The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 477 - Otto Wood
Episode Date: April 20, 2021Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine criminal Otto WoodSourcesTour DatesRedbubble Merch...
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You're listening to the dollop on the All Things Comedy Network. This is a
bilingual American History podcaster each week. I, senior Dave Anthony, read a
story from American History to me Amigo. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what
the topic will be about. Lo siento about that part. What was? I was hoping it was
one of those things where the Spanish would kind of come to me and I don't
think that's how languages work I don't think they just come I will I will tell
you from previous experience that that's not how it works I just actually went
through a situation where I was trying to do a podcast intro and I was thinking
that it was gonna come to me and it just wouldn't so yeah it's it's it truly you
gotta and I think this is for everybody especially the kids you got to put the
work in if you're gonna get the another language. Exactly there's learning is a
key part of it I think is what we're both kind of saying and that's a message
from the podcast that's a we are united on that all right it's just my message
unite my understanding of languages it takes years to learn them that's what
I'm saying no I'm saying that's we're both yes so that is the message from the
show let's just understand that what you did right here was hoping that another
language would come to you if you just thought about it and tried it I think
that's gonna be great for our lessons to say don't waste your time in that
department this was a very it was a terrible experiment I'm no no
entiendo and called it quote is jam-packed I'm the fucking hippo guy okay my name is Gary is it for fun and this is not gonna come to tiggly pot guys okay now hit him with the puppy you both present sick arguments
Actually
Me1894 year if our Lord Jesus Christ sure
Otto Wood was born in Eastern New Wilkes County, North Carolina.
Okay, Otto Wood.
The midwife who delivered him saw a problem with his feet and put splints on them, quote,
to prevent them from turning inward.
Right away?
Do you splint a baby?
Yeah, right off the bat.
He came out.
You got baby splints?
Yeah, he came out and he had to get splints on him immediately.
Yeah, I think he splinted a baby.
I don't know.
I've never had to...
I'm not around a lot of babies coming out, but it sounds like a thing.
A midwife?
I trust a midwife over...
I trust a midwife, but it's also just like...
I mean, babies come out looking contorted and crazy right away.
I mean, I'd be splinting them all.
Well, but you're used to how...
A baby comes out, you're like, God, that's horrible, but that's how they're supposed
to look.
But then there's ones that come out and they look like normal, horrible baby, but then
also they have a turned foot or something.
You're like, God, that should be facing the other way.
I think what we've learned so far, you better midwife than me.
Yeah.
I'm a bit of a panicker.
You get it.
I get it.
I guess.
Nice.
Baby comes out.
You wipe the baby off, then you go grab the hose from the yard, you just spray down the
whole area.
And...
You know what?
It's part of a new show we should pitch soon called Mid-Dave.
Yep.
Oh, yeah, I'm here for baby delivery advice.
I always have been.
I didn't know if people knew that, but I'm thinking about doing a YouTube show about
that.
Do not.
His left foot was clubbed still after even after a split.
He would always have a limp.
Okay.
His family, farmers, maybe six.
He was listed on the census as auto, A-U-T-O.
I assume someone didn't know.
Wow.
His dad's a Chevy.
Better than a Ford.
Tell you that.
Also auto wood.
It's a machine wood.
His machine wood.
He's a motor log.
He's called a motor log, boy.
The spelling would obviously change as it got older.
Now his mom, Ellen, had seven kids, four of who survived past the kid part.
Pretty good.
His father died when he was four, as is standard.
Of course.
Yep.
Well, that's the downside to having four of your children live.
The husband's for sure gone.
Yeah.
It's like, come on.
It's just not your favor.
In 1910, he was living in the Antioch, North Carolina, with his family, and at seven, auto
went to school.
He did not like school.
Okay.
Schools not well funded at the time, and still.
Sure.
One nearby school was described by a North Carolina historian, quote, a roaring fire was
of little help because the door had to be left open to provide light.
The room was windowless.
A plank hung to the wall with leather hinges that was used as a writing desk by five or
six pupils at a time.
What?
What does that mean?
So they just tied a board to the wall, and that was what everyone wrote up.
That was the chalk, okay.
This is your chalkwood.
Not even chalk.
It's just their desk.
This is your stand.
It's a standing desk, Dave.
They were ahead of it.
That's right.
They were ahead of it.
They saw the posture issues.
So his mother let him leave school when he told her kids were making fun of his ragged
clothes.
She was like, all right.
You don't need to do that.
But he knew how to read and write at that point.
So Otto really wanted adventure.
That's just what he was built for, quote, I appeared to crave adventure, and the sound
of a locomotive whistle seemed to put new life into me as I considered it a call to
go somewhere.
Oh, boy.
So when he was young, he started hoboing.
Now define the verb.
What is that?
Hop and trains and cruising around.
You got a little stick, a bag on a stick, a little bindle, yep, bindle stiff.
Beans.
What's the bean?
The bean factor's big, right?
Isn't that part of it?
The bean?
Yeah.
I should eat mostly cans of beans or is that just, I don't know where the stereotype ends.
Any sort of canned food is what you eat.
Keep it in your bindle.
Right?
You want a bindle bean?
Yes, I would like a bindle bean.
You're all right.
Thank you.
You too.
And then are you, and you're, and there's just a ton of, there's like a whole, there's
a lot of hobos, so it's, there's a familiar.
Yeah, yeah.
This is hobo time.
Okay.
At this time, like I said, the coal towns are pretty wild west-ish.
There's guns and saloons and moonshine and lots of shootings, so Otto grew up hearing
stories of the Hatfields and McCoy's, a few playing cards with minors, quote, by the time
I was 10 years old, I knew the gambling game pretty well.
Okay.
So when he's very young, he's around this age or maybe younger, he quote, hoboed to Winston
Salem by stowing away in a coal car on a train.
That's not very far.
And is that very healthy?
Well, they're just transporting the raw coal.
Coal, yeah.
I don't, yeah.
I don't think it's burning coal.
I mean, he just hopped in a, I mean, I'm sure he was pretty covered in black.
Yeah.
Of course.
He was sooty.
Yeah.
So after he did that, he loved it.
And then he next train he hopped went to St. Louis for the exposition.
So now he's traveling pretty far.
What's the exposition?
Uh, that was a big thing we covered in a couple of episodes.
Yeah.
It's like a big thing where they're just like, let's show off what's happening in the world
kind of deal.
Right.
Okay.
And a lot of racism was happening in the world.
Oh, okay.
Cool.
As you might recall.
Oh yeah.
That I remember.
As a kid, Otto was often in trouble and he got bailed out a lot because people pitied
his health.
He was a sickly kid.
He had the limp.
And then because his mother was super protective.
So he wasn't really getting punished.
And because of that, his trouble making ways just kind of continued.
And by 1916, the Charlotte Observer wrote Otto was already known all over North Carolina
as a car thief.
What?
Well, Otto, I mean, they put him in that prison.
They pigeonholed him.
Yeah.
That was, I mean, it's his destiny.
It's destiny.
How old, how old are we talking now that he's become a bit of a hobo train legend?
Well, he's, he's only around 14.
So he really, like when he, like, so we're talking about like eight or nine years old,
he's starting the train life.
And his mother's just kind of letting it go because, you know, because it's, he's been
dealt a maybe difficult hand.
I couldn't figure out exactly what age he started the train life, but it seemed like
it was like eight or nine or 10.
Like it was really young.
It's just great.
Like aren't you, if you're a mother, just being like, he won't, he's going to die.
Otto's going to die, but he's going to die doing what he loved.
Or maybe, maybe their hat, they're like, Oh, that's so great, you hopped a train.
Like they love it.
Well, I mean, I'm not trying to be a jerk off, but like, if you hear like your child
who's got a clubfoot is like hopping trains, you're like, all right, he's doing something.
He's living a life.
Yeah.
He's living a life.
So you know, so that's still so, and like I said, he's stealing cars when he's 13.
Like he's
Pretty cool.
I mean, it's all, it's happening.
These are happening when he was 14, cops stopped Otto because he had stolen a bike, but he
couldn't ride it.
It must have been too big for him.
He's like, I'm used to cars.
I haven't really had a lot of time on these.
I've either, I've been doing a lot of locomotives and then I cars mainly, but you're 12.
I do a lot of cars.
He was given five months in jail for that Jesus.
Right after he was released, he was arrested for breaking into a hardware store to steal
guns.
Okay, so things are, I mean, things are picking up.
Yeah.
Uh, the judge gave him four months on a chain gang.
Wait, he, for stealing guns, got four months.
And then for a bike, he got five.
Well, I think the difference was one, he got put in jail and the other one he got put on
a chain gang, which is hard labor.
Yeah.
Right.
Boy, I tell you, when I get out of here, I'm going to make, I'm going to make something
by myself.
I swear, I know I took a dark turn early Lord.
The Staysville record headline was quote, white boy on chain gang.
Oh, Jesus, I mean, for it to make the paper tells you something.
The paper said auto was quote, somewhat of a cripple, one leg being smaller than the
other, but is active, but he's active.
He moves around.
Everyone was very sympathetic that this kid was having a hard time.
In the share, I've asked for auto to get special privileges on the chain gang.
So maybe not worked as hard or something.
But then when they send me the chain gang, the foreman's like, I can't have a 14 year
old here.
Like these guys are hardened.
Whatever you need me to do, sir.
I'm important for duty.
I'm ready to go.
I'm really ready.
So the foreman just said, what do you need me to do?
You're going home.
How about this?
I'll help some of the other guys.
Maybe I can water the fellas.
Whatever you need me to do, sir.
Okay.
I can do it.
I can do it myself.
Look, I can do anything.
I can do it.
Yeah.
And just go home.
We're good.
We don't need you around.
You're, I feel like it's really not going to build unity between me and the boys.
Yeah.
We don't want you to build unity between the boy.
That's the thing we're trying to avoid is we don't want you to build unity between
I'll tell you, you ain't seen me swing a pickaxe yet.
I ain't looked like much, but I got a lot of vigor.
Yeah.
I'm just going to need you to just head on out.
Thank you for coming to the chain gang.
I'll go to the far right and I'll be at the very end of the chain gang.
That's not a bad idea.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why don't you do that?
You're smart.
All right.
Thank you.
Oh, I'm tired.
Well, we've been working, working all day on the chain gang, chain gang, and working.
We're all men.
All men are working together on the chain gang.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you just started.
So you haven't worked in a little, some of the guys are not enjoying the song because
you've been acting like you're working all day.
You literally just stepped in there.
So when we all wiped, we've been working for about five months on the chain gang tired.
Each one of us is in our thirties.
Woo, we're tired, chain gang.
So the whole chain gang singing thing, it kind of just like a start.
Hey, listen to this asshole trying to tell us what to do.
We don't listen to the jerk office trying to tell us what we're going to do.
Your jerk office is a chain gang.
Woo.
We're a real posse.
No.
All right.
I hate you and I'm going to extend your time on the chain gang by three months.
Woo.
We got to be best friends.
We're working on chain gang.
Sometimes at night, I just think about eating this lead and this gun and a lot of it's because
of people like you.
That's a dark turn, mister.
So he, the guy lets him go.
So essentially he got no punishment again for, for trying to break into the Howard store.
He's too young to punish.
Yeah.
So he goes right back to stealing guns.
He gets arrested again.
Judge is very sympathetic, this new judge is very sympathetic.
He didn't mean to do it.
Well, look at that.
Look at this boy's eyes.
Boy never had an evil thought in his head.
I've never seen such a cute young lad in my courtroom before.
The only thing this child's guilty of is being adorable.
So the judge is like, do you have any family in the courtroom and there's no, no one came.
And so he's like, well, okay, hold on.
He tells the sheriff to go get one of, one of his older brothers and delay sentencing
until a family member member could be there.
So they're bringing the brother and the judge tells him that auto quote was not a bad boy.
Now James doesn't like auto because he thinks James is on the straight and narrow and auto
is like this young criminal and he's, he's already like your honor, take a closer look.
Yeah.
Seriously.
He's not good, your honor.
He's bad.
He's bad.
Right.
The judge.
He's considering having James take care of auto instead of sentencing him again.
So that's amazing to be like, no, no, you should sentence him like I'm going to sentence
him to be in your best friend and living with you.
What the fuck?
I didn't do anything.
I was just sitting at home.
The prosecutors is like, no, auto is going to flee if you do that.
And the judge, this little boy couldn't flee if he wanted to.
Well the judge asked him, he goes, auto, will you flee?
And I was like, no, no.
See, this little angel shoots straighter than Bill of the Kid.
So they let him go to live with James, but then he just, he just kept moving back and
forth between West Virginia and Wilkes and he, he works in the coal fields, he works
on farms and at 17, he becomes a locomotive foreman.
Okay.
Jesus Christ.
Now, when he's 18, he's hunting near his mom's house and a family member said quote,
he saw that the lid was down on Harrison Park's rabbit gum, rabbit gum is.
Rabbit gum?
That's real chewy, mister.
Okay.
So he, I guess he goes down, open up, he leans his shotgun against the bush and he bent down
to take the rabbit out of the gum and his shotgun was slipping.
He reached for it too late, the barrel roared and he caught a full barrel load close range
in his left hand.
Oh geez.
So he, okay.
So he was trying to get some rub, rabbit gum and shot his hand badly.
That's what happens with rabbit gum.
That's true.
That's why I only do a big league chew.
That's right.
A doctor comes and looks at me, we got to take the hand off at the wrist.
So now he's a guy with a limp and no left hand.
Right.
Okay.
So he can't be a look, he can't be a locomotive foreman anymore.
Oh.
And also he's much easier for cops to ID now.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
They're like, what did the guy look like?
They're like, oh, he limped and didn't have a hand.
They're like, oh, that's Otto.
Right.
Okay.
So around this time he gets engaged to a girl.
You know what I would do?
If I was him, I would start cutting off other people's hands.
That would become my new crime.
Yes.
Just then, you know, kind of just created a little murkier situation for the cop.
And who's not, who's not going to have sympathy for that, right?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
You just want a quality, essentially.
Yeah.
It's exactly right.
So he gets engaged to a girl.
I had a dream.
Otto, sit down.
Oh.
It's a terrible dream.
It's a terrible dream.
Well, well, it still came to me in a vision, mister.
Yeah.
No, it's bad.
By the way, I'm 18.
When does this stop?
I know.
We're still waiting for you to.
I mean, I really just, good lord.
It's not great.
I would love to settle down, but all I want to do is play jacks and slingshot.
So he gets engaged to a girl in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
I'm in love.
But also, quote, occasionally called on a girl living in Grand Virginia.
Oh, man.
This dude is so, so he's just totally shaming.
He's a two lifer, right?
He's got the two lives.
He's, he's putting his, he's splitting his time.
He wants adventure.
Yeah.
He does.
Yeah.
So he gets married, but three months later, the girl from Graham has him arrested because
she said he promised to marry her and got her pregnant.
Oh, shit.
And that is a crime.
I mean, I look.
Yeah, it was.
It's shitty.
It's a shitty thing he did.
Yeah.
I'm telling you, baby.
I'm torn.
She means nothing to me.
So I can't even ejaculate.
How could this be possible?
Nothing comes out normally.
Yeah.
I feel like we've heard too much here at church today.
Let's just, uh, I'll just tell you the Lord works a mysterious ways.
Yep.
Okay.
Well, I feel it, but nothing comes out.
If you know what I mean.
Yeah, we got it.
We all got it.
I would say my body experiences orgasm, but as far as discharge, nothing.
Okay.
Well, we're just actually talking about the Lord today and not, not so much.
If magical, if he not.
No, he's very magical.
He's a very mysterious Lord.
Very mysterious Lord.
Very mysterious Lord.
Yeah.
Tell me a weird hand in ways.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, for sure.
You know, you've been through a rough, rough patch as a young man.
And now I'm getting arrested for having two women unlikely.
That's on.
That's probably more on you.
Nothing comes out.
Nothing comes out.
Yeah.
Again, we don't need to hear that in the church.
We have a men's group afterwards.
We can talk about that then.
Oh, great.
Okay.
Yeah.
If they could get the men together.
Maybe not in front of the ladies.
That's right, ladies.
You don't need to know that it's empty.
Yeah, they don't.
So let's just wrap that up.
Exactly.
Stick to the Lord.
He is magical.
Yeah.
That's right.
He's magical.
Yes, sir.
All right.
We're going to move on now.
Okay.
It feels like you're waiting for me to say something else about it.
So, yeah, so he gets arrested for that tried and convicted.
I'm given two years now.
This sometimes things get a little hazy with auto.
There's no record of that, but a new newspaper did report that he was.
Isn't it.
Isn't it funny that how you have to sometimes in this podcast track liars.
Yeah, I mean, because he, he wrote about all this stuff.
So obviously it's going to be more embellished to work in his favor.
Yeah.
So there is a record of him being caught stealing a car.
Okay.
But then he gets sentenced to jail and then he escapes.
Okay.
And so he's on the run for years.
The Charlotte Observer quote, auto would left hand gone deformed foot and has a record
for cunning thievery unequaled here.
It really is.
I mean, I know, but it is amazing that any abnormal physical thing is led with in the
paper.
Always.
It's like, it is before the crime.
It's before anything.
Always.
They're always like, Jimmy, Jimmy Franklin, crazy, ah, yeah, got a burn patch on his head.
Yeah.
That's fella.
Held up a bank.
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, it's always like, and it's the same with like a woman.
They're like, is she had a big hat and lovely gloves and beautiful eyes as she walked into
court that it's like, just what is how about what's happening in 1960 and in 1960 papers
reported he was in Townsend Wilkes County.
So he's, he's on the land, but he's, he's in the area.
Right.
Now his younger brother, Robert Wood, known as Bob joined him and they became like a crime
duo.
Okay.
And they, they're stealing cars.
They're stealing so many cars that people started taking the wheels off their cars when
they weren't going to use them.
Wow.
So like the world's first club, like before the club, you would just be like, I'm going
to take the wheel with me, you know?
Yeah.
Even one of us, I had the club for a little while and boy, there's not a weird, like just
you feel, you felt like such a loser.
Well, I can't remember what like something my car had been broken into.
So like I got the club and like locking your steering wheel as you're leaving your, it
just, it just felt like a phase, even when it was like cutting edge.
I gotta be honest.
When I, I had my car broken into two and I, I had the choice.
I was like, do I get a club and I was like, I can't do it, I can't do it.
I can't be a guy who locks up my car with the club.
All right.
Just got to lock my wheel, then my door.
It's a car.
I live in America.
His younger, so his younger brother is now part of the duo is stealing cars on September
28th.
Bob was caught by a posse.
So Bob's out of the picture.
Otto steals a Buick and heads for Tennessee.
And then he's there for a little while and he gets into a shooting incident in a pool
room.
Okay.
He manages to get off on self-defense and then he heads to West Virginia where he started
working making and hauling moonshine and he's making good money.
He's making like 3000 a month.
So while he's there, he gets married to a 15 year old girl.
He's friends with the father and apparently he's like, yeah, go ahead.
Well, that's not going to help, that's not going to help your moonshine stereotypes.
In 1917, June 1917, he goes back to North Carolina to show off his beautiful young bride
to the family.
And how old is he?
Roughly now?
Oh God.
It's 1917.
So he's 20.
Okay.
That's all I need to hear.
Yeah.
He's in his 20s.
Early 20s.
23.
Okay.
All right.
Nice.
Nice and creepy.
It is nice and creepy, isn't it?
Yep.
So he goes to the family's house.
He said, I think probably his mom's house and cops find out he's there.
They surround the house, but he manages to slip out back, steal a car, and flee.
So this is before the police knew that houses had backs?
I mean, I should do a doll about this.
There's a famous manhunt, one of the biggest manhunts when they were just starting to come
up with the FBI.
It was like Dillinger, one of those guys.
And they show up to this lodge or boarding house and they all just surround it out front
and they just all leave out the back.
It's crazy.
It's absurd.
I mean, it's absurd.
It's like, they're like, how the hell is he doing it?
This Houdini character, where's he going?
It's like magic.
They're like magic men.
It's magical.
We must, tonight we get our heads together and we try to figure out how he's doing this.
My theory is he's going through the center of the earth.
If you, if you could explain to me a lob man, a many years, how a back door works, why I
catch so many of these fellas, I would catch so many of these fellas.
Then there's a guy in the back.
My theory, there's two autos.
Oh, that's good.
That's good.
You know, man, he's got to have a twin.
He's got to have a twin.
There's two autos.
There's two autos.
He does a magician's tactics.
I would like to go back to the, I would like to go back to the point that he may be a warlock.
We moved past that gene.
He could be a warlock and he turns into a dragon and flies off the balcony.
I'm in for the love of God.
I believe that theory like I believe the back door theory.
Now come on.
Well then why, why am I going bald?
Cause he put a curse on me.
We've been through this.
Going bald because it skips a generation.
You don't.
Now for the last time, there's two of them.
Nothing's made more sense than that.
Warlock will vote later.
You'll back door, you'll back door argument.
Yeah.
Oh, and I tell you this great thing, you know, they're talking about opening our schools
and everyone was just like, you got it.
You got to open the windows.
Everyone's like, you got to have the windows open.
Yeah.
It's a big player and we, and a lot of windows and schools don't open because they're scared
people will break in and steal.
I don't know.
And we have a, we have a guy at our board who keeps going.
Every classroom has windows that will open or doors or doors and he says it over and
over again and you're like, see me in the classroom has doors.
Well we're not going to get into the semantics of this, but at minimum the doors open for
sure.
Cool.
Going into what?
A hallway.
Where there's windows?
No.
There's more doors.
Do more doors that are open.
And again, I'm just figuring out what doors are.
I'm just coming around the doors and apparently these things that open and close, but we can
open them.
He's at home.
We got that.
Just like putting on riders on the storm, like that's interesting, the doors.
So, so he, they flee and then they head out of the head of state.
They go on honeymoon in Kentucky.
But then he gets arrested because he was wanted in Tennessee for stealing a car.
And then he got three years in jail for stealing for, yeah, he must have been in, he must
have been in like a, like a hotel with no back door or something like that.
Yeah.
That couldn't have been a back door.
A backless establishment of some nature.
So his young, his young bride divorces him when he goes to jail, takes him six months
to escape, but he escapes.
I'm out of here.
Goes back home, but was arrested at his mother's house and sent back to Tennessee.
Okay.
11 months later, he's been in jail for 11 months and then he hides in a dry goods box
to get carted out of the prison and it works.
He escapes.
Put your hand in there and make sure there's nothing moist.
Now don't fail that muster doll.
Well then push her all out.
He didn't make it.
He didn't make it until the next morning cause they had bloodhounds on his tail.
Oh geez.
I mean, this is, this is, this is really checking.
Like if I picture old timing police stuff, it's just checking every box, every box.
So the, the, they have a guard bringing him back on a train and he knocks out the guard
when the train gets to a station, he runs through the crowd and he gets into the caboose
and puts on overalls and rubs oil all over his face and then joins in the chase of guys
chasing and trying to find him.
Now hold on a minute.
I want to say something.
When we find him, we're going to kill him.
All right.
Hey, where's your hand, mister?
Don't you worry about my hand, boy.
I'm talking about this other fellow when we find him, what we're going to do to him.
Oh, we're going to strap him up and teach him.
We're going to make a lesson out of him.
I hate pieces of shit like this.
They make me sick knocking out police officers.
All they're trying to do is good.
I mean, sure, they're kind of incompetent when it comes to the back of establishments,
but outside of that, I'd take a police officer any day over any other room.
Now when we get him, we're going to make an example.
Whoo.
I'm fired up.
Huh?
You really limping?
Yeah.
Yeah.
A little bit of a limp.
Sure.
What that would tirelessly search and it'll give you that.
You got something you want to say to me, boy, because if you're about to stand there and
accuse me of being him, well, you may as well go to hell.
I ain't him.
I ain't never been him.
Although I do respect a lot of what I read about the fellow.
Sure.
Sads like he sticks to his convictions and he's a bit of a lethario, I guess.
He's made the most out of not too much and he keeps doing it.
And I'll tell you, it sounds like he keeps outsmarting a lot of these police officers,
but that ain't on them.
They're just dealing with some kind of genius.
Whoo.
He's good.
He's good.
I think we can all admit he's good.
He's great.
He's great is what he is.
Whoo.
He's fabulous.
He's good looking and he's great.
And we're going to find him and we're going to make a lesson out of him, but don't be charmed
because from what I understand, he is a charmer.
Who are you looking at his eyes?
You maybe get hypnotized to him.
Whoo.
He's good.
I'm going to go to the bathroom, but y'all keep looking.
And when we find him, we're going to really go at him.
Yeah.
Let's get out of here before that guy comes back.
He's really creeping me out.
I guess weird.
So he heads for West Virginia now and then the Spanish flu comes and it tears through
the county, Wilkes County and Otto comes back and he helps.
He's like helping be a nurse to people who are sick, neighbors around the area, even
though he's on the lam, the flu ends up killing Bob, his brother.
So on the death certificate, he's purposefully vague about it because he has to fill a death
certificate for his brother.
Oh no.
And when they ask for his address, he just says West Virginia.
And when they ask for the birthplace of his parents, it's like state country, you know,
and he just writes country.
Country?
Well, we was actually hoping you could answer both of those questions.
Well, you gave me the option is Curtry.
Yeah, there's there's born a very, very vague place.
Very vague.
Very vague.
Vague'sville.
November 3rd, 1923, Otto went to a pawn shop in Greensboro that was owned by Abraham
Wolf Kaplan to get back a pocket watch that he had pawned previously.
Okay.
And whatever happened, it, it wasn't going well.
They two minutes are arguing.
Oh dear.
And it gets heated and then Otto said Kaplan raised a club to hit him.
So he pulled out his pistol and started pistol whipping Kaplan.
And then the gun accidentally went off and shot Kaplan's shoulder while he was hitting
him in the head with it.
Oh, well, I mean, Kaplan has a fractured skull.
Okay.
And he doesn't make it.
The Statesville landmark, quote, Kaplan on his deathbed claimed he was beaten and shot
by a man with only one arm.
Okay.
So everyone knows it's Otto at that point.
Right.
He, after the, after the, the beating shooting, he runs out into the street, he carjacks a
car, tells the driver to drive him out of the city.
And then once in the country, he kicks the driver out, takes his coat and hat and $150.
And then somehow that night, the car reappears in his pocket.
He must have driven the car back at night, parked the car in town and then left to like
give the guy his car back.
Wait, you, you're saying he parked it in the town to just sort of be like, here's your
car.
I'm done with it.
Yeah.
Well, he ran off.
He drove off in it to get away, but then he brought it back.
And then he brought it back.
But I'm like, now I'm done.
What do I owe you?
Papers are amazed.
The car was returned quote as quietly as if he had been a ghost, right?
But now he's wanted for murder and rewards are offered for $700 all together.
On November 19th, he was cornered by cops and arrested and brought back into town on
a train.
And a local reporter described the scene when they took him off the train in Greensboro,
quote, it looked like a funeral party.
To ensure wood would not make a break, the officers rigged a rope around his neck and
then fastened it to a knot around his arms.
So any swift movement was causing to choke.
So they, I mean, they're like, are they are treating him like a wild animal?
Yes, they're treating him exactly like a wild animal thing.
So paranoid.
Okay.
They've been, I mean, they've been hurt before by him, so it makes sense.
The Greensboro Daily News, quote, he is neat and clean looking, a decided blonde with big
blue eyes.
What is happening in the story with him?
We don't care about his highlights.
He's got lovely hair, a whisper of blonde in it.
Looks like he's been at the beach for a couple of days, sandy, not too bad.
Blue eyes that slightly protrude from his head.
He has high and prominent cheekbones and they in his eyes are the most striking features
on his face.
He wore a blue suit, tap shoes, low white color and soft tap shoes.
He wore tap shoes.
That is the best.
Well, you're on our tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic.
I didn't do it.
Tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic.
I'm sorry, tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic.
Not guilty.
Tic-tic-tic-tic-tic.
Yay!
Tap shoes.
I mean, just walking over the city and tap shoes.
Tic tic-tic-tic.
You're like, who is that guy who, yeah we hear you.
So he is found guilty of second degree murder and given a 30 year prison sentence.
Okay, pretty big.
Spoke to reporters, quote, maybe if my record had not been against me, I might have got
manslaughter.
But the verdict is just about what I expected.
I'm going to try and show the people in North Carolina that I can be a decent man if they
think they can give me another chance.
But if they don't think so, I'll deserve the whole time.
Okay, resignation, sure.
Auto's long sentence made people think the cops had been out to get him.
Okay.
Like I guess a lot of people bought his story that he didn't mean to kill the guy and was
just beating him in the head and then shot him.
I didn't mean to kill him, I was just beating him with a gun.
I suppose to know it's going to go off.
Can't a man beat another man with a gun no more without getting, come on.
The gun was merely a, the gun was a club that fired.
I don't know what the state's coming to.
A man beat a man with the butt of his gun.
The lawyer.
I mean, that's what I think when watching the George Floyd thing, I'm like, how can someone
represent, you know what I mean, to be a lawyer, to represent like Derek Chauvin, it's just
crazy.
But like in this situation to just be like, yeah, ladies and gentlemen, the gun beat my
client.
Like you're just like, there's not a lot you can really do.
My prints are on the gun because I was trying to stop the gun from hitting him.
I was trying to hold the gun, which wanted to beat him.
My client was trying to awaken a pawn shop owner with a gun, but he's guilty of wanting
a man aware.
So Otto's sort of gotten this reputation of a, as a man of the people, he sort of had
a little bit of a Robin Hoodie thing.
So he must have been giving people to help them out.
Sure.
There's definitely the returning of the car.
There was the helping people out where they were sick.
So he definitely had like a, right?
There's a lot of, a lot of people like this guys on our side.
Sure.
I'll make, also people just don't like cops on me.
And also people are just totally crazy.
So they can, they'll like something for reasons that are totally original.
That's right.
On May 10th, 1924, Otto and another prisoner, JH Starnes, were working in the factory.
So they're, they're put to work in a factory and Otto grabbed the guard, took his gun,
and then forced the prison doctor to drive the two prisoners out, right?
So he,
Okay.
He's hijacked the prison doctor.
Hijacked the doctor.
Outside Raleigh, they kicked the, they kicked the guard out of the car and they switched
to a bakery truck.
Okay.
So they're still on the move.
The next morning they carjacked a Studebaker driven by M.D. Klein, who was coming back
from fishing.
Okay.
Oh, not my carp.
That's what he says as they drive off.
That was, my carp was still in the trunk.
Otto drove, Starnes held a gun on Klein and told them that they were escaped prisoners
and then pulled out an article and handed to Klein and it was dark.
So he lit a match and had Klein read the article, the article about their escape while
they drove to them or just for his own information, right?
Just so he could read it.
That's crazy.
That's crazy.
That'd be like, that's the crazier answer to like, it's like, I believe, I mean, it
doesn't, what does it matter what I think?
I believe your criminals.
You have a gun.
This will corroborate what we're saying about how we would kill you.
Hold on.
Hold on here.
There you go.
Let me get a candle.
Let me know when you're done reading.
That's great.
When they, when they were in some woods, they tied Klein to a barbed wire fence.
They stole $30 in a watch.
Then the next thing they did was they carjacked a woman and her small boy.
Hours later, a cop saw the car outside of Rona in Virginia and he trailed it.
And then as the cops got close, Otto and Starnes bailed out while the car was moving.
Oh, they loved the move.
They did the rollout.
The woman and the kid must be in the backseat and the cops hate the move.
Hate the move.
What?
I forgot they were there.
Jesus.
So the cops all chase after the car to stop the car and Otto and Starnes run off into
the woods.
Then the cops keep tracking them and they track them.
They track them to the railroad yard, which is where Otto used to work.
And then they surround them and they give up without a fight.
Okay.
So at this time they had learned about the back of buildings, it seems.
Sir, when you say surround, you mean stop as soon as we get halfway to the edge of
the house?
No, we're doing.
Okay.
That's a really good question, Jim.
Thank you.
We're doing a new thing where we surround, we go around back and on the sides and out
front.
Right.
We have a circle.
We circle it.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
But my only question is, ain't we going to lose about half the people we had up front?
Oh, damn.
That's a...
Yeah.
That is a good point.
All right.
Let's do the front and one of the sides.
Overload the front half a side.
Boom.
Yeah.
We got it.
Yeah, we got it.
Yeah.
Smart.
That's why I like you boys to speak up.
Sir, they escaped.
Oh, damn it.
How'd that happen?
Good idea.
Probably through the front.
So they give up without a fight.
Now the story of this jailbreak, it's big and it's increasing as legend.
Every time he escapes from jail and does, it's like, what's all, what's all I'm going
to do now?
He's seen as a very tactful, a very funny and sort of admirable criminal.
Okay.
A criminal of the people.
A criminal of the people.
A crime, a crime, a crime people's...
Right.
Sure.
A people's criminal.
Don't try any further.
The people's...
The people's court.
Hold on.
Not getting closer.
No, no, no.
Back away from this.
Go back to the computer.
One reporter wrote, quote, he is a bad egg, a dangerous man, but somehow his engaging
candor disarms criticism and takes all the pleasure out of the news of his capture.
It's just a stupid media.
We're just so charmed by him as well.
Another reporter was delighted that he had returned the doctor's car.
So with that first car he stole, he returned.
Right.
Maybe he doesn't know what stealing is.
He might not.
He really might not.
Auto to reporters, quote, I told Warden Busby that if I did not get a square deal, I would
be compelled to leave, and he replied that if it was that easy, I just should go ahead.
Why would you say that?
Which it turned out to be, yeah, bad idea.
To reporters, Auto was now a goldmine who sold papers, like a local Jesse James.
And even though he had killed a man, stories emphasized how he was not ruthless when he
was on the run, and everyone wanted to know about him, like he was just selling papers.
Okay.
The prison system was starting to be questioned because Auto used his newfound fame to put
out his opinions as part of the debate of the prison system.
Okay.
Wow.
So he would write letters and he said, what an interesting turn.
Yeah.
So he said he had escaped due to, quote, the harsh treatment that a poor devil gets that
turns him against the public and society and the inhuman treatment.
He complained about the bad food and the poor treatment he was getting.
And then he said society failed to help those living in poverty and neglect.
Well, come on.
Now we got to love the guy.
I mean, does he mean it?
I hope he means it.
I think he does.
Because that is such a, I mean, that truly is still a complete, that is still totally
true.
It's only worse.
100%.
Yeah.
And then we have a landmark publishing article in which lawyer Alan Adams said auto's conditions
were actually good.
Now Adams had visited auto inside and felt he should set the record straight.
You want any fondue?
We're low on chocolate.
What kind of prison does that chocolate?
Well, we got chocolate.
It's just still melting here.
Sit on the fountain.
Let me tell you what I'm worried about champagne.
Thank you.
There you are.
It's the conditions.
They're killing me.
Hold on.
Let me get this robe off.
I'm a little sweaty.
They're killing me.
That's been really just a terrible picture.
So he's complaining about all this stuff.
This guy sets it straight.
He says he'd visit him.
He had a nice cell.
He seemed happy.
His walls were covered in pictures of quote feminine poultrytude and said the cell looked
like quote the average college freshman's domicile.
That's my favorite quarterback and that's the swimsuit issue.
So some reporters wrote that auto was a pampered convict who complained and other papers pushed
back saying auto was a man fighting a corrupt society.
So more story, if you can imagine a guy who was a criminal that also discussed corruption
at the same time, you would get what we're saying.
So more stories flooded the press and his legend grew.
There was an open house in the jail for people to get a look at auto.
This part I could not understand.
I read it in the paper and I was like, what is happening?
But they just had a day where everyone could come in and look at it.
Maybe they want everyone to see that it's better than he says it is right still.
It's really weird.
But then reporters just gather on a cell and ask some questions.
Hundreds of people visit the jail from quote banker to bum and auto just holds court the
whole time explaining he never ran from North Carolina because he loves North Carolina.
He's like, I love it here.
Why would I?
They're like, why don't you go to California?
He's like, I love my state.
I love my people.
These are my peeps.
And then he immediately after that escapes again.
Heads to California.
This time he hides in a concrete pipe as it's being loaded onto a freight car wet goods.
Quote, I had clothes under my prison clothes.
So when I got a chance, I got onto the boxcar where I had been loading, just took off my
prison clothes and rode out.
Wow.
Wow.
I mean, this is El Chava.
I mean, this is like El Chava.
This is very.
It's pretty amazing.
The pipe thing is amazing.
I love that no one noticed.
I love that no one noticed he had clothes under his clothes.
How come you got a tuxedo under their auto?
I'm not raising this just maybe if we get company later as you were.
I was in love that they let they let him, they just let him have access to his street
clothes when he's.
And how did he know the pipe?
Like, they were like, now, gentlemen, we're going to be removing pieces of pipe about,
I would say, the size of, I don't know, auto, about six or seven of these auto-sized
pipe chunks.
Yeah, you could really get a man right in there.
So we don't want that to happen.
So the point is no crapping from eight to eight.
We're doing a big pipe swap.
And yeah, if you guys want your street clothes, they're all in a pile over here.
Pull them out, enjoy the rest of your day.
So he was caught pretty soon after in Morseville where a cop saw him and just pointed a gun,
a shotgun at him through a windshield was just like, Hey, you're, you're done.
Okay.
Okay.
Upon his return to Raleigh prison, he was put in solitary confinement to stop another
escape.
Okay.
Headlines broke down his escape like it had been a sporting event, calling this escape
the quote annual vacation of auto wood.
Wow.
I mean, okay.
He's not a teacher.
No, the legislative auto with the bandit now really took off.
He became a celebrity.
He wrote letters to papers meant to sway the public.
He published a best selling autobiography, auto biography.
Yeah, that's it.
North Carolina governor Angus McLean was very angry about the focus on auto quote.
The fact that wood succeeded in getting away without getting killed does not prove he is
a hero.
Listen, buddy, you're just saying the lines of the bad guy in the movie preview.
It's so funny how they, the authorities never get that there's just a huge segment of the
population rooting against them.
Yeah.
Well, the truth is that they have made it so you empathize with the side of criminality
versus authority because of the abuse of that.
It's kind of always been that way, right?
We've always loved the gun fighters in the old West and there's something legendary about
all the gangsters.
We do love it.
We invest, we invest in celebrity.
Yeah, so the same paper that printed that quote about the hero quote, right, he's not
a hero, had an article on the same page, fawning over auto.
Okay, sure.
So quote, wood is not the common type of criminal and never has been a bad man in the sense
which the public usually considers the term a co-blooded shooting, fighting son of a gun.
So they're just like right, right when the, on the same page that the governor's like,
he's not a hero.
They're like, here's why.
Get a copy of the contradiction times, contradiction times.
We say one thing, I won't sign and retract it on the next.
Auto said he'd never shot anyone and it was beneath his code of ethics to do so, except
for the guy that he shot, but he didn't mean to shoot him.
I was beating him to death when the gun went off.
Oh, that, sorry, that's from the article, he has said he has never shot anyone that
it was beneath his code of ethics to do.
He is above average mentally, has a pleasing sense of humor and can laugh heartily when
he recalls some pleasing experience.
So he just has a fun magnetic personality which allows you to get away with shit.
It just.
Charming.
He's charming.
Yeah.
His, his self-published 35, 34 page autobiography was titled, man, those were, those were the
days.
Oh my God.
I gotta come up with 34 pages of my life and ain't gonna be easy.
It's called the life history of auto wood.
It sells very well.
Auto asked the state prison superintendent to let him work because they're still keeping
him in solitary, I guess.
The superintendent was very against even letting him out of solitary, but the prison board
overruled him.
So the prison board is probably more of a political job.
So they're like, you know, just listening to the people and soon auto is working in
the boiler room, which is considered a hard job to escape from.
Okay.
Two months later, he escaped by squeezing through a gate that was missing a latch pin.
But at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if he turned himself into vapor.
It was reported by the state's bill landmark that auto was friendly with one of the guards
quote inmates had observed wood in conversation with Hux on several occasions and the guard
appeared very friendly towards him.
Okay.
So that guard and his brother, who was also a guard were immediately fired.
A reward of $250 to put up for auto's capture, one reporter noted he escaped quote two days
ahead of his scheduled established last year.
So they literally saying it's, it's his vacation, vacation time, it's his time, he's taking
two extra days for his vacation this year.
And is it just me or has the reward gone down?
It did.
Well, the first reward was for murder.
This is just escape.
Okay.
Right.
Right.
Um, the writer of one article compared auto to Houdini, people reported seeing auto all
over North Carolina and Southern Virginia.
So people are just calling in now saying they're seeing everywhere.
Right.
It's amazing that he's this public, although when you can escape so easily, you would kind
of be like, I'm going to live my life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then the, the best thing, and I didn't write it up, but the best thing was this,
this dude just came through town and he was just like a, like maybe a hobo or something
and he had one hand and a limp.
Oh, what?
So he was, he was down at a creek, like getting water or something and all of a sudden there's
like 50 cops around him.
Dude.
Oh, if you're auto, you employ that guy.
Like you come with me.
Yeah.
It's like when you go first, had a bunch of, yeah, yeah, when he had like big body doubles
and other locations, cops, close in on one man, but then discovered he quote, displayed
two good hands and an entire absence of gold plated molars.
So tons of false sightings.
Cops are just busy chasing down just false leads.
People were interviewed all.
So now the papers are just like asking people on the street, what do you think of auto?
Like it's just, it's the thing you're talking about.
Cops are written about him and publishing papers, songs, auto wrote a letter to the Greensboro
Daily News and it had been sent from Ashland, Kentucky and he offered to surrender.
If the governor would change his sentence to a chain gang and assure him he would be
treated human and that quote, I would not get the torturing.
So feels like he's now, okay.
So it feels like now he's kind of grasped how media is obsessed with him and how he
can kind of maybe manipulate it a little bit.
And so he's saying, I'll do the hard labor.
I just don't want to be alone with these enforcers who are torturing me, essentially.
Right.
And so that makes people go like, oh gosh, he's, you know, further endears him to the
public.
Yeah.
And he's saying, look, and I'm in a guy who's saying, look, I just want to be a chain gang.
Like who isn't going to be like, oh, let the guy be on a train.
I just want to work hard.
Yeah.
And I got a bunch of new songs I want to debut.
So the prison superintendent is pissed and the governor doubles the reward and said escape
convicts would be killed, could be killed by any citizen for arresting.
So the governor's like, we'll just shoot this, shoot this motherfucker.
Well, it's a different take.
What?
Right now, anybody could kill criminals.
People are now pranking the cops with fake tips.
Okay.
Good.
And all of these stories and how much fun people are having it is just increasing his
reputation.
Right.
Now other people are in on his escape.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's like, he's like the convict Baba Buie.
So on February 12th, 1927 in Indiana, a drugist fought back during a robbery and shot the
robber four times in the chest.
Cops soon ID'd him as Otto Wood.
Shit.
None of the bullets hit organs and he survived.
Wow.
I mean, this guy's got matrix organs.
Yeah.
As we, we, they went right out the back door.
Well, we don't know where these bullets are.
They're not in his body.
There's nowhere else they could have gone once they went in.
Let's surround his chest till they come out.
So six days later, Otto was sent back to North Carolina on the train and reporter interviewed
him.
And Otto said, quote, every man is entitled to a little vacation.
Yeah.
Boy.
Really?
Yeah.
You, and I mean, you get it.
Yeah.
It's like, you know, I don't know, you do get it for sure.
Even though he's a murderer.
Even though he did murder.
Right.
There's the murder thing.
Yeah.
Prison officials said they couldn't believe, quote, the volume of male coming to the prison
from sentimentalists all over the state.
Wow.
It was mostly young women who are upset by the prison's conditions, which they'd heard
about from Otto.
So he has, which is a thing that happens that there's a thing that, especially serial killers,
but they get, there's like an attraction to it for whatever.
I dated Ted Bundy for about a year.
Yes.
Yeah.
I dated Richard Ramirez for a good six years.
I love the Unibrow.
The superintendent forbid Otto from contacting newspapers.
A sideshow operator offered to rent Otto from the jail and put him in a cage on display,
saying it was, quote, a good chance to make some money.
I mean, who is this guy, who is this man?
The ideas people come up with to make money are just so fucking extraordinary.
But it's also like circus talent agent is just like one of the, like at this time, clearly
one of the shadier occupations.
I understand that Otto overhears a little frustrated about how you guys keep throwing
him in tiny shells.
I figured out a way where he could maybe make some money and get a little more notoriety.
We'll just put him in a cage and we'll just electrocute him a little bit for people's
entertainment.
Yeah.
We'll put him right next to the unicorn we got in there.
Now, the only thing I was going to ask you is, are you opposed to a gill surgery where
we sort of gill the man and make him the human convict fish guy?
No, I'm all right with that.
Go ahead and gill him up.
Okay.
All right.
Perfect.
Then the only other thing we was thinking is maybe we cut his torso off.
We have him be torso man with leg boy.
Again, these are all just options.
Is he, is he Union?
Yeah, he is Union.
Okay.
Longest he's Union.
He gets a two week vacation every year.
Okay.
Good.
Because we don't have that built in unless they have a Union car.
I would just say you don't split him in half just because of the, the care, the care situation
is going to be.
Okay.
And did you land on the gill surgery?
Yeah.
We're all for gills.
Okay.
Great.
So we'll just gill him.
We'll just gill him and we'll put him in a tank once a week.
Yeah.
That's great.
Give him something to do.
Give the public something to do.
Give y'all something to do too.
All right.
We're good talk.
Yeah.
Hey, I just get to ask, is anyone here interested in having their head cut off?
Uh, no, it doesn't look like it.
I'll leave a card and if y'all change your mind, you can just give a ding a ling.
Okay.
Thanks so much.
All right.
Thank you.
I'll see y'all Sunday.
Yeah.
And that's doing business with you.
Pleasure mind.
So.
His popularity peaked in the summer of 1927.
The work commenced auto was being mistreated in prison.
And then a new governor, Oliver Gardner took over in 1929.
He had run on prison reform, which, you know, part of this is probably because of auto.
Oh, I'm sure.
Yeah.
And Gardner believed, quote, ignorance was the mother of poverty and the grandmother
of crime.
So he's saying, you know, the way we're treating people is leading to this stuff.
And he tells people he's going to reform the prisons.
So in April, 1929, Otto and Gardner met when the Gardner was on a tour.
I don't know how this happened, but Otto was very gaunt and frail.
He's like a shadow of his former self being in solitary all that time.
He's barely able to walk around and sell.
And the governor ordered Otto taken out of solitary.
When asked if he was worried, Otto would escape.
The governor said he was, quote, taking a chance to see if a man who has gone as far
at downhill as would can go back up.
And then he tells Otto, look, what you do determines what will happen to other prisoners
because you're such a celebrity prisoner that, you know, you have to act a certain way.
And he was, he was a model prisoner.
He managed, he got a job managing the prison delicatessen.
That's where he's working.
He received the classification of honor grade prisoner and was given the maximum amount
of privileges a prisoner could get me.
I mean, I'm glad because solitary is bullshit, but he's, he does it.
Baby steps now.
Now, and I don't know exactly what this is, but the governor publicly gave Otto a grade
a.
So it's like some sort of, I think he's going to turn him into meat.
The delicatessen is just a trap.
It's some sort of classification and, and it's just, it's like, it sounds like it's
some sort of ceremony.
And Otto told him, quote, I won't, I won't offer you my word of honor because that would
be much, but you can be sure of one thing.
I'll never run away as long as you are governor next day, Otto escape from prison.
Oh my God, I even, I just got sold.
I was like, wow, this is really, and it's, it's, he's really calmed himself down.
He's gone.
He's like, son of a bitch.
I thought you got, I thought they elected you out the next day.
That's my bad.
Do you not get a day off?
Is there not a, like a day in the middle, like a Wednesday where you're not governor?
I thought that was, I thought you took a knee every Thursday.
You ain't governor.
Is that not?
Sorry.
Am I bad anyway?
Did I dream the purger?
Is it real?
So now it's national news.
Now Otto is all, like everyone loves the story of Otto Wood.
A Robin Columbus wrote that Otto's star was fading, however, quote, he does not have the
imagination of the public as he once did.
He has been advertised too much.
He has written a book too, and North Carolina people do not like men who write books.
Oh God.
I love that a, I love that a newspaper reporter is writing this.
I mean, it's just, so obviously the book, obviously the book thing is bullshit, but he
had, he now he got too much fame, right?
Now it's, it's like what they call the tall poppy syndrome in Australia.
You get too big.
Now they want to take you down.
Right.
Okay.
So he hooks up with Bob's ex-wife Celia, Celia had been visiting him in prison over this
time.
Obviously Bob's dead.
He died from the Spanish flu.
So when he escapes, they elope.
And they travel around a bunch of Western states.
So they're just on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, he's on a, he's
on a lamby moon.
And they're sending his, sending his, her mom postcards and like it's, it's a big vacay.
And then they come back and it's September.
They show up at Celia's daughter's school.
So she has two daughters, a six year old and an 11 year old.
And so that's it.
So Bob's dead.
So she's really the only parent and they show up at the school and they're like, we're
taking you with us.
But the 11 year old refuses to go.
Okay.
It sounds like she had, she like was like Bob's, Otto's a criminal.
I don't want to go with him.
Yeah.
It sounds like she was like, nah, this situation seems a little unplanned.
Yeah.
She just, she says she's going to stay with the grandma, but the six year old goes with
her mom and Otto.
And then the papers call it a kidnapping.
Hmm.
Well, I couldn't really figure out.
That's kind of right though.
If she's, I mean, well, she's not a criminal.
Well, she is now technically because she's eating in a bedding.
Yeah.
Is she aiding in a bedding?
Okay.
Yeah.
So anyway, it sounds like the grandmother has custody, so they call it a kidnapping.
And then the news comes out that they're also, they call them heavily armed and they're
also traveling with another criminal named Bill Payne, who's more dangerous.
So the press is now super polarized.
There's for Otto and against Otto and he also is no longer his like playful, fun self that
he's been.
Okay.
And the Great Depression is on.
So there's fewer ways to make money.
People are less forgiving of a criminal stealing stuff.
Right.
So that makes his popularity go down.
And then also he was a political pawn in this governor thing and he said he wouldn't
run and then he did run.
Like he, and for some, even though he, like that, I don't know why that would be something
would turn people against him because you're like, oh, he escapes.
That's what he does.
But maybe because the governor was like, I'm going to reform the prisons and you are a
big part of this.
And then he, because he essentially fucked over all the other prisoners by doing that.
Well, and it's also like the saying goes, escape from me once, shame on you.
Escape from me twice, shame on me.
Escape from me three times.
What's going on?
Escape from me four times.
This looks bad.
Escape from me five times.
Okay.
It's funny again.
Escape from me six times.
Kind of not funny again.
Kind of fucked up.
Escape from me seven times.
Now I look like shit.
I lost my job.
I have a family.
Escape from me eight times.
It's been 30 years.
So he went from being a harmless sort of honest criminal to a dangerous lying out law.
So on January 31st, 1930, the Salisbury Police Chief, Lee Rankin, was told a man who appeared
to be Otto was in the city.
So he and Deputy J.W.
Kessler head out to search for him and they find Otto limping with one hand.
So like that's him.
And they confront him.
The chief quote, Otto, let me see your hand.
Otto said, quote, here it is, damn it.
And pulled out a 45 caliber pistol.
I love that he said, let me see your hand.
Did you catch that?
Oh yeah.
I was, I was waiting to see what, yes, of course.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's kind of shitty, but it's still like, put your hand up where I can see it.
So Otto says, here it is, damn it.
And pulls out a 45 caliber pistol and points it at the chief.
Otto ordered the chief to get in the car.
This is from the Burlington Times, quote, as wood climbed into the car with a threat
to the men to drive him out of town or they would be killed.
Chief Rankin leaped from the car and fired.
The bullet struck wood in the leg and he returned fire as he leaped from the car.
In the meantime, Kessler brought his gun into action and fired twice.
Wood shot again and then chief Rankin set his second bullet crashing into Woods mouth
and face.
The charge fired at close range, fairly blue one side of Woods face off.
Oh, wow.
Shit.
I will not count him out.
No, he's gone.
Oh, okay.
Well, that's ready to call this one.
Yeah.
He doesn't have part of his face anymore.
He didn't make it.
Well, really.
I mean, it's, it speaks to the level of the lore that he's just shot them out.
I'm like, I see him pull it through this.
It's just easier to identify.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now he's a guy trying to escape prison with half of his face.
All right.
What we're looking for is a limping one handed half face charmer and some guy rolls out and
he won't leave through the back.
Yeah.
So I ran a guy rules in the town with half a face and I'm opening my business.
I help people get half their faces back.
Not so fast out.
So that was the end of auto wood, but his popularity just increased after the shootout.
It was a Wild West ending to his crime spree.
And then he became a legend.
He's still a folk legend in North Carolina today.
Songs written about him, like all kinds of stuff.
He's like, he's like, he is now a Jesse James type, you know, character that people
are amazing.
Love and auto if he could, he escaped the day out of wood if they could.
I'm just, you know, I'll come up with a good one.
Yeah.
No, that was good.
A lot of this I just took from newspapers and then Trevor Jackson McKenzie wrote the
Robin Hood of the Blue Ridge, the life legend and songs of auto wood, the band.
Wow.
Wow.
Shit.
That's crazy.
I mean, you know, that really is like a, you know, our, our obsession with celebrity
and how it blinds us to reality is something that seems to be tougher and tougher in the
world where we kind of like mix our actual livelihood with messengers who will try to
accomplish what we want versus people who we just kind of are like, they're cool.
And then we put all of our faith into them, like, um, and it's terrible.
Like the, what, you know, like what celebrity culture kind of does is like at this point
just makes everyone think they look and they look like shit and, uh, are poor, um, you
know, but, uh, it's interesting the way that people like, like I remember when like one
of the Jenner girls like Kylie or whatever the other one's name is was like $50 million
short of being a billionaire or something.
And so someone started to go fund me for people to donate to make her a billionaire.
And it was just like, how is that possible?
But celebrity just blinds people to reality.
And this is kind of one of those stories, even though he is charming and like a man
of the people in many ways, you know, it is people are like on the side of, uh, yeah,
someone who killed someone and keeps committing crime, you know, again, not that like the
police are the heroes or anything, but it's what celebrity does, how it kind of rewires
the way people view things is so bizarre.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, Ronald Reagan was a president because he was celebrity.
Donald Trump was president because he was a celebrity.
It's a problem.
So, you know, that it's not like Democrats don't do it.
I'll say also, you know, we, we turn to a Supreme Court justice and do a celebrity.
Kamala Harris is more celebrity than politician.
Well, it's a really, it's a really bad that they shouldn't be politicians shouldn't be
known for celebrity.
They should be known for policy, but a lot of these people are known for it's weird because
it is.
I mean, it's a lot.
It's on the left and the right.
I mean, it really is.
It's weird because politics should be a popularity contest of your policy.
It should not be that you're a celebrity because when you, when you get into that, that's when
you get into the, you know, when you, when you can see no wrong, like no matter which
side you're on there, they both sides do so much wrong.
And when you see the Democrats not identify the things that they do that are wrong, it
really doesn't help the argument when you're going to tell the other side what they're
doing wrong and vice versa.
Like you have to admit that, you know, like these people are, I mean, yeah, they're,
the reason why our political situation is a lot like it is, is because of the ability
to feel the charm of celebrity.
Bill Clinton's your friend.
He would never fuck you, you know, like, um, I, well, sorry, wrong, wrong example.
I dive, I'm excited.
Yeah, I'm excited too, buddy.
Oh, sorry.
Slipping out of my shorts here a little bit.
Yep.
Same.
Oh, you come to YMCA often.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Every day.
Let's get those showers nice and steamy.
I'll make you better.
Yeah.
Shower it up.
Rub some bill.
Bought my way up.
Um, yeah.
I don't know.
It's weird though.
Well, you know, Obama became a celebrity and it's what, it's what I think they do.
I mean, it's what allowed, in my opinion, it's what allowed people to just not really
care that he didn't prosecute any of the people who destroyed our economy.
Like, you know, they're just like, yeah, he's our, he's our guy and, you know, they're
not celebrities.
They're politicians.
No.
Treated as such.
There are no, there is no, there is absolutely no politician that should not be criticized.
That's their job.
You're supposed to go after what you want.
Yeah.
And they, you know, I mean, again, they're, it's, yeah, like it's, it's the same shit.
I mean, they take tons of money from corporations and then go like, I'm looking out for you.
It's like, no, you're not.
Why would you?
I mean, honestly, like, why would you?
I understand your decision.
You are getting money funneled into your campaign from places that have more money than I do.
So of course you're going to go with them.
I mean, corporations are considered people.
And then you get people who do it badly, like the, the senator from Arizona who's just
an idiot.
This woman.
What's her name?
Cinema.
Yeah.
Cinema.
I mean, she's trying so hard to create a sort of celebrity thing around her and she, she's
just coming across like a moron.
It is.
It is like watching a drunk person try to stand up.
It's just like, stop trying.
Yeah.
You're hurting yourself.
Yeah.
You're getting hurt.
You keep falling and hurting yourself.
Oh, yeah.
So not everyone gets to do it.
I mean, you do it to have a charm like an Obama, but, you know, some people it's just
a big deal.
Oh yeah.
Ted Cruz.
I mean, Ted Cruz is a great example.
Ted Cruz is a great example.
Yeah, but now you look at him and he looks, he looks like a guy who rolled out of a duck
hunting, you know, thing.
His hair is the way it is, the clothes he's wearing.
It is such a good old boy image thing he's creating.
It's got like an old, it's got like an old Confederate feel to it.
And it's just like, wow, dude, you're really like, it almost, it's almost like he went
to a stylist.
Like it's really crazy.
Well, you knew it was too much the other day when he went on the floor and he was protesting
a bill through a duck caller.
It was not how you do it.
I mean, this fucker's like, this fucker went to like fucking Harvard or Yale or some shit.
Well they all do.
The way that, the way that they all go to, I mean, they are elites.
And then they're just like, I want to shake your hand.
You're like, well, he's just like me.
It's like, no, he's not, he's nothing like, he wants to kill you.
He will kill you.
He has talked about killing you.
I wanted to present, I would almost guarantee you that Ted Cruz went to someone who has
styled him.
He went to a person who does this thing and he paid them to come up with a new look for
him.
I mean, it's apparently stupid that it breaks my brain every time I see it.
It looks like he's doing an undercover boss on the Senate, but it works.
You know, it works.
It's worked forever in our country, as we can see, which is why just the last serious
thing is, you know, yeah, policy, policy, local, local politics and the policy of these
politicians.
That's just, what did they do?
That's all that matters.
Yeah, that's all I care about.
All right.
Miss you, buddy.
Oh, and I just get vaccinated.
Yeah, go get it.
I get it.
I get it.
You have problems with vaccines because of polio and all these other vaccines that you
don't want to take.
But if you don't want to get vaccinated, there's just things that you don't, shouldn't get
to do anymore.
Like go to a show with a bunch of people, like that's the choice you've made.
And now you can potentially hurt other people.
So, you know, this is the situation we're in.
And so we'd rather people don't come if they're not vaccinated because you can't hurt people
for whom it's not a choice.
They just can't take it for health reasons.
So those are people that we have to not look out for.
Australia's different because Australian is going for zero COVID.
This is about America where we're like, whatever.
All right.
Sorry.
I mean, I know that's going to bump some people out, but, you know, it's just, this
is a different world now.
So thanks for listening and come to the show in England and Ireland this Saturday.
Get a ticket online.
Go to thepodcast.com for the ticket link.