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Zaren.
Girl Nothing Much.
Listen. I was wondering if you knew what was ridiculous.
I was so hoping you would ask me that, because I do you got a new dog? Yes, they did a Bernie's mountainn a doodle. But it's part Bernie's Mountain Dog.
Part it's a half Bernie's Mountain Dog, half poodle.
Okay, Now do you know what you now have with Frank Ocean?
Does Frank Ocean have a burn A Doodle?
Not only does he have a Burna doodle, he has a Bernie's Mountain Dog. He has half of what you have, but he also he named his dog Everest. Here's what the dog looks like, right, And here he is in the studio with his dog, right. Because the reason why this dog is so important is Everest to him is that he named the dog an executive producer on his album Channel Orange. Okay, and that one the Graand so his dog is the only dog ever to win Grammy. I think the only dog ever to win a Grammy period.
But there you go that you now have a common thing with You can tell people my dog is much like the Grammy Award winning Everest, which is you know of the Frank Ocean family.
Ros and then and then I've got Monty. Oh that's right, I'm running with two now.
Yeah, you're running deep.
Yeah, I'm back in my correct place.
There you are. It seems like your energies are sorted.
Rosie is a handful.
But yeah, I notice all like the bitten clothing and stuff. I'm like, oh, oh yeah, there's interns.
Now that is that is ridiculous, right? You know what else is ridiculous?
No, but I think you can tell.
Me Criming for the love of running. This is ridiculous crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers. Heis cons It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred percent ridiculous.
You damn right.
You. You mentioned recently that you don't like jogging, so you're not a runner.
Uh No. I will run in two instances, if there's a ball or a gun.
Okay, that's a good rule.
Yeah, both of those times I will run happily.
Ye.
So, but if there's no ball, no gun, probably not running.
Yeah. No, I've never been one for running. In my former life, I was relatively athletic like, I played a lot of sports when I was younger, but I always hated running always.
I don't like jogging. I like sprinting, like I can, you can't walking.
I love walking. I do what I wish I were in the running ambling. I love strolling. For people who love to run, like it gives them a high, they're into it, and they start to feel off when they don't.
Run, like because their body gets regulated by.
Yeah, I envy that. And there's also yeah, it doesn't seem like something.
Yeah, there's just no way there's I am built for comfort, not speed, so there's no way I'm running, right, but I wish I could. There's the solitary nature of like the long distance runner. Oh yeah, I like solitary activity.
This is true. This is very true.
And like that running must be very therapeutic and contemplative like zen Like, yeah, so.
It's cross country skiing or yeah, there's non impactful right.
So for kids coming up who run, the accomplishment outside of the running itself is to like run in college, get a scholarship or something, and the top of the pile is the Olympics. Oh yeah, right, But it's not like football or baseball or basketball with profession in the leagues.
No, pretty much. You go to Penn Nationals, then you go to the Olympics and you're adult.
That's it. But then you ex exactly. But like those sports though, like the you know, professional league sports, there are phenoms in running. Yes, they're just gifted and they have to do it. Born runners. Yes, I want to tell you about a born runner, babe. He was born to run. He's a fascinating character. His name is James Hogue.
Okay, that's the same, time's familiar.
Good Midwestern boy.
Right.
He was born October twenty second, nineteen fifty nine in Kansas City, Kansas. Ah. So it's not the same as Kansas City, Missouri. The President may not know the difference, but it is an important difference. It is Kansas City, Missouri, very large city. Half a million people live there, home to your chiefs.
Yes, not my chiefs, but the chiefs.
And then.
One hundred and fifty thousand people live in Kansas City, Kansas.
And are they separated by anything the river?
Right, I think, yeah, so wyan Dot County, Kansas. I think like GM plants and associated warehouse and so it's a lot of working class folks and the Hogues working class family. I think his dad worked for like the railroad or something. So James normal kid, except for the fact that he was fast.
He was a great run, super fast James.
Yeah, he's fleet footed, excellent stamina. Like this guy could just run for long distance.
Oh so he's both fast and cross country distance.
Right, okay, and he's just a quiet dude, you know. Like, so he ran track in high school. Of course, he was state champion in a two mile run and his name is still on a plaque in the wall at Washington High School.
Good for him.
Yeah, So he graduated in nineteen seventy seven and he goes off to college at the University of Wyoming now University of Wyoming track program. Super interesting.
And also he's coming along right when running is becoming a realty exactly.
So the big dogs in running at the time were the University of Texas at i'll Passo and the University of Oregon are the two ones, and so they dominated all the running, and they sent a lot of athletes to the Olympics, and so they battled it out constantly for the top spot in the NCAA rankings, and the head coach at the University of Wyoming. Ron Richardson. He was brought in to shake up the program. He wanted to rival those colleges and take some titles. Go ahead,
send some runners to go for the gold. So James he got to the school at the same time as this new coach did, and James he could be part of this new exciting program and it was brutal. Training was nuts. James was all about it right. So here's
a description from the New Yorker quote. Members of the Wyoming team that year describe Richardson as a cold, distant figure who met with his athletes underneath the bleachers of the university's indoor track in a small, cramped office where he kept a dog eared copy of a book about
the management techniques of Jengis Khan. As the skies grew dark and the temperature dropped, Richardson would push his runners through thirty two two hundred and twenty meters sprints wow, followed by sixteen quarter miles and eight half mile.
Runs sixteen quarter miles miles.
Then eight half mile. Having read that sprinters would retain muscle memory when they ran faster than they were ordinarily able to do, he also developed a unique system for training his distance runners. He would tie a rope to a tumbling belt around the runner's waist and tow the runner up and down the high altitude trails, holding the other end of the rope as he drove his Volkswagon bug.
When his runners lost a meat at Brigham Young University, he picked them up early the next morning, dropped them off seventeen miles from Laramie, and told him to run home. What yeah, so the sky no nonsense? Like nuts? He wanted a team of winners, yes, and so to help do that beyond this training regimen.
The pulling the Volkswagen is nuts.
Oh yeah, there are pictures of it. He figured. You know what, I'm going to import some runners? Yeah, enter the Kenyans. Oh, of course, Kenyans dominate distance running for whatever reasons. Kenyons are amazing, And I'm sure there are Kenyans like me who say God bless and good job to the runners and are not so inclined themselves. But those who do run are disproportionately amazing.
Yeah, didn't tell me about the oxygenation.
Yeah, anyway, So all these Kenyons showed up on scholarship in Wyoming. I think they're like four and they were they were like twenty eight years old. So in Wyoming, this is not an organic track de part no no. So they locked in immediately.
To the getting food to eat.
Wyoming goodness. So they were all about this punishing training regime. Like some of them would put heavy boots on and run in the snow to like keep you know, and the rest of the team they're struggling, James is keeping up the coaches. Gambit paid off. So November of nineteen seventy seven, University of Wyoming's cross country team finished third in the country behind Oregon. Yeah, so James, he had this friend from back home, Keith Mark, and he was
one of them two first namers. So Keith he'd been a runner two, but not as talented or driven as James, but the two like stayed in touch. After James went off to college. James would write in letters about what it was like and how grueling the training was, but he never had any complaints, just like arrow Focus. His sophomore year, James had Keith come to visit, and Keith saw a bunch of car stereos and bike frames and James's apartment. Yeah, he's like red flag, Like, where did
you get all this stuff? James? He later went to visit Keith back at home and James leaves the house. Keith looks around and sees that one of his track medals is missing and it was for an event that James had never won. So he calls James. James is like, no, I didn't take it. But then later calls Keith back and he's like, yeah, my mom found your metal outside or something. That was pretty much the last time they talked.
So ye, friendship over.
So, like all this stuff happened in college, Like he was working in collecting butterflies for some professor and like got all in this inclement weather and like had these moments where it was just you know, transformative for him. Okay, so he's different at this point. He's not like taking drugs.
Wait you say transformative, He's different. So he went out on like a butterfly hunting expedition.
And there's a crazy storm.
Yeah, he bare almost died, and yeah.
Keith was there. They almost died and it was just like nuts and he thinks that that was like the moment where everything kind of changed with James. But James when they asked him He's like, this wasn't a big deal butterflies, Yeah, exactly. So shortly after this, James drops out of school at Wyoming and he moves to Texas and he goes to community college there, and then he transferred to University of Texas at Austin and he was he was about to graduate, but then he ran out
of money so he left. And then he got busted in Austin for theft from a bicycle shop. He loves bike, stealing bike stuff. Oh yeah. He bounced out to Colorado after that. There's a lot of missing time.
That his story is hard to figure out.
And it's for us to track, you know, I don't know what he was up to. He was in California for a while. He's bumming around getting odd jobs, stealing stuff here and there. And then he shows up again, this time in Palo Alto, California. Hey, and this time, twenty five year old James was suddenly sixteen year old orphan Jay Mitchell Huntsman.
Oh yeah, he's six.
He can pass for sixteen.
He's kind of a slight guy.
He said. He was like a long distance runner. I'm imagining him kind of fine bombing.
Doctor, really tall, Palo Alto is my dad's hometown, by the way, really and Jay Huntsman he wanted to go this orphan Jay Huntsman, he wanted to go to my dad's alma mater, Palo Alto High School, affectionately known as Palli Pal.
Yeah, was that weird for you? Pop up?
Yeah, it was weird like Palli. Oh, So who was the real Jay Huntsman?
Who is the real Jays?
Great question? He did exist with the birthday that James provided. So it seems that James combed newspaper articles from around the time he wanted to have been born, and he found an o bit for a newborn who passed away from pneumonia. Whoa boom, new identity. So here's how it all goes down, right, James. He goes up to the Stanford cross country coach and tells him, I'm a sixteen year old orphan, you know, he said, I was born
in San Diego nineteen sixty nine. When I was eight, me and my family we moved to this Ananda ashrom in Nevada.
Whoa yeah, he says.
He's like self taught. He did all his learning on his own, he said. When he wasn't working in the asheron he ran fifty to sixty miles a week, so.
This explains why he has no transcripts.
Yeah, and then his parents died in the car accident in Bolivia even and then he sets his sights on attending Stanford, and he figured Palo Alto High was the place to get started on that. So the coach at Stanford's like, yeah, go register with the school district. I'm not sure how you showed up here, but okay. So James he gets provisionally accepted into the Palo Alto Unified
School district and they send him to Pali. Now there are other high school There's Gun, you know, other high school's, but now he goes to Pali and then he unofficially joins the cross country team. Unofficially, well, they're like for the paperwork to come through, so they can't like he's He's like, oh, yeah, I'm going to have him send out my birth certifigin. I'm going to have him send.
Out I was wondering what paperwork.
School everyone, But in the meantime they're like, yeah, whatever, come to school. We don't want you, you know, being in delinquent. Everyone really liked him. His class and his team. They're fascinated by his story and they couldn't get over his race times, like they're incredible. But don't forget this guy was like a runner at University of Wyoming and now he's like, oh yeah, he's a twenty five year
old former collegiate runner. So he did well in school at Wyoming, right, so it should also come as no surprise that he was acing things at Pally. His English teacher thought that he looked a little older than his peers. Quote as a teacher, it was rude for me to even think that he was older, even though he was very thin and you could see the shadow of his beard.
He had these crows feet eyes exactly.
So then came the Stanford Cross Country Invitational October seventh, nineteen eighty five. So remember, James, he was not officially a member of the team. He'd only been there a couple of weeks, and he'd only been accepted into the school district provisionally. As I said, so I'm assuming you know he's they're still waiting good luck. But James, uh, the coach was like, you know what, you can still run, go out there, just don't cross the finish line. It's like auditing a class.
Weird.
Yeah, he puts a Pali jersey. I guess he puts a Pali jersey on inside out and he takes off, and I guess they're figuring, like, you know, just run with and like get a sense of it. No, he goes out there and just dominates, and he just dusts everybody, and he's like about to win the race, like way ahead of everybody, and then he suddenly veers off and leaves the course like he didn't understand what it meant,
like cross, go, but don't cross. It's just like stay with the pack, right Instead, he just like blasts off. Everyone's totally puzzled by this. There just just happened.
Pulls off like he stolen NASCAR gut.
And then so there was a reporter there from a local paper, Jason Cole with the Peninsula Times Tribune. He thought the whole thing was super weird. So he starts like calling around, like who is this kid? He gets the mystery kids IDENTI and backstory from the school district, and then it raised more questions than answers for him. He's like, this is nuts, and I'm guessing that the reporter went looking for information about the parents car accident
or something. It's like going through microfiche. Remember it's like eighty five. But he comes across the same story about the real Jay Huntsman. The dates matched up, and so Cole the reporter tells the school district what he found, and then he wrote an expose in the paper. Yes, and the district confronted James is this true? He's like, yeah, what's your real name? James Hogue? And then he tells him the truth. They're freaked out and he blows town.
He leaves before anything can happen. Let's stop here for a second, take a breathere, get some electrolytes, mellow out. When we come back, we're going to see what James got up to next.
Hell yeah, Zaren yo, Darren.
Sorry, I had to do a couple of laughs, real quick, good, good, Get out of my system. I always talk of running. Get me fired. You know, I was on a track team, so you know where you a bunch of times?
What did you do?
Hurdles? Long jump? I also a relay four by four relay.
You're saying you don't you only run if it's a ball or gun.
Well, there there's a starting pistol.
I see what you're saying.
Yeah, now, but normally it's a yeah, like I'm going to shoot you gun.
But you're a fast runner.
I was fastest.
I can imagine that.
It was the fastest person on my football team.
Nice, good for you.
So I broke both knees old true star OUCHI ouch.
So it was nineteen eighty five and James Hog in knees intact, tries to pass himself off as a sixteen year old cross country running prodigy.
Huh.
He gets found out, skips town night. He turns up again a few years later.
In Utah in another high school.
No, he's in Saint George, Utah, and he's stealing bike frames, of course, living out of a storage space. He had stolen really expensive ones from California and that's what he's gotten his storage space. Yeah, and he was I think he was selling.
Some of those canon kept. Yeah, you're living on the streets.
So he's in this storage space. He's living there, he's got all the bike frames, but he's also doing research about getting into an ivy League college.
How was he doing libraries?
I imagine, Yeah, he just hung out the library all the time. He took the essayts and then he wrote these like absolutely incredible application essays. He invented an even more incredible backstory. So it's better than the truth that he was a twenty eight year old from Kansas with a penchant for lifting things that were in his and then even better than the sixteen year old former Ashram Living kid who became an orphan things to the dangerous
highways of Bolivia. He's like, no, I'm shooting for the moon on this one. I'm going all the way. He became Alexi Induris Santana.
Wow, and listen, that's a hell of a name.
Boy, Howdy did he craft the most amazing bio for this kid. So Alexi Santana was homeschooled and then self taught, just like Jay Huntsman. He lived in Switzerland, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Morocco, and all over the American West. Yes, he later told a reporter for The Trent Times quote, It's not that unusual, at least not when I was young in California, I went to nursery school in kindergarten, and then my parents decided they'd teach me at home. You have to set
up a private school. I learned to read early and always had a lot of books. Some days I'd read from the morning tonight. I learned some French and Italian. I never have had a TV, but I listened to a lot of music. I'd go to librarians and they'd help me find the books I needed.
Well, you know it sounds convinced like that. You're like, oh, yes, look at you. You auto died act working with librarians and in the catalog of expand your mind.
You're fascinating. His dad's dead, he says. His mom, he said, was an artist living in Switzerland.
He does like the flip on Disney instead of like dead mom, it's dead.
Dad dad mom artist in Switzerland. He said. He taught himself to run in the Mojave Desert, he said. He said he was currently you're gonna I cannot wait for you. He said he was currently a ranch hand in Arizona and Utah top hand on He's moving cattle and sheep in a canyon called Little Purgatory. He said he hadn't slept inside in ten years, and then he read. He read Plato under the Stars. He only had his horse,
the livestock, and his radio to keep them company. He made up a letter of recommendation from the imaginary owner of the imaginary ranch he imaginarily lived in, oh He creates a story that no one could resist, and he used it to get into Princeton. So he made a visit to the campus after getting accepted. It's spring and he's set to start in the falls. They're offering him a full scholarship. Naturally, he went and he met with people who charmed everyone with his tases, like huck Finn
Existence and Huck Finn. That's the thing is, that's what the folks at the admissions office thought they would It would be an ideal candidate when asked, Yeah, aside from legacy students and the children of the wealthy. So meanwhile, back in Saint George, Utah, things are developing. Some very expensive stolen bicycle frames and parts had been traced to James's storage unit, and the cops got a warrant and
they searched it, finding all the hot merch. They also found his applications to and correspondence with a bunch of elite universities. They found an acceptance letter to Stanford under the Alexi Santana name. Letters from other colleges doctored up newspaper clippings about the amazing running skills of Alexi Santana and then the materials that tied to James Hog the actual guy. So while the police were in the unit, James showed up and was arrested immediately.
Oh he actually showed him and walked right seem and no, he walked Oh, held up out of there.
He's just like, oh, oh, you're in here. The detectives were super creeped out by the alter ego that they stumbled on. Well, they're like, he you know, you're acting like you're this eighteen year old kid, and you have all these materials that you're pretending to be eighteen. You're twenty eight. And so while James is in custody, they called some of the colleges from the letters and they let them know that Alexi Santana was actually a twenty eight year old.
Thief party poopers.
Yeah, so James, he pleads guilty to the thefts and he gets one to five years.
Okay, Well, I guess he wouldn't get enrollment anyway because he's get you.
Well, there's actually a story in the April seventeenth, nineteen eighty eight, Santa Is Mercury News about the theft and arrest, Great Newspapers, and it says that the police also quote found evidence that Hogue, using the name Alexi Santana, was corresponding with Ivy League universities about athletic scholarships. So it's in the paper, but none of that news reached Princeton, and the detectives didn't call all of the colleges. They didn't call Princeceton, so they don't know what's going on.
Its pre Internet, you know, definitely.
So James he had to figure out how to work this. How do you do your time and also go to Princeton.
Okay, remember you gave me a ride like a year three years ago.
Well, he wasn't going to let jail get in the way of his dream. So while awaiting his move to prison, he got in touch with Princeton admissions office and he asked for a deferment of acceptance. Smart so he told him that his mother in Switzerland was very sick, dying of cancer. He had to go take care of her. Princeton's like, of course, we will be here for you next year.
He has to go and take care of your mind.
Like James knew he wasn't going to do a whole year inside and he was right. So he gets out and then he makes his way to New Jersey to become a Princeton man. So he shows up a few weeks before our classes started to train with the track team and go through the orientation process. He meets his roommates in the dorms, one of whom was from Palo Alto but apparently didn't recognize him. Wow, yeah, I'm thinking he went to another high school.
Yeah, totally me. He could be also from East Palo out there or something where he's like different culture.
He could have gone to one of the other publics. He could have gone to a private Embellerman or any of these others. Gone up to the city to like Saint Ignatius s I. Anyway, so he had he's he's got a roommate in this unit of four guys from Palo Alto. So at Moven, you know, James shows up.
He's got a bunch of books and CDs. He has this photo of a skier doing like a sweet juicy fruit move through some powder that he puts up on his wall, and he has a Mexican blanket and he slept on the floor of the room, so like the bed was always made, he just slept on the floor.
Yeah, He's like.
Look, I'm a cowhan, I'm a ranch hand, I'm a cowboy. Yeah, exactly. I only eat beans to soft from exactly. So in the first weeks of class, his roommate like because they have like a unit of four, but then it's like two to a room. His roommate got hit and killed by a truck. Yeah, James was like sad, everyone's all upside, but he was kind of stoked because he got private room all to himself. They didn't put anyone in there, and he's just had a little campfire gun play in the harmonica all day.
Uh, he go in there, gets real lonesome real quick.
But like he just became a regular Princeton student. He went to class. He got phenomenal grades. He was taking six or seven courses each semester, which is yeah, he got almost all a's in everything. He ran for the track team. You know, he starts making friends. He's genial, but he didn't ever like expound on anything, kept everything really surface.
Also, I mean he's doing track practice, studying a lot he's spending a lot of his time alone.
How he wouldn't have to expound on him exactly well, when he would talk to people, like he would look at the ground all the time and he would only say like a sentence orch So people asked him about that skiing photo, like do you ski? He's like, yeah, is that you in the picture? He's like, yeah, well, how did someone get that shot? I was doing stunts. They're like stunts, yeah, for a movie. And then he just changes the subject, goes on and so everyone's completely fascinated by him.
Interesting is yeah.
There's this documentary about him called con Man. It is really really good. It's not a long feature.
It' second.
Ever, as I was watching it, I realized that James was giving everyone exactly what they wanted. The school wanted a few interesting students to show how broad their population is. Not too many interesting students, but you know, exceptional one with incredible stories. He's going to enrich their legend.
Yes, bootstrap students.
And he provided almost the same for the students because they all loved that they had this interesting character there for their like Princeton experience. It made him feel special to have this creature among them, and they got to feel exceptional by association, Like, look at all the interesting people I met in college, all the cool people at Princeton. So they're thinking like, yeah, this is this elite environment where I'm sitting between like the kid of a senator
and a genius cow poke, you know. So his presencemates, yes, yes, and he's this great runner. So he brings his talents to the athletic program and not as some sort of brute but with like the elegance and elevated intellect of a long distance runner, a runner philosopher, and a cowboy hat.
He just sounds itself.
There it is. They have these things called eating clubs at Princeton yea, So they're private clubs. Is not part of the university, and it's like a dining hall meets social house. Almost all of the undergraduate upperclassmen join one, and some are more exclusive than others. So each club is located in its own mansion on this street Prospect Avenue, and there are eleven eating clubs in total, so six of them Cannon Club, Cap and Gown, Princeton Tower, the
Ivy Club, Tiger Inn, and University Cottage Club. Those picked their members through a process called bicker, and it's kind of like rush I think.
Yeah, the members picked the next year's members.
Yeah, it's very competitive, yeah, exactly. And the other five are just like a lottery system. It's such a big deal. So one of the most exclusive of the exclusive ones is the Ivy Club, and James got tapped for that one.
Yeah.
Another student remembered it, telling the New Yorker quote, two guys came in and I guess tapped him, and they rushed him out into the courtyard and poured champagne over his head. And he was obviously very excited. And I remember being struck that it was kind of a funny thing because he didn't really fit the stereotype of someone who would be in an IVY. Yeah. So James, he's this oddity for everyone, this character that gives them amusement.
But there he is, soaking it all up. He's living this amazing new life.
Yeah, philosopher cowboy with champagne all over it.
Right, reveling in the excitement, the character he's created for himself. Like everyone benefits from this.
He's got a prolonged adolescence.
Yeah, think about it. Put yourself in his Imagine your James and like there's champagne raining down on you.
You're being invited to the most exclusive.
Kyle and all the things you've done in your life and then now you get to be this new character. So but back to running track. Aw So he got to college in the fall of eighty nine. By the spring of nineteen ninety one, he was like fully ensconced in the institution like classroom to track everything. And then something happened. On February sixteenth, nineteen ninety one, James participated in the Harvard Yale Princeton track meet in New Haven, Connecticut.
Everything's going well. All the Ivy League swells are running around like congratulating each other and wearing their j crew whatever. Yes, one of the students at.
The picture them in raccoon hats and fur coats, super preppy. Oh, I know you're correct.
I just want to put rugby shirts, the striped.
Rugby shirts and the sweaters and the buffy and chadlock.
So one of the students at the meat was a senior at Yale, Renee Pacheco, and she was there to watch a friend of hers compete. Something interesting about Renee is that she is an alum of none other than Palli Palo Alto High School. She got a good memory. Yeah, So she looks over and she sees one of the Princeton team members. He looks familiar. They lock eyes and she knew. She's like, that's j Mitchell Huntsman, International boy of Mystery.
Like she knew, so she goes up to also know they both have them.
She goes up to talk to him and he's like, doesn't recognize her. She's like, oh, remember me, what's up? Jay?
And he's like, that's the thing when you're the more interesting person, is that you're going to be more memorable.
Right exactly. He he doesn't recognize her. She's flummoxed. So she she goes home and she calls that Palo Alto reporter Jason Cole. Oh wow, busted James the first time. She is a little snitch, is what she is?
Well, no, but she's like a detective with the.
Whole Yeah the rene mind your own business. Yeah, he's not hurting anybody. So Cole, the reporter, he turns around and calls Princeton. He's like, you know what, Alexi Santana is actually James Hoag and he's done this before and Prince is like according to the New Yorker quote. Justin Harmon, the director of Communications at Princeton, was grateful for the warning. A meeting was immediately convened with the Dean of Admissions, Fred Harganau and the Dean of the College. Santana's file
was produced, his application was reviewed. It became clear to us. Harmon recalled, particularly to the deans, that the only course of action from the standpoint of the institution, since this young man had applied to Princeton under utterly false pretenses, was to declare the admission null and void. And so that's what we did. Alexei Santana was now officially a ghost, is how the quote ends.
Wow. So they just they don't like go and try to remove him. They just say, you're no longer a student.
Yeah, you're out, like full on you know ejection.
You were never here. This never happened.
Yeah, never happened. So let's stop your let's stop for a second, a minute, one too. We come back. We're going to see what it means for Alexi to be a ghost. Hey buddy, Hey what girl, buddy, listen zaren yes, close your eyes.
Oh wow, just jump.
Its placement right, yeah, I want you to picture it. Yes, you are an economics major with a minor in geology at Princeton University. Your father went to Princeton. He's the CEO of an energy conglomerate, and you are prepping to follow in his footsteps. It's February twenty sixth, nineteen ninety one. Chris Isaac's wicked game is climbing the charts. You love that whole album and you listen to it all the
time on your sony Discman. You wear your hair in that sort of updated pompador and think of yourself as a dashing ladies man Zaren. You are not. But that's okay. We all get to reinvent ourselves. We all get to craft our identities for those around us. Right now, you're in Geology three sixteen Structural Geology and Tectonics. Well, the lab portion of the course. Your professor, John Supa pretty much crafted this course himself. He literally wrote the book
on it. And you're all clustered around tables, low mumbled conversation and a scribble of pencil on paper to create this low buzz in the room. The class is offered in the spring semester, so the course can wrap up with a field trip to Vermont. You'll be examining on the ground evidence of an ancient tectonic collision between an island arc and North America. It's fascinating stuff. There are seven guys in this lab with you, and one of them is that cool guy Alexi Santana. He's sitting across
from you on the table. He used to dress kind of raggedy, like long, scraggly hair, ball cap, pulled low sunglasses, cowboy boots, but when he came back for his sophomore year, he'd gone all preppy, like collared shirts and running shoes, short hair. Everything seems so effortless for him. He doesn't get distracted. He just keeps his head down and does really well, and you envy that. You stop staring at him, go back to work, flipping through pages in your notebook.
Suddenly there's a knock at the door. Doctor Supa heads over and open the large classroom door. Outside are two detectives in suits, their badges held up for inspection. We're here for James Hogue. They say, I don't have a student with that name, gentlemen, I'm so sorry. Alexi stands. They mean me, he says. Everyone in the room looks at each other in silence. I'm James Hogue, he says, James hog. One detective says you are under arrest. Every One in the room gasps. The professor gives you all
a disapproving look. Alexi walks over to the officers and turns his back to them. One reads his rights as the other clicks handcuffs on him. They usher him out of the class, his open notebook on the table, his backpack on the chair. There's nothing but silence in the room until you clear your throat you speak. Looks like he was running a wicked game. Everyone groans and rolls their eyes. Enough with the Chris Isaac stuff. They complain to you, a wicked game. Indeed, you declare, so, I'm
sorry it made you such a dork. So the students in that class there were now sitting on the best piece of gossip of perhaps God.
Yes, yeah, so they.
Wait the event of their college years. This is like, you know, the event at Princeton.
Yes, yes, they waste no time in getting the word out that Alexi was not Alexi, and he got arrested. And then they start like inventing more and more details.
Spice color the track team.
They're beside themselves. They could not imagine what Alexi could have done to get arrested. One of the students who had been tasked was showing James around when he first showed up, heard through the grapevine about Renee Pachaco and the Palo Alto story. So he also called the reporter and got the dirt. Wow, this reporter is like a weird little anyway.
And why is there numbers so easy?
I don't know.
So meanwhile, James, he's being held at the Princeton Borough Police Station. His interview with detectives when is followed under what name did you make application to Princeton University? Under Alexi Santana? Where did you obtain that name? I made it up for what purpose? I wanted to start all over again without any burdens of my past. So James answered all their questions and told the truth about everything.
He always seems to do that he does.
But the cops didn't feel like they were getting the whole story. But that's just how he operates, Like I'm not sure he knew the whole story, Like you know, he holds so much to the chest. Pretty soon though the national media was all about this. It was just too good, and like many of the Princeton students were totally indignant. How dare this riff raff come in here to make a mockery?
That's the story the elites, right.
And he was supposed to be our special little character. And then that snitch, Renee but Jacob. She was feeling all proud of herself for blowing the whole thing wide open until someone said to her, like, he's going to go to prison because you know what happens there. You know what happens to a guy in prison, and Renee Pachaiko, all of a sudden, she's like, oh, I feel terrible, Like it became real to her, and like the scale of the crime.
She just wanted to bust, not bust somebody, but like break out the truth.
I guess realized, like the machinery of the ramifications of this and so like this is so people.
Do that they don't think about the results of their actions or their choices. And then and then there's surprised when he.
Meets reality to be the hero of her story.
In that moment.
In that moment, consequences and it's this is so not worth any suffering what he does.
No, and if he's getting away with it, I mean, like, who's really hurting zero?
People got hurt zero anyway. So while he's in lock up, he gets a visit from giacinto this physical chemistry professor at Princeton and he felt for James. He didn't think that James was a hard and criminal. He's like someone who just doesn't think about the consequences of his action, like right, And so James makes bail and the professor offers him money, but James won't take it. But the professors then how about, like, I'm going to help you
move to Cambridge. I've got people there like Harvard Harvard. He's like, you can take classes at the Harvard Extension and I can get you a job. He got a part time job cataloging Harvard's collection of precious minerals and gems. I feel like that was a bad choice and it was because stuff went missing.
Ohs go.
On this moment, these searches room, they find more than fifty thousand dollars worth of minerals and gems.
He's like grabbing every sappire he came.
Crazy expensive microscope that belonged to Hardcore Lab share with the Harvard Seal on it. He's like you. So February tenth, nineteen ninety two, he pleads guilty to the charge of theft by deception. He told the court quote, I submitted an application at Princeton University which had a different name and date of birth. It was my intent to gain admission by deception. So he got two hundred and seventy days at the Mercer County Correctional Center, one hundred hours
of community service, five years probation. He was also supposed to pay back Princeton twenty one.
Thousand dollars ride.
Yeah, exactly, And so James he went from Cambridge to New Jersey for his sentencing December eighteenth, nineteen ninety two. He served five months, and on the day of his release, he gets arrested for the theft of the gems and he did another seventeen months for theft and probation violation. So remember that documentary I mentioned. The best part of the whole thing is an interview with James's cellmate, Donald Cilentry Junior. He's in for being a fence in some sort of
operation in New Jersey. He said James was a quiet guy like your read. And I guess when James got out, he came by Donald's house and dropped off a box of his stuff like books, old clothes, that sort of thing and things in the name of Alexei Santana. Like there was like a running trophy. So in the documentary, like the guy's the cellmate's poking through the box which he still had, and he's holding up T shirts and
you know, showing off the contents. And then we go inside the house and we talked to Donald's dad, Donald Cilentre Senior. Don Senior participates in the film sitting in an easy chair in a robe with a gun on the table.
Next to him.
Like he's just all like casual in this terry cloth robe, just and I'm praying it stays closed. And he's telling about how you know, there's something just off about James, and then the camera pans over and there's like a glock on the table. It's amazing. It's like the greatest moment. So I get all curious. I'm like, what's the story with this Don Senior?
Right?
So I look him up and he had a record too.
Is he a new Jersey run.
Oh yeah so, but here's his obituary in twenty twelve gives amazing bits. Donald the duck Celentre right there, He's the duck seventy eight of Trenton. Passed away on Thursday, September twenty seventh, twenty twelve, at home. Born in Trenton, Donald was a lifelong Trenton resident. He was a veteran of the United States Army. Donald was the owner operator of Don's Deli in Trenton, which he opened at the age of sixteen years and ran the business for sixty
two years until the time of his death. He enjoyed trips to Atlantic City.
There it is.
I want a movie about the duck.
My dad is from Trenton, and I gotta ask him if he knows Don's Please do.
All, please do, because like the dad has a record, son has a record, He's got a gun on the table.
I like the kind of place my pop would know.
This guy was like a beautiful diamond in the middle of this documentary. It's it's a great thing.
But like the Robe Ready documentary, he looks.
Like fresh out of the shower. Great. One of the other things that I loved about it like he and his son are super tickled that James got one over on Princeton. They love it. And then they interview Keith, the friend that you know, the he's just like stoked that James scammed in Ivy League college and like not some state school, Like, don't embarrass the state school. Stick it to them. He's just like Grinnan all over himself.
And I love punch up. I love the contrast with the offended Princeton kids, you know, like everyone else, all the working folks, They're like, this is entertaining. He's a folk hero. Good for him. So in the following years, like James tangled with the law a bunch of times. He also participated in the documentary and was interviewed by David Samuels for The New Yorker. He's enigmatic in all
of it, the crimes, the confession. He's always truthful when confronted, Like we said, but you get this sense that he's just sort of out of step with time and place.
I was just about to say, he feels like he was pulled from a different time and roped here. He said, make do.
He wants to be alone, and he values his privacy. He wanted to get like this huge swath of land and build a cabin and be self sufficient. And he's really interesting in the documentary of just like trying to explain himself, but then he won't. He just kind of gives these little smirks when he doesn't want to talk about stuff. He got busted for living in makeshift shacks and aspen because he's still.
Kind of like basically doing his cowboy thing right, and he goes back to like he can sleep outdoors. He can sleep.
When you take all the like garbage away. He's a guy who likes to be outdoors, can sleep outside in the ground. Very self sufficient, incredible athlete, and brilliant. The guy he's just like acing it everywhere he goes so like he no, it's not and he's just out of step, like he's just misplaced. So he's living in these makeshift shacks. He keeps getting busted like he's stealing bike parts and ski equipment other odds and ends, and he becomes this
sort of like bumming criminal figure and Aspen. Over the years, like the cops would show up to these like camouflage little lean twos that he'd have in the middle of the woods with like a cord running to an apartment building and he'd jump out a window and they're like, James, a bunch of Yeah. The last I could track him
down was twenty twenty one. He was arrested by Aspen police officers investigating a burglary and he got charged with parking illegally and stealing power from a nearby apartment building. And they didn't take him to jail, like there's such a low level thing that they just gave him a summons for trespassing and tampering. And I haven't been able to find anything since. I wish him well, really, I
do have a question for you, though. Have you ever thought about what it would be like to go back in your life and do things over with the knowledge you have now.
I've been asked that a couple of times, Like it's just like a general like get to know your question, like hey, would you rather this or rather that? Or like could you imagine? And I've thought about this like in earnestness, like I think it wouldn't be as much fun because the part of the discovery process, like the first time is so memorable because it's different than all the rest and what follows it that I wouldn't want to go back and try to like fake a first time.
It's something, you know what I mean? Like the part of the not knowing is part of the magic. So if I knew something, I don't think anything would feel valuable or real. I don't think it would actually affect me because it's like a marionetted reality, Like I'm controlling all the strings, so it's not real and I know it, and I can't convince myself that the reaction is real if I'm tricking people, like I would be aware of the strings even if they're not. So I don't think
that I could go back in time. You know, if I could turn back time, I got to bring it back, I would not because it wouldn't do much, and I would go to a different time.
Oh interesting, I would.
Rather go if you had time travel, Rather than going back into my own life and redoing something, or going back and pretending to be like a college student or whatever. I'd much rather go and see what like eighteen thirty was like you and a certain not in America, but in other places. I would like to see. I know what it was like in America, But so that's it. What about you would you want to go back.
And be yourself? I think about it a lot. Did you specifically want to be Yeah, like I could imagine like going back to college and not skipping as many classes, like actually applying myself sure, and having like a wiser outlook on life and people and relationships. Absolutely being savvy when originally I was anything but right. So I, you know, getting to try things over again, or like seeing things with a clearer understanding.
I do like to do things twice.
I'll try anything twice.
Well, I mean like I liked if I'm going to do something, I often enjoy it the second time more than the first.
Yeah, you watch TV shows over.
All sorts of stuff. I go to city. I've lived in cities twice. I mean like there's a lot of things that I do twice. So I don't mind going and trying something again. But it's different, you know what I mean. I'm just better at it.
Yeah. I like the notion of being able to rewrite it.
Yeah.
And I feel like James got to try that out feel really good to do it this way.
I'm going to do it that way, and then he also got to I mean I wonder if it made him feel anything. You know, those students thinking he was cool?
If you yeah, what what did it feel like standing there having the champagne raining down on you?
I think that one probably did feel good because it's such a like a culmination of his own things. But I'm saying is the people he tricked. I know that essentially he tricked them to get in, but I mean, like, I think he would feel like not that he'd earned it, but then he was special and that they're recognizing that when he's actually conning people. I wonder if it felt anything.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It'd be interesting to find out. I don't think we.
Ever will, No, not unless we can find him.
Dave, I need to talk back.
Oh God, I went get.
Hi Sarn, Elizabeth, producer Dye, and the interns who may or may not be dogs. I was listening to the episode with a side of chow chow the kidnapping of Elton B. Stevens Junior this morning, and I had to laugh because my husband and I have a running joke about the Curse of Oak Island that every episode is the same, So whenever we see a preview or airing this Friday episode with clips I'll be like, I've seen that already because every episode is the same, and I think that's really.
You feel me? Are that shows?
And with that we shall end things. You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime dot com. Did you know that with every click of the mouse we plant a tree?
I did not know that us in magical for us, that's awesome.
Every time someone clicks the mouse on Ridiculous time.
Dot com an actual physical mouse.
There's a mouse that runs around and you have to try and find me with your mouse. Yeah. We're also at Ridiculous Crime on both bluesky and Instagram Bluski and you can email us at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, uh producer Dave, and then also leave us a talkback on the iHeart app. I love those. You have no
idea how much I love these talkbacks reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by President of Princeton University Dave Kusten, starring Annals Rutger as Judath. Research is by Professor of Coolness Mursa Brown and Writing Center Assistant Alex French. The theme song is by Princeton University track team Sockboys Thomas Lee
and Travis Dutt. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five hundred guest here and makeup by Sparkleshot and mister Andre. Executive produce this our philosopher Goat Wrangler Ben Bollen and Ashram chemistry tutor Noel Brown.
Ridicous Crime, Say It One More Time Ridiquious Crime.
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