Cadillac Jack

0:05 H a wall street line, shackle change, Oh someome gird, it's calling my name. There is no mercy and it's been a tentery juice as the huge stream game Rango the three. I'm here be by me to die inside these walls, inside the wild and when the girl as I.

1:32 Hey everyone, and welcome back to Bloody Angola, a podcast one hundred and forty two years in the making, the complete story of America's Bloodiest present. I'm Jim Chapman, and today I have a requested story to cover for you. And this one proves how awesome all of you who listen are because I was not familiar with this particular story until it was brought to my attention by a fan of the show. And that is is the story of Cadillac Jack Favor. So Cadillac Jack Favor was an iconic rodeo performer who was sentenced to two life terms in nineteen sixty seven for robbery and double murder of a couple in Boser City, Louisiana. But in nineteen seventy four he started the exoneration process and was exonerated after being housed in Bloody Angola for seven years, and like any story. We start at the beginning with Bloody Angola.

2:36 So I'm bringing you back to nineteen eleven and I'm gonna bring you to a place called Eula, Texas. Which this is a very small town in the center of Texas, so small in fact that the population is just one hundred and twenty five people even today. So it's really amazing that this guy who accomplished so much and we'll get into that, grew up in Ula, Texas. So Jack, he grew up on a ranch in Ula, and he lived which you would consider a true cowboy lifestyle from an early age. As you would expect, he developed some pretty amazing values as it relates to hard work, resilience, discipline, all the things. You're growing up on a ranch, on a farm, basically you're herding cattle, you are practicing rodio skills, and we're going to get into that. It was these formative years that provided Jack with those skills that he would need later and it would make him a standout figure in the world of rodeo. Now, by the time Jack made it to high school, he had already developed a love for competitive sports and especially the very physical nature of what's known as bronc riding, and for those of you not familiar with the radio world, bronc riding

4:08 is an event similar to bull riding, but a rider actually mounts and attempts to ride a bucking horse for eight seconds. The riders are judged not only on their ability to stay on the horse, but the style in which they ride, their ability to spur the horse in rhythm, and even the horse itself is judged by its bucking difficulty. So you can't get out there and get on a horse and it just prants out to the middle of the arena and does a buck or maybe bucks one time, it's still going to hurt your score even though you stayed on it for eight seconds. Now, it was during high school that Jack started riding bronks, and he just fell in love with all things radio and not only that event.

4:57 We'll get into that a little bit later. Jack, after he gets out of high school, he knew this is what he wanted to pursue as a living. But this is the late twenties, y'all. This is the. Great Depression Era time in America. And it's also a time in America where American pride was a big deal. And if you were a young man in those days, you were expected to serve your country before anything else. And that's just what Jack did. He served in the US Navy from nineteen twenty nine to nineteen thirty two. In his service in the Navy, that honed Jack's work ethic even more than it was working on that form, and it exposed Jack to a world outside of his ranch in Texas. I mean, when you're in the Navy, you travel all over the world, and he was in this little small community in Yula, Texas, with one hundred people his whole life prior to this, So it just opened up the entire world to Jack. Now, radio in these days did not pay worth a shit. So when Jack completed his military service, he returned to Texas and he settled in Abilene, Texas. He worked as a truck driver for a plumbing company, and he continued to radio part time. And then it happened December seventh, nineteen forty one,

6:30 a day that will live in infamy, Pearl Harbor, and Jack, like most Americans, he was outraged, and he re enlisted in the Navy to fight in World War Two. Now years prior to that, in nineteen thirty three, a lady by the name of Pearl Alexander and Jack. They get married. However, they divorced in nineteen forty one, just prior to his realistment, and then Jack married a lady by the name of Ponder Roads, and then it was off to his second stint in the military. So he serves that second stint and then he gets back home to Texas and he ended up going between Texas and Oklahoma a lot. That's where kind of a rodeo circuit was, and he really ramped up his radio career. He became absolutely dominant throughout the nineteen forties and fifties, traveling all over the United States, and he established himself as a fearless competitor. And it was during that time that a specialty kind of changed from bronck riding to what's known as steer rustling, and that's also known as bulldogging, which, in this event, a rider on a horse, he chases a steer, he jumps off the horse, and he rustles the steer to the ground as quickly as possible. Now, this event requires speed and a ton of brute strength. I mean you're literally

8:05 throwing this steer to the ground as quick as you can. And it was an event which really turned Cadillac Jack into a global name when at a radio in Houston, Texas, he successfully bulldogged a steer and get this, two point two seconds and that was good enough to break the world record. And interestingly enough, this record still stands today and it cemented Cadillac Jack's status as the greatest steer wrestler in radio history. Now, in addition to that, Jack was also a four time world champion in steer wrestling, and he also stood out as a bronc buster.

8:52 Which would lead to one of his most. Iconic wins if you will, when at Madison Square Garden he he won eighteen thousand dollars a ton of money in those days as the only cowboy to successfully ride what was known as Hell's Angel. And you just can't beat the names. That they give these bulls in these bronx in rodeo right now, this horse was widely regarded as the greatest bucking horse of all time. So this brings us. To nineteen sixty four and Jack at this time was retired from rodeo.

9:36 He was in his fifties, he was. Married, he had three children, very happy and he became a traveling salesman, which would serve him well. He would make good money being a traveling salesman because he was very likable and he had a huge name. Everybody in that area of Texas and Oklahoma where he kind of traveled, they knew who the hell Cadillac Jack Favor was. I mean, even if you were not a huge fan of radio during this time in history, you still knew Jack Favor. So on April sixteenth of nineteen sixty four, Jack was traveling to Tulsa, Oklahoma as part of his job, and he stops to eat lunch in Muskegee, Oklahoma, and it's here that he meets two men, a guy by the name of Floyd Chiger Comby, that's right, his nickname was Chigger, and Donald Lee Yates. Now, also in the mid sixties, hitchhiking was a thing, and you didn't have the concerns necessarily that you have today with picking up hitchhikers, and many times you welcome.

10:52 The company when you were on the road. Now, in Jack's case, he knew what it was like to have to hitchhike. Remember he did radio. There were many times he would have to hitchhike from one town to another many times. Jim, did you see what happened in Texas today? Wait before you tell me that, let me tell you what happened in New York. It cannot be as crazy as the case I told you about yesterday in Louisiana. You know what, we should do a podcast about it. And with that we did. Crime War Weekly covers the crime news headlines that have dominated the week. We cover trending crimes from all over the country and even sprinkle in a few globally.

11:36 Crime War Weekly is available now wherever you listen to your podcasts. Simply by searching Crime War Weekly or clicking the link in the description of this podcast. So after these two men that he met at this restaurant for lunch just by a chance, expressed to him that they needed a ride, he agreed as long as they were good with him making his sales call in Oklahoma and then riding with him to his next stop the following day. Jack was so nice, in fact, that when the two men expressed that they had no money to stay every night anywhere, he agreed to let the men stay with him in his hotel room and just kind of bunk out on the carpet.

12:24 Right. So the next day the two men wake up, Jack wakes up and they drive back to Texas. And even though Jack was meeting another salesman in Houston that day, he drove several hours out of his way so that the men could start hitching rides in Louisiana. Now, the reason he did that was Texas was pretty strict on hitchhikers. Louisiana not says strict. So, just to be nice, he's like, look, if you're trying to get from point A to point B here, I'll go ahead and bring you to the state LINEA in Louisiana, you'll have a much greater chance of hitching a ride there. Pretty nice dude, right, So on April seventeenth of nineteen sixty four, he drops them off in Bojer City, Louisiana, and Jack leaves. He goes he meets with this other salesman and in the meantime in Hofton, Louisiana, which is just outside of Boser City, mister and Miss W. R. Richie, they owned abate and Tackle shop in Hofton. They were brutally murdered by those two hitchhikers, Comby and Yates Apparently Comby and Yates were convinced that the richies had sixty thousand dollars hidden in their safe. So they break in to the richie's house and they demand the money. Now

13:57 the richies they denied, have said money. So these two hitchhikers, they order these folks into the bedroom of their home. They place pillows over their head, and they shoot both of them several times through those pillows, killing them. The duo then robbed the house of what they could find and they could carry, and they just flee the scene. Now, although police knew that several people were involved, they were unable to locate any leads to point to whom. Now remember this is still close to forty years before DNA would be a thing, y'all. This was like what you would call real detective work. So in December of nineteen sixty four, Combe, one of those two hitchhikers, he's a waiting trial for a completely separate robbery. And this guy had a very long criminal history, so he was looking at a lot time if he got yet another conviction for robbery. So he gets an idea and he says, I'm going to cut a deal, and he goes to the police and he says, look, I have details about the Richie murders and if I can get out of this robbery trial somehow that I'm currently facing and maybe work a deal if I confess to some things, I'll share the whole story with you.

15:29 So the chief. Deputy of Bojer Parish Sheriff's Office, a guy by the name of thal Dooley. He sits down with Comby and Comby gives him this version of events. Now, according to Comby, he was the getaway driver in the lookout and Yates was the instigator of all this and Jack Favor was the triggerman of the whole deal. So police they arrest Yates and it took a while, but on September first of nineteen sixty five, Duly tracks down and arrest Cadillac Jack in Texas and he charged him with robbery and double murder in the Richie case. So on November twelfth of nineteen sixty five, there's an extradition hearing and this is held in Texas and Cadillac Jack he's like, this is all bullshit. But as we say today, he provided the receipts quite literally. He provides a mountain of evidence in his defense, he had receipts from restaurants that he traveled to the same day and night that all of this went down. He even had gas station receipts that proved he could not have been in Bojer City or even the Boser City area at the time of these murders.

16:57 He even produced witnesses, including the salesperson he met that same day far away from where Berger's City is, and even his wife who testified that he was in Oklahoma and that she was visiting him the night the Richies, the very night the Richies were murdered. In addition to that, police, of course, they interrogated Yates and he verifies that Comby was full of shit and the Cadillac Jack had nothing to do with the murders. But despite all of this evidence, after hearing Comby's testimony, Jack Favor is extradited to Louisiana to face trial. So, with the extradition pending, Jack calls Duley and he says, hey, what if I take a lie detector test to prove my innocence because I didn't do this and y'all are trying for some reason, you have this tunnel vision. You're believing a guy that is nothing but trouble. Has been nothing but trouble his whole life in Combe. You're believing everything he tells you. What if I take a lot of detector test to prove him innocent? And Dully agrees. He says, yeah, sure, come on down to Bosier City and we'll do a light of detector. So Favor does that. He goes to Boser Parish jail. He meets with some people there. I'm imagining

18:27 he met with a polygrapher and he's ready to take this lie detector test. But guess what, it was all a trick. It was all a trick just to get him back to Louisiana as quickly as possible. When he gets there, he's told, oh, there's no lie detector. If you want to talk to Dooley, you're going to need a confession. That's the only way he's going to talk to you is if you confess to all of this. And he ends up getting duck at the Boser Parish jail for a month. He loses fifty pounds while he's in there because they basically tried to starve this guy out of a confession. And eventually his attorney gets him out, so on April twenty fourth of nineteen sixty seven, finally this trial starts. Comby in the meantime, pleads guilty to murder with the understanding that there's going to be no death penalty involved, and he testifies against Cadillac Jack favor. And it's discovered much later that come Be threatened many of Jack's key witnesses and they chose not to testify out of fear, and most of his evidence in the way of receipts, they wouldn't even admit any of that because most of those receipts lacked an attendance signature, even though

19:59 they were receipts from the gas station. For example, in those days, the gas station attendant would sign those in that way, especially in Jack's case, he was a traveling salesman, he could turn that over on his expense report and get paid for it. Well, many of these weren't signed because in a lot of cases the attendants were busy with other things, and in some cases they weren't even there, so they wouldn't admit any of that evidence. In Yates, who steadfastly stated that Cadillac Jack had nothing to do with the murders, he wasn't even allowed to testify in the trial. So this trial goes on and then the jury gets dismissed to come up with a verdict. And on April twenty ninth of nineteen sixty seven, the jury they send a note to the judge and they say, we can't reach a verdict. We're hung. We're hung jury, and we just can't agree on whether Jack Favor did this.

21:06 So the judge gets very frustrated. He goes and he talks to the entire jury, which is a big no no these days, but he goes and he talks to them and inexplicitly as soon as he returns back gets on the bench. Guess what. The jury comes up with a verdict and Favor is found guilty and he sentenced to life inside a bloody angola. And y'all this nineteen sixty seven, that is the height of the bloody years. This is when inmates slept with mail order catalogs on their chest to avoid being stabbed.

21:50 Cadillac Jack, he's on his way there for the rest of his life. Now, something very interesting happened in December of nineteen sixty seven. Remember Comby, Well, for some reason, he's allowed to change his plea from murder to manslaughter. He gets resentenced, and he gets resentenced to two consecutive twenty one year terms to be served in Bloody in Gola, but he never makes it there. Now later it was discovered his transfer to Louisiana State Penitentiary in Gola it was faked specifically for the trial, so rather than being placed at in Gola, Comby was released, released and driven to Texa Arcana by Duley himself, and it was under the pretense that he would go undercover as an agent for the government. Now, according to some accounts, Duly drives him to Texts Arcana. He gives Comby a gun, not a smart thing to do in twenty five dollars in cash.

23:09 However, you know how it goes. Once an asshole, always an asshole, and Comby just two days later, two days after being released, murders his girlfriend and her roommate for not returning valuables that he left with his girlfriend while he was incarcerated. And he even later commits an armed robbery while he's on the run for those murders. He gets caught, and of course it's back in jail yet again for Comby. Now Duley. Meanwhile, he becomes sheriff, and others involved in the imprisonment of Cadillac Jack they rise in their professional careers as well, including the attorneys who would later become judges, etc. So what happened to Yates, Well, he spent seventeen years at Angola, he was released. He then robs a bank and eventually gets sentenced to federal prison in Kansas. But while at Angola, Yates in Jack Favor would cross paths, and Yates would tell Favor about the fact that Comby never actually arrived in Angola, and that lit a fire in the ass

24:40 of Jack Favor. So he starts layering up with what's known as jailhouse lawyers, and he starts filing appeals, and in April of nineteen seventy four he wins a new trial. And everything I just told you would explain that right, tons of evidence, it was never admitted in trial, key witnesses, never admitted in trial, etc. So in this trial, Yates is in fact allowed to testify and he reveals something pretty shocking. He reveals that a third party was actually involved in all of this, and this guy was an important politician, and that he and Combe were ordered to kill whoever gave them a ride and to steal the car. However, he said Favor was so nice the two just could not bring themselves to kill Favor in that hotel room.

25:42 In that new trial, Duly testified, and he testified when he released Comby in Texarcana, he believed that Comby's sentence was suspended. He said he only learned later that it was not suspended. He also testified, however, that the day before for Comby's release, he prepared fake papers authorizing Comby's transfer to Angola, and he testified that he did not mention his plea bargain because the Boser Parish officials didn't want him to mention it. He said, I was only kind of following instruction from these Bosier Parish higher ups.

26:25 So on April nineteenth of nineteen seventy four, after deliberating for less than one hour, the jury equits Cadillac Jack Favor, and the judge allowed Favor to be released on a five thousand dollars bond until the state decided. To drop the charges. However, because of court and he had a lot of medical expenses. Look, this guy was a radio rider. Right he's banged up, and he had a lot of medical expenses, and Favor just did not have the money to even bond out of jail after he'd already been acquitted. Of all this shit. That blew my mind when I came across that. Think about that, y'all. You've been acquitted, Okay, we've had you in jail.

27:12 For seven years or so. Prison Bunny and Gola that, and come to find out you didn't do this. You get acquitted by a jury and you've got to pay five thousand dollars until the state makes up their mind. To drop the charges. Absolutely nuts. But Jack Favor still had a name, people still knew who he was, and a complete stranger, a guy by the name of Alfred Cloud, provides the bond so that Favor was able to go home with his family. Shout out to that guy. The charges against Favor were dismissed. This was on May seventh of nineteen seventy four, and sadly, after finally arriving home, he suffers. He underwent a triple bypass.

28:03 He had a pacemaker installed, which was replaced three more times before his life ended. On December twenty seventh of nineteen ninety eight. Now during that time, as a matter of fact, just two years after his release, he also suffered from pancreatic cancer. And you may wonder, you know, you spent seven years in jail. It seemed like all these officials were out to get you. Did Favor sue? Well, yes he did. He sued the State of Louisiana for wrongful imprisonment for seven million dollars and that case settled get this for fifty five thousand dollars, and all of that money was used to pay his court and medical expenses. Now, in two thousand and nine Jack Cadillac Jail, he was recognized, of course he was already dead, but he was recognized with being the radio hero he was by being inducted into the Texas Hall of Fame. That was in two thousand and nine. And even inside of Louisiana State Penitentiary and in Goola, he made his mark just like he did outside in the free world. While imprisoned at Louisiana State penitentiaryt in Goola, Favor actually played a very pivotal role,

29:35 as you may expect, in elevating the prison radio. When he got there, it was a very disorganized event, and he helped to make that a professionally managed spectacle, and his expertise in radio as a performer and even as a manager brought a lot of structure to that event, which, of course today is the largest annual prison radio in the entire United States. And he played a huge role in that. Wow, what a freaking story. I hope you enjoyed that. Thank you and shout out to the person that sent me that story. And look, as much as I study Louisiana State Penitent Treaty and Gola, I can tell you I was not familiar with this story. And after I started getting into it, I'm like, man, how the hell have I never heard of this? And that's why I love so much doing this podcast, because now you've all heard of it. Thank you so much again for listening, Thank you for supporting. Check out the Patreon commercial, free early releases and more. That's patreon dot com slash Bloody and Gola podcast. We sure could use your support if you'd like to support the show. And until next time for Bloody Angla, a podcast one forty two years in

31:06 the making, the complete story of America's bloodiest present. I'm Jim Chapman, Peace. A wall, street line, shackle, change gluesome Gurdie. It's calling by the name. There is no mercy and this been a tentery juice ass the huge stream game.

31:52 Wrangle three. I'm here you to die inside these walls, inside the wild. And when the walk as I know, it's overbody angleler ohbody angle,