5: The Rogue Era

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Let's create. We were getting where we couldn't pay the bill.
PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one.

That's terrifying.

That's fair.

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We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe, but it starts driving costs down.

I would love to see that.

We're on our way.

I hope so.

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Phoenix Jones was arrested by Seattle PD on suspicion of assault.

Four people got pepper spray.

The pepper spray turned the scene into total chaos.

That time is here. We're about to stress the whole thing.
You're going to die. You're going to die.
pepper spray turned the scene into total chaos.

When we last left our hero, Phoenix Jones,

he'd just been arrested for pepper spraying a bunch of people outside a bar.

That night on October 9th, 2011, he was booked into the county jail and then bailed out. He says that when he showed up to court a few days later, his old nemesis, Seattle attorney Pete Holmes, was there waiting for him.
He's trying to convince me not to fight crime. Like, if you don't stop fighting crime, we're going to tell you your identity.
I'm like, you can't threaten me with something. Like, I will not be threatened.
You have nothing to threaten me with. Like, it's ridiculous for you to think you're going to threaten me.
Ridiculous. The concept's offensive.
You threatening me. Ridiculous.
Like, oh, you're going to tell everybody my identity? You already did jerk off. I'm in court.
You think we can keep all these court documents sealed? I'm aware the clock's ticking. That's why you did it.
You did it to expose me and to make fun of me because you thought that people would think I was a clown. It was at this moment that Phoenix decided he would turn the tables on his nemesis.
That was one of those moments where I was like, everything sucks, but if it's gonna suck, it's gonna suck my way. He looked to Iron Man for inspiration, specifically the scene where, Tony Stark, reveals his identity at a press conference.

And now Mr. Stark has prepared a statement.

Phoenix watched that clip over and over again.

Like five or six times in a row.

Truth is, I am Iron Man.

And I was like, I'm going to do my version of that.

Phoenix set up a press conference outside the courthouse on October 13, 2011.

Wearing his black and gold superhero costume, flanked by people in business suits,

he turns to the reporters and speaks.

I'm Phoenix Jones. I'm Elsa Ben Fodor.

I'm just like everyone else.

The only difference is that I decided to make a difference and stop crime in my neighborhood and my area. The reveal didn't quite have that Hollywood polish, but it was an impressive thing to witness.
Phoenix had made it clear to Pete Holmes and the rest of the Seattle Police Department, the whole world really, that he would not back down from his mission to fight crime. As Phoenix saw, he called their bluff, and they folded.
Life only gives you a certain amount of moments, right? And I think sometimes people are conflicted by how they feel, their emotions, right? Whereas I'm not. So I really have a chance to look at them as as how can I add to my legacy at this moment? Phoenix concluded his press conference with an announcement.
The city attorney could take his request that Phoenix stop fighting crime and shove it. I'm paraphrasing.
What he actually said was that he was heading back out on patrol that weekend, but the point still stands. Phoenix Jones would not be deterred.
I'm David Weinberg, and from the teams at Novel and iHeartRadio,

this is The Superhero Complex, it was a moment of triumph. Shortly after, Pete Holmes' office announced that they were dropping the charges for the pepper spray incident.
I think that just went perfectly. Other than having to reveal my identity, it really went perfectly because I think that legitimized me as a superhero in a weird way.
Why? How? Well, because when I revealed my secret identity, every news article said, hey, superhero reveals secret identity. You have to be a superhero to have a secret identity.
And I revealed it because the cops were coming after me for stopping crime. Phoenix said that in a way, revealing his identity actually helped him.
Because before now, nobody had been able to check whether he had bona fide superhero credentials. People thought I was a guy running around in spandex trying to fight crime.
It was kind of a clown. But when you expose who I am behind it, you find out that I'm a four time regional champion martial artist, a black belt in Taekwondo, have over 350 crime stops.
Now they can look up because they know my actual name. And then they see all these legal police stops where my name is mentioned in crime reports, including an attempted murder stop, right? And all of a sudden you're like, oh, that guy's not a clown.
So in a weird way, it legitimized me further than I ever could. If Seattle's law enforcement were out to get Phoenix

by trying to get Phoenix by charging him for a crime, they had failed. If anything, the arrest made Phoenix more confident and more defiant.
Shortly after he revealed his true identity, he made an appearance on Fox News on Megyn Kelly's show. Phoenix, is it true that at the end of the court hearing yesterday, you tore off your dress shirt to reveal your signature black and green superhero costume? I was black and gold.
Yeah, I was wearing my super suit because this wasn't about the guy under the mask. They were charging Phoenix Jones because I'm Phoenix Jones.
If I was a regular person and I had just regularly pepper sprayed someone who was in a fight, they would have shook my hand and sent me away. So I wore the suit because that's what this was about.
And I took my mask off because the

person suffering for it is the person under the mask. Phoenix may have won his first major battle

with the police, but it was really just the start of the war. When Phoenix was arrested,

the Seattle police confiscated his beloved super suit, and they refused to give it back.

Phoenix complained about it on the local Seattle radio program, The Bob Rivers Show. Why did they confiscate your suit? There's two answers.
There's the politically correct answer and then the truth. Phoenix says that the police claimed his suit was evidence and they needed it to identify him.
He says that doesn't make any sense because he'd already identified himself publicly. He ends up complaining to the host about the fact that he's having to use a substandard replacement suit.
A bulletproof vest, stab plating. This one doesn't have a stab plating.
The police confiscated that suit. This one is not so expensive.
The other one that the police confiscated, as quotations, evidence, was like $7,000. Holy moly.
What are they doing with that? That makes me mad.

They're probably wearing it and taking photos. You call every day and ask about the suit?

Yeah, I call several times. Seven times a day.
Hi, it's me, Phoenix Jones. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Phoenix.
The thing that's weird is that no one is assigned to my suit, so there's not an officer

I can call directly. In the moments right after Phoenix revealed his identity in his dramatic

press conference, it felt like he'd won a massive victory over the system. But the reality was that Phoenix had just opened up a huge can of worms.
And the repercussions of his decision to out himself were about to hit with disastrous consequences. What was hard for me is when my identity came out, I was working with autistic children.
So they yanked my state license and a bunch of other stuff and said I was crazy.

When Ben Fodor wasn't putting on a superhero costume and chasing down criminals as Phoenix Jones,

or training at the gym, or competing as an MMA fighter, he was at his day job, caring for kids with autism.

He went to their homes or to state-run facilities, and he took them out shopping and helped them learn other life skills they would need to navigate the world as adults. Both my parents own a foster home that works with autistic children for a living.
When I turned 18, the first job I ever had was working with autistic children. I worked with autistic children until I was 25, and I got a bunch of different awards for teacher of the year and all kinds of different stuff for working with autistic kids and helping them cope with their general life skills.
I found them incredibly easy to understand and incredibly easy to help. So being somewhat on that spectrum would make that easier, I guess.
Obviously, any person who becomes a real-life superhero probably thinks outside of societal norms. But there were also these small moments I had with Phoenix that revealed something deeper about how he sees the world, about his thought processes.
For example, one night I was driving with Phoenix when he got a text from his girlfriend Dre. He pulled over to respond, and then he explained this bizarre system he created for talking to friends over text messages.
I don't always understand how to explain things to other people, like how you as a way to show that I like you is not ever going to be something that I value. So I came up with a system with my friends where when I think about them, I'll send a number.
So 313 is like a sandwich. Any number has a sandwich, or a run, like like 1, 2, 3, like 1 in the morning, 123 in the morning.
Sandwich, what do you mean? Like two numbers on the ends and one number in the middle. When I'm thinking of my friends, I'll send them a random set of numbers.
You know what I mean? Because math always makes sense. 347, right? 3 plus 4 equals 7.
So I'll send them like 3 plus 4, and then an equal sign is 7. So we all send each other numbers back and forth.
It's kind of like saying I'm thinking about you at a specific time or I waited till that time because you're an important person to me and math makes sense to me. I didn't quite understand Ben's system.
It just sounds a little like autistic to me. Yeah, well.
Like on the spectrum. People have said that about me before.
You know, it's hard to explain. I don't know.
I feel like autism is a negative thing. Like, people are always saying something negative about being autistic in my mind.
And if I am autistic, then I guess I'm one of the most successful autistic people that there is. Like, I win at every game I play.
So, whatever label people want to put on that they can, I don't care the fuck, I guess. After Phoenix was arrested, the Department of Social and Health Services notified his employer, who barred him from working with any of the children in their care.
Phoenix was told to leave immediately. He says he had to walk out of his job in the middle of the day.
The department spokesperson said they were just trying to err on the side of caution and that he could have his job back if he wasn't convicted. But after the charges were dropped, Phoenix says he still had to prove that he wasn't mentally ill before they'd consider letting him go back to work.
One test he says he was given was supposed to determine whether or not he was autistic. At the end of the test, Phoenix got a score, a number that determined where on the autism spectrum someone is.
Phoenix says he scored a 57 out of 100. Anything above 50 could be autistic.
Anything above 65 is autistic. So what the fuck does that mean? The part of the test that really tripped Phoenix up was the facial recognition questions.
There's a part where they play, like, a video of these faces, and people make weird faces, right? And they're supposed to say, what emotion the person's feeling. I had no fucking clue.
Like, it was just, like, random faces. It didn't make any sense.
No one could have done it. It was crazy.
So afterwards, I was like, this is insane. So I told my doctor about it.
He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, the facial recognition,

recognition test or whatever, right?

So they were like, well, we'll give it to you again.

So I did it again.

I scored the exact same thing, right?

Then he was like, watch your son do it

because my son was with me, right?

Then my son did it.

And he just straight up was like sad, happy, confused, angry,

and nailed all of them.

So it was like this weird moment where I'm like, okay, there's something happening here that I'm not seeing. Clearly.
Phoenix told me that the autism assessment was just one of several psychological tests he was given. So it took me like three years of like proving I'm not a crazy person.
What was that three-year process of trying to prove that you weren't crazy? What did that look like? Well, like first I had to go to a stupid hearing. Then after the hearing, I had to submit a piece of paper.
And then they wanted me to do a mental evaluation. And then they did IEP meetings, which are between the kids that you work with and the parents.
And the final process was something called a judgment review, which is where they just ask you a bunch of questions, basically. But I mean, it wasn't hard because I'm not crazy.
Eventually, Phoenix says he did everything he needed to pass the psychological tests. But in the meantime, he was still out of a job and a super suit.
But Phoenix was determined to continue protecting the citizens of Seattle. So he put on his budget backup suit and hit the streets looking for action.
For Phoenix, the only thing that mattered was the work, protecting those in danger and helping those in need, even if everything else in his life was a total mess. I'm deficient in these areas over here, but none of them have to do with crime fighting.
That is the one place I am fucking flawless. Now here is one issue that Phoenix and I will never agree on.
I wholly reject the idea that Phoenix is perfect at crime fighting. I mean, this is a guy who almost drowned in a puddle because he got caught in his own net and then got robbed by the criminal he was chasing.
Also, every time I hung out with Phoenix, we had to use my rental car to get around because his car had either been towed or broken into by thieves who he was never able to apprehend. So yeah, I think we have different ideas about what crime-fighting

perfection looks like. But Phoenix was adamant that he had achieved it.
There's no crime he

can't stop. Nobody he can't save.
But there was one tragic incident in 2012 that Phoenix

admittedly failed to prevent. It was a night that changed everything.
That's coming up. Divorce can leave you feeling isolated, like you're stuck on an island with no direction.

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That's terrifying. That's fair.
Joe, Regional Vice bill. PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one.

That's terrifying.

That's fair.

Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E.

We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe,

but it starts driving costs down.

I would love to see that.

We're on our way.

I hope so.

PG&E electricity rates are now lower than they were last year.

Hear what other customers have to say

and what PG&E is doing about it at pge.com slash open dash lines. Wondering if you should call or text 988 the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline? Well, here are some reasons to get help.
Reach out if you're having thoughts of suicide, you're feeling depressed or anxious. It doesn't have to be a crisis.
You're worried about a friend. Or if today has been tough and you need someone to talk to.
Basically, if you're thinking about calling 988, you should call 988. To learn what it's like to call 988, go to neverabother.org.
This is Laurie Santos, and I'm here with Libby Abbott, Deputy Director of California Department of Healthcare

Access and Information. So Libby, how did the certified wellness coach profession come about? Knowing that we have a severe overall behavioral health workforce shortage in California, we knew we had to do something innovative to bring needed prevention, promotion, and early identification services.
So we conducted extensive interviews with hundreds of students, parents, teachers. So what we heard was that the youth want a more diverse workforce with workers who can relate to them and make them feel seen and heard, and preferably folks who come from their communities and reflect their backgrounds.
And so who would make a good certified wellness coach candidate? Anyone who's currently working in mental health, substance use disorder, social work,

or child welfare, coaches are people who are passionate about supporting our youth and

equipping them with the tools that they need to navigate mental and behavioral health. To learn more, visit cawellnesscoach.org.
On April 22nd, 2012, a young businessman named Dennis was in Seattle for a work trip. I had brought my wife and one of my kids up there to spend the weekend.
They did some shopping and cruising around while I did all my work. After he wrapped up the day's business, he went to see the Supercross at the football stadium with a friend.
They were grabbing some food and heading back to the hotel where Dennis's wife was waiting for him. It was two o'clock in the morning on a Saturday night, so bars were closing and it was busy down there, so there was a ton of people.
They walked from the stadium to Pioneer Square, where the streets were filled with tourists and folks from the surrounding suburbs who came into the area for the bars and clubs. There was also a large community of homeless people and drug dealers who catered to them.
Phoenix! Hey, what's up, brother? Which was why Phoenix was a few streets away, on patrol with Ghost, Midnight Jack, Captain Karma, and a few other members of the Rain City Superheroes. How you doing, boss? Yeah, some superheroes out here.
So far, it had been just like any other night on patrol. They'd looked for bar fights or drunk people in need of assistance.
And, as usual, Phoenix had snapped some photos with late-night revelers. Can I get a picture? Yeah, well, definitely.
How you doing? Yeah. You gotta hurry, we're leaving.
Just a little bit. One, two, three.

There we go.

Have a good night.

Save the world, baby.

By the time Dennis was setting off back to his hotel,

the Rain City superheroes had stopped a couple blocks away

outside a nightclub called Trinity.

A lot of people out here.

Right spot.

Right spot.

Absolutely.

Phoenix was preoccupied with some communication problems.

Say it again, we're losing contact, brother. Our radios were trash.
We had literally good radios that we had painted. Karma, what's your code? I tried to hail Captain Karma on the radio, and he didn't answer.
Karma, report. Make him give me good radio contact, all right? Who's running your radio? Phoenix was getting frustrated.
Can you hear when I call you? Yes. I called you three times.
You didn't respond. Really? Yes, really.
Put it in your pocket. I heard most.
Put it in your pocket. I'm holding it.
Put it back where it was. At this point, locked in a petty argument about communication, they had no idea that their night was about to be turned inside out.

Phoenix immediately started sprinting towards the sound. Bang! Gunshots, gunshots, gunshots! Three gunshots go off and I'm like, yo, follow me.
Team one, team two, follow me.

Phoenix immediately started sprinting towards the sound.

Within seconds, he'd arrived at a street called Yesler Way.

People were screaming and fleeing in all directions.

There's a person standing on their cell phone.

There's a guy who's kind of crouching, you know?

And then over here, there's like a car that's driving by. And then I see it.
The guy crouching's got a gun. Dennis said he and his friend were there too, in the midst of the chaos.
They'd been crossing the road when the shots were fired. You could hear the panic.
It was chaos, like scary. Over on his side of Yesler Way, Phoenix froze.

Out of the corner of my eye, the person on the cell phone just, like, drops.

And it's a weird kind of drop because it's like, like, everything just stopped working.

Versus, like, someone laying down or being hurt.

It just was like, boom.

The person who dropped to the ground was 21-year-old Nicole Westbrook. Nicole had been shot in the face, and the bullet had gone through her cheek and shattered her spine.
Dennis said he ran towards her. Everything slowed down.
It went into slow motion. I was just trying to keep her alert and awake and talking to me.
So I had my hand kind of underneath her neck to kind of have her like look at me and talk to me. And I felt blood underneath her neck.
I could tell that's where she had been shot. And yeah, I just sat there kind of screaming and yelling for police to come.
By this point, Dennis said the square had emptied. It was scary, quiet after the shooting, because everybody was gone.
There wasn't a soul around me. Phoenix was gone too.
He'd taken off in pursuit of the person he'd seen crouching, who he thought was the gunman. He tore down the street, past confused onlookers,

and he says he ran into the cops,

who were arriving on the scene.

And I'm like, yo, the shooting went this way.

And the cops are like, hold up, Phoenix.

Phoenix says the police wanted to wait for backup.

I'm like, that's ridiculous.

I didn't come into this game to play these rules

and do this shit, but it was too late.

It's mathematically not intelligent to run around a blind corner into the dark with a doo-doo as a weapon. But it could have done it if I kept going when I started.
If I hadn't stopped. I wanted to do something.
You know, we all got dressed up to do something. In the body cam footage available online,

Phoenix talks to the police a few times,

but I couldn't hear the cops telling him to turn back.

Either way, Phoenix says he'd lost sight of the man he was chasing,

and he blames himself for giving up the chase.

Back at the intersection on Yesler Way, Dennis says he sat with Nicole and her boyfriend until the ambulance arrived. The couple had just moved to Seattle three weeks earlier.
Nicole had just started classes in a culinary program at the Art Institute, and her boyfriend had recently been hired at a screen printing shop. They were out that night to celebrate their good fortune at landing a job and starting a new life together in the city.
When the ambulance arrived, Nicole was alive, but in critical condition. Dennis watched the medics pull away and walked back to his hotel with his shirt covered in blood.
I remember seeing, like, he's dressed up like a superhero in O cape. You know, you're in downtown Seattle.
It's another crazy guy dressed up in a costume. I really didn't think anything of it.
It's all going to stay with me probably forever. It just changes you when something like that happens.
Phoenix says that after he gave up his pursuit of the gunman, he returned to the scene of the shooting. The cops wouldn't let me leave because I was the key witness of the thing.
And I'm sitting there on the curb, right there, like on the corner. And then after a little bit of time, like the crime tape, they just take the crime tape down.
And then I'm sitting there and I'm just, just me.

And I'm just, like, sitting next to this pile of blood on the street in my suit.

And it's, like, the morning.

And, like, people are coming to work and, like, living their lives and doing their thing.

And then, like, maybe, like, people are coming to work and, like, living their lives and doing their thing. And then, like, maybe, like, seven, a fire truck comes by and just sprays all the blood into the drain.
And that was it. You know what I mean? Like, nothing got fixed.

Nothing got solved.

None of us helped in any way.

The shooter never got captured.

We all just didn't do our job. Nicole never regained consciousness.

She died in the hospital three days after she was shot.

It's still an unsolved case.

Her family keeps a Facebook page running,

hoping for new information that might lead to an arrest.

There are just moments in your life that you're never going to forget.

Yeah.

Um.

I took a long portion of my life and dedicated it

to stopping bad people from doing bad things.

And I don't care if people don't like me.

I don't care if people don't agree with what I did, but I live with the repercussions of what I did every day. You know? Yeah.
I'm just... Realistically, there's nothing Phoenix could have done to save Nicole.
He was blocks away when the shots were fired, but maybe that's why he was so affected by it. When Phoenix told me about how he'd been inspired by the Nightwing comics as a kid, he'd vowed that he would never be helpless

again. But when it came to the senseless act of violence that ended Nicole Westbrook's life,

he was just as powerless as everyone else. Several of Phoenix's former teammates told me that he was

never the same after that night. Ghost, who was with Phoenix during the shooting and has known

him since they were in high school, put it bluntly. That was when my friend, in my mind, died.
And what we have now is not who I used to know. But he did used to mean a lot to me as a person.
I followed him into gunfire multiple times. He did too.
You know, we all did. Against our better judgment

often.

But, in my opinion,

he took that,

the fact that we couldn't save that one person

that night way too personally.

And I

don't, it sounds terrible coming out like that,

but like, there's a nature to this.

And we're not going to win everything.

You know, but he somehow took that upon himself

in a way that I think changed him.

Phoenix returned from that devastating patrol a different man,

and the transformation would have consequences for everyone around him. That's coming up.
Divorce can leave you feeling isolated, like you're stuck on an island with no direction. But you don't have to

go through it alone. At Hello Divorce, we guide you step by step, offering everything from legal advice to financial planning, so you can find your way back to solid ground.
Start your divorce journey with the support you need at hellodivorce.com, because you deserve a better path forward. We were getting where we couldn't pay the bill.
PG&E asked customers about their biggest concerns so we could address them one by one. That's terrifying.
That's fair. Joe, Regional Vice President, PG&E.
We have to run the business in a way that keeps people safe, but it starts driving costs down. I would love to see that.
We're on our way. I hope so.
PG&E electricity rates are now lower than they were last year. Hear what other customers have to say and what PG&E is doing about it at pge.com slash open dash lines.
Wondering if you should call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline? Well, here are some reasons to get help. Reach out if you're having thoughts of suicide, you're feeling depressed or anxious.
It doesn't have to be a crisis. You're worried about a friend.
Or if today has been tough and you need someone to talk to. Basically, if you're thinking about calling 988, you should call 988.
To learn what it's like to call 988, go to neverabother.org. This is Laurie Santos, and I'm here with Charlotte Noble, Certified Wellness Coach.
Charlotte, why did you apply to become certified as a wellness coach? For me, it was all about having that introductory level position into mental health. And also, it's being there for students who are really dealing with mental health challenges in a rural community.
Today's young people, they're facing so much, and I feel really passionate about providing them with the kind of early accessible support that can make a huge difference. What would you like people to know about the unique challenges that children and youth face today? They're growing up in a world now that's pretty complex in ways that we didn't have to deal with before.
I mean, they're immersed in the digital age with social media that can really define their self-worth and their identity. So often setting almost like these impossible standards.
On top of that, feeling the weight of academic pressures, economic uncertainties,, social issues in day-to-day life.

To learn more, visit cawellnesscoach.org.

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That's Star Star 488 to receive a link to the offer. In the days after Nicole Westbrook's murder, Phoenix was in bad shape.
Didn't come inside a house, take a shower, take my super suit, including my mask off for four days. I was like patrolling at night and then just like just sleeping outside wherever I wanted.
I mean, I lost my mind. I just like stopped living for like four days.
Phoenix was fixated on the man he'd seen crouching at the scene of the crime, and he was determined to find him. How were you able to find him? Just because you knew what he looked like? I knew what he looked like.
I knew most likely from his close he didn't have a car. And there's this place called the jungle.
It's like a lot of homeless encampments. It's stretched next to the side of the city freeway.
I was like, I bet you he's in that place. The jungle stretches for three miles in a green belt directly underneath Interstate 5.

It's a sea of tents with a constant drone of traffic from the cars 50 feet overhead.

According to some reports, unhoused people have lived in the jungle since as far back as the 1930s.

Phoenix made his way to the jungle in the hopes of finding the suspect. And I went through every single tent.
I ripped them apart and got in fights and destroyed things. This is one of the few times Phoenix has ever admitted to losing his cool and going against his own strict moral code.

Despite his objections in the past about homeless outreach

not being a central part of his mission as a superhero,

he's always claimed to offer assistance to those in need when he comes across them.

But rampaging through a homeless encampment and destroying people's only belongings, Phoenix was out of control. Eventually, someone was like, yo, stop it.
This is where that dude's at. And this took me there.
And then me and him had a conversation. Phoenix told me that when he finally found the man he'd been hunting for days, it turned out that he'd been after the wrong person.
Phoenix said the man talked to him and convinced him that he wasn't the shooter. The police investigating believe it was a drive-by and that the shots had been fired from a white sedan.
When he heard this, Phoenix felt totally deflated. I went back to like under the bridge on bridge on James Street.
There's, like, a parking lot.

I was sitting up against a pole

and asked how to sleep under the parking lot.

And then Ghost found me

because of my cell phone tracker that we had on.

He's like, yo, you got to stop patrolling.

Ghost had been there the night of the shooting as well,

but he told me he had a different perspective on it than Phoenix. It does get to me in that way.
I have severe PTSD, and I manage it every day of my life. You know, there'd be something wrong with you if it didn't get to you, but you can't let one loss define you.
You know, and I think that's what he did. In the aftermath of the shooting, some team members were skeptical about how sincere Phoenix's reaction was.
Fellow real-life superhero Crystal Marks told me that she always felt that Phoenix used Nicole Westbrook's murder to his advantage. I think it definitely left an impact.
You can't be a human and know that that happened and not be changed in some way. But he keeps coming back like, I can't rest until her killer is found.
And it's again, he uses it for media attention. Like, I don't know if he really was all that impacted.
Phoenix did interviews with the media about the murder. Nicole's family thanked him on their Facebook page for raising awareness.
But Phoenix also had a comic book made, which featured the shooting starring him.

It included graphic images of Nicole laying in a pool of her own blood.

Phoenix said on a radio show that it was intended to shine a light on the unsolved case.

But there's something about making a comic book about a tragedy like that and making yourself the star that just feels a little gross to me. Whenever Nicole's murder came up when I talked to him, Phoenix was still very emotional about it, even all these years later.
I just, I cannot explain why this event hurts me so much inside.

This person I don't know getting shot by someone I don't know

in a scenario when the guns were already done before we could do anything.

You know?

There's nothing we could have done.

There's no amount of training.

There's no amount of superhero suits or movies or ideas or beliefs that are changing that. Nothing changes that.
Phoenix told me that after the shooting, his approach to crime fighting totally changed. I start patrol, right? About an hour into patrol, I'd be like, all right, guys, if I need you, I'll give you a call.
And then I would go tear up the jungle and get in fist fights with, like, crazy, like, just crazy shit, you know? Or, like, me and Jack would break into an abandoned house that was full of, like, homeless people that were selling drugs in there, and, like, we would just do reckless things. I was on a reckless mission.
I was just on one. Phoenix was acting increasingly

wild and impulsive. Evo called him out on it.
Evo was the straight shooter. Like every time I tell

him about a plan, he would be like, no, you want to go break into an abandoned house? No, like no.

Right. But the crew of guys wanted to patrol and Evo was the secondary guy that they would follow.

Evo grew more and more

frustrated with phoenix's erratic behavior he wouldn't answer anything he wouldn't answer calls he wouldn't answer texts voicemails emails messages on facebook or twitter or anything like that like he was unreachable in the meantime like okay well the show must go on so almost necessity, I would leap into this thing like,

Hey, everybody, I just heard from Phoenix that we're doing Cap Hill tonight.

So meet at our usual spot at 11 o'clock, and we'll figure out roles there and be safe.

I asked Phoenix about what Evo had told me.

I think he got frustrated because he said oftentimes you would just disappear and not be reachable,

and he'd have to kind of like step in, and I feel like he felt like that hindered the patrols.

Thank you. about what Evo had told me.
I think he got frustrated because he said oftentimes you would just disappear and not be reachable, and he'd have to kind of like step in. And I feel like he felt like that hindered the patrols.
I would agree it did. What was going on with you at that time? I was going rogue.
So what he's talking about is like the rogue era. The rogue era.
Phoenix made no apologies about that chaotic period. Maybe you should go save a sex trafficking ring occasionally or maybe you should do something, Evo, because the thing that Evo's done was just, what has Evo done? Did Evo tell you about any of his cool crime stops? Tell me one of Evo's crime stops.
I'll wait. None? He's not here, but I can't like to.
Yeah, but I mean, does he have any? Yeah. I mean, you just interviewed him, right? What was one story he told you about where he stopped a crime? I don't think he told any.
Because he doesn't have any. no i mean you just interviewed him right what was one story he told you about where he stopped a crime i don't think he told that because he doesn't have any he stopped the bagel evo stopped zero crimes full bagels i'm not being mean none so what are you talking about bro oh phoenix would leave all the time and go fight real crimes while you walked around and gave food to homeless people and smiled for photos and shit because you're like a Captain America.
And that's great, dude. Congratulations for you.
But like,

I'm into some real shit. We're out here, people are dying.
I want to do some real fucking shit.

As things started to unravel for Phoenix, there were other troubling lapses in judgment

that caused alarm among his teammates. One incident in particular really rattled Evo.
It was about 11 a.m. and I showed up to his house and he has passed out on the couch, half naked and like, hey dude, gotta get up, man, we gotta go.
As Phoenix was waking up, Evo went to use the bathroom. That's when he noticed the bottle of pills.
Right next to the sink is this little medical bottle on its side, half empty. Looking at it, it's Rohypnol.
I'm like, what the fuck is he doing with fucking date rape drug? What the hell is that? So I come out and I say, hey, what's a little bottle of roofies out there? And he just started like almost panic speaking at a million miles per hour, talking about how this friend of his had roofied purple. So Phoenix got some roofies and he was going to roofie this friend of his in revenge.
It clearly made sense to him, but I was so lost on, like, this is something you call the police for, bro. This is, how is this helping anymore? Like, what does this fix? I asked Phoenix about this incident and he didn't deny it.
That's true. Yeah, that happened.
Can you tell that story? Fuck you, man. You shouldn't have shared that.
See, remember when I said there were things I've actually done that are bad, right? This is one of those things I've actually done. Phoenix says he'd seen a guy put Rohypnol in his girlfriend's drink.
So he threw out the drink, stole the Rohypnol, and decided to take the matter into his own hands. I was like, yo, Evo, you got to help me.
And I stole the bottle, and Evo's like, I'm not going to commit a crime with you. He's like, how dare you want to hypnose someone? I don't even know if that's where you got it.
And I got all like ridiculous about it, which made sense. Phoenix went through with his plan without Evo.
So then I immediately got on the phone and called someone else, super friend of mine, who was like, I'm 100% down, that's terrible. So we went to this party and I dropped in this in this dude's drink, and he just, out, right? So I rented a hotel, put him in the hotel, took all of his clothes off, wrote a note on the door that said, thanks for the good time, and dipped.
With the guy passed out, Phoenix says they took his credit card and ordered shrimp and 37 bottles of champagne. We threw the shrimp all around the room and just put, like, put Cook's bottles, and then we put condoms over the tops of Cook's bottles.
So he just woke up in his room with just, like, shrimp and Cook's bottles. So was that a Phoenix Jones operation or was that a Ben Fodor operation? Oh, I wasn't in my uniform.
I went in my regular clothes. I would never do that as Phoenix Jones.
There's no reason. To me, this whole story just seems like an example of Phoenix's immaturity.
But it was also an example of yet another way in which Phoenix was not, as he keeps insisting, perfect. The first time we talked, you kept insisting that you were perfect at crimefighting.
But then today, I feel like you just keep telling all these stories about when you weren't perfect i'm curious how you like square those two ideas in crime fighting is just this not breaking the law not harming other people and stopping the crime right we've done it every time but what about nicole i mean that's not a win not possible to win but isn't that a little bit like no no no no well i'm just saying person who did it never got caught, right? Oh, 100. Well, that's not a success then.
My job is not to catch the people who do crimes. It's to protect the people who are getting hurt from the crime.
You have a misconception of what crime fighting is because you don't have any experience on the streets. There's no tidy closed corners, not even in police work, never, right? But there's not one story where I showed up and it got worse, or I showed up and no one got helped, or I showed up and they're like, you broke the law, or like they sued me 27 times trying to say I broke the law and I fucking didn't.
There's never been any of that. It's been 100% flawless.
So I don't care if you don't agree. You, hit me.
I disagree. What I'm more interested in is like, why? Because you admittedly have this disastrous life.
Sure. You're always late to things.
Your car's always getting hurt. For sure.
You have a lot of personal struggles. Always.
And the reason I find the idea that you can be perfect in crime fighting is when you put on a suit, you don't become a different person. And so like how in your mind

do you justify this compartmentalization

where like you're perfect at this thing,

but everything else in your life is a mess.

And more importantly,

like why do you feel this need to be perfect?

I don't.

I'm single-minded to the point of recklessness.

And that's why I'm so good at crime fighting

and why I'm so bad at everything else.

Like I've got to come to an interview today, right?

But my car got fucking towed because of some thing. So now I'm focused on that cartel and I'm late for the interview.
But when you walk out to a crime scenario, it happens in front of you and involves all of your attention. It's not ideal to need to be perfect.
It's just what I am. Every time we get into this debate, we reach a stalemate.
But regardless of whether or not you believe Phoenix's logic, I think it's safe to say that what he sees as his greatest failure as a superhero,

Nicole Westbrook's murder, changed his life forever.

I don't know. It was weird.

But if we could, like, make chapters of people's lives,

or, like, in, like, our time we used before Christ, like, B, C, and A, D,

my life would be, like like before Nicole and after.

It just never got better.

And it's really like where the team started unraveling.

That unraveling would ultimately lead to a superhero breakup on a mass scale.

Next time, the Rain City superheroes come crashing to an end.

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.
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. 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 Hausden.
Special thanks to Peter Tangen,

Willard Boxton, Matt O'Meara,

Katrina Norvell, Beth Ann Macaluso,

Oren Rosenbaum, Shelby Schenkman,

and all the team at UTA.

For more from Novel, visit novel.audio. www.horce.com because you deserve a better path forward.
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