Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Saren Yoh, Elizabeth Duddon, Hey, what's up?
Please keep it down?
Oh? Sorry?
Why are we whispering?
I don't know.
Hold on, let me look. Okay, it's clear, let's go. We're good.
Oh, thank god.
I know.
Okay, so listen. Yeah, do you know what's ridiculous?
Oh?
Yes, Oh, sit back down. Yes, yeah, you start whispering. Okay, listen, ready.
Yeah, I'm ready.
Harlem Globetrotters. Okay, they're not ridiculous at all. Okay, yeah. Pope John Paul the Second No, also not ridiculous. But do you know they were on the same team. No, and by that I mean literally, Pope John Paul the Second was an honorary Harlem Globetrotter.
Oh yes, And.
He met them in Saint Peter's Square on October first,
nineteen eighty six. The meeting went so well that fourteen years later, the second time they met, they showed up and they presented him with an autographed basketball and a jersey of his own with his name on it, number seventy five in honor of the Globetrotter's seventy fifth anniversary, and they said the quote they were making him giving him a new title, one befitting the man, and they said, quote, this prestigious title recognizes an individual of extraordinary character and
achievement who's made an everlasting mark on the world. So yeah, they said that similar to the Pope, the Globetrotters have touched tens of millions of people around the world as moral leaders and champions of human rights. I shouldn't have paused so much pause kind of mass that up, but you know what I'm saying. Anyway, John Paul too was an honorary Globetrotter and also a saint. So the Harlem Globetrotters have a saint on their team.
That's amazing. Do you like do you think he ever put the jersey on?
I think he played that night in it skills with exactly.
Do you think it's like in a museum or is it in a box somewhere?
Oh?
I bet Benedict had it burned.
Pope Benedict, He's like burned this probably that's what the smoke was when he got elected with he was the seventh person to be an honorary Globe trot So there's not a lot of them Oh yeah, he's like, they're seventh man.
Oh, I'm going to look up and see who the others are. Okay, okay, so that is ridiculous. Do you know what else is ridiculous?
No, that's right. I came here to ask you.
Having your name become a word in the dictionary because of something you did.
Oh my dream.
This is ridiculous. Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous. Okay, I was waiting for that. Saren, you're a bath guy, right, yeah. I think we've talked.
About bad bath and beyond.
Baby, what is your ideal bath?
Like?
It's like, what do you mean, like the bathtub or like the type of bath? Just walk me, walk you through my favorite bath.
Okay? So there?
Am I a bubbles or no bubbles person, Elizabeth, No surprise, I'm a bubbles person.
Oh you are?
Yeah? Oh yeah, you gotta have some bubbles. Why not?
You're doing it, beat deck and enjoy it, luxuriate. So yes, bubbles, yes, bath bomb maybe if I'm in the mood, but probably not.
Sometimes the salts.
If my muscles are aching, but maybe I'm gonna baby drop in a little Doctor Bronner's, you know, just get a little that pepper mints feel.
I like that one. That's always a nice one. And then I want the temperature of.
The water to be extremely hot, so hot that it's like one of those Japanese baths. But they do it with fire, so that's really nice because it doesn't then tickle the skin. I've here, but my bass, they tickle the skin like it makes the skin itch.
It's like, oh my god, this is like it's like red.
You're like red.
Yes, I want to look like a like a silkwood shower. That's what I'm going for. So then I sit in there for like thirty forty minutes, and I wear I wear my reading glasses, and I bring a phone and I read the day's news, the day's events, my email. I catch up with friends. It's awesome. Sometimes I bring a slice of cake in there if I want I relax, like you want me to keep going on. I can tell you about the drinks, like tell you, but the music.
I like candles.
Do you have like duckies?
No, no floaties, nothing that I'm breaking. I'm not bringing anything anything into the water. But I have I have I like I will admit when I was like a very young bachelor and I was bathing, I would sometimes bring a beer or two into the bathtub and then I would float the empties in the water. So it looks like I meant the beginning of like a movie, like like Smoking the Band at two, it's like a really depressing part of the movie. Yes, exactly, it's like, Oh, we're at the park before his life.
It's better.
For You're a bad guy. That's great, that's cool for you. Do you like bads? You also? Do you like Italian culture? Italy? Italians?
Never heard of it?
Okay, I like Italy and Italian culture and Italians. I think we've talked about that before. You like planes, right, I love them. You said you've always.
Wanted to learn to fl I always wanted to learn to fly. I'm against helicopters, but I love.
Planes, right, and so aviation it thrills you the most. And we've talked about that. Yes, I really love talking about the San Francisco Bay Area. Yes you did, and I've done that to death.
Anders I don't care and.
I won't stop. I love Bay Area history and culture. It's in Memmisota. No, And anytime I can tell a Bay Area.
Story, I will, Yes, you will.
I am annoying that way, Dave, Dave, you love a good immigrant story for sure? Yeah, Hell, who doesn't.
Who doesn't.
We need people coming to the US. And we've talked about that before. So I have a good one for us today.
Sounds like that you're hitting all the bums.
It's something for everyone. Come on, It's something we haven't talked about yet. Though. Oh what if I just started repeating all the old ones. I want to tell you the story of a family.
We could just tell each other's the ones that you've done. I'll tell you that.
Time when you were talking about Yeah, I'm.
Gonna tell the one you did, but I'm gonna do it funnier, faster.
So this is the story of a family. A family that's scrappy and sharp, big dreams, bigger work at a family that sticks together through thick and thin until they don't. I'm going to warn you that this story has more history than crime.
Okay, just coming in up top, Just indulge me.
I was looking into this and I was so taken with the story of this family that I figured, I just make it work.
I'm so curious.
So this is the story of Giovanni and his wife Teresa. He was the patriarch of a large family in Casarsa de la Delicia.
Is this badonna's father, That's why they only have first name.
Yes, everyone only has first names. So this Cassara de la Delicia. It's a farming community in northern Italy, northeast of Venice, northwest of Trieste.
Yeah.
So it's an idyllic setting, very nice, gently rolling hills, vineyards. There's a beautiful church in town. As you can probably guess, I went a Google street viewing and I want to go there.
How was your tour?
It was fantastic. So it's this lovely little Italian village. But it had some issues at the turn of the twentieth century when Giovanni and his family lived there. Jack poverty.
Oh that is an issue.
Yea, not so great. So Giovanni he was a carpenter. He was a very hard worker who came from a long line of farmers and dog workers. Teresa kept a tidy and efficient home. Giovanni and Teresa had thirteen children.
Oh yeah, she was blown out, so they kept that bed warm.
Yeah, yeah, Rakaylee was one Valeriano Francesco.
What do people do before there was radio and TV?
Well, we know now, thirteen kids Giuseppe, Gillian though, Jacondo, Felicita, Angelina, Anquila, Candie though, Chilila, any cosmos stella nice, Jilia nice. Yeah, those are thirteen kids. So money was obviously tight. I mean you have to feed fifteen people.
Yeah, they're feeding two basketball teams.
Basically, Giovanni and Teresa they wanted their children to succeed, to have all the things that the world had to offer. So the boys they studied to become engineers, the girls trained to be seamstresses. Yeah, all right, it's nineteen oh seven.
Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
Europe is changing, the whole modernizing. Yeah, the whole world's changing. Giovanni he felt war coming.
Yea, the Empires are about to follow.
Well oh yeah, and he didn't want to lose his sons in battle, so he came up with a plan. He decided to take his sons and move to the United States.
Good plan, imagine.
Common plan at that time. It's in small group after small group, they scattered out in the American West. They spoke only a little bit of English, and some went to Idaho, others went to my home state, California, La San Francisco. They worked any job that they could. Paolo whose great grandson of Giovanni, He said, quote, they dug ditches, built railroads, did everything they could to make a buck and send it back to Italy and try to get the rest of the family over. So these are just hard,
hard workers. Slowly but surely that's what they did. They got everyone over. The first wave of the family came in nineteen oh seven, nineteen twenty. The whole family was here, dribs and drabs. Don't forget the brothers had all studied mechanical engineering. So while they may have been picking oranges or stocking warehouses to get by, they were saving the money that they made to start a business. In nineteen fifteen,
they opened a machine shop in Berkeley, California. Oh wow, right on San Pablo Avenue, the wide boulevard that cuts its way across the East Bay. You know, the building is still there, It still stands. It's currently a kind of posh furniture store called Fenton McLaren one. Yeah. Anyway, back in the day they made airplane propellers there.
Oh cool.
Yeah, one of the sends Rik Kaylee. He was super geeked on flying in.
Those big wooden airplane Okay, yeah, these.
Were like nineteen fifteen, so Rik Kayley Aviation super into it. He'd worked as a mechanic for James McDonald of McDonald Douglass, so he was working for him checking out planes at the nineteen fifteen Panama Pacific World's Fair in San Francisco. So he studied planes. He was constant looking for a way to improve upon this new technology. He invented a lightweight propeller with a windward pitch that was called a toothpick propeller, and it was new, no one was doing it.
It was super efficient. It caught the eye of the government, and the US Army Air Corps made it their standard equipment. Right. Charles Lindberg used it good on this feature instrumental in the US air presence in World War One. If you want to go look at it, it's on permanent display in the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.
So basically he's the one who took the propeller and candidate.
Yeah. So with that cool invention getting them attention, the brothers, they worked together to come up with something else, another improvement. They designed the first fully enclosed high wing monoplane built and flown in the United States, the J seven. So before this, pilots are just out there whipping around in the wind, ye scarf sedance, and now they're inside a cabin fully enclosed. So the plane exactly. The plane weighed eighteen hundred pounds, was a bigin It cost a fortune
to build. The whole family worked on it, all seven brothers plus the wives and the sisters. They stitched together the canvas to cover the wing frames, so it was a huge family effort. The plane also had a ton of successful flights, which was a serious accomplishment in the early days of eighties. Yeah, they flew it in and out of the Bay Area. And then they had an idea a way to recoup the money that they'd poured into this thing. So passenger service was their idea. Plus
maybe work as a mail plane. So they angled to get a contract with the US Postal Service and they started going on runs. They did a test flight from San Francisco to Reno, Nevada for the Post Office and it went well. Around the time that they're getting ready to sign this contract with the Postal Service. They decided
to do another trial run. This time they were going to take passengers out to Yosemite because they felt like this is that, you know, people are getting more into a tourist run exactly, and more and more people from the Bay Area wanted to.
Rich want to go, and they can afford the tickets right.
So for this daring mission, they got a twenty three year old hot shot named Harold Bud Coffee to fly the plane.
Bud Coffee, Bud Coffee.
He was from Modesto, California, lovely town in the Central Valley. He was seasoned and confident, twenty three years old. He was Bud Coffee Man. This isn't the greatest. So he was a second lieutenant or lieutenant as they say across I love thinking in the Army Air Service and he'd been an aviation instructor in San Diego and then he got into commercial aviation.
He's twenty three years old.
He made the first ever passenger flight into Stockton, California.
Oh that's right there, first one to fly to that city.
He was the first to land at the Feather River Inn in Lake Tahoe.
He was it was Bud coffee.
He flew in a record time of over twelve hours from Laramie, Wyoming, to San Francisco to relay photos of the celebrated Jack Dempsey George Carpentier boxing match.
It was that bud coffee that but okay.
Legends three years old. So on this inaugural flight to Yosemite was aviation writer John Kakke, machine shop plant technician Archibald Duncan.
McLeish Archie, McLeish.
Archie, McLeish. Jacondo, whose brother Raka was the one who designed the plan.
The second oldest, I think so, yeah, one of the oldest.
Yeah, so Riquella he's the oldest, and then Jacondo's like third maybe anyway, So those are the other people and four on the on the plane up up. They flew over the California Central Valley on their way to beautiful Yosemite Wild one of my favorite places, by the way, Yes, it's been a while since I've been there because it's two blasted crowded.
You know. One of my favorite places is the sky right, not the.
Same for me. You could not go in a small plane anyway. I miss you with yes smite uh So July twelfth, the plane, piloted by Bud Coffee, landed in a meadow in front of El Capitan, incredible mountain in the pasta you're talking about, Yeah, exactly. Park officials and visitors, they all came out to marvel at the machine. Coffee and a bunch of the mechanics did a comprehensive one over on the plane to make sure it was in good shape to fly back. Two days later, dudes get
back on the plane. They cruised back to the Bay Area. They're going to make a pit stop in Coffee's hometown of Modesto. He actually just wanted to see his girlfriend. He totally so, Like, he swoops down the roar the engine over the town brings this people all outside to see this amazing plane because it's a big deal. He's waves and then tragedy struck. Oh no, yeah, stop laughing. The left wing came off and the fuselage fell to the ground.
Oh god.
Oh yeah. So some thought that Coffee tried an acrobatic maneuver that went wrong, like maybe he hit an air pocket or something. Investigators blamed a flaw in the design of the plane. It was too heavy and imbalanced, like apparently the radiator was all big out in the front like who knows there were no survivors. News of the crash took up the entire front page of the Modesto b newspaper and including like gruesome photos, it's horrible at
different times. I suppose no discretion. So anyway, despite the family living in Berkeley, Jacondo was buried in Modesto.
Also, I think back then just about the newspapers, they generally knew and experienced more horrors. Oh so what was what a horror was was very different for them, totally.
Yeah, people were not sheltered from things. So Jacondo, he's buried in Modesto. His grave marker said he was quote a martyr of the aviation, loved science, music, and pictorial art. His motto was Koele navigari necessit est and in flying high over the mountains and valleys, he constantly demonstrated how man is able to conquer the air. His name and work shall remain forever. So the Latin phrase translates to we have to sail, we do not have to live.
Hey.
Anyway, obviously the families devastated. Teresa, the matriarch of the family, she put her foot down no more planes.
Oh that's it.
That's it.
That was the last one of us going up in the sky.
Costa no more. So it wasn't too bad of an idea. I mean, she'd lost her son, that's enough reason not But they were also you know, they're swimming in debt with this. Ava got the trauma of oh yeah. But then and they had the heat on them that there's thinking that like, this wasn't designed very well. So they had all this attention, but they didn't have money from it, and they obviously didn't get that USPS contract. So the family ended their aviation company and moved on. What they
did next would change everything. It would change the career and life trajectory of every single family member. It would revolutionize homes and healthcare. It would create something iconic. It would make their surname a household name, something known in the world over. Let's take a break, so curious. When we come back, I'll tell you that last name, and I'll start getting to an actual crime. Zaren Elizabeth, let
me continue telling you this tale. I'm sure, okay, So I'm telling you the story of Giovanni and Teresa and their thirteen kids. They moved from Italy to the US, specifically California, extra specifically to Berkeley. I love Berkeley. So this family started an aviation business in which every single member of the family had a job, but the wild Blue Yonder claimed one of the boys, so the family shut down operations.
More family business.
There's no way they could go on. They had to come up with a new business and that was It wasn't really a problem since the entire family was super clever and inventive. I mean, they came up with a new plane, they came up with a new propeller. Sure, their minds just automatically assessed mechanical situations, broke them down, figured out how to build them back better, and innovators the whole bunch.
Then they invented the monorail.
It was so amazing. So no, they there were stumbles.
And more track guessing who they are going.
So Rickela in nineteen thirty seven, he was only fifty years old, he died of a massive heart attack.
Wow.
So Giuseppe took over the family business for a little while, and then finally Candido, the youngest son, he took over and that was a new era. So this time they stayed on the ground, and they innovated the water pump game water pump. So just as their aviation timing was pretty good, their move into water pumps was equally fortuitous.
They invented the dental pick.
Yes, so agriculture in California booming at all ways. More people meant more food was needed, more land had to be put to absolute optimum use.
Before Ellen's Valley, So it's like a different water system.
So they came up with irrigation systems for orchards, and then they also developed a line of deep well injector pumps, the cousin of the thermal lance the deep well injector pump.
I'm sort of think maybe I might not know this family.
They came up with these ingenious inventions and then they would sell the patents to big corporations in exchange for royalty too. Oh that's smart, so smart the geniuses. So this water pump stuff was a huge success. On like the planes, they raked in money, and they expanded the business to keep up with demand. As the company grew, so did the staff. And that staff was primarily made
up of their grown children and cousins and their kids business. Yeah, so they moved their factory to a larger location along the Bay shore line in Richmond, just above Berkeley. The building's still there by the way. I used to drive by it every time I took my sweet bear, the Late Elliott to a point Isabel Dog Park.
Oh, the largest dog park in the nation.
Aka best place on Earth. So this family nineteen forty one, Candido had a boy. He named him Kenneth, Kenneth Jacuzzie. Oh, my goodness, the Jacuzzi family, son of Candido Jacuzzie. Yes, this is the Jacuzzi family. So how do they get into hot So.
This is a family they got Eddie Murphy Wett.
Yes, yes, it's gotta make you sweat too hot hot m So how.
Did they get into hot tubs?
I don't know. One foot at a time.
Let me tell you. When Kenneth was eighteen months old, Kenny Jaccuzzi, he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. It's some serious, terrible stuff. So it's an autoimmune disease where the body fights itself. Essentially, there's inflammation in the joints, but also in the organs and like bones, erode, joints deform it's really really painful. Doctors didn't think he'd see
his third birthday, so it was rough. He was an active, healthy kid, and then suddenly he wasn't because he got a nasty case of strep throat and that led to rheumatic fever, which led to.
Ra Oh wow.
They didn't have antibiotics like we do now, so you know, it was like basically a bacterial infection. Yeah, pretty much. So he started to lose his mobility. Doctors said that if he did make it, every year would be borrowed time, and if he managed to grow up, he wouldn't grow old and he'd never live independently. So the family tried having him put in a full body cast to straighten his limbs, but that didn't work. They gave him injections of gold salts and that's what they were calling the
gold standard. I suppose it may have helped, who knows. And then they heard about hydrotherapy. So the family lived over the hill from Berkeley in Lafayette, California. Berkeley, though, is where the hydrotherapy treatment for Kenneth was. There was a Hubbard tank at the hospital there. So the Hubbard was an oval shaped tub with a wooden bench in it, and the patient would sit on the bench and water would swirl around the patient's body to relieve stiffness and
improve flexibility. Yeah yeah, provided Kenneth with incredible relief. His parents started taking him twice a week because suddenly he's just loosening up. He can move a little bit better. Pain. Oh completely, as you will.
Where you started out was in a bathtub of hot water.
Exactly in your mama's bed. So it took the family an hour each way to get to the hospital for treatment, driving over the hill. While his parents would have driven to the absolute ends of the earth to take him to these appointments, it's still war on them. So one day Kenneth's mom came home from the drive and she asked Candido the dad, if it would be possible to make one of these machines for the house. You know, you work in water pumps. She's thinking, like, come on now,
And thus the J three hundred was born. So this this thing made everything is the jay whatever with them, the plane was the J South. So this thing, it made a whirl of warm water just like the Hobbard, but it could be attached to a whole bathtub, and so like the Hubbard let patients only sit upright. This way you could lay down and kind of get the back and everything as well.
So, oh, thus the seat in the jacuzzi right, this isn't the full but that's why you see those seats in the jauz.
That's one of the reasons for it. Yeah. So Candido invited his son's doctor to come and look at his invention, and the doctor was just blown away. He asked Candido to make more for other patients, at which point Candido's business acumen kicked in. He decided to patent it and market it. Yes, so this was a big jump for them, not the patenting a design part, but the marketing. They'd always made products that were sold to larger manufacturers and distributors,
and Candido he wanted to own this Holly. He didn't want to distribute it through anyone else.
Smart.
He wanted to go up against the big dogs of the appliance world. Okay, it took convincing, but he got the family on board that.
Like singer sewing machines would like I don't know, like maytag ge maytag.
Yeah, So he and his brothers they honed the sign and they started selling the J three hundred and nineteen forty nine. They were available in bath supply shops and pharmacies at the very beginning. Then the Jacuzi brothers took their machine to the full market in the mid fifties.
It was they said, it was a quote lightweight, portable hydro massage unit, perfect for the tired businessman or harried housewife, for the golfer with sore muscles, for the aches and pains of senior citizens, for frolicking youngsters, and for those who just want to relax and pamper themselves with a hydro massage bath. That's you at the end, that's me.
Yeah, that is me though. So was this a portable Yes?
So this is like plug it in and then you'd like into the wall and then you drop the unit into the bath.
Huh.
And so it's totally portable.
It's basically all of the filters and everything.
This isn't like a total filter no, Yeah, it just drops in and.
It's whirling around here. Yeah the pomps I guess right.
Yeah. So the J three hundred was featured on Queen for a Day. Oh yeah, TV show.
I've heard about that.
That's great concept. Like women would be asked about their hard luck stories and the audience would decide who had the most upsetting, heartbreaking story. I heard clause meter.
This was insane the show they would go on there and these hard luck stories were like crazy hard luck story.
You would currently they have to battle it out with applause meter.
You're like myself.
So the winner was named Queen for a day, Like, and what do you get? You get a crown and a crown, but then you get prizes that are like kind of related to yourself. Kenneth Jacuzzie said, quote, every time a queen had a story that had some medical related aspect to it, one of the prizes was a jacuzzie. The name Jacuzzie became known overnight.
Yeah, so that's right.
Little Kenneth commented on this because Kenneth is a survivor, so he's talking about this later on. Right, the water helped him immensely, but they said he wasn't going to live to like c three or eight. Right. His family worked tirelessly to make sure he had everything he needed to thrive. His progress was noted through the years in local papers that like applauded every single milestone. There's just
tons of articles. He was wheelchair bound, but that didn't make a lick of difference, which is how it should be in this world. So the kid they didn't think would make it to eight at the outside went on to get a master's degree work in Italy for the family business. He got a gig as the director of the Office of the Americans with Disability Act for the state of Arizona. He was a lifelong advocate for ada
and writes of people with disabilities. He got married. He wrote a book called Jacuzzie, a Father's Invention to ease a son's pain. Damn. He was an extraordinary human being who lived to the age of seventy.
Five against all odds. You know what that is, Elizabeth, proof of the beauty and power of bathing.
Bathing, Thank you, Base Jacuzzie couldn't do that with a shower.
So back to Queen For a day, twenty million people watched each show. Roy Jacuzzi, who worked at the factory in the summer as a teen, said quote, We ran ads that claimed heal headaches, heart disease, sexual drive, everything. We demonstrated door to door in people's bathrooms. So they're just out there hustling. People were a little spooped though. They didn't really want to submerge something that was plugged into an electrical outlet into their bath tub.
I want to be electrocuted just to feel good.
Well, they thought it would be like trying to heat your bath water with a toaster. Yeah, so, Zarin, close your eyes, I want you to picture it. You are Roy Jacuzzi. You've graduated, and now you work in the Jacuzzi Brothers offices full time. Yesterday a salesman came in and complained about how customers wanted the whirlpool but they were afraid of being electrocuted, and then discovered all charred and blistered in the tub that they were just relaxing
in no bueno. So this was a problem you'd heard from a bunch of people. They wanted to be relaxed, but they also didn't want to die. So no matter what you did, you couldn't seem to convince people that this was perfectly safe.
You could have both, Yeah, why not?
You left work and you decided to go for a walk along the shore of the bay. There were some mudflats not too far from the offices that you like to visit, you know, at the end of a stressful day, just to unwind.
Of course, I love a mud flat.
Who doesn't. You watched a gorgeous sunset there everywhar and again. So though you know the birds are flying over, you know you hear cars in the distance. You slip off your shoes, you walk into the kredy sandy mud. I'm all for a walk on the beach, believe you mean, but this is gross, dude, whatever you're lost in thought.
Just leave a man to his mudflats.
You just have to figure out a way to get the water moving without putting something attached to actual voltage right in the water. So as you stare at the muddy sand, you see bubbles, bubbles forced to the surface by little clams. They push the air out and off it goes, bubbling out at your toes.
I need diesel powered clams.
You've got it. You scramble up to your car and you race back to the shop. You peel up to the cob and sprint into the building, hoping to catch your great uncle Candido before he heads home for the day. Luckily he's there at his draft desk. Deep in thought. You slam your hand down on the desk, startling him, I've got it. You explained to him that if you installed jets coming from outside of the tub that there wouldn't be any wiring in the water and people would
feel more comfortable. It was easy enough using their water pump technology, sealing materials and new age polymers make it self contained like the original plane. Plus now we sell them a whole ass tub.
Oh brilliant, more material.
Candido looks you square in the eye. You've done it, he yells, and then you high five and you get suspended in a freeze frame that traps you until this very day. So Jacuzzies always have an answer. The family wasn't on board initially, like every big decision, but you had the old Jacuzzi moxie and got your way. The true Jacuzzie was born. The family then made it into the Oxford English Dictionary, Oh My Dream Jacuzzie noun a large bath incorporating jets of water to massage the body.
Origin named after the Italian born American inventor can Ito Jacuzzi. So notice that it only says Candido. That's the official line, But the truth is it Roy Candido's grand nephew is the one who came up with the logistics in the idea. We don't know if that's who knows, but whatever, But.
He wasn't there for the bubbles in the car you were, Roy, Yeah, Oh, you're right.
Yeah, I don't know if he honestly, I don't know how it came to him stealing my thunder. I made that up. So Jacuzzi's they're really coming up in the world, and not just the people, the actual baths, the Jacuzzie bathtubs. They were glamorous and sexy and some wholesome at the same time, really and associated with what we now obnoxiously call wellness.
Oh yeah, it was like a health It was like a health thing.
It really didn't start to get sleezy into like the eighties.
I did the late seventies with the marine San Francisco saying, and then you add in the eighties where they go, oh, I want that in Modesto, I want that in Minneapolis.
We had them all over at that other people wanted. It was actually movies and TV and media that started shampoo.
The movie, the Warren Baty movies as types of movies in the seventies were showing that that that norcoal la like I'm a swinger vibe all of a sudden, people like wanted in Bristol, Connecticut.
Well, and the Jacuzzie was a status symbol in an America desperate for status.
Totally, that's very early eighties.
So Elizabeth, you're asking, Elizabeth, please, I come to you with tears in my ear.
Look at my eyes.
There must be a crime in here somewhere.
Cry my cheeks.
Hold fast, young sailors.
Thank you.
It's roiling up from under the surface. It's ready to bubble and swirl around you.
I sense it coming.
When we get back from this break, we'll get into crime.
All right, jacuzzieoooo.
So, while the Jacuzzie was taken the world by storm, dark clouds were forming over the factory, and Rich Candido had always been let's say, a tough bossuh. He made decisions without consulting the family. But that was pretty much necessary because like, the number of family members employed was almost north of two hundred people by the mid sixties.
Yeah, oh yeah, forget babies sick with Jacuzzie.
So in fact, there's a really great article in the San Bernardino Sun Telegram about the Jacuzzi family having a family reunion at the Columbo Hall in Oakland, with one hundred and eighty eight family members showing up, including nine of the original thirteen kids. Damn, obviously there weren't kids anymore. So anyway, it was a big deal, like this is huge family.
Yeh, slung a cat and without hitting a no.
So that the core group was still there though, sure what remained of the original siblings and their children and the children's children. They ran the whole thing you in Richmond, Yeah, the main offices in Richard. Is it right by the five right where eighty and five eightieslit right split?
Yeah, there's and they needed to make right at the beginning.
I used to live on that pimple of a hill in Albany, and I used to look down on where the jacuzzis are lined up there against the back wall.
Called Jacuzzi Drive, like I used to drive when I would take the dog to the dog park, I drive right by Jacuzzi Drive, And never really I just.
Thought, well, that's you know, you've seen them right, They're all lined up all the spot I've been going past, all of this history.
All this spot exactly. So Candido, he thought that the best way to manage the Jacuzzi money was to form a holding company in Switzerland.
I've had that same thought.
And he also felt that this would minimize taxes. That's why, right, So a splinter faction of the Jacuzzis disagreed. Ridolfo and Rosy Jacuzzi along with Reno Stella Silvano and George Marin.
There's a man named Reno Jacuzzi.
No no, no, Reno Marin, so Reno Stella Silvano and George Morin another part of the family. They all filed suit to stop the transfer of assets. So Rose Jacuzzie was the widow of the original sibling, Jellindo Jacuzzi, and Ridolfo was their son. So this splinter faction thought the choice might be, how do you say the illegal to put it all in Switzerland. They also felt that this was a way for Candido to conceal funds from the.
Rest of everybody. Yeah, not just the taxes, right.
Well, Candido he had a powerhouse lawyer, a notorious man who would later go on to be the mayor of San Francisco, Joseph Alioto. No way, if you have any interest at all in San Francisco history. As an aside, here you have got to read a book called Season of the Witch by David Talbot. It's about San Francisco from the late sixties through the early eighties, which is my favorite era of California history. Anyway, it's a great book, and Joseph Alioto shows up in there quite a bit.
I've heard plenty of stories about the Alioto family over the years out side of this book. Good, inspirational, bad, terrifying, always entertaining though. So anyway, ou Alioto was Candido's lawyer. Alioto told him just go ahead and transfer everything over. Let just go ahead, said, you're the boss. You're the boss. You can do it whatever you have. So the cousin sued.
They're like, actually no, you can't. So back in nineteen sixty one, they filed suit against the other remaining original family members, demanding that Candido be removed from his position as president of Jacuzi Brothers, Incorporated. They also wanted the Swiss holding company deal canceled. They said that overseas assets of the firm were sold to a Swiss holding company for about a million dollars less than the fair market value. The sale price was listed at one point two million,
so the six complainants. They had about fifteen percent of Jacuzzi Brothers stock, and they wanted a complete accounting of all the company's financials, something that hadn't been given thus far. In nineteen sixty three, a judge awarded this Splinter group six point one million dollars in the matter. That's like sixty million dollars today. Was the one million they said they were cheated out of, as well as five million for the actual assets themselves. Hot damn so never fear.
Shortly thereafter, Candido at All filed a relief plea. They wanted these six million dollars judgment voided, and they said that they had been denied due process.
So this thing.
You'll see. So they said that the judgment wasn't valid without a court determination setting out the exact amount. And then on top of that, they said that if they did have to pay it, it would ruin them in the business, and the court's like and I supposed to care about this. Yeah, So there wasn't any movement on the case until nineteen sixty six. So while the world was introduced to the luxury line hydrotherapy pool, the Splinter
Faction was suing Candido and the others once again. Yeah, they said that he fraudulently transferred company stock shares and real estate worth more than two million dollars to other family members in order to keep the Splinter group from collecting the six million dollar judgment.
Oh wow.
They wanted the real estate and the stock put into receivership and then sold to pay them what they were owed. At long last, it finally came to a close at the end of nineteen sixty seven, a court determined that the Swiss holding company was, as the judge put it, a quote alter ego of Candido. What they said, because they're like, basically, it's not a Swiss holding company, it's you, Candido of the he was. There are three people on
the board of the of the holding company. Oh, he was the head of it, and the other two had had documents that had like no dates and their signatures and no one can finued this.
Yeah exactly.
So it's his alter ego.
So they came to a settlement and my vice president Ken d do and.
So they figured like, Okay, this is how we're going to get Candido to return the assets, and he agreed, and he'd also have to personally pay a judgment of sixty thousand dollars, which is like half a mill today. What's really wild is that the court awarded more than eight hundred thousand dollars in attorney's fees on this and that was the largest award recorded for fees in California at that time. So that's like seven million dollars today.
Koozies making history twice Zoozies.
So Candido, he gave a statement from the new company headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas. Right, they moved everything else at Rock. I don't know the cheaperose so it probably the labor you know, the Richmond that was a union shop and they had a couple strikes there over the year. So he gave this statement. He said that settling it all was in the best interest of the company and its shareholders. And he said they were cleaning house in
management and the executive suite. Everything's gonna be fine. We're just going to move forward from here. And he's like, by the way, we're also going to build a new plant in Milan, Italy, my home country. Isn't that cool for us?
Love that?
And they're like, yeah, that's cool for you. You know who else was moving to Italy. What year sixty sevens.
Moving to Italy in sixty seven, that's top. I don't know, Candido.
Oh and you want to know why tax evasion?
No, I could have guessed that one.
So Candido hadn't been paying his taxes, okay, and Zarin, that is a crime.
That is technical. You got it well.
Here the view is great from here for city, it marks the beautiful. So crimey. So nineteen sixty nine, Candido he gets indicted on charges of evading more than sixty thousand dollars in federal income tax. And like for those who like to do inflation calculation, that's like half a million dollars. Yes, today, it's a lot, but it's not a lot in the grand scheme of like his wealth.
It's more that I want to pay, but it's not a lot for his wallet.
Right exactly. So a bench warrant was issued, all right, and the charges were only for sixty thousand dollars, but the IRS made sure to note that he actually owed a lot, more like around one point three million, which calculates out to ten million dollars today, which is okay.
That's a lot. That's a lot.
But there's Candido nowhere to be found. He off to Italy. The papers all said Milan. But I found that in family obituaries they would list their surviving family members and they always noted him as living in Portanone, which isn't far from cassarso where they were originally from. So that kind of makes sense. So to avoid the bench warrant and the I R S. Candido moved to Italy. Going home, He's like double douce as I'm out, and he made his way to the IRS most wanted list.
Yeah, I didn't know the IRS had.
And what's interesting is the papers are all confused about Okay, they have this bench warrant for sixty grand, but they say he owes one point two million. Why isn't Why not the one point two million like that?
Maybe that was maybe the one was criminal and the other was negligent.
Perhaps that's a good point you should have written for the papers in the sixties. So he splits his time between Italy and Mexico because there was no extradition treaty for tax evasion in those yeah, and for tax evasion in those countries at that time.
I didn't know that.
I don't know if it's changed. I started to look at up and then I got down into this rabbit hole, and I realized it doesn't matter because we're talking about how it was in the late six exactly. Let go, Elizabeth, let's live in the moment. Get off my back, sarahen I didn't look it up. So anyway, Mexico, he worked on building a luxurious home there, and there were other like high flyers and celebrities and rich people in this little area of Port of Iarda where he was going
to build a house. He had it made, and then in nineteen seventy six things changed. Candido Jacuzzi had a heart attack in Puertoviarda. He was paralyzed from the chest down, and then they flew him to Houston, Texas for surgery. And he hadn't been on US soil since nineteen sixty nine. This is nineteen seventy six.
So you coming back from medicine, Candido.
Uh huh. So he still had that five count tax evasion hanging over him.
Get handcuffed to his hospital.
He was up against ten thousand dollars in fines and five years in prison for each count. And you know, I'd hang out in Italy and Mexico too. If I were him, live it up.
Heck, I hang on Barbados, anywhere, anywhere but here.
So but he goes to Houston. His attorney, being an officer of the court, had to do the right thing, so he called the Justice Department to let him know that his client was back. Baby.
Oh he really did, and if he need.
Him, he's in Houston. So he was arraigned in his hospital bed.
Oh I did it.
Oh yeah, by a US magistrate. They will totally, Oh, they will totally. Bail was fifty thousand dollars and he secured that with his daughter's home back in Lafayette, California. Oh did she know the house on Upper Happy Valley Road? Oh wow, yeah, so I think that was the house
that he had and his daughter. So later that year, the Jacuzzi brothers sued John Jacuzzie, Candido's son, for illegally transferring eight hundred and seventy one thousand dollars in stock to a Mexican trust and they wanted twenty million dollars in damages. Right, So, John Jacuzzie is such a great name to use to like check into a hotel or make reservations or like, if you have to give a man on the street in view on TV, what's your name?
John Jacuzzi, John Kacuzzie, Table four.
So I don't know whatever happened to that lawsuit, the one about transferring to a Mexican trust. John Jacuzzi also had been living in Mexico for some time. He was in the papers for evading the draft, I suppose for the Korean War, which I didn't whatever.
I didn't even know people did that.
I didn't think they did.
But in nineteen fifty.
One he ran out to me, you'd be presiding and so he was.
Like going to be arrested, and he said, no, I went there to work for my family's coming.
But at the beginning of the Korean War, everybody treated it like World War two, like the Act three or whatever.
Yeah, oh, we have to do it again.
We got to.
So I think at the very beginning you could see people being upset about Yeah, I think that's right. Afterwards it turned into a police action, so it made it.
Makes sense his you know, John is in uh, you know, Mexico, and he goes down there. And so I don't know whatever happened with the trust thing. I'm not even sure how Candido resolved things with the irs, like it's not in any of the papers, and.
I'm sure we both know the answer. He paid them some money and then they were like, this is good enough.
But he still had plenty. So in nineteen seventy five, he gave an interview to Sports Illustrated. Of all places, there you go. He felt that the problems with the company all came from including non family outsiders. Who did he' said quote When there were just us brothers, we'd put a bottle of wine on the table, and that's solve our problems, he said, Today there are too many of us to do.
That sounds like my dad's brothers pretty much.
So in nineteen seventy nine, the Jacuzzis sold their share of Jacuzzi Brothers to Kid Incorporated Kidd Company, a New York conglomerate.
To nineteen seventy nine seventy nine.
Wow, the company made five point six million dollars in yearly profit on ninety million dollars of revenue, and the family made fifty nine million dollars off that deal.
Damn.
Yeah, there's a lot. They spread that around, like there's a Jacuzzi family winery up in Sonoma. It's apparently like, yeah, that's them, one of the great grandkids or something like. So they they've kind of spread out and held on to the wealth. He got away with tax evasion. So nineteen eighty six, Candido Jacuzzi passed away at the age of eighty three at his winter home in Scottsdale, Arizona.
And at his death he held he wants to well, you know, I think like his son was living in Arizona, Kennis. You know, he's working with his family. Yeah, and I think so he was with his son.
And it was probably didn't climate Scottsdale. It was a good climate for Oh yeah, I get that.
So he had fifty patents at the time of his death, fifty and you know, like I said, got away with tax evasion.
So bravo to use her a tip of the head.
That's Aaron, What is your ridiculous takeaway? I think ask?
Oh, well, I will ask you what yours is. I don't have one, but go ahead, Oh really, okay, well I'll just share mine.
Then the Jacuzzi brothers, I had no idea like that. I've been driving past such like northern California history all this time, and I was so close to it, and I was like, oh man, and then have these like these names and we don't have never heard anybody tell this story. How does how can both of us Northern California people and we've never heard the Jacuzzi story?
Right, I know, my ridiculous takeaway. Thank you for asking? Well I wait and so yeah, no, I I'm with you. I'd never heard this story. I see the name wrong. I never associated I guess I never even thought about where does the name Jacuzzi? No?
I also, I never really thought of it as an American invention. It makes perfect sense, tell me.
So I thought it was like, you know, the Hitachi came in from somewhere outside and gave American's pleasure.
I'm gonna skip that and say I am a particular fan too of that. It all came out of helping Kenneth h and that I love that, just like the whole family pours into making Kenni's life livable. Yes, and he goes on to live to seventy five.
I do love that.
That is like, it's just incredible.
So, and you know, once again, power baby, right exactly.
The power of the bad. That's it. That's all I have. You you can find us online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're at Ridiculous Crime on Twitter and Instagram. There's an email address, leave a talkback on the iHeart app and that's it. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by Dave Jacuzzi.
That's Him.
Research is by Marissa Jacuzzi and Andrea Jacuzzi Jacuzzi. The theme song is by Thomas Jacuzzi and Travis Jacuzzi. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred and a. Jacuzzi. Executive producers are Ben Jacuzzi and Noel hot Tub.
Ridicus Crime, Say It one More Times Crime. Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more Podcasts my Heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows