Henry Zebrowski

Even if one guy was dead and another was partially blind.

Well, Cooley said that when Dante's hearings paused for breaks, he could hear the judge muttering under his breath, quote, They're all crazy.

This was fantastic news to Cooley.

Because Cooley's whole strategy had been like, this is a crazy brawl gone wrong.

There's nothing, like, Dante doesn't have any culpability here.

In fact, no records exist of Count Dante's court case at all because the angry Irish judge suddenly dismissed all the charges in a flurry of exasperation.

Reportedly, he said, quote, They're all guilty.

And with that, he banged the gavel, and Count Dante was set loose upon the world once again.

I just imagined this judge, and like, for me, in my head, I see just a George C. Scott, like, We're all guilty!

Get out!

What a fucking lunatic!

Get him out of here!

Now, Count Dante's trial came to a close in 1971, but he'd already been unofficially kicked out of the martial arts community for initiating the Dojo War.

Sure.

All of his students had left because Dante had led Konchevich to his death for reasons Dante still couldn't quite explain.

and the entire affair had turned the Count from a local character to a local joke.

But instead of recalibrating, Count Dante doubled down on being Count Dante by turning Count Dante into a full-time job.

He focused most of his energies on his mail order business, which is of course fueled by the ads he continued placing in national comic books.

But since Count Dante was blackballed from the martial arts world, he began getting out his violent urges by courting conflict in the streets.

Dressed as ridiculously as possible to attract bad attention, Dante would cruise around in his gigantic chocolate brown Cadillac Eldorado, just waiting for somebody to say something.