In the world of rock climbing, they’re known as dirtbags – people who sacrifice worldly comforts to live a life on the precipice. They sleep on couches, live in vans, scraping together just enough to keep going. They live to climb. It would be a great lifestyle choice for someone who wanted to hide from their past.
In the spring of 2017, police in Squamish, British Columbia, made a chilling discovery: a vehicle burned beyond recognition, with a male victim inside — dead from a single gunshot wound. Squamish, known as Canada’s rock climbing capital, was shaken when word spread that the deceased was one of their own: a climber known only as “Jesse James.”
The tragedy sent shockwaves through the tight-knit climbing community. Who really was this man? Why was he killed? The questions piled up, but answers were scarce. It would take three years before DNA testing uncovered the truth — and it was more twisted than anyone could have imagined.
Jesse James was actually Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a 38-year-old American. But that wasn’t his only alias. He was also known as Commander Bo Dekker, Johnny Durango, Dave Bridger, Michael Moriarty but was born Andrew Britt Greenbaum. Each new identity hid a darker secret: from internet spam empires and crypto scams to a disturbing history of Neo-Nazism.
Over five episodes, Dirtbag Climber follows the tangled trail of a rock climbing con artist, uncovering the bizarre double (or multiple!) life of a man who drifted from the dark corners of the internet to the heights of Squamish’s cliffs. It’s a story that veers from competitive chess tournaments to white supremacist rallies, from buried gold bars to the lawless frontier of early online crime.
Unraveling the mystery is Squamish reporter Steven Chua, whose own ties to the climbing world help peel back the layers of Jesse James — and the secrets he thought he could take to the grave.
