Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
What's Up? It's me Zaren Burnett from Ridiculous Crime and the hit CBS series Chicago Code Enforcement. Elizabeth and I are away from headquarters and only able to record these brief intros Bolivian Internet. It can be spotty, especially in the Boron minds. We were on our way to complete our initial assignment when we received a telegram from Bette Midler asking for helps or seeing Boron for her neodymium magnet production facility. You can't turn down Bette Midler, So
here we are. This though, is the third in our four part series of fan favorite Classics. Episode seventy three. What do you get when you combine twelve hundred college student cadets, football, epic training, truck and car chases, private investigators, and a two hundred pounds owl? You get the Texas A and m versus Rice College rivalry, also known as a snowballs chance. Enjoy No, Elizabeth Dunnan.
I'm good.
You know what's ridiculous?
I do?
Hell? Do you want to share it with me?
Collective nouns?
What do you mean?
Well, you know, like groups of things like murder of crows, parliament, owls saren Have you ever done a deep dive on collective nouns? Oh? Completely, son, Oh yeah, I looked at him.
I used to use those as a way to calm myself down in anxious moments.
Okay, I don't want to know, but like you know, there's like a colony of bats. You know what jugglers is, a juggalo of jugglers, a never thing of of jugglers. Oh that's fine, which, like you know, you never see a group of jug well, I guess you do see a group of jugglers outside the Loser Convent.
No kidding, collective noun for silences.
There's a rumba of rattlesnakes, that's cool. And the kingdom of rats, which is kind of like a rat king, which don't google that people. My favorite a death row of turkeys.
Oh that is good, right, And I mean.
A lot of these are multiple collective nouns for these groups, but a death row of turkeys.
Yeah, that's up there.
Yeah.
Is there a writing desk of ravens?
Sure? Never more.
Well, I've got something ridiculous for you.
You got to it, probably way more ridiculous than that I have all the time in the world.
Oh excellent, because this one, it's a wild one, and it'll take me a second to tell to you. Are you ready. Yes, it's about a Texas town. I mean, you know, I like Texas towns, and it is Texas
town in particular. It gets taken over by twelve hundred college age military cadets who are eager to win a rivalry prank war that involves now take notes, Yes, two private detectives, multiple high speed car chases, a night raid on an armory and a depot, a town's telephone lines being seized, casual gunfire, mass arrest, wrongful imprisonment, and a two hundred pounds owl.
Oh okay, this is ridiculous Crime.
A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and ridiculous. Elizabeth Sarah. Before we dive into the insanity of this story, I like to give you a little context.
I love content, right, I figure you do.
Now you also love Reddit, right I do. Yeah.
I don't really check on anybody, but I know you like to lurker. Yeah, I don't post, I just.
You just read until you lurk. Rather Well, there was a post a couple days ago. He might have seen it. I don't know. This guy put forward a theory that the University of Alabama doesn't exist.
I missed that one.
Yeah, And they say, he said, basically, well, I'll just quote it. He said, conspiracy theory. Quote Alabama is not an actual school. It is just a football team. And then he makes his case and I continue to quote. The title says it all. I don't think Alabama truly exists as a school. There are no classes. If you somehow break into one of the buildings on campus, you'll find dusty storage rooms with used jockstraps and satanic altars to bear Bryant's demon ghost. I have met so many
damn many Alabama fans roll tad they say. If you ask them what year they graduated, they will usually hit you with, ah, I never been to college. Like that's the most ridiculous thing they've ever heard. I live and work in the South. I've interacted with fans of every other SEC team, and most of them have actually attended the university they root for. I have never not once met an Alabama fan that went to Alabama.
That's incredible, right, I can get behind that kind of theory. Yes he does.
As you know, he gets response on Reddit, and so far he had had to post an edit, and so I quote, there are some very humble gentlemen visiting me. Every word I've said is unjust. I now know. Maybe I've just been stressed lately and i wanted to be the center of attention. Hopefully my new friends can correct my ignorance on the beauty of an Alabama education. Nick Saban is handsome and intelligent and every man or woman's dream. I've shown my jealousy of their degree programs and anyone
would be lucky to go to school in Tuscaloosa. May God have mercy on my soul, and may Elfan's trample me if I ever Transchrist again.
He should have held fast on that one.
I'm just glad he found the truth in the way of Alabama football because also, I'm legally required to say this because it'll be broadcast in Alabama.
Role Tide.
Yes, so you know, there you go. Bear Now you lived in South Carolina. We've talked about this, and they're an sec style like fanatics for football in that area. They got Clemson, you got the University of South Carolina game Cocks. Now is that told true? Like the Alabama fans where you'd meet people who like, they're like, oh, yeah, I love Clemson and you're like, oh, well, yar'd you graduate and the like, oh I ain't never been to school.
One hundred percent percent. Yeah. I mean when I moved down there, people would say, who do you root for? Clemson or USC? And of course, coming from California, I'm like you already Trojans? Are you kidding me? And uh so then I was educated on that that it's the Cox and uh so they everyone said I had to choose and I was like, like, you know Kelly on nine o two and oh, I choose me. So I
wouldn't want to pick a side. But then I was you know, I'd ask people, oh, you went to Clemson, were you like, you know, an AG major of some sort? And no, they didn't go to Clemson. And same with the most almost every USC fan really yeah that most of them didn't go to those schools. They went to college, they just didn't.
Went to smaller school. Yeah, and they wanted to support the big.
But I'll tell you the most maniacal fans are the Clemson fans who actually did go to Clemson.
Why are they most maniacal?
Like that's all they wear the clothes like they don't know any other clothes, all on and gear and they're super into it, which you know, hey, respect, you love your you love your alma mater.
Yeah, fire up that tiger rag.
Yeah. But you know what, I choose me.
I'm so clod for that. You went to Davis for college and they have a football program. It's now an NCAA team. You did you go to games? Did you care about?
Like once or twice they had? You know, I went to games?
Did you no?
Big?
Was it like a thing? Like? Because you know, I grew up in Davis's my hometown, so we rooted for UCD and I know that idea of being the touny rooting. And now obviously it wasn't like oh I was like eleven, So I was like, oh, you could go to school there. Nobody thought that. But we look, we see the players walking around town. They were huge to us. It might as well be like an NFL star, an NBA star. We loved the team, but we noticed the college kids.
You guys didn't give it. You didn't know anything about the teams. You didn't know, like the game was on Saturday.
I kind of stumbled into it a couple of times, and I was always distracted by the like associative activities, like the T shirt cannon. The T shirt you mean the game, that's a game campus we're in. The full back just fires a T shirt cannon at the other players. No, and then here's here's the thing. I seem to recall that they I think I made this up, and now I think it's real. Someone put a burrito in the T shirt cannon. I don't know if it really happened.
I think I was imagining it that they would go burrito madness and like fire burritos that would explode and people. But like I guess, you know, if you asked me, I'm like, yeah, totally, I saw that. I don't think that actually happened. You know, it's all a blur burrito madness.
I love that.
Well that is so that's the extent of my football knowledge. I'm not a football person, no.
I know this. I definitely know that it's the community aspect of football that I find really fascinating, especially college football, because people will, you know, find themselves in a team and they will go to war for their team. Oh yeah, which brings to this story. So the story takes place in nineteen seventeen. Right now, that was the year that we would enter World War One. This is just before then. This is in January. We enter in April. This is in January.
Is that the year football was invented?
No, we can just say, yes, this is the year football was invented.
It was cool.
And so when they're inventing the game of football, it took place in Texas. They invented football in Texas, Texas A and M the Agricultural Mechanical School. Yes, they were playing Rice University. But in this instance, since it was January, which is after football season, they decided to play a football game on the basketball court. And they wore basketball uniforms and then they'd use a basketball.
Oh in the world, and they used basketball.
So they just played basketball. It was a basketball.
They just really threw the basket.
I'm just saying it's a basketball, Okay. I just didn't want you to get too jarred. Yeah, because I know you've just become a fan of football.
Yeah, it was just invented.
Yeah, it's a brandow sport. You were there the basketball game that they played was Houston's Right University versus college stations Texas A and M. Right big rivalry. Basketball was a huge sport at the time. And although it was a really interesting game because when they won the game, the score was twenty one to thirteen. So Rice beats Texas A and M and embarrasses them twenty one.
To thirteen football basketball.
I'm glad you know that.
Yeah, I figured that one out.
So this was also the Texas A and M's first victory over a Right sports team in three years. Right, they're just fired up about this. They go big, they're celebrate, and they're doing everything they can. They're getting drunk, they're yelling, they're screaming, the driver around and their Model T cars in the campus. Right, but it's not enough. They need something else, the symbolic expression of their victory, something they can hold on to, right, something to unite them and
give them this moment. So what do they do. They're like, it's cast about and find something that we can always have this feeling right, And they find exactly what they need. The Texas A and M basketball players, some fans, some students, and some non student alumni. They all discover however that Rice has left their mascot behind and it's unprotected, right, And their mascot is an owl that is about the size of a man, about a six foot tall owl.
It's not real. It's a statue. It's got a wooden understructure. It has a canvas skin stretched over it. It weighs two hundred pounds. It is a huge structure.
Did a man climb up inside of it?
No, it's just a statue that they carry around. They plopped out. It's more of, yes, an effigy. That's probably the better way of putting it. So this effigy, this canvas creation of theirs, it's you know, filled with sawdust and excelsior, which is stuffing material. Sounds right, and not a great word. Excelsior. It's always like that. Stanley's favorite word is also on the motto of the New York State. It just means like ever on. Yeah, it also means stuffing, yes,
New York stuffing. So this, uh, this wool stuffing that's filled in this bird is what gives it its volume, its weight, its shape, and then obviously the wooden understructure. Right, So the thing two hundred pounds and it's six foot tall. It's basically like picking up a man, right, like a big football player size guy. Now, these guys they pick up this owl and they run off with it, and they manage to get away without any of the Rice
students catching them, right. And then you have to keep in mind also that these Texas ANA and M students, they are corman, they are cadets because Texas A and M at this time was a military institute that required the students to be cadets.
And oh, I didn't know that coming in.
Just a few months, these kids are all about to go off. They all will be released to go join World War One. And at this time they're training for the war. So they're on war footing. They're like war craze. They are already in a military mind. So they start to act like this is an operation.
Well, they're ready to get their faces shot off.
So they and they grab this owl and they they you know, back all off with it into the dark. They loaded into a car, they drive to the train station. They load the owl onto the train station. They hand it over to the Wells Fargo agents. They go get this back to college station and don't tell anyone, you have it, and they're like, okay, are you going to pay for this?
That's all?
That's all, yeah exactly, So they do. They put it on the train, they load it up, and they take the owl back to Texas A and M.
Right.
The Rice students they learn about this when they read it in the news. The Texas A and M. They put it in the news. It filters over to Houston and then they're like what so.
Wait, they got all the way home and they didn't realize they forgot a two hundred pound owl.
No, no, this was that the game was in Rice. So the Texas students go back. Texas students go back. Yeah, so the Rice students are just missing their They weren't they weren't thinking of it.
It was in charge of cleaning the owl after the games.
That's a really good question. I will put that to our researcher. And who's an owl cleaner here? So, Texas A and M. Right, they have the owl, they've managed to get it back, and the Rice students figured this out. So what are they going to do? They lie, They decide, you know what, we're gonna say they didn't steal the owl. So they build a new owl and they put that on campus and they insist that's the original owl.
Like when a kid loses the stuff down, the parents get it one.
So they try that, and now all thing that has to do is pretty much suffice for all of the students and the local population. They could show the newspaper, well see we still have our owl, but they know the truth. So like, we got to get our owl back. Yeah, So seventeen students get together a bunch of student athletes, members of the track team, football team, basketball team. They'd create the Owl Protective Association. So they decide, you know, two days after this owl is stolen, that they were
going to get their owl back. And so then they hire a private detective. That's their first move. We need somebody to find out where the owl is.
Side one.
Yeah, so get get ourselves a private dick and we'll get him to go look for it. So the private detective, they're like, they go and they meet this guy and he's like a grizzled nineteen seventeen private detective probably you know, like I don't know, beat up railroad strikers for the Pankertons.
I don't know this guy.
He's a hard dude, right, So they pay him to travel to college station and hunt around for the owl. He does. He's like, okay, I'll go out to college station and i'll telegraph you guys when I find it. Right, So Private Dick takes the student's money goes off to college station. They don't hear from them. Maybe we made a mistake. So they decide, okay, we need to go over to college station to find out what's going on. So they have to sneak onto the campus. Remember, these
are all cadets. So they go to the store like the Army Navy store and they get some army uniforms.
Right, so theiform No, these the Rice students are just college students, are just like rich Texas A and M is the cadets.
So the Rice students have to go get uniforms so they can sneak onto Texas campus. Right, So they managed to do this. Now have they have all the uniforms and they're gonna go. You have to understand Texas A and M As I told you military institute. So they have real military officers who were armed as sentries on the campus. They've got bull sergeants so as they call them who run around, who tell the students what to do. So they're sneaking onto essentially a military ye like a
DeBie base in Texas. Right, So the right students, they got their work cut out for them. So when they get to town, turns out their detective was on the case. He didn't just take their money and steal away into the night. That's what I thought when I was reading this. It turns out he did, you know, find the guys who like may have stolen it. He's like, I couldn't find the owl. I hate to tell you guys. They're like, man, that sucks. That's terrible news. It's a dark night, it's raining.
They're like, well, we already came all the way to College Station, which is about like a ninety mile one hundred mile trip. So they're like, I guess while we're here, we can hunt around. So they hunt around on the Texas A and M campus, pretending to be student or cadets rather. Yeah, and they have with them two transfer students who know the university. So they're like, okay, where where are It's like the dormitories, where's the where would they put this?
Right turncoats?
They had exactly turncoats. So the scouts they send out. They search all of the buildings except for the dormitories because there'll be too many people who may recognize them. But everything other than that, they're avoiding centuries, military guards, the whole bit. They can't find the owl. No luck, right, so the OPA their their scouts to go off. They return to Houston four more days past to start sweat. People are starting to question the owl they have in the campus.
Because they look right.
So they're like, okay, well this may be beyond us. We need to hire a new detective. So they're rich kids, they throw some money together and they hire a second detective. This dude's and hey, I swear to God is Snowball.
That's the only thing he's referred to.
It was a cat's snowball. Yeah, like he's a cat like snowball. The cat producer Dave spot On with the acknowledgment of the snowball is essentially like his code name. But it's the silliest damn code name he could come up with. And he's in Texas, right, So Snowball shows up on your heart bit detective, what do you guys need? Right, And they're like, I'll take the case.
Snowball like the nose tutans, No, No.
I think he's just a sweetheart.
So is this a little powder problems.
I'll find your two hundred pound owl mascot or whatever you got right, And so the snowball drives out to college station and he starts snooping around and he poses as a Houston area newspaper reporter. He's like, I heard about the owl nab and I want to get the story. And the kids are like, oh, it's great, yeah, because they want the story to go back to Houston and embarrass all the Rice students, so they never questioned the story. He manages to get in and meet the actual Texas
A and M bird nappers. They show him the bird because he's like, I need pictures for the paper. They're like, okay, we'll take it this way. They take them up to the place where they're hiding the bird. He snaps his photos and he's like, okay, the bird's here, and he's like thank you guys, pretends to be a reporter and leaves. Then he goes out to the telegram office Telegram's Rice and he's like, you know, they've got the bird. He sends a coded message The bird's nickname is Sammy, That's
what the Rice students call him. So he sends his coded message, Sammy is fairly well and would like to see his parents at eleven o'clock.
Oh exactly.
So, now the plot is completely in motion, and after this short break, I'll be right back to tell you the next installment in this insane.
Two Nice.
Okay, Elizabeth, you're ready for more of the Great Owl theft? Yes?
Please?
Okay. So the Rice students, right, they now know that the bird is still fine, it exists, and their detective Snowball has found it for them, So they need to get into action, right. The seventeen members of their OPA are called out on a raiding party and they're ready to roll. The Owl Protective Association. Yeah, sorry, I should keep you up with the acronyms. So they decided that Snowball's message and a quote was a signal that the owl had been located and that his capture was now
a matter of daring. So daring is called for, and daring is what they're prepared.
With a feat of daring do Yeah, exactly.
So, the seventeen members of the OPA, the Owl Protective Association, the rock up in two old Fords and a Hudson Super six. They load up all seventeen people in these three cars. Right. The second car, the second car just mentioned, the Hudson Super six. Yeah, that was introduced in nineteen sixteen, much like professional football. So it was called the Super six because I had an inline six cylinder engine. It was the one of the fastest cars of his time.
It was a high performance engine. Like I said, the Rice students, rich kids, right, So they've got this car has a distinctive seventy two horsepower, just blazing form nineteen seventeen. That's forty more horsepower than you get from a similar size Hudson the year prior. Right, So we're talking like real fast. Now, if you're wondering top speed, seventy five miles per hour pretty fast for our non American listeners, one hundred and twenty kilometers.
Excellent. Now.
Fun fact, the Jode family when they went west in the Grapes of Wrath, what they were driving in was a Hudson Super six. Whoa, Now, this is what it looks like.
I'm just going to show you a picture of that put on Instagram.
Yes I will, man, it's the Hudson Super six is probably one of my favorite cars of era.
It just looks really cool, right, how many you did it? Seat?
I'd probably take, like, you know, standards five six.
People and this we had seventeen boys. And this is like in the.
Era wh people would try to see how many people they could fit in a telephone booth, you know, like they were really into.
Like squeezing before that.
There, it's likely, yeah, that's more the twenties. But I'm saying leading up to this, this is the college era of raccoon hats and big fur jackets and like, let's see how many people we can get in this seat, you know, yeah, wacky. So they're doing all of that, and there's a Texas kids, so they go big with it there seventeen. So the other two cars, those are
the two old Fords. When I say old Fords, everybody back then they just refer to the When I read the newspaper accounts, they just said old Fords because there was the only the Model T. They have a bunch of Fords. It's like previous Model A, but now we're to the Model T. The old Tin Lizzy right, top speed forty two miles per hour, blazy, yeah, and for the non American listeners, that's sixty eight kilometers per hour.
So these are, by the way, this is what the Tin Lizzy looks like in case you'd like just a quick recollection.
Yep.
Yeah. So it's the classic car that you think of, like the buggy if you will.
Yeah.
So we have seventeen ten as the horn that goes oh, exactly exactly. So we have seventeen young men loaded in these two open air cars with thin tires, overloaded with a bunch of football players, and they're headed out into essentially dirt roads for one hundred miles to get to College Station, Texas from Houston. There mandates is not as
bad as West Texas, but it's basically central Texas. So they're going through like some mountainous not quite mountainous region, but you know the Texas hills country, Yeah, the hill country and then lots of wooded areas. And they are not going through easy these you are not like you know, paved roads. User cars are designed for driving on basically a wagon road.
Sure, yeah, and it's.
Texas, so they got plenty of wagon roads. So these seventeen men at eleven thirty at night, they reach College station, and that's when they meet up with their private Dick Snowball, right, and Snowball's got some bad news for the boys right now. There was a contemporaneous account of all that's published in the Rice University student newspaper called The Thresher and the Thresher, and it's Thursday, February the fifteenth, nineteen seventeen edition if
you want to look this up on newspapers dot com. Yes, they had a first hand account written by members of the OPA, so we have their actual account. And I quote the detective was of the opinion that would be impossible to get the bird, and it was as it was on the third floor of the US Armory, the strongest room at A and M. But he stated there was a sporting chance to win out.
Huh.
So he's like, look, they got it in the basically the fort on campus and on the third floor, so you have to fight your way in. And they're military, so god speak, you Gause are college athletes, so give it as sporting chance. Right, four men decide, okay, we need to go see what the lay of the land is and they go out on a scouting mission.
Right.
Their names are for the sake of this story, Full Whiler, billups Moore, and the leader Jimmy Waters Gas four will be the only ones whose names I will be telling you because they will come up over and over again. They are essentially the leaders of this racial party.
Right.
So full Whiler, billups More and Waters they hit the track running they go, and they sneak onto campus and they are after their two hundred pound owl mascot. Right. So the four men they elude sentries and these bull sergeants and all the campus cadets, and they entered the US Armory on the ground floor. They make it into the building, all right, So now they have to ascend three flights of stairs. They managed to do that without catching any of the watchmen who are circling through the building.
They're also you know, students who are on guard because they know they have the stolen owl and they know it's in that building, so any weird sounds or anything will immediately alert suspicions. They decide, okay, we need to do this quietly, so they take out big knives and they try to carve their way through a heavy wooden armory door. What so imagine like one of those mission style California doors. We're like, the boards are like nine inches solid woods. They're going to carve through.
Are you kidding me?
So this noise draws the attention of a watchman. They're just slamming away into the woods.
All these guys need to start going to class.
Oh just wait. So Jimmy Water squad leader, he as he just says, here's the watchman coming up the stairs, Like we needed to distraction. So he's like, I'm gonna do something insane. So he runs towards the third story window, climbs out, and then it gets the watchman's attention before he does this. Climbs out of the window and he manages to walk down the side of the building for the third story, but climbing like with his hands and his feet. Basically, he like Spider Man, climbs down the
side of the building. So the Watchman's like, what the hell, So he runs down to the ground floor to be there when he gets done with this three like three story climb. Right, So the watchman is there when Jimmy Waters hits the ground. But Jimmy Waters is a track star, so he hits the ground starts running immediately, right, He doesn't even like have any hesitation. The watchman chases after him,
a perfect distraction, right. So the rest inside they're like, okay, we can get to it, but they hear more watchmans are like dah. So now they're hiding in pools of darkness and shadow and they wait for twenty thirty minutes. They don't know what to do, so they're like, ah, Now Jimmy's outside just running around for this whole time, trying to evade sentries and students and guards, and he's doing it for the most part. So another one of the three who are now inside, they decide, Okay, I
need to go out and see what's going on. Maybe I can help Jimmy and distract more people. You guys can get in. So he runs out there, and as soon as he gets out, there's kid full Whiler. He's like, trying to make his distraction. He runs right into Jimmy Waters and a bull sergeant who's grabbed him and is questioning him. He's out there, Jimmy Waters is nervous, he's telling his family name, his family's history. He's doing everything
he can to do. It's okay, it's okay. So what does full Whyler do he just runs right up into him, knocks down the bull sergeant Jimmy Waters, and he's scamper off, right. So now the two of them start leading the bull sergeants on this mad chase. The two of them split up, so everybody's running around. Kids cadets are starting to get involved and now they know what's going on. Meanwhile, the other fourteen members of the seventeen year are watching. They're like,
you know, what's time to blitz the armory. We can't do this, like you know, skullduggery stuff. So their new plan is charge, right, so they just run onto campus and so now we have all seventeen members of the OPA running around, some big ass football players, gangly basketball players, track star and a bunch of cadets and they're all chasing each other all around in the nighttime and the January air because remember this is also wintertime, so it's cold.
So now to protect their flanks these other members of the OPA, they secure the entrances of the US Armory. So the guys upstairs, because everybody knows where they are, they're still trying to get inside, so they block the doors on the ground floor so that way all these bull sergeants and students can't get in, and then a couple of big college football players rush up to go help the guys knock down the door. So they're armed with crowbars and fire extinguishers that they've pulled off of
the walls. God, so they run up and they decide, Okay, we're all big guys, we'll just knock down this door. So they try using their shoulders. First, one guy runs and he gets bounced off, lands on the tile floor. Now that guy does it. This isn't working. So then they decide we'll go in tandem. So two guys hold hands, two big football players hold hands, and they run at the door, and that doesn't work, and then two more do it. Boom, oh, it cracks open. The door knocks down.
So it turns out they didn't need all the crowbars and fire extend They just needed a couple of big football players to throw themselves right. So when the door springs open, what did they find?
I have no idea.
The owl is sitting there.
In bed with the general. No, I don't know.
Smoking of cigars like that was nice.
I don't know.
I don't know what people nineteen seventeen, you know, nobody knows right exactly. According to the contemporaneous accounts in the Thresher, the quote, the owl was concealed under some canvas at the rear of the armory. The six men seize the old birds, soust them in gasoline, and rushed down three flights of stairs to the ground floor, where the night watchmen wasn't counting. You're like, wait, gasoline, why did you hear there?
Right?
Good ears, So they were confronted by this night watchman, right, and so they tell them, oh, you know, we're students from Texas A and M. We're trying to protect it. They got these you know, troublemakers run around on campus. We're gonna go hide the bird. And the what I watch them's like, where are you taking? He's like right over there, and then they just run in the other direction. Night Watchman's like, wait, what are you doing. They run it over to a car. They throw it in the
Hudson Super six and that car takes off. This bull sergeant night watchman, he gets pissed. He pulls out his forty four and starts firing. Oh yes, what so now the two so the students have to run. They topping the tin lizzies. They hopping the sets in Super six and they're tearing around, but they're not done. They don't want to just get away. They decide, let's, you know, let's car some donuts in the grass. So they start doing circles into and donuts and they're getting fired at,
mind you. So the OPA is pretty stoked. They got back there out right. So and meanwhile there's a couple others who have not quite made it to the car. They decide to grab some paint that they found and they paint the score of the last football game that they won twenty to zero on the side of the building in giant numbers. Right, this is more warning. Shots are firing out, Bugles are being blown, students are yelling, and at this point the OPA is like, look repressing luck.
So they decide to floor it and tear ass out of there. And they managed to escape the campus. Right now, they've got to drive from College Station back to Houston. It's about one hundred mile trip. As I told you, she'd take about an hour and a half two hours, but if you're going forty two miles and I'll solid two hours. This is if they can make it there, because remember now they got hundreds of college cadets who
are about to give chase. Yeah, Elizabeth, I'd like you to close your eyes and picture it.
My eye is a closed Okay.
It's the dark of night. It's January in Texas. The air is cold, the wind is howling as it blows. And there you are with the OPA riding shotgun in the tiled four to ten Lizzie. Ahead of you is another ten Lizzy, and and ahead of that is the year old Hudson Super six. The roads are bad and you're getting jumped and bumped around in your seat as your guys are rocking and rolling down this dirt road car loaded down with other students members of the OPA.
You're all racing back to Houston. You're all fired up, you're excited, you're yelling, but you have this tiny fear inside of you because you're like, this doesn't seem like we've gotten away with it. I don't know.
Why, right, that's that would be me.
Your fears are confirmed when the first forward in the caravan its headlights go out. Oh hits, A bump light goes out. You're like, that's that's no good. So now you guys are in the middle of Texas. Nowhere you got no electric lights. There's no it's just endless darkness. Right, So yeah, these headlights, so you're likest forget that car. Well, no, we need it. So there's too many of us. Okay, you've been in back and we'll keep going. So now they put the car with no headlights in the in
the back. Keep running. Right. So now you're in the lead car of the caravan and uh, you're bouncing a roll, rolling along. Still another miles passes. Now your lights are out. You guys hit a bump your lights? Get is going on with these Fords? What can I tell you?
This is you close your mouth.
So now that the lights are cut out, both bards are running blind. Right, So the Hudson super six takes over his swords.
Maybe the Fords were doing it just because they knew they had to be secrets. Well, they do this purpose sentiences.
They're doing really well the back of the line. So let's just take it from there. About since super six is leading this caravan, the Fords are trying to keep up doing their forty two miles an hour in the dark. Now before you can curse her, but I could curse Henry Ford's a good name. There's another big run in the road and it passes the Ford in front of you. If they're breaks after they land and you slam your Ford slams into them, boom, you basically destroy the front
end of your car. Now your Ford doesn't even operate, So now give one less car. So everyone's like, oh suppose this is no good? Is the car shuddering to a stop? You're like, everybody get in the other cars. So now they they got running boards, they got laps, clinging just like laying on other people. People are clinging to on the running.
On the can't feel their leg not exactly, not at all.
But now you and the one operable Ford and the Hudson Super six, you're tearing away, all seventeen of you in there, and you and your night raid is really not going too well so far.
But well, I mean we got the owl so far.
Yeah, it looks like, you know, you're overcome most obstacles except for you notice there's a new obstacle emerging from the darkness. It's this bright light and then you have you hear the train whistle and you're like, oh no, Because the whole plan was to get to College station and there will you guys would do your raid after the last train had left, So that way they couldn't the cadets couldn't take a train and just get back
to Houston. But you decided to rush it. Remember you got the charge, messed up your timing, and now the train is rushing along and you look over and you spy, Oh how hundreds of students cadets ring out of every window of the limited that's running to Houston. They're screaming and shouting because they can see you, guys, and you can see them. You're not that far away. You on the dirt road, them on the tracks, and they are clipping along. It looks like they're gonna get back to
Houston before y'all. Oh no, So what do you do, Elizabeth? Like, what's the move? You're still in shotgun? What's your call?
I would I would stop and wait till morning, let them go and like you know, cooler jets in Houston, and wait and wait and wait mm hmm. And then meanwhile I can wait. I've like hi out and roasting it up. And yeah, then I go to Austin. It's called a little tour. But when it's light out, then you don't need your headlights.
Yeah, good point. Well, they they listen to most of your plan except for they go, you know what, we should go one further than that, Elizabeth, stopping isn't enough, So you know, let's just go with the thresher's account, because I want you to hear it in their words quote, it was impossible to make any speed on the road. So the party turned around and started back towards College Station. They turned up the first lane they found in a
wild ride of five miles through the woods. Ensued. They decide let's head back towards College Station, and they started that's not a good idea, make a right, So then they start heading north, heading North and Texas into the darken woods and they wrap it off into the woods, trying to make a run for it. Do you think they're gonna get away with it? No, after a quick break. I'll be back with the end of this insane tale. I love it, okay, Elizabeth. So where were we?
Uh? Car chase? Poor decisions on the part of.
The Paw Protective Association. Yeah, so we're headed into North Texas, North Dallas forty will come Okay. The OPA is on the run from hundreds of Texas A and M military cadets. You've got one hundred miles to get back to Houston, and however many miles to get back to College station. One of your ten Lizzie is not working. The other one is limping after the Hudson Super six. No lights right,
hit it cars. Things aren't going well, and you now then break down again one mile down the country road that you guys have just gone, and I reached turn to the thresher's coverage. The remaining Ford soon gave up on the struggle and was left with five men to guard it and to draw a pursuit away from the big car containing the owl. So the rating part and I was all in the Hudson Super six whatever, however many people they can load in.
Their car left five. There's twelve people in this car.
Yeah, there's twelve people loaded up in this Hudson Super six and a two hundred pound owl. Yeah, so that's six feet tall. So after oh yeah.
That's after four, they're thirteen in this car.
Yeah. So after four more miles, the super six runs out of gas because they've.
Not even drive it all night.
No worse than that, they've knocked a hole in the gas ty gone over all these rocks and ruts and roads. Right. So now the OPA is like, Okay, we got no cars. We're in the middle of Texas and we have a six foot tall, two hundred pound owl. We've got to carry eighty ninety miles.
And isn't the owl covered in gasoline?
Yes, it's covered in gasoline. So hours have passed. Now the night is being ginning to give way to on. So the Purple hour is approaching and Snowball, the private detective, he's with them, he's with the raiding party.
Oh so they are now fourteen Actually.
Yeah, because he decided it was quote a sporting proposition to go along with the guys if he could rescue.
The owl to regain his youth.
Yeah, he goes off and they break up into two parties. One of the parties will go into the closest town and see if they get gas as soon as like the sun comes up, and then come back to the two cars that they are going to park and hide in some woods. That's their plan.
They like shirts and skins.
Yeah, the skins will hang out with the owl and then hide in the woods. Right, that's the plan, and hopefully they can get maybe a friendly mechanic to come and either come back with them and fix the cars, or they can load the cars up a gasoline, drive to town and get the cars fixed there. That's the plan. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Texas A and M cadets, Right, what are they doing in all of this? Remember he's racing on the train. That was only some of them.
There's twelve hundred students who will be involved.
In this chase. Wait, so how many were on the train.
A couple hundred.
Yeah, they're now just sitting.
There on the right hands and they're waiting in Houston just be in trouble making.
And then you got like a thousand of them coming up. Yes, that's about they need to go back to.
We have an account from the thresher that can give you some exact numbers.
I want to give the thresher a hand, but not as a farm X. Every time you say thresher, all I think is like you.
You immediately got there. I like that about you. So I quote from the hand taking thresher. Yes, the AMM cadets had been busy organizing their pursuit. Everything that had four wheels had been requisitioned and pressed into service. Eight hundred cadets were brought up to the firing line and automobiles, motorcycles, wagons, buggies, and of course the train.
This is like mad Max. Yes, So it doesn't.
Take long for these eight hundred cadets going off in every direction to find that the raiding party that's out in the woods dis down on a road.
Right now, hold on, when they find this little raiding party, what are they going to do to them? Just tear them limb from lim They just wait, wait, this is this is this isn't.
No, there's no no murder in this one. But there's some sociliarities coming up, so you ready. I returned to the thresher. A detachment of cadets raided Millican and found all of Rice's means of locomotion in the garage. So the guys who had gone off to the town of Milliican with their car, they get discovered, and I continue the quote. The immediately took charge of the cars. Nine Rice men, who had been left to delay pursued as long as possible, were captured with the cars. One of
the people captured, Snowball, the private Detective Snowball. So the other half of the raiding party, they get a messenger back from Milligan. He runs out of town and makes it back to where they are hiding the cars in the woods and tells them, you guys need to run for it.
They're on to us.
We don't have a car. So they're like, okay, so what do they do? They decide we're going to just run for it. So they decided to take this two hundred pound owl and run back to Houston. So they start running across the tall grass to save themselves.
So no, and I quote didn't happen.
Running with a two hundred pound owl was a larger contract than the exhausted men could fill, and all hopes of taking the bird wholesale were abandoned. The A and M searchers were hot on the trail, so the eight men hid themselves in a thicket and skinned the cover off the owl and the hide given to four men with instructions to take it to Houston and stuffing. Was then set on fire as it had been discovered that the party was completely surrounded by cadets, so they burned
the owl. Now the thing is is the gasoline makes it so there's not much smoke, so they almost get away with it, but this is one of the cadets notices the flame and then they go rushing over to where they're hiding in the thickets. So now four of the guys the leaders of the OPA, so this is full while or Drummond uh and my boy More and Jimmy Waters yea yeah, they take the owl skin and they make a break for it. The skin others try to distract, so Sam the owls handed over to the
floor fastest. They're all members of the track team.
They're disgusting run for it.
So they and the other ones, the other four, they lead the aggie search party that's surrounding them in the wrong direction. Right, They're like, yeah, making a lot of noise, run for you guys, trying to get their attention. Jimmy Waters is leader of what we now call the Elusive Four. The Elusive four are going to be officially a dude named Dane, a dude named Payne, a dude named Waters, and Drummond.
So we got a weird old time nursery run day, Potters and trumm and getting the owl and off they went together.
So and I quote they entered some thick woods and had over fifty men on their coat tails in no time at all. The four men had been well chosen, however, and the pursuers were soon distanced. Remember track Stars, So the squad runs two miles with the with the owl skin hidden on them, and they get to a major road, right, so they start waiting for a car to pass, hoping
somebody will be there. It's now morning time, right, and I quote it's now ten am Wednesday, and the party had been without food and water since noon on Tuesday. A well was found soon found in a small clearing, and the four men quench their thirst. So now there's there, like finally getting some nourishment to keep their bodies.
Going die of exposure in this stupid crank exactly.
So a bunch of cadets spot them and they come running across a cotton field after them. They're like, oh, they're coming for us, right, they start running The original fifty cadets who were just seeing them at the thicket of woods they come from the other direction, so they now run another two miles under full chase. Right. The track stars are so exhausted at this point Jimmy Waters can't run over a one foot fence. He trips over a one foot fence. Dane gets tangled up in grapevines
over and over again. Then there's this dude pain He tries to jump a four foot creek and he lands in the middle.
He goes two feet. These are all track Stars. They're so exhausted.
Their bodies are like pulling a full zola. Butd they're pretty much going to just collapse. Right. So at this point, right, we're getting into the afternoon hours, right, and I quote, the pursuers were finally ditched and the refuge was taken in a thick bunch of overgrowth, where the parties slept until three thirty pm, keeping one hour watches each. So now they've gone full military and they're doing one hour
watches trying to get away from these cadets. So at three point thirty they're awoken by the sound of a group of cadets who've discovered their hiding place. Right, So the four Trackstars are like, we're gonna have to split up, guys, we need someone to run distraction. So now they take the owl skin, they tear it in half, they wrap it around their bodies. Two of them got to get this owl home. So the other two run off in
the other direction, making a lot of noise. Well, the two guys who have the owl wrapped around their bodies run off, and they're doing it like you know, I don't even know they did. They have like this vim and vigor and the zeal of like the French resistance, like they are willing to do whatever to beat these military. Right, so the four crawl on their bellies through the tall
grass to escape. They make it out of the thicket in two different directions, right, and now the elusive four reunite and they get to another road and they find that the road is blocked because not because of cadets for once this time, is just because there's basically river water stormwater rushing past. The little bridge is blocked, right, So they're like, okay, what are we gonna do. That's when they hear a car approach. They're like, oh no, right,
there's nowhere for them to hide. There's nowhere to go. They can't cross the river. They're up against the wall, and they quote a car was heard crashing through the brush and it was coming directly towards them. So the men had to interrupt their planning and hit out for cover two with the owl skin remained in hiding while the two went forward to investigate. The car was occupied by hunters and the first question was to ask the best way to get across the river? Who got the owl?
Was the reply, what owl?
You know?
Tell us we can help you out. So this is a group of Texas duck hunters, men, full grown ass men. They come across these kids and like, we heard all about this good thing.
It wasn't like a good man that's hard to find scenario.
Yeah, no, definitely not. They had These hunters had been stopped on their way to go duck hunting, and their vehicle had been searched, so.
They were well aware cadets.
By the cadets, they're doing in the full lockdown.
Now right down, it's not even there.
So these hunters are tickled pink by these twelve hundred cadets trying to find the elusive force. So they're like, yeah, we'll help you guys out. This is great, right. So the hunter's like, you just said, we're gonna keep shooting some ducks. So they make them wait for three more hours. Well, they get their fill of ducks right once the duck hunters are done. They're like, okay, boys, seven PM, let's go back to town. So they tell them, they're like, okay, well,
we can take a couple of you. A couple of you should probably stay here because you know they're gonna stop us again. So one of the duck hunters he changed his clothes with the dude named Dane, and then he hides in the back with the dude named Drummond. They hide in like a toolbox in the back of the truck.
Right, So the hunter and drum hunter, one of the hunters.
And Drummond are in the back, and then Dane is up front with the other hunter and they take off in the truck. Right. The truck does get stopped by cadets at the first bridge that they reach. Right, he gets closely examined. They managed to pass the inspection. But then right before they're about to leave, one of the cadets is like, oh, I'm gonna go right back into town with you, like slaps the back of the truck. He climbs in back and he sits on the toolbox.
No, no, I would not stop for these guys. If they were like hold, I'd look out of them and armed. I don't care no military.
These are armed cadets in their uniform.
Gotten my book, temple faced, I'd be like, no, try again and just keep driving. He gets on the car, I slam on the brakes and he slides down on the hood and then I run him over.
In like five months time, these are all going to be kids on the front. Well, they're like full on soldiers. Like then, they're acting like it, and I'm just telling you, pemble faced or not. They got guns and they're like, look, this truck ain't going anywhere. So Payne and Jimmy Waters right there with the guy who's got the car right, and he gets them back to town. They get out before they get to town. He's like, you know, you guys can walk the rest of the way in.
Yeah.
And they made that choice, and it was a good choice to make because the driver when he gets to town, he gets stopped and he gets arrested and taken in under.
Customer tested by the cadets.
Yes, there are three hundred cadets in this tiny Texas town and they have taken over and I quote took over the town, and I quote from the thresher You ready, the cadets to complete control of all telephone and telegraph lines, had all roads blocked and were searching all trains that passed, so all means of communication and transportation were under vigilants.
So they like declared martial law.
In this area to dip this owl back.
Is there any like, is there any authority figure over these guys the military? Well no, I mean they's just a bunch of cadets, Like who's there, who's their boss guy? It's going to be like.
Texas College Sports. I don't know what to tell you. This is the authority house.
It's so crazy.
So these grown ass men, the duck Hunters, they're willing to join the resistance with the looser four so that that they then call in another friend once they get back to town, who was a doctor, and they're like, okay, now the phone lines a Meanwhile, they are all being tapped and monitors, so they have to use a code language. So they tell the doctor that they need some capsules and they've got some other capsules and could you bring him to the house, and he's like, I'll come by.
So but so the doctor knows this code like that they pre established it or is he like oh, I guess he needs capsule.
He's he's friendly with the hundreds. This may not be the first time they've had to, like, you know, do stuff like this, so he very quickly catches up with them. Right, yes, now we have pain in waters. They go out and they climb into this car because they're going to be they were they'd waited outside of town. So the guy gets out and drives out of town. The doctor picks them up, and the car was run at high speed and all challenges ignored is how they put it right.
And at one point, the doctor's car with waters and pain in it, it approaches a blocked bridge right and the cadets are lining the road and the Doctor's like, what do you guys want me to do? The road's blocked and he's like, they're like, is there any way out? He's like, I think I see away. So this is a checkpoint like a war film.
Yeah.
Also, beanwhild there are thirteen of their comrades who've been captured and they're being held at this bridge by the cadets. So there's hundreds of cadets and they're their own comrades. If you will are standing there, then the doctors starts revenue engine. He's like boys hang on, so he then floors it in his like whatever nineteen sixteen car.
He drives down the ditch, punches it.
He gets up to about fifty miles an hour and then rides up the other side of the ditch and jumps like the general lee from Duke's hazards. They break free from gravity for a little bit.
Aren't making this though? I swear this is all really this is a burrito cannon. This really happened.
The captured member of the OPA. They go nuts. They're cheering as his car is in the air.
Right.
The car eventually lands with a huge crash back on earth and then roars away at full speed. You know, old cars, what you need to do. The cadets immediately give chase. They run and get in their cars and they tear after the doctor's car. And the doctor he's a hallacious driver. This ain't his first rodeo, so he's tearing through Texas. He's enjoying the chase. Right. He manages to get Pain and Waters over to the other house. They reunite with Dane and Drummond, who are still in
hiding at this time. Now all of they're together, and the five the make a break for it and race back to Houston. So the doctors like, let's go and run back to Houston. Is now the moment before dawn on another day on thinking we've reached the purple hour, and these four men make it back to the Rice campus at seven thirty am on Thursday morning, and they still had the skin of their six foot tallund.
Owl, three pieces of it.
Elizabeth, you may be wondering at a lot right now what happened to the thirteen dudes who were captured who were cheering at the side of the bridge. Great question, But they were taken prisoner and they were held at Texas A and M in the military prison or the brig or whatever it was, right, and the president of Rice University had to negotiate with the president of Texas A and M to get the safe return of the thirteen captured members of the Opaight Night Rate.
So he negotiates with terrorists.
Apparently, see I've heard that Texans don't do that.
I get right now.
You may also be wondering, and I know you were. What happened to Snowball.
I guess I am watching that now.
It's the best part, and I quote from the Thresher, Snowball gets paraded around campus, given a regulation army haircut, turned over to the freshman for a few days. He was eventually taken to the station late at night, minus his clothes and told to catch the train. He was said he wasted no time getting aboard.
Wait, what does it mean? Turned over to the freshman for a few days and he comes home?
Yes, they I think you can just let your imagination wander on that one. So then the freshman turn him out and then.
He caught he's taking over the train station afterwards? Did he change his name to Snowball because he didn't want anyone to know who he went?
Do you imagine being a private detective and having to go home? How was your weekend?
Okay? Could you imagine being a private detective a named Snowball B who gets hired to find like a mascot and gets into this absolutely turn one of the board that you're making up in twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty, Why why Snowball.
Texas College exports? That's my answer?
Oh my gosh, I want to hear from the descendants of Snowball.
We should see if we can find them.
If you are a descendant of Snowball, reach out. We want to hear the real story.
We would like to know how what became of Snowball after this.
We want to honor his memory.
So, Elizabeth, what's your ridiculous take away?
My ridiculous takeaway is, I'm having a lot of heart troubled processing right now.
Pretty much broke in your brain.
I can't speak, I don't know the year.
Try try this. Just say these two words. Roll tide that may pull it back.
Deep breath, roll tide that helped. I did okay, oddly enough, it totally helped.
Yeah, yeah, bear brand be so happy. Yeah, hook him horn totally the other one. See if that one works away, that's textic.
Hook them horns. Everything feels so good.
You see football, baby, right there? It is football, there is Everything feels okay except for the losing.
Well.
My ridiculous takeaway, thank you for asking now, is I grew up in the South and I still can't believe this happened like this is one of my favorite stories of Southern sports ever.
It's incredible. You know what it is? Ridiculous, ridiculous, It's so ridiculous.
But thank you for joining us. I'm Zaron Burnett.
That over there is an owl.
An owl name Miss Elizabeth Dutton. You can find us online a Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and the gram. Twitter is the fourth, the one for the discourse that's where you post stuff that's about the cases. And Instagrams where we put up the photos for each episode. They will reveal to you what these people look like, what the cars look like, and so forth. The stories are posted for giggles. Also, you can get sneak peaks for upcoming episodes emails if you want, at Ridiculous Crime at
gmail dot com. Thanks for listening.
Thank you.
Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by It rhymes with Houston Coustin. Research is by the president of the Rice Historical Prank Society, Marissa Brown. Our theme song is by Thomas Payne and Dane Lee and Travis super six Dunty. Executive producers are Ben were the leaders of the Owl Resistance Bowlin and Noel pay Don't tell Anyone.
Brown, Redicus Crime, Say It One More Time, Geequus Crime.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio four more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.