Evel

by Leigh Montville

  The redacted versions of the FBI reports would not surface publicly until 2008, almost forty years after the fact. One said that BLANK, presumably Einhorn’s manager, said that he had discussed the $25,000 challenge with Knievel on the phone a number of times. On August 23, 1972, he received a severe beating from two men that required him to be hospitalized for two days. BLANK said that two weeks later he received a call from Knievel, who said he had no control over “the thing” that had happened, but that if BLANK told anyone, Knievel would fix it in twelve hours that BLANK would never walk again. A different BLANK in Kansas City, presumably Gill, said he was “scared to death” by his confrontation.

  The FBI investigators wanted to find a connection between organized crime and Knievel. They thought that some of the venture capital for his jumps and other business deals was coming from mob characters in Chicago. They wanted to hang the beatings and threats on the mob characters.

  “The FBI came to see me,” Malewicki said. “I told them what happened. They showed me some pictures, but none of them was the guy who had approached me.”

  An agency review of Butte police files about Knievel was interesting. It found that he had indeed been a suspect in a string of robberies when he was a merchant policeman, and a large suspect in the robbery of the treasurer’s office at the courthouse. He also had been flagged for a comment he made in 1962 to a bank official, wondering what the official would do if he, Knievel, wanted a large amount of money at that moment. The comment was thought threatening because he had no account at the bank, but no robbery followed.

  Agents finally talked to Knievel on November 21, 1973, at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. He had called an FBI agent that morning and accused the agent, “in a very excited and occasionally vulgar manner,” of trying to destroy his reputation by telling people that he was connected to organized crime. He said he was going to sue the agent and the FBI for $500,000.

  By the afternoon meeting in the airport, he had calmed down. He retracted his threat to sue. He admitted making phone calls in the past to the different aggrieved parties, admitted that they were angry phone calls, but denied having anything to do with any of the physical confrontations. He said the confrontations probably came about because someone else also disliked the aggrieved parties.

  The FBI tried to put together a case for a grand jury in San Francisco, but never nailed down enough facts. The attorney in charge of the San Francisco strike force was reassigned. The new attorney in charge looked at the files, decided there was not enough evidence to link any of the threats to organized crime. Knievel never was charged. None of this made the newspapers of the time. The public relations bullet was dodged.

  “I later became great friends with Evel,” Bob Gill said after the FBI report came out in 2008. He was unwilling to revisit any of the events. “He did that one bad thing with me, then did a thousand nice things after that. He apologized so many times I had to say, ‘Stop it, will you, with the apologies?’ ”

  A story. The job was not what Gene Sullivan thought it would be. The bodyguard who had joined the operation in San Francisco just in time to knock heads with those Hells Angels at the Cow Palace had expected that he would have to protect his client from bad people with foul intentions. He never thought that his client would be the bad person with foul intentions.

  As weeks and months passed, as the money began to arrive, Sullivan found that he was on the wrong side of an assortment of late-night battles. Knievel would start the trouble, be in the wrong. Sullivan would have to stand beside him. He felt he was wearing a black hat instead of the white hat that had been promised. He didn’t like it.

  “I didn’t feel like I was working for the same guy,” Sullivan said. “I signed up to work for Bob Knievel from Butte, Montana. I liked that guy a lot. I worked now for Evel Knievel from Hollywood, California. I didn’t like that guy as much. It was different.”

  Ray Gunn already had left. He quit one day in Phoenix when Knievel started complaining to a bunch of businessmen about something Gunn had done. Knievel said he was going to dock Gunn a week’s pay. Gunn, who heard the comment, said that would not happen because he no longer worked for Evel Knievel. He quit right there, just like that, went home to Washington.

  Virtually everyone who worked for Knievel was fired at one time or another or quit, that was part of working for him, but this was different. Gunn left and did not come back for a long time.

  “Evel was great to be around most of the time,” Sullivan said. “But he could be very demanding and had an extremely dark side too. Ray had been very close to him, but after Phoenix he never would have that same kind of devotion.”

  Sullivan was bothered by Ray’s departure, bothered by the fights and arguments that Knievel started, bothered by the consistent immorality of the man. After a show in Sacramento, he handed in his notice. He came back a few weeks later, trucked a motorcycle out to Knievel in Detroit after an accident, but that was the end. Knievel wound up accusing him of trying to sabotage the jump in Phoenix after Gunn left. Sullivan told him that was ridiculous.

  About a month later, living in Reno, wondering what to do next, Sullivan was invited to a breakfast sponsored by the Full Gospel Men’s Fellowship. Entranced by the words of former California Angels outfielder Albie Pearson, he became a born-again Christian on the spot.

  “You know, the Lord tells us in the Proverbs to depart from evil, so I did,” Sullivan said. “I obeyed his word and departed from Evel.”

  After a few false starts, Sullivan settled on a career path. He became a cycle-jumper evangelist, touring the country, jumping cars, proselytizing, “Jumping for Jesus,” as the advertisement still reads. He became part of the Knievel competition.

  The new big-money life of Knievel was best exhibited in an event held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on February 18, 1973. He was a co-promoter, along with old friend J. C. Agajanian, of the world’s richest demolition derby. Luxury cars like a new Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, a Cadillac Eldorado, and a Lincoln Continental Mark IV would be placed in combat with twenty-seven other recent-model lesser sedans. After the destruction was complete, Knievel would jump over a pyramid of fifty junk cars.

  There was a little something here for everyone. The day was called “Motorheroics.’ ”

  “As soon as it was announced, we got such hate mail,” J. C. Agajanian Jr. said. “A lot of it came from overseas. This was the decline of civilization. Americans were so … fill in the blanks. A guy wrote that anyone in Britain would give his eyeteeth just to sit in a car like the Rolls, not even drive it. And we were going to destroy it?”

  ABC nevertheless bought the package for Wide World of Sports, Knievel’s first appearance since his cameo debut five years earlier at Ascot. The Rolls was sent around the freeways of L.A., a sign on the side that said “This Car Will Be Destroyed on February 11, 1973,” the date changed to a week later when rain postponed the first show. Knievel also took to the streets to promote the event. In the Maserati, he was clocked at 110 miles per hour on the Hollywood Freeway at one point.

  His schedule was full. He paid a visit to Johnny Carson, where he told the host he was not suicidal. He put in some quality time with the McNasty brothers, who once had announced the news that “EVEL KNIEVEL IS DRUNK INSIDE” on their Sunset Boulevard sign. He dressed up in his mink coat with the sable collar and went to a sportscasters’ luncheon at the Ram’s Horn restaurant in Encino.

  The luncheon did not turn out well. He shared the bill with UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, champion pole vaulter Steve Smith, and British heavyweight boxer Joe Bugner, among other people. As everybody else talked, Knievel formed the impression that he was viewed as a second-class citizen in this group, not as a true athlete. He addressed this impression when he finally went to the microphone. Some of the famous people already had departed.

  “I heard some comments around here that what I do might be some kind of circus stunt,” he said. “I’m sorry that John Wooden and Steve Smith already have
left because I wanted them to hear this. First, I want to say that the least of my worries is what’s going to happen next week. And the second-least of my worries is falling nineteen feet into a pile of sawdust.

  “I want to talk to you about opponents. Now, there are a couple of you guys out there who wonder about that. And I would like you to tell me if you can find a tougher opponent than mine. Because my opponent is death.”

  The remarks, recorded by Charles T. Powers of the Los Angeles Times, left the room squirmy and silent. Knievel simply left the room. He had said what he wanted to say. The hell with those people. He didn’t need any filter.

  “My father sent me with him most of the week,” Agajanian Jr. said. “I took him to a radio interview. I left while he was talking. He asked afterward where I was. I said I went to the bathroom. He said, ‘Never get up and start walking around when I’m talking.’ ”

  All the talk, all the publicity, did not bring out the crowd. Knievel and Agajanian said they had invested $200,000 in the show. They were hoping for 50,000 people, $8 per adult ticket. They got 23,764. The rainout hurt. Something hurt. Only the money from ABC saved them from taking a large financial hit.

  The demolition derby had somewhat predictable results. Ken McCain of Fresno, who drove in derbies every week at Ascot and around the state, took the first prize of $7,000 in a 1973 Ford LTD. (“A lot of people are going to be surprised about those high-priced cars,” Knievel had said. “It’ll probably be some little Jap job that wins it.”) In second place was a 1972 Mercury station wagon, also driven by a derby specialist. Knievel was right. The high-priced cars, driven by the high-priced racing talent, did not fare well.

  The Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud fared worst of all. Bobby Unser, the Indy driver, was behind the wheel. The car quickly became hung up on a hay bale that was part of the out-of-bounds border. The motor died. The Rolls had an electric starter. The starter quit. The Rolls was done almost before the battle began. Assorted competitors crashed into the helpless luxury car, just for the hell of it, just for the show. Unser sat behind the wheel for the hits.

  He had a short-fused personality that was a good match for Knievel. He was not happy. The cars, it should be mentioned, each ran on gas from a five-gallon can that had been secured in the backseat. This was a safety feature, the normal gas tanks left dry. Unser, as he left the Rolls, unhooked the gas line from the five-gallon can. When he was outside of the Rolls, he took out a cigarette lighter. He lit the lighter, threw it into the backseat. The Rolls went up in flames. It was a moment.

  A delay developed between the derby and the jump. The last-minute subject again was money. Knievel had a disagreement with ABC. He said he had decided he wasn’t going to perform. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said. The ABC people pleaded. The dispute eventually was ended.

  Knievel came out of his trailer, jumped on the XR750, roared into the Coliseum, where he did some wheelies. He then went to the microphone. He now talked almost exactly like the character John Milius had created in the movie. He was a caricature of the caricature. He talked about the grand, oft-delayed jump at Snake River.

  “You can say a lot of things about a man,” he said. “You can say that he is a great race-car driver or a not-so-great race-car driver. You can say that he’s been lucky, or else that he’s broke or rich. You can say that he drives a big car or a little car. But you can say nothing better about a man than his word is ‘as good as gold.’ And I want to tell you something. If I jump that canyon and make it, when I land in that parachute I’ll drop to both knees and I’ll thank God Almighty that I’m alive. I’ll grab a handful of Idaho dirt. If I miss and splatter myself against the canyon wall, I’ll just get somewhere quicker where you’re going someday and I’ll wait for you.

  “But remember something. Remember one thing. If you’re ever at a party, or here in this great stadium at a ball game, or at home or in your office, and I happened to have missed on that jump and somebody says to you, ‘That guy is a disgrace,’ I’d like you to do me one favor. Say, ‘Regardless of what Evel Knievel was, I saw him at the Los Angeles Coliseum. He said he was going to jump the canyon; he did; he kept his word.’ And that’s something you can say about very few men on the face of this earth.

  “We’ve been here in Los Angeles for a while now, getting ready for this thing. It’s been a good time. The women have come and gone. The parties have been great; the booze has flowed. But now it’s time for me to do what I came here to do. Thank you.”

  A long, two-hundred-foot ski jump of sorts had been built to the top of the Coliseum at one end. He rode to the top, turned around, and came hurtling back down, trying to hit one hundred miles per hour before he reached the ramp at the twenty-yard line. The cars had been stacked three high in front of him, but had been compressed so they weren’t much taller than a normal sedan. He cleared the pile easily, good landing. A parachute advertising Olympia beer popped out, and he kept moving, riding all the way up another ski jump at the other end of the stadium. The motorcycle slid at the top, but he gained control and came back.

  “Another day, another dollar,” he told ABC broadcaster Bill Fleming.

  “You know, Evel, you’re still shaking a little bit,” Fleming, standing close to him, said.

  “If you did what I did, Bill, you’d be shaking too,” Knievel said.

  16 Butte, MT (III)

  A story. The sad thing happened on the Madison River in Ennis, Montana, on the morning of November 19, 1972. The irony was that after all of the danger, after all of the close calls, all the public conversation about the perils involved in his work, when death made an appearance in the midst of Knievel’s ascendant rise, it came in a depressingly normal package. His father-in-law drowned in front of him, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  The day started early, a duck-hunting trip with Kelly, now twelve, and Robbie, now ten, and Linda’s father, sixty-three-year-old John Bork. Knievel and Bork now got along fine, thirteen years after one had married the other’s daughter. The plan was for the men in the family to hunt, then meet up with Linda and daughter Tracey at Varney’s Bridge in the afternoon. Ennis and the Madison River were perhaps seventy-five miles southwest of Butte.

  Knievel and his father-in-law were lifelong hunters. They weren’t doing anything unusual. This was a family outing, the type of event that the public forgot Knievel had, his life outside the leather jumpsuit and the fast lanes he found on the road after dark.

  The accident happened in a moment. The thirteen-foot inflated boat the men were using hit a log and flipped. Everybody went flying. Knievel was able to grab Kelly. Bork was able to push Robbie to safety on top of the log, but was swept away by the current. He grabbed a branch for a half-second, then he was gone. Just like that.

  “He had on heavy boots, and they filled up with water,” Knievel told Pam Swiger of the Montana Standard. “I had on boots too, and I couldn’t get to him. He never wore boots in a boat, but he just hadn’t got around to taking them off.”

  Knievel and the two boys were able to find safety on a small island in the middle of the river. They proceeded to call out for help, but soon found they were very much alone. Knievel eventually left the boys on the island and found a spot to cross the river to find help. Horses were used to bring the boys to safety. Bork’s body was found on a sandbar further down the river. The current had pulled him away, the boots had pulled him down.

  “It was just a tragedy,” Bob Pavlovich, Knievel’s friend, a member of the state legislature, and the owner of the Met Tavern, said. “There wasn’t any story. It just happened, awful.”

  No one ever had been killed in or at Knievel’s many stunts, not even himself, no matter how he tried. Tragedy didn’t need a challenge, an invitation. Sometimes it simply appeared.

  “What kind of dreams do you have?” interviewer Joan Wixen would ask four years later.

  “You know, there is one dream I keep having over and over,” Knievel replied. “I relive the day my father-in-law
drowned in a boat accident when he was with me and my two sons.

  “I was torn between staying with the boys and trying to save him in the rushing water, and I stayed with my sons. Losing him in that river was probably the worst thing that ever happened to me. When I first married my wife, I wasn’t at all close to him, but through the years we really formed a bond between us, and to this day I have never gotten over that accident and the feeling that maybe I could have done something to save him.”

  Butte was still a part of Knievel’s life. This was his alternate universe, the place where he was husband and father, local boy who had made good despite a lot of grim predictions. This was still his home base, an increasingly silent partner in all that he did, but still a partner. He landed here when there was nowhere else on the schedule for him to land.

  “You’d hear him come down the street with the Stutz Bearcat or whatever he was driving,” Beverly Wulf, a neighbor on Parrot Street who babysat for the kids, said. “He was a show-off. Everything was for Bob. He’d hit the door, come from someplace, the first thing he’d say was, ‘Kelly, get my suitcase, Robbie, get my golf clubs.’ ”

  He was not a great husband, not a great father. Friends and enemies in Butte both would say, “He never should have gotten married.” This opinion quickly would be followed by a nice word about his wife, something like, “Linda’s the greatest, nicest girl in the world. She is going to go straight to heaven.” The implication was that her perseverance, just living with this domineering man, would take care of any time she might be asked to serve in heaven’s alternative.

  Knievel insisted that Linda was off-limits for all interviews, off-limits even for pictures, so she was seen little, heard less. He would later explain that he didn’t like the idea of divorce, someone else raising his kids. Indeed, the possibility of dying and being replaced was one of his oft-stated reasons for spending every dollar that came into his hands. He didn’t like the idea of Linda being remarried to some banker, some businessman who would come onto the scene after Knievel perished in a stunt, some slob who would spend all the money, play with all the toys that Knievel had accumulated. Knievel dreamed about this foul event happening.