June 11, 2024 • 38 mins
Darren Seals’ mother was certain the answer to his murder lay with the FBI. Dismissed as “conspiracy theory,” her assertion seems suddenly bolstered when a redacted document is released that reveals the existence of a U.S. government surveillance operation on Darren over his final six months. What were they after? Who was the informant that sent them to Darren? And what do they know?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Previously on. After the uprising, Seals was found shot inside
a burning car in Riverview on Diamond Drive.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I do know that there is a lot of sentiment
in the community that they want justice, they want the truth.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
You know, you still got a life that has a
tab on it from your past endeavors.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5 (00:23):
I ain't never say brus way. It's like he wanted
on the spot. He was still going an argument. Where
the argument took place.
Speaker 6 (00:30):
That weren't really low you know what I'm saying, where
he was killed during the argument.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Can you give me any sense of what the argument
would have been over.
Speaker 5 (00:39):
The guy who lived at that location.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
He told the two guys, y'all can't leave that body
in front.
Speaker 7 (00:47):
Of my house.
Speaker 6 (00:48):
I'm not gonna let nothing of nobody change my mind
because I don't really know who did it.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
Y'all did this to myself.
Speaker 6 (00:56):
They've been following him for a month.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
What you're looking for is the aftermath of the grand
jury deciding not to indict.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Off Nigel Darren.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
Seals was murdered before his killer set his car on fire.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Once they put out the flames, they discovered Seal's body
inside with a gunshop.
Speaker 8 (01:32):
He pointed gun on me.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Am, I am I footing you all the brothers Fargus
the BD grab you by my heart, slam me.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
Out the car.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
He says, you might want you might want to pick
your enemy Ben. This is after the Uprising season two,
the murder of Darren Seals.
Speaker 9 (02:00):
I got a hold of our detective and essentially the
suspect we applied.
Speaker 10 (02:05):
For warrants on is deceased.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
This is Sergeant Tracy Panis of the Saint Louis County
Police again, and she's telling me something rather amazing. Apparently,
at some point they thought they knew who killed Darren,
and they applied to get an arrest warrant for the suspect.
But that person is now deceased. As getting an arrest
warrant in a homicide case shouldn't take very long, we
wanted to know when the suspect died.
Speaker 9 (02:29):
No, I don't have a death on a death day
on him orythaying no.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
According to Sergeant Panis, the Saint Louis County Police had
made their recommendation for prosecution to the County Attorney's office.
We asked why that never moved forward.
Speaker 9 (02:42):
I would imagine it's related to them being deceased. Yeah, yeah,
if the suspect is deceased, they're not going to do
anything with it.
Speaker 10 (02:48):
I mean I would assume not.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 10 (02:50):
That might be a better question for them. On our end.
Speaker 9 (02:53):
It just shows taken under advisement, which is pretty normal
for a case when they're waiting for more evidence or
they're waiting.
Speaker 10 (02:59):
For some more on the case.
Speaker 9 (03:01):
You can check with them, but that's yeah, that's what
we have. And my detective is not available to speak
to the case, especially since we're still actively actively pursuing
possible other suspects.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
So Sergeant Panis said she couldn't give us the name
of the suspect, but that we might be able to
obtain it if we made a Sunshine request to the
prosecutor's office. So we did, and in the meantime, we
began to dive into the FBI file on Darren that
had been obtained through James Cooper's Freedom of Information Act request.
As we mentioned in the last episode, the vast majority
(03:32):
of the pages in the file are totally blacked out
by redactions, so we sought help in deciphering what was
available to be read.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
So there's an FBI specially in US W. Marshall and
what are's probably a police sergeant who perform a vehicle
stop on Darren Seals as he was driving his known
twenty twelve Chief Wrangler redaction. So the vehicle was located
in parking lot the area redacted. Uniformed officers redacted.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
This is Mike Jerman. He's a fellow with the Brennan
Center for Justices, Liberty and National Security program, and before
that he served as the Policy Council for National Security
and Privacy at the ACLU's Legislative Office. Rather interestingly, before
working for the American Civil Liberties Union, Mike was an
FBI special agent, which informs the bookie author titled Disrupt, Discredit,
(04:23):
and Divide How the New FBI Damages Democracy. We sent
him a copy of the FBI file on Darren, and
here we're breaking down a section of the report that
explains how the FBI arranged to have Darren pulled over
with the help of local police and other authorities. Note
this is not the traffic stop from Ferguson that was
filmed by a bystander that we played audio from earlier
(04:44):
this season.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
The uniformed officers who made Stoff advised that Seals had
active warrants for arrest. These parent appear to be traffic warrants,
including driving with the license revokes, so they're basically putting
the reasonable suspicion for why they can justify car stop.
What's clear from the rest that it is that they
were using the car stop to try to search for
(05:06):
a weapon, and when they don't find a weapon, they
release him, which only reinforces that the purpose of the
stop was not to enforce the warrants or analyze him
for driving without a license.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Everything Mike just read about Darren being pulled over comes
from a page in the report that was filed on
June eighth, twenty sixteen, three months before Darren's death. Darren's
FBI report is so heavily redacted that barely anything can
be gleaned from it, and this description of the traffic
stop is one of the few readable portions of the file.
We asked Mike if he could make sense of the
(05:40):
remaining bits of text, much of which is insider jargon, abbreviations,
and reference codes.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
So there are a.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
Couple of things. One is on the opening memo, the
agent opening the case opens it based upon the allegations
that Darren seals for the self described revolutionary espouse, somewhat
militant rhetoric, and has access to weapons. Under the FBI's
rules that are allegedly to protect First Amendment rights, an
(06:12):
FBI agent is not held out to open an investigation
based solely on First Amendment activities. But this description reflects
how easy that is to overcome one.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
And it strikes me that it's referenced over and over
again that willusion series this is not based on First
Amendment right. I see that many times in this document.
It's one of the only unredacted.
Speaker 5 (06:34):
Statements, and that's because that's the only protection. So that's
the only hurdle that has to be overcome. And some
of the documents are referencing what's called a CDC review.
CDC is the Chief Division Council. That's an FBI agent
lawyer who is in the office. This other FBI official
(06:57):
who has a law degree is supposed to okay the
investigation and the activity and review it every six months.
There are indications that this is openness a domestic terrorism
investigation because of the CDC reviews and because of this document,
which is on page twenty three, the people at this
traffic stop are an FBI special agent, a US Deputy Marshall,
(07:19):
and a police sergeant in addition to the uniform officers
who are apparently making the stop. And that tells me
that it's a task force, and I would imagine most
likely that it's a joint terrorism task force, but it
could also be a violent crimes task force or a
drug task force a given Field's previous convictions for drugs,
but clearly a federal investigation that is utilizing their information
(07:43):
that they have from performance for their own suppositions based
on his criminal history.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
One of the more frustrating things about how insanely redacted
the FBI report is is that we don't even know
what kind of investigation it's describing. It would be easy
enough to just assume that the FBI was looking into
Darren as a potential domestic terrorists because of his highly
visible status with the Ferguson movement, but we don't know
that for sure. The FBI could have been investigating Darren
(08:08):
for other reasons, such as potential gang or drug activity.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
There's a reference to his one drug conviction, but it's
interesting how they characterize that because they also reference a
number of arrests that did not result in convictions, which
is somewhat unusual that you would highlight arrests for assault,
arrest for arm criminal action, and I'm also useablep and
(08:33):
when there was no conviction associated with that. What it
appears to me just from these records is what they
were trying to accomplish was what they call a disruption.
Immediately after nine to eleven, Attorney General John Ashcroft resurrected
this concept of disruption, this idea that if the FBI
believes you did something bad and can't prove it, they're
(08:57):
still going to take actions to disrupt your ac and
this is sometimes referred to as the al Capone concept.
You know that al Capone was this murderous gang leader
in Chicago, but they ended up convicting him of incompax evasion.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
What are the tools in the toolbox of disruption in
the modern FBI selective prosecution?
Speaker 5 (09:18):
You know, finding some minor thing that the FBI typically
wouldn't investigate or charge credit card fraud or food stamp
frauds that are below the threshold that normally triggers an
FBI investigation, but it's kind of like, aha, we can
put them in jail for this and disrupt their activities.
And you know, when the person you're looking at is
(09:39):
actually al Capone or somebody like him who is actually
a gangland leader, and there's plenty of evidence to show that,
just can't get witnesses to testify. You know, that might
seem like a rational methodology, but when the FBI perceives
somebody is dangerous because of their advocacy, and you know,
throughout history, including recent events, we've seen that they tend
(10:02):
to view social movements led by people of color as
threatening to the nation's security, threatening to the status quo
in a way that they don't see white militancy as
the same kind of threat. So who they perceive as
a terrorist is very biased, and then adopting them that
selectively prosecute them for crimes is in itself a bias
(10:25):
activity because they're not actually engaging in terrorist activity.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
What would be the next step, potentially, do you just
prosecute can get a person like that out of what
they consider, you know, arms way, or do you then
try to flip that person and get them feeding you
on you know other people in the circle.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
Well, both are considered legitimate tactics under the disruption strategy
that's documented in a two thousand and nine document called
Spaceline Collection Plan. So it could be finding some other
unrelated charge like felling in possession of firearms and putting
that person away for a period of time, and that's
considered disrupting their criminal activities in the case of graectic
(11:04):
terrors and their terrorist activities, when the reason for the
suspicion is that their advocacy is somehow dangerous.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
It's well known that the FBI under j. Edgar Hoover
employed disruption tactics against the civil rights movement and its
leaders as part of their Cointel pro program. For instance,
they sent an anonymous letter to doctor Martin Luther King, Junior,
disparaging him and urging him on to some unspecified act,
(11:34):
which doctor King himself believed was to commit suicide. Also,
the FBI was instrumental in the Chicago raid that resulted
in the assassination of Fred Hampton, Junior. But those FBI
actions all occurred before the Church Committee in nineteen seventy five,
chaired by Senator Frank Church. This massive investigation into abuses
(11:56):
by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and irs not only turned
up illegal operations like the FBI's co Intel pro and
CIA's mk Ultra, but it resulted in the creation of
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. This new level of
oversight was intended to reign in unethical, unconstitutional, and frankly
(12:20):
on American behaviors of the intelligence agencies. Certainly, we could
argue all day about how successful this oversight is, but
what seems clear is that the modern FBI seems less
inclined to kill, but rather incredibly intent on disrupting and
arresting the individuals they target. A modern example.
Speaker 11 (12:43):
After the break, now back to the show, how did
you end up on the Denver story in particular of
all the ones that you might have chosen in this area.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
To explain that, I need to back up a little
bit and just explain that I'd be probably going back
to like two thousand and nine. I'd been looking into
the FBI's use of informants and sting operations in the
context of terrorism, and my criticism is that the bureau
would find kind of impressionable people who don't have access
to terrorist organizations, don't have weapons on their own, and
(13:22):
then they would provide them with the means of opportunity
to commit some sort of bombing or similar terrorists like crime.
In some of these cases, the targets of these things
end up being mentally ill or financially desperate in a
way that makes them vulnerable to an informants instigation.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
This is journalist Trevor Aronson. In twenty twenty three, he
published a story in The Intercept about how the FBI
paid a violent felon to infiltrate the racial justice movement
that formed in Denver after the killing of George Floyd.
As we've heard from Saint Louis locals who participated in
the Ferguson movement, there was a lot of suspicion that
informants were mixed into the crowd. In such environment, it's
(14:00):
easy to become paranoid. Stories like the one Trevor broke
about Denver served to show us that what some might
call paranoia is sometimes not paranoia at all.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
The unrest in twenty twenty happened, and that coming on
the heels of the FBI defining Black identity extremism as
a form of domestic terrorism. I really had this hunch
that the FBI was using the same type of tactics
against political activists, and I felt like it was a
pretty good hunch and an educated guest, but I didn't
have any proof, and so I spent like a good
(14:32):
year trying to find examples of this. There were all
sorts of rumors that summer about government infiltrators and people
who were acting suspicious, but there wasn't a lot of
proof that these people were government infiltrators. And so in
trying to find this proof that this was happening, I
ended up getting leaked to me this cash of documents
and recordings from Denver that proved that. So it wasn't
(14:53):
like I just went out and picked Denver as the
case study that I would pursue. It was more that
Denver kind of found me for these leaked documents, and
then I was able to go to Denver and report
it out and kind of use Denver as a as
a case study of what was likely happening nationwide.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
What Trevor documents in his reporting is that the FBI
paid a man named Mickey Windecker to infiltrate the movement
in Denver. When Trevor asked Mickey to comment on working
for the FBI, Mickey initially denied having done so, but
Trevor had copies of payment receipts to the tune of
twenty thousand dollars from the FBI to Mickey, and the
FBI didn't just want Mickey to act as eyes and
(15:31):
ears within the movement, they wanted him to go to
an activist into committing a felony. Trevor notes that this
focus on black social movements by federal law enforcement comes
in the wake of the FBI's coining of the term
black identity extremist.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
The FBI was specifically investigating a number of black activists
whose only reason for suspicion, as far as the FBI
was concerned, was a result of their gun ownership. And
you don't see that kind of investigative activity happening targeting
white political activists, white people in general, And so I
think you can point to a double standard. What makes
it harder to kind of quantify the FBI's efforts related
(16:08):
to black identity extremism is that once black identity extremism
as a label became public, it was met with criticism
by people in the press, by people on Capitol Hill.
And what the FBI did was publicly backtrack essentially right,
They said that they no longer use the term black
identity extremism and have instead created this new category under
(16:30):
domestic terrorism called racially motivated biolent extremism, which lumped together
so called black identity extremism with white supremacists and white
nationalists and other kind of racially based extremism in the
FBI's term. And so in that way it becomes harder
to quantify the efforts that the FBI makes specifically toward
black identity extremism.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
We explained to Trevor that before being murdered, Darren had
expressed to his friends and family that he expected to
be killed specifically by the FBI, and we asked if
he thought that, in the post Church Committee era, such
an extra judicial killing by the FBI was even reasonable
to consider.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
And, yeah, anything is possible. I guess I would be
quite skeptical of that, unless you know, Facebook like overwhelming
up and it's the contrary.
Speaker 7 (17:15):
Is it possible that like.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
An agent acting on his own volition or an informant
acting on his own volition killed someone like Darren Fields? Like, sure,
I mean it's possible. I think it's highly unlikely. I
think it's even more unlikely that that would in any
way be condoned or ordered as an official part of
business for the FBI. That's that a case agent or
(17:37):
a supervisor was ordering such a thing.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
I mean, I think that's.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Highly, highly unlikely. I would note that kind of on
a more global level, that anyone who tends to be
under surveillance by the FBI like generally ends up being
somewhat paranoid about what's happening to them. And that's the
nature of that, right, Like, if you realize that you
were under suspicion or under surveillance by the FBI, you
may see an agent, but then you end up being
(18:02):
at a coffee shop or a Walmart, a grocery store,
and you see someone who looks like an agent in
your mind and they're not, and in your mind, they're like, oh, they.
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Must be an ancient.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
And that's part of the process that the FBI has
in providing surveillance on someone. It can be twofold. They
may choose to surveil someone in a way that they
are quite discreet, and that person may not know that
they are under surveillance. But there's also a strategy that
the FBI has of putting someone under surveillance in a
way that they know they're under surveillance to prevent them
from the activism, to prevent them from doing crimes, just
(18:35):
to like to see what they do when they're facing
that suspicion. And so I think that kind of tactic
used by the FBI, if it was used, is the
type that reads paranoia, where someone might say, like, you know,
if something happens to me, it's the FBI.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Mike Jerman had suggested that the agents who are surveilling
seals may have opened their report based on information they
receive from an informant. Unfortunately, the FBI report couldn't give
us any help in this area, again because of its
near total reaction. We ask Trevor what he knew about
how close informants have been known to get with their targets.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
There have been cases of allegations involving like sexual relationships
between informants and their targets, but that is pretty rare.
It's more common that the informants have an intense personal
relationship with the targets of their investigation than that they
would be investigating that person from a distance just simply
because you're obviously not going to get a whole lot
(19:31):
of information about people if you're not close to them.
And so the case with Mickey, Windecker and Denver is
more typically the case of an informant led investigation, in
that the informant not only becomes an integral part of
the supposed conspiracy group, but then also develops very intense
(19:51):
relationships with the targets of the investigation, right. And in
many terrorism investigations, for example, the informant almost plays the
big brother fatherlike role to the targets of the investigation.
And so there's an inherent psychological element where there are
feelings that, you know, the person under investigation doesn't want
(20:11):
to disappoint this person because this person has a brotherly
role in their life, you know. So much so that
a federal judge had commented in one case that informants
are by nature of sociopaths, right, because the job of
an informant is to get to know someone over a
period of weeks, months, if not years, and become an
(20:31):
integral part of that person's life, knowing the entire time
that you're going to send that person to prison for years, right,
And so the ability to kind of do that kind
of work takes a sociopathic personality, and I think that's
true of a lot of informants. I think that's likely
true of someone like Mickey Windecker in Denver.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Given Trevor's comments about the brotherly relationships utilized by FBI
informants to ingratiate themselves with the target, you couldn't help
but wonder if anyone in Darren's life might be working
for the FEDS, someone from the Ferguson movement or the
hip hop world.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Perhaps.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
I tend to find FOYA to be a hindurance more
than anything else, so I don't generally rely on it.
The only way to who it well is to have
a lawyer who's willing to get about for you on
those cases.
Speaker 7 (21:18):
Yeah, we noticed the activists who actually got, you know,
the only document related to the Darren Seals surveillance. He
waited about two years for it, which would have meant
that he put in the foyer around September twenty twenty.
And we noticed that the document itself referenced that it
had been declassified officially as of October twenty twenty. So
(21:40):
it made us wonder why they would have made him
wait two years for a response on a document that
they'd already just declassified at the time of his request.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, I mean, it's part of the system, right, it's intentional.
It's like to make you wait. It's a good way
to dissuade people from doing stories, right because by the
time you get your documents, there's a good chance that
you're no longer interested in the story that he finally
got documents from the Foyer. System is broken, but it's
not broken as far as the government is concerned.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
More after the break.
Speaker 11 (22:17):
Now back to the show, When was your last contact
with the FBI?
Speaker 6 (22:22):
Well, I forget the lady mean, she was very highly intelligent.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
This is Darren's mother. Funny again, was.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
This the Saint Lewis FBI office? So you want to
see her?
Speaker 6 (22:35):
When we got her, I told her, I said my
son was assassinated, because I said it from day one
before these papers came out, the nine hundred sheets. And
she said no, she said, I don't see why. I
don't believe that what happened. So I told I said, well,
if you don't believe he was assassinated, why did take
eight or ten police cause to pull him over? And
(22:57):
his life was expended, it ain't come up.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
When you met with FBI. Did they ever volunteer or
reveal that your son was being surveilled for the six
months before he died. No, that would have been nice
for them to make clear. At that point, Binnie.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Believed that the FBI had killed her son before the
nine hundred page report proving their surveillance had ever been
made public. What we wanted to know is why the
surveillance began when it did.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
When I heard that there was this document that had
come out, I assumed it was going to show that
Darren Seals had been followed since the beginning of the
Ferguson Mike Brown movement, So since maybe about let's say
September of twenty fourteen, when he really he rose to
prominence and he was very well known in twenty fifteen.
Is there anything you make of this timing? Why did
they start this thing on March third, twenty sixteen, a
(23:49):
year and a half or more in his known activities?
Hard to tell.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
Particularly. You got to keep in mind that if you
look at the first page of what the FBI said,
there are a whole lot of pages that the FBI
found regarding Darren Fields that are not disclosed, So there's
a lot of activity that is still hidden. And this
is one of the methods the FBI and the Justice
Department used to subvert Freedom of Information Act requests is
(24:16):
and I'm not sure how this case proceeded, but typically
the FBI either completely ignored or slow walks Freedom of
Information Act requests. In many cases, the FBI will say,
we don't have any records, and that could indicate one
of two things. One that they don't have records, too
(24:36):
that they have records that they just hadn't really searched
very hard for because they only conduct a search of
one database, the main files they're called. But now that
the FBI has redefined itself as a domestic intelligence agency,
it has many other huge databases, including one that has
been called the Investigative Data Warehouse. Typically in litigation there
(24:59):
will be more arduous and more arguous search is done
if you get a judge who is interested in applying
the FOIL law has written. But it's an expensive and
time consuming process, and I think part of the way
they see it working is that because documents are released
in dribs and drabs, it doesn't create a whole story.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
In examining the FBI report, we've been tempted to guess
which words or names might fit in certain blank spots.
But Mike suggests that this is a fool's errand.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
That's always fraught because you know, there's an old adage
that you don't know what you don't know, and you know,
particularly having done investigations, it's kind of risky to guess.
There's exclusions and exceptions. The exclusions are what's written here
on every document where there's a reaction D seven e
B seven D. These are referencing the part of the
(25:54):
statute that says they can hide certain types of information
even as they turn over the occuments. But there are
also exceptions to the employer, which include things like informant files,
and in the past, the FBI would say we have
no records because the way they interpreted that exception was
they didn't even have to acknowledge that those records existed,
(26:18):
so they could provide a false no records reply to
comply with the law. At the HLU, we worked with
the Justice Department during the Obama administration to point out
that having the government lie on employer responses was not
the best way that the government would enforce the spirit
(26:38):
the Free with Information Act law. So now what they
do is when they send you a request, they will
often just cite those exceptions and say, you know, if
there were records under these exceptions to the rule, we
would not disclose them or acknowledge that we had them.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
What's really interesting about what Mike is telling us that
in cases of records concerning an informant, the FBI will
tell a request or that they cannot confirm or deny
that they possess records on the individual, is that we
made a FOYO request to the FBI that got this
exact response. In early twenty twenty three, our producer John
(27:19):
Duffy made a FOYO request to the FBI regarding someone
in Darren's life. Eventually, Duffy was emailed a response to
that request that had links to three PDF documents, and
their file names were the same sort of strings of
characters that Darren's FBI file consisted of. But when Duffy
tried opening these links, they all resulted in a four
(27:42):
h four error, like the linked PDF documents had been removed.
After emailing a complaint to the FBI asking that they
fixed the error and waiting and waiting while they ignored him.
Duffy eventually just resubmitted his exact same FOYO request, but
this time he was sent a letter in the mail
(28:03):
as a response. This letter said, quote, you have requested
records on one or more third party individuals. Please be
advised that the FBI will neither confirm nor deny the
existence of such records, pursue it to FOYA exemptions, and
then they list the exemption codes. Duffy appealed this decision
(28:25):
with the FBI's Office of Information Policy, explaining he had
originally been emailed three defunct links to files. In July
of twenty twenty three, the FBI granted his appeal and
reopened his FOYO request, but ten days later sent him
another letter saying that they searched their central record system
(28:46):
but found no documents. This whole affair is suspicious as hell,
to say the least, the FBI emailing links to PDFs,
then quickly pulling the linked files so they couldn't be accessed,
then refusing to fix them, then pretending no files exist
in their databases at all. Add in the fat that
(29:10):
their letter uses the language. Mike Germann says would be
used in the case of an FBI informant. And it's
hard not to suspect that the FBI is hiding something
regarding the man in question. And who is that person
who is the subject of our producer's wild Foya goose Chase,
Anthony Irvin, better known by his street name Keilo.
Speaker 10 (29:42):
I just sent you another email, So you've got my email,
You've got my number?
Speaker 8 (29:46):
Is including in those emails? Does it include the dates
that you got the initial recommendations from the police.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
This is our producer John Duffy talking to Sherry Luter,
a paralegal at this Saint Lewis County Prosecuting Attorney's office.
She called him back in response to his Sunshine request,
seeking to know the name of the individual that the
county police believed was responsible for killing Darren. He was
driving when she called, so he had to quickly turn
(30:16):
on a recording device, and that's why there's road noise
in the background. He is asking her when exactly the
police passed this name to the prosecutor's office.
Speaker 10 (30:27):
I can tell you when. Let me get this case
up here and look at it. It was November second
of twenty eighteen. Okay, then the prosecutor who was looking
into this, who was going to be assigned this case.
Less than two months later she left, So this was
(30:48):
you know, we never this case never got issued. However,
I do see mister Irvin is deceased, and I don't
know when he passed way.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Mister Irvin again was Darren's friend Kilo, and will continue
to refer to him as Kelo to avoid confusion. Kilo
was a member of the Bottom Boys, and Bonnie told
us Darren had been on the phone with Kelo talking
about a music video deal the day he died, and
that it was Kelo he was going to see when
he left his girlfriend Naomi at home making taco bulls,
(31:24):
having told her that he would be right back. Kelo
himself was murdered in twenty twenty, which lines up with
what the police said about their suspect being deceased.
Speaker 8 (31:34):
He died in April of twenty twenty.
Speaker 10 (31:38):
Oh okay, okay, okay, So yeah, so yeah, so this
would have just this would have you know, obviously, then
it's just the sat SO and the process. Like I said,
(32:00):
the prosecutor that would have been handling this left so
and then at that point we had a change of
administration here and so anyway, basically, this just kind of
and I can't explain why. I don't know, that's not
(32:21):
my area.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
After being told that Kilo died a year and a
half after he was recommended for prosecution, Cherry doesn't know
what to say. It seems she is weighing the gravity
of the fact that his death was not what prevented
the case from going forward, but that someone along the
way dropped the ball. I'm a journalist.
Speaker 8 (32:43):
I'm working on a story about Darren Seal's death, and
we've been talking to a lot of people in his world,
in the community, and on our own. We were able
to come up with Anthony Irvin. The reason I sunshined
the prosecutor's office was to get confirmation of that detail.
But in so far as Darren's murder, there had to
be multiple people involved to move his vehicle and to
(33:06):
get away from the location, things like that, Like, I.
Speaker 10 (33:09):
Don't see any there's nothing on here. There's no co
defendant link to this case. So I do not know.
But I do know that my supervisor has actually looked
at this. I know he's got he got the police report.
(33:30):
I know he's looking at this, or it's going to
be looked at to see if there is a second
person who we should be looking at.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Maybe it goes without saying that the idea that a
team of journalists investigating a seven year old homicide would
be what it takes for a prosecutor's office to examine
their own cases is not ideal. But apparently that's what
had to happen.
Speaker 8 (33:56):
Was there an official reason for holding off on prosecuting
Anthony Irvin at the time? Was it because you needed
more evidence?
Speaker 4 (34:03):
You know?
Speaker 10 (34:04):
I do not know. This is so old and both
of the attorneys that review this are gone.
Speaker 8 (34:10):
Were they from the previous administration? Were they Bob McCullough's
people or were they Wesley Bell's people?
Speaker 10 (34:15):
These were Bob's people?
Speaker 5 (34:17):
Okay?
Speaker 8 (34:18):
When a prosecutor leaves the office, what's the official workflow
to make sure that the case that's being processed, the
ball doesn't get dropped.
Speaker 10 (34:26):
Typically the case it will get reassigned to a different prosecutor.
Speaker 8 (34:32):
So there's a prosecutor now who has this case. Did
they just give it up because mister Irvin passed away?
Speaker 10 (34:39):
Or I don't know where the disconnect here is. I
don't know what happened. I don't know why. It's at
both people that touched this case are gone, and one
of them was the prosecutor's supervisor and she left also.
Speaker 8 (34:56):
I mean, obviously there's the unfortunate matter of a family
who's like, oh, who killed my son, wanting the justice
or wanting the closure and then not getting it.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
But there's the other.
Speaker 8 (35:04):
Issue here is that in theory, had Anthony Irvin been arrested,
he may himself not been murdered. If he had been
arrested and brought to trial for killing Darren, he in theory,
could be alive and in prison right now. And that's hypothetical,
of course, But so that's just what I'm what I'm
curious about, Like, you know, what happened in that that
you know, year and a half period between it being
(35:26):
suggested and him himself being killed. And I know you
probably don't have those answers, but I'm just you know,
that's just where my mind goes when you tell me this.
Speaker 10 (35:35):
Yes, I totally understand, yeah, and I'm not sure. I'm
not sure. Well, I certainly don't have that answer, and
I'm not sure anybody here does.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Honestly, the detectives who investigated Darren's murder believe that his
friend Kilo was responsible, strongly enough to suggest him to
the County Attorney's office for prosecutor. Though no one in
the hip hop world ever told us specifically that they
believed it was Kilo who killed Darren, the suggestion that
(36:08):
the murder was related to music business deals and that
Darren's killer had already himself been murdered were enough for
us to suspect Kelo. The fact that Kilo was alive
for a year and a half and walking the streets
a free man after the police gave his name to
the prosecutor's office as their prime suspect is not only
unnerving but odd. And still there's the matter of not
(36:31):
only who the other people involved in Darren's murder were,
but who killed Keilo? Is it, as Tef Poe says,
that Kilo was murdered in retribution for killing Darren? Was
his death related to Darren's at all? Or is that
just a rumor that's next time on After the Uprising.
(36:53):
After the Uprising is a production of Double Asterisk and
iHeart podcasts in association with True Stories. Season two was written, reported,
and produced by Maria Chappelle, Nadal, John Duffy, Mallory Kenoy,
and Renovashlski. Executive producers are Nikki Atour and Lindsay Hoffman
for iHeart Podcasts, John Duffy and Renoviaschewski for Double Asterisk,
(37:14):
David Cassidy and Ruth Baka for True Stories. Directed by
John Duffy and Renoviashlsky. Theme song and score by Zachary Walter.
Sound engineering and mixed by John Autry. Fact checking by
Muffin Humes. Marketing by Alison Canter, Fair Use legal by
Peter Yazzi and Brandon Butler. Legal by Holly Decan for
iHeart Podcasts and Keith Skarr for Double Asterisk. Missouri Sunshine
(37:38):
Legal by David Rowland. Show logo by iHeart Podcasts using
a photo by at Tillo Dagostino. Our interns were Hannah
Madura and Rosemary Fiery. Website by Stephanie Clark. Recorded at
David Weber's Airtime Studios in Bloomington, Indiana. We want to
acknowledge additional investigation that became part of this podcast was
(37:59):
conducted by Detective Adams in the Saint Louis County Police
and the FBI. Who did not participate in this podcast,
and by a mere Brandy Mosey, Secret and Darnell Singleton.
If you like our work, check out our other podcasts.
You can find us at double asteriskmedia dot com and
on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Support us on Patreon. If
(38:21):
you're enjoying the show, leave us a rating and review
on your favorite podcast app. Thank you to Jamie Dennis,
Danny Gonzalez, Jonathan Hartwig, Bethan macalouso, Matt McDonough, Melissa McKinnes,
Ryan Mears, Tony and Valenovyshlski and the family and loved
ones of Darren Seals, Bottom Boys and Doa. Tracks used
via fair use, So was the news reporting. Archival copyright
(38:45):
twenty twenty four Double Asteriskink
Previously on. After the uprising, Seals was found shot inside
a burning car in Riverview on Diamond Drive.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
I do know that there is a lot of sentiment
in the community that they want justice, they want the truth.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
You know, you still got a life that has a
tab on it from your past endeavors.
Speaker 4 (00:21):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5 (00:23):
I ain't never say brus way. It's like he wanted
on the spot. He was still going an argument. Where
the argument took place.
Speaker 6 (00:30):
That weren't really low you know what I'm saying, where
he was killed during the argument.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Can you give me any sense of what the argument
would have been over.
Speaker 5 (00:39):
The guy who lived at that location.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
He told the two guys, y'all can't leave that body
in front.
Speaker 7 (00:47):
Of my house.
Speaker 6 (00:48):
I'm not gonna let nothing of nobody change my mind
because I don't really know who did it.
Speaker 5 (00:55):
Y'all did this to myself.
Speaker 6 (00:56):
They've been following him for a month.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
What you're looking for is the aftermath of the grand
jury deciding not to indict.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Off Nigel Darren.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
Seals was murdered before his killer set his car on fire.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Once they put out the flames, they discovered Seal's body
inside with a gunshop.
Speaker 8 (01:32):
He pointed gun on me.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Am, I am I footing you all the brothers Fargus
the BD grab you by my heart, slam me.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
Out the car.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
He says, you might want you might want to pick
your enemy Ben. This is after the Uprising season two,
the murder of Darren Seals.
Speaker 9 (02:00):
I got a hold of our detective and essentially the
suspect we applied.
Speaker 10 (02:05):
For warrants on is deceased.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
This is Sergeant Tracy Panis of the Saint Louis County
Police again, and she's telling me something rather amazing. Apparently,
at some point they thought they knew who killed Darren,
and they applied to get an arrest warrant for the suspect.
But that person is now deceased. As getting an arrest
warrant in a homicide case shouldn't take very long, we
wanted to know when the suspect died.
Speaker 9 (02:29):
No, I don't have a death on a death day
on him orythaying no.
Speaker 5 (02:32):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
According to Sergeant Panis, the Saint Louis County Police had
made their recommendation for prosecution to the County Attorney's office.
We asked why that never moved forward.
Speaker 9 (02:42):
I would imagine it's related to them being deceased. Yeah, yeah,
if the suspect is deceased, they're not going to do
anything with it.
Speaker 10 (02:48):
I mean I would assume not.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 10 (02:50):
That might be a better question for them. On our end.
Speaker 9 (02:53):
It just shows taken under advisement, which is pretty normal
for a case when they're waiting for more evidence or
they're waiting.
Speaker 10 (02:59):
For some more on the case.
Speaker 9 (03:01):
You can check with them, but that's yeah, that's what
we have. And my detective is not available to speak
to the case, especially since we're still actively actively pursuing
possible other suspects.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
So Sergeant Panis said she couldn't give us the name
of the suspect, but that we might be able to
obtain it if we made a Sunshine request to the
prosecutor's office. So we did, and in the meantime, we
began to dive into the FBI file on Darren that
had been obtained through James Cooper's Freedom of Information Act request.
As we mentioned in the last episode, the vast majority
(03:32):
of the pages in the file are totally blacked out
by redactions, so we sought help in deciphering what was
available to be read.
Speaker 5 (03:38):
So there's an FBI specially in US W. Marshall and
what are's probably a police sergeant who perform a vehicle
stop on Darren Seals as he was driving his known
twenty twelve Chief Wrangler redaction. So the vehicle was located
in parking lot the area redacted. Uniformed officers redacted.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
This is Mike Jerman. He's a fellow with the Brennan
Center for Justices, Liberty and National Security program, and before
that he served as the Policy Council for National Security
and Privacy at the ACLU's Legislative Office. Rather interestingly, before
working for the American Civil Liberties Union, Mike was an
FBI special agent, which informs the bookie author titled Disrupt, Discredit,
(04:23):
and Divide How the New FBI Damages Democracy. We sent
him a copy of the FBI file on Darren, and
here we're breaking down a section of the report that
explains how the FBI arranged to have Darren pulled over
with the help of local police and other authorities. Note
this is not the traffic stop from Ferguson that was
filmed by a bystander that we played audio from earlier
(04:44):
this season.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
The uniformed officers who made Stoff advised that Seals had
active warrants for arrest. These parent appear to be traffic warrants,
including driving with the license revokes, so they're basically putting
the reasonable suspicion for why they can justify car stop.
What's clear from the rest that it is that they
were using the car stop to try to search for
(05:06):
a weapon, and when they don't find a weapon, they
release him, which only reinforces that the purpose of the
stop was not to enforce the warrants or analyze him
for driving without a license.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Everything Mike just read about Darren being pulled over comes
from a page in the report that was filed on
June eighth, twenty sixteen, three months before Darren's death. Darren's
FBI report is so heavily redacted that barely anything can
be gleaned from it, and this description of the traffic
stop is one of the few readable portions of the file.
We asked Mike if he could make sense of the
(05:40):
remaining bits of text, much of which is insider jargon, abbreviations,
and reference codes.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
So there are a.
Speaker 5 (05:47):
Couple of things. One is on the opening memo, the
agent opening the case opens it based upon the allegations
that Darren seals for the self described revolutionary espouse, somewhat
militant rhetoric, and has access to weapons. Under the FBI's
rules that are allegedly to protect First Amendment rights, an
(06:12):
FBI agent is not held out to open an investigation
based solely on First Amendment activities. But this description reflects
how easy that is to overcome one.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
And it strikes me that it's referenced over and over
again that willusion series this is not based on First
Amendment right. I see that many times in this document.
It's one of the only unredacted.
Speaker 5 (06:34):
Statements, and that's because that's the only protection. So that's
the only hurdle that has to be overcome. And some
of the documents are referencing what's called a CDC review.
CDC is the Chief Division Council. That's an FBI agent
lawyer who is in the office. This other FBI official
(06:57):
who has a law degree is supposed to okay the
investigation and the activity and review it every six months.
There are indications that this is openness a domestic terrorism
investigation because of the CDC reviews and because of this document,
which is on page twenty three, the people at this
traffic stop are an FBI special agent, a US Deputy Marshall,
(07:19):
and a police sergeant in addition to the uniform officers
who are apparently making the stop. And that tells me
that it's a task force, and I would imagine most
likely that it's a joint terrorism task force, but it
could also be a violent crimes task force or a
drug task force a given Field's previous convictions for drugs,
but clearly a federal investigation that is utilizing their information
(07:43):
that they have from performance for their own suppositions based
on his criminal history.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
One of the more frustrating things about how insanely redacted
the FBI report is is that we don't even know
what kind of investigation it's describing. It would be easy
enough to just assume that the FBI was looking into
Darren as a potential domestic terrorists because of his highly
visible status with the Ferguson movement, but we don't know
that for sure. The FBI could have been investigating Darren
(08:08):
for other reasons, such as potential gang or drug activity.
Speaker 5 (08:12):
There's a reference to his one drug conviction, but it's
interesting how they characterize that because they also reference a
number of arrests that did not result in convictions, which
is somewhat unusual that you would highlight arrests for assault,
arrest for arm criminal action, and I'm also useablep and
(08:33):
when there was no conviction associated with that. What it
appears to me just from these records is what they
were trying to accomplish was what they call a disruption.
Immediately after nine to eleven, Attorney General John Ashcroft resurrected
this concept of disruption, this idea that if the FBI
believes you did something bad and can't prove it, they're
(08:57):
still going to take actions to disrupt your ac and
this is sometimes referred to as the al Capone concept.
You know that al Capone was this murderous gang leader
in Chicago, but they ended up convicting him of incompax evasion.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
What are the tools in the toolbox of disruption in
the modern FBI selective prosecution?
Speaker 5 (09:18):
You know, finding some minor thing that the FBI typically
wouldn't investigate or charge credit card fraud or food stamp
frauds that are below the threshold that normally triggers an
FBI investigation, but it's kind of like, aha, we can
put them in jail for this and disrupt their activities.
And you know, when the person you're looking at is
(09:39):
actually al Capone or somebody like him who is actually
a gangland leader, and there's plenty of evidence to show that,
just can't get witnesses to testify. You know, that might
seem like a rational methodology, but when the FBI perceives
somebody is dangerous because of their advocacy, and you know,
throughout history, including recent events, we've seen that they tend
(10:02):
to view social movements led by people of color as
threatening to the nation's security, threatening to the status quo
in a way that they don't see white militancy as
the same kind of threat. So who they perceive as
a terrorist is very biased, and then adopting them that
selectively prosecute them for crimes is in itself a bias
(10:25):
activity because they're not actually engaging in terrorist activity.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
What would be the next step, potentially, do you just
prosecute can get a person like that out of what
they consider, you know, arms way, or do you then
try to flip that person and get them feeding you
on you know other people in the circle.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
Well, both are considered legitimate tactics under the disruption strategy
that's documented in a two thousand and nine document called
Spaceline Collection Plan. So it could be finding some other
unrelated charge like felling in possession of firearms and putting
that person away for a period of time, and that's
considered disrupting their criminal activities in the case of graectic
(11:04):
terrors and their terrorist activities, when the reason for the
suspicion is that their advocacy is somehow dangerous.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
It's well known that the FBI under j. Edgar Hoover
employed disruption tactics against the civil rights movement and its
leaders as part of their Cointel pro program. For instance,
they sent an anonymous letter to doctor Martin Luther King, Junior,
disparaging him and urging him on to some unspecified act,
(11:34):
which doctor King himself believed was to commit suicide. Also,
the FBI was instrumental in the Chicago raid that resulted
in the assassination of Fred Hampton, Junior. But those FBI
actions all occurred before the Church Committee in nineteen seventy five,
chaired by Senator Frank Church. This massive investigation into abuses
(11:56):
by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and irs not only turned
up illegal operations like the FBI's co Intel pro and
CIA's mk Ultra, but it resulted in the creation of
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. This new level of
oversight was intended to reign in unethical, unconstitutional, and frankly
(12:20):
on American behaviors of the intelligence agencies. Certainly, we could
argue all day about how successful this oversight is, but
what seems clear is that the modern FBI seems less
inclined to kill, but rather incredibly intent on disrupting and
arresting the individuals they target. A modern example.
Speaker 11 (12:43):
After the break, now back to the show, how did
you end up on the Denver story in particular of
all the ones that you might have chosen in this area.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
To explain that, I need to back up a little
bit and just explain that I'd be probably going back
to like two thousand and nine. I'd been looking into
the FBI's use of informants and sting operations in the
context of terrorism, and my criticism is that the bureau
would find kind of impressionable people who don't have access
to terrorist organizations, don't have weapons on their own, and
(13:22):
then they would provide them with the means of opportunity
to commit some sort of bombing or similar terrorists like crime.
In some of these cases, the targets of these things
end up being mentally ill or financially desperate in a
way that makes them vulnerable to an informants instigation.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
This is journalist Trevor Aronson. In twenty twenty three, he
published a story in The Intercept about how the FBI
paid a violent felon to infiltrate the racial justice movement
that formed in Denver after the killing of George Floyd.
As we've heard from Saint Louis locals who participated in
the Ferguson movement, there was a lot of suspicion that
informants were mixed into the crowd. In such environment, it's
(14:00):
easy to become paranoid. Stories like the one Trevor broke
about Denver served to show us that what some might
call paranoia is sometimes not paranoia at all.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
The unrest in twenty twenty happened, and that coming on
the heels of the FBI defining Black identity extremism as
a form of domestic terrorism. I really had this hunch
that the FBI was using the same type of tactics
against political activists, and I felt like it was a
pretty good hunch and an educated guest, but I didn't
have any proof, and so I spent like a good
(14:32):
year trying to find examples of this. There were all
sorts of rumors that summer about government infiltrators and people
who were acting suspicious, but there wasn't a lot of
proof that these people were government infiltrators. And so in
trying to find this proof that this was happening, I
ended up getting leaked to me this cash of documents
and recordings from Denver that proved that. So it wasn't
(14:53):
like I just went out and picked Denver as the
case study that I would pursue. It was more that
Denver kind of found me for these leaked documents, and
then I was able to go to Denver and report
it out and kind of use Denver as a as
a case study of what was likely happening nationwide.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
What Trevor documents in his reporting is that the FBI
paid a man named Mickey Windecker to infiltrate the movement
in Denver. When Trevor asked Mickey to comment on working
for the FBI, Mickey initially denied having done so, but
Trevor had copies of payment receipts to the tune of
twenty thousand dollars from the FBI to Mickey, and the
FBI didn't just want Mickey to act as eyes and
(15:31):
ears within the movement, they wanted him to go to
an activist into committing a felony. Trevor notes that this
focus on black social movements by federal law enforcement comes
in the wake of the FBI's coining of the term
black identity extremist.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
The FBI was specifically investigating a number of black activists
whose only reason for suspicion, as far as the FBI
was concerned, was a result of their gun ownership. And
you don't see that kind of investigative activity happening targeting
white political activists, white people in general, And so I
think you can point to a double standard. What makes
it harder to kind of quantify the FBI's efforts related
(16:08):
to black identity extremism is that once black identity extremism
as a label became public, it was met with criticism
by people in the press, by people on Capitol Hill.
And what the FBI did was publicly backtrack essentially right,
They said that they no longer use the term black
identity extremism and have instead created this new category under
(16:30):
domestic terrorism called racially motivated biolent extremism, which lumped together
so called black identity extremism with white supremacists and white
nationalists and other kind of racially based extremism in the
FBI's term. And so in that way it becomes harder
to quantify the efforts that the FBI makes specifically toward
black identity extremism.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
We explained to Trevor that before being murdered, Darren had
expressed to his friends and family that he expected to
be killed specifically by the FBI, and we asked if
he thought that, in the post Church Committee era, such
an extra judicial killing by the FBI was even reasonable
to consider.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
And, yeah, anything is possible. I guess I would be
quite skeptical of that, unless you know, Facebook like overwhelming
up and it's the contrary.
Speaker 7 (17:15):
Is it possible that like.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
An agent acting on his own volition or an informant
acting on his own volition killed someone like Darren Fields? Like, sure,
I mean it's possible. I think it's highly unlikely. I
think it's even more unlikely that that would in any
way be condoned or ordered as an official part of
business for the FBI. That's that a case agent or
(17:37):
a supervisor was ordering such a thing.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
I mean, I think that's.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Highly, highly unlikely. I would note that kind of on
a more global level, that anyone who tends to be
under surveillance by the FBI like generally ends up being
somewhat paranoid about what's happening to them. And that's the
nature of that, right, Like, if you realize that you
were under suspicion or under surveillance by the FBI, you
may see an agent, but then you end up being
(18:02):
at a coffee shop or a Walmart, a grocery store,
and you see someone who looks like an agent in
your mind and they're not, and in your mind, they're like, oh, they.
Speaker 5 (18:12):
Must be an ancient.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
And that's part of the process that the FBI has
in providing surveillance on someone. It can be twofold. They
may choose to surveil someone in a way that they
are quite discreet, and that person may not know that
they are under surveillance. But there's also a strategy that
the FBI has of putting someone under surveillance in a
way that they know they're under surveillance to prevent them
from the activism, to prevent them from doing crimes, just
(18:35):
to like to see what they do when they're facing
that suspicion. And so I think that kind of tactic
used by the FBI, if it was used, is the
type that reads paranoia, where someone might say, like, you know,
if something happens to me, it's the FBI.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Mike Jerman had suggested that the agents who are surveilling
seals may have opened their report based on information they
receive from an informant. Unfortunately, the FBI report couldn't give
us any help in this area, again because of its
near total reaction. We ask Trevor what he knew about
how close informants have been known to get with their targets.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
There have been cases of allegations involving like sexual relationships
between informants and their targets, but that is pretty rare.
It's more common that the informants have an intense personal
relationship with the targets of their investigation than that they
would be investigating that person from a distance just simply
because you're obviously not going to get a whole lot
(19:31):
of information about people if you're not close to them.
And so the case with Mickey, Windecker and Denver is
more typically the case of an informant led investigation, in
that the informant not only becomes an integral part of
the supposed conspiracy group, but then also develops very intense
(19:51):
relationships with the targets of the investigation, right. And in
many terrorism investigations, for example, the informant almost plays the
big brother fatherlike role to the targets of the investigation.
And so there's an inherent psychological element where there are
feelings that, you know, the person under investigation doesn't want
(20:11):
to disappoint this person because this person has a brotherly
role in their life, you know. So much so that
a federal judge had commented in one case that informants
are by nature of sociopaths, right, because the job of
an informant is to get to know someone over a
period of weeks, months, if not years, and become an
(20:31):
integral part of that person's life, knowing the entire time
that you're going to send that person to prison for years, right,
And so the ability to kind of do that kind
of work takes a sociopathic personality, and I think that's
true of a lot of informants. I think that's likely
true of someone like Mickey Windecker in Denver.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Given Trevor's comments about the brotherly relationships utilized by FBI
informants to ingratiate themselves with the target, you couldn't help
but wonder if anyone in Darren's life might be working
for the FEDS, someone from the Ferguson movement or the
hip hop world.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Perhaps.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
I tend to find FOYA to be a hindurance more
than anything else, so I don't generally rely on it.
The only way to who it well is to have
a lawyer who's willing to get about for you on
those cases.
Speaker 7 (21:18):
Yeah, we noticed the activists who actually got, you know,
the only document related to the Darren Seals surveillance. He
waited about two years for it, which would have meant
that he put in the foyer around September twenty twenty.
And we noticed that the document itself referenced that it
had been declassified officially as of October twenty twenty. So
(21:40):
it made us wonder why they would have made him
wait two years for a response on a document that
they'd already just declassified at the time of his request.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Yeah, I mean, it's part of the system, right, it's intentional.
It's like to make you wait. It's a good way
to dissuade people from doing stories, right because by the
time you get your documents, there's a good chance that
you're no longer interested in the story that he finally
got documents from the Foyer. System is broken, but it's
not broken as far as the government is concerned.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
More after the break.
Speaker 11 (22:17):
Now back to the show, When was your last contact
with the FBI?
Speaker 6 (22:22):
Well, I forget the lady mean, she was very highly intelligent.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
This is Darren's mother. Funny again, was.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
This the Saint Lewis FBI office? So you want to
see her?
Speaker 6 (22:35):
When we got her, I told her, I said my
son was assassinated, because I said it from day one
before these papers came out, the nine hundred sheets. And
she said no, she said, I don't see why. I
don't believe that what happened. So I told I said, well,
if you don't believe he was assassinated, why did take
eight or ten police cause to pull him over? And
(22:57):
his life was expended, it ain't come up.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
When you met with FBI. Did they ever volunteer or
reveal that your son was being surveilled for the six
months before he died. No, that would have been nice
for them to make clear. At that point, Binnie.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Believed that the FBI had killed her son before the
nine hundred page report proving their surveillance had ever been
made public. What we wanted to know is why the
surveillance began when it did.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
When I heard that there was this document that had
come out, I assumed it was going to show that
Darren Seals had been followed since the beginning of the
Ferguson Mike Brown movement, So since maybe about let's say
September of twenty fourteen, when he really he rose to
prominence and he was very well known in twenty fifteen.
Is there anything you make of this timing? Why did
they start this thing on March third, twenty sixteen, a
(23:49):
year and a half or more in his known activities?
Hard to tell.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
Particularly. You got to keep in mind that if you
look at the first page of what the FBI said,
there are a whole lot of pages that the FBI
found regarding Darren Fields that are not disclosed, So there's
a lot of activity that is still hidden. And this
is one of the methods the FBI and the Justice
Department used to subvert Freedom of Information Act requests is
(24:16):
and I'm not sure how this case proceeded, but typically
the FBI either completely ignored or slow walks Freedom of
Information Act requests. In many cases, the FBI will say,
we don't have any records, and that could indicate one
of two things. One that they don't have records, too
(24:36):
that they have records that they just hadn't really searched
very hard for because they only conduct a search of
one database, the main files they're called. But now that
the FBI has redefined itself as a domestic intelligence agency,
it has many other huge databases, including one that has
been called the Investigative Data Warehouse. Typically in litigation there
(24:59):
will be more arduous and more arguous search is done
if you get a judge who is interested in applying
the FOIL law has written. But it's an expensive and
time consuming process, and I think part of the way
they see it working is that because documents are released
in dribs and drabs, it doesn't create a whole story.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
In examining the FBI report, we've been tempted to guess
which words or names might fit in certain blank spots.
But Mike suggests that this is a fool's errand.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
That's always fraught because you know, there's an old adage
that you don't know what you don't know, and you know,
particularly having done investigations, it's kind of risky to guess.
There's exclusions and exceptions. The exclusions are what's written here
on every document where there's a reaction D seven e
B seven D. These are referencing the part of the
(25:54):
statute that says they can hide certain types of information
even as they turn over the occuments. But there are
also exceptions to the employer, which include things like informant files,
and in the past, the FBI would say we have
no records because the way they interpreted that exception was
they didn't even have to acknowledge that those records existed,
(26:18):
so they could provide a false no records reply to
comply with the law. At the HLU, we worked with
the Justice Department during the Obama administration to point out
that having the government lie on employer responses was not
the best way that the government would enforce the spirit
(26:38):
the Free with Information Act law. So now what they
do is when they send you a request, they will
often just cite those exceptions and say, you know, if
there were records under these exceptions to the rule, we
would not disclose them or acknowledge that we had them.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
What's really interesting about what Mike is telling us that
in cases of records concerning an informant, the FBI will
tell a request or that they cannot confirm or deny
that they possess records on the individual, is that we
made a FOYO request to the FBI that got this
exact response. In early twenty twenty three, our producer John
(27:19):
Duffy made a FOYO request to the FBI regarding someone
in Darren's life. Eventually, Duffy was emailed a response to
that request that had links to three PDF documents, and
their file names were the same sort of strings of
characters that Darren's FBI file consisted of. But when Duffy
tried opening these links, they all resulted in a four
(27:42):
h four error, like the linked PDF documents had been removed.
After emailing a complaint to the FBI asking that they
fixed the error and waiting and waiting while they ignored him.
Duffy eventually just resubmitted his exact same FOYO request, but
this time he was sent a letter in the mail
(28:03):
as a response. This letter said, quote, you have requested
records on one or more third party individuals. Please be
advised that the FBI will neither confirm nor deny the
existence of such records, pursue it to FOYA exemptions, and
then they list the exemption codes. Duffy appealed this decision
(28:25):
with the FBI's Office of Information Policy, explaining he had
originally been emailed three defunct links to files. In July
of twenty twenty three, the FBI granted his appeal and
reopened his FOYO request, but ten days later sent him
another letter saying that they searched their central record system
(28:46):
but found no documents. This whole affair is suspicious as hell,
to say the least, the FBI emailing links to PDFs,
then quickly pulling the linked files so they couldn't be accessed,
then refusing to fix them, then pretending no files exist
in their databases at all. Add in the fat that
(29:10):
their letter uses the language. Mike Germann says would be
used in the case of an FBI informant. And it's
hard not to suspect that the FBI is hiding something
regarding the man in question. And who is that person
who is the subject of our producer's wild Foya goose Chase,
Anthony Irvin, better known by his street name Keilo.
Speaker 10 (29:42):
I just sent you another email, So you've got my email,
You've got my number?
Speaker 8 (29:46):
Is including in those emails? Does it include the dates
that you got the initial recommendations from the police.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
This is our producer John Duffy talking to Sherry Luter,
a paralegal at this Saint Lewis County Prosecuting Attorney's office.
She called him back in response to his Sunshine request,
seeking to know the name of the individual that the
county police believed was responsible for killing Darren. He was
driving when she called, so he had to quickly turn
(30:16):
on a recording device, and that's why there's road noise
in the background. He is asking her when exactly the
police passed this name to the prosecutor's office.
Speaker 10 (30:27):
I can tell you when. Let me get this case
up here and look at it. It was November second
of twenty eighteen. Okay, then the prosecutor who was looking
into this, who was going to be assigned this case.
Less than two months later she left, So this was
(30:48):
you know, we never this case never got issued. However,
I do see mister Irvin is deceased, and I don't
know when he passed way.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Mister Irvin again was Darren's friend Kilo, and will continue
to refer to him as Kelo to avoid confusion. Kilo
was a member of the Bottom Boys, and Bonnie told
us Darren had been on the phone with Kelo talking
about a music video deal the day he died, and
that it was Kelo he was going to see when
he left his girlfriend Naomi at home making taco bulls,
(31:24):
having told her that he would be right back. Kelo
himself was murdered in twenty twenty, which lines up with
what the police said about their suspect being deceased.
Speaker 8 (31:34):
He died in April of twenty twenty.
Speaker 10 (31:38):
Oh okay, okay, okay, So yeah, so yeah, so this
would have just this would have you know, obviously, then
it's just the sat SO and the process. Like I said,
(32:00):
the prosecutor that would have been handling this left so
and then at that point we had a change of
administration here and so anyway, basically, this just kind of
and I can't explain why. I don't know, that's not
(32:21):
my area.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
After being told that Kilo died a year and a
half after he was recommended for prosecution, Cherry doesn't know
what to say. It seems she is weighing the gravity
of the fact that his death was not what prevented
the case from going forward, but that someone along the
way dropped the ball. I'm a journalist.
Speaker 8 (32:43):
I'm working on a story about Darren Seal's death, and
we've been talking to a lot of people in his world,
in the community, and on our own. We were able
to come up with Anthony Irvin. The reason I sunshined
the prosecutor's office was to get confirmation of that detail.
But in so far as Darren's murder, there had to
be multiple people involved to move his vehicle and to
(33:06):
get away from the location, things like that, Like, I.
Speaker 10 (33:09):
Don't see any there's nothing on here. There's no co
defendant link to this case. So I do not know.
But I do know that my supervisor has actually looked
at this. I know he's got he got the police report.
(33:30):
I know he's looking at this, or it's going to
be looked at to see if there is a second
person who we should be looking at.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Maybe it goes without saying that the idea that a
team of journalists investigating a seven year old homicide would
be what it takes for a prosecutor's office to examine
their own cases is not ideal. But apparently that's what
had to happen.
Speaker 8 (33:56):
Was there an official reason for holding off on prosecuting
Anthony Irvin at the time? Was it because you needed
more evidence?
Speaker 4 (34:03):
You know?
Speaker 10 (34:04):
I do not know. This is so old and both
of the attorneys that review this are gone.
Speaker 8 (34:10):
Were they from the previous administration? Were they Bob McCullough's
people or were they Wesley Bell's people?
Speaker 10 (34:15):
These were Bob's people?
Speaker 5 (34:17):
Okay?
Speaker 8 (34:18):
When a prosecutor leaves the office, what's the official workflow
to make sure that the case that's being processed, the
ball doesn't get dropped.
Speaker 10 (34:26):
Typically the case it will get reassigned to a different prosecutor.
Speaker 8 (34:32):
So there's a prosecutor now who has this case. Did
they just give it up because mister Irvin passed away?
Speaker 10 (34:39):
Or I don't know where the disconnect here is. I
don't know what happened. I don't know why. It's at
both people that touched this case are gone, and one
of them was the prosecutor's supervisor and she left also.
Speaker 8 (34:56):
I mean, obviously there's the unfortunate matter of a family
who's like, oh, who killed my son, wanting the justice
or wanting the closure and then not getting it.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
But there's the other.
Speaker 8 (35:04):
Issue here is that in theory, had Anthony Irvin been arrested,
he may himself not been murdered. If he had been
arrested and brought to trial for killing Darren, he in theory,
could be alive and in prison right now. And that's hypothetical,
of course, But so that's just what I'm what I'm
curious about, Like, you know, what happened in that that
you know, year and a half period between it being
(35:26):
suggested and him himself being killed. And I know you
probably don't have those answers, but I'm just you know,
that's just where my mind goes when you tell me this.
Speaker 10 (35:35):
Yes, I totally understand, yeah, and I'm not sure. I'm
not sure. Well, I certainly don't have that answer, and
I'm not sure anybody here does.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Honestly, the detectives who investigated Darren's murder believe that his
friend Kilo was responsible, strongly enough to suggest him to
the County Attorney's office for prosecutor. Though no one in
the hip hop world ever told us specifically that they
believed it was Kilo who killed Darren, the suggestion that
(36:08):
the murder was related to music business deals and that
Darren's killer had already himself been murdered were enough for
us to suspect Kelo. The fact that Kilo was alive
for a year and a half and walking the streets
a free man after the police gave his name to
the prosecutor's office as their prime suspect is not only
unnerving but odd. And still there's the matter of not
(36:31):
only who the other people involved in Darren's murder were,
but who killed Keilo? Is it, as Tef Poe says,
that Kilo was murdered in retribution for killing Darren? Was
his death related to Darren's at all? Or is that
just a rumor that's next time on After the Uprising.
(36:53):
After the Uprising is a production of Double Asterisk and
iHeart podcasts in association with True Stories. Season two was written, reported,
and produced by Maria Chappelle, Nadal, John Duffy, Mallory Kenoy,
and Renovashlski. Executive producers are Nikki Atour and Lindsay Hoffman
for iHeart Podcasts, John Duffy and Renoviaschewski for Double Asterisk,
(37:14):
David Cassidy and Ruth Baka for True Stories. Directed by
John Duffy and Renoviashlsky. Theme song and score by Zachary Walter.
Sound engineering and mixed by John Autry. Fact checking by
Muffin Humes. Marketing by Alison Canter, Fair Use legal by
Peter Yazzi and Brandon Butler. Legal by Holly Decan for
iHeart Podcasts and Keith Skarr for Double Asterisk. Missouri Sunshine
(37:38):
Legal by David Rowland. Show logo by iHeart Podcasts using
a photo by at Tillo Dagostino. Our interns were Hannah
Madura and Rosemary Fiery. Website by Stephanie Clark. Recorded at
David Weber's Airtime Studios in Bloomington, Indiana. We want to
acknowledge additional investigation that became part of this podcast was
(37:59):
conducted by Detective Adams in the Saint Louis County Police
and the FBI. Who did not participate in this podcast,
and by a mere Brandy Mosey, Secret and Darnell Singleton.
If you like our work, check out our other podcasts.
You can find us at double asteriskmedia dot com and
on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Support us on Patreon. If
(38:21):
you're enjoying the show, leave us a rating and review
on your favorite podcast app. Thank you to Jamie Dennis,
Danny Gonzalez, Jonathan Hartwig, Bethan macalouso, Matt McDonough, Melissa McKinnes,
Ryan Mears, Tony and Valenovyshlski and the family and loved
ones of Darren Seals, Bottom Boys and Doa. Tracks used
via fair use, So was the news reporting. Archival copyright
(38:45):
twenty twenty four Double Asteriskink
Hosts And Creators
Ray Nowosielski
Maria Chappelle-Nadal
John Duffy
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