American Vandal

All right, all set.

Okay, you ready?

Yeah.

So, do you mind walking us through what happened on November 6th?

Um, yeah, it was...

I actually remember, it was a really nice day.

It had been rainy and cold all week.

I didn't know was going to be so much warmer,

so I wore tights.

I really wish I hadn't.

It was really just a normal day.

I don't know how else to describe it.

I started the day on traffic duty.

Mrs. Worthy tried to drop Brian off in the bus lane again,

but other than that,

there was nothing out of the ordinary.

Then in second period, there was a scheduled fire drill.

We do those, like, twice a year, so I didn't really think anything of it.

I got to miss a math test, so I was pretty happy about that.

I had first lunch that day.

I got there earlier than usual 'cause it was Chicken Finger Monday.

Chicken Finger Monday.

Those things are damn good.

Chicken fingers are very popular.

They're actually pretty solid chicken fingers.

They're not restaurant quality, but they're better than what you'd think.

I had a salad that day.

I think, a cookie and lemonade.

I had the chicken fingers for lunch with potatoes and lemonade.

Chicken fingers, chips, lemonade...

- Spaghetti and lemonade... - Pasta, lemonade...

A cookie, a lemonade...

- I got the spaghetti and lemonade. - Lemonade.

- ...and lemonade. - Pasta, lemonade.

- ...and lemonade. - Lemonade.

- Lemonade. - I had the lemonade.

So I was talking to Noah McCusker about something and...

and he just stops.

Mid-sentence.

I'll never forget the look on his face.

It was like time stopped for a second.

A couple of students just started rushing away

and I didn't even know it was going on.

It took me a minute to process.

It didn't really hit me right away.

And then it really hit me.

I had to shit.

And I looked around me and everyone else had to shit too.

All of a sudden, kids aren't making it into the bathroom,

because our our bathrooms weren't designed for that many people.

It was just a race to the closest toilet.

So I was already in the stalls.

Immediately after, people just started, like,

swarming in.

I couldn't even get out.

It wasn't a line to the bathroom.

Seriously! Hurry up! Are you done yet?

It was a pile.

I realized there was no way I was gonna make it to the bathroom,

so I grabbed a trash can.

People were just trying to find a place where they could put their shit.

I was desperate.

I just pooped on the floor.

People were shitting in urinals and sinks. It was crazy.

I've been at St. Bernardine for a long time.

I can tell you,

this was the worst thing I've seen at this school in 20 years.

9-1-1, what's your emergency?

I'm calling from St. Bernardine Catholic.

- Yes, ma'am? - Our students... I don't know how to say.

They're all sick, they're all... They're all pooping.

It happened around lunchtime.

It was just a few students and then all of them started running...

I wanted to die.

We had no choice.

I mean, most of us just shit our pants right in front of everyone.

I realized right away

this wasn't the work of spoiled fish sticks.

This was an attack.

Before it was all over, it had a name.

"The Brownout."

The Brownout was the worst day of my life.

Mrs. Wexler, the Dean of Students, canceled all remaining classes.

- Oh, my God. - So after lunch,

they call school off for the whole rest of the day.

My parents came to pick me up,

I go home,

I take a long shower,

and I look at my phone and I see this notification.

I got tagged in a video by the Turd Burglar.

The Turd Burglar...

I got tagged in a video.

I didn't know who it was,

but he knew just about everybody that shit themselves that day.

He was taunting us with his captions.

"Milk, milk, lemonade, around the corner...

poo emoji is made."

At this point it's clear

it wasn't an accident, because someone's claiming credit.

Honestly I didn't know a single person

who wasn't following the Turd Burglar after that.

He got, like, 800 followers in one day.

There was no name, no face.

Just a bunch of pictures of poop and the Brownout.

A bunch of us tried to message him, but he never DM'd

or followed anyone back.

He posted a picture of the lemonade dispenser.

What caught my eye right away was this card,

@theturdburglar,

and right away I thought, "Here we go."

We got something really serious going on.

This guy wanted an audience.

For the next two weeks, all anybody could talk about was...

"Who is the Turd Burglar?"

In April of 2016,

Sam Ecklund and I began shooting American Vandal,

in hopes of getting Hanover High School's school board

to reexamine the case of Dylan Maxwell,

a high school senior accused of drawing dicks,

a crime he didn't commit.

And it worked.

But we never anticipated the reaction from the rest of the world.

Vimeo made it a Staff Pick, and before we knew it,

it got hundreds of thousands of views.

And then,

we got an email.

At first, I thought it was Sam messing with me,

but it was real

and it was from Netflix.

Netflix allowed us to reach a wider audience

and to add some additional production value,

like drone shots, an original score, opening credits,

and 3D graphics.

It brought new life to our documentary,

even though many the fans thought the changes robbed it

of some of the Vimeo version's original charm.

Since season one was released on Netflix,

the response has been incredible.

Please welcome Peter Maldonado and Sam Ecklund.

It put us on the national stage in a way we could have never anticipated.

The biggestquestion facing this country right now...

who drew the dicks?

I'm telling you all this for context.

Because with all this attention came a lot of pressure,

and a lot of opinions on what kind of a case to take on next.

There was a staggering number of people

who contacted us about their schools' dick-drawing controversies.

For example,

someone burnt a dick into the 50-yard line of their school's football field.

I'm not sure if it was weed killer or, you know, lighter fluid,

but we had to re-sod the whole field.

Then there was a spray-painting vagina vandal in Texas,

a serial pool-pisser in a high school in Wisconsin,

a Navy pilot who drew a dick in the sky,

and a real murder,

that for some reason someone thought Sam and I should figure out.

But with the exception of that murder,

nothing seemed worth a deeper investigation,

until I was contacted by Chloe Lyman.

Hi, Peter.

My name is Chloe Lyman and I'm a junior at St. Bernardine Catholic.

I'm contacting you today because we have a vandal.

He goes by the name "The Turd Burglar."

This one really grabbed me.

The Hanover High dicks were a financial headache for some teachers,

but what happened at St. Bernardine was a different animal.

The Turd Burglar, an anonymous digital entity,

was waging psychological warfare on the students and teachers

of one of the most affluent high schools in the country.

A school whose alumni donors include two billionaires and a senator.

A school with a nationally ranked basketball program.

A school that, according to Chloe Lyman,

cared about its reputation above all else.

Because, I'm telling you, this school has secrets,

secrets that go all the way up to the top.

So after giving a presentation to our teachers at Hanover High,

Sam and I were approved to make the Turd Burglar investigation

our senior project.

In December of 2017,

we headed up to Bellevue, Washington

with a small crew and brand new equipment.

Chloe's parents let Sam and I stay at their house.

Hi.

- Oh my God, hi. - Hey.

- Thanks for letting us stay. - Nice to meet you.

She seemed to know a lot about the mystery surrounding the Turd Burglar,

so I thought it was a good idea to stay with her.

Also, her house is sick.

Don't drop it.

Twelve hundred miles north of Oceanside,

we found ourselves in a completely new world,

at the scene of the crime:

St. Bernardine Catholic High School.

This is beautiful.

This is the east gym.

You guys really aren't messing around when it comes to basketball, are you?

Kind of a lot.

St. Bernardine is a school with great pride,

so it's no wonder the Turd Burglar

was able to terrorize the entire community.