The Intriguing Tale of Richard Russell

On August the 10th of 2018, just after 7 30 p.m., a man named Richard Russell stole an Alaskan Airlines passenger plane from the Seattle Washington Airport. What happened over the course of the next hour and 10 minutes would go on to change aviation and the internet forever. Hello everybody, today we're going to be talking about the legend of Sky King, one of the most remembered and beloved people. Hijackers in American History. And perhaps most importantly, we're gonna talk about how the same guy who caused two military fighter jets to chase him down and caused people to be afraid of flying on a level not seen since 9-11 has also joined the Digital Hall of Fame as one of the Internet's favorite antiheroes. Even if you're familiar with this story, you still might want to stick around because there's been new developments with this case as recently as last year. That's because on April the 14th of 2022, the FBI finally released all of their reports regarding the investigation, a document that's over 500 pages long. Plus, a lot of new information regarding Richard has come from co-workers and friends and interviews in the past several years. And if you have never heard of this story before and have no idea who I'm talking about, then you are in for a treat today. The story of Richard Russell somehow manages to be terrifying, inspiring. and ridiculous all at once. And I for one am so excited to talk about it. So without further ado, let's get into the story of a notorious and controversial figure that will almost certainly put my name on any list it isn't already on at this point. But before we get into something that is dangerous that I do not condone, let's talk about something that is subtle, yet just as devastating, and is also dangerous and I do not condone. And that's identity theft. 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It really does mean the most. Hope you all check them out. Link is in the description and we are back to the video. We are going to go ahead and get into it, but as always, thank you for watching. Let me set the stage for you a little bit before we get into the middle of the action. The Seattle-Tacoma Airport of Washington State is, according to a pilot who was interviewed by Rolling Stones for this story, the ninth busiest airport in America. Because of that, as you can imagine, there's a lot of different employees going about their daily tasks without paying a lot of mind to what the others are doing. Because of this, no one thought it suspicious when a ground ops employee named Richard Russell began moving a plane using an air tug. For clarification, an air tug is a device used to move or rotate planes when they're on the runway or in an aircraft hangar. And a ground operations employee is exactly what the name sounds like. Ground ops are normally the people who are doing things like loading luggage in and out of planes or directing planes into the appropriate docking station. This plane, which was more specifically a Horizon Q400 turboprop passenger aircraft, was in the shop due to a problem with one of the passenger doors, but other than that the plane worked just fine, as everyone would soon find out. The plane was a part of the Alaska Airlines fleet and featured the tail number of N449QX, a number that would become sort of infamous in aviation circles after this incident. Most websites I found list the occupancy of the plane to 76 passengers. However, for some reason, the FBI's report said that it was a 90-passenger plane. So, maybe this was some kind of special edition that held an additional 14 seats somewhere, or the FBI got it wrong and it's actually 76. Either way, pretty big plane. The plane itself was over 100 feet long and nearly impossible to operate without a co-pilot. or at least that's what everyone thought. At 7 15 p.m. Richard Russell uses the air tug to rotate the plane 180 degrees so that it faces the runway. From there Richard removes the stopping blocks from underneath the landing gear of the plane and walks back and forth from the air tug to the cockpit seemingly trying to start the engine. Now again on its own this wouldn't raise any suspicions. Other than the fact that he's alone, someone like Richard has the qualifications to turn on a plane in order to taxi it from one part of the airport to the other for maintenance or what have you. The first sign that something was amiss would occur when, after disconnecting the air tug from the plane, the plane began to roll backwards, causing Richard to run next to it, open the door, jump in, and take control of the wheel. Again, this process is meant to be a two-person job. Richard then taxis the plane not to another service station or hangar, but instead to the main Seattle Airport runway. As you could imagine, the airport was pretty busy, and while there's normally a guy up in the tower controlling what planes land where and what planes take off at what time, but Richard, who has no connection to air traffic control, is out there according to one report treating it like road traffic. In other words, he's acting like it's a stoplight intersection and letting one person pass before he goes and then braking to let another person pass. As soon as the air control tower realizes they don't know who's flying that plane, panic ensues. One of the pilots who was cut off by Richard on the runway said that it appeared he had left the brakes on the landing gear as all of the wheels were smoking. The pilots, realizing that something's gone awry, began to yell at air traffic control to call the military because there's been a hijacking. From the control tower to pilots and passengers, everyone had to watch helplessly as at 7 33 pm, Richard Russell took flight, moving from his initial contact with the plane to take off in 18 minutes. As you can imagine, this was immediately a huge deal. Immediately, everyone's primary concern was some kind of terrorist attack, and if not that, some kind of heist or ransom. After all, people just don't steal passenger planes for no reason. Within minutes, pilots at the Portland Air National Guard Base began suiting up to combat, again, what they believed to be some kind of terrorist attack. Traffic control continued to try to get in contact with whoever was in the cockpit, but whoever it was wouldn't pick up. As everyone is panicking, flights in and out of Seattle are being canceled. Local population centers are being warned that an attack may be imminent. The fighter jets are about to arrive 10 minutes into the flight. The person inside of the cockpit picks up. Right, 070. Approach, welcome, final runway 16 right. Welcome. Man, I'm a ground service agent, I don't know what that is. So to ask the question that you're all probably thinking, who was Richard Russell? Well, Richard Russell was born on September the 19th of 1989. He was born in Key West, Florida. However, at the age of seven, his family moved to Wasilla, Alaska. and it was here in Alaska that Richard would find a home. From a young age his friends and family began to refer to Richard as Bebo and young Richard Bebo Russell became a crowd favorite among his friends and family. After middle school Richard would attend Wasilla High School, which is the same high school that Sarah Palin attended. That has no relation to the video. I just felt compelled to mention that for some reason. Richard excelled not only socially but in athletics as well. He played a lot of sports like wrestling and track and field, but where he really shined was in football. Richard played as a fullback and was hailed by many to be one of the star players of the league. So much so that when college rolled around, Richard went to North Dakota at the Valley City State University to play football. However, while a prodigy in high school, it seems that didn't transfer well into college, and after only a season of not a lot of playtime and poor performance when he did, Richard ended up leaving. He instead moved to Oregon and began attending the Southwestern Oregon Community College. Another important aspect of Richard Russell's life is that he was a devout Christian. So with a lot more free time in Oregon because he's no longer playing football, Richard decides to take a leadership role in various ministries. He was a big leader in his local Young Life group. Young Life is an organization that primarily works with high school or college age students and various other organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ. As a matter of fact, it was at one of these Campus Crusade meetings that Richard would meet Hannah, his future wife. It turns out the two of them had an interest in cooking, so while in Oregon, they opened their own restaurant called Hannah Marie's Artesian Breads. However, according to most interviews and people who just knew the family, it seems that Hannah was getting homesick and wanted to live closer to her family. So in 2015, the two of them sold the business and eventually began living in Sumner, Washington. Once there, Richard got his job with Horizon Air and even transferred to Washington State. where he graduated in 2017 with his bachelor's degree in social studies. It was actually during his time in college that he had to make various blog posts and videos of himself for assignments. And it's from some of these blog posts and videos that we learn more about him. For example, the fact that he's not exactly thrilled with his job. And while he thinks planes are really cool, he hates the mundane nature of his current profession. However, one of the perks of the job, at least according to him, was free travel and getting to see his family back in Alaska whenever he wanted. So why was this guy who by all outside accounts was living a perfectly normal happy married lifestyle now in the cockpit of a stolen passenger plane? Well what would become apparent in the eventual interviews and investigation as well as the recording between air traffic control and Richard himself is that Richard wasn't in the best state of mind. Again, this will become apparent with some of the sections of the tape recording that you're going to hear in a bit, but from the now-released FBI reports, it seems that those around Richard had some sign that something was about to go wrong right before it did. Now, according to everyone who the FBI interviewed around Richard, as well as various, you know, journal articles and news sources,... Everyone said that Richard was an incredibly kind guy, if a little quiet, but once you got him talking, he wouldn't stop. And he wanted to be best friends with everyone. So his co-workers began to notice a couple weeks before August the 10th that he seemed uncharacteristically down. A lot of sections from the FBI report are redacted just because they probably mention individuals'names or addresses or phone numbers or what have you. But from the sections that we... can see, we see that on August the 3rd, he mentioned to a co-worker that he felt he wasn't living up to what others thought of him. And then only a couple of days later, his family held an intervention for something. Again, the specifics have been redacted. We could speculate if it was perhaps depression. Maybe he mentioned he was going to harm himself. Maybe it was something drug or substance related. I don't really feel like taking guesses as to what the man's mental health was. but we can assume from what we have. After this intervention, the family noted that he seemed to be doing better, although he was also seeming to drink in excess. And then it would only be five days after this intervention that the hijacking would occur. Now, while this may lead you to believe that perhaps it was some short notice spur of the moment thing that caused the hijacking to occur, there were signs of some kind of suspicious activity at least a year in advance. Because on at least two occasions within the previous year, Richard had gotten in trouble, and by in trouble I mean told to leave, because he and another employee were standing in a cockpit when they weren't supposed to be and, quote, flipping and pointing at switches. Now of course you could chalk this up to just general interest with planes, but given where it went it's understandable why that activity seems suspicious in hindsight. Now there's also another important question to ask. Richard's entire job was to just do ground maintenance for planes. Sure, he knew how to taxi them around, but that was with the assistance of an air tug and another person. So how did this guy learn how to take off and fly a plane on his own? Well, I don't think I have to tell you in the modern age of the internet, it's not hard to look up a user manual for a kind of plane or even a flight simulator for that specific model. Out of all of Richard's co-workers that were interviewed, none of them said that they knew of him having a flight sim, but that each of them individually knew it was pretty easy to get a flight sim. Also, the FBI raided and investigated his house after this, and even though they don't mention that they found like a flight sim on his computer or anything. I don't know how well they investigated. So he almost certainly had something. I mentioned that to say, I don't think this was a short notice thing. It takes a long time to learn how to effectively fly a passenger plane. And while a lot of people point to the intervention and the mention a week prior that he felt he wasn't living up to expectations as being maybe a fight he got into or some short notice thing that led to this, I think that the events of August the 10th were coming for a very long time. One theory poised by the Rolling Stones article that I mentioned earlier through interviews of people who were friends with Richard is that due to various concussions and head trauma that Richard received while playing football, perhaps CTE was a part of the issue. Or basically the idea that, for those of you who may not know, chronic long-term head trauma can lead to things like increased aggression, instability, increased risk-taking decisions, etc. And while I don't think that was entirely what was at play here, I would certainly be willing to believe that it was a factor. One more thing I want to mention from this Rolling Stones article, which the article itself is great. Tim Dickinson did a fantastic job at compiling it. However, there's this one part that's really funny. And I understand that internet culture is very weird, and hard to understand from the outside looking in, but that being said, I have to read this paragraph. So this is during a point in the article where it's discussing potential warning signs or clues people may have been able to see if Richard left any hints as to what he's about to do. And it closes with, Russell also kept a Pinterest profile where he went by the handle Bebro and collected memes, including several from the satirical site Despair.com. In July of 2018, days before his unauthorized departure, Russell pinned an image to a board called Dank Memes. It was...... It was a photoshop of a chubby kid with brown hair dressed up as Sonic the Hedgehog with this with a sad Distant look in his eyes It's not a spitting image But it's hard to not see Russell in the child's face. No matter how fast I run, the text reads, I cannot run away from the pain. And like, yeah, yeah, sure, maybe like ironic memes being used by people who mean them unironically. Sure, but just when he said you can see Russell in the child's face, I lost it. Like we have lost the plot boys and perhaps there's no better sign of Richard's state of mind or his character than the events of the flight itself as soon as contact is established with Richard It's apparent that he's just up here to have fun It's apparent that he has no real plans as to what he's going to do up here, and disturbingly, he doesn't even have any plans to land. The first thing he does is begin banking the plane around Mount Rainier. As he comes out of this, he immediately starts throwing up. It's around this time that it sounds like Richard is losing some of the gumption he had initially. Like early on, you could hear like the adrenaline and the excitement in his voice, but now there seems to be a lot more regret. I'm sorry, say that again. Sorry, my mic can't... Came off, I threw up a little bit. Uh, you know, hold on. Shoot. Sorry about this. I hope this doesn't ruin your day. Air traffic control begins to try to find places for him to land, eventually suggesting a military base, but Richard says he doesn't want to do that because he'll get beat up. That's the, uh, that's McCord Field. Oh man, those guys would rough me up if I tried landing there. I think I might have met something up there. I wouldn't want to do that. Oh, they probably got anti-aircraft. No, they don't have any of that stuff. We're just trying to find a place for you to land safely. At around 8.15 p.m., the jets from the Oregon National Guard show up. It took them about seven minutes to get from their base to Richard's plane. So that meant there was about half an hour between Richard taking off and the jets being mobilized. We'll talk about that near the end. It's also around this time that Richard begins to realize the gravity of what he's done, making the comment that he thinks he'll get jail for life for doing this. This is probably like jail time for life, huh? I mean, I would hope it is for a guy like me. At one point, air traffic control gets a hold of a pilot who can direct Richard on how to successfully land the plane. 22, Crossrail 6 left contact. Just flying the plane around, do you seem comfortable with that? Oh hell yeah, it's a blast. I've played video games before so I put up there one a little bit. See not only was Richard an inexperienced pilot behind the wheel, he was an inexperienced pilot behind the wheel of a notoriously hard to land plane. This model of plane's designation was a dash 8 among airports. However, pilots would refer to it as a crash 8 due to the plane's quick aptitude for rising or falling. Everyone around Richard knows this and begins to try to direct him towards something that will have the least likely amount of surrounding casualties. For example, at one point Richard flies over a rather small airstrip and asks about landing there, but the pilot keeps trying to tell him to go back to the military base because for one, the military base airstrip is much bigger, and two, there's less people near the runway. Eventually they just start asking him if he's willing to put the plane down in the water, for the same reason. But as discussed, it seems that Richard doesn't plan on landing. There's one point after Richard asks the pilot to help him pressurize the cabin. It's the only time over the whole call that we hear Richard get anything close to violent. Okay, thank you. 16 left American. 7 Alaska. Damn it Drew! People's lives are at stake here! Now Rich, don't say stuff like that. No, I'm not. I don't want to hurt you. I just want you to whisper sweet nothings in my ear. So maybe he was just panicking in fear for his life or in fear for the life of others that he didn't take into account when he got in the plane, but I digress. Or maybe the depressurization was getting to him and he was in a comparatively unsteady state of mind while behind the wheel of a passenger plane. Eventually, Richard asked the pilot he's speaking to if he thinks he can get a job after this. Not concentrate so much on flying the airplane. Hey, you think about me a job? Uh, can we give you a job of doing anything if you could pull this off? Before remarking that he wants to go see the Orca. Context for that, there was a local story at the time. of a mother orca whose baby died off the coast of like the Oregon Washington area and scientists had been tracking her because she was like carrying her dead baby and it was like a real sad story in the news at the time so that's what Richards referring to when he says he wants to take the plane to go see that orca there's also one part during the call when when not real He doesn't really ask specifically anything like, oh, why did you do this? Or why did you steal the plane? He just says this. Okay, you know how fast you're going? It's a hold behind, uh, a jet. Zero. That's 20, 21. Uh, minimum wage. And while, of course, there's a certain level of sarcasm there. It also points to him just overall not really enjoying his position in life. The two most heartbreaking moments to me of the entire flight logs are for one when he starts to take into account his family and the people in his life who will miss him when he's gone. I got a lot of people that care about me and it disappoints them. And another when he kind of mentions that he didn't get the clarity coming up here that he hoped he would. Another important detail about this story to mention is that people on the ground around the area saw the plane behaving, you know, sporadically and thought something was weird. So a bunch of people, because it's 2018, started taking cell phone videos. I mention that now because one cell phone was able to record one of the wildest maneuvers in aviation history, at least considering the pilot and plane the maneuver was performed with. Richard asked the tower if he can perform a barrel roll. I'm going to try to do a barrel roll, and if that goes good, I'll just go nose down. I mean, he's more wondering out loud. It's not like he's going to listen to what they have to say at this point anyway. So, while being followed by two jets and lord knows how many people on the ground, Richard does this. My favorite part about the barrel roll, other than the fact that he did it, is that everyone connected to this story, regardless of if they loved Richard or hated him, everyone acknowledges that the barrel roll was cool. The Horizon CEO, in a statement he would give the next day, said that it was, quote, incredible. And the two fighter jet pilots that were following Richard said this. I should mention their code word for Richard's plane they were chasing was TOY-1. It stood for Track of Interest 1. So one pilot says, TOY-1 just completed a barrel roll. The other pilot responded with, confirm he did a barrel roll, and the first pilot says, affirm, before chuckling and saying, he cleared the surface of the water by approximately 10 feet, which is professional military speak for, bro, did you see that? Oh, I forgot to mention this. I want to mention this because I'm sure a lot of people clicked on this video just because they're plane enthusiasts. The two fighter jets that were chasing him were McDonnell Douglas F-15C Eagles. So. There's someone out there who's really glad I mentioned that. Even the control tower he was in communication with admitted that he pulled it off, and it was pretty good, but now it's time to come back. And then Richard says one of the other most depressing things in the entire call. All right, Rich, this is Captain Bill. Congratulations, you did that. Now let's try to land that airplane safely and not hurt anybody on the ground. All right. Damn it, I don't know! I don't want to. I was kind of hoping that was going to be it, you know. Eventually, the plane finds its way over the southern point of an island called Ketron Island, again in Washington. While speaking to the control tower about being low on gas, Russell remarks that he believes one of the engines is going out. In a move that investigators would later find to be intentional, the nose of the plane began to barrel down. Six seconds after this maneuver, the plane crashed into the woods of Ketron Island, Washington. The plane made an explosive impact with the ground. and the fire that ensued covered an area of about two acres before firefighters arrived on a ferry and were able to stop the flames. Ketron Island itself had a low population, only about 17 people. And while if Richard continued forward for just a couple seconds longer he probably would have hit an occupied cabin on the island. Despite that, no one in the crash was injured beside Richard himself and as you can imagine Richard Russell did not survive the crash. His death was ruled to be caused by several traumatic injuries and to be, of course, Self-inflicted. Now we'll talk about Richard in a second, but I want to mention a few more interesting facts and developments that came because of this case. For one, this was kind of a PR nightmare, especially for Alaska Airlines and Horizon, because while this could pretty much have happened to any airline, it was specifically theirs, so they got the heat for it. This got really controversial with airport security because only a month earlier in July of 2018, The TSA had delivered a report to their head administrator citing the potential of inside threats. Basically, as I'm sure we're all aware, airport security is pretty tight since 9-11. Or at least it's pretty tight for passengers on planes. The concern that the TSA raised in July of 2018 is that employees are pretty laid-back. Sure, you don't want your employees coming into work every day and getting patted down. But there's been a lot of stories of employees or TSA agents getting guns or other kinds of weapons onto planes. So the fact that the TSA was already aware this could be an issue and then this event happened caused a pretty big storm in the media. And the really interesting thing about this case from an investigative standpoint is that absolutely nothing went wrong. At least nothing went wrong as far as procedure goes. Think about it. There's only a few people who have access to planes at any point and they're not taught how to fly them. People are given background checks but Richard passed every background check. It's not like he had some kind of criminal record. There's no precedent or at least there wasn't a precedent for an employee who's worked at the company for three and a half years, been faithful and solid up until this point, just one day deciding with information he learned on the internet to steal a plane and take off. Because of this event, airports changed a lot of their methods for employee security. For example, many implemented a rule that even workers on the ground cannot go out to a plane without a second person. Or many have implemented that airport employees are given regular mental health screenings. I'm not sure if that would have done anything in Richard's case, but it's still a nice thought. Furthermore, NORAD, the organization that was responsible for the response time of the jets that came to intercept Richard, while sure Richard wasn't planning to attack a populated area or anything, but if he were to, if someone was to steal a plane in his position to cause a lot of damage, he would have already crashed it by the time the jets showed up. So NORAD changed their response time protocols. You no longer have to go to the top brass to get clearance. If the guy at the location feels that they need a jet response, then he can order it and then answer for it later. During his flight, he went as far east as Graham, Washington, and as far west as Anderson Island, Washington, in a flight that lasted for a total of an hour and 10 minutes. And at the end of the day, the only definitive physical damage that Richard caused was 17 incoming flights were diverted to nearby airports, 75 were delayed, 5 were canceled, The area of Kentron Island, two acres of it, was destroyed and on fire, and one $30 million plane was crashed. Interestingly, according to the Seattle Police report, the police went to check for the audio logs of the call on August the 13th. However, by unknown means, the call had already leaked online by August the 11th. And as soon as that call from the cockpit went online, a legend was born. The mythos of the Sky King exploded. People began to praise him as a hero of the clouds, as the everyday man who decided to stick it to his bosses, and with his final moments, do something worth remembering. Some ascribe this almost Robin Hood persona to him. And most of the tributes for Richard, everything from Facebook groups to subreddits, describes him as this misunderstood hero of the common man. I mean even the name Sky King implies a level of reverence. And what do I think of the Sky King? Do I think he lives up to the legend? Do I think that the stories and the myths around him are all true? No, but also yes. The idea that Richard was this troubled individual who set off for the clouds and then everything just kind of made sense up there and he lived his life in a manner that if he could answer for he'd agree was the right way to go out. I don't think that's true. I think about that one section of the call to me probably the most depressing part when he's talking about the view and he's he's describing how he thought it would look one way but it really doesn't from up here. Another detail that came out in reports is that apparently right before the crash he sent a text message to his wife. And the specific message has never been made public, but according to the family, the general gist of it was that he's sorry and she deserved better. From friends and family who have spoken of Richard, it seems they kind of resent the moniker of Sky King. Because with his final act, he caused a lot of damage. Absolutely, he was in an unstable state of mind. I understand that. But it seems like, from all accounts we have, that he had a family who truly loved and cared for him and wanted to see him get better. Only a few days before this event, they staged an intervention and wanted to see him come out of it as a better man. And to theorize otherwise or theorize some malicious intent on their behalf is unfair to the family. And yes, I don't believe he intended to hurt anyone with his hijacking. However, stealing a plane that you think you can fly and then flying it over heavily populated areas only to put it down in an island that you're pretty sure doesn't have anyone on it is insanely reckless. Like I said, there was a cabin on that island right above where he crashed the plane. Not to mention, he started a forest fire that took up two acres, and it seems like every year there's some colossal fire out west that results in the deaths of a lot of people. He could have very well caused one of those. And yes, even though those things didn't happen, if nothing else, he left Hannah as a widow. But, with that being said, I get it. One of the most interesting things about Sky King to me is anytime I see, like, a true crime case, so to speak, like you hear about someone murdering someone else or, you know, something to that effect, everyone wants to know the motive, right? They're always like, oh, why? Oh, did the person they kill, like, try to... do something to them? Did they have this relationship? You know, people theorize, whatever. But I remember when Sky King happened. I remember within a couple days of Richard stealing the plane of seeing like the memes and the stories online. I didn't see a single person ask why he did it. There was just this kind of this solemn understanding almost of, yeah, yeah, I get it. Someone who is unhappy with their life and suffering from Lord knows what kind of mental illness. There's almost, I hate to admit it because like I mentioned earlier, it was an act that endangered a lot of people and hurt a lot of people emotionally. But in isolation, there is almost a poetry to someone who has spent their entire career, at least the past four years of his life, watching planes take off every day. And then one day... He just wants to be in one. It's no secret that by and large the fellows aren't doing great as of lately. Depression and self-harm rates are consistently on the rise and there's just a lot of people who while the rest of us are enjoying life and getting by they just can't. And because of that there's a lot of people who relate to Richard. A lot of people who see the story of someone who had had enough, was at his end, but before he went... Just wanted to see how big this guy could get. Is that truly what I think he is? Do I think he found some kind of clarity or nirvana almost while he was up there? No, because that's never the answer. Anyone who survives that kind of situation comes out of it saying that it absolutely wasn't the answer. And I wish, almost, that I could say he did have peace in the end. But from his words and the text he sent his wife and whatnot, it seems that he didn't. And that is tragic. But I also understand seeing a guy steal a plane just so he could do a barrel roll. I understand why people call him the Sky King. Shortly after the hijacking, which fun fact, legally was never called a hijacking because no passengers were kidnapped or stolen during this event. Instead it was just called a theft, which funny note. But in the days following the theft, the police would search Richard's Honda Civic, they would search his house, and they would search his locker at work. In his locker, locker 55, that had an unlocked padlock on the front, police found things like various snacks, his wallet, and a red notebook. In the notebook, a few various phrases and comments were written down, but most interesting among them was this. He wanted to create something, something with a profound insight and charm. He had once been confident in his writing, so he gave that a shot. During one of his many breaks at work, he decided to go for it. Rather than use the downtime to escape in books or social media, he would use it to benefit his all mankind. He sat in the corner of the dilapidated locker room, searching for the concepts he wanted to convey. What did he know the most about? What did he feel strongly about? Several questions fizzled in his mind. but no resolutions were made. It all felt so irrelevant. He was a cure. Nothing was worthy enough for the paper. I don't know what was going through Richard's mind in his last days, and I don't profess to. I do know that what he did is not the answer and it sounds like in the end, sadly, he found out it wasn't the answer as well. But I also understand looking to his story and finding some inspiration. Not necessarily in what he did, but the spirit behind why he did it. Of course I don't condone his actions in any means. I think I've adequately said why they were dangerous and I could condemn it, but for someone in Richard's state of mind that's not going to do a lot. I can simply just say I I get it. And something that I think I can agree with, as well as Richard's family and anyone else who loves or hates his actions, I think we can all say... I hope he's at peace. And hopefully you can say that you enjoyed this video. Because I sure did enjoy making it as depressing as it was. And thank you so much for sticking around. And I just want to say thank you for watching. The Sky King is a story, like I said, I knew about it before I started YouTube. Like a few days after it happened, I remember the memes coming out. Everyone making jokes. I remember one of the first things I saw was the image of the plane like in the sunset. It's a beautiful image by the way. There's the plane in the sunset and the quote was something like, he didn't go up there to die, but he went up there to live or something like that. And he's always been like this sort of cult figure. That has I don't know he's always stuck with me It's always been something I kind of wanted to make a video about for a while And I figured you know 2024 first video of the year why not right? So yeah, I hope in I hope in some small way. I did the story justice and there was some more details I found or like Like theories people had regarding the family and stuff, and I really don't want to like the family's remark several times They don't want to do interviews. I don't want to talk about it, especially out of respect for for Richard's widowed wife and I wouldn't feel right being like well maybe you know this happened or maybe he had this problem or whatever We don't we don't know why he did what he did But we can I think that's also part of the reason so many people Relate to him so much because if say for example, this isn't a theory, but just say for example We found out that Richard had some kind of drug problem that led to it, right? If that was it, then it wouldn't be as relatable as just a guy who had something going on and decided to do something with his last moments. I think the ambiguity of the story is what lends to the legend so much. At least in the way I hear people talk about online. I don't know. I'm just rambling. But like I said, hopefully you enjoyed this video. And hopefully the story of Sky King interests you, as it certainly has me for a while now. That should do it. I don't think there's anything else to announce. Thank you all so much for how supportive you've been with the merchandise recently, from the posters to the hoodie drop and the YouTube drop and everything. You guys are fantastic. There's more on the way. I'm planning for some stuff tentatively around like Valentine's Day, so hopefully you all will be ready for that. I'm very excited for it. But yeah, other than that... check out the podcast. Oh, the Weird Bible Podcast, which I'm sure a lot of you all have been missing because it's been a while. We recorded a live show, live show, in-person show of that recently, and that should be up soon. So it will soon be three podcasts to stay on the lookout for. But I'll link the Red Thread and Creepcast and the Weird Bible all down in the description. You all should go check them out if you want to hear more of me ramble for some reason. But sometimes I ramble with people cooler than me, so that should be advertisement enough. But if you stick around in this video... as long as you have right now, then I think you'll enjoy it. But that's it. I hope that you enjoyed the video. More content soon on the way. I'm going to do, I think, another video unrelated to the cryptid iceberg. I want to get into the same cycle with the cryptid iceberg I had during the conspiracy theory iceberg, where every third video was an iceberg, but we'll see how that goes, or is a part of the iceberg. You know what I mean. But anyway, I believe that should do it for now. More content on the way. And thank you all so much for watching. Yeah, no, that's it. We're done. So yeah, thank you for watching. I hope that you enjoyed. And I will see you in the next one. Bye! That was a weak bye. Bye! There we go.

And perhaps most importantly, we're gonna talk about how the same guy who caused two military fighter jets to chase him down and caused people to be afraid of flying on a level not seen since 9-11 has also joined the Digital Hall of Fame as one of the Internet's favorite antiheroes. Even if you're familiar with this story, you still might want to stick around because there's been new developments with this case as recently as last year. That's because on April the 14th of 2022, the FBI finally released all of their reports regarding the investigation, a document that's over 500 pages long.

Plus, a lot of new information regarding Richard has come from co-workers and friends and interviews in the past several years. And if you have never heard of this story before and have no idea who I'm talking about, then you are in for a treat today. The story of Richard Russell somehow manages to be terrifying, inspiring. and ridiculous all at once.

And I for one am so excited to talk about it. So without further ado, let's get into the story of a notorious and controversial figure that will almost certainly put my name on any list it isn't already on at this point. But before we get into something that is dangerous that I do not condone, let's talk about something that is subtle, yet just as devastating, and is also dangerous and I do not condone.

And that's identity theft. In the modern age of our internet, we use our names, email addresses, and passwords willy-nilly across the web without expecting it to ever come back to harm us. And while a lot of us just do this for ease of access, there's a lot of bad people out there. And it can be scary not knowing where your information's going to wind up. But knowing is half the battle and there's no one better to have on your side of the fight than today's sponsor, Aura.

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Anyway, I went on that website and it turns out from that that or identified that my email had got tied into a data broker scam so thanks to aura I was able to clear that up but without aura for one I wouldn't have known that my email was compromised in the first place until I started getting really weird phishing emails or whatever and two I wouldn't have known what to do afterwards so they've already got me sold on it. And that's not even getting started on the Aura app that has a VPN, a password manager, real-time credit and identity theft monitoring, internet parental controls, and even protects your devices from malware. Aura even has a lot of features for the family like preventing inappropriate websites from popping up, excessive screen time from becoming a problem.

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Hope you all check them out. Link is in the description and we are back to the video. We are going to go ahead and get into it, but as always, thank you for watching. Let me set the stage for you a little bit before we get into the middle of the action. The Seattle-Tacoma Airport of Washington State is, according to a pilot who was interviewed by Rolling Stones for this story, the ninth busiest airport in America.

Because of that, as you can imagine, there's a lot of different employees going about their daily tasks without paying a lot of mind to what the others are doing. Because of this, no one thought it suspicious when a ground ops employee named Richard Russell began moving a plane using an air tug. For clarification, an air tug is a device used to move or rotate planes when they're on the runway or in an aircraft hangar.

And a ground operations employee is exactly what the name sounds like. Ground ops are normally the people who are doing things like loading luggage in and out of planes or directing planes into the appropriate docking station. This plane, which was more specifically a Horizon Q400 turboprop passenger aircraft, was in the shop due to a problem with one of the passenger doors, but other than that the plane worked just fine, as everyone would soon find out. The plane was a part of the Alaska Airlines fleet and featured the tail number of N449QX, a number that would become sort of infamous in aviation circles after this incident.

Most websites I found list the occupancy of the plane to 76 passengers. However, for some reason, the FBI's report said that it was a 90-passenger plane. So, maybe this was some kind of special edition that held an additional 14 seats somewhere, or the FBI got it wrong and it's actually 76. Either way, pretty big plane. The plane itself was over 100 feet long and nearly impossible to operate without a co-pilot. or at least that's what everyone thought.

At 7 15 p.m. Richard Russell uses the air tug to rotate the plane 180 degrees so that it faces the runway. From there Richard removes the stopping blocks from underneath the landing gear of the plane and walks back and forth from the air tug to the cockpit seemingly trying to start the engine.

Now again on its own this wouldn't raise any suspicions. Other than the fact that he's alone, someone like Richard has the qualifications to turn on a plane in order to taxi it from one part of the airport to the other for maintenance or what have you. The first sign that something was amiss would occur when, after disconnecting the air tug from the plane, the plane began to roll backwards, causing Richard to run next to it, open the door, jump in, and take control of the wheel.

Again, this process is meant to be a two-person job. Richard then taxis the plane not to another service station or hangar, but instead to the main Seattle Airport runway. As you could imagine, the airport was pretty busy, and while there's normally a guy up in the tower controlling what planes land where and what planes take off at what time, but Richard, who has no connection to air traffic control, is out there according to one report treating it like road traffic.

In other words, he's acting like it's a stoplight intersection and letting one person pass before he goes and then braking to let another person pass. As soon as the air control tower realizes they don't know who's flying that plane, panic ensues. One of the pilots who was cut off by Richard on the runway said that it appeared he had left the brakes on the landing gear as all of the wheels were smoking. The pilots, realizing that something's gone awry, began to yell at air traffic control to call the military because there's been a hijacking. From the control tower to pilots and passengers, everyone had to watch helplessly as at 7 33 pm, Richard Russell took flight, moving from his initial contact with the plane to take off in 18 minutes.

As you can imagine, this was immediately a huge deal. Immediately, everyone's primary concern was some kind of terrorist attack, and if not that, some kind of heist or ransom. After all, people just don't steal passenger planes for no reason.

Within minutes, pilots at the Portland Air National Guard Base began suiting up to combat, again, what they believed to be some kind of terrorist attack. Traffic control continued to try to get in contact with whoever was in the cockpit, but whoever it was wouldn't pick up. As everyone is panicking, flights in and out of Seattle are being canceled.

Local population centers are being warned that an attack may be imminent. The fighter jets are about to arrive 10 minutes into the flight. The person inside of the cockpit picks up. Right, 070. Approach, welcome, final runway 16 right.

Welcome. Man, I'm a ground service agent, I don't know what that is. So to ask the question that you're all probably thinking, who was Richard Russell?

Well, Richard Russell was born on September the 19th of 1989. He was born in Key West, Florida. However, at the age of seven, his family moved to Wasilla, Alaska. and it was here in Alaska that Richard would find a home.

From a young age his friends and family began to refer to Richard as Bebo and young Richard Bebo Russell became a crowd favorite among his friends and family. After middle school Richard would attend Wasilla High School, which is the same high school that Sarah Palin attended. That has no relation to the video.

I just felt compelled to mention that for some reason. Richard excelled not only socially but in athletics as well. He played a lot of sports like wrestling and track and field, but where he really shined was in football. Richard played as a fullback and was hailed by many to be one of the star players of the league. So much so that when college rolled around, Richard went to North Dakota at the Valley City State University to play football.

However, while a prodigy in high school, it seems that didn't transfer well into college, and after only a season of not a lot of playtime and poor performance when he did, Richard ended up leaving. He instead moved to Oregon and began attending the Southwestern Oregon Community College. Another important aspect of Richard Russell's life is that he was a devout Christian. So with a lot more free time in Oregon because he's no longer playing football, Richard decides to take a leadership role in various ministries.

He was a big leader in his local Young Life group. Young Life is an organization that primarily works with high school or college age students and various other organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ. As a matter of fact, it was at one of these Campus Crusade meetings that Richard would meet Hannah, his future wife. It turns out the two of them had an interest in cooking, so while in Oregon, they opened their own restaurant called Hannah Marie's Artesian Breads. However, according to most interviews and people who just knew the family, it seems that Hannah was getting homesick and wanted to live closer to her family.

So in 2015, the two of them sold the business and eventually began living in Sumner, Washington. Once there, Richard got his job with Horizon Air and even transferred to Washington State. where he graduated in 2017 with his bachelor's degree in social studies. It was actually during his time in college that he had to make various blog posts and videos of himself for assignments. And it's from some of these blog posts and videos that we learn more about him.

For example, the fact that he's not exactly thrilled with his job. And while he thinks planes are really cool, he hates the mundane nature of his current profession. However, one of the perks of the job, at least according to him, was free travel and getting to see his family back in Alaska whenever he wanted. So why was this guy who by all outside accounts was living a perfectly normal happy married lifestyle now in the cockpit of a stolen passenger plane?

Well what would become apparent in the eventual interviews and investigation as well as the recording between air traffic control and Richard himself is that Richard wasn't in the best state of mind. Again, this will become apparent with some of the sections of the tape recording that you're going to hear in a bit, but from the now-released FBI reports, it seems that those around Richard had some sign that something was about to go wrong right before it did. Now, according to everyone who the FBI interviewed around Richard, as well as various, you know, journal articles and news sources,... Everyone said that Richard was an incredibly kind guy, if a little quiet, but once you got him talking, he wouldn't stop. And he wanted to be best friends with everyone.

So his co-workers began to notice a couple weeks before August the 10th that he seemed uncharacteristically down. A lot of sections from the FBI report are redacted just because they probably mention individuals'names or addresses or phone numbers or what have you. But from the sections that we...

can see, we see that on August the 3rd, he mentioned to a co-worker that he felt he wasn't living up to what others thought of him. And then only a couple of days later, his family held an intervention for something. Again, the specifics have been redacted. We could speculate if it was perhaps depression. Maybe he mentioned he was going to harm himself.

Maybe it was something drug or substance related. I don't really feel like taking guesses as to what the man's mental health was. but we can assume from what we have. After this intervention, the family noted that he seemed to be doing better, although he was also seeming to drink in excess.

And then it would only be five days after this intervention that the hijacking would occur. Now, while this may lead you to believe that perhaps it was some short notice spur of the moment thing that caused the hijacking to occur, there were signs of some kind of suspicious activity at least a year in advance. Because on at least two occasions within the previous year, Richard had gotten in trouble, and by in trouble I mean told to leave, because he and another employee were standing in a cockpit when they weren't supposed to be and, quote, flipping and pointing at switches.

Now of course you could chalk this up to just general interest with planes, but given where it went it's understandable why that activity seems suspicious in hindsight. Now there's also another important question to ask. Richard's entire job was to just do ground maintenance for planes. Sure, he knew how to taxi them around, but that was with the assistance of an air tug and another person.

So how did this guy learn how to take off and fly a plane on his own? Well, I don't think I have to tell you in the modern age of the internet, it's not hard to look up a user manual for a kind of plane or even a flight simulator for that specific model. Out of all of Richard's co-workers that were interviewed, none of them said that they knew of him having a flight sim, but that each of them individually knew it was pretty easy to get a flight sim. Also, the FBI raided and investigated his house after this, and even though they don't mention that they found like a flight sim on his computer or anything. I don't know how well they investigated.

So he almost certainly had something. I mentioned that to say, I don't think this was a short notice thing. It takes a long time to learn how to effectively fly a passenger plane.

And while a lot of people point to the intervention and the mention a week prior that he felt he wasn't living up to expectations as being maybe a fight he got into or some short notice thing that led to this, I think that the events of August the 10th were coming for a very long time. One theory poised by the Rolling Stones article that I mentioned earlier through interviews of people who were friends with Richard is that due to various concussions and head trauma that Richard received while playing football, perhaps CTE was a part of the issue. Or basically the idea that, for those of you who may not know, chronic long-term head trauma can lead to things like increased aggression, instability, increased risk-taking decisions, etc.

And while I don't think that was entirely what was at play here, I would certainly be willing to believe that it was a factor. One more thing I want to mention from this Rolling Stones article, which the article itself is great. Tim Dickinson did a fantastic job at compiling it. However, there's this one part that's really funny.

And I understand that internet culture is very weird, and hard to understand from the outside looking in, but that being said, I have to read this paragraph. So this is during a point in the article where it's discussing potential warning signs or clues people may have been able to see if Richard left any hints as to what he's about to do. And it closes with, Russell also kept a Pinterest profile where he went by the handle Bebro and collected memes, including several from the satirical site Despair.com.

In July of 2018, days before his unauthorized departure, Russell pinned an image to a board called Dank Memes. It was...... It was a photoshop of a chubby kid with brown hair dressed up as Sonic the Hedgehog with this with a sad Distant look in his eyes It's not a spitting image But it's hard to not see Russell in the child's face. No matter how fast I run, the text reads, I cannot run away from the pain.

And like, yeah, yeah, sure, maybe like ironic memes being used by people who mean them unironically. Sure, but just when he said you can see Russell in the child's face, I lost it. Like we have lost the plot boys and perhaps there's no better sign of Richard's state of mind or his character than the events of the flight itself as soon as contact is established with Richard It's apparent that he's just up here to have fun It's apparent that he has no real plans as to what he's going to do up here, and disturbingly, he doesn't even have any plans to land.

The first thing he does is begin banking the plane around Mount Rainier. As he comes out of this, he immediately starts throwing up. It's around this time that it sounds like Richard is losing some of the gumption he had initially. Like early on, you could hear like the adrenaline and the excitement in his voice, but now there seems to be a lot more regret.

I'm sorry, say that again. Sorry, my mic can't... Came off, I threw up a little bit. Uh, you know, hold on. Shoot.

Sorry about this. I hope this doesn't ruin your day. Air traffic control begins to try to find places for him to land, eventually suggesting a military base, but Richard says he doesn't want to do that because he'll get beat up.

That's the, uh, that's McCord Field. Oh man, those guys would rough me up if I tried landing there. I think I might have met something up there.

I wouldn't want to do that. Oh, they probably got anti-aircraft. No, they don't have any of that stuff.

We're just trying to find a place for you to land safely. At around 8.15 p.m., the jets from the Oregon National Guard show up. It took them about seven minutes to get from their base to Richard's plane. So that meant there was about half an hour between Richard taking off and the jets being mobilized. We'll talk about that near the end.

It's also around this time that Richard begins to realize the gravity of what he's done, making the comment that he thinks he'll get jail for life for doing this. This is probably like jail time for life, huh? I mean, I would hope it is for a guy like me.

At one point, air traffic control gets a hold of a pilot who can direct Richard on how to successfully land the plane. 22, Crossrail 6 left contact. Just flying the plane around, do you seem comfortable with that?

Oh hell yeah, it's a blast. I've played video games before so I put up there one a little bit. See not only was Richard an inexperienced pilot behind the wheel, he was an inexperienced pilot behind the wheel of a notoriously hard to land plane. This model of plane's designation was a dash 8 among airports. However, pilots would refer to it as a crash 8 due to the plane's quick aptitude for rising or falling.

Everyone around Richard knows this and begins to try to direct him towards something that will have the least likely amount of surrounding casualties. For example, at one point Richard flies over a rather small airstrip and asks about landing there, but the pilot keeps trying to tell him to go back to the military base because for one, the military base airstrip is much bigger, and two, there's less people near the runway. Eventually they just start asking him if he's willing to put the plane down in the water, for the same reason. But as discussed, it seems that Richard doesn't plan on landing. There's one point after Richard asks the pilot to help him pressurize the cabin.

It's the only time over the whole call that we hear Richard get anything close to violent. Okay, thank you. 16 left American.

7 Alaska. Damn it Drew! People's lives are at stake here!

Now Rich, don't say stuff like that. No, I'm not. I don't want to hurt you.

I just want you to whisper sweet nothings in my ear. So maybe he was just panicking in fear for his life or in fear for the life of others that he didn't take into account when he got in the plane, but I digress. Or maybe the depressurization was getting to him and he was in a comparatively unsteady state of mind while behind the wheel of a passenger plane.

Eventually, Richard asked the pilot he's speaking to if he thinks he can get a job after this. Not concentrate so much on flying the airplane. Hey, you think about me a job? Uh, can we give you a job of doing anything if you could pull this off?

Before remarking that he wants to go see the Orca. Context for that, there was a local story at the time. of a mother orca whose baby died off the coast of like the Oregon Washington area and scientists had been tracking her because she was like carrying her dead baby and it was like a real sad story in the news at the time so that's what Richards referring to when he says he wants to take the plane to go see that orca there's also one part during the call when when not real He doesn't really ask specifically anything like, oh, why did you do this? Or why did you steal the plane?

He just says this. Okay, you know how fast you're going? It's a hold behind, uh, a jet. Zero.

That's 20, 21. Uh, minimum wage. And while, of course, there's a certain level of sarcasm there. It also points to him just overall not really enjoying his position in life. The two most heartbreaking moments to me of the entire flight logs are for one when he starts to take into account his family and the people in his life who will miss him when he's gone.

I got a lot of people that care about me and it disappoints them. And another when he kind of mentions that he didn't get the clarity coming up here that he hoped he would. Another important detail about this story to mention is that people on the ground around the area saw the plane behaving, you know, sporadically and thought something was weird.

So a bunch of people, because it's 2018, started taking cell phone videos. I mention that now because one cell phone was able to record one of the wildest maneuvers in aviation history, at least considering the pilot and plane the maneuver was performed with. Richard asked the tower if he can perform a barrel roll.

I'm going to try to do a barrel roll, and if that goes good, I'll just go nose down. I mean, he's more wondering out loud. It's not like he's going to listen to what they have to say at this point anyway.

So, while being followed by two jets and lord knows how many people on the ground, Richard does this. My favorite part about the barrel roll, other than the fact that he did it, is that everyone connected to this story, regardless of if they loved Richard or hated him, everyone acknowledges that the barrel roll was cool. The Horizon CEO, in a statement he would give the next day, said that it was, quote, incredible.

And the two fighter jet pilots that were following Richard said this. I should mention their code word for Richard's plane they were chasing was TOY-1. It stood for Track of Interest 1. So one pilot says, TOY-1 just completed a barrel roll.

The other pilot responded with, confirm he did a barrel roll, and the first pilot says, affirm, before chuckling and saying, he cleared the surface of the water by approximately 10 feet, which is professional military speak for, bro, did you see that? Oh, I forgot to mention this. I want to mention this because I'm sure a lot of people clicked on this video just because they're plane enthusiasts.

The two fighter jets that were chasing him were McDonnell Douglas F-15C Eagles. So. There's someone out there who's really glad I mentioned that.

Even the control tower he was in communication with admitted that he pulled it off, and it was pretty good, but now it's time to come back. And then Richard says one of the other most depressing things in the entire call. All right, Rich, this is Captain Bill.

Congratulations, you did that. Now let's try to land that airplane safely and not hurt anybody on the ground. All right. Damn it, I don't know!

I don't want to. I was kind of hoping that was going to be it, you know. Eventually, the plane finds its way over the southern point of an island called Ketron Island, again in Washington. While speaking to the control tower about being low on gas, Russell remarks that he believes one of the engines is going out. In a move that investigators would later find to be intentional, the nose of the plane began to barrel down.

Six seconds after this maneuver, the plane crashed into the woods of Ketron Island, Washington. The plane made an explosive impact with the ground. and the fire that ensued covered an area of about two acres before firefighters arrived on a ferry and were able to stop the flames. Ketron Island itself had a low population, only about 17 people. And while if Richard continued forward for just a couple seconds longer he probably would have hit an occupied cabin on the island.

Despite that, no one in the crash was injured beside Richard himself and as you can imagine Richard Russell did not survive the crash. His death was ruled to be caused by several traumatic injuries and to be, of course, Self-inflicted. Now we'll talk about Richard in a second, but I want to mention a few more interesting facts and developments that came because of this case. For one, this was kind of a PR nightmare, especially for Alaska Airlines and Horizon, because while this could pretty much have happened to any airline, it was specifically theirs, so they got the heat for it. This got really controversial with airport security because only a month earlier in July of 2018, The TSA had delivered a report to their head administrator citing the potential of inside threats.

Basically, as I'm sure we're all aware, airport security is pretty tight since 9-11. Or at least it's pretty tight for passengers on planes. The concern that the TSA raised in July of 2018 is that employees are pretty laid-back.

Sure, you don't want your employees coming into work every day and getting patted down. But there's been a lot of stories of employees or TSA agents getting guns or other kinds of weapons onto planes. So the fact that the TSA was already aware this could be an issue and then this event happened caused a pretty big storm in the media. And the really interesting thing about this case from an investigative standpoint is that absolutely nothing went wrong.

At least nothing went wrong as far as procedure goes. Think about it. There's only a few people who have access to planes at any point and they're not taught how to fly them.

People are given background checks but Richard passed every background check. It's not like he had some kind of criminal record. There's no precedent or at least there wasn't a precedent for an employee who's worked at the company for three and a half years, been faithful and solid up until this point, just one day deciding with information he learned on the internet to steal a plane and take off. Because of this event, airports changed a lot of their methods for employee security.

For example, many implemented a rule that even workers on the ground cannot go out to a plane without a second person. Or many have implemented that airport employees are given regular mental health screenings. I'm not sure if that would have done anything in Richard's case, but it's still a nice thought.

Furthermore, NORAD, the organization that was responsible for the response time of the jets that came to intercept Richard, while sure Richard wasn't planning to attack a populated area or anything, but if he were to, if someone was to steal a plane in his position to cause a lot of damage, he would have already crashed it by the time the jets showed up. So NORAD changed their response time protocols. You no longer have to go to the top brass to get clearance. If the guy at the location feels that they need a jet response, then he can order it and then answer for it later. During his flight, he went as far east as Graham, Washington, and as far west as Anderson Island, Washington, in a flight that lasted for a total of an hour and 10 minutes.

And at the end of the day, the only definitive physical damage that Richard caused was 17 incoming flights were diverted to nearby airports, 75 were delayed, 5 were canceled, The area of Kentron Island, two acres of it, was destroyed and on fire, and one $30 million plane was crashed. Interestingly, according to the Seattle Police report, the police went to check for the audio logs of the call on August the 13th. However, by unknown means, the call had already leaked online by August the 11th.

And as soon as that call from the cockpit went online, a legend was born. The mythos of the Sky King exploded. People began to praise him as a hero of the clouds, as the everyday man who decided to stick it to his bosses, and with his final moments, do something worth remembering. Some ascribe this almost Robin Hood persona to him. And most of the tributes for Richard, everything from Facebook groups to subreddits, describes him as this misunderstood hero of the common man.

I mean even the name Sky King implies a level of reverence. And what do I think of the Sky King? Do I think he lives up to the legend? Do I think that the stories and the myths around him are all true?

No, but also yes. The idea that Richard was this troubled individual who set off for the clouds and then everything just kind of made sense up there and he lived his life in a manner that if he could answer for he'd agree was the right way to go out. I don't think that's true.

I think about that one section of the call to me probably the most depressing part when he's talking about the view and he's he's describing how he thought it would look one way but it really doesn't from up here. Another detail that came out in reports is that apparently right before the crash he sent a text message to his wife. And the specific message has never been made public, but according to the family, the general gist of it was that he's sorry and she deserved better. From friends and family who have spoken of Richard, it seems they kind of resent the moniker of Sky King. Because with his final act, he caused a lot of damage.

Absolutely, he was in an unstable state of mind. I understand that. But it seems like, from all accounts we have, that he had a family who truly loved and cared for him and wanted to see him get better. Only a few days before this event, they staged an intervention and wanted to see him come out of it as a better man. And to theorize otherwise or theorize some malicious intent on their behalf is unfair to the family.

And yes, I don't believe he intended to hurt anyone with his hijacking. However, stealing a plane that you think you can fly and then flying it over heavily populated areas only to put it down in an island that you're pretty sure doesn't have anyone on it is insanely reckless. Like I said, there was a cabin on that island right above where he crashed the plane. Not to mention, he started a forest fire that took up two acres, and it seems like every year there's some colossal fire out west that results in the deaths of a lot of people.

He could have very well caused one of those. And yes, even though those things didn't happen, if nothing else, he left Hannah as a widow. But, with that being said, I get it.

One of the most interesting things about Sky King to me is anytime I see, like, a true crime case, so to speak, like you hear about someone murdering someone else or, you know, something to that effect, everyone wants to know the motive, right? They're always like, oh, why? Oh, did the person they kill, like, try to... do something to them?

Did they have this relationship? You know, people theorize, whatever. But I remember when Sky King happened.

I remember within a couple days of Richard stealing the plane of seeing like the memes and the stories online. I didn't see a single person ask why he did it. There was just this kind of this solemn understanding almost of, yeah, yeah, I get it. Someone who is unhappy with their life and suffering from Lord knows what kind of mental illness.

There's almost, I hate to admit it because like I mentioned earlier, it was an act that endangered a lot of people and hurt a lot of people emotionally. But in isolation, there is almost a poetry to someone who has spent their entire career, at least the past four years of his life, watching planes take off every day. And then one day... He just wants to be in one.

It's no secret that by and large the fellows aren't doing great as of lately. Depression and self-harm rates are consistently on the rise and there's just a lot of people who while the rest of us are enjoying life and getting by they just can't. And because of that there's a lot of people who relate to Richard.

A lot of people who see the story of someone who had had enough, was at his end, but before he went... Just wanted to see how big this guy could get. Is that truly what I think he is?

Do I think he found some kind of clarity or nirvana almost while he was up there? No, because that's never the answer. Anyone who survives that kind of situation comes out of it saying that it absolutely wasn't the answer. And I wish, almost, that I could say he did have peace in the end. But from his words and the text he sent his wife and whatnot, it seems that he didn't.

And that is tragic. But I also understand seeing a guy steal a plane just so he could do a barrel roll. I understand why people call him the Sky King. Shortly after the hijacking, which fun fact, legally was never called a hijacking because no passengers were kidnapped or stolen during this event.

Instead it was just called a theft, which funny note. But in the days following the theft, the police would search Richard's Honda Civic, they would search his house, and they would search his locker at work. In his locker, locker 55, that had an unlocked padlock on the front, police found things like various snacks, his wallet, and a red notebook. In the notebook, a few various phrases and comments were written down, but most interesting among them was this. He wanted to create something, something with a profound insight and charm.

He had once been confident in his writing, so he gave that a shot. During one of his many breaks at work, he decided to go for it. Rather than use the downtime to escape in books or social media, he would use it to benefit his all mankind. He sat in the corner of the dilapidated locker room, searching for the concepts he wanted to convey.

What did he know the most about? What did he feel strongly about? Several questions fizzled in his mind.

but no resolutions were made. It all felt so irrelevant. He was a cure.

Nothing was worthy enough for the paper. I don't know what was going through Richard's mind in his last days, and I don't profess to. I do know that what he did is not the answer and it sounds like in the end, sadly, he found out it wasn't the answer as well. But I also understand looking to his story and finding some inspiration.

Not necessarily in what he did, but the spirit behind why he did it. Of course I don't condone his actions in any means. I think I've adequately said why they were dangerous and I could condemn it, but for someone in Richard's state of mind that's not going to do a lot. I can simply just say I I get it.

And something that I think I can agree with, as well as Richard's family and anyone else who loves or hates his actions, I think we can all say... I hope he's at peace. And hopefully you can say that you enjoyed this video. Because I sure did enjoy making it as depressing as it was.

And thank you so much for sticking around. And I just want to say thank you for watching. The Sky King is a story, like I said, I knew about it before I started YouTube.

Like a few days after it happened, I remember the memes coming out. Everyone making jokes. I remember one of the first things I saw was the image of the plane like in the sunset. It's a beautiful image by the way.

There's the plane in the sunset and the quote was something like, he didn't go up there to die, but he went up there to live or something like that. And he's always been like this sort of cult figure. That has I don't know he's always stuck with me It's always been something I kind of wanted to make a video about for a while And I figured you know 2024 first video of the year why not right?

So yeah, I hope in I hope in some small way. I did the story justice and there was some more details I found or like Like theories people had regarding the family and stuff, and I really don't want to like the family's remark several times They don't want to do interviews. I don't want to talk about it, especially out of respect for for Richard's widowed wife and I wouldn't feel right being like well maybe you know this happened or maybe he had this problem or whatever We don't we don't know why he did what he did But we can I think that's also part of the reason so many people Relate to him so much because if say for example, this isn't a theory, but just say for example We found out that Richard had some kind of drug problem that led to it, right? If that was it, then it wouldn't be as relatable as just a guy who had something going on and decided to do something with his last moments. I think the ambiguity of the story is what lends to the legend so much.

At least in the way I hear people talk about online. I don't know. I'm just rambling.

But like I said, hopefully you enjoyed this video. And hopefully the story of Sky King interests you, as it certainly has me for a while now. That should do it. I don't think there's anything else to announce. Thank you all so much for how supportive you've been with the merchandise recently, from the posters to the hoodie drop and the YouTube drop and everything.

You guys are fantastic. There's more on the way. I'm planning for some stuff tentatively around like Valentine's Day, so hopefully you all will be ready for that. I'm very excited for it. But yeah, other than that...

check out the podcast. Oh, the Weird Bible Podcast, which I'm sure a lot of you all have been missing because it's been a while. We recorded a live show, live show, in-person show of that recently, and that should be up soon. So it will soon be three podcasts to stay on the lookout for. But I'll link the Red Thread and Creepcast and the Weird Bible all down in the description.

You all should go check them out if you want to hear more of me ramble for some reason. But sometimes I ramble with people cooler than me, so that should be advertisement enough. But if you stick around in this video... as long as you have right now, then I think you'll enjoy it.

But that's it. I hope that you enjoyed the video. More content soon on the way. I'm going to do, I think, another video unrelated to the cryptid iceberg. I want to get into the same cycle with the cryptid iceberg I had during the conspiracy theory iceberg, where every third video was an iceberg, but we'll see how that goes, or is a part of the iceberg.

You know what I mean. But anyway, I believe that should do it for now. More content on the way.

And thank you all so much for watching. Yeah, no, that's it. We're done.

So yeah, thank you for watching. I hope that you enjoyed. And I will see you in the next one. Bye! That was a weak bye.

Bye! There we go.

Transcript for:The Intriguing Tale of Richard Russell

Transcript for:
The Intriguing Tale of Richard Russell