← Behind the Bastards
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- [00:02]
Robert Evans
Call Zone Media. Oh. Welcome back to behind the Bastards, a podcast formed or filmed, recorded all of those things in the burning hellscape that is Portland, Oregon. The. The most vicious and collapsed war zone on planet Earth. Here from the rubble, Robert Evans to talk to you about a really bad piece of shit with someone who isn't really bad, my wonderful guest today, Bridget Todd. Bridget, welcome to the program.
- [00:35]
Bridget Todd
Thank you. I am also calling in from a bombed out hellscape city that is Washington, dc. Yeah, Hellscape. To Hellscape.
- [00:43]
Robert Evans
It was so funny when we Both got on JDAMs. Detonated simultaneously right above both of our houses on opposite coasts. It was quite funny. It's very good. Very good stuff. Bridget, what's your least favorite US aerial munition?
- [00:58]
Bridget Todd
Ooh. Do most people have a least favorite?
- [01:02]
Robert Evans
Most people who've been targeted by them do. I'll say that much.
- [01:09]
Bridget Todd
What's your least favorite?
- [01:11]
Robert Evans
I will say the scariest thing I've ever seen hit anywhere is a jdam. Although hellfires are pretty fucking scary, too. And then just watching an Apache empty itself, empty its whole cartload into a building is pretty fucked up. None of them are really that fun when you're anywhere close to seeing them. It's more just like, oh, fuck. Fireworks. Really ain't got the juice.
- [01:32]
Bridget Todd
Yeah. No part of you is like, oh, that looks cool.
- [01:35]
Robert Evans
Oh, no, fuck me. I gotta get away from that son of a bitch real fast. Bridget, what do you do on the Internet? A place where there are no girls, according to one of your podcasts.
- [01:49]
Bridget Todd
That is true. There are no girls on the Internet. Yet here we are, showing up there every day, making.
- [01:53]
Robert Evans
That's right.
- [01:55]
Bridget Todd
Flapping our gums and making opinions and all of that.
- [01:59]
Robert Evans
That's right. And yeah, you got anything else you want to plug right up at the top here before we get into it?
- [02:04]
Bridget Todd
Oh, yeah, you can listen to me on there. No girls on the Internet. I am occasionally on it. Could happen here.
- [02:10]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [02:11]
Bridget Todd
Hate fascism. Hate everything that's going on. Excited to be super bummed out by whatever you're about to tell me, I'm sure.
- [02:17]
Robert Evans
Fascism. What is that? Is that good or is that bad? It sounds like bad, I'm guessing.
- [02:22]
Bridget Todd
Who can say anymore?
- [02:23]
Robert Evans
Who's to say?
- [02:24]
Bridget Todd
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
- [02:26]
Robert Evans
That's right. That's right. You know who wasn't in the middle of the fascism good or bad debate? Who? I mean, a lot of people. Bridget, have you ever heard of a guy named Daryl Gates?
- [02:39]
Bridget Todd
I have not.
- [02:41]
Robert Evans
That's interesting. Daryl Gates is. Was the police chief in Los Angeles for a period of time. Right. Mostly through like the 80s, the late 70s and the 80s, up until 1992. And if you kind of know what happened in 1992, you might be able to guess what made him have to stop being the chief of police in Los Angeles. Right. And the reason why I want to talk about Daryl Gates is that if you live in a US city and have been to a protest recently, or if you've just like watched the news and spent portions of the last decade or so in muted horror as you see, you know, police officers and federal agents dressed like soldiers tear people from their loved ones or beat kids in the street, then you have a bone to pick with Daryl Gates because he is maybe the single most important figure in the militarization of US law enforcement. Right. That's kind of what Daryl is known for. Among other things, he co created and named the first SWAT team, he invented the DARE program, and he played a major role in the birth of Hollywood Copaganda and the militarization of normal city police departments. Right. This is Daryl Gates. Right. That's the fellow we are talking about this week.
- [03:57]
Bridget Todd
Wow. I will never forgive him for making me spend what could have been a free period for most of my K through 12 education. I don't know, watching a police officer sing a song about why you shouldn't do drugs and play acoustic guitar.
- [04:10]
Robert Evans
Right, right. Tell you lies about the crack houses he'd busted up and no one, like, no, no one who was busting up drug rings or whatever got made a DARE cop.
- [04:18]
Bridget Todd
I have a very clear memory of the DARE cop in our school saying, oh, if you ever go into your parents drawers and you see some of this green stuff, be sure to come tell your buddies you're at the DARE program.
- [04:27]
Robert Evans
Basically telling them cops on your parents.
- [04:29]
Bridget Todd
Rat out your mom and dad, kids, what the fuck?
- [04:32]
Robert Evans
Yeah, we'll be talking all about that.
- [04:37]
Narrator from Unrestorable
This is an iheart podcast.
- [04:45]
Narrator from Graves County
The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved, loved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.
- [04:58]
Robert Evans
America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.
- [05:10]
Narrator from Graves County
Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [05:24]
Narrator from Unrestorable
On a cold January day in 1995, 18 year old Christa pike killed 19 year old Colleen Slemmer in the woods of Knoxville, Tennessee. Since her conviction, Christa has been sitting on death row. How does someone prove that they deserve to live?
- [05:41]
Robert Evans
We are starting the recording now. Please state your first and last name. Krista Pike.
- [05:49]
Narrator from Unrestorable
Listen to unrestorable Season 2 proof of life on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [05:59]
Narrator from Sacred Scandal
Sacred Scandal is back, the hit true crime podcast that uncovers hidden truths and shattered faith. For 19 years, Alayna Sada was a nun for the Legion of Christ. This season, she's telling her story.
- [06:11]
Elena Sada
When I first joined the Legion of Christ, I felt chosen. I was 19 years old when Marcia Almaser, the leader of the Legionaries, looked me in the eye and told me I had a calling.
- [06:21]
Narrator from Sacred Scandal
Surviving meant hiding. Escaping. Took courage. Risking everything to tell her truth. Listen to Sacred the Many Secrets of Martial Maciel on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [06:34]
Nicole Angemi
Hi, everyone, It's Nicole Angemi, P.A. and curator of ISSsangemi on Instagram, where I have been teaching about pathology and death for over 10 years. And I'm her daughter, Maria Q. Kain, and we host the podcast Mother Knows Death. Each week we dive into the darker side of life, exploring topics such as what can go wrong with the human body, true crime, medical mysteries, freak accidents, and more. New episodes of our show drop twice a week. Make sure to tune in to Mother Knows Death on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [07:08]
Robert Evans
Daryl was a famous cop in his own life. So famous that after his career ended, he got to write an autobiography. He's kind of like the first celebrity influencer police chief, which is like a thing that we have to deal with now on the right. I really hate that. Yeah, you can tell a lot. His autobiography was just called Chief, and you could tell a lot about his life by just skimming the first few chapters of the table of contents. Chief. Chapter one is Street Fighter. Chapter two is Rookie. Chapter three is Parker, which was the name of the guy he worked for when he was chief the first time. And chapter four is Gamblers, Drunks, Prostitutes, and Scumbags. So really just exactly what you'd expect from an LAPD cop's autobiography. You know, those are some of my.
- [07:53]
Bridget Todd
Favorite kinds of people he describes. Those are some of my core social groups.
- [07:57]
Robert Evans
Yeah, everyone I hang out with. Gamblers, drunks, prostitutes, and scumbags. Yeah. Which one are you? I'm at least three of the four.
- [08:05]
Bridget Todd
Oh, I think I can make a claim for at least all of them.
- [08:08]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most or all, depending on the day of the week. So Darryl Francis Gates was born on August 30, 1926 in Glendale, California. His father was a plumber and Catholic. His mother was initially a homemaker and came from a Mormon background. And as a little kid, he remembers that his family was comfortable and had a large house in a decent part of Glendale. And as an interesting aside, Darrel, D A R Y L is how his name would come to be spelled. But he was born D A R R E L and I have found no reason why. I don't know why he changed it to add a Y. Something must have happened. There's a story there. It's not in his autobiography.
- [08:50]
Bridget Todd
Dude, is that like, when girls will add, they'll change the spelling of their name to look unique, like, oh, I.
- [08:56]
Robert Evans
Added a Y, right. There has to have been A and like, why would you take the E out and add a Y? I mean, I have seen more D A R Y L Darrels than D A R R E L Darrels, but I just don't understand it.
- [09:08]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, that's really. I would love to know what the story is there.
- [09:12]
Robert Evans
Yeah, that would be fun. So Daryl and his four year older brother Lowell had separate rooms, you know, which means, again, you're doing pretty good in the 20s and 30s if each kid has their own room. And up until Daryl was four or so, his family was doing all right. But as he notes in his autobiography, In 1930, my world changed. And without explanation, his parents moved the family to the other side of Glendale. So far out they were almost in Burbank, which residents of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area will recognize as the very pit of hell itself. You know, if you've ever had to be out on that side of Glendale, you know, I wouldn't, wouldn't wish it on the devil. And this is, you know, today when we're talking about Glendale, nobody's like, oh, that's the rough part of Los Angeles. But this is legitimately like a more impoverished area. Especially as, like, we're coming into the early years of the Great Depression and it's also semi rural. Right. Gates describes the move as like, you know, the family going past cornfields and grape orchards into this tired, ramshackle house that was very small. He and his brother have to share a room and a single bed. And quote, even more disconcerting, my mother wasn't at home anymore. That was the most shocking thing in my memory. My mother going to work and this is like the first great trauma of Daryl's life is that his mom has to get a job to keep the family afloat, which he doesn't describe as like a bad thing on his mom's behalf. It's just like it changes his entire conception of the world because his dad goes from, you know, this powerful figure holding up the family to someone who is on unemployment and unable to actually earn anything. And he responds to it, Daryl's dad, by becoming a self destructive alcoholic and abandoning his family for days at a time. Not a unique story during the Great Depression, but obviously something that's gonna fuck this kid up, you know. And when Daryl's dad does show back up, he's no longer present or functional. He stumbles around in what his son describes as a boozy haze. And Daryl would later write, with my mother gone and my brother at school, I was in effect home alone. So he's kind of raising himself in the earliest years that he has memories, you know, that's a big deal for this kid. So we're starting to see some of the trauma that is making him the person he's going to be. It's not surprising that this leaves a mark on a kid. I don't think.
- [11:31]
Bridget Todd
Sure. I was also a latchkey kid with two overworked parents. I didn't go on to remake, to militarize our police department.
- [11:38]
Robert Evans
Yeah, exactly. I know a lot of latchkey kids. None of them did this.
- [11:42]
Bridget Todd
I mean, I was doing things I shouldn't have been doing, but not that.
- [11:45]
Robert Evans
Yeah, not that. Get into drugs, kids don't create SWAT teams. That's our advice here on behind the Bastards. Just do drugs. Don't become, you know. Speak for yourself, my friend. I am speaking for myself, Sophie. That worked out great for me. I know.
- [12:00]
Bridget Todd
You could run an opposite dare program where you come into schools and tell kids to experiment with drugs.
- [12:06]
Robert Evans
Kids, I dropped out of school and started doing drugs. And I make. I have a comfortable living these days, you know, all my friends who got a college debt not nearly doing as well, so just, just fuck off, you know, Give up. Jesus Christ. It works for everyone. It doesn't work for everyone, but nothing works for everyone. There's no good, there's no good advice I have for you. My friends who got medical degrees and became lawyers, they're all fucked too. I don't know what to tell you kids. Do your best. It's messy out there. Darryl has, you know, a rough time of it and he's not entirely consistent when he writes about his background. So I expect he's. There's aspects of this he's exaggerating because it makes a better story. In one paragraph, he says that his dad was pretty much absent during his childhood. And on the next page, he talks about how to avoid starvation. His family raised livestock, turkeys, chickens and rabbits. And his dad, per his recollection, was doing all of the raising of animals. He talks a lot about his dad, like, butchering livestock in the house and preparing it for dinner. And that doesn't sound as, like, checked out and unavailable and not a part of life as he kind of describes him in other parts, you know, So I don't. I'm sure he's not completely making up that his dad was out of the picture, but his stories about how out of the picture he was are kind of inconsistent, if that makes sense. Right?
- [13:26]
Bridget Todd
Yeah.
- [13:27]
Robert Evans
Now, Darrell was particular. You know, the fact that they are raising their own food. This still doesn't provide enough for the growing family. So the Gates has come to rely on what he calls government handouts. Quote, once a week, I would go with my father along San Fernando Road to an empty lot just outside Burbank. We would join a long line of other recipients inching forward. I would hold my gunny sack while people tossed in potatoes, cabbage and lettuce. I always felt a little embarrassed, thinking it wasn't right, people giving us things. I felt the same way at Christmas when the school would come by to deliver a Christmas basket to the Gates family. Again, I had those ambivalent feelings. I was delighted, but a little uncomfortable at being singled out. And you see this sometimes with conservative people who grow. People who grow up to be conservative, like influential figures in politics and were poor as kids, where they react. And I have to think this is a failing on behalf of our society, with shame at the fact that they survived due to social programs that they later wind up thinking are the root of all evil. Right. Well, my family needed them, but I felt bad about it, and so maybe no one else should have them. I'm always interested when I encounter that in one of these stories, Right.
- [14:34]
Bridget Todd
Where you pulling up of the ladder. Like, I got this and it was helpful for me. So nobody should get this. It really reminds me of the way that J.D. vance writes about himself in his books.
- [14:45]
Robert Evans
My God. Yes, yes. Where it's like. And you're someone the system absolutely worked on. Right. Like, to the extent that your family, your parents were unable to close the gaps, there were other things there for you, and you just don't Want those to exist anymore for anyone else. Because you think that like you felt bad about needing them and you don't think anyone else deserves them. It's. It's so fucked up. Yeah, I love when stuff like that makes me sad and depressed about the world. Daryl would become a major Reagan era figure in the law and order movement. And yeah, he's just one of these guys who learns the wrong thing from growing up poor. And he never gets over the shame of the fact that his family has to be given help during this period of time. In fact, the shame of having been poor as a kid is probably the strongest feeling that Darrel gets across in his memoir. He writes at length about the God awful sandwiches his mother had to make for him with their limited food supplies during the depression and how embarrassed he was at seeing kids with shiny new lunch boxes while he kept his food in a sad crinkled up paper bag. Which boy is that? An experience I share with him, you know, like just remembering being a kid, poor kid with a paper bag lunch at school instead of like a nice lunchbox and like. Or just getting new stuff from the fucking. The school lunch line. He describes his food as. Often it would be bean or mashed potato sandwich. Sometimes when things were really bad, my mom would mix sugar, cocoa and canned milk into a thick paste and spread it on a piece of bread. So like legit poor kid sandwiches, you know?
- [16:19]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, that is legit poor kid food right there.
- [16:22]
Robert Evans
That is a poor kid sandwich. Yeah, yeah.
- [16:27]
Bridget Todd
Peanut butter smeared on a playing card.
- [16:29]
Robert Evans
Yeah, that sounds like shit. Yeah, exactly. He writes that his mom was a non union laborer in a dress factory. She put in nine or ten hour days probably because she was non union and she often came home with her hands bleeding because her workplace had switched to electric cutters that were faster but way worse for the workers. He grows up revering his mom because she keeps his family together during this period of time through sheer perseverance and hard work. His father is a very different figure and Darryl describes him as having kept us in line out of sheer fear. He goes on to describe how his father was abusive and to be honest, it's one of the weirder descriptions of an abusive parent that I've ever met just because of how he talks about it. When he was sober we were scared to death he would whip us. He did that only a couple of times, but we were always terrified he might do it again, basically. Paul Gates was an easygoing man who liked to laugh with this self deprecating humor and an ability to tell a funny story. He made everyone else laugh too. But he also had a real temper and woo. That kept us in line. And it's like, my dad was a nice guy who hit us. And I get it. I get your interpretation of that, but again, it's just evidence of this. You haven't examined stuff all that much, you know?
- [17:39]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, I get what he. I think I sort of get what he's putting down here.
- [17:43]
Robert Evans
Same here. I do.
- [17:44]
Bridget Todd
You would get glimpses of a temper and the fear of that would be enough to kind of have there be a fear behind. Behind you at all times whether or not your dad was actively hitting you.
- [17:56]
Robert Evans
A lot. My dad didn't. You know, it was my dad. But, like, yeah, this parent was not constantly or even often violent, but it happened a couple of times. And that was enough that you were like, I am not going to fuck with them, you know?
- [18:09]
Bridget Todd
Yeah.
- [18:10]
Robert Evans
And, yeah, that's. That's not a. Again, uncommon parenting experience for kids to have. Because prohibition coincided with the collapse of the economy and his family fortunes, and because his dad was a drinker, his father took to brewing beer in the family home in order to stay supplied with alcohol and to supply his friends with alcohol. And so some of Darryl's earliest memories were watching Paul and his Irish Catholic buddies make beer in the bathtub and bottle it. When the family moved houses, his dad's friends still came over to make beer. But he notes that his father was increasingly absent because he's just drinking too much to make beer. You know, too much of an alcoholic to be a moonshiner. And this is where Daryl makes his first reference to being aware of the police at the kid, which is really interesting to me for a guy who grows up to be one of the most famous cops in the country, is he doesn't like the cops as a kid because when his dad gets more out of control as a drinker, there are increasing run ins with the law. And one of Darryl's worst memories as a kid was the day the Glendale PD finally came for his father. Quote, there was a knock at the door, a loud knock. And out front stood these large uniformed people. It was just devastating. As a kid, drunk or not, my dad was still the authority figure in the family. And there he was, scurrying out the back door into the blackness of night while these massive uniformed people were beating on the door, rushing in. In those days, they didn't stand on ceremony. They just pushed in past my mother. Where is he? And that's a searing Memory, Right. It's a memory, unfortunately, even more kids are having today with what the ICE raids are doing, you know. And it's not surprising that Daryl grows up hating the cops. He repeats this story, variations of it, numerous times over his childhood. The police are coming constantly to his house. They're chasing his dad off or taking his dad away all the time. And he comes to see the police as fundamentally cruel and destructive. As an adolescent, Daryl saw law enforcement as, quote, just a plague on society. Wow.
- [20:08]
Bridget Todd
It's so interesting to me. The same thing as what you were describing with him not wanting to use welfare or other kinds of social services, it turning him against those things. It's interesting that his run ins with the police. He was like, oh, I hate the police and such, so I will become one. That's just very interesting to me.
- [20:25]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah. How that's going to happen is going to be interesting. But it is, it is like such a sad part that like he grows up understanding what's so problematic about the police. Right. Is that, is this guy not doing good as a father? Is he out of control to an extent. Does there need to be some sort of intervention in his life? Sure. Is that intervention armed uniformed men taking him away from his family? No, probably not. Right.
- [20:51]
Bridget Todd
And traumatizing his kids even more, Pushing him.
- [20:53]
Robert Evans
That's probably not the way, you know. Yeah. One of his other traumatic incidents from his childhood comes when he wakes up sick with his face. All this just tells you a lot of growing up in the depression. He like wakes up with his face swollen and like just clearly deathly ill. And his brother tells him, you should probably skip school and go to a doctor. And Daryl goes to his dad and is like, hey, dad, I think I'm not doing well. And his dad, who was drunk at 7 in the morning, probably from the night before, is like, fuck off. Like, sleep it off, kid. I'm about to do that. And so Daryl stays home. And then by the time his brother gets home from school, Daryl's face is twice its normal size. Right. It's just become clear that this kid needs to be in the hospital. And instead of going to the hospital, Daryl tries to go out and play with the other kids when they get out of school who mock him for looking fucked up because they're like, dude, your whole face is, what the fuck's wrong with that? Right. And it's not until his mom gets home later that night that she's like, no one took him to the doctor. What's wrong with you people? And she Calls the family doctor, who diagnoses Daryl with an acute kidney condition. He blames this on the fact that there'd just been, like, a sports competition in school that he won and that he'd had to push himself so hard to win that he pulled a kidney loose. I don't know if that what happened. I think it's just that it's the 30s. People are getting sick all the time. You know, they don't know medicine yet. But he's treated in time and he manages getting over it. But the fact that his dad ignored it in order to get drunk is like a searing moment to him. Right. This really burns itself into his brain as you'd expect it to. Right. He spends three months slowly recovering from his injuries. And since his mom worked all day and his brother was at school, that means that for three months, he was basically rotting alone in bed. You know, there's not a tv. They don't have a radio. His dad doesn't go to the library often to check out books, so he's mostly just laying there alone, stewing in his anger, you know? And that's not gonna help anything about this kid.
- [22:56]
Bridget Todd
No. I could see that being a very formative experience for a child. Just lots of time to sit there and stew about your drunk father and the horrible school lunches. You're packed every day, right?
- [23:08]
Robert Evans
Exactly. So the next year, 1935, his family moves again to Highland Park. Decades later, Darryl would recall the racial makeup of their new neighborhood in what I'd call telling terms. A lot of Italian and German families, a mixture of Catholics and Jews, many Hispanics, some Japanese and Chinese. I don't recall any blacks. He writes this book in the mid-90s, you know, so was it still.
- [23:33]
Bridget Todd
Was it cool to be describing the makeup of your. Where you live in that way, and then like, just completely obsessed with the races and ethnicities of people around you.
- [23:43]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Just, like, really laying out, here's all the different races in my town when I'm 10, you know, like. Yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know that I believe that.
- [23:51]
Bridget Todd
Do you ever meet somebody that tells a story, and whenever they tell a story, they have to tell you the ethnicity or the race of the person involved? When you meet somebody like that, it really tells you a lot about how they see the world.
- [24:02]
Robert Evans
Yes. Yes. Yeah. That really gets across. Significant details is like, also just what races you remember, you know? Okay.
- [24:12]
Bridget Todd
Which ones were notable to you?
- [24:14]
Robert Evans
Yeah. What are the notable races in your childhood? So the same year his dad notched a new public drinking arrest for which he finally serves jail time. And Daryl calls this his dad's rock bottom point. You know, he goes through the DTs after he sobers up in the drunk tank. And the experience fucks up Paul Gates so much that Paul commits to sobering up, and he did. And Gates family life gets better at this point. Not only is the Great Depression starting to wind down by the later half of the 30s, but his dad gets to another job and starts working again. He gets a family car so that the Gateses have a vehicle for the first time. And his new dad, the sober dad, becomes a real gung ho pro fdr, New Deal Democrat, which makes complete sense because a lot of people, my grandparents were like that, where it's like, yeah, they were dedicated New Deal Democrats for a long time because they survived thanks to New Deal programs. You know, of course that that makes you real positive towards government programs, you know, at least for a period of time. Paul becomes more involved with his kids and makes the questionable decision to teach young Darryl how to box. I say questionable because Daryl decides I want to be a professional fighter, right? So as an adolescent, he joins a boxing club. He spends all his free time fighting. By the time he's 15 years old, he is muscular and increasingly aggressive. That Halloween, he dresses up in costume with what he called a bean shooter up his sleeve. And at parties, he would shoot beans randomly at other kids. This predictably leads to a fist fight, which his brother broke up. But the other kid's dad came in and saw Lowell with hands on his son. And so he starts attacking Daryl's brother Lowell. And Daryl sucker punches the dad of the kid that he'd shot repeatedly with beans. Absolutely furious at me. Lowell grabbed the bean shooter and snapped it in half. But the lesson he intended to teach me fell on deaf ears. I could not keep my fists to myself. So just a bean shooting little prick.
- [26:09]
Bridget Todd
I grew up in a house where my brother is a boxer. My dad and grandfather are boxers. I took boxing lessons as a kid. And it's the kind of thing that a well meaning adult is thinking, maybe this will teach my kid some focus.
- [26:22]
Robert Evans
And a way to get his aggression out.
- [26:24]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, yeah. And then it can go that way.
- [26:27]
Robert Evans
It can. It could be great for you or.
- [26:29]
Bridget Todd
Be making a very violent child.
- [26:32]
Robert Evans
You have to teach. Here's the thing. If you're gonna teach your kid to be good at beating people up, which boxing can teach you, boxing's a functional fighting sport. Art, right. You also have to teach them how not to use fighting people as like a default go to.
- [26:46]
Bridget Todd
Yes, exactly.
- [26:47]
Robert Evans
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- [27:55]
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- [28:58]
Robert Evans
All I know is what I've been told and that to have truth is a whole lie.
- [29:03]
Narrator from Graves County
For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until A local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.
- [29:19]
Robert Evans
I'm telling you. We know Quincy killed her.
- [29:21]
Narrator from Graves County
We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.
- [29:30]
Robert Evans
Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Kern.
- [29:37]
Narrator from Graves County
My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.
- [29:47]
Robert Evans
I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y' all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her.
- [30:01]
Narrator from Graves County
From Lava For Good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.
- [30:11]
Robert Evans
America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.
- [30:20]
Narrator from Graves County
Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [30:42]
Narrator from Sacred Scandal
At 19, Elena Zada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pull back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Marcia Maciel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the Legion of Christ.
- [31:00]
Elena Sada
My name is Elena Sada, and this is my story. It's a story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive, and eventually how I got out.
- [31:13]
Narrator from Sacred Scandal
This season on Sacred Scandal, hear the full story from the woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determined survivor as Helena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light. Listen to Sacred the Many Secrets of Marcial Maciel as part of the My Cultura podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [31:44]
Robert Evans
We're back. There you go. So he starts high school Daryl, and this offers him some, you know, outlets for his violence because he describes himself as getting regularly into fights with kids he calls bullies. And I'm not sure if they were the bullies, I'll say that much, right? This leads him to his first real legal trouble, because by age 16, these other he's come to the conclusion and the accurate one, in my opinion, that, quote, there was no bigger bully than a cop and he saved up money to buy an old car of his own by this point. And the police, he says, were, quote, always P me over for something, citing him for everything under the sun, including having a loud muffler. And again, like, yeah, a lot of people have this experience. Mostly not white kids. And the fact that you did, it's a bummer that this doesn't, like, make you a better person.
- [32:37]
Bridget Todd
I feel like he's taking all the wrong lessons from these very formative life.
- [32:40]
Robert Evans
Experiences, all of them. It's amazing. Yeah, it's just every wrong lesson you could take. Shocking stuff. Here's a passage from his book talking about how, you know, one of his early meaningful interactions with the cops. On a Sunday night in 1942, with my girlfriend beside me and my buddy in back, I stopped my car in front of the Franklin Theater every Sunday night. They showed a hop along. Cassidy and my buddy Pete Ciula went in to see what time the next show started. We were sitting there, my car parked just a little bit up from the curb, when suddenly a squad car slammed to a stop behind me. Because of the war, the LAPD had been forced to hire emergency wartime officers among them. It turned out these two. One strolled over and whipped out his pad. I jumped out of my car. What are you doing? Writing you a citation. Come on. What for? You're double parked. But my friend will be right back. And it deteriorated from there. Now, eventually, his friend comes out and his brother tries to de escalate things. And when the cops shove Lowell away, Darryl loses it. And he punches the cop who'd shoved his brother. And one of his friends punches the other cop and they all get arrested, he and his friend and Lowell. Now, punching a cop normally would get you jail time, but his brother is kind of like a good goody two shoes. In town. He started some, like, local sports program for kids that the LAPD are partnering with. And so they offer Daryl and Lowell a deal, which is that they'll drop the charges if he apologizes. And Daryl refuses at first, right? He's wanting to, like, no fucking charge me with assaulting a police officer. I'm not gonna say sorry, dick. And insisted that, like, well, the cop pushed my brother, so I had a right to sock the bastard. And eventually Lowell has to, like, intervene and be like, you stupid motherfucker. They're offering to drop assault on an officer charges. Shut your fucking mouth and say sorry. Right, yeah, like.
- [34:29]
Bridget Todd
Like, I appreciate standing on business and being like, no, it's the principal, but if they're going to drop charges, yeah.
- [34:36]
Robert Evans
You hit a cop, bro. Like, take the, take the dub, you know? Next. Per an article in the LA Times, in 1943, after graduating from Franklin High School in Highland Park, Gates joined the Navy and served two years as a plain old seaman on a destroyer in the Pacific. After his discharge, he enrolled at Pasadena College and married a classmate, Wanda Hawkins. He was taking pre law courses at USC when he learned that she was pregnant. Unsure how he was going to support a family, he did not greet the news happily. Not a weird story, right? You know, a lot of kids like this out there in the world. And one of his friends, this is kind of him. Finally, Breaking Bad is he's like desperate and has to figure out how to make money to pay for a kid now. And one of his friends says, hey, the LAPD is hiring. They don't have enough people and the pay's good. They've got like signing bonuses and a decent starting salary. And Daryl reacts with fury at first. He remembers calling his telling his friend, no way in the world will I ever be a dumb cop. But then his friend's like, but they pay like 290 bucks a month and that's real good money back then. And while he's in police academy, he can continue to study at USC the whole time. So he drives out to Hollywood High and he takes a civil service exam, and he's claimed scored number nine in a room with 5,000 applicants. And this is where we get a strong hint that old Darryl might have some narcissistic tendencies because rather than taking satisfaction in his high score, he recalled anger that eight other, quote, prospective dumb cops had scored higher than him. He assumed that this must have been the result of nepotism or these other kids gaming the system in some way. But it continues on to the other stages of the application, right? He's like, no, there's no way these other only dumb people would want to be cops. So I have to be the smartest person in this room full of people who are desperate for money.
- [36:23]
Bridget Todd
You know, every takeaway is the wrong takeaway. Also, is it really that hard to believe that there are eight kids who would score better on this test than you? Is that really so important?
- [36:35]
Robert Evans
No. No. And you're doing fine, brother. Like, come on, man. So he has to lie when his interviewer asks if he has any criminal history or has ever been arrested. But since the charges had been dropped, the guys responsible for the hiring process have no evidence to the contrary. At first, he joins the LAPD to pay his way through college and support a young family. And he starts the job holding his nose and kind of not really wanting to do it at all. On September 16, 1949, he has his first day at the police academy. And it's not like the classic film Police Academy. Unfortunately, his first sight as he goes to the academy are the words inscribed on the entrance of the building. The more you sweat here, the less you will bleed in the street. And Daryl writes about his time training in a typically self aggrandizing fashion, noting that he was too heavy when he joined, but at the end of the training he was 205 pounds of, of pure muscle and that his colleagues nicknamed him the Bear. And no, they didn't. Whatever. I'm sorry, man. No one's colleagues and like, no one gets nicknames that cool that other people give them.
- [37:42]
Bridget Todd
No, that is a self made nickname if I've ever heard one.
- [37:46]
Robert Evans
Yeah, you know, and if you get a nickname like the Bear, it's not for a cool reason. It's because you like scratch your back on a wall or something and you look like a bear and people are like, oh man, look at him, he looks like he's a bear rubbing up against a tree.
- [37:59]
Bridget Todd
Always getting your head stuck in picnic baskets, right?
- [38:02]
Robert Evans
Yeah, you get your head stuck in a picnic basket and people are like fucking Yogi Bear over here. Right? That's someone who gets nicknamed the Bear. You know, it's like if anyone ever tells you my nickname was the Reaper, it's like, no, that's probably because you ate nothing but corn or something during basic training or some weird shit. It's not because you were cool. Nobody gets that nickname for being cool. No, people just don't give out nicknames for that reason. You get a nickname like fucking cum stain or whatever. Right? That's a military nickname. Anyway, he claims more than on my physique. I prided myself on my intellect, which, sure, bro, I don't know, man, that's not gonna be a real through line in your life, but okay. Now by the time he finishes training, he says his opinion on the police had changed. He met so many great guys in police academy that he realizes, oh no, I've been wrong about the cops all along. And he never seems to have squared this fact that whatever his experience with the instructors and with his peers, the experiences that he had as a child of the police busting down his door and fucking up his life also happened. Right. He never like deals with the intersection of these two things, which is interesting to me.
- [39:11]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, I'm so Curious what's going on there other than seemingly just being someone who, again, every lesson is the wrong lesson from a life experience.
- [39:20]
Robert Evans
Yeah, that is his most consistent characteristic, is that he never learns the right thing from the things that happen to him with a consistency that's like impressive in its fucked up edness, if that makes sense.
- [39:31]
Bridget Todd
It does.
- [39:33]
Robert Evans
So Darryl's first job on the street was as an accident investigator with the traffic division. He spends a little time on patrol after that. And at the end of his rookie year, he still thinks policing is like a temporary gig for him, you know, a stopover on the path to him becoming a lawyer. He does not want to work for long at the lapd. His plan is to finish school, get his law degree, and then leave the force. But shortly after starting his rookie year, he spends a little bit of time moving around different jobs as a rookie. And then he's selected after kind of right at the end of his first year for this special detail where they're going to make him the personal chauffeur and bodyguard for the new police chief, William H. Parker. And I don't think this was meant as a compliment to him. It's going to help his career immensely because he gets close to the boss. But I don't think you make the best new cop the cop, the police chief chauffeur. And as a spoiler, the police chief needs a chauffeur because he's a hardcore alcoholic who can never legally drive. Right. Yikes. Yeah, he's not getting this because he's the best.
- [40:44]
Nicole Angemi
Yikes.
- [40:45]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, yeah, cool guy.
- [40:50]
Robert Evans
We need you to drive the boss who has never been sober a day in his life because you're the best cop. Yeah. You don't, you don't give RoboCop that gig, you know. No, no, no, no.
- [41:03]
Bridget Todd
Also, it does kind of put to rest the idea that people have the fiction that people become police because they really care about law and order. I've known like the handful of people in my life who are law enforcement. They're the most lawless, psycho pieces of shit you've ever met in your life. Never date a cop. Oh, my God.
- [41:23]
Robert Evans
Yeah, it's. I mean that statistically the evidence bears that one out. And it's just this. Yeah, you did it because the money was good and you suddenly didn't care anymore about the fact that you knew they were bad in a lot of ways. You had horrible experiences with the police, but then they offered you 290 bucks a month. So like, fuck it, you know, I Guess they're good guys.
- [41:46]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, yeah. I can't help but think about hearing all of the stuff like, oh, join ICE. You get a signing bonus, maybe 50 grand.
- [41:53]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [41:54]
Bridget Todd
The way they sweeten these jobs that most people can see are odious. The way they sweeten them and it makes. I think there's a certain kind of person that will just forget how harmful these jobs are to people.
- [42:08]
Robert Evans
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's the they live kind of. John Carpenter called all this out decades ago in his classic film. Right. You know, people will forget their morality as soon as you offer him some cash, which, you know is. None of us are immune to it. I think some people's price is higher than 290 bucks a month, but whatever. So I want to talk a little bit about the cop that he becomes the chauffeur for. Right. William Parker. Bill Parker, who is a really influential LA police chief. He takes the LAPD from like old timey cops kind of into the early modern era in a lot of ways. And he's got one of these like classic American turn of the century lifes. He was born in the town of Lead, South Dakota, and then he was raised in the. Even more. The only town with a more sinister name than Lead. Deadwood. It's awesome. I think that one's in North Dakota. But like, yeah, from Lead to Deadwood is his childhood. He's an okay student as a kid and a promising athlete, but obviously he's in Deadwood, so there's not a lot of a future there. Right. And after he graduates, he works a series of dead end jobs. At one point he's selling underpants that his mom knitted to women in town. So he's an underwear salesman for a little while in Deadwood. I have never heard of a bleaker job than that.
- [43:26]
Bridget Todd
Not just underwear. Hand knitted underwear.
- [43:29]
Nicole Angemi
Yeah.
- [43:29]
Robert Evans
Hand knitted by your mom. Underwear salesman and fucking Deadwood, bro. That's bleak. Like, doesn't get any worse than that. Eventually, in 1922, his mom splits from his dad and decides to move to LA with his younger siblings. And Bill's like, I guess I'll move to Los Angeles too. It's gotta beat fucking Deadwood, you know? Now at this point in time, LA is advertised as being like. If you, if you look at like the advertisements the city is putting out, one of the names that Los Angeles gives itself is, quote, the white spot of America. I don't need to tell you what the word white means in that context. Right.
- [44:08]
Bridget Todd
But I think I can figure it out.
- [44:09]
Robert Evans
You think you can figure it out? Yeah, I know what it means. It's not talking about the color of clothes or whatever, Right. Per the book L A Noire by John Bunton, it was seen as, quote, a place where native born white Protestants could enjoy the magic of outdoors. Inviting always, trees in blossom throughout the year, flowers in bloom all the time, as well as mystery, romance, charms and splendor, all safe among others of their kind. Right. The weather's always nice for white people who are the only ones allowed in Los Angeles. That's how LA is presenting itself to the rest of the country at this period of time. And not because that's a totally accurate description, because even LA is never not a diverse place, right? Like it is always an incredibly mixed city. This is how they're trying. They're trying to portray themselves to the rest of the country that way so that white people will move there. Right. This is a conscious attempt by the people leading the city to gentrify it. Right now, LA is at this point a hub of vice and organized crime because there's a lot of money and the film industry's there and all of the gangsters who'd gotten cracked down on the east coast had moved out west, right? Like that's a big thing that has happened by this period of time. It's why, I mean, I just quoted from a book called L a Noire, but it's why L A Noire becomes a genre. Genre, right, is because Los Angeles, a lot of crime there, a lot of real good opportunities for organized crime there. It's a huge port, a lot of money moves through it. And as a young man, Parker joins the police and he spends his adulthood fighting crime in a city overwhelmed by it. He takes a brief break to fight in World War II and he comes home a war hero and is the highest ranked LAPD officer and war veteran. This earns Parker a measure of fame. The city Council passes a resolution thanking him specifically for his service. And to make a long story short, he rides that fame to the top. Parker would go down as perhaps the most consequential chief in LAPD history, certainly before Daryl Gates. In an LA Times article, Joe Dominique describes his reign this World War II in the years that followed had brought a mass migration to Los Angeles of job hungry African Americans, Jews and later Latinos. By the mid-60s, these new arrivals were transforming the complexity and politics of the city and coming into conflict with the lapd. Parker reinvented the lapd, making it a less corrupt and more professional Department, but also turning it into one that was aggressive, intimidating and confrontational by design. A small force of faceless paramilitary cops and patrol cars. Policing through fear. Doesn't sound familiar.
- [46:39]
Bridget Todd
It certainly does.
- [46:40]
Robert Evans
I'm.
- [46:40]
Bridget Todd
So what was the. What was the police? So the only police that I know is the one they have described, you know, hyper militarized. What was it like before then? I can't even conceptualize what policing would be like before. That was the vibe.
- [46:54]
Robert Evans
Yeah. I mean, number one, there just weren't as many cops. Number two, the idea that like they would have that kind of strength, they would have access to heavy weaponry. The idea that they would have access to high numbers, that they would do sweeps in big numbers, that was all fairly new at the time. Right. Some of that really starts becoming a thing because of the gangster era. But, you know, and there's also this factor that like the LAPD isn't a thing for you to worry about if you can bribe them. And so one of the things that happens when Parker's with the LAPD is that the ability of just like random normal local criminals to pay their way out of problems becomes less of a factor. But also the LAPD are becoming increasingly violent and increasingly like a force of their own. Right. During the time that Parker is in charge. So there's both this thing of like, well, the LAPD are less of a whoever can pay for them, owns them, and more of a militant force of their own that is increasingly controlling the city during his reign.
- [47:53]
Bridget Todd
This might sound fucked up. I feel like it might be less harmful to have them be a force where anybody who can pay them kind of owns them than having them be their own military force wreaking havoc in the city.
- [48:08]
Robert Evans
I can see how you would view the change as progress, but also, I don't know, maybe it wasn't as much of an improvement as you might have thought. Right.
- [48:16]
Bridget Todd
Fair.
- [48:17]
Robert Evans
Yeah. Speaking of improvements, you know what will improve my day is if people check out these ads.
- [48:25]
Narrator from Graves County
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- [48:29]
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- [49:32]
Robert Evans
All I know is what I've been told and that to have Truth is.
- [49:36]
Narrator from Graves County
A Whole Lie for almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.
- [49:53]
Robert Evans
I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.
- [49:56]
Narrator from Graves County
We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.
- [50:05]
Robert Evans
Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.
- [50:11]
Narrator from Graves County
My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.
- [50:22]
Robert Evans
I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y' all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her.
- [50:35]
Narrator from Graves County
From Lava for good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.
- [50:45]
Robert Evans
America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.
- [50:55]
Narrator from Graves County
Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [51:17]
Narrator from Sacred Scandal
At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Martial Maciel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the Legion of Christ.
- [51:35]
Elena Sada
My name is Elena Sada and this is my story. It's the story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive, and eventually, how I got out.
- [51:48]
Narrator from Sacred Scandal
This season on Sacred Scandal, hear the full story from the woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determined survivor as Helena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light. Listen to secret scandal the mini secrets of Martial Maciel as part of the My Cultura podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get her podcasts.
- [52:15]
Robert Evans
This is a tape recorder statement. Person being interviewed is Krista Gale Pike. This is in regards to the death of Colleen Slemmer. She just started going off on me, but I hit her. I just hit her and hit her and hit her and hit her.
- [52:33]
Narrator from Unrestorable
On a cold January day in 1995, 18 year old Christa pike killed 19 year old Colleen Slemmer in the woods of Knoxville, Tennessee. Since her conviction, Christa has been sitting on death row.
- [52:47]
Robert Evans
The state has asked for an execution date for Krista.
- [52:51]
Narrator from Unrestorable
We let people languish in prison for decades, raising questions about who we consider fundamentally unrestorable. How does someone prove that they deserve to live?
- [53:02]
Robert Evans
We are starting the recording now. Please state your first and Last Name. Christa Pike.
- [53:09]
Narrator from Unrestorable
Listen to Unrestorable Season 2 Proof of Life on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [53:24]
Robert Evans
And we're back. So we just set up, you know, Bill Parker's time running the lapd and right after Parker gets made chief, Darryl is made his driver. And the fact that Daryl is the chief's driver during the Busy the first 15 months of Parker's time running the department gives him a front seat to this revolutionary period in LAPD history. And his position makes him a natural sounding board for Parker's ideas. It gives him influence incommensurate to his low rank and his rookie status inside the department. In the lapd, Gates gains a reputation as being the chief's fair haired boy, per journalists Elaine Wu and Eric Walnick. Gates would later write, quote, what I received during my 15 months with him turned out to be more than a primer on policing. It became a tutorial on how to be chief. Right. And for the sake of completion. I should note that in his own autobiography, Gates paints a mixed picture of his mentor. He admits that he became totally smitten with Parker and saw him as a kind of father figure. But also, Parker was sadly a father figure in more ways than I would have liked. By which I mean Bill was a raging alcoholic like Daryl's dad. And Daryl writes, yeah, like, oh yeah, I can see why this guy influences you.
- [54:42]
Bridget Todd
Making a guy just like Daddy. I know all about it.
- [54:44]
Robert Evans
Yeah, but daddy got in trouble with the cops and this guy gets to run them for some reason. Here's a quote. After trying to absorb Parker's brilliance by day, I would Too often by night, drive him home drunk and I mean loaded. He drank until his words slurred and stairs became a hazard. He would repeat the same thought over and over until he became a terrible bore. Some nights he would attend to function and not touch a drop. Other nights he drank heavily and smelled embarrassing to me as he stumbled getting into the car and stumbled. Getting out from the street to his house required negotiating a steep hill that I often had to help him up. And Darlin says, yeah. And he's like. But his drinking never affected his thinking, right? It never changed the way he worked. And like, I don't know, man. You're just describing it as affecting him on the job, but you described him as smelling embarrassing.
- [55:29]
Bridget Todd
You think that didn't impact his work at all?
- [55:30]
Robert Evans
Really? You think that didn't change how he worked as police chief? I don't know, man. Now Darrell does note fairly well all the journalists in the media pool at press conferences were outrageous alcoholics too. And yeah, man, it was the 50s, right? Like, I'm not, I don't believe you're lying about all the journalists having being self destructive alcoholics in 1951, you know. Yeah, that makes sense. He did acknowledge one time in which Parker's drinking caused serious issues. New Year's Day 1951, he and the chief were scheduled to pick up the mayor and drive to the Elks Club for breakfast before the Rose Bowl. But Parker had gotten completely shithouse hammered the night before and Gates only got him home two hours before they had to wake up. The result of this was that they are late to pick up the mayor the next day and the mayor is furious. Gates plays this off as the mayor being an arrogant prick, even though he admits he and his boss were giggling the whole time about how hammered he still was. So I'm not sure it's the mayor who sounds bad in this story. The mayor's like, my fucking police chief can't sober up to pick me up for the fucking Rose Bowl. Like, can't do one night without getting so drunk that he's blacked out the next morning.
- [56:37]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, hours late. And laughing about it in front of the mayor is not a great in.
- [56:41]
Robert Evans
Front of the drinking.
- [56:42]
Bridget Todd
Never impacted his drinking. Never impacted his work though.
- [56:45]
Robert Evans
Never impacted his job. Absolutely not. Now one long term impact of this year and change is that Gates rockets himself to the head of the line for promotions and choice appointments within the department. When he gets back to normal duty, he works briefly on juvenile patrol. Like the cops who'd let him and his Brother off easy for assaulting an officer when they were kids. And his section of the book on his time in juvenile patrol is one of the most incoherent pieces of his autobiography. He describes this adolescent kid named Jose who was a serial burglar and enough of like a habitual criminal that he and his partner could tell when they got a call about a burglary that, like, oh, that's Joseph, right? Like, that must have been him. It matches his M.O. perfectly.
- [57:25]
Bridget Todd
Classic Jose.
- [57:27]
Robert Evans
Classic Jose. And he's like, we liked this kid, but like, you know, we had to deal with him constantly. And he describes having to call Jose's parents all the time about their son. And then he writes a very confusing passage that is absolutely not consistent. Times were so different then. The people were different and the laws were different. Often you'd haul a kid in, chew him out and call his folks. Father would come down, ball the kid out, you'd never encounter that kid again. And he goes on to complain that, like, that's not the way it is today because police don't have as much power. There's all these children's rights advocates who've lobbied for laws that give kids more rights. And now cops can't use their own in house probation system to, quote, skip the courts and put kids on probation at their own recognizance without involving a judge or court. But you just talked about this kid who was constantly a problem and who, like the way the system worked didn't benefit him at all. It didn't help him stop. He was career criminal anyway. And then you're like, but things were bad that didn't happen back then. You know, not like it was in the. Not like it is today. He's writing in the 90s where, like, because kids have rights, things are worse. It's just interesting to me. Again, he just can't. It's completely inconsistent. Right? Like, his recollection of things and how they worked then versus how they work now is just never accurate to the actual things he's saying.
- [58:43]
Bridget Todd
I almost feel like this is an issue with the editing. Like I, like, like I'm curious if an editor of this book would have called out that very clear inconsistency there to say, hey, your point's getting a bit muddled.
- [58:54]
Robert Evans
They don't have those on right wing sheriff books.
- [58:57]
Bridget Todd
You know, just write whatever you want.
- [59:00]
Robert Evans
Hit, publish, throw whatever you want on there, kid. We don't give a shit. It's your name that's gonna sell this motherfucker. People will Know it's the SWAT guy. Yeah. So Daryl goes from this point where he talks about this kid and how things are different now than they were back then. He goes from that to immediately telling an anecdote that, like, none of his colleagues should have been allowed within 100 yards of a school. And this is so fucking wild that he just tells this as like a gag. We had encountered a 16 year old girl living on her own. A typical arrival. She was hoping for the big break. But on the streets of Hollywood, anything could happen to her. So when we'd spot her, we would stop and talk. Or sometimes we'd go by her room to check up on her. I tried to give her all kinds of fatherly advice and I guess she kind of fell for me. One day I was thumbing through a batch of crime reports when I noticed one for rape. I picked it up and went, oh, no, it was the girl. Next, I saw the suspect's name. Me. Oh, my God, I thought. Instinctively, I checked the date of the rape and the time, trying to remember what the hell was I doing. Then suddenly I looked up, a bunch of detectives were standing there laughing, thinking they'd played a pretty good joke on me. So the joke that his cousin colleague's play is filing a fake child rape report for him. Isn't that funny? What a great joke.
- [60:21]
Bridget Todd
I mean, it's hard to know what to say. These are like, I mean, oh, my gosh. Got him. Got him. He thought he raped a kid.
- [60:32]
Robert Evans
You thought you raped a kid. You were thinking back to remember if you'd raped that kid. Ha ha, ha ha. Oh, dear. We got you. Cause you have done it before, right? Obviously it was a possibility in your head. You had to think about it, right.
- [60:46]
Bridget Todd
Man, the fact that he was like, oh, let me think back, let me think back. As opposed to, this is clearly some mistake.
- [60:52]
Robert Evans
Who was I raping that day? Oh, no, that's insane.
- [60:56]
Bridget Todd
Real weird, sis.
- [60:57]
Robert Evans
That's insane as a bit. As a bit. That's nuts. And then you'd say that about your colleagues who were like, I respected my. I really had my mind changed. I thought the LAPD were all bullies, but then I learned they're real serious professionals who do joke about child rape reporting, obviously. But that's fine, you know, it's a bit.
- [61:18]
Narrator from Graves County
Jesus Christ.
- [61:20]
Robert Evans
Holy shit. Like, that was really one of those, like. Oh, okay, so things haven't changed all that much, huh? Like, cops haven't. No. Okay.
- [61:29]
Bridget Todd
Cops really have not changed.
- [61:31]
Robert Evans
Cool, bro. After his time on the juvie beat, Gates gets moved to the vice squad, and in 1955, he makes sergeant. Four years later, he's promoted to lieutenant, and four years after that, he makes captain. This is a pretty rapid pace of advancement, and he credits this. He says he gets his promotions as rapidly as he does because he studies really hard for every exam, and he's just very rigorous in the way he approaches the work. But brown nosing is at least so much a factor in his rise as anything else. You know, the chief likes him. He's the golden boy. He drove him around, they bonded. And so for the remainder of the time that Parker is running the lapd, Daryl can count on having the boss's ear whenever he needs it. So he's never going to get turned down for a promotion when he goes up for it, right? By the spring of 1965, Gates had risen to an impressive rank indeed. Inspector. Now his particular role is oversight and. Bridget, this is probably going to start the ominous music in your head. And 65, he gets made the inspector overseeing all patrol officers in a certain neighborhood of Los Angeles called Watts. Oh, God. Yeah, we know what's going on.
- [62:40]
Bridget Todd
I know where this is going.
- [62:42]
Robert Evans
We know where this is going. Right. Watts is a majority black neighborhood that is very impoverished. Right. And as the civil rights movement is picking up steam, people there are growing increasingly organized and increasingly angry about a system that rules their lives. And the fact that. That Parker has turned the LAPD into this unaccountable paramilitary force and set them patrolling neighborhoods with an aggressive posture is about to bite everyone in the ass. Right? That is. That's what's coming up. And as a spoiler, Parker is in charge of not the whole lapd, but, like, the. The group of cops who are directly responding to Watts when the Watts riots breaks out. And he's running the whole department during the 92 Rodney King riots. That's Daryl Gates. The same guy was on. Probably not. When you think about it, there's like, oh, is the same guy on deck for both of those things? Yeah. Oh, hell, yeah. That's kind of scan, huh? Unbelievable. There's four guys in all of history, and two of them are Daryl Gates. The other two are Hitler. It's just Daryl Gates and Hitler. All the way down, baby.
- [63:47]
Bridget Todd
All the way down.
- [63:50]
Robert Evans
But speaking of neither of those guys, Bridget, Todd, you wanna plug anything as we head out here on part one?
- [63:57]
Bridget Todd
Yeah. Well, I am not Daryl Gates or Hitler, and I actually host a podcast that I think is pretty good called There Are no Girls on the Internet. You should check it out.
- [64:06]
Robert Evans
You should check that out. You should check out our new podcast or our new season of a pre existing podcast. Jay Kanarahan's Sad Oligarch just dropped its second season. If you wanted to learn about all these powerful Russian businessmen and corporate leaders who keep dying strangely, you know, check that out too. Check out There Are no Girls on the Internet. And if you want to learn more about Daryl Gates and why Los Angeles be the way that it is, there's a book we'll be quoting from in our next episode called City of Quartz by Mike Davis. Check out that book too, because we'll be hearing from that in part two. All right, that's been our episode. Friends and Enemies Frenemies behind the Bastards.
- [64:49]
Narrator from Graves County
Is a production of Cool Zone Media.
- [64:51]
Robert Evans
For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is Now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.
- [65:06]
Narrator from Graves County
Subscribe to our channel YouTube.com behindthebast. The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.
- [65:29]
Robert Evans
America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.
- [65:41]
Narrator from Graves County
Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.
- [65:55]
Narrator from Sacred Scandal
Sacred Scandal is back, the hit true crime podcast that uncovers hidden truths and shattered faith. For 19 years, Elena Sada was a nun for the Legion of Christ. This season she's telling her story.
- [66:08]
Elena Sada
When I first joined the Legion of Christ, I felt chosen. I was 19 years old when Marciel Macel, the leader of the Legionaries, looked me in the eye and told me I had a calling.
- [66:17]
Narrator from Sacred Scandal
Surviving meant hiding. Escaping took courage. Risking everything to tell her truth. Listen to Sacred Scandal, the many secrets of Martial maciel on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [66:30]
Narrator from Unrestorable
On a cold January day in 1995, 18 year old Christa pike killed 19 year old Colleen Slemmer in the woods of Knoxville, Tennessee. Since her conviction, Christa has been sitting on Death row. How does someone prove that they deserve to live?
- [66:48]
Robert Evans
We are starting the recording now. Please state your first and last name. Krista Pike.
- [66:55]
Narrator from Unrestorable
Listen to unrestorable Season 2 proof of life on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [67:06]
Nicole Angemi
Hi everyone, It's Nicole Angemi, P.A. and curator of ISSsangemi on Instagram, where I have been teaching about pathology and death for over 10 years, and I'm her daughter Maria Q. Kain, and we host the podcast Mother Knows Death. Each week we dive into the darker side of life, exploring topics such as what can go wrong with the human body, true crime, medical mysteries, freak accidents, and more. New episodes of our show drop twice a week. Make sure to tune in to Mother Knows Death on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [67:36]
Robert Evans
This is an I Heart podcast.