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On January 23, 1989, several hundred reporters waited outside Florida State Prison. Ted Bundy gave his last filmed interview to one man instead, a psychologist who had flown in from California.
It was recorded around 2:30 in the afternoon. He was due to be executed at 7:00 the next morning.
Bundy had confessed to 30 murders across 7 states. He had 3 death sentences by 1980 and nearly a decade of appeals behind him.
He was executed about 17 hours after this tape was made.
In the video below, you see the last stretch of that interview. Dr. James Dobson asks him straight whether he deserves the punishment the state has inflicted on him.
He starts with "I don't want to die." Then he says "I deserve certainly the most extreme punishment society has."
Then he argues that executing him will not give anything back to the families, and turns the rest of his answer into a case about what the country reads and watches. Dobson, who ran a national ministry, had campaigned on that issue for years.
A Tampa station aired all 29 minutes the evening he died.
The state spent a decade and 3 death sentences getting to that afternoon. Should a condemned man's last words ever be broadcast, or is that the one stage the system should never hand him?
On January 23, 1989, several hundred reporters waited outside Florida State Prison. Ted Bundy gave his last filmed interview to one man instead, a psychologist who had flown in from California.
It was recorded around 2:30 in the afternoon. He was due to be executed at 7:00 the next morning.
Bundy had confessed to 30 murders across 7 states. He had 3 death sentences by 1980 and nearly a decade of appeals behind him.
He was executed about 17 hours after this tape was made.
In the video below, you see the last stretch of that interview. Dr. James Dobson asks him straight whether he deserves the punishment the state has inflicted on him.
He starts with "I don't want to die." Then he says "I deserve certainly the most extreme punishment society has."
Then he argues that executing him will not give anything back to the families, and turns the rest of his answer into a case about what the country reads and watches. Dobson, who ran a national ministry, had campaigned on that issue for years.
A Tampa station aired all 29 minutes the evening he died.
The state spent a decade and 3 death sentences getting to that afternoon. Should a condemned man's last words ever be broadcast, or is that the one stage the system should never hand him?
Koa retweeted
The FBI hid a camera in a Los Angeles hotel suite in October 1982 and filmed car maker John DeLorean looking at a suitcase of cocaine.
The deal was $24 million, and he called the powder better than gold.
A jury acquitted him in 1984.
In the video below, you see the hidden camera footage as CBS aired it, then DeLorean on the Dick Cavett show, asked why he did not just call the police.
Watch the caption on the tape. It has him saying gold weighs more than this, for God's sake.
His answer is the detail that stays. On the flight that morning he read the New York Times, a story about a young Colombian and his family killed on a Long Island freeway.
Then he walked into a room with three men he believed were organized crime. He says standing up and announcing you are going to the police with three armed men is not logical.
"I was told to go along with the game."
Cavett does not buy it and says so. DeLorean says the government proved his innocence for him, so his side never needed a defense.
He says he acted on his attorneys' advice, and that threats against his children and himself were the reason.
If the FBI sets the scene and the camera records you playing along, is the tape proof of a crime or proof of a trap?
The FBI hid a camera in a Los Angeles hotel suite in October 1982 and filmed car maker John DeLorean looking at a suitcase of cocaine.
The deal was $24 million, and he called the powder better than gold.
A jury acquitted him in 1984.
In the video below, you see the hidden camera footage as CBS aired it, then DeLorean on the Dick Cavett show, asked why he did not just call the police.
Watch the caption on the tape. It has him saying gold weighs more than this, for God's sake.
His answer is the detail that stays. On the flight that morning he read the New York Times, a story about a young Colombian and his family killed on a Long Island freeway.
Then he walked into a room with three men he believed were organized crime. He says standing up and announcing you are going to the police with three armed men is not logical.
"I was told to go along with the game."
Cavett does not buy it and says so. DeLorean says the government proved his innocence for him, so his side never needed a defense.
He says he acted on his attorneys' advice, and that threats against his children and himself were the reason.
If the FBI sets the scene and the camera records you playing along, is the tape proof of a crime or proof of a trap?
Koa retweeted
Fox was braced for George Lucas to ask for $1 million to make Star Wars.
Not a raise. He took about $150,000 and asked for the sequel rights.
In 2012 Disney paid $4.05 billion for the company that clause built.
In the video below, Lucas says it himself: "It was like half of nothing is nothing, so they let me have the sequel rights."
In 1973 American Graffiti, made for $750,000, was turning into a hit. Lucas was, in his words, "the hottest director in Hollywood." The Fox executives, he says, started worrying: "Oh my God, he's going to come and ask for a million dollars. No director's ever gotten a million dollars."
His agent said Fox would pay $500,000, maybe $1 million. His lawyer Tom Pollock says the deal paid $150,000 to write, produce and direct. Lucas remembers $125,000.
William Immerman, who ran Fox's daily business with Alan Ladd Jr., told CNNfn in 1999: "We've never done it before for anybody. Why should we do it ... for George?"
Fox, Lucas says, "was sort of on the ropes." Its board hated the movie.
Lucas says he asked Ladd what Fox did for its 50% of the profits. The answer: "I provide the money." His reply: "You go to a bank with a letter of credit."
For Empire, he offered to finance the film himself. Ladd: "Wait a minute. You're getting 100% of the profits." Lucas: "Yeah, I'm financing it."
Disney's price was about half cash and about 40 million shares. Lucas owned 100% of Lucasfilm, so all of it went to him.
Fox did not lose a bet on toys. It lost it on the sequel.
A studio prices the movie it has seen. He priced the ones he had already written.
Fox offers you $1 million now, or $150,000 and the rights to a sequel only you believe in. Which one do you sign?
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Evander Holyfield made more than $230 million in the ring. His 109 room mansion in Georgia went to auction for a reported $7 million.
By his own account, a loan against the house came from one of his sisters. He says he was never going to put her in jail.
The house was the biggest in the state. 45,000 square feet on 235 acres, with a pool that held 350,000 gallons. He built it, he says, so his kids would have something to inherit.
Then Washington Mutual started going under, the documents came out, and the house was put up for auction. A family member had borrowed money against it. Rick Ross ended up buying it.
He is the youngest in his family, and he says the sisters were almost like a mama to him.
In the video below, he says it himself. Watch the part where he explains why he did not make an example of her.
"I made too much money to stoop that low."
He says everybody wanted to steal from him after his mother died. He says he forgives and moves on. And he says the loss never made him broke, because the opportunities kept coming.
A quarter billion dollars passed through his hands, and the one he let off was the one who cost him the house.
If your own sister mortgaged your home, is letting it go a kind of strength, or is it how people learn they can take from you?
Evander Holyfield made more than $230 million in the ring. His 109 room mansion in Georgia went to auction for a reported $7 million.
By his own account, a loan against the house came from one of his sisters. He says he was never going to put her in jail.
The house was the biggest in the state. 45,000 square feet on 235 acres, with a pool that held 350,000 gallons. He built it, he says, so his kids would have something to inherit.
Then Washington Mutual started going under, the documents came out, and the house was put up for auction. A family member had borrowed money against it. Rick Ross ended up buying it.
He is the youngest in his family, and he says the sisters were almost like a mama to him.
In the video below, he says it himself. Watch the part where he explains why he did not make an example of her.
"I made too much money to stoop that low."
He says everybody wanted to steal from him after his mother died. He says he forgives and moves on. And he says the loss never made him broke, because the opportunities kept coming.
A quarter billion dollars passed through his hands, and the one he let off was the one who cost him the house.
If your own sister mortgaged your home, is letting it go a kind of strength, or is it how people learn they can take from you?
Koa retweeted
George Zimmer opened Men's Wearhouse at 24 with $7,000. By the end, one in five American suits came from his stores.
Then his board fired him. His furniture was already in storage.
He says part of the reason was a $1.8 billion rival he would not have bought for one dollar. About 80% of its customers were already his.
He took no paycheck after the 1992 IPO and lived off the stock. He built that board himself, and says they were kissing his butt so he would think they agreed.
He chose the people who fired him.
It is a Monday at 5 pm. The shareholder meeting is Wednesday morning. The board asks him to step down as chairman and gives him a few hours to resign.
The next morning the lead director delivers the verdict. By unanimous consent, Zimmer is out of the company entirely.
Watch the part where he gets to the furniture. "And we've put your furniture and knickknacks in storage." Zimmer remembers thinking: you did that already.
Fifty cartons. His assistant, who started with him at 16, carried them to his house.
His new company rents suits and tuxedos for weddings. He says it grew over 100% this year, at an 80% gross margin.
David Rubenstein offered him $3 billion to buy the old company back. His answer: "That is very generous of you to make that offer."
Was the board betraying a founder, or doing the job he picked it to do?
George Zimmer opened Men's Wearhouse at 24 with $7,000. By the end, one in five American suits came from his stores.
Then his board fired him. His furniture was already in storage.
He says part of the reason was a $1.8 billion rival he would not have bought for one dollar. About 80% of its customers were already his.
He took no paycheck after the 1992 IPO and lived off the stock. He built that board himself, and says they were kissing his butt so he would think they agreed.
He chose the people who fired him.
It is a Monday at 5 pm. The shareholder meeting is Wednesday morning. The board asks him to step down as chairman and gives him a few hours to resign.
The next morning the lead director delivers the verdict. By unanimous consent, Zimmer is out of the company entirely.
Watch the part where he gets to the furniture. "And we've put your furniture and knickknacks in storage." Zimmer remembers thinking: you did that already.
Fifty cartons. His assistant, who started with him at 16, carried them to his house.
His new company rents suits and tuxedos for weddings. He says it grew over 100% this year, at an 80% gross margin.
David Rubenstein offered him $3 billion to buy the old company back. His answer: "That is very generous of you to make that offer."
Was the board betraying a founder, or doing the job he picked it to do?
Koa retweeted
George Lucas could have asked Fox for $1 million to make Star Wars. He took $125,000 and asked for the sequel and merchandising rights instead.
Fox let him have both. By his own account, the studio thought it was giving away half of nothing.
Everyone calls that contract genius. He says he was only protecting himself.
He had just made American Graffiti and was the hottest director in Hollywood. Fox was on the ropes and sure he would ask for a million, which no director had ever been paid.
He signed the memo for his salary. Everything it did not mention stayed open.
Licensing barely existed. A toy takes a year or two to make, and a movie is gone in 6 weeks, so no studio wanted it.
In the video below, he says it himself. Watch the part about the t-shirts and posters.
"Everybody thought I was really brilliant but I was really just protecting myself."
He had already written three movies. If the first flopped, Fox would own the rights and could tell him he could not make the rest.
It did not flop. He went to a toy company, helped them build little action figures, and the money came from there. "Movies don't make money. I got news for you."
Decades later he sold Lucasfilm to Disney for about $4 billion.
The studio kept the movie. He kept everything that came after it.
Was Fox cheated, or did it sell what it honestly called worthless?
George Lucas could have asked Fox for $1 million to make Star Wars. He took $125,000 and asked for the sequel and merchandising rights instead.
Fox let him have both. By his own account, the studio thought it was giving away half of nothing.
Everyone calls that contract genius. He says he was only protecting himself.
He had just made American Graffiti and was the hottest director in Hollywood. Fox was on the ropes and sure he would ask for a million, which no director had ever been paid.
He signed the memo for his salary. Everything it did not mention stayed open.
Licensing barely existed. A toy takes a year or two to make, and a movie is gone in 6 weeks, so no studio wanted it.
In the video below, he says it himself. Watch the part about the t-shirts and posters.
"Everybody thought I was really brilliant but I was really just protecting myself."
He had already written three movies. If the first flopped, Fox would own the rights and could tell him he could not make the rest.
It did not flop. He went to a toy company, helped them build little action figures, and the money came from there. "Movies don't make money. I got news for you."
Decades later he sold Lucasfilm to Disney for about $4 billion.
The studio kept the movie. He kept everything that came after it.
Was Fox cheated, or did it sell what it honestly called worthless?
Koa retweeted
Tori Spelling's father left an estate reported at $500 million. She got $800,000. "What if he'd given me 50 million?"
In the video below, she tells it herself.
Aaron Spelling, the producer behind Beverly Hills, 90210, died in 2006. Most of his fortune went to his wife, Candy. Tori and her brother Randy are reported to have received $800,000 each.
On a talk show, Lisa Vanderpump suggests her father may have done her a favor. With hundreds of millions, Tori might not have had the incentive.
Tori disagrees. "I think I always would have had that drive. I'm built like my dad."
Then she asks the question out loud. "What if he'd given me 50 million and what if with that 50 million, I had changed the world?"
She says she is a "fierce hustler and businesswoman" today. With more money? "I guess we'll never know."
She ends with a joke. "We could have had so many poodles and parachutes."
Candy has a different view. In a 2014 interview with The New York Times, she said Tori "would close a store and drop" $50,000 to $60,000.
Aaron isn't here to explain it.
Did Aaron Spelling save his daughter from a fortune she would have spent, or was $800,000 too little for the child of one of TV's richest men?
Koa retweeted
Mike Tyson says he blew $300 to $400 million. He also says nobody is to blame but himself.
His first managers took a third, he says. Then a friend told him most of his money was missing. He later got a payout and cannot say if it was 20 million or 30.
"It's a small amount of money."
In the video below, he says it himself, in the 2008 documentary Tyson. Watch the part where he describes the people around him.
He had homes and apartments all over the country and "the most exquisite cars." He says he wanted the leeches to suck all of his blood. Then he bought his blood back so they could do it again.
He was 17 or 18, too young to even sign the contract. He calls the managers "like slave masters."
Then came Don King. He says he confronted him about the missing money, was told no, and attacked him in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Later he took the Lennox Lewis fight, he says, for the money. He knew he was in no condition to beat anybody. He knew the payday would be large.
He calls himself an extremist. "I either have a lot of money or I have none." Nobody without his kind of mind, he says, can understand how a man blows $400 million.
He sounds less like a victim than a man reading his own bank statement.
His last word on it: "I wish I was smarter. Old too soon, smart too late."
Was Tyson robbed, or did he choose it?
Mike Tyson says he blew $300 to $400 million. He also says nobody is to blame but himself.
His first managers took a third, he says. Then a friend told him most of his money was missing. He later got a payout and cannot say if it was 20 million or 30.
"It's a small amount of money."
In the video below, he says it himself, in the 2008 documentary Tyson. Watch the part where he describes the people around him.
He had homes and apartments all over the country and "the most exquisite cars." He says he wanted the leeches to suck all of his blood. Then he bought his blood back so they could do it again.
He was 17 or 18, too young to even sign the contract. He calls the managers "like slave masters."
Then came Don King. He says he confronted him about the missing money, was told no, and attacked him in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Later he took the Lennox Lewis fight, he says, for the money. He knew he was in no condition to beat anybody. He knew the payday would be large.
He calls himself an extremist. "I either have a lot of money or I have none." Nobody without his kind of mind, he says, can understand how a man blows $400 million.
He sounds less like a victim than a man reading his own bank statement.
His last word on it: "I wish I was smarter. Old too soon, smart too late."
Was Tyson robbed, or did he choose it?
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Paris Hilton's grandfather pledged 97% of his fortune to charity. CBS told her to kiss the family money goodbye.
In December 2007, Barron Hilton pledged about $2.3 billion to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. He ran the family hotel company that carries the name.
In the video below, CBS News reports it: "Paris Hilton can kiss the family fortune goodbye." Then the number: "Paris will inherit about $5 million."
The detail that makes it worse: he was copying his own father. Barron said Conrad Hilton "left nearly 97 percent of his wealth" to the same foundation when he died in 1979. The 1988 settlement of the fight over that will gave Barron 4 million shares worth $212 million.
The foundation held about $7.4 billion in assets at the end of 2023.
Was Barron protecting the family name, or taking the money out of the family?
Koa retweeted
Michael Jackson paid about $47.5 million in 1985 for a song catalog that held the Lennon and McCartney songs. Paul McCartney says he was the one who told Jackson to buy one.
It may be the most expensive free advice in pop history.
McCartney and John Lennon signed their publishing deal at around 21, in a back alley in Liverpool. He says the terms never changed, even after the songs made the company famous.
He tells the Jackson part himself on the Late Show with David Letterman.
It starts at Christmas. His private phone rings at home. A small voice says it is Michael. McCartney asks, Michael who? Then the voice asks if he wants to make some hits.
They made a couple of records and a video, and Jackson came to his house.
Watch the part where McCartney gives his advice. He told Jackson to think about getting into music publishing, and took the answer for a joke: "I'm going to get yours."
Afterwards, McCartney says, he kept asking for a better deal on his own songs. The reply was always the same. That is just business.
On Howard Stern in 2001 he sounds almost fair about it. Jackson had the cash, someone was selling, he bought. What rubs McCartney the wrong way is buying back, at those prices, songs he wrote for nothing.
Nothing in his telling is a crime. It is a lesson that worked.
Was Jackson a smart buyer doing business, or a friend who owed McCartney a better deal?
Michael Jackson paid about $47.5 million in 1985 for a song catalog that held the Lennon and McCartney songs. Paul McCartney says he was the one who told Jackson to buy one.
It may be the most expensive free advice in pop history.
McCartney and John Lennon signed their publishing deal at around 21, in a back alley in Liverpool. He says the terms never changed, even after the songs made the company famous.
He tells the Jackson part himself on the Late Show with David Letterman.
It starts at Christmas. His private phone rings at home. A small voice says it is Michael. McCartney asks, Michael who? Then the voice asks if he wants to make some hits.
They made a couple of records and a video, and Jackson came to his house.
Watch the part where McCartney gives his advice. He told Jackson to think about getting into music publishing, and took the answer for a joke: "I'm going to get yours."
Afterwards, McCartney says, he kept asking for a better deal on his own songs. The reply was always the same. That is just business.
On Howard Stern in 2001 he sounds almost fair about it. Jackson had the cash, someone was selling, he bought. What rubs McCartney the wrong way is buying back, at those prices, songs he wrote for nothing.
Nothing in his telling is a crime. It is a lesson that worked.
Was Jackson a smart buyer doing business, or a friend who owed McCartney a better deal?
Koa retweeted
In 2019 the songs Taylor Swift wrote as a teenager were sold in a deal reported at $300 million. She says she never owned any of them.
Six years later, she says, a phone call from her mom put her on the floor.
The buyer was Scooter Braun, and what he bought was her old label, Big Machine. The six albums she made there went with it. She called it "my worst case scenario."
The label's founder, Scott Borchetta, says she had every chance to buy her music and that he texted her the night before the news broke. Swift says she was blindsided.
She had signed with the label at 15. She says that since she was a teenager she had been saving up to buy her music back, and every attempt fell through.
In the video below, she tells the rest herself on the New Heights podcast. She says the first sale "ripped my heart out of my chest," so she started re-recording her albums, because it was the only way she thought she would ever own them.
By then the music belonged to a private equity firm called Shamrock Capital. She did not send lawyers. She says she sent her mom and her brother to LA to tell Shamrock "the whole story of all the times we've tried to buy it, all the times it's fallen through."
A few months after the Super Bowl, she says, she was in Kansas City when her mom called: "You got your music." She says she "very dramatically hit the floor" and started bawling.
The sale that took the songs was in the news within days. Getting them back, she says, took six years and her mother.
What this story shows us is that you can write every word of your life and still not own a single one of them.
Was Swift a teenager who signed away what she could not yet value, or did she walk away from the one deal that would have kept it?
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Jim McCann bought a failed company for one thing, its phone number. Then he learned it came with $7 million of debt nobody had mentioned, and he had signed for all of it himself.
That number became 1-800-Flowers, which now sells about $2 billion a year.
He did not build that brand. AT&T did, for free.
It is 1986. McCann runs 40 flower shops in New York and has worked out that 40 shops have no economy of scale. Hotels pay dancers and singers to make you remember a reservation number. He wants one you can simply dial.
The company that owned it has gone under. He pays $2 million for what is left, and skips the lawyers, the accountants and the bankers.
Then the other $7 million shows up. Nobody saw it coming because the company had no employees left to tell him. He sells his shops to raise cash and becomes a franchisor.
He renames everything after the number. Everyone says you cannot name a company after a phone number. Customers do not even see that it is one, so he adds a 1 in front.
Watch the part where AT&T calls him back about a commercial he shot for them. It was meant to run for a week.
"All of a sudden, we became a national brand." It ran three times a night through the 1992 Summer Olympics.
The number cost him $2 million. The fame cost him nothing.
Was McCann a shrewd operator who saw the number first, or a man a hidden debt should have sunk and a phone company happened to save?
Jim McCann bought a failed company for one thing, its phone number. Then he learned it came with $7 million of debt nobody had mentioned, and he had signed for all of it himself.
That number became 1-800-Flowers, which now sells about $2 billion a year.
He did not build that brand. AT&T did, for free.
It is 1986. McCann runs 40 flower shops in New York and has worked out that 40 shops have no economy of scale. Hotels pay dancers and singers to make you remember a reservation number. He wants one you can simply dial.
The company that owned it has gone under. He pays $2 million for what is left, and skips the lawyers, the accountants and the bankers.
Then the other $7 million shows up. Nobody saw it coming because the company had no employees left to tell him. He sells his shops to raise cash and becomes a franchisor.
He renames everything after the number. Everyone says you cannot name a company after a phone number. Customers do not even see that it is one, so he adds a 1 in front.
Watch the part where AT&T calls him back about a commercial he shot for them. It was meant to run for a week.
"All of a sudden, we became a national brand." It ran three times a night through the 1992 Summer Olympics.
The number cost him $2 million. The fame cost him nothing.
Was McCann a shrewd operator who saw the number first, or a man a hidden debt should have sunk and a phone company happened to save?