506: Secret Identity

0:00This message comes from Avalara Aviator. Aviator is the agent hub for tax and compliance. If you've listened to enough podcasts, you know a confident answer isn't necessarily a correct one. Sources matter. The same goes for AI, tax, and compliance. Aviator is grounded in 20-plus years of Avalara tax intelligence and delivers source-backed, audit-defensible outcomes with human oversight built in. Because the AI said so won't pass an audit. Visit avalera.com slash aviator. Okay, so a few years ago, I went to see this thing that happens all summer long on Highway 101 in Northern California in the middle of the Redwood Forest. Little kids hold conversations with a statue that's five stories high.

0:43What do you eat? What do you eat? What do I eat? Mostly pancakes. What do you eat? The statue is Paul Bunyan. Big red shirt, blue pants, hairy chest, black beard. He stands next to Babe, his 36-foot-tall blue ox. The adults talk to him, too. Hey, do you know Bigfoot? Yeah, I play poker with him on Friday nights. Who else plays in that game? What's your shoe size? Shouldn't you be in Minnesota? Where are the bathrooms? Tell me a joke. Paul and Babe are part of a roadside attraction called Trees of Mystery. Paul can turn his head in a slow swivel. He can wave. He can wink, all with the sort of stiff, hydraulic-powered gestures you would expect from a statue built in 1962, which he is. Can I sing you a song?

1:31Can you sing me a song? Yeah. You are very much welcome to sing me a song. Okay. L is for the way you look at me O is for the only one I see Don't be fooled by how great these two seem to be getting along. Eight-year-old Morgan Gossage, like lots of kids, also has skeptical questions for Paul Bunyan. So many kids try to trap him into admitting he is not really Paul Bunyan. He's just a statue. Why can't you open your mouth when you talk? I can. I don't need to, though. How come you never move? Because I'm not allowed to. There's all the OSHA regulations, like I can't swing my axe. I can't dance. I can't jump up and down. Management, by the way, holds the line on this. When one of our producers first spoke with a woman in the gift shop and asked who does the voice for Paul Bunyan, by the way, holds the line on this. One of our producers first spoke with a woman

2:26in the gift shop and asked, who does the voice for Paul Bunyan? The woman replied, Paul Bunyan. Or, this is John Thompson. His family owns Trees of Mystery, and he runs the place. I ask him what Paul's made of. He says, the same stuff as you or I, only more of it. I ask if Paul Bunyan's an employee. Well, you know, there's a fuzzy area there. Because he's so big, we can't really get him to do what we want him to do all the time. It's only been a few years we got him to stop walking around in the daytime. He stepped on a couple cars, you know, and made a mess. But, um, that's Paul. John's daughter, Hannah, and his son-in-law, Kylan, both listened to him tell me this. They both seemed a little pained to have to keep up the pretense with me that Paul is real.

3:10And it's Kylan who pipes in with a very reasonable point, that if Paul Bunyan is just, you know, some guy pretending to be Paul Bunyan... You know, it really isn't as fun. I don't think the truth is really as interesting as people want to believe it is. It really isn't. The bottom line, Ira, is that would you pull the mask off Mickey Mouse? Me, no. Well, there you go. Okay. Okay, and I'll be frank. I thought that this is where the story would end. We have an episode for you today about secret identities. And at this point, I would say something about, you know, how it's better not to find out who's behind the mask. And, you know, I would start the show, WBEC Chicago, all that, blah, blah, blah.

3:55And we would move on to Act One. But around closing time at Trees of Mystery, that plan fell completely apart. I was standing near Paul Bunyan. And this heavyset guy in a t-shirt and jeans and wire rimmed glasses walked up to me. Hi. Hi. Dave Johnson. Dave Johnson. Yeah. Okay. Get a little closer. Oh, okay. So you work here? Yes, I do. What do you do here? I work at Skyill and do Paul Bunyan occasionally. You're blowing the cover here. Is that you today? Yeah, that was me. It was hot up there. Your face is totally flushed. Yeah, yeah. It was about 95 up there. Especially when he was bright red. Though it took me a minute to realize what he meant when he said up there. I had assumed that whoever was the voice of Paul Bunyan was looking out a window from the gift shop,

4:51which is right across the way, or maybe they were watching a video monitor somewhere and talking into a mic. But no. John and Kylan, in a stunning reversal in their media strategy, I have to say, walked me around to see the back of Paul Bunyan's right shoe. And there's a little door there and they opened it up. We now see a ladder and a bunch of pipes and wires heading up. I stick my head in and look up. It's dark and narrow. Kylan and Hannah offered to take me up and I climb in first and it was stuffy and hot and claustrophobic. It felt very easy to fall. So we just keep going up? Yep. We climb this one ladder for what seems like a really long time and then switch to another ladder and then hoist ourselves through an opening.

5:37Holy s***. It's like a little space capsule in here. Yes. It's about an 8 to 10 foot oval. We're inside Paul's torso. It's lit by a single bare light bulb on a bare wire that looks like if you touched the wire, you would die. You see outside through Paul's chest hair. The walls are covered in decaying soundproofing tiles and torn insulation. There's a dingy old sink that the guys pee into on their shifts. And old pressure gauges from 1962 measuring the hydraulics. Four levers to make Paul's eye wink or head turn. This is amazing. This is really like a magical place, I have to say. The coolest things, I think, are, old hydraulics that control everything. So you can feel this whole place shake.

6:32That's the hand? Yeah. So, like, do you think it's better now that you know? Or is it worse? Or is it the same? I have to say, this is better than not knowing. This is so cool in here, in this room with these steel beams cutting through it and the crappy sink where people pee. This really is like going inside the Wizard of Oz's head. Of course, right? Anybody with a secret identity probably feels this. They're supposed to keep it secret, but it must be so tempting to tell people the truth. It must be so hard to keep your mouth shut for spies and for superheroes because the truth is so insanely cool. How did Bruce Wayne not bring every woman he ever took on a date to see the Batcave? Is this the microphone?

7:22I think so. Is it live? You'd probably have a better shot. Oh, I would totally know how to work this. Yeah, this is totally? I think so. Is it live? You'd probably have a better shot. Oh, I would totally know how to work this. Yeah, this is totally technology that I know. One, two, three. That sounds fine. Oh, it's on. Oops. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Paul Bunyan. Stay with us. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Capital One. Capital One offers checking accounts with no fees or minimums. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash BankGuy for details. Capital One N.A., member FDIC. This message comes from Avalara Aviator.

8:19Aviator is the agent hub for tax and compliance. If you've listened to enough podcasts, you know a confident answer isn't necessarily a correct one. Sources matter. The same goes for AI, tax, and compliance. Aviator is grounded in 20-plus years of Avalara tax intelligence and delivers source-backed, audit-defensible outcomes with human oversight built in. Because the AI said so won't pass an audit. Visit avalara.com slash aviator. It's just American life, Equine. You can't handle the truth. So I'm just guessing here, but I would think that people usually take on a secret identity only after careful consideration, only after thinking through all the angles, taking some time. John Ronson has this story

9:04of a guy who takes on a secret identity in haste, without a lot of strategizing, without much long-term thinking. Today's show is a rerun, by the way. He reported this story back in 2013. Here's John. Sometimes the government stages crimes. Like in the 1950s when the CIA was experimenting with LSD as a truth serum and they set up a fake brothel in New York City. The prostitutes would spike the unsuspecting Johns drinks with acid while CIA agents sat behind a one-way mirror to see if they would blurt out secrets. This really happened. Just a few years ago, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was telling gun shops to sell weapons to drug smugglers. The idea was to track the guns into the Mexican cartels,

9:53but the operation fell apart when they lost track of them and two turned up at the murder scene of a US Border Patrol agent. These kinds of covert operations happen quite a lot. Keep that in mind as you hear this story, which starts with a spate of attempted bank robberies in Northern Virginia in June 2012. The man who carried them out was a terrible bank robber, and I don't mean he was terribly evil, I mean he was terrible at it. He'd stand there, demand money, suddenly look panicky and run out the door. The entire spree lasted four days. Five attempted robberies in all. He didn't make a penny. The police quickly caught up with him. He was a 21-year-old guy named Hurston Torres. But things took a strange turn when they sat him down for questioning.

10:51Tom Schoenberg is a legal affairs reporter, and he covered the story for Bloomberg Businessweek. Initially, he didn't want to tell him anything, and he didn't tell him anything for a little bit. They started showing him pictures of his relatives that they had assembled and saying he could go to prison for 25 years. By that point, he was crying and he said, I'm going to tell you something, but you're not going to believe what I'm going to tell you. What Hurston told them was unbelievable. But within hours of questioning Hurston, the police began to think that his story might be true and that Hurston was innocent. It all started, he said, a few days earlier. Hurston had got home from a shift unloading trucks at Target

11:38when he saw that he had a text message from an old high school friend, Carolina. Here's Tom Schoenberg again. And the message says, hey, I got a job for you. We're going to get paid 25K. And he taps back, doing what? She responds, robbing banks. And at first he thought it was a joke. She explains that it's all legitimate, that it's for the federal government, and he agreed to meet with her. Three hours later and Herson was meeting Carolina in a nearby Dick's Sporting Goods parking lot. She was already on the phone to her government contact, a man named Theo, who worked with the Defence Intelligence Agency, a part of the Department of Defence. She passed the phone over to Herson. Theo started telling Herson that this was an operation

12:38using civilians to test the security of area banks. He'd vetted Herson, Theo said, so he knew all about a misdemeanor theft charge for when Herson was a teenager, the sort of charge that was sealed in juvenile records. And then Theo explained the job that Herson was being recruited into. He calmly said they were going to, you know, the banks knew that this operation was happening. And he was going to tell them which bank to target. He explained how it would, how the whole operation would work out, that there would be no weapons involved. And that it was really a simple thing to go and see into these banks and see would they turn over money when someone comes in there and presents them with a note asking them to do so.

13:27Okay, so when you said that the banks knew, then the bank head office knew, but the bank tellers didn't know and the local managers didn't know. Exactly. Right. Exactly. Right. And so what would happen if Hurston kind of got into trouble in the bank, like if somebody tried to attack him or something in the bank or call the police. Right. He was told, you know, and this is where his sort of timing of going into these banks and out was very quick, was that he was told, do not stay in a bank for longer than five minutes. If anyone, you know, says they're going to call police, leave immediately. If you see any armed security officers there, you know, immediately leave. And if you get arrested, stay silent.

14:12We'll have you out within 24 hours. So how long after this phone call did the spate of robberies take place? Immediately. Well, like the next day of robberies take place? Immediately. Well, like the next day. The same day. Wow. Herson had plenty of reasons to go along with it. The government guy, Theo, was credible. He seemed to know all about Herson's past. He said he may be able to get Herson a full-time government job. Plus, Herson was going to be well paid. $25,000 if he managed to get money out of the banks. $2,500 if not. At the first bank, Herson handed them a note, which read, I need your help. I need money. My family is being held hostage and a bomb will go off at 4.30 if you don't help.

15:12Don't call the police or the FBI. The teller asked Hurston to wait for a few moments. Hurston immediately ran out of the bank. Within minutes, the area was filled with police cars and a police helicopter. Theo was on Carolina's cell phone throughout it all, telling Hurston which bank to go to next and to not worry. Hurston made four more attempts over the next two days, cropped in his cousin, his brother-in-law and a friend. They were all as hopeless as Hurston, running out of the banks before anyone could give them any money. Plus, they'd forgotten to bring a bag, so even if they had waited for the money, they'd have had to run out with it in their arms. At the last bank, the cousin just stood there while the others ran away,

15:57so the police questioned him. He gave them Herson's name and address, which is how the spree ended. So there was Herson at the police station, facing 25 years in prison and crying. So when he finally tells police, look, this is the story, he says, take a look at my phone, look at my Facebook account, look at my email, it's all there. He also told them, go to my car and in there you'll find an immunity letter that Theo gave me. Theo had emailed Hurston a letter on Defence Intelligence Agency letterhead describing the bank operation titled Operation Downstrike, an operation involving civilian volunteers who would be immune from civil and criminal action. It asked police that, upon receipt of the letter, to assist in the operation.

16:54The officer in charge, a veteran detective named John Vickery, was sceptical, but the letter was perplexing. And then, six hours after Herson was arrested, Detective Vickery got a call from a number he didn't recognise. It was Theo. He demanded to know what the police had done with Herson. He sounded authoritative and exasperated and explained that he was with the CIA. Detective Vickery was truly confused. After all, this was Virginia, CIA country. Vickery did deal with CIA people from time to time, but it seemed such a strange, covert operation. Theo demanded a face-to-face meeting with the detective's superiors. Theo also called Washington-area criminal defence lawyers, saying he was with

17:46the CIA and he needed to hire civilian counsel to defend Hurston. The meeting place with the cops was set. He would be at the courthouse during Hurston's arraignment hearing. Theo would be wearing an American flag pin on his black suit. The day came, but Theo never showed. Eventually, the encryption on Theo's phone number was broken, and police traced the phone to a man called Josh Brady, who lived in a ranch house 100 miles south of Washington DC. The police drove down there and in an instant three things became clear. The first was that Theo and Josh were the same person. The second was that Josh was not working for the CIA. He was 26 and living with his mother and grandmother. And the third was that Josh was totally convinced that he was working for them.

18:48Here's Tom. I interviewed Josh in a jail in Virginia. And when I met with him, he told me pretty quickly that he was, you know, working with the CIA and that I would say he was firmly convinced at that time that they took a computer from him, from his house, that contained all the information to prove that this was legitimate. Josh was initially charged with impersonating a government official and three counts of attempted bank robbery. But doctors found that Josh suffered from a variety of mental illnesses and disorders, so prosecutors dropped those charges and Joshua was released into his mother's care in order to get mental health treatment. They declined to prosecute Hurston and Carolina was

19:41never charged. In the end, no one was prosecuted for the attempted bank robberies. But here's something I find especially interesting about this story. During the court proceedings, a court-appointed forensic psychologist had offered a second opinion about Josh Brady. He had diagnosed Josh with something really rare. It's a disorder that most people have never heard of. I'd never heard of it. It's called delusional disorder. Hurston Torres didn't want to talk to me for this story. Maybe he felt embarrassed about being taken in by Josh. But he shouldn't feel embarrassed, because the whole scheme, it was plausible. That's the amazing thing about delusional disorder. The delusions are plausible.

20:31I mean, we all know that there are indeed folks who seem perfectly normal but turn out to be undercover agents. It doesn't violate the boundaries of reality. This is Dr Evan Nelson, the court psychologist who diagnosed Josh Brady with delusional disorder. Dr. Nelson couldn't talk to me about Josh Brady's case, but he explained to me that delusional disorder is like a cousin to better known psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. The big difference is that people with schizophrenia have crazy delusions that nobody believes, like believing that the CIA is using telepathy to read your thoughts or believing that you're Jesus Christ. Whereas the delusions that come with delusional disorder, they could be true.

21:16It's the difference between believing people are following you, which is entirely possible, and believing they're following you because they've inserted some sort of an x-ray machine in your body and they can covertly track you through a satellite that's orbiting Mars, that sort of violation of logic wouldn't be part of a delusional disorder. Delusional disorder is defined as a rare disorder, but a lot of clinicians like Dr. Nelson believe that it has to be under-diagnosed. There have to be people out there who don't realise that they are living inside someone else's delusion. Like, for instance, my friend Emily, which isn't her real name. And this isn't her real voice either. Well, my husband had it, so I lived with someone with delusional disorder. When you say

22:08your husband had it, does that mean he doesn't have it anymore? No, I mean, he probably still has it. Emily asked to be disguised because she loves her husband and wants to protect his privacy. And so, in a show about secret identities, this weird robot voice is her one. Emily is the reason why I ever got to hear about Hurston and Theo. She sent me a link to Tom's article. In the message she wrote, imagine being married to that LOL. By that, Emily meant a marriage filled with the chaos of a plausible delusion. I said I couldn't imagine it, so Emily agreed to talk about it. When Emily first met her husband, and when they first got married, everything was fine. He told her he'd been in a long-term relationship before, but unfortunately, it didn't work out. He told me that his previous partner had been extremely unfaithful,

23:08unfaithful in the extreme. At the time, I just thought, oh, that's dreadful. You poor soul, I can't imagine what you've been through. Emily says that for the first five years of their marriage, everything was normal. But then her husband had a bad turn professionally. It stressed him out. He worried about his job prospects and his finances, but mainly he worried about losing Emily. He started accusing her of having crushes and flirting with friends and co-workers. I mean, you know, it got to the point where I would be accused of sleeping with friends, co-workers, just random people that, like, if I caught someone's eye and smiled at them on the street, it would be, how do you know that person?

23:55You had an affair with that guy, didn't you? That's why he was smiling at you. When would you have been having the affair? Because I presumed that every night you were sleeping in the same bed as him. Yeah, I mean, he would literally accuse me of getting up in the middle of the night to sort of go have secret assignations. While he slept? While he was asleep, yeah. So at this point, did you think, this is beyond just kind of regular jealousy? Absolutely. There are five main subtypes identified with delusional disorder. There's the persecutory type, believing a person or group of people are out to get you. There's the erotomanic type, believing a person, usually a famous person, is secretly in love with you and trying to be with you.

24:52There is somatic, thinking you've got a medical or health condition you don't have. Grandiosity, thinking you're special or have a high status, like, say, believing you work undercover for the CIA. And the last, as Emily discovered when she began desperately googling for some kind of explanation. Delusional disorder, jealousy subtype. The diagnosis, made on the internet, was later confirmed by a psychiatrist. Emily's husband's delusions weren't real, but his anger was. Inside his delusion, she was cheating on him all the time. It was a living hell for them both. You know, when someone's screaming at you for like nine hours a day, you know, your first response is maybe to, you know, get angry and scream back. But like,

25:39it would just, I would just watch him and it would almost be like the sound was turned down on a movie. It was just so sad to watch him be in such distress and be so sort of separated from reality. It was just the saddest thing to watch and kind of know that there's no way that you can help him. You know, I used to sort of invite people over for Sunday dinner and I do remember just him sort of announcing to the, you know, the table of diners that my wife has a lot of affairs. She's a right slut. And, like, you know, I didn't know whether to laugh it off or what. What did the people around the table do? I mean, this happens a lot. You know, people maybe just thought he was joking. You know, I mean, mean like people just sort of

26:46like politely ignored it and moved on and people didn't know whether it was just a bad joke or maybe some people maybe some people believed him uh you know i had one chap that was convinced that um you know i was the nymphomaniac that my husband had been boasting to everyone that I was and so he like came into the bedroom once and when I was staying at a friend's house and I just had to like roll over and pretend to be asleep well somebody came in and said I hear you well joy having affairs with people would you I mean he didn't he didn't say anything but he made a pass so i just like pretended to be asleep because this is like this is like a person that i knew and i didn't want to be embarrassed about seeing the next day wow he must have been so crushed because you know

27:37you're sleeping with everyone i know and what this is kind of a crazy question, but, you know, when a delusion is as powerful as these delusions were, was there ever a moment, even though you knew you weren't having any affairs with anyone, was there ever a moment when you thought, oh, my God, maybe I am having an affair? I was honestly, I mean, because, you know, my husband was a very rational human being. I mean, he was highly scientific. So when someone's that rational and sort of that grounded in like, you know, that level of reality, there was a point where I thought, well, you know, maybe I'm sort of sleepwalking or maybe I've got like a multiple personality disorder or something. You know, maybe I am

28:32the one that's mad. It's really difficult to treat delusional disorder. Dr Nelson, the forensic psychologist, says logic doesn't work. They can't be talked out of it. Antipsychotic medications can work wonders for people with schizophrenia because they're good at tackling hallucinations. But for some reason, they're not so great on delusions. Dr Nelson says medication can sort of lessen the delusions a bit, but they can't make them disappear. There is a best option, but it's a really frustrating one. Gradually over time, you reach a sort of a détente, which is they're not willing to admit that their idea is a delusion, but they're willing to admit that acting on it isn't in their best interest.

29:26So I still suspect that my wife is cheating on me, but I know she says that it's not true, and I want to trust her, and our marriage is good, and every time I bring this up, I make it worse. So maybe I'll just have to tolerate a little bit of infidelity in exchange for keeping this marriage. So convince them that open marriages are the way forward. Well, I don't know that that's necessarily an open marriage. I don't think they're consenting. But you're definitely talking about compromises. Same thing with the persecutory type and the grandiose type. You may not get to the point where they agree that they weren't really acting as a special agent for the FBI or where they agree that there isn't really acting as a special agent for the FBI, or where

30:06they agree that there isn't really a plot against them. But you might get them to the point where they agree that from a practical level, you've never been paid for your work from the FBI, so why bother to keep working for them? The only way to move forward is for everyone to be submissive to the delusion. So someone like Emily never gets justice, never gets an apology for being taken all wrong. The delusion always wins. A few years ago, Emily and her husband split up. You know, people and places are triggers, so I actually became a trigger in my husband's life. So, you know, the only way for him to sort of be healthy is to remove the triggers. So that's him moving to another new town and leaving me.

31:01And, you know, I'm sure that he'll, you know, find another woman in a new town, tell her the same story about the wife that was extremely unfaithful and the cycle will begin again. Incidentally, Josh Brady, the fake CIA agent who orchestrated the robberies, he's been arrested again. A little under two months after he was released and remanded to psychiatric counselling, he was picked up again, this time charged with impersonating a Department of Homeland Security agent. John Ronson. His latest book is called The Castle. Since we first ran this story a few years back, Josh Brady was convicted of violating his supervised release and sentenced to two years at a minimum security prison where a judge recommended he receive psychiatric treatment.

31:58In 2019, he used a fake alias again and was found guilty of bribing a woman to file a false case of sexual assault. Coming up, a woman Avenger takes to the streets with a gun and a mission of justice. Men fear her. Nobody knows her name. That's one of the stories after the break in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Capital One. Capital One offers checking accounts with no fees or minimums. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash BankGuy for details. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC. This message comes from Rosetta Stone. Rosetta Stone is designed to make language learning intuitive.

32:54It mimics how people naturally acquire speech as children, helping users read, write, and think in a second language. More at rosettastone.com. This message comes from LinkedIn ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype for marketers. That's impressions. When ads don't create revenue, that's a tough conversation with the CFO. Instead invest in results. Your CFO will love LinkedIn ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. So advertise on LinkedIn, spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Just go to linkedin.com slash NPR pod. Terms and conditions apply. It's American Life from Ira Glass. Today's program, Secret Identities. We've arrived at

33:39act two of our program, act two, Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright. So one of our producers, Eleanor Baker, has this cousin named Navy. And back when we first broadcast today's program, Navy had a secret identity. It actually wasn't so secret. She was a school mascot, a tiger at Gilbert High in Gilbert, Arizona. And Navy was one of those kids who was just completely transformed by that. Her second identity gave her power. Here's Ele Anna to explain. I used to babysit Navy, and she's always been able to completely lose herself in characters, to a degree, honestly, you don't see in most kids. Like, when Navy was four or five, she was obsessed with dogs. So she'd tape a tube sock to her butt for a tail and crawl on all

34:23fours. She'd drink from a bowl. She'd do that thing where she'd drag her butt along the carpet to scratch it. She'd sniff people's crotches. She was method. Like, we had, like, old collars, dog collars around the house. I'd put those on, and I'd tie a leash to, like, a little stroller, and I'd run around the house pretending I was, like, a sled dog. I mean, I was fine with her being a dog until she started crapping in our yard. I didn't think that was very funny. It is funny, though. That's Navy's dad, Carl. And at first I thought he was joking. But it turns out one day he's looking out the window. And I'm watching her and she's acting like I'll kind of walk around the backyard. And next thing I know, she takes her pants and goes crap in the backyard.

35:05And then I like kicked my feet kind of walk around the backyard. And next thing you know, she takes her pants and goes crap in the backyard. And then I, like, kicked my feet back, like, to cover up the poop. Now, I don't know how many times she did it before that. This whole time I was picking up, like, my dog's poop. I may have been picking up my kid's poop. And as she got older, Navy discovered a more socially acceptable way to do the same thing when, in second grade, the elementary school mascot, a husky dog, stopped by her class for the first time. Navy's mind was blown because here's this person who got to act like an animal all the time. She became obsessed with mascots. I know this because I babysat her for a whole week when she was 10,

35:44and while her siblings were outside in the yard playing, Navy was inside practicing mascot routines she'd found on YouTube. She'd be dressed up in this old tiger Halloween costume. A tiger because that's the mascot for the local high school. All of this started to worry Navy's dad, Carl. He was really hoping it would be like a passing phase. I don't know if many parents like wake up one morning and go, oh my gosh, I can't wait for my daughter to be a mascot. And did you make fun of mascots when you're in high school or middle school? No, that's kind of an awkward question. Doesn't everybody? You know, I remember being a junior high really just trying to fit in. And I just didn't know if this being this would be something that she would be accepted in.

36:27I mean, is this something that she gets branded as kind of the odd girl who likes to dress up like a tiger? For years, her parents kept trying to get her interested in other things, more quote-unquote normal things like ballet, you know, Girl Scouts. But Navy had tiger tunnel vision. It all came to a head one Friday night at her brother's football game. Our older son was playing football in high school, and Navy's still in junior high. And I came home from work, and I'm like, hey, Navy, we've got to hurry up. We've got to get to Justin's game. And I was like, I want to wear my mascot costume. Please let me wear it. I thought to my head, I says, I don't know if I feel comfortable with me taking my daughter to a football game

37:03dressed up like a mascot at a high school. Because, A, you don't go to high school there, and it's just kind of bizarre me walking into a football game with a tiger. And I was like, I don't want to go to the game if I can't wear my suit. And I says, you know what? Then stay home. So we're at the football game, and she's texting my wife and just saying, hey, you know, you don't love me. You don't support me as the mascot. You love the football player son, but you don't love the mascot daughter. And finally she texts me. She goes, listen, I still want to kind of please come to the game. So we say, your grandma and grandpa haven't got here yet, but we'll call them. They'll pick you up. When I took that out, I'd say, hey, I can wear the costume. So I get in the car, I'm wearing my

37:42costume. And my grandpa, he said, he goes, did they say that you could wear it? I was like, yeah. And so I showed up, got out of the car, and everyone was like, oh, my gosh. She said, hey, it's a tiger. And then I go, and I look up, and I was like, oh, it's my parents. And I could tell they were not happy. And she looks at us. We look at her in those big, giant mascot eyes, and she beelined it onto the field. And I thought, oh my gosh, what's going to happen? The sophomore cheerleaders didn't realize that she wasn't supposed to be there. And she's unbelievable. The crowd loves her. She's doing the wave. She's doing the cheers. She's leading the cheerleaders. Football players are taking pictures with her.

38:26And no one has idea that it's a girl that's in eighth grade. Everyone loved me. The crowd was cheering for me. Oh, I freaking loved. I can't even tell you. Like, I felt like this is my calling. And that's when I finally said, listen, you have a gift. You should go and do it 100%. This ended up being her big break. The high school athletic director was there, and he came up to her after and said, look, if you want to do this again, just let us know. You're great. And then he told her that she should try out to be the mascot when she got to high school. So since freshman year, she's been the Gilbert High Tiger. And all family pride aside, she is the best mascot I have ever seen. When she puts her costume on, which looks like a buff tigger, Navy transforms.

39:16She goes from being this awkward, husky, Mormon tomboy. Right, she's Mormon. But she puts her costume on and then starts grinding like a male stripper and it's hard not to think, like, are we allowed to do that? The kid has serious swagger. There's times where I sometimes forget it's my daughter. Like, I don't picture her dancing because she doesn't like walk around the house dancing. Immediately when she puts that outfit on, she knows all these moves. She can pretty much do any of the new fad dance moves. Beyonce's single lady, she can do that. She can do Psy. She can do Michael Jackson. The two don't really match up. It's bizarre. She's been on the news. She's in the paper. In town, her parents are known as the Tigers' parents.

40:03Some people come to games just to see her. The football team sucks. Sorry, Navy. And she's gotten so much attention that recently, the Suns' gorilla, that's the mascot for the Phoenix Suns, tweeted at her, You're inspiring. That's no hashtag monkey business. Here she is at a dance-off against her rival, the Chandler Wolf. They're staring each other down across the 50-yard line. There's the tiger. There's the tiger. We love the tiger. The wolf does the lawnmower. Navy, as the tiger, throws her head back and laughs, as if to say, that all you got? And then she busts out Gangnam Style. She dances around him in a circle, shuffling and shimmying on the turns. And then she stops, face to face, and flicks her paws at him like, what are you going to do about it? Then, slowly,

40:56she backs away. And he shrugs like, I have nothing, and then bows to her, shakes her hand, and walks off the field. Okay, so that insanely confident person cut to the next day at school, and she's just like this super awkward teenager who doesn't want any attention drawn to her. Navy Baker is shy. Like, during classes, I just won't talk to kids around me. I just kind of, like, sit there and do my work, be quiet. Like, I'm nervous to go to Taco Bell and order me a freaking burrito. And is it weird to be two people? Yeah, it's like Superman. I mean Superman, glasses, and a suit and tie, and then all of a sudden he rips the suit and tie off and he's Superman. Except I put clothes on to become a tiger.

41:49This is how extreme it is. Navy's never been able to do a cartwheel. But then one practice, with all the cheerleaders there, she thought, the tiger would do a cartwheel right now. And so she did one, just like that. She's done cartwheels in front of thousands since. But then Navy, the person, still can't do a cartwheel. Which seemed, like, impossible to me. So I asked her to try one, out of costume. This is scary. I might hit something. Navy pushed off and crumpled to the ground. It wasn't an act. It was horrible. Nope. You had a good start, but... What means you give up the minute your hands touch the floor? I don't know. I got scared. And I sat down. So I told her to put her tiger costume on and try again.

42:39All right. You're all zipped up. And now for the head. I'm gonna, like, hang on. It's hard to breathe in here. All right, talk to me. Do you feel different all of a sudden? Yeah, definitely. My heart's racing right now. My legs feel like running a mile. Like, I just feel like, let's go crazy. Let's go slide somewhere. Let's go slide on my belly and onto the court. All right, here we go, Tiger. Let's see this cartwheel. Oh, wow, you did it. All right. Tiger is fist pumping the air. Tiger is bowing. All right, you want to take your hat off? I felt a lot better doing it in the costume than I did outside the costume. What is it about that costume that lets you be that way? Well, definitely the fact that no one can see your face.

43:35So no one's like, oh, who's that? Like, oh, they look stupid. So that's like another thing I'm scared of. Like, oh, people are going to judge me from what I look like. Like, I have broad shoulders, big old calves, and it's just, I'm a big kid. So, I mean, the Tigers kind of, like, based off on, like, what I really want to be, like, this fearless person, it doesn't care. When you watch Navy on stage, it's clear that she's the one with the confidence. This is Navy's confidence. It's not the Tigers. I keep trying to get her to see this. But the more I grill her, the more she insists. It's the Tiger. It's all the Tiger. Elna Baker. Like I said, today's show is a rerun, and these days she is no longer a producer at our show,

44:32but a writer working on a new memoir. Navy. Wanted to become the mascot at Boise State for five years. She's also appeared in the reality TV show about school mascots, a very short-lived TV show called Behind the Mask. These days she's an occupational therapist. Act three, Blonde Avenger. So back when we were putting together today's radio show, we heard about this real-life Avenger with a secret identity in Mexico, on the roads that run through Juarez, that incredibly violent city near the border, and the roads that run to the Mequilas, the factories on the border. Writer Yuri Herrera lived on the border for years and spent a lot of time in Juarez. It's the inspiration for the setting of his first novel. And he has this story about a wave of

45:14unusual crimes that happened back in 2013 when we first ran this story, a warning that much of the story is not right for little kids and mentions sexual violence. The first murder happened at 7.45 a.m. on August 28th on bus route 4A. That morning, a woman hailed bus 718, climbed the steps, pulled a gun, and shot the driver. The driver jumped out of the bus trying to escape, but died on the sidewalk. The killer, witnesses said, was a middle-aged woman with dyed blonde hair. Or maybe it was a wig, wearing a cap, plaid shirt and jeans. Nobody saw how she escaped. Or at least nobody would say. The second murder happened 24 hours later, on the same route. A woman boarded the bus downtown, and a few blocks later requested a stop.

46:15She walked towards the exit and motioned as if she were looking for the bus fare. But instead she drew her gun, spat words into the driver's ear, and shot him twice in the head. Then fled the scene. One day later, a news website from El Paso, called La Polaca, which specializes in covering the political gossip of Juárez, received an email. You think that because we are women, we are weak. And that may be true, but only up to a point. Because even though we have nobody to defend us, and we have to work long hours until late into the night to earn a living for our families, we can no longer be silent in the face of these acts that enrage us. We were victims of sexual violence from bus drivers working the Maquila night shifts here in Juarez.

47:09And although a lot of people know about the things we've suffered, nobody defends us nor does anything to protect us. That's why I am an instrument that will take revenge for many women. For we are seen as weak, but in reality we are not. We are brave. And if we don't get respect, we will earn that respect with our own hands. We, the women of Juarez, are strong. The email was signed by someone calling herself Diana, hunter of bus drivers. Hunter of Bus Drivers. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first disappearances of young women in Juarez. Or at least, when people started recording these disappearances and considering them as being related. After a 13-year-old girl was kidnapped and then found dead with signs of rape and strangulation.

48:11After that, the number of women who were killed just kept growing. It went from dozens of reported murders in a year to hundreds. So many women it was hard to count accurately. In 2010, the number peaked. At least 304 women were murdered that year. The circumstances of the crimes were eerily similar. One day, a girl would disappear on the way to work or on the way home. And if there was any news about her, it would be when her body was found in the desert or an abandoned lot, often with traces of rape and torture. Sometimes they were found together in mass graves. Oscar Maínez, who worked some of these cases as a criminologist, explained to me the way the authorities became complicit in the murders.

49:06First, they denied the problem, he said. Then they played it down, and finally they blamed the victims' lifestyle and their families. The criminologist resigned, he says, after realizing his superiors were more interested in covering up investigations and tampering with evidence than in finding justice. So when I heard about the case of this woman, this Diana, who supposedly was trying to do something by herself, I wondered, after all these years without justice, if women in Juarez would look at Diana and say, it's about time. So I went down there to ask them. As you can imagine, most of the women I approached to get their opinions were reluctant to speak to a stranger about the woman who'd murdered bus drivers. I know nothing about it, said a woman

50:03with a small child on the bus, only to fix her eyes on the back of the seat afterwards and not glance in my direction again. I have no opinion about that, another one said, before quickly entering a mall. But also, one day, I got this answer. When I heard about what she did, I said, how great that someone's doing what many of us should have done. This was Laura, 25 years old, pregnant with her second child. When I asked her, if you were to run into Diana on the street, what would you say to her if you knew it was her? She said, without a doubt, I would congratulate her. There is a sense among the general population that buses are a bad place to be by yourself. Just this week, a bus driver was arrested for allegedly raping a

50:53girl on her way to school. About this, Laura said, I remember when I was in high school, I would hear a lot about it. My friends would say to me, if you're going on the route and no one's there, take a pen with you with the point facing outward, because you never know. That's been happening for years, years. And it's the same for the ladies working in the maquilas. There's no evidence that the bus drivers who were killed by the blonde woman had actually committed a crime at all. But Laura didn't seem concerned about that. In a city where justice rarely brings results, maybe, at some point, you settle to get the justice available to you. Just a couple of weeks before the Diana the Hunter case,

51:44Laura's younger sister, Maria Alejandra, 20 years old, suffered a home invasion. A man came in through her bedroom window in the night, armed with a gun, and tried to rape her. She recognized him. He lived in the neighborhood. After the man left her house, Maria Alejandra told her sister what happened and that she was going to report it to the police. Laura told her not to do that. What for? They knew how the police work. Laura told me, I told her not to go, not to expose herself, because they would ask questions and check her. I think between the police, they've created a sort of code. So you basically are putting yourself out there to suffer one humiliation after another. My father was with us. He wanted to go kill him. And my husband too. And me too. I said I'll kill

52:42him. I said I'll go. And I'll kill him. Since we know who it is, we're gonna go and do it with our own hands. But despite Laura's pleading, María Alejandra, after talking to her friends, decided to go to the police anyway. And things went down exactly as Laura predicted. Even though the doctors had said that there was evidence of sexual assault, María Alejandra says the police questioned her as if she was making it all up. Why didn't she have bruises? What took her so long to report the intrusion? I would have to almost be dying for them to investigate, María Alejandra says they told her. Laura was angry. Now the opportunity for revenge was gone. I said to her, I told you, we should have done something before. Because now, if we took action,

53:39they would know who did it. Because that's how justice works here. The victims are the ones that are in jail. In 2001, police did apprehend a bus driver, Victor Garcia Uribe. He was arrested with a colleague and accused of murdering eight women who were left in an old cotton field. He denied any involvement in the killings, but the police kept questioning him. Finally, after long hours of interrogation, he confessed to taking part in those murders and in the murders of three other women. Yes, he said, he enjoyed killing them. Yes, he said, they did it under the influence of marijuana, cocaine and alcohol. Yes, they loved to rape them and kill them and then they would throw them afterwards in an empty field.

54:38But two days later, in court, García Uribe did a complete 180. Again he denied that he was involved in the murders. He said he only confessed because officers had kidnapped him, taken him to a police academy, and tortured him until he did. He said they'd beaten him and burned him with cigarettes. Still, the judge convicted him and sentenced him to 50 years. Garcia Uribe was freed in 2005, after it was proven that the authorities had tortured him into confessing. What makes me laugh, Laura told me, is how the bus drivers are so scared. That's what really makes me laugh. I didn't see this myself, but Maria Alejandra says she's seen bus drivers who posted a sketch of Diana near their dashboards. And when a woman who looks like her tries to board the bus, they don't let her.

55:37She says they close the doors quickly now, and she's heard that some are carrying knives on them. You know what it is, Laura said. In this country, people don't have balls. That's what my dad has always said, Laura told me. We don't have balls, he says, because if we had a little bit more balls, many things wouldn't be happening. We don't express what we think. We don't express how we feel. And we don't act in accordance with what we think. And that's our problem. That's what we are lacking. So I ask her, but wait, weren't you on the verge of taking things into your own hands with your sister? Yeah, but I'm not the kind of person who would do it. Sure, in the moment I reacted and I thought about it, but I would never do it.

56:31I would never try to kill anyone. It's not how I was brought up. I'm not like that. While I was in Juarez, I spent more time riding the buses on Route 4 than doing anything else. These buses, the Juarez public transportation buses, are old school buses imported from the U.S. They are noisy, old buses, reasonably clean but in a state of decay that everyone accepts. I rode in the back of the bus and in the front of the bus. I rode it at the time of the killings, in the morning, and late at night, when the last bus was about to finish the route. Sitting there, I wonder if the guy driving my bus was scared at all, nervous. I wonder if in moments on his route he was thinking about Diana the hunter

57:26and the words she said to the second bus driver on the morning of August the 29th. Ustedes se creen muy chingones. You all think you are so tough. Right before shooting the driver twice in the head and running away. She hasn't been spotted since, and there's no proof that the email signed by Diana actually came from the woman who did the shootings. Whoever chose Diana's name chose well. Diana the Hunter is the goddess of women and childbirth, who, like many other Roman gods, acts out of basic human feelings, like rage and revenge. There is, on one of Mexico City's most famous streets, a statue of Diana the Hunter. And there's a replica of it outside a restaurant in Juarez. She's muscular, strong,

58:24holding a bow with her arms stretched back, about to shoot. Maybe that image was in this one driver's mind on a bus I was riding, when he opened the door and a woman came in and he said, what, are you Diana the hunter? No, of course not, she replied. What, are you afraid of me now? Well, yeah, he replied. Shouldn't I be? Yuri Herrera. His latest book is Season of the Swamp. We commissioned a piece of artwork of Diana the Hunter on the bus to go with his story from this artist named Alice Leora Briggs. She's been doing these incredible drawings of scenes from Juarez. You can see this piece of artwork at our website. We also have a link to her other drawings at thisamericanlife.org. Left your secret identity by the kitchen sink.

59:29Pausing all this composure on a minute to do. Well, today's program was produced by Brian Reed, with Alex Bloomberg, Ben Calhoun, Sarah Koenig, Miki Meek, Jonathan Minhevar, Lisa Pollack, Robin Semien, Alyssa Shipp, and Nancy Opdyke. Senior producer for today's show, Julie Snyder. Production help on today's rerun from Adrienne Lilly, Stone Nelson, and Ruby Schwartz. Research help today from Michelle Harris and Julie Beer. Research and Spanish translation by Ani Correal. Music from Damian Grafe, from Rob Geddes, and Anthony Roman. Original instrumental music in today's program by Roger Neal. Special thanks today to Daniel Alacon and Radio Ambulante. To Diane Washington-Valdez, Ana Arana, Judith Terea, Chris Epperson.

1:00:11The Route 4 drivers in Juarez, who spoke to Yuri. Lou Teddy at String and Can. Jessica Eden and Eric Black in KHSU. Also thanks to The Phil at Trinity College Dublin. F the hist. Thanks also to all of our This American Life partners. They support our show. They keep us going. And to thank them, we give them bonus episodes and a newsletter and other stuff. Like, for example, the recent show that I did on stage in Los Angeles that we streamed live for our life partners. In that show, I told stories. Then comedians improvised based on the stories. It was a really fun night. And you can see this video for free yourself. You can see this by signing up for a free trial subscription at thisamericanlife.org

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1:01:34My legs feel like running a mile. Like, I just feel like, let's go crazy. Let's go slide somewhere. Let's go slide on my belly. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week, with more stories of this American life. Left your secret identity Billy. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. Next week on the podcast of This American Life. Midterms are here. People are calling their friends, trying to convince them who to vote for. Like this call about Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. What is it about him you don't trust? His nationality. I want to vote for an American. He isn't American. He's Arabic American. No, not in my world. We're African American. He's Arabic-American. We're African-American.

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