Vince Champ: Comedian, Serial Rapist, and "A Real Jerk"

this video is brought to you by surf shark safety and security online are critically important protect yourself with surf shark get 83 off formats for free there's a link in the description below and now today's video hello everybody and welcome back to another brand new episode of the casual criminal list uh i as always i'm your host simon what happens here is i'm gonna read a script uh this one is vince champ uh champ comedian serial rapist and a real jerk um this is written by david thank you so much david putting this together uh and afterwards of course jen are you listening to me neil and in some of the finest well memes and images and videos and sounds and everything that makes this podcast come to life or i mean it's also a video so it's like a video podcast uh yeah obviously if you're just listening you don't get any of those images so why not check it out on youtube yes uh also um yeah i'm wearing a christmas jumper if you're watching that if you're watching this i have no idea right now it's the lead up to christmas when i'm recording this obviously this might come out in january people feel like what's up with the christmas sweater simon it's a bit weird isn't it and honestly it's just very warm and very comfortable and you might see this sweater just make more of an appearance because honestly i'm just feeling really comfortable right now also i'm feeling quite tired my kid decided to get up at five o'clock this morning and not even really get up just start making some sounds like they sleep in the room next door and they're just like ah oh my oh god what is it so i go in and i give them a dummy or a pacifier as americans call it and she goes back to sleep and then i'm like okay back to bed and i just can't get back to sleep because i gotta pee and then appear all right i'm getting up so i got about five this morning which was awesome gotta get it together i got some coffee that sound was me slapping myself on the head let's go let's go get that energy first of all i'd like to dedicate this episode to my to the late nor macdonald one of the greatest comedians of all time who gave me the subtitle for this script if you're unfamiliar with the story of vince champ it all will become clear in a moment i'm also a bit unfamiliar with the story of norm mcdonald's i i know he's a comedian but i don't really know much about him i feel like comedians between the us and the uk don't often cross the pond i'm from canada but you know i'm still a human being like i feel there's a lot of british comedians who i feel like american people wouldn't know about and there's also a lot of american comedians that i feel like british people wouldn't know about and i don't know a lot about norm mcdonald's um which is interesting i mean obviously some comedians definitely do let's just move on with this isn't a podcast about comedians and their international appeal let's continue but if you are familiar with vince champ then you know why i mention nor macdonald since you can't look up vince champ and go more than two minutes without finding a norm reference or quotation type the words vince champ into youtube go to the comment section of any video that comes up and you'll see what i mean okay this is all a total mystery to me because i mean i know who nor macdonald is have no idea who vince champ is i've no idea why they'd be related oh if you're new here the reason i don't know any of these things is because i'm a true professional and i've never read this stuff before it's all brand new to me nor macdonald who passed away earlier this year from cancer frequently liked to make uh blatantly idiotic jokes in order to watch people's reactions he didn't care if the joke made you laugh though it often did he just wanted to amuse himself at your reaction an awkward silence groans of frustration or scales of anger suited him just as well as peals of laughter all would be met with a look of pure joy and indulgence on norm's face he didn't cater towards the sarfaced thin-skinned or tiptoe around the more humorless fuss pots in the audience he loved jokes for the jokes themselves he sounds like a very funny guy i would like to see more i'd like to know more about him and watch some of his stuff i'm sure i can look it up on youtube that's probably what i'll do with my lunch break today one of norm's blatantly idiotic and oft-repeated jokes was to raise the name of one of history's monsters in conversation adolf hitler or albert fish the werewolf of wisteria or today's eponymous victim the former stand-up comedian vince jam whom norm utterly despised as a traitor to the profession's central calling to lift the dark feelings of the audience for a while not to unload your own darkness upon the world just because you think you could get away with it norm would then give you a straight-faced and grim account of who this monster was and their horrific crimes against humankind and nature he'd be unnecessarily detailed he would use high-flow and biblical language to underline the travesties the person in question had imposed upon the indelibly blood-stained pages of the history of human crime he'll go on a bit too long staring you in the eye his face impassive his voice cold and just when you'd start to wonder how this pot staring comedian was going to wrap this up and actually make this catalog of atrocity funny he'd interrupt himself in the middle of recounting the details of a genocide or murder or rape and bluster you know i mean this guy's a real jerk so understatement of the century there norm the punchline was stupid it was an anti-climax and it obviously was in an appropriate understatement describing the deeds of an atrocious person couched in the archaic 1930s radio language that norm was so fond of using is this like what they call an anti-joke or like you know where it's like the joke is that it's not really a joke you're like ah oh no it wasn't designed to unleash howls of laughter just a grim just a grin or a chuckle but it was with this cheeky punchline that nor macdonald transformed any kind of horror into something gleamingly funny within seconds norm was the embodiment of the idea that anything could be laughed at with just a little bit of introspection intelligence and childlike joy ah yes the childlike joy of genocide the exact opposite of the squeaky clean comedian vince champ who stayed away from all the controversial topics never curse never pushed the envelope and never offended anyone and in private he turned down to be one of the worst people ever or in norman's words a real jerk for norm no monstrous topic in the world existed so fierce and evil that it could not be slain by a little bit of immature gallows humor oh my god what's that about the gallows humor the most brilliant example of that is is it from a movie or just a meme where it's the two guys standing on a steady at the actual gallows you know with the the noose down and one dude turns to the other dude and just says you know they're both about to be hung he just looks at me goes first time it was small acts of genius like that joke not my joke that i stole from a meme or whatever but the norm mcdonald joke which made dozens of comedy legends from jerry seinfeld to bill burr and millions of fans worldwide dubbed norm mcdonald one of the greatest comedians of all time conversely if it were not for norm's joke vince champ whose tepid comedy could barely be found anywhere today would have long since faded into obscurity interestingly i reflect we could make norm's same joke after every episode of the casual criminalist oh my god couldn't we just i'm like nor mcdonald got into intricate details and i'm like as intricate as our details i was reading one of these the other day where i was like no i'm not sure if it's come out yet maybe it has but i was just reading it as like no no no no no and i always read ahead you know a few words maybe a line ahead so uh you know i don't stumble over myself at every word and just like we're not reading that that is uh that is just way too far and we shall certainly need a liberal dose of gallows humor to approach the twisted tale of a man as psychologically revolting as vince champ a hack comedian with what norm mcdonnell called the world's worst gimmick who provided humanity with one of life's darkest punchlines [Music] atrocity in omaha in the evening of the 5th of march 1997 the university of nebraska in the city of omaha is certainly not in the american ivy league it's a decent little university in a flyover state with a relatively small enrollment of students the only thing i know about omaha is uh i think warren buffett lives there right doesn't he famously live in like omaha in a regular house that's not really a regular house but uh that's like the the common thing and also uh the counting crows right omaha somewhere in middle america god i'm terrible at seeing you but you know the one you know the one somewhere in middle middle america it's like no one really knows where it is somewhere in there it doesn't really matter i'm sorry everyone from omaha wait nebraska no omar's the state nebraska's the town big brain omaha itself is a rather unassuming city wait omaha's not the state ah i'm so stupid i just read this omaha nebraska nebraska omaha honestly if someone was like omaha's estate i'd be like yes yeah definitely i agree it's not though it's apparently it's a city it's a city that with this restrained countryside aesthetic that has an unashamedly unashamedly corny community spirit and a can-do attitude which is one of the greatest virtues of chronically under-appreciated u.s cities and among the most attractive qualities of everyday americans and as a humble backdrop to our story omaha is not the sort of place you usually see many students or criminals migrating to heidi hess a part-time grad student teacher who was working by herself on a in a computer lab on the university of nebraska campus it was getting late most other people had gone home her anonymity would usually be protected by convention but heidi had bravely chosen to sacrifice her anonymity claim ownership of her story and freely share it in order to overcome what was done to her and also let other victims of such crimes know they are not alone a tough decision which should be commended and applauded do victims have their anonyms i guess so but it's so often like i'm like wait yeah because i in like law cases and stuff it'll just be referred to like maybe their first name i especially think like in europe it's also interesting you read like like i'll read the paper here i live in prague in the czech republic and you're not the paper but you know news websites and until someone is guilty of a crime they're just like john p or like mike s i mean these are super english names that i chose but like the equivalents and uh their faces will be blurred out in all of the newspapers and stuff until they're convicted so it's like the the newspapers just don't report on it which is like i guess that's pretty good and i never really thought about it before but that seems like quite a good thing to do and victims should definitely be protected but i just was thinking on casual criminals we often know the names of the victims but i guess that's because it's quite high profile or they come forward or something like that i guess also sometimes it's it's no most the time we do know who they were a man slipped quietly through the door of her lap quickly quietly but swiftly he walked away oh he walked up behind hess who was so engrossed in her work that she had not looked up at him and the man put a gloved hand over the woman's eyes he then pulled a ragged cap cloth cap over the woman's entire face so she could not identify him in the days before cctv cameras were placed all over university campuses for the express purpose of student safety no footage would capture the man entering or leaving the premises either i'm here to rob you the man muttered ripped from what she was doing still disorientated heidi has panicked the man gripped the woman and held her firm until she stopped struggling he told her in a deep but perversely apologetic voice that if she did as she did as he said no one needs to get hurt gradually heidi stopped moving and in an adrenaline-muddled flash see she came to the foul ugly and traumatizing conclusion that her best chance of survival was to comply with her attacker it is this cold realization of potential powerlessness and loss of agency where nothing you can do will avert the harm being done to you which causes the most mental damage and can take decades or even a lifetime to repair i mean this guy was a real jerk i don't know i also feel like isn't that the best advice i know you're you're always watching movies or whatever it's like now is the time to get the gun now is the time to grab the gut off your attacker because i mean you're dead anyway but when you're in that situation you're like i don't know if i'm gonna die i mean if i'd seen the person's face i'd be like okay it's probably time to take a few more risks isn't it whistle boy let's uh let you know that's not a good thing but if they've prevented me from seeing their face and stuff it's like chances are i'm probably going to be all right because then they don't want to kill me because they haven't let me see the face right that that makes sense that's not just a movie thing right that seems like logical um but also i feel like if someone robs me if i'm getting if some if you know someone comes up to me in the stream give me your wallet i'll be like okay you want to go to the atm i can take you out some cash just don't kill me just let me go i don't care take my wallet take my phone take my whatever i've got on me go for it it's fine please don't hurt me i feel like that's good advice don't fight back unless you are really screwed then fight back the man's voice sounded deep resonant and oddly formal like a news reader trapped in that room with her attacker the man proceeded to sexually assault her in multiple ways for over an hour and with being late at night it seemed unlikely that anyone would hear her scream for help not that the victim dead because she feared that non-compliance would cause the rapist to turn violent gonna say david but uh maybe maybe rape is a violent act in itself could we maybe say turn more violent turned like murderers i'm sure that's like david doesn't think that rape isn't violent he's probably just phrased that badly the entire time the mad debit is victim with questions expecting a response which heidi was too terrified not to give he asked where she was from he asked about her parents and siblings he asked about her past sexual experiences a very strange and twisted modus operandi heidi gave it's not really super surprising though is it from a guy who breaks in to rape someone it's like he's going to be a bit weird shocking uh heidi gave the sort of brief terrified answers that anyone in a position would feel forced to give she was overwhelmed by the feeling that she might die if she did not comply a shockingly cold venomous and paralyzing feeling that anyone who has gone through a sexual assault must deal with for the rest of their lives this is one of those things it's like oh my god i think about things in my life that have been like traumatizing and i mean i've never been a victim of a sexual assault like this but i think about like stupid that i still um like have bad dreams about to this day and i mean really stupid like people will have a go at me for comparing but what i want to do is not like say that these things are in any way related but how something that is a one out of ten on the scale of extremeness could still bother you years later whereas something like this which is like a 10 out of 10 on the stale of extremeness that must just you this must just be with you forever like the one the one i'm thinking of is like just two nights ago i had like nightmares about uh doing final exams you know university exams and just being unprepared for them and it's like that is like the trauma of like going through like those hard exams at the end of university is still something that you know 15 years later i'll still have like bad dreams about for no reason and that is like a one it's not even a one it's a nothing i can't imagine the the how harrowing that is and how that must screw people up it's so crazy people are such dicks to each other yeah i guess that's therapy and psychiatry and all of that stuff i really don't want anyone to think that i'm comparing my stupid example with rape i'm just trying to put it in perspective of like how intense that could be right that's so intense afterwards the assailant did not immediately flee instead the man asked his victim if she would pray for his soul crossing your fingers behind your back right there it's like yeah yeah yeah god will definitely forgive you maybe after a thousand years of being tortured in hell a strange request one that may imply guilt but also a putridly selfish act by forcing his victim to pray for forgiveness for him he was in a sense coercing an implied forgiveness out of his victim and also implying that the victim was somehow complicit in his crime then the man finally left but not before politely requesting that the victim weighed now before alerting the authorities to add insult to injury the man did indeed rob her of what little cash she had and what few valuables she had on her at the time after what seemed to be like an eternity but in a superhuman display of endurance there was actually just a few minutes hess got up and alerted the police the victim had not properly seen her assailant but he sounded white given the percentage of omaha nebraska population at the time that was caucasian this sounded like a safe bet the omar police sent out an alert of a recent sex crime along with a description of a white man in his 20s or 30s as the perpetrator who might still be in the area the police then set about the task of investigating male students on campus and scouring the sex offenders registry for nearly for nearby ex-cons who did not have an alibi there's going to be a wide net my guys it's like yeah we didn't know what he looked like looks like he's white in nebraska and he's in his 20s or 30s and that's then they just start looking for people who are criminals that match that description isn't that going to be like i don't know a good proportion of them they ran the assailant's dna in the hopes that the criminal database would find a match no such luck well that's also sort of helpful i know it's not helpful it's obviously not helpful in a way but it also rules out all the criminals because their database you know all the criminals who are now in the area because it's like well they're going to be in the database so it's like well that's helpful one we can now stop looking for a previous criminal who's at least in the dna register and also when we do find a suspect boom get a sample of their dna match it up handy you know pretty handy stuff as with so many rape cases like these where the rapist is not known to their victim the unknown assailant was not found and there was little hope he would ever be found well unless they unless he does some other crime and he gets his dna tested or nowadays they uh maybe one of his ancestors does that ancestry dna thing and it's like boom uh mate your brother is that rapist dude from when the 80s that's got to be that's gotta be i i it's very cool what this technology can do and also kind of scary i mean not for me but it's like i mean it's like one of those things where you're like yeah yeah yeah this is great but it's like why was if the nazis had that technology it'd be like oh my god it would be it would or like any genocidal group who's like yeah we don't like that part of your dna and we can now see it's in a big database online i don't know generally i think this stuff's great because it obviously helps catch rapists and murderers and the golden state killer and all of this but it's also like i don't know if we lived in a bit of a different world it would be a bit a bit more terrifying wasn't it and tess thought she would have gone had to go her entire life repairing the damage that he had done without closure and without justice and forever feeling anxiety about heading out of her front door or ever trusting the average man that she happened to meet again yeah i mean that's that that's what i'm talking about that's that lifelong this is gonna be with you forever i mean you can deal with it but it's gonna it's always gonna be there isn't it that's so intense [Music] justice in pasadena it is the late evening of the 6th of may 1997 just a couple of months later and the rapist was now 1550 miles or 2500 kilometers away in the city of pasadena california not too far from downtown los angeles pasadena is a typical laid-back and sun-kissed paradise with exorbitant property prices and just a little bit too much of a seedy underbelly that place in california i remember like i went there a few years ago and it's just we were staying it was for like vidcon which is like a big uh like video youtube conference that goes on in in california pre-covered and uh we stayed in some airbnb and it was super expensive and it was super shitty and i'm like what the [ __ ] california and so i was just like curious like how much does this kind of piece of crap house cost it was like a million pound there were a million point something dollars and i'm like there's nothing around here it's just on a street with other nothing houses the walls are made out of cardboard and i'm like who the hell lives here what is going on everything is just it was just run down and bad but it wasn't even run it was fairly new and it was already run down i was like who built this you made it out of paper yeah so i don't know los angeles i don't understand pasadena is composed of luxury shops cultural institutions and interesting architecture combined with a high crime rate and almost third world profusions of drug addiction and homelessness which the rich inhabitants are at baines to avoid and ignore yeah great that sounds like the solution let's avoid and ignore the homeless population brilliant work uh the city itself is i was doing another video the other day and uh it was like set it was talking about like ridiculous laws from the past and one of the ridiculous laws they just made homelessness illegal they were like how are we going to deal with this homelessness problem let's make being homeless illegal problem solved and i made a joke it's like yeah let's just make you know screw it let's just make disease illegal that'll solve the problem the past it was the worst the city itself is small but for many decades in the 20th century it was slowly drawn into the orbit of the much larger city of los angeles and today it's little more than a de facto suburb yeah another thing about los angeles is it's just never ending it's never absolutely it's just absolutely massive and i know it's kind of like drifts from like this downtown la and then uh the uh vidcon is at disney in uh i think it's like near orange county or we were staying in orange county and i'm like wait this is separate from los angeles because i'd you know you drive in there or in a taxi or whatever and i'm like but i never left the city it's not like we drove through some countryside it was just it was just city all the way and it's like now we're in a different city but the city never ended that doesn't mean it's a different city and then you're flying out and you look it down and it was night and i'm like it's just endless it's just an endless city and another anecdote because i don't know why i'm sharing all of these it's just i just find it fascinating how huge it is i was like yeah yeah cool i'll just walk down to the beach and i looked on google maps and i was not that far it was like two hours walk and it was hot and i got burned i was like desperately looking for a petrol station to like buy some like sun uh sun cream or something and my my head got burned because you know california 20 minutes in the sun my my bald head is game burns sorry enough of this boring talk about los angeles pasadena city college like the university of nebraska is not ivy league it's a mid-tiered educational institution with a relatively small student enrollment rate this is exactly the sort of institution which our perpetrator frequently found himself the hour was late it was dark and most staff and students had already gone home a female student whose anonymity is protected was walking across the campus when a man came up behind her grabbed her and covered her eyes with a gloved hand the woman managed to let out a scream before the attacker shifted his hand down to her mouth and silenced her he said this is robbery and the woman should not struggle if she did exactly what he said she wouldn't get hurt he then pulled a cloth hood over her head as she so she could not identify gripping the woman's arms the attacker then proceeded to frog march her toward a poorly lit area fortunately two people walking nearby had heard the woman screamed they quickly located the source of the cry and saw a deeply troubling sight a man in a black ski mask was shoving a woman whose head was covered with some kind of fabric into a darkened part of the campus common obscured from view one of these witnesses shouted at the man to stop what he was doing the man in the ski mask immediately let go of the victim and ran away the witness followed him and saw the rapist leap into a black four-door bmw as the attacker sped away the witness managed to take no to the man's license plate uh oh this is extremely careless i don't feel like this is casual criminal material this just sounds like yeah guy's a rapist and he's he's he's not very smart but there's obviously more to this story because well the script is very thick i've just feel this is like why are you gonna get caught aren't you you were like doing this in a place where there's gonna be people around they're gonna see you you have your car there i'm assuming it's your car when the number was later given to police the owner of the vehicle came up as one vince champ there we go a stand-up comedian and resident of los angeles who had recently performed at pasadena city college champ was arrested at his hollywood apartment the very next day ah this is why he's a i was like why is he at these different universities around the place uh it's because he's a comedian for me performing at like i guess university comedy clubs and stuff which i used to go to i used to every week i'd go to the the comedy club at university it was great really enjoyed it love stand-up comedy when questioned vince champ denied the charges claimed the witness must have gotten the license number wrong and claimed to have been heading home at the time of the attack while this is not a great alibi and champ's car was identified at the scene the police would have a hard time pinning the attempted rape on champs so a jury could convict beyond a reasonable doubt the victim had not properly seen her attacker the two witnesses had seen only a man in a ski mask and because the sexual assault had mercifully been stopped before it could be carried out there was little in the way of dna or physical evidence attempted sexual assaults of this kind have a very low conviction rate when do we get someone's dna i guess they got to be like was he arrested he was arrested yeah yeah do they take it when you're arrested or do they have to get like uh a court order because they'll take your fingerprints right why can't they take your dna and then they'd run it in that database and be like yo yo you're the rapey dude from before prison for you doesn't matter about this latest one because you're going to prison for the other one and maybe some other ones as well because i get the feeling this is going to expand because it's thick nevertheless vince chap was charged with the attempted rape he paid his bail and fully intended to appear in court to refute the charges made against him and clear his name indeed if he was convicted of this crime his entire career in the entertainment industry built up over 12 years as a clean-cut comedian might be completely ruined might be might be people who are like what's these these guys the um although i feel some of these guys are performing again like isn't louis ck and he definitely didn't rape anybody he's just a bit of a weirdo and i mean that feels like i'm under underplaying that i don't even remember what he did didn't he jerk off in a what was that who jerked off in a plant pot wow masturbating is really important yeah it is it keeps me sane who was that that's weird um but it's not it's not this and his career didn't go so well for a while if you if you're a convicted rapist and your brand of comedy is clean cut or even it's not no one wants to see a rapist that's just not it's just not good it's not good for your career he's like you want to go to that comedy night and say wait isn't that the guy who was that rapist no i don't i don't want to support the rapist comedian there's lots of comedians that are very funny it's a competitive field why can't we go see someone who's not a rapist but in a pre me too and indeed largely pre-internet era if chap managed to get the charges quashed there were good odds that he could go on with his career largely unemployed unimpeded by these allegations most of his fan base would never even hear of them and by the time social media vigilante justice fully became a thing these allegations would be quite old and champ walled off behind publicists could merely give them the silent treatment uh i don't know isn't that exactly the sort of thing that someone would dig up and be like yo yo yo this guy although if he was not convicted then is it really oh god this is a debate that we're not going to get into today because it's way too complicated and polarizing and i don't exactly know where i stand on this specific one and i don't want to try and figure it out live on a podcast sounds like a good way to get in trouble unintentionally after all this was hollywood in the 1990s strong and ugly allegations might be brought up from time to time in hushed circles or in the tabloid press but if they were not proven in a court of law they did not prevent people from winning oscars much less having a career hell even convictions or open warrants don't seem to always scupper a hollywood career eve if it's spun the right way yeah i mean open warrants and convictions it depends what it's for if it's like yeah he was drunk driving again wasn't he or it's like i don't know like i feel many celebrities have been arrested and done crimes and stuff and it's like well yeah but they're not like horrible crimes i mean drunk driving is a bad crime don't drink drive because you could hit someone but it's like if you didn't and you get arrested for it's like oh well i'm not going to not go and see i can't remember anyone who's been convicted of this but xyz movie because he was convicted of drunk driving in the 1990s i'm going to be like okay well hopefully he's learned his lesson all one needed was a good lawyer a skilled agent and perhaps some powerful friends it really is no wonder that hollywood was the sort of place where a manipulator narcissist sociopath and sex pest like vince champ managed to thrive yeah i mean obviously like harvey weinstein thrived and he was like all of those things and worse right i mean also does that did you guys ever watch that tv show entourage there was a character in there called like harvey weinberg or something who looks like harvey weinstein like oh i mean like not exactly but it was clearly modeled on harvey weinstein before all of that stuff came out so it seems like everyone knew this right everyone knew that he was like this bad dude and that show was like spot on with it you can watch it again now they've someone people have compiled the clips of like harvey weinberg in entourage on youtube it's well worth the watch meanwhile as champ 40's legal case the comedian would continue to tour the college circuit and do shows in comedy clubs and cruise lines in order to make a living he also occasionally made television appearances though these were a bit more hit and miss in terms of the man's still mediocre career in what i consider exorbitant generosity the presiding judge did not consider a flight risk and so mere days after being arrested vince chap departed to work on board as an onboard comedian on a cruise in the caribbean our suspected rapist just temporarily left the country wait can you if you get bail surely that bail is like yo i mean this is again this is like all like my entire like legal knowledge of the american system is just like from movies but aren't they always like yeah bail don't leave the state don't leave town definitely don't leave the country while he was gone detectives looked into exactly what they were dealing with now just before we continue with the episode today well a quick word from today's wonderful sponsor surf shark do you use the internet you're probably using the internet right now almost sure you are because you're watching a video on the internet well the internet's a strange place you know there's a the world's a strange place you're listening to a true crime show or watching a true crime show more accurately you know there's lots of weirdos out there and that's not just true in that real flesh world there's also weirdos on the internet like hackers and bad people looking to steal your information all of that kind of stuff don't worry surf shark has hack clock searches database for your 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money-back guarantee which is fantastic you get 83 off surf shark today and 4 months for free through the link in the description below or just use my code criminalist and now back to today's video [Music] meet vince champ vince horace champ was born on september 6 1961. his background details are suspiciously sketchy and even his place of birth is frustratingly difficult to pinpoint when he was born in america right don't they keep records it's not it was born in 18th century spain or whatever it'd be like okay well maybe i don't know why i chose spain i'm sure they had lots of records but i don't know like you go back far enough and nowhere seems to be really sure is that when was he born i was around the 1690s ish there's no real record uh we do know his father was born in cleveland ohio but moved to california to serve in the u.s army and later the u.s air force vince's father was 34 at the time of his son's birth and given his father's movements at the time that places vince's likely birthplace and the majority of his upbringing in the modest city of stockton california yeah although i guess if he's never shared it publicly then how would we know can you look this stuff up i feel like you can look this up can't you look up someone's birthday maybe not that's probably a privacy thing you probably can't if not stockton then vince was born wherever in california his father was briefly posted before the family settled in stockton long term either way this place has vince champ as a california resident for pretty much his entire life this may come into play later yeah i was like david this better be foreshadowing because otherwise we just got into like depth of where this guy was born i even went off on a tangent about it and i'm like wait why does this matter in any way whatsoever foreshadowing friends foreshadowing we also have precious little information about vrince champs champs upbringing or family life vince had seven siblings damn baron's been busy i think the honorable thing for our species to do is stop reproducing one of whom a brother died some years ago some former colleagues we've got seven brothers and sisters the guy's what 60 one he was born in 61 so that makes him well like 62. that's an interesting coincidence um yeah he's got seven kids chances like i mean it's not super unusual for one of them to be dead already some former colleagues of champ have speculated that he had a strict upbringing which wouldn't be surprising being a son of an air force serviceman we have no information on whether the family was highly religious or secular though with the number of children and champ's later use of prayer during his rape sod place my money on tending towards the religious we also do not know whether vince champs family life was stable or abusive sure the air force father may have been strict but there are varying degrees of strictness and not all of them entail abuse while many criminal profiles have the trauma of an abusive childhood as a contributing factor to later adult behavior there is no evidence one way or the other in champ's case an abusive childhood is certainly not required for criminal activity and there are plenty of people who go on to do twisted things who seem to have had a perfectly decent upbringing and a stable home yeah but there's going to be a correlation between like you know bad upbringing and crime right that's pretty well established i feel it happened and a stable home life does not eliminate the possibility of undocumented abuse by a teacher pastor or other trusted adult authority figure specific to serial rapist statistically more often than not the perpetrators of sexual assaults were some uh were somehow sexually abused themselves as children we simply don't know in vince champs case nature or nurture or maybe both if we were to interpret champs er faux polite behavior during the sexual assaults and the request for prayers being connected to some kind of sexual repression and strict upbringing then some combination of childhood abuse may definitely have been a factor allegedly a word which i'd like to see on a casual criminalist t-shirt someday i don't know about the audience but i'd buy it and wear it with pride i'm actually working i think i mentioned this in the last episode so i won't go over in a ton of detail but i'm working on the first merch item for this channel which is the notebook which says definitely not my crimes on the front which is going to be awesome i just wasn't happy with the print-on-demand options that were a bit crap so i'm working on a really nice one getting it specially made it's going to be awesome uh maybe a month two months fingers crossed there is only one other strange indicator of something amiss in champ's upbringing the fact that vince champ's background is so difficult to unearth that his relatives have never rushed to claim him sure they did not fly to his defense when he was charged with rape which is completely understandable but they didn't seem to engage with him for the years that he was making waves in his comedy career either which may imply that the family was indeed strict that they did not approve of champs moving off to la to pursue an entertainment career or is it possible that champ's darker babies manifested themselves earlier than we know and this is the reason why his family had little contact regardless at some point either before or after his crimes his family appears to have disowned him but that is largely speculation on my part again allegedly allegedly allegedly yeah i'm glad to see this word being used here because you know always got to throw that in when it's not like proven allegedly i mean definitely not allegedly for that just the what use the word allegedly is good [Music] vince's act vince champ started doing stand-up comedy in 1985 at the age of 24 and was active until 1996 a sample of vince champ's comedy is decidedly rare to come across since he wasn't very famous at the time of his arrest the 1980s and 1990s vhs footage of his work was largely scrubbed clean before it could be immortalized on the internet however you can see one of vince's full sets on youtube by simply searching his name where you can see him performing on vh1 in 1990 where vince is introduced by rosie o'donnell who surreally calls him a friend jam this is wait so he wasn't very famous uh 1980s 1990s when was he arrested i don't remember when he was arrested but i feel like in 1990 bh1 okay so i guess this it must come later cause then you're like famous right rosie o'donnell i've heard of her mike if you're getting introduced by her that's a big deal i think i listened to a podcast isn't she friends with tom cruise and he's mega famous he's like the most famous or is that just my boomer energy thinking that tom cruise is still the most famous person it's probably some like i don't know like justin bieber or something isn't it lord forgive us as a species for liking justin bieber's music good lord i told the story before maybe not on this podcast but i was like there's got to be something to this right justin bieber right he's super famous his music is you know some of the most listened to stuff on spotify so i'm like it's probably you know open your mind from your boomer energy fact boy and have a listen to some justin bieber and i did and it's awful it's truly dreadful music and i hate it scroll down to read the inevitable norm mcdonald references in the comments if you want to dig a little deeper for vince's act it's still possible to find footage of him competing in the 1992 edition of the american idol 4runner star search champ actually did quite well in that competition coming out of it with a hundred thousand dollar prize that is did quite well in the 1990s a hundred thousand dollars that's a lot of money i mean it's a lot of money now but prize money in the 90s on tv shows was terrible to use the lingo of the biz vince champs act was what you'd call hack or hacky in that he was extremely predictable formula can never push the boundaries of his comedy well i mean i don't want to defend the guy's comedy because he's a horrible monster i mean he was good enough to win a hundred thousand dollars and get on vh1 and be rosie o'donnell's friend allegedly it can't have been that bad it's term comedians reserve for people who only tell jokes or works at work angles that are guaranteed to get a cheap laugh if there's one label you don't want to receive in comedy from your peers it is being a hack yeah but also who cares i mean yeah okay like it's good to be a comedian who pushes the edge and stuff but there's also nothing wrong with being a comedian who treads ground that's been done before and actually makes a living as a comedian because you could bet there are a whole lot of comedians out there who aren't hacks but are also not successful because they just don't because they're just that they're pushing the boundary stuff just isn't funny like a successful hack comic is great analogy but more successful than someone who is a like non-hack unsuccessful comic am i making any sense whatsoever with this train of thought i'm just saying that commercial comedy or whatever this guy is like hat comedy commercial comedy like broadly appealing cheap laugh comedy it made this guy a career it made this guy a hundred thousand dollars another trait that you'll notice about his act is the amateur mistake of just plowing through his pre-prepared lines he works slightly too fast and generally doesn't give the jokes enough time to marinate this is a mistake frequently made by less seasoned stand-ups who think they need to constantly force high energy on stage rather than just relaxing and doing what comes naturally in tandem with the audience you can't be naturally high energy every night i don't know cocaine would beg to differ audiences can usually spot fake energy pretty well and sometimes a slower world weary approach can work well with the same material on evenings where you've had an exhausting day in short a bit of on-stage honesty can be the best policy in a performance a great example of this is bill burr but honesty isn't something champ really excelled at yeah bill burr i'm just thinking about that now i listen to his uh bilber's monday morning podcast it's on youtube and i guess it's a podcast as well lately i i mean just with youtube premium i listened to so many uh how many of you i really wonder let me know in the comments if you're watching this on youtube but you're not really watching it because you've got youtube premium you just got your headphones in your phone in your pocket or whatever that's how i swear it most podcasts i consume that way these days because they're also on youtube and it's just easier because i don't know just youtube's so easy to consume stuff and then sometimes if people refer to an image you just oh yeah look i'll just take it out my point have a look amazing probably how you're watching this one or listening to this one what we talking about oh yeah bill burr i never really thought about like his energy level but bilber is super chill most i mean he gets you know riled up and that's particularly funny most the time he's like yeah how you doing i'm bill burr this kind of speaks like this i mean he doesn't because he's got an american accent but he's always like yeah then this happens ah interesting ah i mean i love him it's it's really funny he's an extremely funny dude you'll notice that champ's act hinges on his being perceived as intelligent and quick-witted even debonair other comedians deliberately make themselves appear low intelligence like the actually quite intelligent nor mcdonald for instance usually to win over the audience but also because people generally don't like being spoken down to in a comedy show people like dynalette being spoken down to in general some other comedians like to come off drunk or troubled or otherwise broken to enhance the feeling of chaos as they deliver material champ's category of male comic is come off as suave handsome and intelligence any male comic will tell you that this is a deliberate design since it helps comedians pick up women at the bar after his set and apparently vince champ had great success at this clean cut articulous tall handsome people who knew him said that he was leaving with a new woman almost every night so in vince champ's case we already know we're dealing with that category of predators who have no problem getting sex but go out of their way to commit sexual assault anyway as a way of satisfying a pathological need for control vince champ was also a clean comic he and he immediately goes out of his way in every act to let you know it and i quote can you believe it i don't drink i don't smoke occasionally do a little heroin ha ha ha wait so this means okay okay well that is clean is that clean then to make a joke about drug use i guess it's just no swearing i know so little about comedy despite how much i enjoy it what this means is that he doesn't swear he doesn't make too many lewd remarks though he does make a few tame innuendos and he doesn't engage with any edgy material but he just said he does a little heroin that feels contradictory by design champ wanted to have a full mainstream audience accepting him he wasn't like those other comics in those smokey nightclubs he was good clean fun for the whole family and with his clean cut and polite exterior how could anyone doubt him i mean you could literally say i don't drink i don't smoke occasional rapist and it's like dude i guess that would be a little too close to home finally it is widely accepted in comedy circles nowadays that vince champ was something of a race traitor not my words that's just how he's depicted by the comics and not without merit champ openly disdained other black comics while doing his act oh he's black in my mind i just totally adam as a white dude i don't know why i just i don't have to explain this it's just how he was in my mind one of his most overused lines was unlike most black comedians i don't have a white girlfriend which plays on an african-american stereotype that when black men make it rich or famous they stop dating african-american women it's quite a nasty thing to say this was also by design as it would appeal to predominantly white audiences yeah i mean i get where i mean i yeah that seems kind of like well internet just makes them seem like they're the douchebag doesn't it champ didn't bother producing comedy for black audiences and stood deliberately apart from the comedy renaissance that currently was sweeping through african-american standard with the likes of eddie murphy chris rock patrice o'neill and the breakthrough show in living color yeah i mean or people who are actually funny um yeah i don't know this makes just seem like they're the [ __ ] doesn't it champ's strategy was to sidestep all this competition and become the clean accented token black comedian who could tour the midwest and the bible belt though why he felt it necessary to open most of his axe by immediately distance himself from his peers just deliver hack jokes i could not say also wasn't he just like i want to appeal to a mainstream audience and then he's like yes except for the large portion you know relatively large proportion of the majority where are my words where are my words can you guys hear that drilling my neighbor's like trying to drill through the wall it sounds like probably just putting in a shelf but it's kind of annoying um yeah but so he wants his comedy to appeal to like a wide-ranging audience and as many people as possible except for black people it's like okay why just why not just make it appeal to everyone just leave that hacky joke out of the beginning and you'll be fine weird why is that where you want to push the envelope as an aside the line unlike most black comedians i don't have a white girlfriend turned out to be [ __ ] according to comedian ron bennington almost invariably the women champ went home with after his set were white i suppose we shouldn't be surprised that a serial rapist turns out to be a hypocrite that's my feeling most rapists are hypocrites you don't meet many girls i like raping tonight oh i know why i thought he was white um because at the beginning the woman said sounds like a white dude right like 20s white sounding yeah okay that's why and also i mean to be honest if even if that i'd be like yeah casual criminals most the criminals seem to be pretty white so that's where they are in my mind also i'm white so it's like brilliant simon so you imagine all of the criminals are exactly like you so i don't know i don't know i can't explain it i'm so sorry when it came to the question of race in his act chap never really made fun of white people he did not reference historical or present racism nothing to make a predominantly white audience uncomfortable when he did poke fun at race he was almost always self-deprecatingly making fun of himself many have compared vince champs comedy style to that of bill cosby cosby another notorious rapist who's out of prison which is crazy all the stuff that he was like convicted of or like you know allegedly did the the other stuff i guess that he wasn't convicted of i'm not super familiar but what i do know is he was not a good dude allegedly and now he's out of prison because there was some mistake or something which is like [ __ ] bill you got those good lawyers that is the biggest advertisement for bill cosby's lawyers i've ever seen but from what i've seen i would say the vins champ was even more apologetic and self-deprecating about his ethnicity than even cosby was one frequent joke is vince champ would point out that he had a caucasian sounding voice there we go that's what i was talking about which would be quote very useful when it came to getting that bank loan over the phone champ's voice itself sounds reminiscent of a radio announcer or tv news reader it's no wonder that some of champ's victims not properly seeing him during the attacks reported him as a white man start things off by saying i right away kind of consider myself quite different from most black comedians because i have a black girlfriend so you know i am there is another interesting thing to note about champ's voice it sounds fake like dave chappelle putting on an exaggerated cliche white man's voice certainly there is no regional accent like it in stockton or california more widely or even in his father's birthplace of ohio certain accents might get close to that but these were the soupy melodic tones of radio announcers or tv news readers unnatural and if champ used this voice on stage that would be one thing but he persisted using the voice off stage as well it wasn't just a performance gimmick it was an assumed identity or he just had a weird accent i know i've got a weird accent and it's because i don't know like i'm british but it's been a long time since i lived in england and other people's accents like rub off on you a little bit and i also have a south of england quite impressionable accent i think like i'm one of those people it's like you know you just start speaking like the people you're hanging out with you're like ah should i be doing that sounds kind of offensive uh in short everything about champ's act was designed to hide who he really was and to manipulate his audience into accepting him as such champ wielded his polite clean-cut image as a means of exerting social control oh how life art imitates life the feigned banality of evil vince champ started in comedy in 1985 doing the small club circuit here he met many comedians who would later make it big rosie o'donnell as we've already mentioned mark maron did some of his first mid-weeks with vince jason stewart a gay comic who didn't get an easy ride of it back then said to be one said one of his biggest supporters and kindest confidants was vince champ and who even helped stuart score some early gigs on the road comedian roy bennington described champ as a guy everybody liked he comfortably moved in and out of white society he was everybody's best friend although norm macdonald competed in star search two years earlier than champ i've not found any indication they knew each other as well but norm was aware of champ's existence as a comedian coming up around the same time as him in a travesty of justice norm did not win star search the year he competed but he landed a spot on letterman soon afterwards so screw star search for not being able to tell the difference between a comedic genius and a serial rapist or i mean more accurately or more appropriately a a hack comic since champ's career is best described as mediocre a high point was definitely star search in 1992. he opened for jay leno gary shandling paul pat paulson joe cocker leon redbone and chuck mangione i don't know that last name or how to pronounce it he had tv spots on into the night and the byron allen show and briefly had a recurring role on the match game in case you're wondering some of these things are decently respectable while others are a real who's who of who gives a [ __ ] but by the mid-1990s a flagging career made the college circuit an appealing prospect and money make of a champ yeah i guess that college circuit when i was at those comedy shows at university i was always thinking these guys are up and coming right but now that i think about it maybe these are the guys who just never really fully made it i always thought yes these guys are going to be big someday but maybe they just maybe that's where the level they play at that's kind of sad i never really thought about it that was like yeah these guys are going to be big they're so funny and it's like no no these guys are really funny and they just didn't make it big because they're not as funny as the guys who are really funny it's interesting it's interesting surely after his arrest some newspapers wrongly referred to vince chap's act as raunchy because it fit the story of a serial rapist but nothing could be further from the truth vince champ had cultivated himself as a clean comic and he was particularly in demand in the midwest where he toured two months of the year from 1993 to 1997. two months of the year that's all he has to work damn archie graham director of student life at milwaukee area technical college said that champ assured me he supported school policy and didn't use inappropriate behavior in his act what an edgy badass carlita scott student activities coordinator at illinois state university said he was never raunchy or offensive at all his humor was geared toward college students and one agent told me that he was so popular and personable that some schools invited him back three or four times indeed chap was popular on the college circuit with both students and administrators he was clean just daring enough in a lame 1990s midwest kind of way to keep the students entertained as they got hammered off cheap beer he was risque sometimes but not edgy or controversial this was enough for college-age students who in those days deprived of the general pit of filth forms on the internet were staffed for anything they could get that was remotely naughty this was an era where you could make a fortune off of cheesy boner comedy film students wanted comedy and it was in short supply quite unlike the quasi-victorian children of the corn shtick that we see on many college campuses today i also think i don't know david i feel like you're being a bit harsh on clean comedy does i i feel i mean i swear all over the place i feel it's a crutch almost like i feel that i use swearing as a way of emphasizing stuff because i'm not smart enough to come up with a better description for emphasizing stuff and i think comedians who manage to who's that there's the british comedian michael mcintyre who's like undeniably very funny it's a little bit cheesy uh at times but it's like he's a funny dude and he doesn't swear it's all clean and i'm like is that i i think that's almost more of a talent than someone who relies on dick jokes which uh i don't know i love dick jokes i find it very very funny like i love non-clean comedy it's most like i would prefer to watch that but making it clean is i feel like that's a skill in itself it's impressive but there were already a few cracks in champ's squeaky clean facade in 1996 he was placed on probation in order to attend domestic violence counseling for beating up his 17 year old girlfriend wow okay he also busted up some property during the incident well let's just say that who cares about the other stuff i feel like beating up your girlfriends who's 17 is that even allowed how old's this dude 1996 he was born in 61 678 i was 35. dude what are you up to why do you have a why do you have a 17 year old like i'm 34. the idea of dating a 17 year old i'm like what the [ __ ] what did you talk about it's like what on earth did you possibly have in common apparently it was an expensive stereo and some crockery okay there's also some anecdotal evidence that champ spent large amounts of money on prostitutes allegedly which in the night is all caps there from david allegedly which in 1990s la was the furthest thing from safe clean sex work and attracted all sorts of unsavory customers given he was already pulling from uh regularly at comedy clubs the uh sex workers and serial rapes certainly point to a clear and troubling pathology there's an entirely unrelated note also in 1996 champion filed for bankruptcy despite making good money from his middling comedy career okay i mean brilliant he's not great of things that champ does that are bad rape beating up his underage girlfriend smashing in a stereo uh and then i don't know those are like one two and three and somewhere down at around 437 bad financial management oh which might imply that champ's extracurricular active pursuits were destabilizing an otherwise fairly solid lifestyle and i'm going to throw in another allegedly there for good measure good job david which brings us back to the rape of heidi hess on march the 5th 1997. throughout the entire atrocious act champs seemed oddly calm polite and even at one point asked why heidi was crying which is an odd question for a rapist to ask assuming that they have an iq slightly higher than raccoons yes as it turns out from the attacker's psychological profile the rapist had completely disassociated himself morally from what he was doing he had justified his actions in his own mind he thought a woman could not possibly refuse a sexual advance from someone as handsome and as charming as him that is the most narcissistic thing that i've ever heard in my life he was a textbook narcissist there we go with a pathological sense of entitlement to women's bodies in his own mind the assailant thought he was irresistible and a woman had no need to cry from anything he did to her worst of all he thought on some level that his victim would secretly enjoy what was happening i mean this guy was a real jerk again this is one of those things where it's like wow that's super [ __ ] up it's like but also one of those things where it's like why are we surprised in any way whatsoever that his brain is like [ __ ] up obviously it is he's a serial rapist additionally chan thought he was simply cutting to the chase by using physical coercion rather than a couple of hours of smooth talking in a bar somewhere mate that is so messed up it was through this thinking that the rapist had half deluded himself into thinking what he was doing was on some level consensual and in the most bit of logic that i've ever read the rapist thought it was at least partly consensual even if and i put this in the biggest air quotations ever constructed in human history the woman didn't agree yeah yeah those need to be in like the biggest quotation marks ever constructed in history good lord needless to say that this sort of solipsistic [ __ ] doesn't usually stand up in court i hate that i have to insert the word usually there i'm like yeah why do you say usually they'd be like yeah you're accused of rape it wasn't rape she loved it god damn my dudes how is that a something that usually doesn't stand up what the justice system and as a way of diminishing the severity of his atrocities the rapist thought he was making up for his aggression by remaining polite and apologetic the entire time as if he had accidentally stepped on her foot or asked to borrow some spare change he thought by being polite he was softening things and doing his victim a favor which is possibly the ugliest trait of this entire pathological way of thinking and he asked her questions as they were simply on a date somewhere as if this would somehow relieve the tension and help keep the women calm and distracted as bizarre as this modus oberendo may seem first the actor being polite in the situation was this particular rapist's way of maintaining control in the way another rapist might use threats or a weapon as we know from countless studies and criminology sexual assault is first and foremost about power and control not solely about the sexual gratification of the perpetrator in this case the assailant had a track record of exerting power over people by using manipulative charm tactics and politeness in his real life with a reasonable degree of social success and so the rapist thought he could somehow use the same tactics during his crimes in reality however the two contexts did not translate to each other all the rapists managed to do were with his display of pseudo manners was to make an atrocity all the more bizarre and creepy and one could definitely argue more traumatizing for the victim yeah dude it's super weird it's like it's like skin crawly creepy like what are you doing why are you doing this why are you so weird furthermore beyond champ's overwhelming drive to commit sexually heinous acts and the backward logic that influenced his behavior the attacker was not altogether completely deranged in regular life he was a high functioning individual albeit with some carefully concealed impulses and opinions not to mention bad financial management he knew on some level that what he was doing was wrong at least in the eyes of the law and he simply didn't care all signs point to either psychopathy or sociopathy with a heavy dose of self-absorbed rationalizations yeah it does seem like that psychopath profile right i don't know like super manipulative in his career in his personal life and then especially the thing where he's like yeah yeah yeah no deep down they love it and it's like dude that is the most psycho [ __ ] ever what are you talking about which brings us to the extremely parting shot of him asking his victims to pray for him and while it could imply that the rapist on some level felt guilt for what he had done this turns out to be incorrect later psychological evaluation would reveal that the act of prayer was the criminal's way of seeking cheap absolution so that he could brush off his guilt as easily and as carelessly as he would dandruff from his shoulder the physical assault being concluded champ had not run out of psychological blows the man in question wasn't particularly religious not for at least a decade he just knew that it was what some people did to win sympathy and forgiveness admitting they are sinners who had committed vile deeds and this was 1990s midwest america perhaps his approach would delay the reporting of the crime by the victim or somehow contort the prosecution or somehow contort the prosecution should he be identified if he happened to be convicted for one such crime he might get sympathy from a jury or a lighter sentence from a judge i would like to think that the people could see through that and be like yeah yeah let's just see it as rather than him being religious as let's just see it as him being ultra creepy and uh maybe let's tack on some extra time for the creep factor that'd be better maybe yes not that the perpetrator expected that to happen he had been very very careful in the execution of his crimes enough to prompt smugness under interrogation except that time he did it in like that university and people saw him and then they saw him get into his car which was registered to his name that doesn't seem like the most careful thing ever in a word the man was a fake a phony and a liar a man who coldly lived his life by an impersonal algorithm of correct actions seeking the corresponding responses people weren't people they were objects to be prodded and poked for a predictable response he would still do whatever needed to be done to suit his own advantage compel compliance in return excapate himself from a crime he'd manipulate and control in order to get what he wanted what he felt he deserved vince champ viewed his audience this way he viewed his peers this way and pathetically this was also how he viewed women [Music] an unsurprising twist robin's champ was working his caribbean cruise catching some sun certain facts have come to light way back on february the 16th 1997 captain james van fossen of davenport iowa had had been investigating a college campus rape of his own oh because we're talking about cruises immediately yeah he's the captain of the boat but he's not he's like a captain police officer of some kind which makes more sense in the context of our story although maybe the captain the boat was like that guy's a bit weird isn't he uh he had entertained the idea of an itinerant serial rapist but suspected a food server or a professor traveling around giving talks or maybe an athlete going from school to school it never occurred to him to look into the clean comedian who had recently performed there far away in lincoln nebraska detective jeff howard had been investigating another campus rape that had occurred 10 days earlier we thought it was isolated at first howard said it just didn't make sense that someone would be traveling and just stop through after the march 5th rape of heidi hess in omaha investigator mike hawk thought to send out a teletype to other police officers in the midwest inquiring about similar attacks with the same modus operandi over the next months the attack was linked to others in lincoln kenosha omaha and davenport further towns followed all of them matched the profile of the perpetrator quote that is when we realized there was a pretty good possibility that we had a serial rapist said sergeant ken kosiol the police in all these districts sent out for help to the fbi to coordinate and investigate across state lines all told the police linked the unknown perpetrator to seven rapes and attempted rapes in iowa nebraska illinois and wisconsin all of them occurred on college campuses they're gonna quickly i guess like back in the day even now it'd be really hard to tie it up to like okay all of these rapes occurred at the same date that that comedian was at the universities because that's just going to be one thing going on in a whole pile of information that isn't easily accessible because you can't just look it up on the university website or whatever but if he's a suspect then they'll be like you were here you were here you were here you were here and lock it down but you got to find him and have him as a suspect first otherwise i don't think you're going to find that needle in the haystack or maybe they will maybe they're better than i expect but they didn't have a suspect there we go then pasadena happened and vince got caught if we kill pasadena the suspect defense total increases to eight i'm told what clinched the issue was one of the victims heard vince's voice on a radio show but we can't confirm this either way police looked into champ's touring schedule between september 1996 and may 1997 and to quote one of champ's booking agent scott bass it looked like a road map of where these rapes had occurred yeah okay exactly as soon as exactly what i said as soon as they figured out it could be him then they can look it all match it all up and that's a hell of a coincidence when the midwest cops heard of the pasadena case they knew they had their man according to jeff howard once that last piece snapped into place everything just made sense omaha put out a warrant for vince champs arrest hearing of this champ abandoned his gig and flew home the midwest cops got wind of this and put out an all-alert champ was arrested when he arrived in newark new jersey on may 13. this time the judge was not so generous bell was set at a million dollars he's been risking getting like seven rape convictions should there be bail even if it's a million dollars i mean i guess that's just unaffordable for him the idea of a touring stand-up comedian raping college students immediately sets off the jackals in the media it was splashed across front pages of the entire usa for several days from the hollywood reporter to the washington post the new york times whoever said that all publicity is good publicity deserves to be shot yes it's the most untrue thing ever it's like yo yo if you're getting publicity for this it's like you're not going to be like sweet finally some exposure ah this is gonna do wonders for my career of course it's not you're just gonna end up in prison allegedly i bet champ wasn't feeling too good at this moment but there is some poetic justice in that this was the biggest publicity the hack comedian ever got bud freeman owner of the improv chain of comedy clubs quite prestigious for comics said there are a lot of violent comics out there that you might think would do something like this some nice way to talk about your employees bud but vince was not one of them everybody i've spoken to is shocked he's a very nice guy very polite i mean he's not a very nice guy objectively untrue now isn't it the feigned banality of evil indeed if i don't see a post on the subreddit dedicated to nice guys at some point that i will be crushingly disappointed yeah although it has been covered to death hasn't it uh ron bennington latest not on the specific subreddit but in general uh there is a subreddit it's not for casual criminalist it's just mine it's like uh r forward slash simon whistler if you want to check it out this convo is about cash crim and other stuff on there you're welcome to join that weird little part of the internet ron bennington later said when he first heard the news that he thought this is some kind of mid western grab the first black guy you see and string him up thing it's not like he was running through town frothing at the mouth alas this is one of the few cases where i'd like to think that it was police racism but as we'll see in a moment that's rather unlikely in four out of the eight cases vince champ was positively linked to crime to the crimes by dna analysis oh my dude you're going to prison for a long ass time with that dna in a few of the other rapes and attempted rapes there was insufficient evidence to bring charges against him nevertheless that was enough to convict chan but put him away for life he was thrown into the nebraska state pen where he has been slapped with 30 to 40 to a 30 to 40 year sentence sentence for the lincoln rape and a 25 to 30 year sentence for the attack on heidi has in obama allowing for parole and good behavior which there certainly has been an absence of oh there we go champ might get out in 2033. how's that possible he got 40 years and then 25 30 is 4567 he was convicted in when 1990 late 90s oh i guess if the sentences are serving cons concurrently which is possible and good behavior he could be getting out wow um i kind of just assumed they'll die in prison but i mean he'll be like he'll be 70 when he gets that he shouldn't get out should he i don't know oh he sounds like a total psycho is he going to be i mean allegedly is he going to be rehabilitable should he survive beyond these sentences he'll be shipped off to iowa where he'll face two more negative life sentences oh okay there we go never mind that's what's going on consecutive sentences elsewhere without question according to that sentencing the man will die in prison on trial vince champ said had a tendency to plead no contest given the mounting evidence against him but in prison he maintains his innocence and i'm dating margot robbie [Music] yeah dna man doesn't kind of lie does it while in prison vince champ has committed indecent exposure on several occasions has masturbated in front of a female guard is frequently in fights with inmates once biting off a chunk of a dude's ear and he has stomped on a few people's faces causing abrasions and bleeding holy [ __ ] this dude got into prison and he's like he's let out that he's let out that inner demon that was in him all along hasn't he the mask has fallen the sex stuff is inexcusable and fits the perp's form in regard to the fights one could speculate whether in prison the once clean cut and debonair vince champ is finally showing his true colors i reckon so or whether he simply evolved to become a tough bastard to survive as a sexual offender in the u.s prison system where sex pests are placed at the bottom of the totem pole by the way i've never understood how rape in the prison system is just permissively viewed as part of the punishment it's not is it i've never instilled rape in the prison permissively butas i think they understand that it's a huge problem who says he's part of the party is that an attitude that people have towards rape in prison that's insane that's insane there should there should not be rape in prison obviously not it should be massive there shouldn't be violence in prison we should be doing our damndest to stamp that [ __ ] out prison shouldn't be the place where you go to essentially get tortured it should be a place where you go to serve a punishment dished out to you by the state christ that's not i can't no no no no no am i just being super naive here damn but maybe that's just me nor macdonald has also made a few jokes about this hypocrisy if you want to look them up speaking of norm mcdonald's and hypocrisy he once referenced his friend that sanctimonious twitter hound patton oswald who said in reference to bill cosby that the worst thing about the case was cosby's hypocrisy and i disagree to which norm famously included in his stand up that he didn't think the hypocrisy was the worst person it was probably the rapes i thought it was the raping yeah i do find this and uh like it's something i don't know i get a lot of you know different pieces of writing from a lot of different writers and uh it is something like it is something people often do by accident where it's like and the worst part was the hypocrisy it's like wait wait wait no no no it wasn't it wasn't the hypocrisy of hitler like not looking super aryan that wasn't the worst part of of the holocaust it just wasn't it's that's incorrect hypocrisy was way down the [ __ ] list probably on page 20 or something this is a real piss there uh it is a real piss that vince champ of similar age is still alive in prison and nor macdonald is dead but to quote another set of comedy geniuses monty python life's a piece of [ __ ] when you look at it life's a laugh and death's a joke it's true you'll see it's all a show keep them laughing as you go just remember that the last laugh is on you i'm not going to close by repeating norms he was a real jerk punchline i'm not a comedian but i will point out that champ's body of work has largely been lost to time or scrubbed by the networks i wonder as he rots in prison if he realizes that his lasting legacy to the world of comedy is being a punchline to a much better comedian's joke i hope so and uh also i don't know he's in prison justice was served i don't think we need to like i mean do we need to scrub all of his works from history i don't know i don't care i don't think it's that important he wasn't that funny it's all gonna be forgotten anyway and well he's in prison for the rest of his life so i don't know if i was a victim i'd be pretty happy with that result dismembered appendices vince champs spree of campus rapes and attempted rapes between 1996 and 1997 may have been the worst of it possibly triggered by tumultuous events of breakups violence and bankruptcy the previous year it's also possible that the man's record goes back much further than any of us realize obviously the first place to look is any other unsold sexual assaults that coincide with his tour schedules going back to the 1980s i was just assuming they did that when you were isn't that how you found all these other ones as well i mean he's in prison forever but it's nice to get some closure no and given that it takes time for a serial rapist to fall into a pattern one might look into unsolved cases further back where vince champ might have still been sloppy to fellow researchers out there i'd suggest starting with stockton california and gradually widening your search to encompass the whole state given his conduct in prison the man's got formed to be involved in far more than what he's currently been linked to number two as part of the black lives matter movement some people have argued that the sentencing vince chap received was inspired by racism and was far too harsh i don't know i'd say it was inspired by the uh the rapes that he committed but that's just me this certainly would hold firm with the clinton policy at the time to relentlessly pursue what the administration called super predators which is widely regarded as a racist form of classification and policy is life in prison to serve before confirmed sexual assaults and probable links to others certainly there have been far lighter sentences for far more severe offences in criminal history yeah i mean i don't know obviously yeah this is i mean i'm not gonna be naive here like there is a racial divide of how long people get sentenced to by judges and juries for crimes right black people get screwed over in that regard am i is that is that right i feel like that's right um obviously i don't know it feels like this guy belongs in prison for forever and honest if he was white i'd feel exactly the same way but then i also had that moment of maybe he could be can he be rehabilitated but he seems like an absolute animal in prison so i'm going to say no and i'd say exactly the same thing if the doo was white obviously i don't understand certainly there have been fallouts though he said already but i'm also of the general opinion the predatory leap from the bush's serial rapists should be buried underneath the prison either way i don't think there should be death penalty here either way i'm sure as hell not brave enough oh buried underneath the prison so they die in prison okay i get it sorry stupid not big brain either way i'm sure as hell not brave enough to wade into the morris of american race-based politics whoops a doodle [Music] but feel free to slug it out in the comments number on the statistics showing that black people get sent to prison for longer and more often for the same crimes isn't that what i don't know i don't know i don't know but i just feel that that's isn't that what people say based on stats i'm sure someone in the comments will be like uh simon that's obviously wrong and there'll be other people be like simon yes obviously right although it's not debate when there are statistics it shouldn't be at least number three what is perhaps more uplifting is the story of heidi hess when champ went down she was already she was asked what sort of punishment she thought he deserved hess replied what's the number that's going to make me feel better i don't know i just don't want him on the streets i don't want him doing this to other women for two weeks after the attack heidi's father would come to her apartment every night armed with a shotgun where he stayed on guard till morning heidi's friends brought her groceries show she could stay inside she became a shut-in then one day on tv she saw the father of ronald goldman talking about his likely murderer o.j simpson and how he wouldn't rest until o.j was behind bars quoting heidi i sat there and thought that poor man has no control over that his whole life has turned into the day his son was murdered heidi didn't want to be goldman's father in 10 years one of her friends said you've given more than a month of your life to the man who attacked you how much more do you want to give none heidi declared the same day she walked outside turned back several times she made it to her car she drove to her friend's house and sat on the driveway for two minutes until she could work up the courage to walk inside she had dinner and drove home it took months before heidi had to stop forcing herself out of her own apartment and longer before the nightmares stopped that was really how i started to heal i made a decision i would not let this man have any more control over my life than he already took heidi has lived a happy life with her partner and a thriving career she rarely thinks about champ anymore but she occasionally talks about her experience with those in need to quote her people need to know rape happens to people they know not nameless faceless people they have never come into contact with good show heidi you've got my admiration i wish i was half as strong as you yeah i agree heidi legends nice positive note to end that on um in a video that was uh mostly about a total piece of [ __ ] i mean this guy was a real jerk so thank you so much for watching or listening to today's episode of the casual criminalist if you enjoy this show please do give us a review if you're listening on a podcast app or leaving a comment below a subscriber like if you're watching the video on youtube and i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: The Casual Criminalist

Views: 498,120

Keywords: true crime

Id: 5YjTRgfY0cU

Length: 81min 16sec (4876 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 21 2021