The Real Rambo | Hunting Eric Frein

[Music] hey you and welcome my name is mike and in this whole video we are first off going to the year 2014 to north east pennsylvania and deep into the heart are the poconos that autumn a man was running through the woods as fast as he possibly could he was dressed in a bosnian serb uniform because he was a big fan of the balkan's war as you do and he could hear dogs after him in the distance growing up his favorite movie was rambo first blood now he was living it he had drawn first blood and now he was running like he had been for many weeks by this stage before we get into it please subscribe to see a new crime video every week it helps out now let's get into the how the why and the you know what let's give it a go [Music] the town of blooming grove lies roughly 40 minutes east of world famous scranton pennsylvania blumenell blooming grove is in fact closer to new york than to ophelia of philly i mean there's a township there and not really a whole lot else google maps tells me that there is the blooming grove tavern a few scoops sounds good and a sewer plant yummy but you know have a look and what do you see first first first and then there's some more forest over there like they could have filmed the blair witch project and there you could disappear pretty handily and if you're in those woods you could go south down to west virginia or keep going in the other direction to upstate new york so you get the click pick in those same woods not far but a few forests between it and blooming grove is the pa state police barracks essentially it's the state police police station right so that is where i'm gonna begin when late one autumn night it went under siege on the 12th of september 2014 just before 11 pm so it was getting pretty dark not cold but you could start to feel it there was a shift change the evening officers were out and the night officers were in they would do the 11 pm to 7 am shift on the way out after finishing up his eight-hour shift was corporal brian k dixon brian was 38 years old he had been with the state police for seven years in 2014. he was married he was the father of two boys a former marine big baseball fan and he had a degree in criminal justice he had in fact just been transferred to blooming grove a year before before that he was working where it is always sunny so it was corporal brian dixon who that late night at about 10 50 p.m he was walking out of the barracks he was walking to his car that was in the car park surrounded by these dense woods when a shot rang out followed by a scream when people looked around they saw brian lying on the ground officers they ran out to him but more shots were ringing it so they dove for cover it was impossible to tell where these shots were coming from but they are being directed at that state police barracks from somewhere in that extremely dark dense forest that surrounded them pretty much on all sides another officer who happened to be in the car park at that same time not leaving but in fact arriving was trooper alex douglas and he was a 10-year veteran with the pa state police he had been on the phone when the shots rang out and he ran over to brian a brian in a pool of his own blood he had tried to drag brian inside the barks but another shot rang out of that dark night alex went flying onto the ground he had been shot and the bullet had went through both his hips he managed to crawl inside and other officers who were who were in there taking cover and were getting their rifles out they dragged alex to safety and they were just barricaded inside trying to see anything they managed to get into an suv that was in the back of the barracks they drove it around the front and they put shields over the windows so that you know bullets couldn't pierce it and they drove it in front of brian who was still lying outside in a pool of his own blood they shielded him and so they managed to bring him inside the barracks also by the time they did so though he was gone emergency services all all the police arrived from neighboring stations and counties and even states trooper douglas he was airlifted to safety as i said unfortunately brian dixon was was gone he had been shot he had been shot twice and the shooter ran away into those dark autumn woods it was initially assumed that there were multiple shooters with long rifles camped out in the endless forests surrounding them a militia or or something but they had no idea in fact it would be three days before they even had the slightest clue as to who and what had attacked them that night that had put a state police barracks under siege and it was one person it was on the 17th of september that the first clue was found found by some lad walking the yale dog he was walking along route 402 which is the road the barracks is on he was four miles to the north as he was walking along walking the dog and having a goo he saw off the road semi submerged in like a drainage pond like a swamp was a 2001 jeep cherokee and obviously hearing about what had just happened down the road he called it in the police were quickly able to trace the license plate of that 2001 jeep cherokee to an older couple an older couple named deborah and the gene and they lived in another small township in those same woods it was a town called canadensis it was half hour south that couple they had a son and the police knew they were looking for a man named eric frein pretty quickly because in that cheap cherokee they found eric frein's social security card and his driver's license along with bullet casings that matched the shots fired three days previous at the police barracks i don't i don't know if he was mad to yeah here i am it was me he may as well just shouted while he was shooting so now there was a major and i mean over 1 000 officers state police from pa new york new jersey fbi u.s marshals atf the whole the whole gang the whole gang got together for a big ol like avenger style team up they were now in those woods looking for an eric who was on the run eric frein was 31 years old born in new jersey but he grew up in pennsylvania and in fact he went to pocono mountain high school not terribly far away so he was very familiar with the area he was an eagle scout he got all those little badges good for him and he knew how to live off the land in 2014 he was living with his parents in canadensis about a half hour's drive from the barks his dad eugene was a retired army major so he was around guns and all that sort of stuff from youth and he was especially around and drawn to the heroic tales says that eugene would tell of his army days in fact eric loved the military he loved guns he loved and i mean really loved reenactments especially like world war ii reenactments he ended up working on a couple of documentaries as a background actor or technical advisor did you get it my name is eric screen and we're here today at fort mifflin vietnam remembrance day how did you feel um having been to a few of these that the reenactment went today can you give us a commentary on that the reenactment we saw today was it's hard to call it like a really reenactment and a bunch of guys went out and popped off some blanks blank ammunition from the rifles uh you know it's really it's it's a remembrance day it's to commemorate the veterans it's not really to play army to basically an act of fantasy he loved like old war shite in fact that actually caused him to get in trouble the only time he was ever in trouble with the law before was in 2004 when he was 21 years old he was arrested and accused of stealing world war ii stuff from like a reenactment uh i don't know what you call scenario he was jailed for 109 days and he had to pay back three thousand dollars but other than that he had no criminal history or anything like that nothing really that would make authorities aware of him you know until now he also did balkan's war reenactments uh that's a bit of an odd choice of a war to get uh you know dolled up for he just took one look at those brutal war atrocities and he said wow i've never seen anything more beautiful now apparently it wasn't the war itself he was you know uh stunning uh he just liked the uniforms just like the look so much so he founded a stuckney voc which i'm sure i butchered meaning eastern wolf and eastern wolf is probably exactly what he saw himself as and he would get all dolled up they would he would go you know all the time to have these airsoft you know battles or you know setups and reenactments and all that sort of stuff he he made a couple of trips to uh to to that part of eastern europe just having a goo around you know i wonder if you wore the uniform and so he lived with his folks in the middle of nowhere he attended college a couple of times but never finished any of the degrees in the meantime he worked at the local supermarket stocking shelves uh kind of typically described as a loner and he fired four shots in total at the blooming grove state police barracks two hit a corporal brian dixon won hit trooper alex uh douglas and then he ran like crazy through those those pitch black woods his adrenaline you know his heart bumping he ran through those woods uh to his car which was about two miles away he got in and he started driving now he started driving with the lights of that jeep cherokee off to avoid detection as you can imagine driving through a road in the middle of nowhere with the lights off he couldn't see where he was going so hence he went off the road and into that swamp where the car would be found just a couple of days later so he was now in that big forest on foot fleeing with thousands of people looking for him he even made it to the big leagues he was put on the fbi's 10 most wanted look at you people would say he was a crack shot and expert sharpshooter and survivalist and so he was now survivalist ting in those woods you know well like i said pretty much decompined combined police forces of like a lot right and so there was numerous times when they the police and authorities would see him in the distance on the sides of mountains and hills across fields and meadows fleeing away from them and every time he would evade them they'd see him on a hill in the distance by the time they got there he was gone this got to the point where the police believed he was taunting them like they'd put on their binoculars and then they'd just see him in the distance he was seen by civilians too but when they'd alert the police he was gone the hunt focused primarily on the delaware state first and they would find from time to time things he had left behind for example one thing eric really was just mad about was serbian cigarettes what's like a wee-boo but for serbia also soiled diapers i guess you really did not want to stop moving though i'm not sure if rambo himself caves abandoned seasonal homes shacks all were searched whirlybirds dogs you name it his face was plastered everywhere the advised lethal force is authorized for protection of self and others if positive id is made and subject refuses to surrender i will repeat per psp command lethal force is authorized for protection of self and others if positive id is made and subject refuses to surrender and his family um they cooperated they had absolutely no idea where he was he had in fact eric had told his parents in fact that he was moving to delaware for a job and that's that was his explanation for just packing up his stuff and leaving but they did say that before he left he shaved his head into like a weird mohawk and upon searching their home they found two rifles were missing an ak-47 and a 308 rifle a 308 rifle can do a lot of damage to a human body it already did and eugene frain said that his son eric was a he was a he was a good shot once they thought they were close when he used his cell phone to call his parents on the 18th of september and it was traced to price township when they got there they found the phone clothing and his diary where he wrote september 12th got a shot around 11 pm and took it he dropped i was surprised at how quick i took a follow-up shot on his head neck area he was still and quiet after september 13th had to run jeep stuck ditched the rifle went on foot heading south west to stream under interstate 84. september 14th slept all day in abandoned camper no police activity started campfire they would later find in fact more of his diaries kind of strewn about the place it's like that slenderman uh and this is like someone more some of the other stuff he wrote during this entire manhunt which he was it was documented he was a great little writer september 18th started campfire slept well for the first time in three days went deeper into the woods set up shelter and cleaned up cell phone home twice to let them know i'm still alive got text saying i'm a suspect saw patrol not spotted they stuck to the trails listen to portable radio news media calling me a survivalist catchy phrase i guess shelter in place ordered in nearby residential areas by spooked cops october 5th helos close safe to travel after dark hunting closed two cops fell from tree stand and flown to hospital that's what those helos must have been no respite recon went well this massive search can't last forever slept in mourning plugged in laptop bathed and tried fasting did laundry got piece of chocolate and the search continued for week after week after week one hundred thousand dollars was offered for his capture pipe bombs were also found in the woods also a discarded the discarded ak-47 and some ammo searching his parents home for any information on his computer he had been reading up how to avoid police manhunts sniper training supplies needed to make it in the wild so the ak-47 that was one of the guns he had that was found but there was still a sniper in those woods a sniper who knew the woods well knew how to hunt and had to survive and live off the land um a sniper who was not afraid to take lies in fact had already taken one and tried to take another and had left behind traps pipe bombs so i mean there was a great fear that he might start picking off you know uh the searchers one by one by one and then disappearing into the woods just doing like this gorilla tactics on the the hunters essentially and he was always one step ahead this would go on for 48 days hunting eric frein it was on the 30th of october 2014 that officers were searching fields near an abandoned hangar at birchwood pocono airpark as you can see it's surrounded by dense woods and walking across a field officers spotted eric just walking he was unarmed he surrendered without a fuss arrested with corporal brian dixon's own handcuffs the slain troopers handcuffs placed on the wrist of his suspected killer to confirm the subject will be held blooming grove car 2 is in route with corporal dixon's handcuffs he'll be there in approximately 20 minutes so we'll stand by until that takes place then the 48-day search ends with his final radio transmission from trooper dixon's state police car used to transport the captured suspect to face the criminal justice system one one six five two romeo four two four two rounds station one package in the back he didn't resist but um well the officers got some digs in he had been staying in that hangar for for a while his supplies were there his guns but he was running out of food trooper douglas um he had a tough time making a recovery and remember he had been shot the bullet went through both his hips as a trio eight round in fact one of his legs would have to be amputated but he survived um and brian dixon would have a you know a huge funeral so why did he do this what was his motive you know to begin this attack in the first place well he said he wanted to wake people up start a revolution he said he never had any intention of um you know attacking or hurting any of the police who were after him in fact he said that he was almost about to turn himself in when he was arrested here's a letter he wrote to his parents where he kind of explains a little bit about why he did this whole thing i've seen so many depressing changes made in my time that i cannot imagine what it must be like for you there is so much wrong and on so many levels only passing through the crucible of another revolution and get us back to the liberties we once had i do not pretend to know what the revolution will look like or even if it would be successful it seems eric's that eugene was a huge influence on uh eric's life and he would tell all these kind of exaggerated stories of his own time in the military and that kind of rubbed off on eric and i kind of set a bar that was you know eric could never reach essentially because the stories were really exaggerated his father also spoke of his hatred for the police how he thought the police were too powerful and that kind of led to eric hating the cops too so in the end it's like daddy issues it kind of always is little boys and lookers shouting at frein as he was led out of the courthouse after today's hearing nbc 10 reporter randy gyllenhaal was there to send us this reaction and then this video showing eric frein being walked out of the state police barracks in blooming grove as he was being taken to jail this morning eric frein went on trial for first degree murder terrorism and almost a dozen other charges in april 2017 two and a half years after he was captured the trial lasted 11 days after which he was found guilty on all counts he was sentenced to death [Music] he was scheduled to be executed in june 2020 but the governor of pennsylvania put a moratorium on you know executions uh so no lethal injection for eric just yet but he still sits on death row like today it's crazy story of a real life rambo on the run for two for almost two months causing all sorts of havoc shutting down an entire section of the stage it's it's incred incredible story it's crazy trying to take lives and he took one scary a guy who had so many airsoft battles and was so obsessed with reenactments he probably saw this as just another one and he was the hero on the run basically an act of fantasy only this time the bullets were very very real he smoked his serbian cigarettes he played with his toy guns and he worked in the grocery store and then he was out in the woods having taken a life with the very real fear he may take many many more lethal force was even authorized to be used on him he was plotting planning plotting the whole time for some kind of revolution to start it didn't really seem like he he thought it true terribly well honestly though waking people up was his whole game it didn't really seem like he believed in it himself [Music] thank you so much for watching i really appreciate you taking the time to be here with misha um if you want to learn more about this story as with all my stories references and sources are down below in the description where you will also find a patreon that chapter patreon and merch and all the other stuff thanks again for watching uh i really appreciate it as always please look after yourselves hey and each other because i love you [Music]

Channel: That Chapter

Views: 1,563,732

Keywords: that chapter, eric frein, real rambo

Id: 3Urxy8bwL68

Length: 23min 46sec (1426 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 09 2022