Hacking, Housefires and Hidden Tunnels: The Strange, Tragic Tale of the Beckwitt Tunnels

The local authorities only discovered the elaborate series of tunnels under Danbury Road when the house above them was burning down. When brilliant and disturbed former hacker Daniel Beckwitt felt the collapse of civilization was imminent, he decided to make a plan, building a series of secret underground tunnels beneath his home in Maryland. As the construction continued, he employed various people to help dig out the structure, living beneath the ground for days at a time. Join the guys to learn more about this strange story about hackers, doomsday prepping, nuclear war, hidden tunnels, fire and what may arguably be murder.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Welcome back

(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt. Noel is not
here today. They called me Ben. We are joined as
always with our super producer Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly,
you argue, and you are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. I gotta say, Matt,
I am very, very glad to be here in the

(00:45):
booth with you. I hate missing an episode, but I
look forward to hearing the ones you know that happened
in my absence. It's you know, I'm like the audience
at that point. Nobody here, including everyone listening, likes it
when you're not here. Been I assure you that Sir
and Paul was out too, and Mission Control was out. Yes, Nolan,

(01:06):
I and Casey were just like floundering over here without you.
Super producer Casey pegram Well, I want it. I wanted
to check in to see you know how everything went.
How's how's your day? How's your week been? The week
has been good. I'm researching a new thing that I'm
going to be working on and it is even darker

(01:27):
than anything we've covered on this show or anywhere else,
and my psyche is taken a hit. But other than that,
you know, great, Matt. This sounds like the sort of
thing that we can't yet talk about on the airwaves.
Is that correct? We can't, and honestly I'm not sure
if we ever should, but well, we'll see what happens
with it. Absolutely, and h let me know, as always,
if you want a helping hand or just a dumb

(01:50):
hand to hand out, you can have it. It is
all yours, buddy, just let me know. So here's something
may interest you, as you know, without going too far
into the details on this. Paul and I recently returned
from a strange potato chip related related excursion true story,

(02:13):
And while we were there, we didn't manage to do
much non potato chip related stuff, but we were able
to check out the Alamo. Yeah, and the the Alamo,
the site of the historic battle which later became a
rallying cry for Texans all around. Uh, the Alamo. When

(02:34):
I posted about it on social media on Instagram or something,
people start messaging me and saying, ask about the basement.
I had forgotten. That was a reference to Pee weee
Herman's Big Adventure, wherein he asked about the basement of
the Alamo. But uh, it does pertain to our show.

(02:55):
Check this out, because it turns out the Alamo, uh
may indeed have a basement. A lot of structures that
you wouldn't suspect do have subterranean components. They do have tunnels,
And in today's episode, we're exploring this. The love of
money may not be the root of all evil, but

(03:15):
it certainly gives people the opportunity to do things we
would not normally do. So join us today as we
explore the strange story of a paranoid millionaire, the death
of his ambitious young employee, a mysterious secret system of
underground tunnels, and what makes Maryland call something a murder

(03:36):
of the depraved heart. Oh so, uh, here are the facts, everybody.
There's a man named Daniel Beckwitt B E C K
W I T T. Hopefully you've read it in the title. Uh.
In many ways, this was an intelligent young man. He
was a few times throughout his life on the wrong

(03:57):
side of the law. Prior to win all of the
things were just seeing today went down. Uh, he went
to school, the University of Or of Illinois at Urbana Champagne,
and he was while they're arrested and charged with conducting
a some sort of hacking operation against his college. It
was it was alleged that he installed key laggers or

(04:17):
I believe this is the time that that occurred, UM,
which is, you know, not so great hacking into your
your college's system like that. On the eighteenth of January,
there were search warrants that were executed by the police
department there in Urbana. UM. The campus p D and

(04:38):
the FBI got involved in that occasion and they both
went in together and this guy was accused of aggravated
computer tampering and it was the single largest hack in
the school's history that Daniel Bequitt, you know, supposedly allegedly
at that point had had done. And over the course

(05:00):
of this hack, I guess you would call it this
attack or operation that lasted for months Beckwit. He rescheduled exams,
he sent mass emails from university accounts, and he also
defaced I guess is a way to say it. A
bunch of university websites official stuff that then got trashed
a bit and he was arrested. He spent two days

(05:23):
in jail, he posted one thousand dollars in bail, and
then he was released. And then fast forward six months later,
Daniel Beckwood pled guilty in federal court to a charge
of computer fraud. This was part of a plea deal
the U s attorney under the terms of this plea
deal gave gave beck with a couple of passes. First,

(05:46):
Beckwitt could avoid federal charges and he would avoid there
for jail time in a federal prison. And the idea
here was, at least as far as the prosecution the judge,
we're thinking that it would have been a shame for
such a talented young man to lose his life for
youthful indiscretion unquote. And this is a kind of double

(06:09):
standard argument that we here applied often. After spending two
years at the University of Illinois and where he'd been
a five beta Sigma Honor Society member, Beckwitt was expelled
from school and he went back to his parents home
in Bethesda, Maryland, and he started his new life as
a rogue day trader. So let's look at his rise

(06:32):
as a crypto tycoon very quickly. He rode the bitcoin bubble,
and he had already amassed a pretty hefty nest egg
from investing a bitcoin at the right time and then
getting out at the right time. And he had taken
that money, and he hadn't done you know, the stuff
that we all dream about. He didn't buy a blimp

(06:54):
or anything, or a hot air balloon. Instead, he invested
it and he used He grew the money through the
stock trade. He also had a ton and a ton
and a ton of free time because, unlike most people
in their mid to late twenties, he did not have
to have a job, He did not have to pay bills,
he did not have to you know, scrape by in

(07:16):
the increasingly hostile economic system that most Americans his age
struggle within. At this point, it seemed like he was
living out the American redemption story, right. Yeah, he's also
living in his parents home. Oh yeah, that's right, that's right. Uh,
he does even worry about a mortgage here? Well, yeah,
And from everything I could read, and I could not

(07:37):
find this anywhere at least not stated exactly that he
wasn't living with his parents. He I know, he wasn't
living with his parents at least I'm fairly certain from
everything I've read that he wasn't living with his parents. Um,
but it was their home, like officially, it was their home,
and it seemed like a redemption story. He'd gone from
being a criminal to being a young million air with

(08:00):
a world of possibility stretching out before him. However, this
was not to be a happily ever after story. You see, folks,
in addition to being incredibly talented, people also described Daniel
Beckwitt as increasingly paranoid. And it was this paranoia, authorities argue,
that ultimately lead to murder. Find out how after this

(08:26):
word from our sponsors, here's where it gets crazy. So
let's introduce the second character in our story. Here, Askaya Kafra,
a twenty one year old son of immigrants. He was
a man who believed in the American dream and he

(08:48):
he had a plan to fulfill that dream. He had
a startup that was called Equity Shark. You can find
it on it's He still has a LinkedIn page that
you can find equity Shark on. It was described as
quote the future of private securities trading in stealth mode.
UM sounds interesting to me, and he really believed that
he could make a fortune inside the United States with

(09:10):
this idea, but he needed to get some money to
start it, as you do with a startup. UH. So
he found this person, Beckquit, and they cracked a deal
together to have Beckuitt put money in essentially seed money
into his idea and to create a company. They met online. Yes,

(09:32):
they didn't for him right, So Beckwitt said, I will
fund your start up, this new startup, because he had
a previous one, and in return, I want you to
help me with a top secret project, very very much
a secret project. This secret project was being constructed below

(09:52):
the Bequitt home in Maryland. Daniel beckwittt You see, in
addition to being a very intelligent cryptocurrency analysts and a
talented hacker, he was also given to um escalating paranoid thoughts,
and he was convinced that North Korea the DPRK, was

(10:14):
about to nuke the United States sooner rather than later.
And although he lived in Bethesda on the east coast
of the country, he felt compelled to be prepared for
what he thought would be uh an imminent and inevitable
nuclear exchange that could lead to you know, a third

(10:36):
World war, nuclear winter, all those terrible things you've heard
about in previous episodes of stuff they Don't want you
to know, available wherever you find your favorite podcast. And again,
to slightly in Daniel Beckwood's defense, the way the media
was portraying our relationship with North Korea the d b

(10:57):
r K with um of the tensions that existed for real,
this fear isn't completely unfounded. So well, well, here's the problem.
I'm just gonna be completely honest here. The problem is
that the way North Korea would deliver a nuclear weapon

(11:19):
that could reach the US would most likely be an
i CBM intercontinental ballistic missile. There are a couple that
they have, and they all kind of stink. The newest
one is the Hua Song fourteen, which first got launched
in That's that's the newest one, and it's still is

(11:42):
probably probably not going to be able to reach the
eastern coast. The TYPEO dong to which existed before I
have a little bit in common with backway I read
up on this stuff as well. The point is that
North Korea would have to use an alternative delivery system
like a suit case bomb or something of that nature.

(12:03):
They don't have submarines that could launch them, and they
don't have missiles that could launch them. So it was
an obsessive thought. And like anyone who's had an obsessive
thought will know that these things are like earworms, but
instead of songs, they are certitudes, and they grow and
they expand, and they thrive in your mind and they
eat your thoughts, alive all your other thoughts. So he

(12:28):
felt like this was inevitable. Like the biblical Noah, he
felt that he knew a disaster was coming and he
must build something, an impenetrable bunker, some sort of arc
to preserve himself and maybe his loved ones, maybe his dad.
The bunker he was building also, in his opinion, needed

(12:49):
to be constructed in absolute secrecy. His neighbors had no
idea what was happening underground, and he went to extreme
links to keep it that way. We found the description
of how he how he transported Kafra to this to
this area in Bethesda. It reads like something out of

(13:10):
a organized crime story or a noir detective film. Uh. Confra,
by the way, is the fourth person that he has
hired to do this job. Yeah, so Cafra and his
family lived in Silver Spring in Maryland, and Beckwood would

(13:31):
rent a car, get a rental car. He would head
on over to Silver Spring and pick up Cafra, different
rental car each time. Yes, exactly, you gotta switch it
up every time. Then drive to Manassas, Virginia, which is
about a ninety minute trip. And um again in in
the mind of beck With, beck With, this is um
guaranteed secrecy. And this has to do with the way

(13:52):
cell phone towers, UH pick up your signal depending on
where you are, and then if you turn off your
phone while you're over here in this one signal area,
if someone is still looking for your phone or something,
that's the last place you were. There's there are all
kinds of there's all kinds of stuff that went into
this reasoning. There's a there's a logic, yeah, of driving
that far away, because then once they were there out

(14:15):
in Manassas, Beckwittwood hand Kafra, who's you know, generally sitting
in the backseat A pair of these things called blackout glasses,
which is essentially like putting on a blindfold. Yeah, it's
a it's a cleaner form of a blindfold and Also,
it's tougher to remove than a blindfold unless your hands
are tied. So the weird thing is after after he's

(14:38):
put this blindfold on the Gay, he would drive them
around the del Marva area for another hour, So this
is a two hour and thirty minute trip total. He
was doing this all because, as you said, Matt, he
did not want someone to be able to track his
cell phone and record its position or record what sort

(14:59):
of in nation was sending and receiving at the time.
He also made doubly sure two attempt to protect his
privacy by using spoofing systems that would reroute his data
from his phone so that whenever it pinned a cell tower,
the phone would report that he was in Virginia, even

(15:21):
though at this point he was driving that other ninety
minutes back to Maryland. Yeah, because Bethesday is not very
far from the Silver Spring where he went over to
pick up Coffer in the first place. Right, it's about
five miles away. This is all just a drive around.
Confused cofra, confused the cell phone towers just it's a

(15:42):
lot of secrecy, and for some people, some of us listening,
this could sound indicative of one man slide into mental instability.
But he was proud of these methods and this was
not a new thing for him. In twenty sixteen, the
previous year, Beckwitt presented a talk at Schmoo Con, which,
despite its hilarious name, yes it's spelled the way you

(16:03):
think s h m o O con schmoo Khan. It's
fun to say to Schmukhan, it's a hack. It's a
hacker con. Schmoo. Okay, I'm back, so yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's a hacker convention. You're right. He presented this talk
called this Message will self destructing ten seconds avoiding bilateral

(16:26):
in nucleation, and it was his response to a hacking challenge.
The challenge was this, basically, how can you destroy forensic
evidence that's on a hard drive in sixty seconds or
less and not destroy all the surrounding stuff? Okay, so
you can't use a nuclear bomb, not a fire, or

(16:48):
like a not an uncontrolled fire. I guess right. His
presentation included references to Peppe the Frog, the meme that
is so closely associated with the alt right, holidays uh
and Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh, Timothy McVeigh and Beckwitt

(17:08):
used the image of the destroyed compact car from Oklahoma
City to show the dangers of explosions, not the dangers
that they posed to human life, let's be very clear
about that, but rather that these explosions don't reliably vaporize
forensic evidence. So in Backwood's minds, mcveigh's uh horrific acts

(17:34):
of terrorism weren't the focus of his presentation. Instead, the
fact that the guy was sloppy was the was what
he was harping on in the example them that the
method just doesn't work as well. And just to be
fair to beck with in that presentation, and he had
memes all over the place, and it was I think
his attempt to be funny. I I think sure. I mean,

(17:58):
the world is full of people trying to be funny, right.
You know the worst part is almost everybody that you
think of as an absolute monster throughout history probably thought
they were a pretty funny guy, you know what I mean,
A pretty funny dude, a person and whatever. So did
we talk about what he was wearing when he presented.
We did not. He's wearing like a full on flame

(18:18):
retardant suit, like chemical level flame retardant it's like breaking
bad when they go to the nice lab. Looks like yes,
looks like gold metallic materials. And you can't see his
face because he's got a darkened shield essentially over his
face plastic shield. Yeah, I mean that's a cool outfit. Yeah,
I'm no say he's a cool person. But but he

(18:41):
so does he answer the question, yes, somewhat, but not
not really. He answers a different question, changes the question.
He says that first off, you're keeping it on the
wrong kind of media. You need a flash drive instead
of a hard drive. Flash A flash drive is smaller,
it's easier to transport, and it's much easier to destroy.

(19:04):
And so he teaches people how to make a thermite
analog called therm mate. This is the same chemical that
some nine eleven conspiracy journalists believe was responsible for collapsing
the Twin Towers and Backwitt again. Remember he is objectively
a very intelligent person. He had invented his own recipe

(19:26):
for this. He used five legally available, easy to find
chemicals that you can locate at most hardware stores. That
ending taught people how to make thermite, and he showed
that you can you can do like you said, a
controlled burn. Yeah, and and it really is a pretty

(19:48):
terrifying substance. Um substances, both thermite and therm mate the
version of it that he was making, because you could
put it on the hood of a car, um set
the stuff on fire or at least started urn on
this substance, and then it will it will burn so
hot that it goes right through the engine block on
a vehicle. It's used in armor piercing for military purposes

(20:11):
and as well as cutting through steel like as again
we mentioned, you'll hear um cutting through steel beams, right right. Yeah. Uh.
It's a mixture of iron oxide F E two oh
three or rust and aluminum powder and when you ignite it,
the powder reacts with the O three part of the rust,

(20:33):
producing this very intense temperature. Oh, there are ways to
create it that you can find online that we don't
recommend you search for. Well, I've I've searched for him.
But you know, in the in the course of preparing
for a show, right, and we have that excuse, you
probably do not. So be careful. What is life if

(20:56):
not to be lived just to be put on lists
all over the place, because you probably will be back
Witt probably was to be honest, even if there wasn't
any particularly nefarious stuff to hide. We have to remember
that he he had already committed federal level crimes and
just barely got past it. And now he's teaching people

(21:17):
how to make these sorts of substances at home and
back to the tunnel. He's conducting this massive subterranean operation
and complete secrecy, which means no safety requirements. No one
else knows about it. Maybe maybe his parents maybe, but
we don't know. He sends Kafra like he sent other

(21:41):
kids into this tunnel system for days at a time.
This kid is sleeping there, he's eating there. Yeah, there's
a there's what looks like a little cot set up
down there, kind of bed in an old what looks
like an LCD screen and an Xbox and WiFi inside
the tunnel. But it is just like a c and

(22:03):
a fan. But but it's it's not like you're imagining.
I promise you, it's not like you're imagining. It's not
like a Pinterest tunnel home, right, So he's stuck in
there for days. These tunnels extend hundreds of feet below
the ground, like it drops twenty ft below the house,
and then it stretches out, uh, traversing public roads, other

(22:23):
people's property. You can see a map of the rough area,
and there were at least three tunnels. There may have
been more. But despite all the intricate planning in terms
of secrecy, this project was not safe. He did not
put really any any level of planning into safety in
the infrastructure and into planning for something to go wrong.

(22:49):
The home also exhibited signs that could be arguably indicative
of Beckwood's mental state. Uh, the exhibited signs of hoarding.
There's piles of junk is crap blocking all these hallways, right,
so you have to if you ever been into a
home with someone who suffers from um the phenomenon known

(23:10):
as hoarding, then you know what we're talking about. The
home transforms into this warring of tiny tunnels and and
some rooms that you just can't enter because they're piled
with stuff. Then the smell, Oh, the smell. Yeah, there
was a show about that always used to creep me out,
you know, the like dead cats are everywhere and they

(23:34):
can't like go of anything. Don't throw away my newspaper
from three Almost every time it was human extrament, though
that was the worst part when you watch the hosts
every week just like hacking up all of their stomach
contents on screen for our entertainment. And it's just a
it's a physiological reaction to it's not a performative thing

(23:55):
like crying. You just have to do it. And we're
not in any way detigrating people who encounter that mindset
or people currently suffer from um the various conditions that
would cause hoarding. But we do want you to know
there is a better way you can. You can get help.

(24:16):
And if you have someone who in your family who
is a hoarder, you can help them. If they won't
listen to you, you can help them find a professional
or therapist who will. And I'm not talking about that
Marie Condo Craze, the does this bring me joy kind
of thing. God, You're you're talking more like the Long
Island Medium. I am not talking about. Oh man, that's

(24:43):
not what I'm I guess that's always kind of what
I'm talking about. Yeah, us, So maybe hoarding is an
episode for a different day. Let us know your strangest
hoarding stories. In the meantime, let's go back to these tunnels.
Let's go back to what happens on September, and we'll

(25:04):
get to that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
On September ten, the local fire department receives increasingly concerned
calls from neighbors of the Bequett home because you see,

(25:26):
a fire has appeared to creep out of the tunnels
that no one knew existed and has begun to burn
the structure that sat above the underground layer. And yeah,
there was smoke coming out all the windows on all
three floors of the home, because you know, you've got
the basement, first level, in the second level. And when
the firefighters and police get there, they find back with

(25:48):
Daniels out outside. He's shirtless, he's covered in dirt what
looks to be fresh dirt, and he's stumbling out of
the house and around the house and he's out of it,
which may makes sense. He's suffering from smoke inhalation, but
he is alive and he's mumbling things like I think
he's in there. I think he's in there. The house

(26:09):
also survived. Like Beckwitt, the firefighters were able to control
the flames before they made the structure unrecoverable underneath the
home firefighters discovered the naked, charred body of a deceased male.
This was Kafra, and he had likely died from smoke inhalation,

(26:31):
or at the very least it had caused him to
lose consciousness in the tunnels where he burned alive. So
either death is terrible, either death from inhalation slash asphyxiation
or the tremendously gruesome and horrifying death of burning alive.
And even when you're unconscious, your body is gonna respond,

(26:53):
and you can feel that has a terrible, terribly tragic
outcome for both him and his family and friends. He's
only twenty one years old and cofre had texted Beckwitt
to let him know he smelled smoke a few hours beforehand,
and his decision to text was very smart. But Beckwood's

(27:13):
response is probably what spelled confers death sentence. So Beckwood's
first fear was that the smoke was coming from an
electrical fire. To fix that, Beckwitt decided to turn off
the power to the lighting inside the tunnels. Yeah, and
this is a huge thing to remember here because Confers
down there alone in the tunnels that you have to

(27:34):
get down what is and he's down there working, smelling
this stuff and communicating just via text with the man
who's upstairs doing whatever he's doing. Um, this is a
huge point here, Confers down there alone then, and he did,
and Daniel decides to do what benes it turn off
the lights right right, And this stuff was also goes

(27:58):
without saying not up to code that Xbox, the screen
that you mentioned, Matt, these were all run through extension cords,
just a giant daisy chain right going down into the cave.
So Confre had to crawl through these tunnels hoping to
escape in utter darkness, and he had to crawl through

(28:21):
these immense piles of garbage and discarded crap laying around
the house, laying around the tunnels. And the thing about those, um,
what do't you call him, Matt daisy chains? Yeah, is
that each each link in the chain increases the risk
of something going wrong and creating a fire. And back
with accidentally purposely had designed a death trap. It's quite

(28:46):
possible that Confer could have escaped had that, had all
that junk not been blocking the way. So what happens next?
Coffer's parents take legal action. His father asked the court
to ensure that a judge ordered David Beckwittt, that's the father,
and his son, Daniel Beckwittt, to fill in those tunnels
demolish that home. He went to a neighborhood meeting. He said,

(29:08):
it was my son who died in that fire. I'm
emotional because of some of the things you all are
presenting have been sanitized. I came here because I wanted
to let people know how dangerous what was going on is.
This thing is far more extensive and complicated than people
here believe it to be. Wow. And then in December,

(29:29):
Montgomery County, they they took the side of cow for
his family, and they followed it. They followed a lawsuit
of their own, and they demanded that the home itself
be demolished. And again they're all these neighbors and everyone
complaining about the home as well. So it's becoming more
of a swell than just you know, one family saying
we need to get rid of this for this reason.

(29:49):
It's everybody saying this is a This is not only
an eyesore and a tragedy and a reminder of what happened,
but we we just need to get rid of this thing.
It's dangerous. Um the Beckway family. However, the people who
actually owned the home, they appealed the lawsuit. Um they
disregarded the county's order, and they countered with an offer
of their own. And they said, well, hey, why don't

(30:11):
we fix the burned home. Will remediate the tunnel complex.
You guys won't have to worry about that anymore, uh,
and it will just look like a regular house. The
county reportedly responded by informing the Beckwits that this plan
to you know, just fix up the house and everything
and fill in the whole quote significantly misses the severity
of the situation. And I personally would have to agree.

(30:33):
So let's let's get into of actually being on trial.
Daniel Beckwitt's on trial and he's being charged with second
degree murder, but with a little caveat that I was
unaware of before we started researching this. Spin rights judge
in Montgomery County presided over the Bequwitt trial late April

(30:56):
and found him guilty of committee depraved heart, second degree
murder in the death of Kafra. And this crime could
put Beckwett in prison for three decades. In reaching the
verdict of Jews determined Beckwett had acted with extreme disregard
for human life. So what is deprived heart murder? It's

(31:20):
it's strange it exists in Maryland but not a lot
of other states. So the most serious of homicide charges,
if we all remember our law and order, his first
degree murder, premeditated act. I wanted them dead. I did
it on purpose. The only flaws that you caught me.
Manslaughter is the least serious, and that's charged when there's

(31:41):
no malice present. I'm an idiot. I don't know how
to drive. Someone died. I didn't plan it. I'm not
glad that they're dead. Uh, but I'm I'm a terrible driver.
That that could be manslaughter. For deprived heart second degree murder,
the prosecution rules somewhere in between. The defendant committed a

(32:04):
deliberate act that was so dangerous it showed the defendant
had total indifference to someone's life. There are three elements
that have to be present for something to be depraved
heart murder. All three have to be proven to provide
a guilty verdict. These are one the death was caused
by the defendant somehow, in some way. There was a

(32:25):
very high risk that was caused by the defendant's actions
to the life of the person who ended up dying.
That's too. And then the defendant was aware that his
or her actions would be dangerous in some way like that,
and yet they acted anyway without regard for the consequences
to that person. Three boom, boom boom. The Backwitt homicide

(32:47):
ticks all the boxes there. So, so Daniel Beckwit, regardless
of his mental state, his malevolence or lack there of,
his intention to kill or lack there of, uh, has
been found guilty of having a depraved heart. Yeah, I mean,
second degree murder. The jury came back and they said

(33:08):
you're you're guilty. And it seems fairly certain in conclusion
here that back what, whatever his mental state may have been,
did not intend Kaffret to die because he had hired
again three other acquaintances to work on the tunnels in
the past. Yeah, there's uh. I mean, if you look
through just the reporting on this thing and some of
the court documents, you can find that there was a

(33:31):
guy named Douglas Hart who testified that he I think
he excavated for around six months before deciding to not
do the job anymore. And within that testimony he quoted.
He was quoted as saying he left because he was
concerned for his ten year old dog, and he had
grown tired of the work. And if it's anything, if
his situation was anything like um conference situation, he was

(33:54):
probably living in those tunnels with his dog uh down there,
sleeping and going to the bathroom in a bucket, the
way Coffer was. And it just seems like a It
seems like a bad situation, even if you are getting
paid pretty well, no kidding. But the problem here is
that it's while it is a bad situation, While this
is a tragedy, it is not unique. There are no

(34:17):
reliable estimates on just how many people are building secret
bunkers across this country. But we know it is virtually
certain that this cannot be the only one we've done.
We've done numerous shows on secret bunkers that were treated
first as conspiracy theories and then later discovered. This is
just the only difference here is that this bunker was

(34:39):
discovered before it was completed. You can check out our
interview with Garrett Grath wherein he outlines the discovery of
a congressional bunker that was hidden beneath a hotel for
decades and decades. They're out there, uh and there. You know,
even if you don't live in the US there, they're
probably some in your neck of the woods. So we

(34:59):
will to know what you think of this case. What
do you think of bunkers in general? Are there any
suspected secret bunkers around you? And what do you think
is gonna happen to retrial? Because they're already requesting a
retrial or at least another day in court an appeal, right,
so we'll see. Yeah, financial might makes right in the
U s. Judicial system, and Backwood is well equipped to

(35:22):
fight any any finding. You know, the rules are just
different in the US judicial system. If you have access
to millions of dollars. All right, well, hey tell us
what you think. Find us on Instagram, find us on Twitter,
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Ben bowling hs w yes on Twitter. I'm also just

(35:45):
playing old Ben Boland at Instagram. You can see me
get kicked out of and into various countries, regions, and states,
the traveling man. You're just rambling around, aren't your rambler?
That's awesome. I don't do that. I stay at home
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(36:09):
us on social media and you don't like that stuff,
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(36:31):
any specifics like that? Uh, and also make us laugh
if you can, because that is our favorite thing after
researching something like this episode. Just give us a little lightheartedness. Yeah, awesome, Yeah,
shout out to our super moods who live in the
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(36:52):
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(37:30):
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