Soon, their rocket belt started turning up everywhere, from Lost In Space episodes to the James Bond film Thunderball. It had captured the public imagination. There was absolutely no way of stopping the rocket belt's momentum at this point. The only conceivable thing that could halt such a force of nature would have to be a heart attack or something.

Together, Tyler and Suitor continued the tradition of bringing a jet pack to a place, flying a jet pack at that place, collecting a paycheck, swimming in jet pack groupie ass, and rolling on to the next town. The jet pack heyday climaxed at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. During the opening ceremonies, Suitor would enrapture not just the 90,000 people in attendance, but also the millions watching on TV, all by completing a successful 17-second ride. The planet went apeshit. Jet packs had finally arrived, human flight was here, and the world would never be the same again.

Except it turned out that the world would stay the exact same. Jet packs are quite expensive and hard to make, and piloting one requires a perfect blend of technical skill with a complete disrespect for both gravity and your own well-being (there were no parachutes for these guys).

Tyler's jet pack eventually fell into the hands of Hollywood stuntman Kinnie Gibson (stunt work is arguably the only job in the entire world where a jet pack can just come into your life and it's not that bizarre). Gibson was dead set on continuing the device's storied legacy of getting people to pay him a boatload of money to maybe die in front of them.

After a while, Gibson enlisted the help of an old friend named Brad Barker, whose personality by all accounts could be best described as "Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, only moreso." Here is where things take a turn for the stupid. I should note that many of the ludicrous/gruesome details you're about to read come from The Rocketbelt Caper, Paul Brown's incredible book on the story. Buckle up.

Gibson knew him from when they both lived in Houston. While Gibson had left home to become a stuntman, Barker stayed behind to have kids and a family. And like all maniacs, this life of stability and unconditional love just made him more antsy. Sure, he had tasted everyone else's version of it, but he hungered for the real American dream: jet pack ownership.

Barker joined Gibson in their bootleg propulsion lab and got to work. Things actually went pretty well for a while. They got the jet pack up and running, and Gibson even scored a contract to go on tour with Michael Jackson, making a ton of money in the process. But their fame caught the attention of a third guy they knew from back home, who had money and was also obsessed with jet packs. His name was Larry Stanley, and he knew Barker from a failed smuggling venture (itself a long and stupid story). After seeing Gibson flying on television one night, Stanley just couldn't sit around with his money and good life back home. He too decided he needed a jet pack.

With Gibson away doing stunt work in the Philippines, Stanley broke into his storage facility and jacked a bunch of their rocket belt equipment. When Barker learned about the heist, he did what anybody would do in this situation: He called up a friend who had a black belt in karate and rolled out, ready to kick someone in the head to get a jet pack back.

When they arrived at Stanley's property, they found Stanley's own henchmen, an former Navy SEAL, waiting for them. Now you've got your classic standoff: a contracted black belt, but definitely that Florida strip mall studio-style white guy with a mustache and a tight ponytail, facing off with a former SEAL, who probably looked exactly the same as him.

In this round of redneck Mortal Kombat, the karate master prevailed, dropping the SEAL and allowing Barker to move in for interrogations. Barker proceeded to beat the SEAL's legs with a bat, hollering questions about the equipment's whereabouts until Stanley showed up and agreed to give it back. This incident would go down as probably the tenth-dumbest thing to occur in the course of this story.

The two quickly got into a fistfight, tossing each other around like it was a superhero fight, crashing through walls and shit. Eventually Barker had to be taken to the emergency room, which gave him just enough time to calm down, regroup, and return to the shop to restart the fight. This time, Barker decided to get a little zesty and grabbed a hammer, his left arm still in a goddamned sling from that morning's bout.

He tonked Stanley over the back of the head with the hammer while a friend of Stanley's tried to intervene. Barker, in a frenzy of jet pack rage, kept swinging and managed to connect a few more hammer shots, one of them severing one of Stanley's fingers at the knuckle. Eventually, Brad put down the hammer and returned to the back office. But because this was the real-life version of the alley fight from They Live, Stanley marched back for a little more and the men began to go at it again. Mercifully, the cops finally showed up and put them in jail for several hours.

We're sad to say that their friendship would never fully recover from this dispute.

Joe Wright, really just a poor car stereo store owner who was caught in the middle of a bad situation, then fell out with Barker (it kind of seems like everyone eventually falls out with Barker). Stanley saw that as his way in. He promised to take Wright out of his civil suit and help out with some money problems if he agreed to help track down Pretty Bird. Though he was terrified of crossing Barker, Wright had no choice but to say yes.

A few days later, on July 19, 1998, Wright was found dead in his home. He'd been beaten to death with a blunt object.

Naturally, the first suspect who came to mind was Barker, and he was arrested immediately. He was turned loose after three days of interrogation. Ultimately, police couldn't verify his alibi or connect him with the crime (the assailant had carefully cleaned up the evidence). There were some other suspects, like a bookie Wright owed money to and an unsavory drug dealer. Stanley totally believed it was Barker, and promised Wright's family that he would do something about it.

Barker was released from jail, and in what had to have seemed like a bit of good fortune, he then got a phone call asking him to head to the California desert for a few days of stunt work. Not being a stuntman or in any way qualified for such an odd, out of the blue offer, Barker of course signed up immediately. He landed in Los Angeles and met up with a few shady "stunt guys," who instead instantly interrogated him about the rocket belt.

As usual, Barker didn't say a word. So they pulled out a gun, handcuffed him, blindfolded him, and threw him into a tiny wooden box which they proceeded to screw shut. They transported said box to an apartment somewhere in Hollywood. From then on, Barker was only brought out of his coffin to be beaten and interrogated about the jet pack. And still he didn't break.

After about a week of this (during which he lost nearly 30 pounds), Barker was informed that they were bringing an honest-to-god, bona fide notary over, and that she was going to sit down across from this kidnapped, tortured man and have him sign away the jet pack rights. And you know what? They did exactly that. Barker signed. The notary got up to leave and handed the papers over to a man in the corner. Unsurprisingly, it was Larry Stanley.

He took his new, completely useless papers and put Barker back in the box. Panicked and terrified, Barker believed he was a dead man if he couldn't get out. Later that night, Barker found a way out of his handcuffs and escaped the box and apartment before trucking into the Hollywood night.

After belatedly coming to the realization that being in jail for life isn't super cool (since there are no jet packs in jail), Stanley admitted his guilt and the DA and judge threw out some of the charges, reducing his sentence to eight years. (Barker claims he generously reached out to the DA to plea on behalf of his kidnapper. It's unknown if this had any effect.)

Barker, meanwhile, would move from place to place, evading court appearances before inevitably ending up before a judge again, where he would continue to insist he had no idea where the jet pack was. This was 2004, five years after the kidnapping incident and nine goddamned years after Stanley sued for the rights to Pretty Bird. The judge threw him in jail on contempt charges, saying the sentence would be extended indefinitely if Barker refused to turn the jet pack over. He, of course, chose indefinite jail over surrendering Pretty Bird. After six months, the judge just gave up and let him go.

And that was that. Larry Stanley has since been released from jail. The murder of Joe Wright remains unsolved. Kinnie Gibson died in 2015, from cancer, of all things. Bill Suitor is most likely still up to his eyeballs in carnival tail. The whole affair got turned into a little-seen movie starring Paul Giamatti.

And Pretty Bird was never seen publicly again. If someone ever stumbles across it, we'll probably know only from the sheer mayhem that ensues.

Note: Seriously, read The Rocketbelt Caper by Paul Brown. t contains far more details and twists than we could include here, including many quotes from the actual people involved.

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