Life of Evel: Evel Knievel (18 page)

Sheldon Saltman was not one of Evel Knievel’s favourite people. A Hollywood promoter, he worked with Knievel on the Snake River Canyon jump and was by his side throughout the 62-city promotional tour leading up to the event itself. It was during this time that he gathered information through personal experience to write a book called
Evel Knievel on Tour,
and in August of 1977 it was published. Evel was not at all amused by it. ‘He said I was a drug-taker and that I hated my mother. He said I’d fucked every girl in Butte, Montana. My kids even had to quit high school over that book. And it broke my mother’s heart. I’ve never taken a drug unless it was prescribed by a doctor. That guy was just a filthy, stinkin’ little liar.’

In truth, while Saltman (along with co-author Maury Green) did not paint a particularly glamorous picture of Knievel, he didn’t actually reveal anything which avid readers of newspapers and magazine articles about Evel would not have already known. He detailed Knievel’s heavy drinking habits, which were well known to all despite Evel’s constant ‘do as I say and not as I do’ pre-jump speeches; he told of Evel’s use of painkillers and tranquillisers, which was to be expected of someone who had suffered as much pain as Knievel, and none of the substances was illegal anyhow. As for Knievel’s womanising, while he may not have managed to sleep with
every
girl in Butte, Montana he had made no secret of the hundreds of women he
had
slept with over the years, and therefore had little right to complain when someone else committed this fact to print. And while Evel cursed Saltman for saying he hated his mother, all Saltman actually said was that Evel had refused to stay overnight in Denver on one occasion because his mother lived there. There may have been any number of reasons for Evel wishing to avoid his mother at that particular time which had nothing to do with ‘hating’ her.

Knievel’s outrage was a typical overreaction on his part and may have had more to do with the rumours that he had initially cooperated on the book but had fallen foul of either the publishers or Saltman himself and now stood to lose out financially. Whatever the case, little more would have been heard of the matter had Evel not decided to administer his own justice – Butte style.

Saltman at this point was vice president of the Fox Telecommunications Group, and on 21 September Evel tracked him down to the Twentieth Century Fox studio lot in Los Angeles. An accomplice, who Knievel always refused to name, then grabbed hold of Saltman (who later claimed there were two accomplices) while Evel repeatedly beat both his arms with a baseball bat. The beating was so fierce that it left Saltman with a compound break (where the bone breaks through the skin) to his left arm and a broken right wrist, along with the expected bruises, aches and pains. Saltman’s left arm was so badly broken it required surgery to insert a metal plate to piece it back together.

But if it was Butte justice in Evel’s eyes, it was Butte justice with a difference – two (possibly even three) against one was not accepted in Knievel’s hometown. Knievel has always insisted that he needed help because both his arms were in plaster, but since his last recorded jump was over the tank of sharks in Chicago eight months previously, this does not stand up. To further justify his actions, Evel also said the accomplice was necessary so that he could ‘very carefully’ break Saltman’s arms without missing completely and killing the hapless promoter. And the reason for wanting to so carefully break Saltman’s arms? ‘So he don’t write any more goddamn books.’

The moment may have proved satisfying for Knievel, but even by his standards he must have known that this time he had overstepped the mark. While he himself viewed broken limbs as little more than an inconvenience, and while he had every right to mangle his own limbs at will, the law took a very different view when it came to wilfully breaking someone else’s, as Evel became all too aware.

Leaving the scene of the crime with his unnamed accomplice(s) – and leaving Saltman in a great deal of agony – Knievel made straight for the West Los Angeles Police Station to turn himself in. He had known the consequences of his actions before tracking down Saltman and was fully prepared to pay the price. After being charged with assault with a deadly weapon he was released on $1,000 bail and even found it within himself to joke with the press that ‘I’ve jumped everything else, but I won’t jump bail.’

But beneath the bravado Knievel must have known his life was spinning out of control. Overweight and approaching 40, his career had practically halted with the disastrous shark-pool affair and now he was facing a possible custodial sentence. But whatever his true feelings, he still had to live up to the image of Evel Knievel, and Evel Knievel could not show any signs of weakness, be it in the face of danger and pain or in the face of the judicial system. Yet he had no regrets about his actions and if anything wished he had gone even further, saying Saltman was ‘…a filthy little leprechaun user of people. Skinny little, rotten little bastard. I shoulda killed the little prick.’ In a more humorous outburst Knievel said, ‘If I catch him in Los Angeles I’m gonna slap him so hard they’ll pick him up for speeding in San Francisco. That’s how hard I’m gonna hit him.’

Three weeks after the assault, Knievel appeared before Los Angeles County Superior Court on 12 October 1977 after reportedly having drunk half a bottle of Wild Turkey, which was considerably more than he used to consume before a jump and a real indicator of just how nervous he actually felt about the whole legal process. The judge was forced to grant an overnight delay since Knievel and his lawyer, Paul Caruso, could not agree on how to plead. Knievel, still feeling he had done the right thing, wanted to plead guilty, while Caruso wanted to plead not guilty. True to form, Knievel sacked Caruso and defended himself, pleading guilty and insisting he had done the right thing and could still count on the support of his family and friends back in Butte because he had been honest and admitted to his crime.

It may have been how things were done in Butte, but, unfortunately for Evel, it’s not how things were done in Los Angeles, as Judge Edward Rafeedie explained. ‘We long ago abandoned frontier justice in California. No affront justifies such retaliation. It sets a terrible example.’ Rafeedie sentenced Evel to six months in Los Angeles County Jail and ordered three years probation (Knievel often boasted that he was sentenced to three years but only served six months). His sentence would start in one week’s time. On leaving the courthouse, Knievel addressed the gathered media who finally had a new and sensational angle on the stuntman they had become progressively bored with. But there was to be no avalanche of sound bites from the usually quotable Knievel on this occasion, only a solemn acceptance of his sentence. ‘I only have one thing to say about this day in court. That judge is a good judge and he’s a fair judge. I have nothing more to say.’

The judge had recommended that Knievel be given work duties on weekdays but should return to the prison each night and at weekends. It didn’t seem too harsh a deal and in fact there were many who complained that he had been shown preferential treatment because of his celebrity status.

Knievel didn’t care and, as always, found a positive side to his situation on which to capitalise. With the spotlight fixed firmly back on him, he used the week before he was due to start his sentence to announce the most outrageous stunt of his career. Evel arranged a press conference at the Sheraton Universal Hotel in Hollywood – where he was still living – to announce the details. He would be strapped to the underside of an aeroplane flying at 30,000 feet and would release himself with the intention of hitting one of 13 massive bales of hay placed in the car park of a Las Vegas casino – without a parachute. With hindsight it seems too ridiculous for words but Evel at least appeared to be taking the plan seriously and even displayed some detailed drawings of himself strapped to the undercarriage of an aeroplane.

Ridiculously far-fetched the plan may have seemed, but, given the fact that Knievel had actually gone ahead and attempted the canyon jump when many thought it was suicidal, there was a growing sense that Knievel might just actually be mad enough to attempt this one too. He boasted of having signed up a veteran World War II bomber pilot who would fly the plane, while he himself would have a homing device surgically implanted in his chest to help guide him to one of the hay bales. Knievel drew further gasps and looks of utter disbelief when he announced he would voluntarily have his spleen – one of the body’s vital organs – removed, because it could rupture upon landing, though why he only considered that his spleen could be damaged and not his head, neck, back, or any other part of his body was anyone’s guess.

Again, Evel announced that this jump would mark his retirement, and again he promised it would be a massive money-spinner which would net him around $20 million. He set the date for 4 July 1978 and headed off to jail. At least the media would have some fuel to keep the Knievel name going for the six months he would be absent. In the event, Knievel’s sanity was never put to the test as the Las Vegas Gaming Commission threatened to slap a restraining order on Knievel as soon as they got wind of the plan. Las Vegas didn’t need a public suicide on its hands.

Knievel remained convinced the stunt could have worked with the help of the US Army’s Golden Knights parachute team. ‘The Golden Knights were gonna fall right in with me to about 1,000 feet on a laser beam that was being shot [upwards] from the middle of the haystacks, and then let me go in, but I was gonna come all the way down with oxygen and no parachute, just free-falling. And believe me, someday that will be done. It will be done.’

On 21 November, Evel turned himself in at the Santa Monica County Courthouse, wished a simple ‘good morning’ to the gathered press and was driven off in a bus to begin his sentence. But it soon became clear that even prison could not subdue Evel’s flamboyance or dampen his spirit. Each morning he made his way to the offices of Ralph Andrews Productions in Toluca Lake to continue making plans for his suicidal aeroplane drop, having not yet been threatened with the restraining order. But unlike the other work-release prisoners who were dropped off at their respective workplaces by a prison bus, Evel had a chauffeur pick him up in his Stutz. It was a touch of pure Evel and conveyed the message to the outside world that he wasn’t doing regular time like the other convicts but was being treated according to his celebrity status. He was, after all, Evel Knievel, and even when in prison he was going to play by his own rules, at least as far as the law would allow.

In January 1978, in an even more outrageous display of contempt for the authorities, Knievel kept a promise he had made to his fellow inmates. He had said that if he won a particular bet on a football match he would rent an entire fleet of limousines to ferry those inmates to their work details. Evel won the bet and, true to his word, on 4 January a fleet of 20 limousines pulled up outside Los Angeles County Jail to take Knievel’s cronies to work. They did so for the next four days. ‘Aw, what the hell, you know? They had to catch a bus so I got ‘em all limos. I won some money on a Rose Bowl game so I spent it on them. I got limousines from Carey Limousines at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I had a good time.’

The use of limos to travel to work was not in itself in breach of any prison regulations so long as Knievel reported back at the prison each night – on time. To be more than a few minutes late could, in the eyes of the law, be considered a breakout attempt, so when Knievel turned up several hours late on one particular occasion Judge Rafeedie was not amused. Evel might have got away with his breach of regulations had it been a one-off slip-up, but his public displays of contempt for his sentence and his continual signing of autographs for guards and prisoners had already angered Rafeedie and he now had the excuse he was waiting for to punish his celebrity inmate.

There were rumours that Evel had been spotted in a bar with a mystery woman, and while these were never confirmed, Evel had still been late in getting back to the prison. He even had the audacity to play a few rounds of golf when he should have been working. ‘They caught me playing golf…My buddy brought the clubs up for me, a guy named Jack Swank. He brought them out, and my yellow shoes and my green, red and white bag, and I was out in the field hittin’ balls and people were stopped along the freeway saying, “What the hell’s the matter with this God-damn nut? He’s out here thinking it’s a country club.”’

At his disciplinary hearing, Judge Rafeedie said, ‘The spectacle of an inmate signing photographs and autographs I find very offensive. You are not Evel Knievel, you are Robert Craig Knievel with a booking number. Do your time like a man. You are in jail. You ought to spend the rest of your time in jail and spend it in self-examination.’

Knievel had no option this time but to obey the judge’s orders and finally got a taste of what a real prison sentence was like, and it was not to his taste. ‘It was degrading. I mean, I was allowed privileges like using a telephone and I played a lot of basketball, but it was degrading. The guards were pretty good to me though – I never had to do any work. In fact, I spent a lot of time in solitary so nobody bothered me. It was a lot better than being out in the general population.’

The solitary that Knievel speaks about was actually the high-power hold of Los Angeles County Jail, usually reserved for particularly dangerous prisoners but a place where Evel says he chose to be held. ‘I was in there cos I chose to be in there. I wanted to do my time, I didn’t want to be bothered and I didn’t want to listen to all the bullshit in jail. I found time went by faster in the cell. The sheriff wanted me to be a “keep-away” prisoner; he didn’t want nothing to happen to me in the jail. So they let me do that, that’s where I stayed. There were only six cells in there. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face when they locked the door.’