Greg_S_H
Senior HTF Member
FBI ARRESTS SUSPECTED "PUSH BUTT" VANDAL
25 year investigation ends with arrest of retired trucker Bakersfield, Ca.
FBI agents surrounded a dilapidated Trailor in a remote area of the Mojave desert Tuesday, and, after a tense standoff, arrested Monte Wilkes, the man they believe to be the "Push Butt Vandal". Wilkes arrest apparently marks the end of a 25 year, 267 million dollar investigation which has baffled authorities from the start.
Defaced Dryer
"We started getting reports of the defacement of hand dryers early in 1975", said FBI agent Gene Valero, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "At first, it just involved the scraping off of the letters "O" and "N" from the word "Button" on the standard step 1 instruction line, "Push Button".Initially, it seemed an innocent prank, but as reports of the defacement increased in number, they also increased in intensity. Soon the step number 2 line, which states "Rub hands gently under warm air" was altered to read "Rub hands under arm".
And when the step 3 line, "Stops automatically," began to be scratched randomly and incoherently, with no linear concern for the joke, we knew we had a madman on our hands. A major break in the case came in the mid 80's when the phrase "Wipe hands on pants" began to appear after the random scratching on step 3. "This was the first solid piece of handwriting we could analyze", said Valero. "One of our profiles put forth the theory that this was the work of an organized group of vandals. We even considered for a time that this could be copy-cat defacement run amok. However, when we got the handwriting sample, we immediately knew this was the work of a lone maniac. I mean, "wipe hands on pants"? Why would you need to do that if you already rubbed your hands under your arm?" Federal agents, working together with the Sani-Aire Corporation, put video cameras in every hand dryer manufactured after 1985, but the "Push Butt Vandal" remained active and at large.
"We had 2000 agents monitoring 4 screens each in 8 hour shifts 24 hours a day. We traced the path of his rampage on a large map with different colored push-pins. Then we got a larger map with plastic inserts that lit up like the old "Lite-Brite" game, and yet, he still eluded us. Thats when we decided to change the course of the investigation." FBI psychiatrists, working closely with Sani-Aire officials, launched the new strategy in the early 90's with the introduction of the "No-Touch Sani-Aire Deluxe model 2A", which turned on and off with the aid of an electric eye. But it was the "Sani-Aire Economy Deluxe model 1C" which led to Wilkes' arrest.
Detail of Defaced Dryer
"We decided to change the step 1 instructions from "Push Button" to "Push Knob"" said a Sani-Aire official. "We had no idea that it would lead to the "Push Butt Manifesto". In June of '97 the New York Times, New Improved News, and several major news magazines recieved, in plain brown envelopes with no return address, the essay that came to be known as "The Push Butt Manifesto".
New Improved News made the controversial decision to print it. Beginning with the now famous phrase, "You don't push a knob. you push a button. You TURN A KNOB'', the rambling 44 word document gave the "Push Butt Vandal Task Force" just the information it needed to track down the perpetrator. "There were a few phrases that gave us the distinct impression that this man considered himself a poet" said Valero. "Most notably "limp witted" and "butchered verbiage". And because the vandalism was so widespread, and much of it occurred in truck stops, we had long suspected that he could be a trucker.
We just put 2 and 2 together, and started searching through archives of trucker poetry in major trucking magazines." FBI poetry experts spent the next 2 years inputting every published piece of trucker poetry they could find into "BIG SPOOK", the FBI's powerhouse mainframe computer. Using "The Push Butt Manifesto", and the phrase "wipe hands on pants" as a stylistic model, they eventually found a poem by Wilkes in "American Trucker" magazine which bore some striking similarities.
The FBI then contacted Bill Davis, the poetry editor for "American Trucker", and asked if they had any unpublished Wilkes. "Those Fed's jaws dropped like a bad transmission when I brought out the Wilkes file", said Davis. "Yeah, ol' Monte's been sending us poetry for 35, 40 years. His work is, well... let's just say it's not up to our usual standards.
He did write about them hand dryers quite a bit, but we never thought he was The "Push Butt Vandal". You see, the "Push Butt Vandal" is something of a folk hero to us truckers, and Wilkes' work,...well... it's just so... pedestrian." Handwriting and style analysis provided enough evidence for the FBI to order Wilkes' immediate arrest. Federal agents and Sani-Aire investigators continue to search Wilkes' trailor for scratching implements with telltale hand dryer filings.
If you're a guy, you know exactly what this is all about. Do people do the same to the dryers in women's bathrooms? Hmm.
http://www.trucksongs.com/News.htm
