Part One: The Worst Team Owner in FIFA History: Uday Hussein

Oh, I didn't see you there. Welcome to Behind the Bastards. You've stepped into our living room podcast house. I don't know. I'm a podcast about bad people. I struggle through the introduction every week, but then we get to the terrible person. One of the worst people in all of history that we're talking about and everybody has a good time learning about things that make them feel bad, because we're all damaged people. Speaking of, oh, shit. That's a bad way to speaking of talented podcast hosts. Thank you. My guest this week, Molly Konger. Molly, welcome to the show. You got a podcast. It's real to be here. Yeah, I also have a podcast about about guys who suck, minor, weirder and whittler. It's weirder guys. Yes, yes, there's a strict height requirement much like the Prussian heavy infantry in order to be on your podcast, but in the reverse way. Anyway, Molly, how do you how do you feel about soccer, football, as it's called by most of the people who like it? So I don't know anything about it, but I've been watching the world cup with my husband and I love hollering at the TV. Oh, good, good, good. I feel like this is kind of this happens periodically where like, you know, the world cups in the United States. So a lot of Americans who normally aren't so much in to what the West to football, we'll call it football, suddenly find themselves intrigued by it for like the first time or the first time in a while. And right now the whole freedom loving world is captured by a new and often performative love of the sport. And as I think most people are aware of the organization that governs how football or soccer works is FIFA. And they are more corrupt than a barrel full of Iraqi generals marinated in oil. Marinated in the oil, like, huh? Is it Gianni and Fintino? Are we doing? No, much worse, much worse, much worse, much worse, much worse because if you're not aware, if you weren't that excited about that. We will, we will, we will have to cover him at some point, but like FIFA is so corrupt that if you Google FIFA corruption scandals, you have to specify the year in order to get any kind of useful result because there's just way too many otherwise, like you're just going to get like chronological news stories from the latest one. And any infamously corrupt and abusive institution is only as good as its most corrupt and sadistically violent team managers, or and in the case of professional soccer, the most abusive manager slash team owner in the history of the sport. Do you want to have a guess to who's the most abusive team owner in the history of football? I couldn't even begin to guess, but as I've been watching the World Cup, I have noticed that whenever they cut to the sidelines, it's the most sinister looking man you've ever seen in your fucking life. And that's how it is now. Now, I'll give you, I'll give you one hint, Molly, one hint. The character we're talking about today is the son of a whitely beloved romance novelist, although someone who's better known for their other work. Is it one of the Hussein sons? It's Ude Hussein. That's right. That's right. He owned a soccer team. He was like the manager of a FIFA team. He is a big deal in the world of soccer for a while and for a long time, actually. And I imagine he treated the players fairly and with respect. That's right. This is a story about a man who treated his players respectfully and didn't, for example, keep a torture dungeon underneath the team workout area for members of the team. Highly motivational, controversial tactic. That's right. That's right. I've told Sophie won't try something like that for the network, but she says apparently it's hard to expense torture dungeons anymore unless your Amazon. Yeah. I think I think I could bring in twice as many downloads if I was recording above a torture dungeon. If there was a torture dungeon, yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. This isn't I heart podcast. Guaranteed human. In 1986, a man named Scott Maclam was killed in broad daylight. Police quickly found their suspect. Prosecutors convicted him, but now almost 40 years later, I'm re-examining this case. I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job. As the wrong man been in prison this whole time, listen to examined the backfire effect on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast. Here's what you missed. There should not be a single law enforcement agency that's not have body cameras. It's real. Black farmers have been under attack. This is just the latest example of them just slapping DEI on anything. And I'm sitting here going, they are playing y'all for fools. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the black information network. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the I heart radio app Apple podcast. Or wherever you get your podcasts. So, yeah, you ready to talk about Uday Hussain? Soccer? Star? Kind of. I mean, I think you asked me like the traits of Uday Hussain, like what was what was he best known for? How would you describe Uday Hussain football manager? Top of the list football manager. Yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of. Yeah, manager sort of it. Team owner. It's a little it's hard to translate his job directly. But he basically he owns like the most prestigious team in Iraq. And he's also the head of like their their their their football like the the National like football committee and the head of their like Olympic football team, right? Because his great real because of his great skill in football. Of course, Uday Hussain wouldn't get the job for any other reason at the age of 20. Anyway, we're going to go well given a bit of a biography. This is these are technically our Uday episodes. I think I still might do dedicated Uday epic. There's a lot this guy got up to in his life. And it's all pretty awful, but pretty entertaining. But we're going to stick mostly to football in this one because there's that much like his football career is that significant. Born in Carc Bogdad on either June 18th or March 9th of 1964. And you again, one of the best ways to tell if this is going to be a great episode of behind the bastards are there multiple equally likely birthday is for the bastard. We're like, we have any idea when they were really born. This many children, like at least five. Yeah, at least at least. These are the details, you know, that make things fun. Uday came into this world. The son of a father who was a man of modest means, you know, Saddam Hussein was not born wealthy. He came from a scrappy backwater town. And he was a scrappy backwater kid who fought every hour of his life to become a powerful and influential man in the new Iraq that he also helped to create. Saddam was a bath party activist and he'd fought to help the party seize power three years before Uday's birth. So by the time Uday comes into the world, the future of the bath party in Iraq is uncertain, right? They had just taken power. They don't have things like super solidified. It's very possible there's going to be a counter wave that like pushes them out because they're not necessarily doing the best job, right? So it's at this point by no means guaranteed that Saddam is going to ever be more than like a mid-level kind of political thug. You know, this is he could have just been just yet another pretty forgettable guy in the history of Iraqi politics. And indeed shortly after Uday was born, Saddam miscalculated and put his support behind a faction in the party that lost out in a major power struggle. And Saddam was imprisoned for two years, but escaped. And being Saddam Hussein, he goes on the run. And so like in some of Uday's earliest years, his dad is like living outside of the law and having like infrequent communication with his family. I think they're moving sometimes to try to like meet up with him. And by the time Uday is like three years old, Saddam has kind of gotten himself out of the dog house. He's scripted back enough power to make like a play for a better position for himself. And he succeeds. There's like a, you know, another coup basically in Iraq. And the new power structure that Saddam helps bring into being sees Iraq run by a president named Al-Bacher who is a kind of in the mold that happens in these situations, a sick and elderly man that people sometimes compare to Vimar, Germany's Paul Hindenburg. Like after this, this rebel or this, this coup, Saddam is the secondary guy to this sick old dude that more people like. And he's kind of running things from the background, you know, like that's what's happening with Uday is like four or five, six years old, right in those years. So Saddam is basically running Iraq at that point in Uday's life, but he's not officially in charge. Does that make sense? Because it's been so long since your Saddam Hussein, but those like early in the show, right? You did some early years ago, almost 10 years ago. I know we're kind of yadda because this isn't Saddam episode. So I know I'm just trying to think because I guess that's, you know, most of what I know about Saddam Hussein. Yeah. I just never occurred to me that his children were young during his rise to power. Like when he was a young like aspiring to Uday. Yeah. Yeah. Just Uday really. I don't think who says come into the picture at this point. But yeah, he was there for the come up. Yes. Uday is probably his first memories are kind of when his dad is like vice president and just sort of coming into power. Tribunal writer, George Woodward describes Uday being raised. "from the age of five like a crown prince." So from about his earliest memory, his dad is the guy who's running everything and he's expected to follow in his dad's footsteps, right? So he doesn't really have much in the way of a life before that, although you have to imagine the kind of chaotic and dangerous very early years of his life probably had some impact on him, the fact that his dad's on the run and stuff, that likely percolated through to some extent I expect. - I don't know, by the time you're five, you're a little prince. - Right, right, maybe it doesn't do all that much. Now, if you lived through the Gulf War and then the Iraq War years, as I think all three of us on the show did, you've encountered a lot of propaganda about Saddam Hussein and his Iraq. Now, much of that has been proven to be nonsense, as we'll discuss in these episodes, there's a lot of bullshit about Saddam Hussein, just because it made a good story and especially like cheap periodicals like the New York Post weren't checking anything. So I had like a lurid story about Saddam Hussein in 2002, you could get it printed in a bunch of places. Nobody was checking on shit as long as some guy who was an Iraqi defector said that this is what happened, people were not doing any kind of due diligence and the journalism world, right? - Especially not the early 2000s. - But not a lot of them, right? Yeah, not in the early 2000s. Now, that doesn't change the fact that Saddam Hussein is not doing any revisionism. Saddam was an undeniably brutal dictator. He was a horrible guy and Uday is going to grow into a horrific, violent man who kills a lot of people. But that doesn't mean every story about them is true. And so part of what you have to do when you're kind of researching an episode like this is try to pick apart how possible is this crazy claim that I may want to beat through, but how likely is that that'd happen, you know? - Right, they did Uday do that or was it Dr. Evil? - Yeah, right, 'cause that sounds more Dr. Evil. Yeah, I've done an article. - Are lasers on the sharks? - Yeah, yeah, I don't know if he had access to those. I think Iraq might have done better if he had lasers for the sharks. So I found an article in these football times by Justin Sherman that gives a pretty representative summary of the comment take on Uday's childhood. This is how he's described in a lot of publications, right? In very similar terms to this, 'cause this is the definitely like most marketable version of his life story. Almost from birth, Uday Hussein had a curiosity and borderline affinity for violence as an infant instead of pushing toy cars. He played with disarmed grenades. By the age of 10, he was already shadowing his father to the torture chamber at Kasar al-Nehaya, nicknamed the Palace of the End. Many political enemies were killed here, including the overthrown King Faisal II, to observe how Saddam dealt with perceived dissidents. By his high school, he bragged how he had murdered his teacher for disrespecting him in front of his girlfriend. So that's the traditional like take on Uday from born to murder, right, like from the time he's a little kid, torturing with glee, just one of these people who was inherently monstrous. And obviously we'll get how evil Saddam is. How could he be anything but inherently monstrous? We'll talk a little bit about how accurate I think all of that is here. Woodward's own description attributes Uday's propensity to violence to quote, "unusual ideas" that Saddam had about raising children. But notes that this claim that like Uday's violent because his dad had these different beliefs about how you raise kids, that that claim is something Saddam's political opponents circulated. After they fled the country, right? 'Cause who's actually raising the child? Is this mother, is this Nannies? It's Nannies and Ma, like his mom is in the picture, but he's also like a wealthy kid. So they all, from a pretty early age, he's being watched by a lot of different people, right? We don't have a ton of context on that, but that's kind of what I've pieced together. I like what kind of parenting philosophies are we talking about? I said they're like early 20th century German thing, where it's illegal to touch your children. Like you can't kiss them? It's more Saddam wanted him to like see guys being beaten and tortured up close from a pretty young age to get used to life. So we're talking about that. So what it takes to be in, it's game of thrones kind of shit almost. It's like you need to know what it takes to rule this kingdom. Gotta see your first thing heading by six, right? Yeah. Right. Now again, how crazy all this actually went to how crazy people talk about it. These are two different things. And there are alternate, less extreme explanations and less crazy than descriptions of Uday's childhood that sound very different from the paragraph I just read you. For example, the thing about him playing with disarmed grenades, if you read deeper, that's like one specific story of like him playing around with like a disarmed grenade while they were waiting for like the result of some raid, like or some like like who kind of related activity that his dad was carrying out. So it was like a dangerous night for them and Uday's playing and they've got like a disarmed grenade. And like maybe that sounds crazy. A disarmed grenade could be fun. One of my, yeah, I remember one of my uncles had, when I was a kid, they had like a desk toy that was like a disarmed or faintly. I think I may have just been a training grenade or whatever, but that may have been what Uday had. It's like a training grenade that was never real. Like it's not clear to me. I don't know. I don't think it's that crazy. Like he's not playing with disarmed grenades because it was like a toy gun. No, exactly, exactly. And it's not like those were his only toys. This is like one weird occasion, right? Right. The blocks he only had like military surplus equipment, that would be weird. Yeah, that would be weird, but I don't think anyone's really saying that. Yeah. And he definitely at a certain point, it sees like his dad's torture dungeons, right? And it helps his dad. That's not great for a child. He had a big fan of torture. It's unclear when that starts. Woodward says it's from age like 15 on that Saddam lets him participate in torture. That said, I also think it's fairer to describe that as Saddam abused him by making him participate in torture because he's-- That's just genius, right? Yeah. But also, I feel like exposing a child to that, like, especially during puberty. I don't know. There's something about the cement being wet in your brain at that moment. It's not going to do good things to him. You're going to become weird probably. And you get really varying stories as to when did Saddam start exposing him to this stuff? Uday's obituary in the independent claimed that when Uday was five, Saddam made him attend a family gathering in a Baghdad public square to watch the hanging of dozens of Iraqi Jews who had been declared spies. The article continues that quote, "Saddam boasted that he toughened his boys up by taking them to watch the torture of enemies of the nation and the liquidation of traitors." That's very midi. And again, I don't have trouble believing that. That's in line with some other stuff and it's pretty consistent in stories about them. But it's often described as like evidence of Uday's early propensity violence in brutality where more of what I'm saying, and this will make sense with some other stuff we're about to talk about is that, I think Saddam starts exposing to Uday to violence at a very young age and it like fucks him up. And you can see it change him and damage him. He was not a violent kid from an early age. He's brutalized by his dad exposing him to this stuff. - Even if there's a 12 year old he's saying, "Oh, Daddy, please take me to the public hanging." That's still a child and it's still your responsibility is the parent to take you. - Probably because you make it sound cool because he doesn't really know what it is 'cause he's 12. - It's child abuse, I think, to take children to the torture dungeon. I'm gonna stand in front of him on that one. - Exactly, and it's not described as that often enough. It always in these stories comes across as part of, well, this is a man who was just always from the earliest days of his childhood of violence. No, this is a child who was molded and abused into being a violent psychopath. That's kind of important, you know? - It's not like those stories of serial killers where you hear like, oh, you know, as in middle school, we sort of disembring cats. Like, this is not that. - No, this is different than that, really. And I don't know, maybe, I don't know enough about who his childhood to know was he that guy, but there's reasons to believe he wasn't, right? And I'm inclined to doubt the often repeated possibly by Ude's story that he murdered a teacher before he went into high school for just respecting him. - That's so fake. - He would tell that, right? It not only does it sound fake, but I've read a book and it's kind of hard to find, but there's some online copies that is like the Saddam who's saying approved version of his life story for Westerners, like it was a propaganda thing that he came out. And one of the stories in there is him holding his principal at gunpoint to force him to like admit him to school 'cause Saddam loved learning how to read, like love school. His reading program actually was really good. He had a very effective reading program for Iraq. It was one of the things he was good at. - You got a head to a literacy program, was good. - It really did. Where I worked quite well. But, and that's definitely a high-end. - Because they have the children. Real evidence, and I think Uday may have told that like, 'cause like, well my dad has a story about fucking being violent to his teacher. I need an even more extreme one. That's what I read there. Because I don't have, I don't have any like good reason to believe he actually killed a teacher. No one claims to know who this teacher is or to have seen it directly. There are accounts of Uday doing stuff like this later in life, but I think that just makes people assume, well, if he did that 20 years later, he must have done that when he was 10. And that's nonsense, right? - Right, that's personal myth building. - Yeah, I think this is him myth building and copying his dad's myth building. - But wanting his dad to be proud of him. - I think that, and this isn't just me thinking that 'cause it's easier. We have some accounts from some of his teachers, because Uday went to really nice schools for most of his education. And the most detailed account we have from one of his teachers comes from a foreign teacher who like worked in his, 'cause like, these are nicer schools in Iraq, and a lot of the teachers are foreigners. Dina Bentley from Yorkshire in the north of England married a Kurdish man back in the 1970s and wound up working at a private school in Baghdad when Uday Hussein is a pretty young kid. Iraq has a long tradition of private school staff with foreign teachers for the children of the elite and wealthy, and even in Saddam's area, these people were respected professionals who enjoyed a high degree of protection. Today, certainly not gonna be a good day. to be killing like a white European teacher, right? - I bet he did, but if he did, we would know about it. Like, this didn't have to happen to him too, right? - We would have heard of him too, right? - Now, he also had Iraqi teachers, but again, I think someone would have said specifically like, we would hear something besides like he killed a teacher for being rude with his girlfriend. We would have more of that story, I think, if it were real. And again, this just doesn't comport with Deena's time with him when he was very young. In 2003, and this is like the height of Iraq war fever, Deena recalled to ABC that time in her life when she was teaching in Iraq, and Uday was her student, he would have been 11 years old at this point. And per that article, quote, Saddam Hussein, then second in command, was already a powerful figure at the time. Uday arrived at school with bodyguards, but she recalls a normal child who was bright, cheerful, and responsive to discipline. He was always grinning and happy, and as soon as they knew who he was, the other children were a little bit wary, but he certainly wasn't a bully, she said. People would like me to say that he had two heads and wasn't unbearable people, he wasn't. Asked about Uday's current reputation, she said, it must have been around the time of the 1991 Gulf War when there were stories in the papers, I don't know how true they are about his murderous ways. That did surprise me because he was never aggressive or a problem in class, he said. I had a good relationship with him. He never tried to pull rank. He certainly never said to me, do you realize who I am, you know? - Demsa Uday got the pleasure to be in class on his report card. - Right, right, right. It just sounds like a real kid, as opposed to this like violent murder error, this 11 year old that like a lot of news stories want you to believe that like this kid is obsessed with death as a child, naturally. - A lot of what I do on my show, and I'm writing about these men who become terrible, these men who commit these terrible acts, they are not like ontological evil, they did not emerge from the womb as a monster. It's a human guy who became fucked up over time, sometimes for a discernible reason. - Yes, yes, and that's all it is. It's very rare for someone to be born monstrous. - Yeah, and again, Uday's gonna do monster. We're gonna be talking all about the nightmare as stuff he does. I'm not at all trying to mitigate it. I just really want to emphasize. - No, I think it actually makes it more frightening, right? That this was just a human man who became this way. But it's, I don't know, it's more comforting sometimes to write these people off as, oh, sometimes just ontological evil exists in the world, and there he is. - It's easier to believe that than that like yeah, this kid could have been a perfectly nice child at 11, and then four or five years later, because of the shit his dad exposes him to a way scarier person, you know, like that's just a more upsetting. - It's a more complicated and upsetting story, yeah. - Yeah, and again, it's not that there's not fear around this kid then, it's just the fear is clearly not because he's a maniac. - No, the fear is that if I upset this child, his dad will kill my family. - Exactly, exactly. And Dina was like, I'm glad, like said, I'm never came to parents' evening, and I'm glad he didn't. Like I knew stories about him at the time, right? I didn't wanna meet the guy. - Parents need your comforts would be nerve-wracking. - Yeah, you don't wanna have that one. And she also stated that her colleagues, her Iraqi colleagues were surprised that she was willing to discipline Uday when he did misbehave. They were too worried of his father to discipline, but she still isn't based on him doing stuff. It's based on Saddam, right? She told another story I find particularly interesting. He was leaping about in class one day, so I took him by a tough to hair and sat him down. I said, we don't do this, I am teaching. You are learning, now sit down. Another teacher watching through the classroom window was horrified. She said to me later, do you know who that is? It's Saddam's son. And this anecdote tells us a couple of things. One is that there's enough fear around his family again that most people don't wanna discipline Uday, and that must have had an effect on him, but Dina does and nothing happens to her, right? - Right. - And it's also interesting Uday's reaction to being chastised by his teacher. You could see like the crazy version of this kid would have gotten furious at her embarrassing him and would have had some plan for a bit. - For a sucker. - Or a hot or killed, or Uday gets a haircut, so he has his barber trim off the bit of hair that she'd grabbed him by, and he like smiles and points it out, which is like malicious compliance maybe, but that doesn't suggest a homicidal mind. That seems like a normal 11 year old boy, a rich kid maybe, but like. - And she lived to tell the tale. - She lived to tell the tale, you know? Dina added, he was not a high flyer, but he did his best. He was always smiling a bit of a clown. Uday picked up a lovely Yorkshire accent from me. He's probably still got it. It was nice because it reminded me of home. - So the Yorkshire folks in our audience, if you're wondering how this fuckers sounds, is he's torturing soccer players, football players, like you, sorry, that's not your fault, that's not Dina's fault. - That's a love affair. - Just trying to teach the poor fucker English, not poor fucker. - That's ridiculous. - That's ridiculous. - Yeah, it's really funny to think of, and I want you all to keep that thought in your mind as we take a little trip down Advertiser Lane. - My name is Josie Duffy Rice. I'm a journalist who covers the criminal legal system. And over my career, I've heard account after account of prosecutorial misconduct, story after story of injustice. But I've never heard a story quite like this. The more I kept reading that stuff, I thought, man, there's more red flags that just kept coming up over and over. - We'll hypnotize them to strengthen that memory. So he went into a good France. - I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're gonna figure out this is not me, they're gonna do their police job. - Listen to examined the backfire effect on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - Didn't catch the latest role in the Martin unfiltered podcast? - Here's what you missed. - And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. - It's real. - Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests, and they complained about the very thing they were seeing. - It's raw. - I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. - Roland Martin unfiltered. - I went off. I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. - Y'all go scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same van. - Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the black information network. - 12 seats. Those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030. You better be hitting the ground, go on a heart in the south now. - And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHotRadio app Apple Podcast. - Oh, wherever you get your podcasts. - And we're back. - That was nice. - Oh, I just got an email about a FIFA party in Portland. That sounds awful. I don't think I'm gonna be doing that. - Hey, should we RSVP absolutely not? - Yeah, RSVP, no, thank you. I don't like-- - Pass. - I don't like-- - Nope. - Them. - Nope. - Molly, Sophie, shall we dive back in? - Yep. - Okay, so Uday's dead now, obviously, but he was noted as speaking English very well. And all of the other hard facts we have about his education comport with Dina's story. He wasn't a great student, but he wasn't a bad one. And there aren't really any clear, incredible claims that he was involved in hardcore violence. There are some, but not any that I find super believable until he's 15. And his dad starts taking him to see and possibly help out in the torture chambers that he's operating, right? - Yeah. - Yeah, and I think that, you know, assuming that's true, and I think it does, it's pretty consistent. I can see this being what sort of changes him, because by the time he's in an adolescent, Saddam is looking at his eldest son as the heir apparent, but that's not gonna last forever, right? Uday's going to start to really change and take a turn for the brutal as a young adult. It's a little unclear to me when exactly that starts, but I can definitely see a lot of this being the result of Saddam wanting to raise his heir to be strong and powerful, and just kind of destroying this kid's mind and turning him into a dangerous homicidal maniac, 'cause Saddam doesn't do the same thing with Kusey. The funniest thing about, maybe there's some fundamental difference in the two of them, I don't know, but it kind of reads to me, just like he got better at being a parent in between the two, and was like, oh, I fucked up the main kid. I got to pick a new heir. I'm not gonna make this next one turn out more normal. - I say he's an Irma Bomback quote, right? Children are like pancakes. You have to throw the first one out. - Right, right, that's kind of Saddam treats Uday after a point, but at this era, Uday's still looking like the heir apparent, and he hasn't done anything too crazy. So one person who claims to have attended private school with Uday is Latif Yahya, and you may have heard of this guy. He also becomes particularly famous in the post Go For period, and then again, right before Operation Iraqi Freedom, or when we invaded Iraq for the second, and really, really illegal time, right? So if you've heard of Latif Yahya, Dr. Latif Yahya, it's because he's going to claim to have been forced to serve as Uday's body double. You've probably heard of Saddam's body doubles, the whole family, a lot of stories. They may all be lies, by the way. I can't prove, I may do a dedicated story. I can't actually prove that they had body doubles in the way it was usually reported. Everyone takes it as red, but then when you look into like, okay, well, did they find any of those guys? And it's like, no, they never did. Oh, that's weird. It's weird that the actual individual body doubles, the guys who claim they were always have really sketchy stories that you can't back up, and the evidence, like the body doubles that we're supposed to be found mostly weren't there, [BLANK_AUDIO] kind of looks like maybe instead of having a stable of comedic body doubles, it just looks like some of his guards who looked like him could also like, if you just wanna like run a dude out, who might look like the boss to see if anyone's gonna try to shoot at him or something. - Right, like it's not. - And maybe it wasn't as crazy elaborate as all the news reported to be. - I was just watching Veep and there was like a plot line in Veep where her primary secret service assigned to her looks like her from the back. - Yeah, it's not a body double, it's just like. - Exactly, exactly. - If someone is gonna shoot through the back of the head, maybe they'll shoot her. - So much late 90s early 2000s comedy, relied upon fucking Saddam Hussein body doubles. Like that was a really big, I don't know why in the media and it's just anyway. So this guy Latifiaia is going to claim to have been Uday's body double. And so a lot of our best Uday stories, the wildest stories of Uday being a maniac come from Dr. Latifiaia. - Oh, so from a guy who might be making them up. - He's definitely making it up. Latifiaia is for sure a con man, a huge con man. He definitely lied about a bunch of stuff and there's zero evidence whatsoever he was ever Uday's body double. However, he may have known Uday. That doesn't mean he didn't know him at all because there is some evidence that he may have been connected to the regime in some kind of corrupt ways. - What the fuck? - There's a money laundering and stuff. - The best part is you have a little bit of truth in the mail. - Yeah. - Like a little nougat center of truth. - He denies that entirely. There's just allegations. I don't fully know what's going on with this guy, but there's no reason to really think he was Uday's body double. But he may have in fact known Uday. He came from a wealthy family and Baghdad. He claims he and Uday went to the same like primary school, private school, like private primary school. And they very well may have. I can't disprove that. So I will read you some of his accounts, but I need you to remember this guy is for sure a liar. So I don't know, I'm not gonna tell you to take the, you're gonna run into this guy anytime you read about Uday so I don't wanna ignore him 'cause then people will be like, why didn't you include this guy? Well, because he's a fucking liar. But I will tell you some of what he says, 'cause again, he may have known Uday. There's some reason to believe that. He just definitely wasn't doing what he said he was. So here's his account of supposedly Uday and like high school basically. First came the bodyguards. Then Uday, usually in a t-shirt and jeans like a cowboy. His hair was longer than ours. And he wore it in an afro like Jimmy Hendrix. After a few weeks, we finally got used to the daily performance. Uday was never friendly, never normal, never conventional. And I actually found him repugnant from the very first. He had no respect for the teachers or anyone else who tried to tell him what to do. He couldn't care less about tests or homework or anything. There were 24 of us in the class. And while everyone else worked hard to succeed, Uday wasn't interested. If a teacher tried to call him to the blackboard, Uday would throw chalk at him and order him to change the subject or simply to leave him alone. He came when he wanted to, left when he wanted to and basically did whatever he wanted. He never took his textbooks home with him and nonetheless, he received the best grades at the end of the school year. And I don't actually have that much trouble believing it. That again, this guy may have been in position to have known Uday. And that's not necessarily inconsistent with like five or six years later, the kid that we heard about earlier, especially going through some rough years with his dad. Exactly the kind of behavior I would expect from someone who doesn't have no said to him. You're not gonna punish him, you're not gonna flunk him. So why, why would he? He's a teenager, a teenager, for sure. And again, as I just said, I think that Teef Yaya is not a super honest guy, but also if you're gonna be running a con like that, there are often based on some truths and there's evidence, you know, it's not impossible. So I don't find that a super hard belief description. Yeah, like of course he's disrespectful to his teachers. What are they gonna do? Yeah, exactly, right. So Yaya claims Uday obeyed no rules and even broke the strictest taboo of all, girls. This means that one time he brought his girlfriend to class with him. Yaya describes him enjoying the teacher's helplessness when Uday ordered him to continue teaching while he made out with his girlfriend. He claims this teacher was gone the next day and none of us ever saw him again. And I think that's a lie. And I guess I might be able to believe that he knew Uday a little or knew him at a distance and just kind of added some bullshit too. I don't know, maybe this is all, like, but there's one more study of Uday school days in Yaya's questionable book that I will include. He claims that in 1980, soon after Saddam took power, like in the front power, right? Like he's no longer kind of sitting in the back pretending to be the VP. Uday asked Yaya to paint a picture of his father as a congratulations gift. So Yaya says he took this as an honor initially and he finishes a painting of Saddam Hussein and he gives it to Uday in class and the dictator's son is really happy and compliments him. And quote, he heaped with compliments. Simply perfect, simply perfect. He list because he had slightly protruding teeth and thus a slight speech defect. Although no one ever mentioned it. It is interesting. I found one other account at least that Uday had a speech impediment that I can, like, to a separate person. So at least a couple of people have said that. It's weird to me that his English teacher didn't notice it. Maybe he didn't has, have a list been English? I know. I guess that's possible. I don't know. But a list specifically is like a, isn't it like a structural thing in your mind? It's like something you're doing with your mouth that you would do in any language. I see. We can speak language for dollars. I'm not a, my mom wasn't a speech language pathologist. Ironically, but I don't know shit. So I'm not going to try and guess more. I can't say that he's like, because other people do talk about him having it. It's just interesting that his teacher didn't seem to mention that either. And I could also see this him kind of wanting to make fun of Uday. And this was the time in which it was more acceptable. Obviously there's nothing wrong with a speech impediment. But in the 90s, it was a lot more acceptable to like mock people for stuff like that. Like people did that a lot more openly. And this is kind of a shitty guy. So that might just be what he's doing here. I don't actually know. So yeah. Yaya says that Uday was thrilled and start seeking a mountain trying to hang out with him every day after getting this painting of Saddam. And quote, he even promised he would give me everything I wanted. He would sort it all out. But Yaya claims he instinctively knew to keep Uday at a distance, because he wasn't comfortable at their peers kept pointing out how similar they looked. They're like, wow, you guys really look a lot alike. And they did look kind of similar. A little, yeah. I'm like that crazily, but somewhat. Yeah. Dr. Lateef Yaya and Uday. Now, I'll caution against giving, again, too much credence to anything in this fucker's book, but it's not too wild a claim. Yaya claims that he and Uday lost touch after graduating like you do. And we'll hear more of Yaya's claims next episode. We will talk about him more. But let's get back to Uday. So after graduating, the school, the high school, where he and Yaya went together, Uday went to Baghdad Medical College. And you can kind of gather how legitimately he earned his introduction to Baghdad Medical College by the fact that he dropped out three days later. Oh, two days. He was at medical school for 96 hours. So he wouldn't have even attended very many lectures at that point. I don't know if he attended any. He signed up for classes. He got to the dorm and many went home. Yeah. No, he might have been spooked by his first stethoscope. It's thank God he didn't. Dr. Uday Hussein. No, probably not a good idea. OK, I looked it up. And maybe it's just, I mean, they're just like two guys who both have a mustache. Yeah, yeah. That's that's the other thing. And this is also part of the, if you read like the, some of the, like, Saddam Hussein body double stories, having been to Iraq a good amount of times, I could just see those being stories of like, well, they were just looking for a guy who's kind of said, I'm size and had a mustache because they needed somebody at a distance for a minute. But that's not as crazy as he's got like this team of men who live their entire lives pretending to be him and get like facial surgery, you know, I don't know which is true. So he drops out of Baghdad Medical College. And next he starts taking classes at the College of Engineering where he got a bachelor's degree. And then he attends military academy. And he writes a thesis on the Iran Iraq War. He's trying different things. He's trying to be a doctor, be an engineer, be a general. Who knows? Yeah, exactly. He needs to establish his bonafide as like, this is why I'm good to follow in my father's footsteps. You know, I have the military experience. I have this, you know, professional experience. Now he's not really doing much of any work here. His thesis is nearly universally agreed to have been written by like a professional military advisor in the Iraqi army. He just like writes it for Uday, which would be nice. Although I guess in the United States, if Pete Hegseth wrote your essay, I don't think it would get you very much. So I guess it depends on who's grading. Yeah, it's not who's grading. Per George Woodward's article, quote, "While at university, Uday wanted to marry a fellow student from a noble Iraqi family, but his father refused. He wanted a bride from within the family clan, Uday obeyed. But from then on, he was spoken of as a serial rapist. Girls were allegedly abducted for him and forced into sex. One of the most famous stories is that a bride was kidnapped for Uday on the second day of her wedding. After the rape, she could not live with the horror and took her own life. And the groomed by Uday's order was hanged as a preventative measure." Now, that's an awful story. And you hear a couple versions of it. So there, it either means either he did stuff like this several times, or like one person told this story about him and maybe pieces of it were true and other pieces aren't. But people just started spinning it off. It's very hard for me to tell because there's slightly different versions of this story. And I don't know, are these evidence of him doing it a bunch? Or is this evidence of like the same? 'Cause a lot of these come from like people dissidents who leave Saddam's Iraq and are telling all sorts of horrible stories. And I don't doubt some amount of this is happening. It's just hard to tell what is happening which stories are there? are true and which ones are like the in-threpition of something that has changed over telling a bunch of times, right? I guess, too. You know, if he's murky, take us, take us a given. He is a serial rapist. He is committing these sexual crimes. Pretty good evidence that he was. Abducting a woman on her wedding night and raping her is this sort of worst scenario of this genre. Exactly. This is very, this is dictator's son, premonocta type shit. I never doubt the basics of like a dictator's son committed a lot of rape. But these, this particular details is like what's the worst version of the story you could tell? The theatricality always makes me second-guess like this doesn't necessarily always seem like something a person would do. Right. Like not even I don't think he's this bad. Oh, no, I guess this seems weirdly elaborate. Like you're getting, you're getting jaded to a done too many sex crimes. Yeah. And again, so I, I can't, for reasons like that, I can't throw all this stuff out either because he does some pretty crazy shit. Um, yeah, and one of the reasons that kind of makes me hesitant about this is that one of the most detailed accounts of this kind of like him murdering, like raping a woman after her wedding and like they're being murders after that comes from Latifiaia, right? He's got a story that sounds a lot like the one I just recounted to you that I found from a 2009 interview he gave to the national, uh, and this is an article on Michael Tibidos. This is years after Udae's dead. He tells of a grotesque episode in El Habania, Iraq's leading honeymoon resort when Udae noticed a newlywed couple walking hand in hand and called over to them. Udae was livid when they ignored him. Mr. Yaya attempted to persuade Udae to leave the couple alone, pointing out that they had only been married a few days. Udae snapped back. This isn't your business. Udae's pimps beat up the husband and forced the beautiful bride to his suite where he raped her. And she made a spare she later threw herself to her death from the fourth floor window of the building. Mr. Yaya says the husband was accused of trying to kill Udae and sentenced to death but was later spared because of his long service and a war against Iran for which he was awarded medals. The man Yaya claims was one of those who nearly killed Udae in a 1996 assassination attempt. And I have that, so this is part of why I have trouble believing specifically is that we know this story Yaya gives claims from when he supposedly Udae's body double and he almost certainly wasn't. So that means I don't believe this story and that's so similar to the other one that it makes me wonder how much of these specific really theatrical stories of rape are just sort of like things that enemies concocted in that period of time when it was profitable to do so. But again, kernels of truth, right? So sure he's doing it. Rape married women who then killed themselves because within that culture, she would not be able to go back to her family. Yeah. And like kernels of truth, I don't kernels of truth. It's just there's so much of it that's like I or that he tried to kill him and then he let him live because of his medals like that's too many details. There's a lot of like, yeah, I don't know, um, we'll see. I'm trying to provide, present you with all this so that like you the listener can conclude what you want to believe about Udae who's saying, but there's a hard, it's hard to, it's hard to tell for sure with stuff like this. It's so politicized. The fact that the US was looking for any excuse to to do a war against Saddam's Iraq makes it hard to judge every piece of information as easily as I otherwise like to. But yeah, anyway, all of this takes us up to the early 1980s. During this period of time, Iraq was not yet the global pariah state that it would become after Desert Storm and it had one of the best football teams in the entire Middle East. Iraqis had become very proud of their team, which got its first foreign manager the Romanian Cornel Dragucian in 1962 and in 1965 under his leadership, they won the Arab Nations Cup. They won it again in 1966. People started calling them by the nickname the Lions of Mesopotamia, which is an undoubtedly cool name for your football team. Yeah, that's a dude's rock moment. Given the guys involved, I'm surprised there wasn't a real lion on the field. Where's the lion? Give me a lion. I don't know that there wasn't Molly and I would also like to remind you, you've got, you've got a fucking Romanian man whose last name is basically dragon and a team full of Iraqis, the mustache game in that team. We don't have the capability to recreate moustaches that were that powerful like I need to see this guy amazing stuff. Yeah, I can only imagine him in my dreams. They're mad to actually be pictures of the guy. I didn't look them up. So I'd be disappointed if he doesn't have a beautiful mustache. So first couple of years that this guy is working, you know, the Iraqi team in the mid 60s is really starting to get off the ground in a big way. It's looking good and for a new country and Iraq is a new country in the mid 60s, having like a football team that's a huge hit, like one of the best in the region, that's a big deal. Like it's, and so it becomes like integral to like this burgeoning sense of national pride that Iraqi people are getting. And the team becomes very beloved for this reason. However, after the mid 60s, they kind of backslide for quite a while. There's this initial period of greatness. And then through the late 60s, up through much of the 70s, you know, there's a lot of unrest and disorder in the country. Saddam is rising to power and causing a good amount of that unrest. It's a rough period for the team. So after Saddam takes power and starts a war against Iran in 1984, that war is consuming Iraqi soldiers at a terrifying rate. And Saddam needs something to bind the people together and improve morale because the population is not happy with this war that did not need to happen. It is. You're saying people don't love it when you take them into an unnecessary war with Iran and you should distract them with soccer. Yes. Saddam who says something that we wouldn't know anything about. Exactly. No, yeah. It's never happened again. Never has a world leader started an ill-advised war with Iran and then tried to distract the country by a soccer game against Iran. Yeah. That's never happened before. It's never happened. So yeah, there's wars consuming human beings at a terrifying rate. And Saddam needs something to improve morale. I'm going to quote from Justin Sherman's article again here. In the hope that his son could help rebuild the spirit of the nation while also proving himself a worthy successor, Saddam handed Uday the reigns of both the country's Olympic Committee and its football federation. Through sports, Saddam believed that a fervent nationalism would return, permeating through the sun-kissed football pitches to the trenches in the desert. The appointment of the 20-year-old Uday would initially yield historic results. Iraq would win the Gulf Cup his first year in charge, followed by the Arab Cup just a year later. However, nothing could prepare them for what was about to come. With dramatic win over Syria and their final match of qualifiers, Iraq punched their ticket to the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, which to this day represents their first and only appearance in the prestigious tournament. So pretty good early first two year run for the fail for, you know, Saddam's nebo baby son. But like, is that because of his management or were they going to go anyway and he was just there? So not long before this, and by the way, I should note, Iraq is in the World Cup this year. So this was the first time since Uday. These articles are real, but I think this is their first, yeah, qualified for the second time in 2026. So that is something to celebrate this year. Like, I love. So they can do it without a day. They could. They finally did. They finally did. It took a while. Like, and I have, I love the country a long time. Like, it's, it's unfortunately when we're telling Iraqi stories, they're often very sad just because of how difficult that country's recent history has been, but it's actually really awesome. It's really happy for them that they made it back to the World Cup, because that's going to mean a lot to people. Like, we've been talking about like football means a lot to people, teams like this, especially with shits really hard out there means a hell of a lot to people. So that's actually super nice to hear. And that's why Saddam thinks this is a good idea, right? And it first, it kind of looks like it is, you know, Uday pulls the team. It seems like Uday pulls the team. Now, the, the, what's part of what's really happening is they've recently brought on a new coach and he's been like, Uday doesn't know she's about managing a national soccer team. No. And I think this new coach has started before and it's kind of, that's kind of started too. But he doesn't fuck it up. You, you got to give him credit for that. Like, he doesn't, he doesn't step over his own day, which he's going to have to do in the future. Yeah. I don't. Um, I certainly can't say that he was bad at the job at this stage, right? But it may just be that's because he was too nervous to like do anything. So maybe he was just listening to his subordinates in this period of time, because it's not going to, this is going to be the only period of time where things are like really good, uh, for the team. But yeah, at first things are going really well. And, and at this stage in the story, like the Lions of Mesopotamia, it's like a fucking 90s move. It's like a Disney movie from like 1996, like the cool thing, like, you've got the dictators fail son. Who doesn't particularly like football and has never been good at anything and is desperate to please his father. And he takes on this team that had been great once, but they fallen into disrepute and he welves them together into this like group of bluffable missfits and they make it to the World Cup. Like that's, that's a really good Disney movie. I'll watch that movie. I'll watch that. Absolutely. Absolutely. If you do not include anything that happens after the World Cup, it's a great Disney movie. No, credit's roll over the football pitch. Yeah. Over the football pitch in the torture chamber. Um, no, no, at the World Cup, we, we, it ends there. It ends there. It ends there. That's right. It ends there because there's no torture at the World Cup other than having to watch football. Oh, that was, that was, there was an issue with some slays that were, well, yeah, there's slaves too. There's slaves too. There's a lot of issues to have. - You do it. - Yeah, I was trying to go to ads after, after accusing FIFA of complicity and slavery. It was definitely our, that is a fact. You know what else is a fact, Molly? It's time for ads. - Wow. And over my career, I've heard account after account of prosecutorial misconduct, story after story of injustice, but I've never heard a story quite like this. - The more I kept reading that stuff, I thought, man, there's more red flags that just kept coming up over and over. Listen to examined, the backfire effect on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast? - It's real. It's wrong. - I went off, I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. - Y'all gonna scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same bag. - 12 seats, those are moving south. - So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 23. You better be hitting the ground, going hard in the south now. - And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHotRadio app, Apple Podcast. - Or wherever you get your podcasts. - We're back. So it's in the days right before the World Cup that we first start to see science. If, and I think this is probably likely, the success of the Iraqi team in today's first couple of years because he mostly, like, stayed out of his own way and let other people make decisions. If that's the case, then it's right before the game that he starts to think, maybe I am a genius and I should be making more decisions. - That's exactly the right time to fuck with the team. Like, right before the game. - Exactly, you want to start doing it. That's when you want to start doing it. - What's the lineup? Let's put on different shoes. - He's accused later of having been a hardcore drug user. There's certainly evidence that he used heroin and other, like, pills and stuff on occasion. I've heard allegations that he used a lot of Coke. It would certainly make sense. I don't know if he's doing that now. That could explain if he's got exactly the right time. - This is exactly the right time. - Because his team went to the World Cup. That might explain, maybe I need to be making more of the decisions. I need, I can't listen to the coach anymore. This is all, but it's kind of, it's Uday's time, you know? - I gotta get out there. - Yeah. So he's, like, while they're, you know, at the World Cup, he gets asked to organize friendly matches while they're there with both Brazil and England. And this is like a big deal. These don't count for the overall World Cup. But it's still a big deal. Iraq is a new country and their team is really, it has just started becoming good again. Brazil and England's teams are both very well established. And they're both like, hey, that's like, basically, that's a, that's a huge compliment saying, we want to do this like game with you, right? It should be a huge thing for Iraq. It's a really, among other things, it's the country being kind of invited into the global community in like a really prominent big way. It's a big deal. It should have been a great moment. Uday says, no, fuck off. We're not having any friendly games 'cause he thinks his guys will lose and then his dad will be angry at him. If they lose, the friendly games. And it's like, it's not about winning or losing. It's about the fact that you're like, a part of this community of nations and let your team is, and he can't see that 'cause he's scared of his dad being convicted and perlosing. - It's fear of loss, like, you're gonna have to play those teams eventually. - Yeah, you're gonna have to play him eventually. Like, this is how-- - You might as well play him in a relaxed manner where they're gonna go kinda easy on you. - Right, right, exactly. And also, it might make your team better. Like, playing against really good friends. - Might be good friends. - Yeah, it's like, and I can believe that he didn't do this 'cause he was scared of his dad. He didn't wanna like, he was scared it would make him look bad, right? If the kind of insecurity you would expect out of a guy like this in this situation. - A guy who's seen his dad torture somebody? - Right, exactly. - Yeah, and it makes it clear why Uday was never gonna be a very good team manager, right? And he makes the further mistake after this. And for placing right before the World Cup, he replaces the, I mean, he's not technically the team manager, but he is doing that job and he replaces the guy who had been the official team manager with his assistant right before the match for no real reason. Right, he's just switching people around. He changes the team colors from green and white to yellow and blue with no consideration that for 20 years, Iraqi fans had gotten used to the old colors. He does it for no reason. - Athletes are so superstitious. They're so superstitious and paranoid, they spook like horses. - They spook like horses, that's exactly. Yeah, and so do fans, to be honest. - Like why would you do that? - Yeah. - There are people out there wearing dirty underwear because it's their lucky panties, like-- - Right, yeah, you can't, you cannot understand how crazy people are about sports Uday. - You can't change it. - And yeah, I wonder how much of it is that he's not really into sports. Like that is emphasized in a lot of what you're reading. He never really cared all that much, other than he didn't want to lose, you know? So Justin Sherman argues that as a result of all this, the Iraqi team arrives in Mexico for the World Cup quote, "It'll prepared and mentally shackled." And it's possible that by this point, Uday's already started threatening his players. I don't know if he's already started. The allegations of torture don't start until after this. I don't know when it actually started. Now, I'm not well suited to the task of judging Iraq's performance at the World Cup, but the accounts I've read, all seem to agree, they did a really good job for a new and an experienced team. You gotta remember, what's happened here is Iraq is a team that has just started seeing success again. They won some local championships. And kind of, it's not, a fluke would be the wrong, but they get, they get really lucky, and they make it to the World Cup, and they're not really fully ready to be there. - And that's not a bad decision. Like playing Brazil is a different situation. - Exactly. And this could be really good for a new team. Getting into the World Cup this early, getting to play with teams of that caliber, that could really help take, move them forward and take them up, right? And they don't do badly in the World Cup, right? Not compared to how new they are, right? They get knocked out pretty early. They only score one goal in all three of their games. However, if you just kind of read it that way, it makes it seem like they did less well than they actually did. And I don't want to short-change the team. - We know, we're getting there at all. Like, even the-- - It is a huge team. - Like losing to a good team doesn't mean you did badly. Like, getting there day tying up Spain was an incredible win. They didn't win the game. - Exactly. - That's an incredible win. - Yeah, and that's what George Woodward points that out in his article for Tribuna. And I want to read from that here, quote, "After rewatching archive footage from 40 years ago, we can see that Iraq looked good, but lacked experience of major tournaments in an evenly matched game with Paraguay that conceded the only goal from a quickly taken free kick. At the end of the first half, they even equalized. But referee Pekon Akong from Mauritius disallowed the goal. He blew for halftime just as the decisive corner was being delivered. Against Belgium, Iraq actually looked better and more dangerous, even with 10 men. The Belgian scored the winner from a penalty that today might well have been overturned by VAR. At the final match, at the 100,000 seated as Tekka against hosts Mexico, who needed to improve their goal difference, the Iraqis defended bravely and conceded only once. So it can be said that they performed with dignity despite their final place in the table. And in a good world, if this is like a normal country with a normal leadership, this would be the start of like a really good team, you know, that could build for this, make it back, right, right, right. It's, this should have been the start of something great. And it's not. Iraq doesn't make it back again until this year to the World Cup. And the story, a lot of what we're going to be talking about this week is why, because Uday is a big part of why. Iraq does not know back that this promising start does not continue promising, because Uday can't accept that just getting to the World Cup was a victory. And I have to presume part of this is because Saddam is a huge asshole to him about losing. So when the team returns home to Baghdad, they're greeted not the way they should have been as like a team that did really, really well and as a bright future. Instead, he explodes with rage. And in the days and years to come, the Iraqi football team is going to see just how violent Uday Hussein could be. And we'll talk about that in part two. - Woohoo. - How you feeling? - I'm pumped. I'm ready to watch some soccer. - Well, we're just going to talk about it because I don't know much about soccer. But what I do know about Molly is that you have a podcast. That's all I know. I'm like Casper Houser, you know? I stumbled into work this morning with a sign around my neck that says, "Weird little guys hosted by Molly Conquer." That's all I need. I don't even have a name. - Just Tabula Raza, yeah. - Yeah, that's right, that's right. That's right. It's something to do with the German cavalry. - The ideal listener. - Yeah, exactly. That's what we, in fact, target directly for Germans several centuries ago who lost their memories somehow. I don't remember enough of that myth. Anyway, Molly, anything to say before we go? - Yeah. Listen to Weird Little Guys, it's fun, you'll love it. You'll love it, you'll love it. Listen to Weird Little Guys. If you want to hear more about the clan, you know? Yeah, yeah. Weird Little Guys. Uday's a weird little guy. You love weird little guys. If you love weird little guys, listen to weird little guys. I'm not going to say that title anymore for a minute. Hey, weird little guys, weird little guys, weird little guys. Nope, nope, nope. We're done. Well, so we came up with it. She can say it as many times as she wants. Weird little guys, weird little guys, weird little guys, weird little guys, weird little guys. Behind the bastards is a production of CoolZone Media. For more from CoolZone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday and Thursday. Hit Remind Me on Netflix so you don't miss an episode. For Eclipse and our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com/@behindthebastard. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking. In 1986, a man named Scott McLean was killed in broad daylight. Police quickly found their suspect, prosecutors convicted him. But now, almost 40 years later, I'm re-examining this case. I really didn't believe any of it was real, and I was like, "Well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job." As the wrong man been in prison this whole time, listen to examined the Backfire Effect on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.