Hi, and welcome to Serial Sisters, a podcast from my sister and I tell each other true crime stories. I'm Devanna. And I'm Kristen. And this week Kristen has a story for me.
So let's talk about Mark Wahlberg for a little bit. Oh fuck, okay. Okay. So all this came from Biography.com, TheGuardian.com, Today I Found Out.com, TheDailyBeasts.com, CBS News.com, NewYorkDailyNews.com, and Wikipedia.
Damn, a girl's got sources, okay. Yeah, I went into it. Mark Wahlberg was born June 5, 1971, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the youngest of nine children, who are Debbie, Michelle, Arthur, Paul, Jim, Tracy, Robert, and Donnie.
He was a bank clerk and his father was a delivery driver. His parents divorced in 1982 and his father would have more children with his next wife, who were Scott, Buddy, and Donna. He's like, fucking Catholics. There's just so many of them.
He's so many. Just keep popping them out. Uh-huh. So by age 13, he had developed an addiction to cocaine and he dropped out of school at age 14.
Oh, man. New Kids on the Block was formed by Maurice Starr, who auditioned 500 Boys for the Band. The first member selected was Donnie Wahlberg, and he convinced Maurice to also add his 13-year-old brother Mark to the band. Mark quit the band before they became famous, though.
Mark joined a gang and he was in trouble with the police affair amount. On June 15, 1986, when he was 15, a group of black kids were walking home when Mark and two of his friends began following them on their bikes, telling them that they didn't want N-words in the area. They began throwing rocks at them while shouting racial epithets. Yeah, super classy.
The next day, he and some of his friends followed a mostly black group of fourth graders who were taking a field trip to the beach. Children, tiny kids. Oh, God, little babies. Mark and his friends again started throwing rocks and yelling slurs at the group.
Two girls were hit in the head with rocks. Oh, my gosh, that's fucking terrible. They're going to the beach? Yeah, with their school.
Yeah, fucking assholes. In August, a civil case was brought against him and Mark and his two friends received civil rights and junctions and were told that they would be sent to jail if they committed another hate crime. On April 8, 1988, when he was 16, Mark was trying to steal some beer when he came across a Vietnamese man named Tan Lam, I think. Could be wrong.
Mark had a large stick about five feet long and he called him Lam a Vietnam fucking shit and hit him over the head hard enough to break the stick in two. What the fuck? He ran away from the scene and came across another Vietnamese man named Hoa Tran, I think. He put his arm around Tran's shoulder and told him the police were coming in to hide him.
So after the cops had driven past, Mark punched Tran in the eye. So it was said for years that he had hit him hard enough to blind him, but Tran later said that he had actually lost sight in his left eye due to a grenade in the Vietnam War. Oh, fuck. That's even worse though.
Yeah. Vietnam War veteran. Oh God. When the cops arrested him, they took him to the scene of the crime and Mark said something along the lines of, you don't have to let him identify me.
I'll tell you now, that's the mother fucker whose head I slid open. Oh my God. Uh-huh. After he was right, he made a bunch of unsolicited racial remarks about gooks.
Because it's just fucking classy. That's very, very classy. Mark was initially charged with attempted murder, but he pled guilty to felony assault. The maximum sentence was ten years, but he was only sentenced to two.
However, he only served 45 days of the sentence before he was released. What the fuck? He says that it's time in prison because it was so long, inspired him to turn his life around. No, she found Jesus.
Yeah, okay. So here's a quote. As soon as I began that life of crime, there was always a voice in my head telling me I was going to end up in jail. Three of my brothers had done time.
My sister went to prison so many times I lost count. Finally, I was there, locked up with the kind of guys I'd always wanted to be like. Now I'd earned my stripes and I was just like them and I realized it wasn't what I wanted at all. I'd ended up in the worst place I could possibly imagine and I never wanted to go back.
So, you know, thank God, he only served 45 days. Yeah. I'm so glad you didn't just like turn yourself around that clip. In 1990, he started the group, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch with his brother Donnie's support, which Buck Mark Walberg, but I'm not going to lie, I do kind of like good vibrations.
Oh God, he doesn't. It's a fun song. I can't help it. He was also a model for Calvin Klein.
He posed by himself for a lot of the shots, but he also posed with a topless Kate Moss, who later said that she really hated working with him. She told Vanity Fair that she hated having to press her naked breasts against him, that he was unpleasant about her slender figure, and that she lay in bed for the next two weeks feeling like she was going to die. Oh my God. He said he didn't remember having any issues with Kate and that they've exchanged pleasant trees when they run into each other.
In August 1992, when he was 21, a friend of his held a man named Robert Crayhan on the ground while Mark kicked the shit out of him. Crayhan ended up with a broken jaw and a decreased learning ability. Oh my God. Fuck it, dude.
Just stop the track record motherfucker. I know. In December 1992, while performing on the British TV show The Word, Walberg praised Shaba ranks who had stated gays should be crucified. What the fuck?
I did not know that. The lesbian alliance against defamation condemned him and they berated Calvin Klein for using him to promote their products, which again, nothing really happened though. Of course, yeah, never does. Mark was originally scheduled to be on the hijacked United 93 flight on September 11, 2001, but he had canceled his ticket the night before because of a change in plans.
He later said, quote, if I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn't have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, okay, we're going to land somewhere safely. Don't worry. Oh my God, I cannot even deal with that right now.
So obviously this pissed off a lot of people, especially the family of those who had died on that flight. Especially because people who were on that flight had almost taken control of the plane back when it crashed. The official report states that the time of impact of the passengers were just seconds from taking complete control. Yeah.
So yeah, sure, he would have been the one to stop it. Exactly. Yeah. Fuck and just come in on your white night asshole.
He did later issue a public apology for his statements, but you know, maybe it'll be a dick in the first place. Right. Maybe you don't have your public system right that statement to begin with. We know you're not sorry.
Mm-hmm. In November 2014, he applied for a pardon for his convictions. He was worried that his record would make it difficult for him to expand his family's chain of restaurants, Walbergers, into California. He also wanted to be erased because he does charity work now.
Oh, okay. Yeah. When he applied for the pardon, he said he was deeply sorry for what he had done and that he had apologized for it many times. Although at that point, he still hadn't reached out to apologize directly to any of the victims.
Oh my God. Yeah. Mm-hmm. There was naturally a lot of backlash against his application.
Mm-hmm. Kristen Atwood was one of the children who was hit in the head with a rock at the beach when she was in fourth grade. She still has a scar from it. Oh my God.
She said that he doesn't deserve to be pardoned. Quote, I don't really care who he is. It doesn't make him any exception. If you're a racist, you're always going to be a racist.
And for him to want to erase it, I think it's just wrong. Fuck yeah. Mm-hmm. Judith Beals, who had been the prosecutor in some of the cases, argued that Walberg has never really acknowledged the racial nature of his crimes and that a pardon would undermine Walberg's charity work, saying a formal public pardon would highlight all too clearly that if you were white and a movie star, a different standard applies.
Is that really what Walberg wants? Yeah. Fuck yeah, man. Uh-huh.
The man who Mark punched in the face, who is called Johnny Tran instead of Hoa Tran in the article, the newer one, says that he forgives him. He said, quote, he did hurt me, but my left eye was already gone. He was not responsible for that. He was young and reckless, but I forgive him now.
Everyone deserves another chance. He paid for his crime when he went to prison. I'm not saying that it did not hurt when he punched me in the face, but it was a long time ago. Which- I'm just not that big of a person.
That and he barely went to prison. Yeah. It was 45 days. Not even two months.
No, I don't know. I think I would hold that grudge until I fucking die. Me too. In 2016, the pardon board reached out to Mark to ask if he wanted to continue to keep the petition open and he decided not to answer and let it close, saying that he regretted his decision to try and obtain a pardon.
It's not like his background affected him anyway. More workers are in California. He was able to expand their franchise without any issues, so no consequences continuously. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. No.
No. No. No. Oh.
No. No. No. No.
No. God. Oh. Jesus fucking Christ.
Yup. And isn't exhibited on him? He is an executive producer. okay.
Yeah, that's what I thought. Fuck him. I just, yeah. As soon as he said Mark.
I was like I think I know what this is about, but I still, that's just like it's a Stan named to me that he just gets out of all of it. Oh yeah, I know. Anytime Mike's like wanting to watch Mark Wallburg. I'm like he's such a dick.
Why? Yeah! Michael would be like, well you just know too much about pop culture. You can't enjoy anything.
It's not pop culture. It's fuck him. Yeah. Ugh, yeah.
No, fuck Mark Wahlberg, you're in the face. I agree. I used to be able to shoot through fucking rocks at fourth graders. I know.
They're what, nine, ten? Yeah. Like, you can't tell me that you thought those were Fulgrine adults, they're goddamn children. With their teacher, it was a group class trip.
Yeah. Oh, no, no. Yeah. And him.
Yeah. I read one of the interviews that I read was somebody pointed out to him that, you know, he was coming up now. He never would have made it because people are a little bit more sensitive to shit like that. He was like, well, everybody deserves a second chance.
It's like, yeah, it'd be great to some extent, but he's had so many chances and continues to do the same shit. Well, it's like you deserve a second chance, but you also have to pay the consequences for your actions, which you clearly didn't do. Uh-huh. And you have to be remorseful, which you clearly are not.
He's never acknowledged that there was a racial element to it. Exactly. So no, you don't deserve a second chance. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Oh, my gosh. We have good vibrations. I do like that song.
I love it. Thanks for listening. You can email us at serialsisters at outlook.com or follow us on Instagram and Twitter at serialsisters. Bye.