Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (52 page)

Still, Walsh wasn’t sure he wanted to host the show. Like the FBI, he didn’t know what to make of it. He was worried that if it turned out to be cheesy and exploitative, it might hurt his ability to continue lobbying on behalf of missing children.

About 1,500 New York residents are bitten every year…by other New Yorkers.

HOST TO HOST

Walsh told Fox he wasn’t interested, and the producers considered a number of other people to host the show, including a former commandant of the Marine Corps, former U.S. attorney Rudolph Giuliani, and several actors, including Treat Williams, Brian Dennehy, and Brian Keith. While some agreed to take the job, none of them had the credibility that Walsh did. Linder and Chao decided to wait.

Finally, after six months of saying no, Walsh changed his mind. He agreed to host the show provided that Fox would flash a phone number on the screen during the broadcast so viewers would know where to call. “What would be the point, otherwise?” he told
Newsday
in 1988. But the deciding factor for Walsh was David James Roberts, the escaped killer who was going to be featured on the pilot. Walsh decided that if there was anything he could do to put a murderer of children behind bars, he had to try.

PREMIERE

The pilot of
America’s Most Wanted
aired on Sunday, February 7, 1988. Nobody knew how it would do—nothing like it had been shown in the U.S. before. Would anyone watch? The FBI had questioned the show’s merit; so had most of the other law-enforcement agencies who were asked to participate. So had John Walsh.

So had Fox—
AMW
was so unusual and so untested that instead of broadcasting the show to the nearly 100 stations in their fledgling network, Fox decided to air it only on the seven stations that it owned outright. They did very little to promote the show, and scheduled it to run following
21 Jump Street
, a program that didn’t provide much of a lead-in audience. Those few people who did watch were asked to help find a man that police had been hunting nonstop for 19 years, and whose appearance must have changed considerably since 1968.

So how long did it take to catch Roberts after
America’s Most Wanted
debuted on seven TV stations? Four days.

GOTCHA!

Then, as now,
AMW
set up a phone bank to handle whatever calls came in, even though “we didn’t know if we’d get one call,” Linder admitted in 1988. They did get calls, though—dozens of them, including 15 tips in the first 40 minutes that placed Roberts in New York City. One of the callers recognized him as the man running a homeless shelter on Staten Island. Police took Roberts into custody on February 11.

What do smelly cheeses, sweaty feet, and vomit have in common?
Butyric acid
.

Other arrests followed: In the first two months alone, 15 other suspects profiled on the show were captured, eight of them caught solely on the basis of tips phoned in to the
AMW
hotline.

America’s Most Wanted
moved to the full network in early April and quickly became Fox’s highest-rated show—and its first genuine hit. As torrents of viewer tips led to the arrest of one fugitive after another, the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies abandoned their skepticism. Soon they were fighting to get their most difficult unsolved cases on the air. By the end of the first year, more than 25 million viewers were tuning in each week; the tips they phoned in led to the arrests of 73 fugitives. By the end of 1989,
America’s Most Wanted
was averaging one arrest every 16 days, a success rate of 44%.

I WANT MY
AMW

America’s Most Wanted
was a hit, but Fox may not have realized what a cultural force the show had become until 1996, when they announced they were pulling it from the upcoming fall season—even though its ratings were still on the upswing. Why kill a success? The up-to-the-minute nature of the show means that there isn’t much of a market for reruns or DVD collections. Apparently Fox was hoping to replace
AMW
with something that had a greater potential for future profits.

Fox broke the news to John Walsh on a Monday, made the public announcement on Tuesday, and by Wednesday a campaign to save the show was well underway. FBI director Louis Freeh asked Fox to put the show back on; so did countless other law-enforcement agencies. So did the governors of 37 states. But it was the letters from fans, Walsh says—more than 200,000 of them—that got the show back on the air after an absence of just six weeks. “The public was the judge,” he told reporters. “It was the shortest cancellation in the history of network television.”

Marlon Brando was paid $14 million for his cameo in
Superman
.

ROGUE’S GALLERY

America’s Most Wanted
hasn’t been perfect—Walsh admits that he cringes when he thinks back to how graphic the filmed reenactments were in the show’s early days. And it’s not uncommon for the actors who play the criminals to be mistakenly turned in to the police. One man in Louisiana was “apprehended” six times in one week in March 1990 just because he looked like someone who had been profiled on the show.

Even so, the number of criminals who have been captured over the years is astounding—as of August 2006, 900 fugitives had been captured and 42 missing children returned safely to their homes. Here’s a look at some of the most notable captures:

•
Jack and Mona Volagres,
wanted for the murder of Mona’s daughter Saleana. They were arrested only 29 minutes after the episode aired, the quickest arrest in the show’s history.

•
James Charles Stark,
a repeat sex offender. The week before his segment was scheduled to air,
AMW
showed his picture for five seconds as part of a preview. That’s all it took—six people phoned in tips that he worked at a car wash in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Police took him into custody the next day.

•
Stephen Randall Dye,
wanted for shooting a man and linked to the murder of a motorcyclist. After seeing himself profiled on the show, he went outside, flagged down the first police car that came along, and surrendered on the spot.

•
James Henderson,
wanted for kidnapping and assault in Arizona. Henderson wasn’t on the show at all—Tucson police suspected that his wife was in contact with him, so they told her that an
America’s Most Wanted
film crew was in town shooting reenactments of his crimes. Henderson’s wife didn’t know they were lying, and passed the information on to Henderson. He surrendered to police a short time later.

•
Steven Ray Stout,
wanted for the murder of his stepmother-in-law and stepsister-in-law. Arrested nine days after his story aired, Stout pled guilty to both murders and was sentenced to life in prison. One of the few subjects of the show who also admits to being a fan, Stout says he watches the program in prison every week. “There’s no doubt that most of the people on the show need to be off the streets,” he says.

Technically, you must have a hunting license to catch mice in California.

CAN YOU PASS THE U.S. CITIZENSHIP TEST?

Bad news! The government lost the answers to the quiz you took on
page 177
. You need to take it again. Here are 21 “medium-hard” questions
.

1.
What is it called when the president refuses to sign a bill into law and returns it to the Congress with his objections?

2.
What do we celebrate on the 4th of July?

3.
Name one of the five freedoms outlined in the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

4.
How many justices are there in the U.S. Supreme Court?

5.
Who is the commander in chief of the U.S. military?

6.
Who alone has the power to declare war in the U.S.?

7.
Who elects the Congress?

8.
Who elects the president of the United States?

9.
Name the three branches of the federal government.

10.
Who is the head of the executive branch?

11.
The Civil War was fought over what important issues?

12.
What are the duties of the Supreme Court?

13.
How many voting members are there in the House of Representatives?

14.
How many senators are there in the U.S. Senate?

15.
Why are there that many senators in the U.S. Senate?

16.
What are the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution called?

17.
How long is the term of each U.S. senator?

18.
How long is the term of each U.S. representative?

19.
How many full terms can a president serve?

20.
How many full terms can a U.S. senator or representative serve?

21.
Who said, “Give me liberty, or give me death?”

Whew! Check your answers on
page 516
, then try the “hard” test on
page 473
…if you dare
.

Old softie: President Andrew Johnson left crumbs out for the White House mice.

DELICIOUSLY FAMILIAR PHRASES

Hungry for some word play? You’ll eat up these juicy origins of popular phrases.

S
PILL THE BEANS
Meaning:
To give away a secret
Origin:
“A tradition that began in ancient Greece for electing a new member to a private club was to give each existing member one white and one brown bean with which to cast their votes (white was ‘yes’; brown was ‘no’). The beans were then placed in a jar and then counted in secret by an official. The prospective member would never know how many people voted for or against him. Unless, that is, the jar was knocked over before the secret count and the beans spilled. Then the members’ secret would be out.” (
Red Herrings & White Elephants
, by Albert Jack)

TO EGG ONE ON

Meaning:
To persistently urge someone to do something
Origin:
“Following the Norman Conquest, Anglo-Saxon peasants were treated brutally. Roped or chained together, they were often driven from place to place like cattle. Many prisoners were urged to move faster by a poke of their captor’s spearpoint, or
ecg
. Later, children listened as their elders told of having been “ecged on” in this fashion. Tradition kept the stories alive long after Anglo-Saxon ceased to be spoken, with the result that later generations referred to their ancestors as having been
egged
on.” (
I’ve Got Goose Pimples
, by Marvin Vanoni)

EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY

Meaning:
To feast and not worry about life’s problems
Origin:
“This phrase has its roots in the Bible, where, in Ecclesiastes 8:15, we read: ‘A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.’ There is a further reference in Isaiah 22:13, ‘Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we may die.’” (
Everyday Phrases—Their Origins and Meanings
, by Neil Ewart)

Until 2004, caffeine was on the International Olympic Committee list of prohibited substances.

IN A PICKLE

Meaning:
To be stuck in a difficult situation
Origin:
“From
in de pikel zitten
, a Dutch phrase going back four centuries, literally meaning to sit in a salt solution used for preserving pickles, an uncomfortable or sorry plight.” Dante used the idiom in his
Divine Comedy
; Shakespeare used it in
The Tempest
(“How camest thou in this pickle?”). It’s now also used to describe the sorry plight of a baseball player caught in a rundown between two bases.” (
Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins
, by Robert Hendrickson)

EASY AS PIE

Meaning:
Simple to complete
Origin:
This phrase came from Australia, by way of New Zealand, in the 1920s. When someone was good at something, they were considered “pie at it” or “pie on it.” For example, a good climber was “pie at climbing.” Although the modern phrase is associated with pie (the dessert), it is actually derived from the Maori word
pai
, which means “good.”

THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING

Meaning:
Wait to pass judgement until a task is actually completed
Origin:
“In its full wording this old English proverb runs, ‘The proof of the pudding is in the eating’—with ‘proof’ meaning ‘test’ rather than its normal sense of ‘verifying that something is true.’ The expression has a long history in English, with recorded versions dating from the beginning of the 14th century. From that time until the present, it has remained unaltered.” (
Bringing Home the Bacon & Cutting the Mustard
, Castle Books)

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN AND INTO THE FIRE

Meaning:
To escape one danger, only to land in another
Origin:
“This expression is common to many languages; dating to the 2nd-century Greek equivalent, ‘out of the smoke into the flame.’ Its English usage is traceable to an ongoing religious argument in 1528 between William Tynedale, translator of the Bible into English, and Sir Thomas More, who wrote that his adversary ‘featly conuayed himself out of the frying panne fayre into the fyre.’” (
Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions
, by Charles Earle Funk)