The evening of Sept. 30, 1994, was like some other for a bunch of associates in Gurnee. It was a Friday. “Family Matters” was on ABC. Just a couple of months earlier than, O.J. Simpson’s notorious Bronco trip had gripped the nation.
But when the solar rose on the following day, the Midwest was gripped by one other main information story that they had a hand in: The abduction of Tiny the Spider, Six Flags’ big inflatable Halloween mascot.
“It was on every single radio station; every single newspaper,” Bill Walther stated.
As Saturday’s opening of Six Flags Great America’s fiftieth season approached, Walther recalled the evening greater than 30 years in the past that made him and his associates native legends, in addition to everlasting exiles from the widespread theme park.
The evening started like many others for a bunch of associates in a small city in the Nineties. They have been at somebody’s home, bored and hungry.
“You can’t really pilfer through their mom’s cupboards too much; all the food is gone,” Walther recalled.
It was determined they might cruise to White Castle for a chunk. The climate was advantageous, he recalled, as he and Lawrence “Jeff” Evitts rode in Mikey Bartels’ pickup truck on a route that took them previous the bottom of Six Flags.
Starting in 1991, Tiny the Spider — measured at 40 toes throughout, and weighing 200 kilos — was put in on the west aspect of the American Eagle rollercoaster each October for the annual Fright Fest.
Walther couldn’t keep in mind who stated it first, however as he and his buddies have been driving by Tiny, they acquired an thought.
“We would do scavenger hunts,” Walther stated. “And all through high school, people had looked at that big spider on the side and been like, ‘Man, that would be cool. That’d be the ultimate scavenger hunt prize.’”
Walther, describing his childhood, didn’t think about himself an extreme rabble-rouser. He wasn’t stealing cease indicators and enjoying “mailbox baseball or any of that kind of stuff.” But he and his associates would make their very own enjoyable doing what he known as “painless things.”
He recalled typically blocking vehicles in at the highschool car parking zone by transferring round parking stops, and one other time all of them picked up a buddy’s automobile and turned it sideways.
The spider caper, nevertheless, could be a bit extra severe.
The American Eagle trip is an enormous picket rollercoaster. The monitor is held up 127 toes in the air by a lattice of picket beams painted white. As Walther recalls it, the spider’s prime legs have been close to the prime of the coaster, and the backside was nonetheless seen above the bushes alongside the freeway, which means it might’ve been 100 toes up.
But Walther, six toes tall and a soccer participant, was good with heights and recalled scaling the scaffolding simply. Years later, he would transfer to Arizona, the place he would go mountaineering, bouldering, ziplining, skydiving and parasailing.
“I’m not an adrenaline junkie,” Walther stated. “Heights just don’t really spook me.”
Walther and Evitts climbed — Bartel was content material to stay with the truck — and unplugged the air compressor retaining the spider inflated. Then, they merely climbed again down and drove to White Castle.
It was solely on the drive again on the freeway, after they noticed the spider utterly flat, that Walther acquired the thought to take the prank a bit additional by taking Tiny. With their profitable sabotage, there would seemingly be extra safety in the future, which means a future try could be far tougher.
“I was like, ‘Hey man, if there was any time to take it, it’d be now, right?’” Walther stated. “This is, you know, brilliant logic.”
Actually getting the spider down was a unique matter. Climbing up once more, they discovered every leg tied down with eight straps.
“We had to go to each and every leg and untie those straps while we’re holding on to the side of a rollercoaster with no safety equipment or gears or nothing,” Walther stated.
Finally, hours later, the spider was lastly down. Next got here a sequence hyperlink fence, seemingly “meant to keep yahoos like us from attempting something stupid.”
They ended up pushing Tiny beneath. By this level, the spider was already waterlogged after a dip in the water when it dropped, and the morning dew wasn’t serving to as they dragged it up a hill. By the time they lastly lugged it into the again of the pickup truck, the three associates have been exhausted, he stated.
Despite the prolonged operation, that they had remained “invisible,” even with semis rolling by on the freeway.
What to do subsequent was trickier. Should they cruise to Antioch’s soccer area and dump it there, or take it to certainly one of their dorms? They ended up driving round, unsure, earlier than deciding they might determine it out later, leaving their treasure at Evitt’s home.
What adopted was a media maelstrom.
“It was the talk of the town,” Walther recalled. “My mom was a hairstylist. Every single person who sat in her chair was talking about this caper.”
On the radio, individuals would name in, alternating between calling for the Tiny-takers’ heads and waving it off as a innocent youthful prank. A Crime Stoppers award for any info went out. For days, Tiny remained in Evitt’s storage, with the trio deciding they might transfer it the following weekend.
But that was not quickly sufficient.
“I got a feeling somebody called and gave a tip,” Walther stated.
As the official story goes, the storage door had been left open, and somebody driving by noticed Tiny and reported it. Walther nonetheless doesn’t purchase it.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me, because if I looked into somebody’s garage and saw some black stuff, it just looks like garbage bags,” he stated. “I’m not going to call and say, ‘Hey, there’s the inflatable spider in so-and-so’s garage.”
After the alleged tip, Evitts known as Walther and Bartels, and the three determined to show themselves in.
While the police have been understanding, Walther ended up spending the evening in jail.
“My mom was always like, ‘If you get in trouble, don’t you call me,’” Walther recalled with a smile. “That was her way of, I don’t know, trying to keep me from doing stupid things.”
What stood out to him about that evening was the sandwiches: pimento olive bologna, which dampened his spirits.
“This is the worst meal I’ve ever had, and these 24 hours sitting in the cell are the longest time of my whole life,” he recalled.
Local radio had the identical cut up of callers, alternating between advocating for throwing the e book at the group and sentiments like “They’re just kids.”
The problem was, in response to Chicago Tribune reporting at the time, the vinyl-and-nylon spider was valued at greater than $15,000, making it a felony theft. And after they pushed Tiny underneath the fence, it acquired torn, making it felony legal injury, past extra trespassing expenses.
The felonies have been in the end dropped, and Walther stated they have been hit with fines and 200 hours of neighborhood service per individual. Six Flags Great America, for its half, banned them from the park for all times.
“I joke with my son, ‘I could take you back home to the amusement park, but I’ve just got to sit in the parking lot while you go in.’” Walther stated. “I’m sure they have an old photograph of me, aged, that all the security guards are keeping a lookout.”
The theft made the trio native legends, and to this present day, Walther stated he runs into individuals who keep in mind the story. He’s shared it quite a few instances over the years.
“They don’t even have to be from Illinois,” Walther stated. “They’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I remember that.’ And then when they find out that I’m the guy, sitting there with them, they have to go through the story.”
Thirty years later, Walther has had a profitable profession, untainted by the story of his youthful misadventure. His son has heard and requested the story loads of instances. But it’s one he doesn’t suppose could be potential in the trendy period of know-how and surveillance.
“I feel like he’s missing out on some youth,” Walther stated. “This generation is missing out on some youth and getting into some misadventures.”
But additionally with age comes reflection. Today, he’s “longer in the tooth,” and understands how harmful the stunt was, and the way terrible he would have felt if he had influenced others into doing “something stupid.”
While he clearly enjoys telling the story, he stated sharing it along with his son requires some warning labels.
“There’s the practicality and the maturity behind it,” Walther stated. “It’s important to be aware of, and to communicate when you are telling the story, to try and instill in our kids that, yeah, you are going to do some stupid things, but you need to slow down and think about what the repercussions could be.”
Tiny is now not perched on the American Eagle trip, though that’s unrelated to the heist. In 2012, it confronted “health troubles,” as a earlier report described it, and was later discovered “deflated and unresponsive.” The park even held a funeral.
But she turned out to be fabricated from sterner stuff — what’s dying to an enormous inflatable spider? — and returned the following season. Today, Tiny is often displayed on floor degree elsewhere in the park throughout Fright Fest, presumably underneath the watchful eyes of safety cameras.
