Transcript
Jeremy Scott (0:02)
Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley season one.
Gilbert King (0:09)
Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.
Jeremy Scott (0:13)
I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known.
Gilbert King (0:18)
At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.
Jeremy Scott (0:21)
Listen to new episodes of bone Valley Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Aaron Manke (0:34)
Welcome to Erin Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and mild.
Harrison Ford (0:43)
Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Aaron Manke (1:06)
Crime does not pay. It's a saying that almost everyone knows. We teach it to our children to remind them not to take shortcuts, because in the end, your actions have consequences and your choices will catch up with you. Stealing something is still stealing something. Of course, this sort of moralizing has not prevented crime from happening. Thievery is a profession as old as the very concept of ownership. And since we no longer hang thieves for taking things, and most petty theft happens too fast to notify police, merchants have found themselves in need of alternate ways to deter criminals. United States banks, for example, are armed with a dummy wad of cash that conceals a trap for potential robbers. Inside this innocuous looking wad of tens and twenty dollars bills, there is a small explosive triggered by radio to detonate when brought out of the doors of the bank. This explosion releases tear gas and sometimes a colored paint that marks the bank robber and more importantly, the stolen money. Any cash marked in this way would be unusable to the criminal in question. This bank robber deterrent is known as an Intelligent Banknote neutralization system, or IBNS. The first prototype was developed in 1982 using colored smoke rather than paint. After a decade in development, the modern system was fully finalized, and it remains in common use to this day. But this was not the only crime deterrent that took off in the 1980s. On the other side of the globe, the country of Japan was facing an interesting crisis. They were running low on eggs. This wasn't because people were stealing eggs at increased rates. It was because people were refusing to pay at toll booths. Yes, you heard that right. You see, at this time, Japan was facing a small epidemic of people who wouldn't pay tolls on public highways. They would just drive past the attendants and keep going down the highway to avoid any payment. Toll workers responded to this behavior by throwing raw eggs at the vehicles that did it. This was an imperfect system, of course, more useful in letting out the frustration of a toll worker than inflicting any real consequences on the drivers. But this practice gave someone the bright idea of replacing the eggs with something more permanent, because egg can be washed off fairly easily. After all. Sometime in the early 1980s, someone developed a suitable egg replacement, a plastic sphere about the size and shape of a baseball filled with bright orange paint. Toll workers, who presumably had plenty of practice with eggs, could use them to tag a fleeing vehicle, providing a more useful mark for policemen to find the perpetrator. These plastic paintballs eventually became known as bohan yokara buro, or anti crime color balls. In the years following their invention, they would expand from toll booths to banks and even convenience stores. Even today, when you step into a convenience store in Japan, you're likely to see a small pile of these orange balls waiting by the cash register. Of course, they're rarely used. In fact, studies have shown that even in cases of store robbery, the owners rarely turn to the paintballs for assistance. Their benefit, it is said, is more psychological than physical. If someone enters a store and sees these innocuous plastic oranges, they will think twice about shoplifting. It's impossible to say how many potential crimes were deterred with the mere threat of getting painted, but one thing is for sure. Anti crime color balls make a much stronger statement than raw egg.