My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 376 - That's a Good Bean!

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

On today's episode, Georgia covers Japan's Monster with 21 Faces and the Vending Machine Murders and Karen tells the legendary story of Southern Appalachian moonshiner, Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton.For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is Exactly Right. I'm Cara Clank. And I'm Lisa Trager. We're comedians and hosts of That's Messed Up, an SVU podcast on Exactly Right. Every Tuesday, we take you through an episode of Law & Order SVU, the crime it's based on, and chat with celeb guests from the episode.

Listen to That's Messed Up on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Justin from Generation Y, and we're doing a four-part series unraveling the story of Khalif Browder, a young boy falsely accused of stealing a backpack and held at Rikers Island for three years without trial. This story is about a young life caught in the middle of the justice system. Listen to Generation Y on Amazon Music,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Do we need a clap? What's that? We clapped. We clapped. Did we? Shit. We do it again.

I don't feel good. Wow. A mere 30 seconds ago. I still don't remember it. My favorite murder. Hello. And welcome. It's my favorite murder.

That's Georgia Hardstark. That's Karen Gilgarath. And you know what, we have a lot of business this week, so let's just, we have so many things to do and discuss and see and be. Yeah, you can tell there's a lot of business, because Karen has a pen behind her ear. And that's happening. Oh, you didn't know?

No, I don't have a pen behind my ear. You don't, but wouldn't it be great if you did? That's how you knew you wanted to get down to business? I completely thought I'd put it there and then forgot about it. I was like, do I? I'm also like, were you old enough to watch the, what's the basketball team? Oh, Harlem Globetrotters.

Yeah. Do you remember the Harlem Globetrotters? They had a cartoon. Yes. Where they traveled around the world and had adventures. I watched it, but didn't understand it, because I was too young to understand it. But we watched it.

You just remembered the visuals? Yes. So do you remember, I don't think it was Metal Arc Lemon. I think it was one of the other players, he would pull stuff out of his Afro while they were playing to like do stuff to other players and stuff. Like, or if they got into, if they were in a pinch, they got locked out of something,

he'd be like, hold on and pull stuff out of his Afro. Yes. That's how I feel about my hair this moment, where literally you're like, there's a pen in there. And I'd be like, hold on, let me go check. Which one do you want? What color do you want? You want a blue?

I have a nice, a nice pick. I have a soft tip, whatever. There's a mechanical pencil over here. That's right. There's a lead every time. Every time. Just right in my ear. Yeah, very busy.

Also, Well, have you done the thing where you lose your phone and then realize it's in your hand? Almost every time. Same with, I don't know where my glasses are in there. I've now begun to wear my glasses like a headband. Yeah. They're always on my head at all times.

Yeah. It's gone now. I can't remember. No, that's okay. That's how it is these days. It's just like, if you have anything that you need to convey to another person, and you're not going to say it immediately,

or I should say, I, I better write it down on a piece of paper, because it will be gone in moments, seconds. Can we just talk about the fact that I, we were about to start recording. And I was like, don't we need to do the clap? Cause we do the one, two, three, four claps or we're synced. And Karen goes, we already did it.

Like we just did it like 15 seconds ago, but I had gotten up to grab something else. And then I come back and I'm like, we have to do the clap that we already done it. It's almost like these days, because we've all been through so much, aside from what we've already been through in our personal lives, which is plenty,

then on top of that, there's the national trauma that we're all experiencing. Where our brains are just like, okay, enough of this already. Like it's just like, let's refresh like goldfish every 10 seconds. And just like keep it new. Let's not hold on to anything. Let's just keep it new. Yeah.

We got to take, we got to take our ginkgo biloba. However, there's certain things I don't want to fucking remember that I just read. You know, it's like, is there a selective ginkgo biloba that we could be taking? Good news. Good news.

Scientists. Can you please get on that? A good news. Ginkgo biloba. Please. Please God. No bad thoughts. There are no bad thoughts.

Only bad people. I, that think, that think about that. I have a piece of news for you, which is long ago. You recommended Bridget Everett's HBO show, Somebody Somewhere. And do you know the reason I didn't take you up on it immediately? Cause I had seen it on there,

but the way she looks in the poster, in the like promotional picture, I'm like, this is going to make me cry and I can't deal with it. That's all it is. That's all it is. That's all it is. That's all it is.

That's all it is. That's all it is. That's all it is. That's all it is. It's, and I love Bridget Everett so much. If you've never seen her listener out in the world and you get an opportunity to see Bridget Everett live, you must take that opportunity.

You must fight for that opportunity because she is truly and legitimately one of the greatest live performers I've ever seen. She is so talented and so amazing. She's an incredible singer. She's so funny. She writes these original songs. She does covers.

But then in this show and my sister's the one who was like, please watch this. I just watched it. I can't be alone with this experience. So I finally did it where I was like, I can cry. It's fine. I have the bandwidth now. I didn't before.

And I watched the entire fucking season in one night. I loved it so much. I didn't want to leave Kansas. And Bridget, of course, is amazing. But Jeff Hiller, the guy that's in it with her, is one of my favorite people on the planet now. He's incredible. It's such a heartbreaking show.

And it is a cry fast and it's supposed to be, but somehow it's still so funny and touching and poignant. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful. And my friend Rob Cohen directed a bunch of episodes. So that I saw his name at the end and I was like, oh my god. Wait, Rob Cohen is at the helm. It's just so real.

I want to do so many spoilers right now, but I won't. But anybody, if you have HBO or you have a friend that will give you their code to HBO, please watch somebody somewhere. It fucking deserves everything. And season two is starting in mere days. I know. I can't wait. Did you start season two of Barry season four,

whatever season it is. That's the last season of Barry. No, because I'm not caught up with season three of Barry. So now I have that binge waiting. Oh, good for you. Did you start it? Yeah, we'll talk about it. It's great.

It's great. It's so well acted. It's beautiful. He's so fucking good. They all are. And has a fucking... Bill Hader. Bill Hader has fucking...

Henry Winkler done anything bad in his life ever. Not well. Does he read the newspaper poorly? No. Everything he fucking does is magical. I honestly believe it's because it's coming out of him and the spirit of the man himself, which I have already bragged to you multiple times

that I got to meet him in real life. Me too. Me too. Right. We've both done this bragged to each other, but I truly believe it's like he as a person is such a delight. He so gets it. He gets the point of everything.

Totally. So he can't... How could he do something like inauthentic or insincere because he's just so goddamn good as a person? Yeah. That's what I believe. What else? You got anything else?

Well, the exciting thing is it's Steven Ray Morris' birthday today. Steven! Thank you. Happy birthday. Thank you so much. Steven. Steven. Older, wiser, you know, all the things you should hope to get from age.

Forgetfulness, you know? Right? Yeah. Welcome. Your mustache does look a little fuller today. Thank you. It does, doesn't it? Steven, have you gotten any grays yet in your mustache?

Yes, I have. But they only come on this side. So then eventually it just looks like this side is missing. Yeah. And it's just like a fun half-seas situation going on. No, that's not cool. That doesn't sound like getting older. That just sounds like, you know, you're stressed out about something one too many times

and then like peek-a-boo. I think it all works out. You have the thing where you just pull... The stress thing is to pull on your mustache and then you've just pulled half of it off. Yes. I'm like a cat when they lick their belly. Yes. I also just realized that I'm the age that Georgia was when you guys started MFM.

Oh my God. Was I 35? You turned 36. Yes, yes. I'm turning 36. So I turned 36 today. Wow. So that just really put in perspective.

To everything turned into... Turned into... Well, we got you 5,000 cats for your birthday. Open your front door. They're all waiting. Oh my gosh. They're stealing your car. Yes.

Oh my gosh. Thank you guys so much. Yeah. 5,000 cats. Happy birthday. Thank you. Did you get our birthday email yet? I don't think so.

Well, just keep refreshing. We're going to sit here quietly. Keep refreshing. Wait, when did it come? Do you want to just tell him what it is? Steven, we got you tickets to Carly Rae Jepsen. What? Oh my gosh.

Wait, when? That's so exciting. The Out Loud Fest, I think it's happening because it's Pride Weekend and they're doing all these musical events. And basically, our assistant Melissa found out that Annalise was going, who is a producer here, exactly right. And good friends with Steven. And so now you can go with Annalise. Oh my gosh. We've actually seen Carly Rae Jepsen together before.

I love it. So that's going to be so much fun. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, Annalise and I, one of the pillars of our friendship is Carly Rae Jepsen. So I love that so much. We got you 5,000 Carly Rae Jepsen. Yay. So we're trying to build that relationship even stronger year by year.

It's important to us. Oh, thank you so much. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Do you think it's better to open a gift or to have me just describe a gift to you that I guarantee you're going to get? I love it. That's the whole podcast is describing presents that you're giving to people. Oh, that's a great idea. Oh wait, that's I said no gifts.

Oh my gosh. I said no gifts. Go ahead and tune on in. Well, happy birthday, Steven. Thank you for always being here for us. We appreciate you. Oh my gosh. Thank you.

Yes, we love you. We love you. Okay, well. Goodbye. See you later. And then he goes off the zoo. Goodbye. Goodbye forever.

But wait, come back because don't we want to do our jelly bean taste off? Oh, yes. Steven, you got them too. Right. Thank you, Alejandra. Yeah. Hook this up. That's right.

So last week Karen told us of a tweet where someone let us know that Brock's who likes to do weird flavors of jelly beans has actually outdone themselves. And instead of doing turkey and gravy jelly beans have done desserts of the world jelly beans. Just a quick note, this is non-spawn con. So we are not being paid to do this. We just like doing it. There's no promo code. Sorry. Sorry.

Right to Brock's at Brock's.com. You can like to Shasta on Twitter. It was her idea. I just want to churro one. I've been waiting this whole week to open this so I can eat a churro one. Let's all dig around for the churro one so Georgia can have a churro first. Okay, I'll read you. We have churro flavor, apple pie flavor, lemon sorbet, strawberry mochi.

And chocolate macaron. Macaron. Okay. I think it's the spotted one, right? Yeah. I believe it's brown. Yeah. Okay.

I found it. I'm putting two in my mouth at once. Oh shit. Okay. It's churro time. Here we go. Everybody go. All right.

Minimal chewing. That's good. Yeah. Not much to report there. Yeah. Really truly very low key, especially for people who made like whatever it was stuffing, whatever the one was that we can deal with Thanksgiving. Hot dog.

Hot dog. Yeah. Should we do one more? Yum. Chocolate macaron. Let's do lemon sorbet just because I love lemon so much. Okay. It'll clear the palette.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm doing two again. Ooh, I love that. Ooh, that one is good. Wait. Wait, stop chewing. Okay.

Oh. Ooh. Very spring. Very spring. It's got a tang to it. That's good. That's a good mean. Yeah.

I think my sister would be so furious if she heard the chewing on this. I think a lot of people just tuned out. Okay. The chewing has stopped now. People at home. Those are good. Yeah. That was good.

There's really no substitute for a churro though. I mean, like you don't want a jelly bean when you're having a churro. Word on the street is that Jack in the box has really good churros. Whoa. Really? Uh-huh. I'm going to try it on me though. Do they come with dip?

I wonder. I bet they do. I bet. I bet. I'll try that. All right. Should we do exactly right corner? Let's do it.

Cool. Hey, guess what? We have a podcast network and here are some updates. Right now it's season eight. It's the finale of Tenfold More Wicked. So tune in and learn what was really happening with the morphine murderous. That story has been told. It's now coming to an end.

Jump in if you haven't started it, but tune in for the finale if you have. And we're really excited about this. The winner of season five of RuPaul's Drag Race, all stars joins. Amazing. Joins Michelle and Jordan this week on adulting and it's live from the bell house in Brooklyn, New York. And Shay is just a magical human being as you already know, I'm sure. So you got to check that out.

Yeah, that's going to be amazing. And lastly, we're both so excited to talk to you about this because we put together a very last minute t-shirt, which had that pearl heart quote on it. And we told you that we're going to put it up and everyone should get one. And all proceeds we're going to go to a donation for Planned Parenthood. And you guys showed up. You got those shirts. And now we are donating $30,000 to Planned Parenthood.

So thank you to everybody who bought a pearl heart quote shirt. This is a fundraising, you know, women having their rights taken away drive, which we, I guess now that's what we have to do. Let's do a car wash for your fucking bodily autonomy, because that's apparently the position all women are in in this country right now. That's right. But I'm so, I feel so proud that we get to give this money to Planned Parenthood. Like they helped me out when I had no money at all and needed birth control.

They've done so much good in the world. And there's such an incredible cause and organization that this just feels incredible. And you guys should be so proud of yourselves. And we are honored to be the conduit to give this 30 freaking grand to Planned Parenthood. We're so lucky to have a community. You guys built yourselves around this podcast and you show up and you show up and you show up kind of no matter what is going on. And it's really impressive. So thank you all.

Yes. Thank you guys. Is that it? I think so. I mean, you know, we've eaten jelly beans. We've talked about important shit. What more do people want? What? I mean, true crime.

Oh, fine. What do you think this is? I'm sweating. Why am I sweating? There's questions. Oh, are you getting nervous for your story? Maybe. Okay.

This is an interesting one. I'm first this week, right? Yeah. Yes. Today I'm going to tell you the baffling Japanese mid 80s stories of the monster with 21 faces and the vending machine murders. Are those things related? They will be when I tell you how they are. Okay.

Great. Amazing. Let's see here. So the sources used in today's episodes are a New York Times article by Claire Haberman, a grunge article by Nicholas Verkateke, the United Express International article by Marie Okabe, and all that's interesting article by Bernadette Giacomozzo and a video from the Buzzfeed Unsolved Network. I also want to just mention real quick that suicide is mentioned in part of this story. So I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on that.

Okay. So here we go. First I'm going to tell you about the monster with 21 faces, which is like such a crazy great name, isn't it? It really is. I kind of want to like lay down and I can't really turn the lights out because it's like five o'clock. Like here a spooky bedtime story. Yeah. Light a fire in your office.

In the middle of the day. Yeah. Lean back. So it's 1984. We're in Japan. The country is in the midst of what's later referred to as its quote economic miracle. So during the 1970s and 80s, there's an enormous boom in industry and it catapults Japan into a state of growth, expansion and luxury.

And it's so interesting to think of like now Japan is one of the like, you know, bright stars of the world. But like it took a while to get there. So that's pretty interesting to think about it being a new thing. You know, you know, it's also interesting. And I don't know even know if this is a Japanese company, but Yamaha makes motorcycles and pianos. Same company. I think so. Yeah.

That's wild. But also I could be wrong. Okay. So but as the rich get richer, the poor people, of course, as is the way of capitalism get poorer. Yeah. It's during this moment that one criminal or group of criminals, we don't really know, decides to make major corporations their target. So on the night of March 18th, 1984, a man named Hatsuitza Izaki is kidnapped by two masked men from his hometown in Osaka, Japan.

He's the president of the Izaki Glico Company, which is a beloved and highly successful Japanese food and candy company. They're your favorite candy company, Karen, because they make Pocky. Oh, yeah. It's Pocky. Yeah. Pocky. Everyone loves Pocky, of course. So from this point on, I will refer to the company as the Glico Company and the president as Izaki to keep things simple.

Okay. Izaki is taking a bath after a long day. So he is fully nude when the two armed gunmen break into his house. Nightmare. Nightmare. His wife and family are also home and the criminals tie them up. And Izaki's wife offers the criminals payment in exchange for leaving them alone. But the kidnappers reportedly say, quote, be quiet. Money is irrelevant.

Oh, criminals escape with the naked Izaki. And eventually his family is able to untie the ropes and then call the police. The statement that money is irrelevant is confusing because the next day a ransom note is sent to a Glico company executive. The kidnappers demand a one billion yen. I want to thank my researcher Sarah Blair Jenkins for doing the math on this for us. It's one billion yen. And she let us know that that's over 10 million US dollars in today's money. Oh, wow.

She not only did the yen math, but she did the math math. She did the time math, which we love. Exactly. Wow. So basically they're asking for 10 million dollars. And they also asked for 100 kilograms of gold and 100 kilograms of gold is about, first she wrote, is how much a panda weighs. It's just adorable.

Okay, great. So we've got a gold panda, which is about 220 pounds. And that much gold today is worth six over $6 million in the US. So lots of fucking money they want. And they asked that it be put in a specified phone booth in exchange for Izaki's return. Two days later, before anyone's able to make a payment, Izaki, who we don't know if it's naked still or not. No idea.

He escapes his captors. Thank God. In one account, he manages to get his ropes loose, kick down the door of the empty warehouse he's been trapped in, and find some bystanders to help him contact the police. Please don't let him have been naked that whole time. It makes me wildly uncomfortable. Can you have a little bit of self respect in this, please?

Let him have it. Throw him a robe or something. But he's unable to identify his captors and no ransom money ever changes hands. The mysterious criminals behind this abduction soon start sending threatening letters to the Glico company. Their next letter asked for 60 million yet, and close to half a million US dollars in today's money, in exchange for no longer harassing the company.

So it's like, okay, well, we tried to kidnap someone. It didn't work. We're going to now harass you unless you pay us off. Yeah, that's not effective. No, bad planning. So Glico does follow the instructions, though. They come up with the money, the police stake out the specified ransom drop off, and nothing happens.

Then about a week later, a fire breaks out at the Glico headquarters. No one's hurt, but the fire damages a lot of property. And it's determined to be arson presumed to be the work of the same people who abducted Izaki. The letters and attempts at extortion, they're relentless. So I guess they were being really fucking annoying. And letters are sent to newspapers, Glico executives, and the cops themselves, each assigned by, quote, the monster with 21 faces. This name is in reference to a Japanese children's book from the 1930s

about a mysterious thief who's excellent at disguises and purposely tries to stir up trouble in the news. Can I make a point? Yeah. It's that thing of like, you can't nickname yourself. Because you're complimenting yourself through the nickname and you're not actually very good kidnappers. If the person you're going to get all this money from for ransom

just kicks his way out of his place and gets free and is fine. And it was a naked business executive who got free. Like that to me is like. Yeah. He wasn't some, it wasn't a spy or someone that was like, you know, had a bunch of training in that. Right. And then it's like, so then your plan is just to be irritating with letters. Yeah.

Like just. I'm not stopping. Stern sternly written and a bunch of them. Yeah, that's right. So the monster with 21 faces openly taunts the police and the letters for being so bad at their job and even starts threatening the poison Glico products. The police are starting to take this case extremely personally. The Japanese police force has an outstanding record of solving crimes in the mid 80s

and this massive public criminal enterprise is making them look like bumbling fools. The letters contain specific details about the crimes that have been committed proving that the monster with 21 faces is indeed responsible. Yet the cops can't actually find any tangible leads. Here's a portion of a letter that was addressed to the police to give you an idea of the town. Quote to the stupid police. Are you idiots? What are you doing with so many people?

If you were pros, you would catch us. So clearly it's a 12 year old boy. Yeah. What are you a stupid idiot? Stupid head. So almost two months after Izaki's kidnapping on May 10th, 1984, the Glico company gets a letter from the monster with 21 faces claiming to have poisoned several of their products with potassium cyanide.

But when all Glico inventory is pulled off the shelves and tested for poison, none of them have been tampered with. There's no trace of poison in any product, but it doesn't matter. The damage has been done. The Glico company, because the public found out about this threat, loses $130 million worth of sales and has to lay off at least 450 workers. Oh man. It sucks for them.

A few months later in the summer of 1984, the monster with 21 faces quote forgives the Glico company publicly in a letter and proclaims that their products are safe to buy and to sell again. I swear to God, this sounds like a teenage kid did it. It really does. It's like an internet troll. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The letter reads quote, we're satisfied. The president of Glico has already gone around with his head hanging down long enough. We would like to forgive him. But by that fall, the criminal targets another Japanese food company called Morinaga. So in September 1984, the criminals changed targets. And the Morinaga company begins to receive these really familiar extortion letters. The monster 21 faces first begins by demanding money.

And when the company refuses to pay that money, the criminals add pressure. They send a letter to newspapers addressed to quote, mom's throughout Japan. And they say they have tampered with some beloved Morinaga candies saying quote, we added some special flavor, the flavor of potassium cyanide is a little bitter. No. Yeah. After this letter is published, police begin to search stores all over Japan. And sure enough, they find over 18 boxes of Morinaga candies, particularly choco balls

and Angel Pie, your favorites. Angel Pie. That have handmade labels on them. So they put labels on them that reads quote, danger contains poison. The criminal did that. They're trying to screw at this company. Yeah. But they also don't want to actually kill a child.

Yeah. But they do contain poison. They do contain potassium cyanide. The risk is still there. But they're like, but please at least read this warning. Yeah. There's a warning on the box. It's just different than it makes me think of, of course, the Tylenol poisonings where it's like.

Exactly. It's the complete inverse. Yeah. But miraculously, no one is hurt by these poisoned sweets with warning labels on them. This attack in their use of the labels seems to show that the monster with 21 faces is less interested in killing people than in generating a climate of fear in Japan in order to shake down corporations and humiliate the police. So the letters keep coming.

And even though police are trying their best, they can't catch a break on this one. But after the potassium cyanide candy debacle, some surveillance footage from a grocery store surfaces that appears to show a man placing something onto the shelf where some of the poison candy was later found. So they actually have an image of him. You can see on the video camera, but the quality of the camera footage is not great. And the man's body is turned away. And so there's almost no identifying information.

The footage is released to the public. But no one can figure out who it is. Throughout the course of these crimes, the abduction, the arson, the poison candies, money continues to be demanded and sometimes is actually paid. When ransom is paid, bundles of cash are left at specific points and staked out by police, but no money is ever collected throughout this entire ordeal. So they just make, they're just like making them play cat and mouse, essentially. Oh, wow.

Yeah. It's like, if the kidnapping hadn't happened, I would totally think this is some kid fucking with people. Right. And, but then they actually meant it when they said money is like not, would they say money is no object or something? Yeah. Or no, money isn't important or whatever. Yeah.

I mean, they mean it. They're not. Yeah. I just want to fuck around. Yeah. And they're finding out. Yeah, they are. However, one suspect emerges from the police surveillance of these random money drop off location.

Someone nicknamed quote, the fox eyed man because of his unique eyes is seen multiple times in and around these drop off points acting suspiciously. A sketch of him is even released to the public. At one point, police believe the suspect might be an infamous Yakuza boss and they actually bring him in for questioning. But despite a strong resemblance to the fox eyed man, he has an airtight alibi. So just like the videotape man, the fox eyed man is never identified or caught. Hmm. Also, I think that's such a different style than Yakuza, which are basically the mafia.

Right. This is a small time for them. Yes. They're not going to write stern letters and make threats. Right. Exactly. The monster 21 faces terrorizes a total of 31 Japanese food companies. In addition to the police and the public for a year and a half from 1984 to 85, the perpetrator send over 100 letters in total.

The Japanese police ultimately collect over 28,000 tips and have had over 130,000 officers on the case at various points. Tragically, on August 7, 1985, the chief investigator into the monster 21 faces case dies by suicide. No. Soji Yamamoto was 59 years old when he dies. Just a few hours before his death, Yamamoto was fired from his position as head of the prefectural police in Shinga, Japan, and was reassigned to a different unit. So I think he was just disgraced. Right. And according to United Press International article from 1985, Yamamoto was embarrassed by his investigative performance and lack of arrest made in the monster with 21 faces case.

I know it's awful. Just five days after the police chief's suicide, the monster 21 faces sent this letter, quote, Yamamoto of she got perfecture police died. How stupid of him. Don't let bad guys like us get away with it. There are many more fools who want to copy us. No career Yamamoto died like a man. So we decided to give our condolences. We decided to forget about torturing food making companies.

We are bad guys. That means we've got more to do other than bullying companies. It's fun to leave a bad man's life. Doesn't that just sound like a whole shit? This went further than I expected it to. Yeah, like we have to get out of this because we actually caused a man to take his own life. Totally. Yeah.

It's signed by the monster 21 faces and the letters and attempts at extortion and all other criminal activities surrounding this case abruptly stops. The monster with 21 faces is whoever it is, they're never heard from again and the case remains unsolved to this day. Wow. But wait, there's more. So this kind of large scale criminal enterprise focusing on stoking fear and disrupting capitalism and creating mayhem in Japanese society continues. Even after the supposed retirement of the monster with 21 faces, can I please stop saying that? They said it themselves and I'll last quote, there are many more fools who want to copy us. And this leads us into the vending machine murders.

So it's April 30th, 1985. Haruo Otsu is walking through the streets of Fukuyama, Japan. He's about to go fishing and he's looking for refreshments to take with him. And so he stops at a vending machine, one of Japan's 250,000 vending machines in existence that year. They love a vending machine. They really do. And I love them for that. Yeah, me too.

He buys a bottle of something called Oranamin C, which is a sugary juice drink with some added vitamins. So it's just basically a good vitamin. So it's high C. Exactly. These drinks are specifically marketed towards middle aged men like Haruo and the soda company that makes them are in the midst of a big promotional gimmick. Basically, if you buy one from the vending machine, you get one free. Sorry, the idea that there's a drink that's marketed toward middle aged men is hilarious to me. It's got it.

The poster is like a middle aged man with glasses on, you know, like, cheers-ing or whatever. This is the drink for me. Yeah. And like, why? It's just a soda. It's not like it's anything special. So specific. It's so specific.

Haruo gets two bottles of the drink, one for free when he gets it from the vending machine. So he drinks one bottle and then starts on the other. But before he can finish that second bottle, he begins to feel sick. And a few hours later, he goes to the hospital. His symptoms are acute, intense, and they're getting worse fast. The next night he stops breathing and he ultimately dies from his mysterious illness. Oh no. Tests later reveal that Haruo died from periquate poisoning.

So periquate is an herbicide that was popular around the world in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. More recently, it's been banned because it can cause serious long-term health effects if people breathe it in. But there are even more serious and horrible short-term effects if periquate is swallowed. Basically, it chemically burns a person from the inside out. No, that's horrible. That's a horrible death. It horrifically damages all the internal organs, but attacks the lungs in particular, causing that tissue to thicken and harden,

making it increasingly impossible to breathe. So it sounds like a fucking nightmare. It's extremely painful and periquate is extremely lethal. Unfortunately, Haruo's poisoning is not the last. Between April 30th and November 17th of 1985, 11 people are murdered after drinking poison drinks found in or around vending machines. Fucking 11 people. 35 others are poisoned, but survive. In most of these poisonings, it's the same combination as the first incident, the poisoned periquate,

and Orenamin C, the drink. Sunny D. I don't know what it is. It's almost, though, the inverse of the monster with 21 faces, because they didn't actually hurt anybody, except for the policeman who was so shamed. But this is so much worse than that. Yeah, to go after the public is a completely different thing than going after corporations, the big guys. To go after the public, here's the thing that is going to be the worst kind of death.

Totally. Horrifying. These vending machine murders terrorize the Japanese public and baffle the police. There's a widespread panic around food safety. The attacks are spread out at random intervals with no pattern to follow. They're not really centralized, meaning they're taking place at different vending machines all over Japan. And at this time, Japan has more vending machines per capita than any other country. Warning signs are placed on the machines themselves, but beyond that, there's really not much the police can do about it.

So do companies blame the customers with a spokesperson from the Japanese soft drink bottles association saying, quote, if only consumers were more cautious, they would have seen that some tampering had been done. Sir? And I'm assuming you're a man. Shut the fuck up. Like, what are you doing? No. The soft drink industry also believed that some of these paraquat poisonings are actually suicides is what they determine, not murders.

Paraquat was used in 1,402 recorded suicide attempts in 1984 alone, which is just terrible. 1,402. Yeah. Is that what I said? Yeah. No, I was, you said 1,402, which is the same. Yeah. That's so horrible.

What a horrible way to die. Totally. Then the poisonings abruptly stop in November of 1985, just a few months after they start. Police have almost no information. They really can't build a case at all. The company that makes Orenamen C does eventually change the top of the drink to a pull tab, making it much more difficult to tamper with. But there's no real motive established in the case ever. Wait, I'd love to know what it was before it was a pull tab.

It was just a little piece of tape over the top. What was it? Well, they had to make it easy for middle-aged men to open it, so it couldn't have been like, you know, hard to open. If you have iron poor blood, this is your drink. You can, you don't worry, you can do it. Okay, so let's talk about the motive and the impact. These two highly publicized crimes both involved randomly poisoned food and beverage. It's worth noting, as you mentioned also during this time, the whole world was on high alert after the Tylenol murders in Chicago,

which had just happened in 1982. I covered that in episode 43 if you want to check it out. I still think it's one of the most fascinating stories. And just in 1985 in Japan, there were two other poisoning scares. Wine imported from Austria was discovered to contain antifreeze, and poison cartons of milk were found at several schools in central Japan. I know, so sad. So it's a fair statement that this is a decade where anonymous attacks on consumers were on the rise.

Luckily, this wave of poisonings ultimately causes companies to take consumer protection more seriously and invest in new tamper-proof seals and security measures. So if you ever have a hard time opening a bottle or a thing of aspirin, it's because they don't want your children to kill themselves with it. Yeah, and also if you have an easy time, throw that thing away. That's right. There's nothing. And write a strongly worded letter.

Have you ever done that, though, where you open a bottle of water and then you go to take a sip of it and realize there was no resistance on the cap? There was no seal. It wasn't sealed. That's a scary one. You know, like, do I just... I always just drink it, though. I mean, I have in the past, and I'm here today. I'm here to tell you about it. So with these crimes in mind, Japanese psychologists start generating profiles

for the new kinds of criminals they're seeing emerge. Two interesting terms they come up with are Yukohan and Gekijo Hanzi. So those are the two probably mis-said words. And you're telling me you're fluent Japanese? You're telling me this is your mother tongue. Oh, you didn't know that? It's amazing. How do I not know that about you? I know. I know. I sound amazing.

So the term Yukohan literally translates into, quote, happy criminal. And the idea is that a criminal gets a thrill out of the public's reaction to their crime. They don't need to personally witness the crime in order to feel satisfied by it or, like, make any money off of it or anything like that. Yeah. A renowned criminal psychiatrist. So Sumo Oda describes that quote as, they cynically enjoy superiority by imagining the victims groaning

and do not feel any remorse. Gekijo Hanzi roughly translates to crime as theater. The idea that one of the motives for a crime is to stir up massive public attention and outcry specifically through the use of media. So these psychological terms give at least some grounding into what otherwise looks like a motiveless crime. So the monster was 21 faces despite constantly attempting to extort, never collected any money.

The vending machine killer didn't seem to need to know or even interact with the victims in order to justify random murder. But both of these crimes, anonymous and highly publicized, could be understood as being motivated by the psychological need to provoke a strong and deep public reaction in order to feel powerful. None of these crimes have ever been solved and there are still no substantial leads. Police often tie the vending machine murders and the monster with 21 faces together to the fact that they both use unassuming consumer products to potentially kill strangers,

but no evidence has ever been found that they're related. And they don't seem to be to me, right? Well, no, because of exactly what we talked about, where one was the threat of it and it really did feel like a great way to ruin a food company is like, oh, your stuff isn't safe and now everybody thinks that. But they truly were like, don't eat this. Poisoned it, but don't eat it. And then the inverse of that is the vending machine murderer,

who's just like, I'm going to kill middle-aged men. Come on. Terrible. But undeniably, both of these cases significantly disrupted the booming economy and highly capitalistic society of Japan in the 1980s. And here's the last time I'm going to say it. And those are the dystopian stories of the monster with 21 faces and the vending machine murders. Wow.

I've never heard of either of those. I just haven't heard the monster 21 faces because it's the creepiest fucking name I've ever heard. Yeah. Yeah. And it's obviously that it feels like that was, it was marketed. It was about marketing almost, where it's like, we've got a name. We're going to sign this creepy name to the letters we send to the police. We're going to do this thing that's affecting this corporation that they're going to have to make a statement

or all their products get pulled. There seemed to be a real public facing awareness about those crimes. Whereas vending machine was just like, oh, just like terrible. Horrible and a horrible death. And just like, you picked the wrong bottle. Yeah. So shitty. Yeah.

Wow. Good one. This is actually a fun left turn because we don't have to left turn that far away from anything horrible. Great. But my story today is probably on the outer edges of a true crime story. Okay. It's very criminally layered or involved, but at the same time it's more of a salute to,

you know, kind of an old timey criminal that maybe should be a little more well known than he is because he's a regional hero. But okay, so here's what I'm telling you. Basically, a listener named Chrissy Wolf sent me a tweet linking an article from a website called thesmokies.com and it's about a man named Popcorn Sutton. He wrote praying Popcorn's colorful life gets the MFM treatment if nothing else, the YouTube documentary will certainly entertain. So I send this tweet and the article that's attached to Marin and I say, hey, can you look and see if this would be worth doing? And Marin writes back, Karen, I kid you not, this man is a hometown hero for me.

Oh my God. Would truly be an honor. Oh my God. So then it's like, well, now we're doing it no matter what this story is. I was like, I don't even care. Let's do it. Because what are the odds that Marin is from near where Popcorn Sutton became famous? Yeah. So I'm going to tell you today about a man who's become a celebrated symbol of Appalachian heritage.

It's the story of the legendary bootlegger Marvin Popcorn Sutton. All right. Right. So sources used in this story are the 2008 documentary The Last One by filmmaker Neil Hutchison. Excerpts from the book Daddy Moonshine by Skye Sutton, who was Popcorn Sutton's daughter. A 2012 Maxim article called The Last Hildilly Hero by David Kushner. And then the smokies.com article that Christie sent me, Popcorn Sutton and His Moonshine, Six Surprising Facts by Morgan Overholt. We'll start by talking about Appalachia, which you and I learned a little bit about by doing live shows in that area, including how to pronounce it correctly.

I've learned more about Appalachia doing this podcast than I knew in the 35 years before it at all. Yeah, which has been one of my favorite things about doing this podcast and so unexpected. And in touring, how much I've learned about my own country, how much I've learned that I did not know, just all about this great land of ours. That's right. And the crimes, the horrible crimes that its citizens have committed. And still we don't deserve fascism, so let's take our country back from this psychotic fascist dictatorship that's trying to take over. Okay. Hey, fucking men.

Amen, amen. So we'll just tell you a little bit about Appalachia just as a brief overview. If you don't know, it's a huge swath of land that spans over 200,000 square miles. It covers 13 states from Southern New York to Northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. So it basically is kind of the same shape roughly as California, at least when I was looking at it on the map. And it looks like it was just picked up from the southern east coast and slid in a little bit and then is just sitting there from New York down to Northern Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. All types of people live in this region, various ethnicities, religions, political ideologies. But for many outsiders, our first impression of Appalachia was from oversimplified and reductive movies and TV shows like Deliverance or the Beverly Hill Billies.

Right. It's like known as like, oh, people that live there are hillbillies. Right. But the truth is that this region has a rich and important history and heritage that's influenced many aspects of modern American culture. And one of the kind of biggest ones, which I think a lot of people know, but if you don't, it's kind of hilarious and surprising, is that moonshining and the making and transporting of moonshine, especially during the prohibition era, is like the beginning of NASCAR. Oh. The first like kind of era of NASCAR drivers that like got famous were moonshine drivers.

That makes total sense because you're like race car drivers get the fuck out of town, kind of like outrun the cops. You have to outrun the cops. You have to build your cars so that you can carry all this moonshine and still move faster. You have to know those back roads. You have to take the turns. You have to, you know, high speed, blah, blah, blah. It's all kind of connected, which I absolutely adore. Wow.

Which is what it's like, that's the kind of thing that's great about this country is there's things like that where it's like, it's all about people making the best of oppression, people making the best of hearts and bad situations. I think moonshine basically being the grandfather of NASCAR is one of my favorites. Yeah. This story begins at the meeting point of the Great Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountains in an area spanning Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina. It's a beautiful pocket of the country with a rich Southern Appalachian history. And right now it's currently experiencing a population and a development boom. I think we played Asheville, North Carolina, right? Definitely.

That beautiful little town. Yes, I loved it. Yeah, that's one of the, I mean, there's tons of metropolitan cities that are in Appalachia, including Pittsburgh is in Appalachia, Asheville, Knoxville, you know, got it. But then of course it's like, it's known for the incredibly mountainous areas and the people that were able to move into those mountainous areas during both the Revolutionary War and then the Civil War to basically get it. So I just wanted to get away from the government, they wanted to get away from people telling them how to live, you know, whatever. And that's kind of how that the spirit of Appalachia and the quote unquote hillbillies that live there, that's what it's all about is people that just want to be around their family. They want the government to stay out of their business. They want to be able to do what they want and just live free.

And they're very like, they're all about nature, some of the original tree hugging hippies that are just like, don't come on to our land and exploit it and exploit our people to exploit the land. Got it. So the Sutton family are descendants of Scott's Irish settlers who first moved into this area in the 1700s. These settlers brought the practice of distilling whiskey from, you know, the UK and Scotland and Ireland or whatever. And at the time that was no big deal. Most people would rig like stills right on their front porches, very common. In fact, George Washington had a whiskey still built near his Virginia home and he hired a Scottish distiller to like work it for him. So that was kind of the way it was.

So around the time of the American Revolution, whiskey consumption in the US is booming becomes a very popular spirit served in Tavern. So of course, in the 1790s, the feds slap attacks on it. The federal government needs cash following the Revolutionary War and it sees an opportunity to capitalize on whiskey sales. So basically like, yeah, we get a piece of that and it'll all go back to building this country of ours. But this decision causes an absolute outrage and it actually culminates in the violent whiskey rebellion protests, which I've never heard of. And, you know, I've been a big fan of whiskey for a good portion of my life. But even after President Washington successfully calms the rebellion, the whiskey tax remains a sticking point. Many people just don't pay it.

And within a few years, the taxes repealed. So then later in the 1860s, when the federal government needs cash to fund the Civil War, they decide to give the whiskey tax another shot. This time the feds put an even steeper taxes on whiskey. And as you might expect, people still don't want to pay them. But instead of taking their fight to the streets, many distillers, especially in the South and in Appalachia, they just take their whiskey sales underground. They figure it's the best way to avoid paying high taxes basically just to go off the government's radar. And this is where the word moonshine comes from, because people start making liquor by literal and metaphorical moonlight in secret and anytime the eyes of the law can't see them. Oh, that makes sense. I love that.

Yeah. So after the Civil War ends, these heavy whiskey taxes don't go away entirely, but they are significantly reduced. That said, many of the rural distillers who took their operations underground don't care by now a localized culture around making illegal moonshine has taken root. And over 50 years later, when the prohibition starts from that goes from 1920 to 1933, that secretive culture around making moonshine kicks into overdrive. It grows stronger, more secretive, in some cases more lawless. And even though laws are passed to make it a crime, bootleggers continue to sell their liquor untaxed and unregulated directly to buyers. And this is essentially how, like I said, how NASCAR starts is they start running moonshine, which means you have to go do deliveries, you make a bunch, and then you go deliver it. But if the cops like are on to you and then chase you, it's also kind of the like the underlying plot of the Dukes of Hazard. That whole thing of outrunning the cops and like driving a car that you have basically rigged to make it so that you can outrun the cops. Yeah.

Okay. So by the time Marvin Sutton is born in 1946 in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, generations of Sutton men have been learning the tricks of the illegal whiskey trade. But the Sutton's aren't big scary bootleggers. They're a family devoted to their faith and to each other. In fact, Marvin's daughter, Sky Sutton, who wrote about her father in the book, Daddy Moonshine, describes his childhood home as quote, full of lots of love and a lot of music too. His mother played the fiddle, his father played spoons, Marvin and his sister danced. He loved to dance. Just give you a little background on what that family was like. And making Moonshine was part of their lives as well. So technically doing it made them criminals, but making Moonshine is not something the Sutton's are ashamed of. In fact, Marvin's father would make enough money off of the Moonshine that he made to bankroll the construction of the community's Baptist church. So they're taking all their profits and putting it back into the community, which is what, you know, billionaires should be doing.

The Baptist community, though. Oh, that's true. I don't know if there was a ton of other communities. I would love to actually know the history of like Jews and Appalachia. Was it happening? Was there a temple anywhere? Yeah, good question. Could it be possible? So Marvin's father teaches him everything he knows. Together they build stills, they make their mash and they churn out very strong alcohol. Marvin would later say that, quote, me and daddy made Moonshine together for 30 years and never was caught. I swore when I was a little old kid, if I ever got big enough, I'd make liquor and haul it. And I did. I actually went to the NASCAR Hall of Fame website to get a little information on hauling Moonshine and how that basically became NASCAR.

And so I'll just read you this chunk from that website that I thought was so good. So they say on their quote, in the first decade or so of NASCAR racing, the transportation of illegal liquor in the South was huge business. And a lot of the sport's early stars drove owned or built Moonshine cars. Junior Johnson was the best known bootlaker in Wilkes County, North Carolina, a hotbed of the Moonshine industry. But of all the Moonshiners who raced, Johnson was the most legendary. He knew the back roads of his native Wilkes County like the back of his hand and was an exceptionally skilled driver. Just as importantly, Johnson was a brilliant mechanic who could milk every ounce of speed out of the Fords and Oldsmobiles that he used in his whiskey runs. Johnson did a lot of things other haulers did back then.

He'd modify the engines of his cars to produce more power, add heavy duty suspension components to safely carry the extra weight of all the liquor and remove all but the driver's seat to maximize the room inside for mason jars filled with booze. Clever Moonshiners would sometimes rig their cars to produce clouds of smoke or drop oil or nails from the rear of their cars to thwart pursuing law enforcement officers. That's like, you think that's from James Bond? It's from fucking Appalachia, baby. Others installed steel plates in front of their radiators to keep police from shooting holes in them and causing their engines to overheat and break down. Ever the innovator, Johnson studied aerodynamics by trial and error. He learned that by removing the windshield wipers from his car and taping up the openings around his headlights, he could pick up 10 miles per hour in top speed enough to outrun his pursuers.

It's no coincidence that junior Johnson was never caught on the road with a load of moonshine. After all, he knew what would happen to him if he did get captured, so he built the fastest cars in Wilkes County. And then it says, quote, Moonshiners put more time, energy, thought and love into their cars than any racer ever will, Johnson once said. Lose on a track and you go home. Lose with a load of whiskey and you go to jail. That's one little piece that that is interesting, but also there's a thing I found years ago on Tumblr and it was just a picture and they're an invention, a Moonshiner invention called cow shoes. So basically they attached cow hooves to a piece of metal and then attached that to the bottom of their shoes so that no one could track them. Yeah. If the cops were coming, they could run away and not get tracked. And if the cops were looking for them in the mountains, they wouldn't find them because they're looking at cow prints instead of men's shoe prints. That makes total sense.

Isn't that genius? Yeah, that's so smart. That's my favorite. Then that picture got put into a paper in Florida in 1922 and then basically they weren't able to use that trick anymore. But it's like that kind of thing where it's like, well, if you have to go quote unquote underground, how creative you have to get or you need to get to basically stay that way. Totally. Fascinating. So, okay, so we're getting back to Marvin Sutton, who didn't have the name Popcorn. He's a Moonshiner with his dad his whole life, but it's not until the early 70s that he gets the nickname Popcorn and he gets it after violently attacking a Popcorn vending machine that had just eaten his money.

He hit it with a pool cue until it broke. And so after that everyone called him Popcorn. Okay, that is how you get a nickname is like something like that. And the fact that everyone called him that was kind of making fun of him. Yes. Like he got the name of the thing that that bested him. And that is like, it's like an insult kind of. It's a little bit, it's a light slam because it's like, well, you must love Popcorn if you're willing, if you're willing to like break a pool cue over a vending machine's head. Basically, he's known as a very what some people would call colorful man, which essentially means he's raunchy, he's rude, and he's a very rugged persona. But his moonshine on the other hand is considered pristine. Some of the best ever made Popcorn has perfected his family's secret recipe and he's gotten the distilling process down to an exact science. He builds stills with all copper piping. He uses the highest quality white corn for the mash. And he carefully seeks out the most remote and cleanest streams that he can find to ensure that his liquor is made with the purest mountain water.

So he's basically doing like what's that called these days, like, Oh, like, what's it called bespoke. Yes, it's like high quality bespoke fancy ass shit, but it's just like it's popcorn moonshine. Yeah, yeah. The final product is smooth, sweet and very strong. Journalist David Kushner says that it quote tastes like sweet buttery corn, but his infusions of pears, peaches, figs and black cherries are what cement his greatness. That sounds great. Yeah, he's like, he's doing some stuff with that. It's not just moonshine and like, you know, it tastes like Windex and then you get fucked up. It's like, he's really making wonderful, delicious, incredibly strong whisky. And Marin made a note for me saying I'm not sure how potent popcorn's moonshine was back in the day and potencies can vary widely between distillers and their badges. But moonshine at its strongest typically tops out at around 180 proof and compared to regular liquor like whiskey vodka, those are all sold at 80 proof.

Good night. So for real, it's like you what you need like a cup of it. Yeah, yeah. Which also is the kind of thing that's like, it's that kind of thing where it's like, yeah, because you don't, you're not going to take all that time to make a thing that then you have to drink a ton of it's not wine. Right, right. You're trying to like, you worked all day, you worked in a fucking coal mine, you worked on the scariest hardest job, I think there might be. Yeah. You're going to come up out of that you're going to want a little something that works quickly and like gets the job done. A shot, a shot to clean you out a little bit.

Yes. And then be like, well, okay, like now I can, you know, now my back doesn't hurt so fucking bad. And I can beat a popcorn machine with a pool cue now. And if a popcorn machine starts shit with me, I'll win. Making such excellent liquor. And by the way, a popcorn Sutton spells liquor, L I K K E R. Nice. Love it.

It's very labor intensive work. He has to lug around heavy equipment. He digs into the earth. He has to build things with his hands. It's also dangerous. There's very little room for error in making moonshine. If you build your still wrong, it can explode. That's a huge issue and a huge threat always.

And also a bad batch of moonshine can lead to lethal methanol poisoning on top of everything else. You know, it's illegal. Popcorn is risking jail time with every new batch he makes. But as challenging as all that is, popcorn considers it his calling. He says, quote, I've dug ditches. I've worked on construction. I've done everything and there ain't nothing no harder than the one I'm a doing because it's just in my blood. And quote, and I'm sorry, I don't want to do like a Southern, you know, I'm not going to do a voice for Popcorn Sutton.

No, it's okay. But you can get the sense of this. You know, this is a this is a born and bred Appalachian man. So he's got he's got an accent. I like that he calls himself a little old kid when I was when I was a little old kid. So Popcorn Sutton and his moonshine, you know, over the years basically they become famous. He's famous. He's well known and he will sell moonshine to just about anybody.

The only requirement for buying it is you have to track down Popcorn himself. He sells moonshine out of his Eastern Tennessee home. He sells it out of the junk shop that he runs in West North Carolina. And he also sells it out of the trunk of his car. Buyers can even approach Popcorn on the street. According to David Kushner, quote, if strangers seemed trustworthy, Popcorn would take their cash about $40 per gallon at its peak and tell them to pick up their moonshine from one of his secret drop boxes hidden in the woods, either a baby casket or an old toilet. I'll take the baby casket. Those are the drop boxes.

Popcorn also starts dressing the part of the classic moonshiner. He sports a long beard. He's got a floppy hat. He wears overalls over a long sleeve flannel shirt to be very clear. Popcorn sticks out like a sore thumb in the mountain towns that he frequents and everything about him, including that his dress and mannerisms and his devotion to moonshine might feel a little dated or like it's a costume. But to locals, Popcorn is committed to keeping the mountain heritage, which feels like it's slipping away in the modern world, alive and honored. Filmmaker Neil Hutchison, who develops a close friendship with Popcorn, adds quote, it's not a put on. Everything that Popcorn is pulling from and putting into play is from his legitimate cultural background.

He just knows when to lean in and exaggerate it a little bit. So he's just like, I'm the moonshine guy. It's who I am. It's who I grew up to be. So I'm going to play the part and you'll know it's me. Nothing about Popcorn Sutton is understated. He's an outrageous character with an undeniable folksy charm, but he's also a self-professed outlaw and not to be messed with. This story is fucking crazy. His daughter Regina tells reporters about a particularly harrowing childhood memory. One afternoon she was walking toward her house when she saw a man stumble out the front door with a butcher knife stuck in his neck.

It's unclear what happened to this man or why, but Regina immediately suspected her father was responsible. And as a direct result of this incident, Regina pursues a medical career and she ends up becoming a trauma surgeon in Alaska. That's like the best way to make trauma, you know, livable. Yes, and we're kind of work for everybody else. Jesus fucking Christ. But I mean, but that's the kind of thing where it's like, you can't do that kind of business and not be willing to, you know, that's the business. That's what comes with illegal stuff. Maybe every once in a while, a butcher knife in the neck.

It also didn't say how far out the knife was sticking. What kind of knife it was? Could have been a smaller butcher. Okay, so there's all sorts of tales about popcorn's bad behavior. Occasionally it catches up to him. Skye Sutton, who's Regina's sister, once wrote about her father crashing his car while being chased by the police. She says that popcorn, quote, crushed his car and his face. He laughed that it took him a whole week to pass all those front teeth.

Oh, God. He swallowed. He smashed his teeth and swallowed them. Oh, God. That is, that's a good image right there. You know what it is? It's hardcore. It's hardcore.

It's not the only time popcorn faces consequences for his actions. In the 1970s, he's charged with his first alcohol related offense, selling untaxed liquor. He's found guilty. He takes it as a rite of passage. I mean, his father and his father's father had their own share of moonshine related legal troubles. It's just part of doing business. Then in 1981, popcorn is arrested again. This time it's felony charges.

He's given a five year prison sentence. It's hard to track what these are about or there's no public information. He's found guilty again in 1985 and convicted on a felony assault charge. And he is sent back to prison for three years. So that's the thing that he, Popcorn Sutton gets into a lot of fights. There's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of brawling. So a lot of people think that the 1985 prison sentence is for that knife attack. Okay.

So after popcorn serves a sentence, he goes right back to making moonshine. And actually this, his problems with the law make him more popular to locals. He's gained a ton of respect across Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. He loves the attention, which is why in the nineties he agrees to build a moonshine still for the museum of Appalachia, which is just outside of Knoxville. For the museum's highly anticipated homecoming event, which thousands of people will attend, Popcorn will be there operating his still in person. Wow.

But to keep things legal, he's explicitly instructed to run water through that still. So on the night of the event, Popcorn changes his mind and he makes actual moonshine right there in the museum. And then he hands it out to the crowd in little cups. So he even gives a sample to Tennessee's then governor. And the result is, as Marin puts it, light chaos. According to the Associated Press, complaints start swirling that Popcorn is quote, getting everybody drunk and apparently that included children. Oh no.

He was just handing out little cups of moonshine because I'm sure he drank it as a kid. Yeah. He's part of it. So he's like, yeah, everybody drink this moonshine. It's really fucking good. It's bespoke. Yeah. He's reprimanded by museum staffers and he's told to toss his moonshine immediately.

But Popcorn, who in my opinion is rightfully offended by these instructions, refuses to comply. Instead, he breaks down his still, packs up his things and leaves the museum. It's like, you guys want to party, then party. If not, don't go through this bullshit of pretending. Not long after in 1999, Popcorn and his then girlfriend, Ernestine E. Upchurch, co-write and self-publish Popcorn's autobiography. And it's called Me and My Liquor, like K-K-E-R. Popcorn makes the copies himself.

They're sold as spiral bound booklets out of his North Carolina junk shop. And because of that, it's hard to track down a copy of this book today without actually paying big bucks, because that's Marin's way of saying, I would have bought the book if it wasn't so expensive. Right. My exactly right credit card only goes so far. Yeah, exactly. Giovanna is going to say no to those expenses. Exactly.

But the book has been described as, quote, a rambling, obscene and often hilarious account of Popcorn's life in the trade. So it's a tell-all that he authored, which is great. That's smart. Popcorn's motivation behind Me and My Liquor seems to be entirely self-promotional. He's advertising both his moonshine and his colorful persona, and people can't get enough of it. He is still more or less a local celebrity. But then Popcorn catches the attention of a young filmmaker named Neil Hutchison. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Neil starts filming Popcorn for a low-budget documentary called,

This is the Last Damn Run of Liquor I'll Ever Make. And it candidly follows Popcorn as he makes moonshine for what he swears is the very last time. But of course, it is not the last time Popcorn makes moonshine. So this documentary becomes a cult classic. Popcorn's big oddball personality absolutely shines. And he has incredible lines like, quote, I've made all kinds of liquor in my time. I've made the fighting kind, the loving kind, the crying kind. I even made some one time and sold it to this couple.

They was happily married. The next damn week they was divorced. I don't think it was the moonshine. But eventually the documentary is recut and entitled The Last One. And it goes on to win a regional Emmy award. So yes. So Neil Hutchison is the real deal. He's not just some dude with a camera.

With each screening, more and more Popcorn Sutton fans pop up. And by the 2000s, Popcorn's happily making a name off of being a bootlegger. And it's clear that discretion is not something he entertains. He makes business cards that advertise his moonshining operations. And over at the junk shop, he sells VHS copies of The Last One alongside his autobiography, Me and My Licker. Basically, he's walking around town with a big sign that says, I'm breaking the law. Sure. According to The New York Times, a close friend of Popcorn's named Mark Ramsey once told him,

quote, you can't be a movie star and make liquor too. And Popcorn replied by saying, quote, you can't sell it if nobody knows you got it. Which is a very good point. So the publicity is definitely paying off. It's reported that tourists swing through eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina with the sole intention of finding Popcorn and buying some of that famous moonshine. Wow. It basically starts feeling like he has some sort of legal invincibility in his little corner of Appalachia. He's worked hard to achieve it.

He's intentionally made inroads with leaders in the local government. He has friends on the police force. He even sends police officers little gifts, quote, unquote, at Christmas. Little moonshine gifts. But as Popcorn's illegal moonshining fame grows, his ability to sidestep legal consequences becomes more difficult. And this all comes to a head in 2007 when an indoor still on his Tennessee property explodes. Oh, shit. Yeah.

Luckily, no one's injured by the blast, but it's serious enough that officers are dispatched to the scene. Popcorn reportedly tries to shoo the police away, telling them, quote, don't tell nobody what you've seen here. But it doesn't work. Popcorn's arrested and he winds up on probation. But even on probation, he refuses to stop making and selling his liquor. And it's never been more popular. In the spring of 2008, just months after his arrest, three of Popcorn's buyers turn out to be undercover federal agents. So they're kind of like enough with the messing around.

You can't do, you know, obviously, because three of them, it's like, really? It's just kind of knocked on the door. I don't think like, I think a sting operation was really necessary. Go to the junk shop. Yeah. He's got business cards and an autobiography telling you everything he's done. Simple. In separate transactions, he sells them nearly 200 gallons of moonshine. Whoo.

Yeah. So he's kind of, he's selling in bulk. He's like moonshine Costco. Once again, he's arrested and then his property gets raided. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, the federal agents find, quote, guns, bullets, three 1000 gallon stills, copper line and more than 800 gallons of moonshine and hundreds of gallons of sour mash and other ingredients. So he's got 1000 gallon stills. This is no small.

That's huge. Yeah. Yeah. The sting operation was directed by an ATF agent and Tennessee native named James Kavanaugh, who also worked on the Unabomber investigation and Waco. So these, those seem way more important to me than the fucking moonshiner. You know, agree. I think he was bummed that he was like, did you see what I've done?

We've done these amazing things. Yes. The accomplishments. And also it's like, I understand, but this is like, this is a crime of no paperwork is what it feels like to me. Right. This is like that kind of thing where like all the pot dealers that are still sitting in prison. Right. Like every, you know, Los Angeles has covered an Apple store level pot stores now.

Yeah. And where it's just like, oh, this is just like, it's basically you didn't have the money to get legit. Right. And basically pay for all the stuff to go through to basically legitimize this business. Right. And you could have and maybe you should have because you're so good at it. Yeah. Yeah.

And you could have been indicted on federal charges. But he also was like, you know, he, he basically was like, you couldn't date me on federal charges. That's like, that's how he lived his life. Right. That's what that was the quote underneath his name on his business card. He shows up to court wearing his signature overalls. And even though the charges against him are serious, Popcorn reportedly doesn't think he's going to have to do any prison time. His health, he's in his early sixties, but his health is starting to fail.

After the federal raid, he goes through a serious mental health crisis and also simultaneously, like right in that same time, he was diagnosed with cancer. Right. So like then the raid happened and he basically kind of lost it because it was like everything's going to shit. Right. Essentially, he believes he'll be able to carry out any sentence given to him from home. But the judge in this case shows little mercy and Popcorn is given an 18 month prison sentence. Yeah. Yeah.

So now it's early 2009, several weeks are passing between Popcorn sentencing and the date he has to report to prison. He spends his time in his Tennessee home trying to figure out how he can avoid avoid incarceration. It's a low point in his life, but it's also ironically the peak of his fame. News the Popcorn Sutton, the wiry foul mouth bootleger is going to federal prison, drums up a lot of publicity. And for many Popcorn is a throwback to old school outlaws who found themselves on the wrong end of a battle with the federal government. So he's basically become a modern day folk hero. Right. In early March, filmmaker Neil Hutchison talks with Popcorn on the phone and Popcorn, despite the circumstances, is his normal colorful self.

But one thing stands out to Neil, Popcorn makes a point to thank his friend for all the time they spent together. And then in typical Popcorn fashion, he starts complaining about the many admirers who've been calling him a hero and calling his house nonstop. Neil later says, quote, Popcorn didn't like to be called a hero because he was an outlaw. And that was his identity. When people kept calling him and saying, I'm pulling for you, you're my hero or whatever. He said, the next time someone says that, I'm going to say, fuck you and slam the phone down. But Popcorn was receptive to some admirers. Tennessee native Johnny Knoxville of Jackass fame travels to Popcorn's house to shoot some footage with him and raise publicity around his case.

And you can actually go see that shoot on YouTube. Wow. It's a very silly interview, but it does take a serious turn when Popcorn talks about going to prison. He tells Johnny Knoxville, quote, I hope and pray they don't send me off. I ain't got much time the way it is. I'm just about a dead man now. Whoa. So more time passes.

And then Popcorn's visited by a motocross racer named Jamie Grocer, who is a big fan of Popcorn's. The two men wind up talking for hours. Popcorn shares one of his biggest fears saying, quote, I don't want moonshine to die with me. So before their meeting ends, Popcorn offers to sell Jamie his secret recipe with the hopes that Jamie can find a way to keep it going, keep it in production. Jamie accepts Popcorn's offer and the two men make a deal. But then on March 16, 2009, just four days before he's supposed to report to prison, Marvin Popcorn Sutton is found dead at his Tennessee home of an apparent suicide. He's only 62 years old. Wow.

So when Neil Hutchison hears the news, he immediately thinks back to the last phone conversation he had with Popcorn and says, quote, after the shock, it was sort of like, oh right, he was calling all his friends and saying goodbye. Oh my God. Yeah. Popcorn leaves behind a huge, complicated legacy. To many, he's an anti-establishment hero. To others, he's a cocky criminal. Some consider him the real deal when it comes to moonshiners. Others say he's a marketing genius.

Many people, especially in Southern Appalachia, view him as a keeper of the region's spirit, tradition, and individualism. It's unclear if Popcorn had any inkling that his story would resonate with so many people. Neil Hutchison once told Smokey Mountain News that quote, he always kind of banked on the fact that people couldn't get enough of him. But I think he was probably very surprised at the intensity with which people grabbed on to him. In Tennessee and North Carolina, distilling any type of liquor without permits is still illegal. But in the years since Popcorn's death, micro distilleries with proper licensing are allowed in both states. Ironically, because of the deal he made with Jamie Grocer, Popcorn's recipe is now bottled and sold in stores across the country. And the name on the bottle is simply Popcorn Sutton.

Wow. Now, a lot of diehards don't think it's possible to legally sell moonshine because to make it real, it has to be illegally made. But it's pretty great to know that you can buy a version of Popcorn Sutton's moonshine out there. Popcorn Sutton's Daughter Sky said quote, I think that over the counter moonshine and mountain made liquor are two different beasts. The over the counter kind now has its place on the shelves of liquor stores. The mountain made kind is still elusive, mysterious, and much stronger. That said, there might never, I wonder if this is, if this is Marin's accent coming through. That said, there might never been a moonshine more sought after. Oh shit.

It's a typo, but maybe she just got into it. There might never been a moonshine more sought after than the liquor Popcorn Sutton distilled himself. He once put it this way, quote, I can brag about one thing, making liquor. They ain't no damn body that can beat me making liquor, end quote. And this last part I'm just going to read you is, it is the lift from the article from the smokies.com by Morgan Overholt. And it says this quote, as only a legend would be. Popcorn Sutton was actually buried twice. Originally, he was buried in an isolated plot in Western North Carolina near the graves of his parents.

Reports vary on why he was exhumed and reburied. Either way, months later, his wife Pam held a large public memorial service, which Hank Williams Jr. famously attended. Whoa. Right. Sutton's exhumed body was transported via horse-drawn carriage to his property in Parrotsville, Tennessee, where he remains today. Beside his grave is a marker that reads, Popcorn said fuck you. And that is the story of legendary Southern Appalachian moonshiner, Marvin Popcorn Sutton. Wow.

His grave stone says Popcorn said fuck you. You know I respect that so much. I mean, that right there, like, it was at the top of the story. And I'm like, I need to say that for the end because it kind of justifies the entire thing of like, the popcorn Sutton in us all, which is that just free spirit fuck you attitude is my favorite. Oh my God. I love it. Right?

Great job. Great story. Thank you. Great job, Marin, because, you know, hometown hero, she really put her heart into that one. Love it. Wow. Yeah. And with that, we send you off into the world with the spirit of Popcorn Sutton.

That's right. Tell someone to fuck off today. Speed. Don't get caught by the cops. Yeah. Drink a little liquor, L-I-K-K-E-R. Yeah. Where overalls and a floppy hat if you feel like it.

And of course, stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Okay. Woo-hoo. Aaaaaaa! This has been an exactly right production.

Our producer is Alejandra Kek. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. This episode was engineered and mixed by Steven Ray Morris. Our researchers are Maren MacLashen and Sarah Blair Jenkins. Email your hometowns and fucking hurrays to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavemurder. Goodbye.

Goodbye. Listen, follow, leave us a review on Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Prime members, did you know that you can listen to myfavoritmurder early and ad free on Amazon Music? Download the Amazon Music app today. You can support my favorite murder by filling out a survey at Wondery.com.