Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Season Six: Holiday Episode 1 (2025)
139 Plays4 days ago
This podcast was made possible by www.labrottiecreations.com Check out their merchandise and specifically their fun pop pet art custom pieces made from photos of your very own pets. Use the promo code CRIMEXS for 20% off a fun, brightly colored, happy piece of art of your own pet at their site.
Music in this episode was licensed for True Crime XS. Our theme song is No Scars from slip.fm
You can reach us at our website truecrimexs.com and you can leave us a voice message at 252-365-5593. Find us most anywhere with @truecrimexs
Thanks for listening. Please like and subscribe if you want to hear more and you can come over to patreon.com/truecrimexs and check out what we’ve got going on there if you’d like to donate to fund future True Crime XS road trip investigations and FOIA requests. We also have some merchandise up at Teepublic http://tee.pub/lic/mZUXW1MOYxM
Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
Ad Information:
New Era Caps: https://zen.ai/dWeCYLHxxANOaZ6NcKocEw
Liquid IV: Link: https://zen.ai/45lYmDnWl1Z3cR66LBX5mA
Zencastr: Link: https://zen.ai/SFkD99OGWGNz_plc2c_Yaw
Recommended
Transcript
Content Warning & Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Holiday Themes & True Crime Stories
00:00:50
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:01:00
Speaker
So it's that time of year again where we do something that is either really cool or really annoying for people. um And that is, it's the holidays. So technically it's the it's the Christmas season. And ah one of the things that we do uh, is we run a big chunk of episodes. It varies. Like some years we do the 12 days of Christmas, some years we do 25 days of Christmas, um, maybe even a bonus episode. And then we kind of come back for new years and take a break after that.
00:01:33
Speaker
But we're kicking that time off because, My experience with the holidays is that it's a time of year where a lot of people either have to deal with family or they have some time off work that like makes them potentially feel more alone. And i thought having an episode a day for a period of time was kind of like one sort of cool way to connect with people. Particularly, i think I realized about two or three years ago people...
00:02:05
Speaker
people who produce content don't produce as much around Christmas that's not really Christmas oriented. and I know that some people do like a lot of Christmas time, true crime stories. And I don't do that per se, but I do try to like come up with the theme. And I usually come up with that theme very early in the year and start collecting stories or information. And it sort of starts as like ah A group of links that I make a note to myself, like this is an idea I have. And, you know, sometimes I switch topics because i don't find enough of like one underlying theme.
Focus on Hostage Situations
00:02:39
Speaker
And i thought this year, sort of the way my brain works is I was thinking about it can feel a little bit like a hostage situation.
00:02:49
Speaker
when you're having the holidays and i sort of ran with that ah for people who may be within laws that they really only see once or twice a year or people who may be traveling to see family that they don't normally spend much time with. I thought that a good theme or an interesting theme would be to tell stories about hostage takings that have happened throughout the years.
00:03:14
Speaker
And I, at first I wasn't sure that I would have enough that were that interesting, but at some point I got to like 30 ideas and I was like, well, that seems like, uh, that seems like it's going to be enough stories that I can put those into a series of
Jimmy Lee Dykes Hostage Situation
00:03:31
Speaker
episodes. about But I thought I would kick off, um, the holiday season, ah with sort of one of those stories that seems like it's set in another time.
00:03:42
Speaker
And,
00:03:44
Speaker
It's only taking place 12 years ago, but it feels like it's taking place a really, really long time ago. and As I read some of the details of the story, i was sort of like, what is happening?
00:03:57
Speaker
Because things were brought up. At one point, they mentioned that the perpetrator in the story is from a particular time, war-wise. I was like, but he's only this old.
00:04:09
Speaker
If he were alive today, he'd be in his 70s. So... it is It's kind of a bizarre story. And just to lay the groundwork for this, I pulled from a couple of sources down at al.com.
00:04:24
Speaker
which is literally just ael.com, uh, specifically the section that you would find this in would be circa 2013 in the Montgomery section of ael.com. Um, I pulled from CBS news. They had several interesting 2020 articles by Caroline Summers and Iris Carreras, where they were talking about, um, with the FBI and some of the things the FBI had to do with this case, but sort of in context of, uh,
00:04:53
Speaker
FBI profiling how it works with hostage taking and kidnapping. So I pulled from there. I also pulled from WDHN and the articles that I pulled from there are not as old as you would think. They were published in January and February of 2022. A guy named Mike Gerstmann wrote there. um And I pulled heavily from an article by a gentleman named Michael Phillips.
00:05:18
Speaker
Michael Phillips wrote for the Wall Street Journal and The article that I pulled from, um i don't remember it having a date. It's one of their long-form articles with like an intro series and then a lot of information. i think it's from 2014 or so. um i i confirmed it's still available on the Wall Street Journal site.
00:05:45
Speaker
um And i think the main title for it was Inside an FBI Hostage Crisis. And when I looked at it, um it was further confirmation that it kind of feels like you're living at a different time, like as all of this is happening.
00:06:02
Speaker
ah But the story today is, um it's called the Bunker Hostage Crisis. It took place in January of 2013. So, you know, coming up on 13 years ago.
00:06:16
Speaker
And it involves a man named Jimmy Lee Dykes. What Michael... Phillips wrote about him. It's pretty interesting. It says there was nobody in Jimmy Lee Dykes' life to take the edge off of his anger.
00:06:29
Speaker
He had long ago lost touch with ex-wife and two daughters. His older daughter recalled his fondness of firearms and a hatred of authorities, how he smelled of spearmint, coffee, and cigarettes, and how he beat her mother.
00:06:43
Speaker
Jimmy Dykes was a Vietnam veteran. He had worked a land surveyor and a truck driver. He was fired from his last hauling job after a dispute with his boss, and at the age of 65, he ended up living on the edge of a peanut field in a town of 2400 in southeastern Alabama, growing his own vegetables and collecting grievances. Metal cattle gates opened to his acre-and-a-half property located at the crest of a rutted red dirt road.
00:07:12
Speaker
He landscaped with cinder block and laid out a pond and a garden. Mostly, though, his land resembled a scrub-covered parking lot for his maroon and silver Econoline van, a 40-foot shipping container, and up on blocks, his home, which is a scruffy trailer left over from a federal disaster relief program.
00:07:33
Speaker
in jeans and a t-shirt with lightning strike white hair. Mr. Dykes roamed his property shooting grasshoppers with a pellet gun. He talked about putting out bowls of antifreeze to poison neighborhood dogs that soiled his property.
00:07:47
Speaker
In early 2012, Mr. Dykes drove his next-door neighbor, Michael Creel, to the Walmart and spent the ride fuming over a new gun law. On the return trip, Mr. Dykes mused about taking people hostage in a church some Sunday until a reporter broadcast his views against the law.
00:08:08
Speaker
Mr. Creel told Mr. Dykes no one would listen to a man taking hostages. The two men drove home in stony silence. A sheriff's deputy once intervened in a spat over Mr. Dykes' claim to pecans that fell on the roadside from another man's tree.
00:08:23
Speaker
For Mr. Dykes, the confrontation was one more complaint against a world that had done him wrong and was too stupid to know it All the boys at the top, they shit on all the people at the bottom, is what Mr. Dykes told the deputy.
00:08:37
Speaker
In 2012, Mr. Dykes hired Mr. Creel to help dig an underground bunker. The two men spent weeks clawing through dense red clay. They lined the walls with joyston wood panels, and Mr. Dykes worked from dawn till dusk on what he told Mr. Creel was a storm shelter.
00:08:55
Speaker
He talked about surviving hurricanes down in Florida. When they were done, Mr. Dykes asked Mr. Creel to climb inside. Scream real loud, said Mr. Dykes.
00:09:06
Speaker
I want to see if I can hear you. And then he walked away. Mr. Creel figured his neighbor wanted to see if yelling would bring help should a tree fall and block the hatch on top of the bunker. He found it odd that Mr. Dykes seemed pleased.
00:09:20
Speaker
Voices couldn't penetrate the thick earth. Over the years, Mr. Dykes had been arrested for drugs, drunken driving, assault, and larceny. He was due in court on January 30, 2013 to face a misdemeanor charge.
The School Bus Kidnapping
00:09:35
Speaker
He had built a speed bump, hopefully to slow down a neighbor's sports car. It was an obstacle that led to a confrontation and allegations that Jerry Dykes brandished a firearm.
00:09:47
Speaker
Mr. Dykes didn't show up for his court date. Instead, he boarded a school bus, grabbed a boy, and carried him down to his bunker. So, this is a fascinating one for me.
00:10:01
Speaker
um The reason it's fascinating to me is because it kind of defies all the reasons that you would typically think about somebody having had a bunker on the property.
00:10:13
Speaker
I think I exclusively think of more ah sex crime related reasons. And I think of trying to like hide out from like a bomb or a tornado or natural disaster. Yeah. I guess I should have, I should clarified that I was thinking of like what terrible things would a criminal use a bunker for.
00:10:37
Speaker
um So Jimmy Dykes, he's a decorated Vietnam war veteran from the Navy. um he they say he lives in isolation, but I found a lot of evidence across the internet in a lot of different articles with a lot of people talking about their interactions with them in a way that law enforcement seems to confirm.
00:10:59
Speaker
um So he definitely is talking to some people, but I think what they mean by the isolation part is that when he loses contact with his daughters, he does not reconnect to them The thing about that is, for people to know that and tell us that after the fact, they had to know him a little bit.
00:11:20
Speaker
And this is all according to people who lived and interacted with him. Well, just the the short um sort of entry you gave about his trip to Walmart with his neighbor, right?
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah. I have a feeling... Might not have been all up to him, right? Because you're telling somebody, don't take people hostage. Yeah. I mean, how many times are you going to have to tell them that? Like, you're not going to be around that person, and right? Right, right.
00:11:48
Speaker
So, ah as it's mentioned in the intro there, he previously lived down in Florida. He was arrested there for brandishing a gun in 1995. Right. So that's going to be a full 18 years ahead of the time frame we pick up with. ah In 2000, he had been arrested for marijuana possession charges.
00:12:08
Speaker
He had moved to a place called Midland City. And while he's in Midland City, he beat a neighbor's dog to death with an iron pipe. Now, I got i got to step in here. You said earlier...
00:12:22
Speaker
that he put bowls of antifreeze out to poison dogs that were using his ah land, and he's beating a dog to death. And I got to tell you, of all the signs that you can see in people that there's something ah really, really wrong with them, beating a dog to death is really high up there.
00:12:44
Speaker
Yeah. it's It's absolutely a terrible sign that something is seriously wrong with a person. Don't you think? I do i think i i think, and it's it's something that we can all look at it and know it's wrong.
00:12:59
Speaker
And you know I would obviously try to stop it if I saw it happening. But I'm not sure that we can really get deep down in there and understand it, right? Yeah. i don't i don't know I don't know that even the goal of this 45 minutes to an hour episode story we're doing is going to now uncover the yeah the the actual motives for somebody like...
00:13:22
Speaker
Jimmy Dykes, who seems to be a walking contradiction. And I say that because digging through all of this information that is available about him. And there's a pretty thorough investigation done to him because it's kind of rare for the FBI invade a 2,400-person town.
00:13:38
Speaker
But they do. They do invade a 2,400-person town, but they're specifically there looking for Jimmy Dykes. But among all that information is, in addition to having beat a neighbor's dog to death and, as I just said, putting the speed bump in to stop like the guys with sports cars that are driving down through there, and he's known to have patrolled his property at night with a shotgun and a flashlight. He's known to have harmed animals,
00:14:03
Speaker
He has warned children not to come on his land.
00:14:10
Speaker
And at the same time, he has cleared a path on his property that school buses can take to go through. it It doesn't make any sense. No, it doesn't at all.
00:14:23
Speaker
But on the afternoon of Monday, January 28th, even though court's on January 30th, we've got, and that's for sentencing and i'm in the what is a menacing case or a brandishing of a firearm case.
00:14:36
Speaker
We have this incident happening on January 29th, but on Monday, January 28th,
00:14:43
Speaker
While the school bus driver is driving ah down the highway and he turns off at Destiny Church, which is this little sort of prefab metal building that's got a steeple kind of attached to it.
00:14:57
Speaker
He takes his bus down what's known as Private Road 1539 through the Red Dirt Road. And he is attempting to drop off the kids who live down here.
00:15:08
Speaker
And then he backs up into a driveway and that driveway is owned by Jimmy Dykes, who's recently cleared it. And Jimmy Dykes, on on this Monday, he approaches the door and ah Chuck Poland thanks him for making a room and clearing the trees and the turnaround.
00:15:26
Speaker
And Jimmy Dykes says, well, I figured you'd appreciate it. He says, hey, do you like broccoli and carrots? And the driver says, i like broccoli. And Mr. Dykes says, all right, I'll catch you tomorrow.
00:15:40
Speaker
So this driver's name is Chuck Poland. Chuck Poland served as a U.S. Army helicopter mechanic. He's around the same age as Jimmy Dykes. He's 66 years old at the time that he's driving this bus.
00:15:54
Speaker
He's a stocky guy. has a beard. He's a grandfather. At night, he would watch footage from the bus security cameras, and he would make notes of which students were doing what so that he could like pay attention to them you know outside of his driving. He didn't want to be distracted.
00:16:13
Speaker
He would turn them in if they had multiple transgressions or if they were bullying against some other kid. So he's riding along that day, and he says the kids were talking about seeing Mr. Dykes and he explained to them, he dug that while they were on Christmas break, he had dug out these trees and cleared this area so that we'd be able to turn around.
The Bus Confrontation
00:16:40
Speaker
So according to Chuck Poland's wife, Chuck had told her that he seemed like a man who just needed a friend. So Tuesday, January 29th,
00:16:54
Speaker
Chuck Poland left a dozen fresh eggs and a jar of homemade muscadine grape jelly in the front seat of Mr. Light's van along with a note. And that note said, sorry, I missed you. I'll see you later.
00:17:06
Speaker
ah There's a photo of it online. It's actually like a pretty long note. It says, hi there. I am Chuck Poland, the school bus driver. Sorry, I missed you, but I left you some eggs and muscadine jelly in the front seat of the van for you.
00:17:20
Speaker
I'll see you later. And he writes his phone number on here. and puts phone beside it, and it says Chuck Poland. Mr. Dykes gives this jelly to a neighbor, but he keeps the note in his wallet next to a scrap of paper with phone numbers that the police are going to find later on, and it's going to have phone numbers in there for the White House and U.S. Senate.
00:17:41
Speaker
And it has a folded receipt for a handgun that had been seized by police in 2000, so years prior to this.
00:17:55
Speaker
At around 3.30 p.m., Chuck Poland, wearing his usual outfit, which included suspenders, again backed up his bus into the turnaround by the Laurel Oak trees. He saw Mr. Dykes approaching him, carrying a t-shirt bag full of broccoli.
00:18:12
Speaker
So Chuck opens the door, and Mr. Dykes, wearing his blue jeans and a baseball cap, climbs aboard, But instead of handing him the bag of broccoli, he pulls out a pistol.
00:18:25
Speaker
He hands Mr. Poland a neatly printed letter that begins, I have a story to tell. It ordered Mr. Poland to select two well-behaved boys that had no mental or physical problems and to cuff them together using black zip ties.
00:18:43
Speaker
The letter continued, no harm will come to the kids. When the story is finished, they will go free and I will die.
00:18:51
Speaker
Mr. Dykes in the letter promised consequences if Chuck Pollan refused. I don't want to shoot you. I want two kids, six to eight years old, right now. So then he said it out loud to the driver.
00:19:05
Speaker
He said, I mean it right now, right now, two kids, six to eight, get it, make a move, I'll shoot you if you don't do it. Mr. Pollan in a very even voice said, I'm sorry, but going to have to shoot me.
00:19:17
Speaker
The children ducked down behind the seats. and they were quietly trying to see what was happening. Trey Watts, a 16-year-old on the bus, was in the second the last row. He was playing NBA Jam on his iPhone, and he called 911.
00:19:32
Speaker
Britton Norris, the operator, picked up and said, where is your emergency? Trey told Britton, we're on the bus, and someone is trying to take our kids. To which she responded, somebody on the bus is trying to take a kid?
00:19:46
Speaker
Trey said, yes, ma'am. So Mr. Dykes, with a pistol in one hand and zip ties in the other, he used his hand to summon several children forward. A boy in red, a girl in the back seat, but no one moved.
00:19:57
Speaker
So he turned to Ethan Gilman. Ethan Gilman was a five-year-old boy. He was considered impulsive and easily distracted. According to his mother, he was autistic.
00:20:08
Speaker
He would sit up front to be near Mr. Poland. Ethan was heavy for his age. He was frightened of the stares. Come here, come on, come on.
00:20:20
Speaker
Jerry Dykes yelled at Ethan. He's scared to death, said Chuck Poland. You will not be harmed, son. Come on. Mr. Poland stayed in his seat, but he wouldn't let anyone move.
00:20:33
Speaker
Dykes said, I'm going to have to shoot you now. And then he yelled, go on. I don't have any time. The goddamn law is coming. Go on. And Mr. Poland said in a steady and quiet voice, I can't do it.
00:20:47
Speaker
Jerry Dykes at this point fired one shot. Mr. Pullen cried out, and the bus rolled backward through the trees, shadows fluttering over the seats. Four seconds later, Jerry Dykes fired another shot, then three more.
00:21:02
Speaker
Mr. Pullen slumped against the side window, blood seeping through his t-shirt, and the bus suddenly stopped. The 911 operator heard children scream. What's going on, she asked Trey, and Trey said, the bus driver's dead.
00:21:17
Speaker
Britton said, the what? And Trey repeated, the bus driver's dead. All she could think of to do was to say, hang in there, baby, hang in there, just get down.
00:21:28
Speaker
Mr. Dykes pulled Ethan from his seat and wrestled him down the bus stairs. He hoisted the boy onto his shoulder and disappeared. I want my mommy, cried one of the girls.
00:21:41
Speaker
So that is what gets us to... this hostage-taking crisis. And what a crazy situation. Like, what is he thinking?
00:21:53
Speaker
Well, and I can only imagine. so i like to put myself in, like, everybody's place, right? So all these kids are going, well, what's this dude doing on the bus, right? Right. Got a gun. Then the 911 operator, i know this sounds bad, but, like, some of the most interesting calls are the ones where the operator that answers immediately has to have the person repeat themselves. Right. Right.
00:22:15
Speaker
Because it's something that they've never been trained for. They can't even fathom the situation, right? Right. And I do understand, you know, it would, for one thing, it was probably confusing because a bus is typically transporting kids and for it to be stopped and somebody to get on, that's a weird, like,
00:22:36
Speaker
it it doesn't happen very often, I wouldn't imagine, right? But there was this sort of setup here where he had cleared for the bus to turn around. And then, you know, Chuck Poland had, you know, very graciously tried to be a friend, right? He had, yep.
00:22:54
Speaker
And so that's what, you know, and obviously to me, that's that is Dykes setting up a situation where it's not odd for him to stand up and get on the bus, right? Right.
00:23:06
Speaker
because he's going to give him some broccoli or whatever. So this is, you know, the wheels turning in Dyke's head to get it to happen. And then we've got this, uh, 16 year old,
00:23:17
Speaker
who immediately calls 911, which is another thing that if you think back to other hostage situations that happened in different times and places, that wouldn't have even been an option, Right. right To have a kid on the bus with a cell phone, but he you know he immediately knew something was wrong. There are children on the bus, and that that takes front and center, but I can only imagine what Chuck Poland thought.
00:23:41
Speaker
Well, I mean, there's 21 kids on this bus. Right. And ultimately, like that guy refusing to participate in what Jimmy Liedex is trying to do probably saves some of these kids. i don't you know He gets away with the one kid, but that's really because he kills Chuck Paulin.
00:24:02
Speaker
That's the only reason. Like, he knew he wasn't going to be able to take a child with him sitting there. Now, the interesting thing to me is I have a feeling because of we have sort of an insight from um Chuck Poland's wife that he thought he was a man that just needed a friend, right? Yeah. I have a feeling that's why he didn't just, you know, from the position he was sitting in as the driver of the bus, just kick him right back out the door, right? Yeah. Because I don't think he thought it was going to escalate.
00:24:33
Speaker
Yeah. um you Because, you know, people talk, right? People say, I'm going to do this, that, or the other. And I have a feeling he was looking for a, you know, nonviolent end to that situation. it probably, he was probably surprised, right, that they actually did shoot him. Yeah.
00:24:49
Speaker
You know, when you look at an older, well, they were the same age, so well he wouldn't have seen an older man, but he would have seen somebody that he could probably, ah he thought he would have stuff in common with, right? Yeah, he probably empathized with him, too, yeah. Exactly. And so, I think it just escalated really fast. Now...
00:25:08
Speaker
We can't ignore the irony of the note asking for two basically no medical problems and well-behaved, I think, six to eight-year-old children. And he gets a five-year-old who has like ADHD or autism or something, right? Right. Because that's irony. Yeah, I've seen the ADHD reported. I've seen autism. I've seen Asperger's. I've seen multiple things reported. I think every single person who, at we if you went to school in like the eighty s and 90s,
00:25:45
Speaker
you Which this was in 2013, so it was only 12 years ago, but I know kids that I went to school with that had those problems. And even if it wasn't said out loud, do you know exactly what they're talking about. Yeah, yeah, you do. And it's interesting. So we have this description of Michael Creel talking about what Dykes is doing. And clearly that's when they're building the bunker, so that's ahead of this happening.
00:26:11
Speaker
I will say one of the interesting things about this is the timing of the world. And they give you like like that's one of my favorite things to do, is like to give you an idea of what's happening in the world. About a month before this, you have the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
00:26:25
Speaker
So that's December 14th, 2012. Fresh on the mind of people is the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Exactly. Yeah, you're right, because that was a big deal. And then, you know, earlier in 2012, you have the Aurora, Colorado shooting and um in a movie theater.
00:26:46
Speaker
The Batman movie, right. So you have James Holmes at the Batman movie premiere. um So that's another type of mass shooting. My point is, for like a solid year, the previous year, and and that's why these like ah assault gun bans and other laws are being abandoned about in 2012. It's because of incidents in 2011 and 2012. But, like, where' we're looking at the aftermath of this, and you have to think about the fact that, like, we just had something terrible happen up in Newton, Connecticut, that, like, is going to still be on the minds of everyone involved, including law enforcement.
Gun Laws & Mass Shootings
00:27:24
Speaker
Not to mention the fact that... um It gives us a lot of insight into the thought that this plan that he is right now in our story going through with, this it has something to do with trying to get a gun law not happening. Yeah, he he's doing something where he...
00:27:46
Speaker
But it it gives you insight. like He doesn't understand a lot of dynamics, right? I'm going to take a guess that probably at this point, he's he talks about the they talk about the pistol receipt being in his wallet, and it's 13 years earlier.
00:28:02
Speaker
My guess is the gun law he's pissed about, while he's talking about a gun law that's on the radio with Michael Creel, I think he's probably mad about the gun law that if you're convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, because i don't see felonies in here, but I don't know that for sure.
00:28:20
Speaker
i am betting that he has some kind of misdemeanor crime of domestic violence with his ex-wife where he was assaulting her and she takes the kids. And that prevents him from being able to purchase a firearm and that makes him mad.
00:28:33
Speaker
Right, it except like he's he's committing a crime with a gun. He's kind of proving the point of that law in what he's doing here. Right, but that gives you insight into what kind of mind we're dealing with, right? Because this is you know, boiling it all down. Essentially, he's trying to put innocent lives at risk to bully legislators or whoever he's trying to get at to do something. It's not going to work. It's almost like negotiating with terrorists, right? Yep.
00:29:03
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, you know, it's baffling to me that we end up with the one kid, meaning Ethan.
00:29:14
Speaker
ah By the way, if you go hunting for this, I think I should say this here. There is, there is weirdly a video and audio to accompany this. It's no longer in the main portion, I would call, of like the ah Wall Street Journal site. But the Wall Street Journal article that I pulled from, you can find... um the archive of it on the Wayback Machine.
00:29:44
Speaker
And in that archive, they have security camera footage of this happening. It takes place from like above the driver's perspective, looking out at all the kids, but like it unfolds in a way that you can listen to the 911 call, you can watch the footage.
00:29:58
Speaker
And that is fascinating that we're able to do this with this type of story. But as we tell the story, doesn't it feel like it took place in like another time? It should it seems like it is it would be impossible that a kid had an iPhone they called 911 on, and it would be impossible that there was video on the bus, but just the same, it happened. And to me, it's so barbaric, or I don't know, it's something about it, it just seems like something that would not have happened.
00:30:30
Speaker
in 2013, right? Right. Yeah. And yet it did. um So I don't know how much people know about like hostage rescue teams.
00:30:41
Speaker
So i'm going to throw in some sta statistics there and it's going to become relevant in a minute. um Hostage rescue teams, particularly at the federal level, have been around for a really long time.
00:30:51
Speaker
If you look at the bulk of them in the United States, there is no like particular set of statistics attached to how a hostage situation is going to go down. But you can look at the historical averages, and the majority of them last less than eight hours.
00:31:07
Speaker
But there have been multiple ah negotiations that have taken place over the course of days. There's a particularly long um siege in Waco, Texas, which lasted from February 28th to April 19th of 1993.
00:31:24
Speaker
um And that had multiple entries attempted. it had multiple people killed on the federal side. There were multiple lives that were lost. um There was a prison riot in 1991 at the Talladega Federal Correctional Institution, or FCI.
00:31:40
Speaker
um In that particular ah riot on August 21st, 1991, Cuban detainees were able to grab a corrections officer and hold him with the threat of being shipped.
00:31:53
Speaker
ah They took the officer's uniform and they started a prison takeover that would ultimately include 121 detainees and 11 hostages. The leader of the riot told officials at the time that they would be released once a planned deportation of 31 of the detainees was stopped.
00:32:10
Speaker
And other Talladega inmates were allowed to leave the prison. so over the course of the negotiations, the detainees released two hostages. um There was an injured prison case manager and there was a prison secretary who had already been ill and attempting to leave work.
00:32:26
Speaker
But after negotiations failed to resolve that situation and the inmates threatened to start killing the hostages, authorities stormed the unit in the early morning hours and all of the hostages were ultimately recovered safely.
00:32:40
Speaker
um That relied on mostly non-lethal methods. And the 31 Cubans facing deportation saw their deportation accelerated.
00:32:51
Speaker
So... That's exactly what should have happened. Because, I mean, no offense to them, but it you can't do things like that, right? Right. they Like, most of these people were so they were already serving sentences for violent crimes. They had already been through the appellate process. And they were going to... They were now going to go through the final portion Right, right. And if you give in to any sort of show of force from a hostage situation, you are opening a door you do not want to opened.
00:33:20
Speaker
i I agree with that. Now, according to CBS News, the drama here starts pretty quickly. And that is, i say drama, um it's it's it's really a life-threatening situation for at least the little boy that's been abducted.
00:33:36
Speaker
But Jerry Dykes calls 911. And he gives instructions on how hostage negotiators can communicate with him. He's literally set this up specifically to get his point across. Right. this is He had absolutely no interest in and taking a small child but for the ability to force people he thought would do something to do something. That's it.
00:34:04
Speaker
Because the life of the small child was worth it. That's it. that he He wasn't, there was no altering, well, I don't know which way it goes, right? A lot of times hostage hostage situations can happen for a variety of reasons, but he specifically was doing it just to be listened to.
00:34:24
Speaker
He was. um And what's interesting is He had been planning this for weeks, they determined. Well, yeah, he had to build that bunker. Yep, he had to build the bunker.
00:34:38
Speaker
um And they really wanted to know, i think that everyone wanted to know sort of why he was doing this. And then when he gives them this out that they can communicate through, what is described as a PVC ventilation pipe. So it's a pipe that was put into the bunker. I believe that it it's got an open and closed setting so he could turn it off, turn it on. But pretty quickly, and he is, you know, surrounded by police and the FBI.
00:35:06
Speaker
By everybody he wanted to be there. Right, by everybody. And so The negotiations start out locally and the first day the FBI arrives.
00:35:19
Speaker
Now, the way this kind of rolls out is ah they know who they're dealing with. They know that ah Chuck Poland is dead and that's a big deal.
00:35:31
Speaker
He ultimately had been blocking access to the children when he was killed and the first person to come in is local. The hostage negotiator that is, I don't think he's from like the police force right there. I think he's from the State Bureau.
00:35:49
Speaker
He begins communicating through this 60-foot-long plastic ventilation pipe, and he reports back that he thinks the boy is unharmed. um He ends up agreeing that the police can send down coloring books, they can send down crayons, and they can send down prescription medication. that the The boy's mother, when notified, she warned them ah that they needed the the boy needed some medication.
00:36:13
Speaker
According to neighbors, ah the bunker had electricity, and they had seen Jerry Dykes disappear and be in this bunker for up to a week at a time.
00:36:26
Speaker
um I think, in addition to Sandy Hook, a lot of the things that were on people's minds is there have been some strange hostage takings over the years related to school buses. Yeah.
00:36:40
Speaker
including the 1976 taking of a Chowchilla. Now that, um that is exactly what came to my mind. I'm not, I'm not actually sure like that anything could ever top that.
00:36:53
Speaker
Right. Right. That just the dynamic of it, like how it was buried and all that stuff that happened. Right. Right. But in, in my way the When I was reading about this case, which was this a big deal in mainstream media or no?
00:37:12
Speaker
It popped for a minute. the The one part of it that's a big deal is so. So this starts happening on January 29th by about the fourth day of this. It's a huge deal.
00:37:25
Speaker
Okay. but But then it went away again, right? because Yeah. Because there were a lot of things that were overshadowing it as far as gun violence, right? Correct. And it's almost like ah because you know Chuck Poland did die, but then the child doesn't, and the perpetrator dies. And so it's not like there's a whole bunch of trial stuff and all that stuff, right? Right. So it doesn't it doesn't maintain its position in the spotlight. Right.
00:37:52
Speaker
right But the Chowchilla case, I didn't know anything about that. I wasn't alive when that happened. But when I learned about it, it was sort of like, what? Right? And so because of that, it seems like any sort of like...
00:38:08
Speaker
blip on the radar as far as anything having to do with school bus hostage taking, which they didn't even take the, Dykes didn't even take the school bus here, right? I mean, he took a child off the school bus, but the Chowchilla one, they took the whole school bus and nothing like that has ever come up again. So it's almost like that is the, the Holy grail of school bus abductions or something. Right.
00:38:32
Speaker
It is. And the, The early reports in this, if you go and and like read across the internet, they report some of the ages slightly differently. like Trey is relatively the same age, but he's described as 15 or 16. Ethan Gilman is described as 5 or 6, in the like the sort of breaking news ah fashion.
00:38:54
Speaker
But pretty quickly, this rural Alabama area, they end up calling the FBI, and the FBI sends in a team from the Behavioral Analysis Unit to deal with all of this.
00:39:05
Speaker
Now, that would be what people call these analysts, that's their job title. um the way that the media refers to them as, quote, profilers.
00:39:17
Speaker
And they are put on the ground to to try and bring an end to the situation. A lot of times they come out more for abductions than they do for hostage rescue situations, but they do they are trained and brought in to analyze situations when there is an active ah taking, particularly when there's a child involved. I was going to say, just about anybody, even if you have to use semantics very um creatively, they will respond with a five-year-old, right? and Right. Definitely. And in a way, he was abducted.
00:39:53
Speaker
Right. And um the even though he's not taken very far, he is squirreled away from the world, particularly from the family that's taking care of him.
Dykes' Personality & Negotiation Efforts
00:40:03
Speaker
Against his will. Against his will.
00:40:05
Speaker
Against the bus driver's will and to the horror of all the children sitting on the bus, right? Right. And CBS News ends up talking to one of the profilers that's sort of affiliated with this. She's an analyst named Molly Ammon. And Molly Ammon ends up basically describing what they were attempting to do in a few sentences in one of the brief...
00:40:24
Speaker
media appearances about this case that they make. And she said that they were essentially trying to bend ah jim Jimmy Dykes to their will, and they wanted to figure out how to make him release Ethan. they characterized Jimmy Dykes as an injustice collector. Are you familiar with that term?
00:40:42
Speaker
I absolutely am. So injustice collectors are frequently loners. um Sometimes they have other problems going on ah in their life and they always seem to find someone else to blame them themselves. And I will say that the human the normal inherent human condition... We all have to fight and rally against becoming an injustice collector.
00:41:06
Speaker
We do. Because it's natural to hold grudges and to be mad because, you know, things happen that aren't fair, right? Right. But the general description she gives is that Jimmy D.D. Dykes was ah a loner. um She doesn't go as far as to say sovereign citizen, but she kind of describes him as having a strong anti-government mentality and he's distrustful of everyone. um She said that he did lack empathy, and I don't know if that's the like I don't know if she's leaning towards sociopaths. He doesn't come out and say that. The fact that he has no successful relationships in his life and he is lacking in empathy, because I don't think he would take a kid if he had any kind of empathy going on that was like functional. I don't know that like I would classify him as having like full-blown
00:41:51
Speaker
sociopath would say. Well, right, but he thought this was going to be some sort of statement or solution, so it kind of looks like he is. Well, but I think he'd already come to the foregone conclusion that he was not going to survive, based on the letter he gives Chuck Poland when he gets on the bus. He knew he was not going to survive, so this isn't for him, whatever he's doing, which is sort of defiant against the concept of empathy not existing. I agree with that, but then you you have to wonder...
00:42:17
Speaker
Well, I have to wonder. if he was He knew he wasn't going to survive. Why is he doing it? Well, and it's interesting like that you ask that because we don't ever get like a full answer to what's happening here. We get some weird details that come out. This is the part in the expression. This is a textbook example of a screw loose.
00:42:40
Speaker
It's a screw loose and it's a cry for help at the same time. And that can have an an unusual appearance. It's a cry for help that he does not expect to be answered, though, because he he is committing suicide the long way.
00:42:53
Speaker
It is kind of the long way, yes. um So according to Maliamin, they did a deep background on him and interviews with relatives and neighbors and scrutinized very quickly every detail of his life that they could determine. He only had a misdemeanor criminal record that, and as he got older, largely included altercations with his neighbors.
00:43:14
Speaker
um And they include the fact that like even in respect to... even in um ah respect to the day that he pulls this stunt, so to speak. He was supposed to be in court very shortly thereafter.
00:43:32
Speaker
Ammon said that they had to study the hostage as carefully as they did the kidnapper. And they point out here in this brief interview in this media piece from CBS i that Jimmy Dykes and Ethan would end up in a codependency. And I thought that was interesting that they said it that way. But Jimmy Dykes needs Ethan to live, and Ethan um is ultimately his only protection against being taken down from the position that he's in for killing Chuck Poland.
Resolution & Rescue
00:44:01
Speaker
and Ethan needs Jimmy Dykes because he was, the difference between life and death for someone who is... Because he was trapped underground. Trapped underground, right. So it's a very difficult situation, they said. But this was all by design. It is by design, and it is by the perpetrator. Ultimately, this is going to last several days.
00:44:23
Speaker
ah It is later confirmed that Jimmy Dykes had been requesting one of his demands was a specific female reporter come and hold his hand while broadcasting with him live from the bunker. Which is pathetic. That is a pathetic stance to take, and it undermines any sort of even perceived by his own perception, perceived nobility or whatever he was trying to accomplish, that was pathetic. Right. But his goal was ultimately, while holding her hand, to commit suicide on live television. Which is, it just makes it even more so pathetic. I mean, the child and the woman, I mean, come on, man. We're in 2013. Yeah. There's also some indication
00:45:04
Speaker
And I'll say this with a grain of salt, because I've seen it on, I think the boy in the bunker talked about this. I'm just saying it from the perspective of, I don't have any way to confirm this, and I have not seen anything in writing, but I've heard several people affiliated with the investigation of this case say it.
00:45:21
Speaker
They say that Jimmy Dykes had been training Ethan Gilman to detonate the improvised explosive devices inside of the bunker. Right. And so he might've successfully done that, a five-year-old in very precarious, scary situation.
00:45:39
Speaker
he might have done it. He could have told him all kinds of things to convince him. Yeah. So it starts on January 29th and then it ends abruptly on February 4th, 2013 at 3 12 PM.
00:45:52
Speaker
Um, the FBI's HRT ends up breaching the roof of the bunker using explosive charges after the negotiations have broken down. And quite frankly, they say broken down. I say they were always asinine. The FBI just realized they, this guy was not budging.
00:46:10
Speaker
um They're able to use a hidden camera ah down this ventilation pipe, which is probably one of the two cameras that you see. um They're long and kind of snake-like.
00:46:21
Speaker
ah They're able to see ah Jimmy Dykes holding a gun. And at this point, stun grenades are thrown into the bunker. There is an exchange of gunfire with Jimmy Dykes. He is killed, and Ethan Gilman is rescued. He is taken to an area hospital. He's reported to be in good condition.
00:46:39
Speaker
And according to multiple sources, there are at least two improvised explosive devices the hospital. inside ah this bunker. They describe one as being found inside PVC pipe. And then in one of the more official documents that's sort of included in the Wall Street Journal article, they describe it as being a PVC pipe bomb, which I'm not familiar with a PVC type pipe bomb. I'm familiar with steel and aluminum pipe bombs. So I imagine it's a steel and aluminum pipe bomb that they use PVC pipe instead. i think Yeah, I think probably this was like a terribly made IED, um or possibly it had been slid into the PVC ventilation pipe that they're talking through, and and and maybe that was just a mistake made from having seen a picture.
00:47:24
Speaker
Right.
Aftermath & Reflections
00:47:25
Speaker
Okay. but Now, according to all of this, talking about Ethan, the following week on February 14th, 2013, Dr. Phil has an interview with Ethan and his mother, Jennifer Kirkland. So Ethan had been in the Dale County, Alabama foster care system and his mother, Jennifer Kirkland had been raising him since he was three, but she had substance use issues.
00:47:50
Speaker
And she comes on the air and and tells a little bit about this. February 26th, the bunker where Jimmy Dykes had held Ethan captive, it was ended up being demolished by officials who stated that it posed a, quote, biological risk.
00:48:04
Speaker
I can only imagine that hard to clean it up. And there was, you know, if you're in there for five days with a kid and you guys are eating food and whatever, there's bound to be No bathroom in this place, given the... Not to mention, i mean, yeah i feel like demolishing it was the correct thing to do. It shouldn't have been there to begin with, unless it was, again, for a natural disaster-type shelter. Right.
00:48:27
Speaker
And so, Ethan Gilman, he goes... ah with his mom to start with, but then Jennifer Kirkland begins using substances again, and he ends up being raised by his grandmother to a point, and then his 18-year-old brother, when his grandmother passes away, he's finally adopted by a local minister and his wife named the Cherners, and they had had Ethan when he was a little toddler in foster care, and they end up with him again.
00:48:56
Speaker
and that is one of the most heart-wrenching aspects of this right yeah you mean did that kid really need to be taken by a crazy gunman no he did not i would say that no kid needs to be taken it just seems like it's just like the terrible rotten cherry on top right right and there was a there was a sixth anniversary like broadcast of this back 2019 they showed ethan he has a new name now he was a fifth grader at a local elementary school at the time he would be about 17 now
00:49:29
Speaker
ah One of the things that happened in the aftermath of all of this is there's the chuck or Charles Chuck Poland Act. And that is it makes it a crime to trespass onto a school bus. And it was signed into law in June of 2013, which I think is sort of the icing on the cake, because I believe a law making it crime.
00:49:49
Speaker
Like from his crime, a law making a new crime that wasn't a crime previously would make Jimmy Dykes crazy if that came out of his actions.
00:50:00
Speaker
It absolutely would. And it's always, anytime you have a law having to be, you know, spelled out, put on paper and enacted and, you know, become a law when it's a principle of common sense. Right.
00:50:17
Speaker
Like to begin with, you don't get on a school bus, like it's trespassing, whether, you know, I'm sure nuances of the wording of other laws perhaps didn't allow for that to be considered. Right. But it is always just the height of stupidity right that ends up putting things like that into place. Right. Yeah, it is. and And I think that, you know, I'm glad that they honored Chuck Poland. He was a hero.
00:50:46
Speaker
saving all those children and I'm glad that they did something that would have aggravated Dykes because he was going about everything the wrong way yeah but yeah this is our our first holiday episode the theme this year is hostage taking do you have anything else on on this particular case no I don't um I feel like it turned out the exact way it should have been and i hope that Chuck Poland's resting in peace and I hope that the child is do we don't know his name now we wouldn't probably use it in any way but i hope that he's doing well and prospering yeah and i'm glad that it everybody uh else all the small children involved uh survived and i hope they're all they've all recovered from it i do too
00:51:46
Speaker
Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabrattiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or five-star rating.
00:51:58
Speaker
It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS. s
00:54:02
Speaker
True Crime Access is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through Patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at TrueCrimeAccess.com.
00:54:20
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.