We explore some of Wikipedia’s oddities in our 6,290,703-week series, Wiki Wormhole.
This week’s entry: The Mad Pooper
What it’s about: History is full of unnamed criminal masterminds who evaded the law. D.B. Cooper. The Zodiac Killer. The Cigarette Smoking Man. A more recent add to that list is the Colorado Springs woman known only to authorities as “The Mad Pooper.” In the summer of 2017, she frequently took a break from her daily jog to take a dump on the sidewalk. Despite being caught in the act repeatedly, and even after being photographed jogging away from the scene of the crime, she was never identified and never caught.
Biggest controversy: Several magazines had a running debate as to what the Mad Pooper’s motives might have been. Women’s Health speculated that she may have suffered from Crohn’s disease, an inflammation of the bowels that can cause a very sudden need to go. Psychology Today argued against Crohn’s, as the Pooper seemed to change up her routine to avoid being caught, but not to avoid pooping in public, which she continued to do all summer. Instead, Psychology Today argued in favor of exhibitionism (or more clinically, impulse control disorder), and that the thrill of flaunting society’s pretty reasonable restrictions on pooping out in the open, and getting away with it repeatedly, was enough motivation for her to keep going. (Our own sister site Deadspin also monitored the story closely—so closely the Colorado Springs Police Department asked them to stop calling.)
Strangest fact: The Mad Pooper seemed completely unashamed. A woman named Cathy Budde first noticed the Pooper when her children ran into the house and announced, “There’s a lady taking a poop!” Budde investigated, and found the mystery woman squatting, pants around her ankles. She confronted the woman, “about having defecated in public and allowing the Budde children to see her private parts,” and the woman mumbled “sorry” and left. Budde assumed (perhaps overly optimistically) that she would return to clean up after herself, and (more realistically) that she’d be embarrassed enough never to return. Instead, Budde found she returned to the scene of the crime to do more dirty, sinful business at least weekly, and Budde personally witnessed three separate poopings. Budde was convinced the public pooping was deliberate, as there were several public toilets nearby.
Thing we were happiest to learn: Mad Pooper V. Colorado never became a landmark first amendment case. Once the local news picked up on the story and the Mad Pooper’s fame grew, a video appeared on YouTube from a man purporting to be a family member of the Mad Pooper, who he identified as “Shirley.” He apologized on her behalf, saying she had suffered a traumatic brain injury. But he insisted that she was breaking no law (in fact, she was breaking several), and that public pooping was protected by the First Amendment and belonged in the same protected category as breastfeeding. The local news brought on a lawyer who “emphatically rejected that claim,” and a few days later the video was revealed to be a hoax—the man claiming to be “Shirley”’s relative was in fact an established YouTuber “known for producing videos of flatulent pets,” and his pro-pooping manifesto was an attempt at satire.
Thing we were unhappiest to learn: The long plunger of the law never managed to catch up with the Mad Pooper. Budde called the police, providing pictures of the Pooper she had taken with her phone. The police said she could not only face charges of public defecation, but also indecent exposure, possibly labeling her a sex offender. However, at least one officer suggested the Pooper likely suffered from a mental health issue, and that “she’ll still be held accountable, but we would want to get her help.”
She apparently never got that help. After Budde posted a sign near the jogger’s favorite pooping spot, warning that the police were now involved, the Pooper simply changed her routine, pooping at different times of day to avoid capture. She also ran past the note “15 times in one day” before pooping near it. Even after Charmin offered her a year’s supply of toilet paper if she turned herself in, the police never had any contact with the Pooper, or received any further leads on her identity.
Also noteworthy: There are other Mad Poopers out there. The Lincoln Pooper was caught on camera repeatedly pooping near a public swimming pool, both before and after hours, and was never identified. The Brisbane Poo Jogger was caught, as neighbors banded together and caught him in the act—photos revealed him to be a 64-year-old corporate executive, who was charged with creating a public nuisance. The Newcastle Star Jumper was a British female jogger caught pooping outdoors by a security camera, and then doing a star jump (known in the U.S. as a jumping jack) before running away.
Most unpleasantly, Wall Street banker and first-class airline passenger Gerard Finneran was so angry when the flight crew stopped serving him alcohol that he pooped on top of a food cart in full view of other passengers, later wiping his shit on the walls of the plane. He later claimed he had diarrhea and was prevented from using the bathroom by the security detail for the president of Portugal (who was also traveling in first class). But in the end he pled guilty and agreed to reimburse the airline for cleanup and pay fellow passengers’ airfare, amounting to nearly $50,000, making it one of the most expensive dumps in human history. Even among the very low standards of public poopers, finance bros are the absolute worst.
Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: For those of you who just read Wikipedia for the dirty pictures, exhibitionism (NSFW link) does not disappoint, with photos of male and female nudity, as well as an in-depth look at streaking—primarily as a fad in the ’70s and a not-infrequent occurrence at sporting events. The page also breaks down the difference between flashing, mooning, streaking, sexting, and obscene phone calls, while examining naked bike rides, medieval religious nudist sects, and various college campus’ nude traditions.
Further Down the Wormhole: While pooping in public certainly qualifies, indecent exposure is usually thought to mean exposing one’s genitals, masturbating, or having sex in public. Public lewdness has run afoul of the law in this country since at least 1874, when the Sacramento Daily Union described a “shameless fellow” who had been arrested after making a habit of exposing himself to schoolchildren. But people have also rightly pushed back against public indecency laws, as it was once forbidden for women to go swimming without full-body “dresses and pantaloon combinations,” until Australian swimmer Annette Kellermann challenged the law by wearing a one-piece swimsuit in Boston, and social mores (and the law) soon changed.
Whatever the law may say, sex and nudity is an inescapable part of life, even creeping into video games, which have included X-rated content even before there were graphics: 1981’s Softporn Adventure was a text-only game that sold 25,000 copies for the Apple II at a time when there were only 100,000 Apple IIs in existence (and the game was widely pirated on top of those paid copies).
Sex, however, is far from the most immoral thing to make it into the video game world. We’ll look at advergames—video games designed to blatantly advertise a consumer product—next week.
82 Comments
Women’s Health speculated that she may have suffered from
Crohn’s disease, an inflammation of the bowels that can cause a very
sudden need to go.A standard poop chart could help prove/disprove that.I think Crohn’s Disease would fall well towards the bottom.
Take your star and get out….
It’s also pretty distinctive in an olfactory sense, but that might be less evident outside.
I’d say they’re type 5 on account of their lack of moral fibre.
‘Clear-cut edges’? Who examines it that closely?
Wouldn’t that really hurt on the way out?
Well, shit.
Who gives a crap?
Read the article. At least one person did, jeez
All I’m saying is it must been a real shit show.
I don’t give a shit, ‘cause I don’t take no shit!
Well-shit.
Shit well?
How did you list all those other incidents without including the Tim Horton’s Poop Thrower?https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tim-hortons-poop-throwing-1.4665873
Including the greatest, most heavily starred comment in Kinja history. https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/1826083917Since we can no longer hyperlink you’ll need to copy and paste it. Like a neanderthal.
A work of pure genius.Also, I didn’t realize the herbs left any comments in place over there. Better preserve that via archive.org, just in case.
I tried finding an image or archive before I considered clicking on NuDeadspin.Just assumed it was gone.
Apparently, archive.org can’t scrape the comments. Time to screenshot that gem for posterity.“She wants an old argument with your wife?” is already lost, except in screenshot form.
Or, The Mad Shitter from 1980s Texas (I do not know if this story is real or not, but it’s fun in a dooky kind of way):
https://www.panix.com/~msaroff/shitter.shtml
“the Pooper simply changed her routine, pooping at different times of day to avoid capture” I’m convinced there was a second pooper…
Poop was found on a grassy knoll but they covered it up!
That’s what my dog does every time she poops. At least she tries, but she’s really stupid and just makes more of a mess.What I’m saying is, my dog shot JFK.
“What I’m saying is, my dog shot JFK.”Yours too?? Multiple shooters!!!
Multiple pooper-shooters?
“No luck catchin’ them poopers, then?”
https://youtu.be/qV4sEuDfFo4
However, at least one officer suggested the Pooper likely suffered from a mental health issue, and that “she’ll still be held accountable, but we would want to get her helpWhat a thoughtful bunch of officers! To paraphrase Matthew McConaughey in that one film that one time: “Now imagine if she were Black”. (You can bet your shitting ass they’d be sure to shoot the shitter!)
And don’t forget Brisbane’s own Poo Jogger, Andrew Mcintosh.Note that he brought dunny paper with him on this run, making this pre-meditated pooing. Not the best ad for New Balances, either. Be grateful this is the cropped photo.
The face of a man literally caught with his pants down
Why, yes, he was an executive of an aged care buiness: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/aveo-executive-resigns-after-being-identified-as-poo-jogger-20180607-p4zk1e.htmlWas.A delightful metaphor for the aged care industry.
I still say it was Zeke.Also, “The Mad Pooper” is one of the best songs the show has ever done, and that’s saying something.
This was my first thought from my fave episode. But because of this scene:
There’s just so much goodness in that Wagstaff Broadcast News episode. I think the Gene-as-Bob bit is my favorite thing the show ever did. We don’t talk about Best Episode Ever with Bob as much as we do with the Simpsons, but that one gets my vote.
I tape it every time it comes on. I laugh about as hard as I did the first time I saw this scene. It would elevate any episode to an all-time great, but the rest of the epi is also just amazing.
I dunno, given recent episodes & the details saying the Mad Pooper here was a woman, all the signs point to Linda.
It depends on what time of day the incidents took place, since Linda does her BM in the PM.
They should have gone with the Butt-ler
Dangit, we got poop-scooped agin!
My favorite poop joke on the show is when Bob and Louise are dressed up as pickles and both finally overcome their mutual fear of pooping in public, and Bob says, “It wasn’t great. It took me a long time to get the suit off, and it didn’t end where I wanted it to end.”
Came here for this. He will always be the only Mad Pooper for many of us!
I hope they eventually do vol 2 of the soundtrack album. A couple of those Boyz 4 Now songs absolutely kill me.
I couldn’t believe they did this whole article without citing the source of “The Mad Pooper”
‘medieval religious nudist sects’. At least they got rid of their dirty habits!here all week, veal, etc…….
There had better be some praise of chex quest next week
I’ve never played that one, but in college I dusted off my old Atari only to discover two of my housemates had huge collections of cartridges that we then pooled and spent a whole summer playing Atari. Between us, we had both Kool-Aid Man and Chase the Chuck Wagon, but no Chex Quest. We also spent an inordinate amount of time playing Atari Baseball, despite never figuring out how to make the outfielders move. If someone hit a ball out of the infield, you’d have to send the shortstop on an odyssey to retrieve it while all of the runners scored.
There may have been a 2600 Chex game, but Chex Quest was a mid 1990s PC game — it was a reskinned version of Doom.
Wasn’t there also a Burger King video game in the late 90’s where you played a creepy stalking Burger King?found it
That was so odd but interesting to watch. Never heard of it!
I replayed the first one recently for the first time in probably a decade, and what struck me was the remarkably sophisticated level design for a freeware tie-in “Doom” clone completed in such a rush. And whoever recorded the Flemoid sounds is a plain genius.The remake is pretty fun, too, but instead of shilling Chex cereal there were promo codes on bags of Chex Mix for unlockable multiplayer characters. The best part of it is they got someone to voice Fred Chexter — yes, the Chex Warrior has a name, and it is Fred Chexter — so he now spits out little quips a la Duke Nukem and it is a cheesy, glorious thing.
I was hoping for a deep dive into Candystand’s Bullpen Blast, where I never actually managed to throw a perfect game despite an absurd number of hours playing.
I wonder if she reads/edits her own Wikipedia page?
The Bob’s Burgers episode really needs a shout-out here.
It’s official. This website has gone to shit.
The targeted nature of the pooping suggests a personal vendetta. Why poop in front of that house every time?
I was also wondering how they knew she’d passed the sign 15 times in one day, and yet nobody managed to trail her, but perhaps there was a doorbell cam or something that recorded her.
No discussion of mad poopers is complete without a link to the tale of the Mad Shitter of Texas(s) Instruments:https://www.panix.com/~msaroff/shitter.shtml
My high school class took a trip to Toronto (stupid long story that has nothing to do with this) and aside from getting to see the Parliment building where RUSH had that iconic picture for their album Moving Pictures, we also visited a very, shall we say, interesting museum of arts and sciences. I remember nothing about the place, other than the display of fecal matter and what its’ various forms and colors meant. It was, in a word, eye-opening. Ever since I was 14 I now check my shit daily.
She left her shit on the sidewalk. Cities will DNA test and issue fines to the owner for dog poop.
So, send her ‘sample’ for a DNA test. Get the name and arrest her – very publicly.
Not questioning the awfulness of finance bros, but the fact that Finneran pleaded guilty and paid damages surely raises his standing to among the best of public poopers.
Now if it was a Pharma-bro doing the public pooping, I can see how things would then get even worse. In revenge, they’d probably raise the cost of aspirin to $10,000 a pill.
It didn’t sound like he had much of a choice. He got caught brown-handed…
“The Best of Public Poopers” was the name of my ska band in college.
Went down an Internet rabbit hole. So, apparently Gerard Finneran died less than 10 years later from early onset Alzheimer’s, which assumedly contributed to his outrageous behavior on that flight….
“1981’s Softporn Adventure was a text-only game that sold 25,000
copies for the Apple II at a time when there were only 100,000 Apple
IIs in existence (and the game was widely pirated on top of those paid
copies).”This is amazing.
There was also that strip poker game. Every kid I knew had a copy of that. CGA nudity!
There are a ton of interesting factoids around Softporn Adventure, like the fact that it was remade/parodied as the first Leisure Suit Larry game (which itself has been remade twice), or the uproar around the cover art, featuring King’s Quest mastermind Roberta Williams topless in a jacuzzi. (Based on oral histories of the rise and fall of Sierra, that actually seems pretty representative of the company culture at the time, with weekly drunken company parties at the Williamses’ home. I don’t know that anyone’s actually admitted that Sierra On-Line in the early 80s could give SNL a run for its money in terms of the amount of coke consumed, but it’s definitely been hinted.)
that public pooping was protected by the First Amendment and belonged in the same protected category as breastfeedingMy work has a room dedicated to breastfeeding. They should have rooms dedicated to pooping! Oh wait, they have those too.
Is that what those sinks near the floor are for? I thought those were dedicated swirly-stalls!
Many offices offer the same room for both purposes.
at least one officer suggested the Pooper likely suffered from a mental
health issue, and that “she’ll still be held accountable, but we would
want to get her help.”
This officer is surely long off the force. What menace to society wants to get people help?
The Mad Pooper is not exactly Professor Moriarty, but she did get away with it I guess. Maybe the cops just thought it was too trivial and/or gross to really investigate?I could imagine in The Wire a boss arguing that none of the department’s crime solving statistics related to public shitting, so they were not going to assign anyone to the case
Bunk and McNulty investigate the Mad Pooper:“Shit.”“Shit. Shit shit shit.”“Aw, shit…”“Shit?”“Shit!”etc, etc…
Bunny’s just gonna juke the pooping stats anyway
The Mad Pooper is not exactly Professor Moriarty, but she did get away with it I guess. Maybe the cops just thought it was too trivial and/or gross to really investigate?I could imagine in The Wire a boss arguing that none of the department’s crime solving statistics related to public shitting, so they were not going to assign anyone to the case
This should bridge the gap between today’s topic and next week’s topic:
And before everyone gets all up in arms, remember that this game is an advertisement for a long lost F. Scott Fitzgerald novel…
What a load of shit.
I’m not a mad pooper, just a disappointed pooper.
One time when I worked in a library branch, we had what we called The Phantom Pooper. Every Thursday night, they would come in to use our toilet. It was a mess to clean the next day since they only did close to closing. It was a weeks worth of shit in one go and smeared on the walls as well. After a couple of weeks we figured out it was this teen boy. We felt bad for him because for some reason he wouldn’t poop where he lived. It stopped when we put a lock on the door and patrons had to get the key from one of us.
“The Lincoln Pooper was caught on camera repeatedly pooping near a public swimming pool, both before and after hours, and was never identified.”Why not the Lincoln Logger?
I thought this was going to be about the rapper from Reel II Reels’ I Like To Move It, but I now realise that was a different person. Ironically, though, Brisbane Poo Jogger is the name of my current musical project.