Confessions of a Pathological Prankster

Confessions of a Pathological Prankster

By Jason Osmond

They were called many things: “The Three Pranksters,” “The Tennessee Tricksters,” “The Joker Squad,” as well as many other more notorious titles such as “The Devil’s Trio,” or “The Shenanigan Boys,” but according to Peter Rags himself, there was no official title for the secret company of mischief doers.

“Jack would sometimes call us ‘the Jesters Three,’ but thankfully that name never stuck,” said Mr. Rags during our first official interview at the Tennessee State Penitentiary.

When I first met with Peter, he was reluctant to tell his story. But after a few visits, and a little coercion on my part, he agreed to “give it to me straight.” You would think that after twenty-nine years in prison, he would be anxious to tell his tale, but he wasn’t, not at first anyway. But after a few visits, he came around. And I was excited to learn that he did in fact have much to tell, and during the course of our short time together, I dare say we became good friends.

I interviewed many other people for my book—most of them prank victims not contained in this article—but Peter was the most insightful, and by far my favorite source. And since the whereabouts of the other two members of the group have been unknown for thirty years, Mr. Rags was the only one who could provide me with an unvarnished, first-hand account of the events that led to his imprisonment, and for that I was grateful.

All of the interviews with Peter were conducted in the prison’s visitor center. I’d bring old newspaper clippings, copies of public police records, and any other documents /videos I had that were related to their pranks. When I told Peter that I was writing a book about it all, he seemed fine with it as long as I got the facts right—“And the first, and most important fact you should know,” he said, with a finger pointed in my face, “is that we didn’t mean to make that poor girl’s head explode, honestly, that wasn’t the plan. Samantha was a nice girl, sweet, maybe a little stuck up, but with a good D-cup reason to be. But we didn’t mean to harm her.”

I had to laugh. If only every person I interviewed started their story with a bit like that. From that moment on, I was hooked, and because I loved the man’s voice so much, I included much of my unedited dialogue with Peter, transcribed directly from my recorder into this article.

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It was April 1st 2015 the day it all started, and school had just let out for the summer. It was earlier than was expected due to a teacher’s strike in Nashville, but neither Jack, nor Peter, were doing any complaining. It was the end of their senior year at Franklin High, and in a few months they’d be moving out of their parent’s homes, and onto the campus of the Tennessee Technical University. “In retrospect, I find it a bit ironic that it was April Fool’s Day,” said Peter. “Of all the days in the year, it had to be that one.”

Peter Rags is the only son of an ex-rock/country star that had made a name for himself in the Nashville studio scene. Some of his fondest memories were touring around with his father as a young boy, and helping backstage with the video/audio equipment. “I learned a lot about the technical side of show business,” said Peter, “which is exactly why Jack had me doing all the filming during the Pranks. He (Jack) handled all of the neuroscience, and controls, and Jimmy did all the smooth talking.”

On record, Jack Holiday was a lazy underachiever who had a tentative inclination for electrical engineering. But according to Peter, Jack was something of genius. “The guy was smarter than most of those white collar monkeys at NASA. If he wasn’t such a prick, he might have actually made a good name for himself, and become just as successful as his father,” said Peter.

Larry Holiday, Jack’s father, was an esteemed brain surgeon whose central hub was located near Vanderbilt University. “Larry was hardly ever home, but when he was, the two of them argued incessantly over Jack’s future,” said Peter. “Jack wanted to work in computer programming, or robotics, or something like that, but his father wanted him to follow in his footsteps. He showed no signs of interest in the human brain until we started pranking. Then I guess it all just sort of came to him after that.”

When I inquired about Jimmy Honeycutt, the third member of the team, Peter sat back in his chair, rolled his eyes, and cracked a soft smile. “Well, there’s no one quite like Honeycutt, that’s for sure. The boy could party harder than anyone I knew, and had more energy than the sun. Without him, I doubt if any of it would have ever happened. He was the front man for most of our schemes, and wasn’t afraid of anything, or anyone. He had a contagious way about him, and would do anything for a good laugh. Plus, the ladies loved him, which came in handy when clients would pay us to prank their ex-girlfriends, or mother-in-laws.”

The Honeycutts were by far one of the wealthiest families in the state of Tennessee. Jimmy’s mother owned over a dozen record labels, and his father delved in real estate while standing comfortably near the top of thirteen international multi-level health pyramids. Jack, Peter, and Jimmy had grown up together on the same street as princes in the Green Hills, and had established themselves as best friends at a very young age.
“I remember how jealous Honey was when school ended early for Jack and I,” said Peter. “They’d sent him to one of those ‘special’ schools to finish out the year after a little romantic episode with an English teacher at Franklin,” said Peter, with a soft chuckle. “He didn’t get out till June.”

When I asked him what had happened on April 1st that started it all, he told me it was all because of Scuzz-bucket, Jack’s Afghan Hound. “It’s been scientifically proven that the Afghan Hound is the least intelligent dog breed in the world,” said Peter, “and Scuz was the dumbest of the dumb. I remember like it was yesterday: Jack and I were peeing in his parent’s fountain that sat in front of his house at the end of his driveway, when we heard these horrible yelps. It took us a while to locate Scuzzy, and even longer to figure out what was going on. You see, Jack’s mom had strapped a shock collar around the poor beast’s neck that morning, but because the dog’s long hair covered any trace of it, we just thought she’d gone nuts. She kept running back and forth in the backyard, and when she’d get too far away from the house, she’d break out and spasm. Eventually, she’d crawl back, but as soon as she did, she’d run back the other way and get shocked all over again. Most dogs, I assume, would have learned after the first or second blast, but not Scuz-bucket, no, that stupid animal must have crossed the line at least a hundred times. I’m surprised it didn’t kill her. Eventually, we pinned her down and took the collar off. We just couldn’t take it any longer.”

“And how did that lead to your pranking career?” I asked.

Peter smiled. “Well, Jack had the idea that if we made the electrical current stronger it would teach the dog what it was supposed to—you know, actually be effective. He also wanted to take down the barrier lines, and adapt the triggering mechanism to respond via remote control. And Jack possessed the talent to do this. Like I said, the kid was a genius.

“So did it work?”

“Of course it worked, but not exactly how he intended it to. He was able to convert the chip in the dog collar to respond to his Blade 500 X Helicopter remote controller. And the only reason I remember the name of the controller is because it’s the same device we used to manipulate all of our other victims with. But you see, when we put the collar back on the dog, and activated the shocking mechanism, the dog let out a horrendous sneeze. Every time Jack pushed the lever, the dog would get revved up, and blow out a load of snot. Somehow, Jack had accidentally tapped into the right nerves, with the right amount of electricity, to control the reflex. Poor Scuzzy, I don’t think she ever fully recovered from the events of that day.”

“When did you start using the chip on people?"

“Well, of course, Jimmy was the first person to try the collar on,” said Peter. “Jack had sent him a text to come over as soon as his school let out because he had something totally awesome for him to try. Jimmy, of course, thought he was talking about weed, or some other form of drug, but was just as excited about the collar. And to everyone’s surprise, it worked just as well on Jimmy as it did the dog.” Peter took a moment to laugh as he reminisced. “I remember the snot dripping from Honey’s nose, and how Jack accidentally made him throw up all over his mother’s new carpet."

I pulled up a picture of a woman named Harriet Kilpatrick on my iPad, and showed it to him. She was one of the many people who had testified against Peter in court, and who I knew to be the team’s first documented victim. When he saw the image, his expression turned sour. “She was your first, wasn’t she?” I asked.

Peter sighed, and then nodded his head. “The first of many, yes, but the only one we used the sneezing chip on,” he said. “And if I remember right, she suffered a brain aneurysm because of it.”

“Why her?” I asked.

“Well, we all hated her for breaking up Juniper’s parent’s marriage,” said Peter. (When I asked who Juniper was, he hesitated, and simply defined her as a friend. Although it wasn’t until I tracked Juniper down myself, and interviewed her, that I realized how significant she was to the three of them, and how each one of the boys loved her in some way.) “That Kilpatrick woman was quite a cougar,” continued Peter. “That part was no secret—what was a secret, however, was how she got her money. We always just assumed it was from multiple divorce settlements, but no one really knew for sure. But what everyone did know was how she handled her men, especially her married men. When Harriet found out that Juniper’s father wasn’t as rich as she thought he was, she broke it off. Juniper’s poor mother forgave him and took him back—if you can believe that—but the damage was done, and her family was never the same.”

Peter went on to tell me how Jack spent a good portion of that summer in his parent’s garage converting the dog collar into a beautiful necklace. “We only needed the chip,” said Peter, “the rest of the collar was useless.” He explained how the three of them came up with a plan that would lay the foundation for all of their other pranks, or “jobs,” as Peter called them. Jimmy would place the chip on the unsuspecting victim (which, in this case, involved pretending to be a sexy, young pool cleaner with an interest in older women who needed a summer job), Jack would pilot the operation with the controller, and Peter would film it.“As long as the chip was touching anywhere on her skin, we could make it work,” said Peter. “I don’t want to go into how Honey got her to wear it, exactly—I don’t think you want to know—but suffice it to say that he did. And a few hours later, while she was lying out by her freshly cleaned pool, we got together, and I filmed a really great show.” Peter had indefinitely borrowed some of his father’s recording equipment, which he used for the bulk of their time as pranksters, to do just that, over and over again.

I was familiar with the Kilpatrick video, so I pulled it up on my iPad. But when I began to play it, Peter asked me very kindly to put it away, if that was all right with me. “Jack should never have put that video on line,” said Peter. “It became a sensation—we became a sensation. We had no idea how making a woman sneeze over five-hundred times in a row could get you so much attention. We weren't doing it to get famous; we just wanted to humiliate that old gold-digger. But to our surprise, we started getting emails by the hundreds, offering large amounts of money to prank people.”

“So when did you move away from sneezing, and start using the ‘chip’ for more…aggressive persuasions?” I asked.

Peter thought for a moment. “Well, when we moved into our little home together on the Tenn. Tech campus, Jack went to work on the chip, tweaking it, making it capable of doing other things. While Jimmy and I partied, Jack locked himself away, and for the longest time we didn’t know why. When he finally emerged, we had a chip that could make people gag, itch, and spasm—get erections, lose control of their sphincters, and even imitate Tourette’s syndrome. And that was just the beginning. It was gold, pure gold, or so we thought.”
Peter began to get excited, and explained how everything in the body is electrical. “We are all computers, Jack would tell me. You just need the right code to make the body do the right things.”

When I asked about Samantha, Peter’s excitement immediately diminished. He pushed the issue aside as being too complicated, and told me that that was a tale for another day. After five more meetings, he finally opened up about it, and this is what he had to say:

“To start off, it was just bad timing,” said Peter. “Juniper and Jack were fighting, so he was always in a bad mood, and when Jack would get in those moods, bad things would happen. We had agreed to do a job for this meathead, football player, who was a huge jerk, but offered to pay good money. And believe it or not, we were a little low on cash, so we didn’t really have a choice. You see, this muscle man was having trouble getting the attention of a certain Vanderbilt Cheerleader (Samantha), and he thought we could help. It was the first job that wasn’t technically considered a ‘prank.’ We weren’t going to make someone defecate in class, or freak out in a job interview, or throw up on a date—you know…stuff we were used to. We were supposed to figure out a way to get this girl all riled up every time this jock guy came around. He wanted her to think that whenever she saw him, she was falling in love, if you catch my drift. He also made it clear that we weren’t supposed to film anything, either, so I felt a bit redundant throughout the whole thing, but that was okay.”

“So you were stimulating her sexually?”

“Well, when you say it like that it sounds down right dirty. But yes, I guess in a way we were. Jack had made a special workout band for her to wear around her wrist, which made a lot more sense than a necklace for a cheerleader. The chip was supposed to trigger the periaqueductal gray in the brain…I think. Or maybe it was the ventral tegmental area…Oh, I don’t remember exactly how it worked, but it did something to make feel immense pleasure whenever Jack pulled the trigger. And just between you and me, I think we would have made a killing selling replicas of those chips, if her brain hadn’t exploded.”

“What went wrong?”

“Oh, everything went wrong! First of all, Jimmy was taking his sweet time placing the chip. I think he started to develop a bit of a—dare I say it—relationship with her, and it was no secret that he was enjoying the process. Unlike our client—who was getting very impatient, by the way—Jimmy had no problem getting Samantha’s attention. It was taking him so long, in fact, that Jack and I thought maybe Jimmy had betrayed us, and had actually fallen for the girl. But after a good, healthy fistfight with Jack, he assured us that everything was cool. The next day, Samantha was wearing the chip. Jimmy had convinced her that there was a special stone inside the band that helped with her stamina, so she wore it religiously.”

“So how did it happen?” I prodded.

“Well, the job was supposed to last for about a week, and the first couple times were easy. The client, and Samantha went to the same gym, so we would follow—excluding Jimmy, of course—and pretend to lift weights while watching for the meathead to make his moves. When the client would say something to her, or walk past her, we’d give her a heavy burst of pleasure, which usually resulted in her having to go to the bathroom. And to our surprise, by the end of the week, it had started working. Eventually, Samantha began associating pleasure with our Mr. Muscle man. But one day, after Jack had had a particularly bad fight with Juniper, he revved Samantha up too high, too fast, while she was running too hard on a treadmill, and her brain just…couldn’t take the stimulation. It burst out of her ears and nose like a firecracker. BAM! Just like that.”

“And you have no idea where Jack and Jimmy are now, or how they got away?”

Peter looked at me, smiled, and then frowned. For moment that felt like an eternity, he stared down into his lap as if in deep contemplation. He was an old man despite his youthful disposition, beaten down by life in prison, and I could see it now. When he started to cry, I didn’t know what to do, so I called for security. After a few guards consoled him, the Warden informed me that our meetings were going to have to be “permanently suspended,” given Mr. Rags “unstable condition.” The decision broke my heart, and left me with a melancholy taste in my mouth as I left. By then, meetings with Peter had become somewhat of a constant in my life, something I looked forward to. But I had gotten all the information I needed to write my book, and I guess it was time to move on.

However, Just before I went, Peter secretly slipped an envelope into my coat pocket without any of the guards noticing. “They are watching. Don’t open it ‘til you get home,” he whispered, and gave me a quick wink, and a grin. After that, he started crying again, and it hit me that he was faking it. That was the last time I ever saw Mr. Rags.

It was dark when I got home to my bottom level apartment. I was tired, and ready for bed, but quite anxious to see what inside the envelope. I had hoped for an address, or possibly the name of someone who could lead me to the whereabouts of Jimmy and Jack. Instead, there was a little piece of paper with the words: HA, HA, HA, written on it in red ink. And taped to the paper was a small microchip. I pulled the chip off, held it between my thumb and finger, and examined it carefully. It was the worst mistake of my life.

My body was suddenly seized upon. Every muscle I owned locked up. I started to gag, and then let out a terribly, painful sneeze. I fell flat on my face like a stiff, wooden board. I could feel something warm running down my leg, and my skin began to burn as if being devoured by a million army ants. My left eye began to twitch uncontrollably fast, and then I threw up all over my white carpet. Incoherent sounds blared uncontrollably from my mouth, and then it felt like someone was tickling me. For a long time, I thrashed about unable to stop laughing. I laughed so hard, and for so long that I ended up puking again. Then, as I fell, splashing into a puddle of my own stomach fluids, it all suddenly vanished. The torture had ended. And for a moment, I just laid there, unable to move. If I hadn’t noticed the two dark figures standing outside my window, I might have remained on the floor for the rest of the night.

After I’d finally made my way to the window, and opened it up, the figures had vanished. I was too exhausted to yell, or do anything except stare into the night. It wasn’t until I was about to close the window in defeat that I saw two men under a street lamp, running down the road. They looked older, and a bit out of shape, wearing what looked to be sweatpants and hoodies. And it was only for a moment, so I couldn’t be sure, but I thought for certain that one of them was holding a remote control.

The End.