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SIAPepsi - Been awhile since we've had an ice storm warning 'round these parts
- By bagdropper
- Off Topic
- 85 Replies
In case you're living under a rock...the "good" thing is we are supposed to warm up above freezing later in the day and be above freezing Saturday night.
I've got a bus trip early tomorrow - quite surprised it hasn't been cancelled yet. Hell, damn near every school in Iowa probably has some sort of event scheduled tomorrow morning.
I've got a bus trip early tomorrow - quite surprised it hasn't been cancelled yet. Hell, damn near every school in Iowa probably has some sort of event scheduled tomorrow morning.
A mole in several right-wing militia groups; very interesting read
In an Off Topic thread recently a poster on here said something like "there arent any militias, white supremacist groups". Well read this account a someone who infiltrated, recorded and documented a few of these groups and the law enforcement, and other types who are in these groups. They are a scary bunch of wankers (nice word for them) who want to take matters into their own hands and the laws and justice be damned.
www.propublica.org
A Mole Infiltrated the Highest Ranks of American Militias. This Is What He Found.
Outraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends. The one person he told was a ProPublica reporter.
Iowa crew behind “ChiefsAholic” documentary releases true-crime look at Kansas City Chiefs superfan, string of bank robberies
- By cigaretteman
- Off Topic
- 0 Replies
It is, in some ways, a modern retelling of iconic scenes from the Wild West — a story that needs no sensationalizing.
Dressed head-to-toe in his gray wolf suit, Kansas City Chiefs superfan Xaviar Babudar was a staple at the team’s every game and adored online for years.
Then, the man known as the “ChiefsAholic” disappeared.
After a string of bank robberies across several states, including Iowa, police in Oklahoma caught him for one of the robberies. In September 2024, the 30-year-old was sentenced to 17.5 years after stealing more than $800,000 across seven states — Oklahoma, Iowa, Tennessee, Nebraska, Minnesota, Nevada and California — and laundering it through casinos.
Now, an Iowa documentary crew has released exclusive, firsthand accounts outlining Babudar’s homeless childhood, gambling addiction and rendezvous with fame that illuminates an entire subculture of fandom for one of the NFL’s most popular Midwestern teams.
Producer Kristian Day, a Cedar Rapids graduate, and director Dylan Sires, a Waterloo native, navigate interviews with Chiefs superfans through an unusual question: “Does America love a bank robber?”
“That’s a wild question, because you don’t think about bank robbers in 2024. There’s cameras everywhere. All your smart devices will tell the police where you were,” Sires told The Gazette. “Yet there’s a guy doing it, who to a degree was getting away with it. That, I think, it absolutely bonkers.”
“ChiefsAholic: A Wolf in Chiefs Clothing” was released on Dec. 24 and is available for streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.
Day and Sires had just finished wrapping up “Taken Together: Who Killed Lyric and Elizabeth?” an HBO Max series about missing Waterloo cousins whose killer was never found, when they got the call.
Their pitch about the ChiefsAholic was approved for funding after Babudar went radio silent.
For years, his near-daily updates were watched by thousands of fans. Twitter followers did some sleuthing and discovered his December 2022 arrest for robbing a credit union in Bixby, Oklahoma.
After spending years in the dark world of kidnapping, pedophilia and drug abuse, Babudar’s case was a much-needed new direction for the documentary makers — a compelling mystery without murder.
“This was still a true crime story … but there wasn’t anything like that,” Day said. “There was almost this Looney Tunes character so obsessed with the Chiefs that he was robbing banks to go to Chiefs games.”
With a small crew, they beelined to Oklahoma and met Babudar in January 2023, just after he was released from jail on bond with an ankle monitor.
Even before Babudar was publicly connected to a string of robberies outside Oklahoma, Sires had a hunch that the ChiefsAholic was responsible for other similar bank robberies — including his first one in Clive, Iowa, in March 2022. For one, the robbers’ modus operandi was unique. He robbed each bank with a gun — an uncommon trait in modern robberies — and often jumped over the counter.
“I just didn’t believe him. Who does that in this day and age?” Day said. “(But) Dylan was right. Who is this guy who thinks he’s a cowboy, going from state to state to rob banks?”
Standing over 6 feet tall and about 250 pounds, their physical description of Babudar is an enigma of duality: imposing and muscular when he jumps for the Chiefs, but goofy and disarming with a high-pitched voice when he flashes a braces-clad smile outside of his wolf suit.
Through stakeouts and interviews with friends and family, they find frames of nuance in the story of a child who grew up living in a car with his mother and brother. All of them were part of another subculture that gets through life with multiple cars, but no jobs and no land.
“There’s this American outlaw aspect to them. They live on their own terms,” Day said. “They’ve figured out the system that works for them.”
Other Kansas City Chiefs superfans appear on camera, giving a glimpse into a culture that eats, sleeps and breathes this football team.
But Day, who isn’t a sports fan himself, says that appeal goes far beyond the football field sidelines.
“The things that excite me are subculture and counterculture,” he said. “The superfans are a subculture amongst themselves. There’s something very interesting about that.”
They caught up with the bank tellers who were pistol whipped, filmed reenactments of Babudar’s Oklahoma arrest with the arresting officers, and studied his stream of consciousness as he went to games and won six-figure bets.
But before they could wrap up production, the star of the documentary cut off his ankle monitor. Babudar lived on the run for four months during a nationwide manhunt led by a bail bondsman who had $80,000 of personal cash on the line.
In an uncommon feat for documentaries, viewers can watch the consequences of his actions in real time as producers chase an open-ended case — from jumping bail to a sentencing that came just under the film’s deadline.
“At some point, you have this guy who had no agency throughout most of his life. When he gets ahold of money, he starts to have agency,” Day said. “For someone living out of his car, what do you think happens?”
www.thegazette.com
Dressed head-to-toe in his gray wolf suit, Kansas City Chiefs superfan Xaviar Babudar was a staple at the team’s every game and adored online for years.
Then, the man known as the “ChiefsAholic” disappeared.
After a string of bank robberies across several states, including Iowa, police in Oklahoma caught him for one of the robberies. In September 2024, the 30-year-old was sentenced to 17.5 years after stealing more than $800,000 across seven states — Oklahoma, Iowa, Tennessee, Nebraska, Minnesota, Nevada and California — and laundering it through casinos.
Now, an Iowa documentary crew has released exclusive, firsthand accounts outlining Babudar’s homeless childhood, gambling addiction and rendezvous with fame that illuminates an entire subculture of fandom for one of the NFL’s most popular Midwestern teams.
Producer Kristian Day, a Cedar Rapids graduate, and director Dylan Sires, a Waterloo native, navigate interviews with Chiefs superfans through an unusual question: “Does America love a bank robber?”
“That’s a wild question, because you don’t think about bank robbers in 2024. There’s cameras everywhere. All your smart devices will tell the police where you were,” Sires told The Gazette. “Yet there’s a guy doing it, who to a degree was getting away with it. That, I think, it absolutely bonkers.”
“ChiefsAholic: A Wolf in Chiefs Clothing” was released on Dec. 24 and is available for streaming exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.
How it started
Day and Sires had just finished wrapping up “Taken Together: Who Killed Lyric and Elizabeth?” an HBO Max series about missing Waterloo cousins whose killer was never found, when they got the call.
Their pitch about the ChiefsAholic was approved for funding after Babudar went radio silent.
For years, his near-daily updates were watched by thousands of fans. Twitter followers did some sleuthing and discovered his December 2022 arrest for robbing a credit union in Bixby, Oklahoma.
After spending years in the dark world of kidnapping, pedophilia and drug abuse, Babudar’s case was a much-needed new direction for the documentary makers — a compelling mystery without murder.
“This was still a true crime story … but there wasn’t anything like that,” Day said. “There was almost this Looney Tunes character so obsessed with the Chiefs that he was robbing banks to go to Chiefs games.”
With a small crew, they beelined to Oklahoma and met Babudar in January 2023, just after he was released from jail on bond with an ankle monitor.
An open-ended case
Even before Babudar was publicly connected to a string of robberies outside Oklahoma, Sires had a hunch that the ChiefsAholic was responsible for other similar bank robberies — including his first one in Clive, Iowa, in March 2022. For one, the robbers’ modus operandi was unique. He robbed each bank with a gun — an uncommon trait in modern robberies — and often jumped over the counter.
“I just didn’t believe him. Who does that in this day and age?” Day said. “(But) Dylan was right. Who is this guy who thinks he’s a cowboy, going from state to state to rob banks?”
Standing over 6 feet tall and about 250 pounds, their physical description of Babudar is an enigma of duality: imposing and muscular when he jumps for the Chiefs, but goofy and disarming with a high-pitched voice when he flashes a braces-clad smile outside of his wolf suit.
Through stakeouts and interviews with friends and family, they find frames of nuance in the story of a child who grew up living in a car with his mother and brother. All of them were part of another subculture that gets through life with multiple cars, but no jobs and no land.
“There’s this American outlaw aspect to them. They live on their own terms,” Day said. “They’ve figured out the system that works for them.”
Other Kansas City Chiefs superfans appear on camera, giving a glimpse into a culture that eats, sleeps and breathes this football team.
But Day, who isn’t a sports fan himself, says that appeal goes far beyond the football field sidelines.
“The things that excite me are subculture and counterculture,” he said. “The superfans are a subculture amongst themselves. There’s something very interesting about that.”
They caught up with the bank tellers who were pistol whipped, filmed reenactments of Babudar’s Oklahoma arrest with the arresting officers, and studied his stream of consciousness as he went to games and won six-figure bets.
But before they could wrap up production, the star of the documentary cut off his ankle monitor. Babudar lived on the run for four months during a nationwide manhunt led by a bail bondsman who had $80,000 of personal cash on the line.
In an uncommon feat for documentaries, viewers can watch the consequences of his actions in real time as producers chase an open-ended case — from jumping bail to a sentencing that came just under the film’s deadline.
“At some point, you have this guy who had no agency throughout most of his life. When he gets ahold of money, he starts to have agency,” Day said. “For someone living out of his car, what do you think happens?”
He started robbing banks in Iowa. Now, this documentary shows exclusive looks at the “ChiefsAholic.”
Producer Kristian Day, an Ely native, and director Dylan Sires, a Waterloo native, navigate interviews with Chiefs superfans through an unusual question: “Does America love a bank robber?”
www.thegazette.com
Trump sentencing on Jan 10th
"Judge Juan Merchan said Trump can appear in person or virtually for the sentencing, and that he won't order Trump jailed."
"Merchan said that "a sentence of an unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue his appellate options," but he would not grant Trump's request to vacate the verdict."
www.nbcnews.com
"Merchan said that "a sentence of an unconditional discharge appears to be the most viable solution to ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue his appellate options," but he would not grant Trump's request to vacate the verdict."
Judge orders Trump to be sentenced in hush money case on Jan. 10, but says he won't be incarcerated
Judge Juan Merchan denied Trump's motion to dismiss the case against him, and said he could appear in person or remotely for the sentencing.
www.nbcnews.com