July 2, 2026 • 68 mins
What really happens on the dark web—and how do investigators find the people hiding there? Alicia sits down with investigator Rusty in Part 1 of a 2 part episode, for an eye-opening conversation about tracking child exploitation networks, exposing the growing threat of nihilistic violent extremist (NVE), and how predators recruit vulnerable young people online. Rusty explains why offenders don't "accidentally" end up on the dark web, what parents need to know to protect their children, and the emotional toll of investigating some of the most disturbing crimes imaginable.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to the Alicia Kazack Podcast. If you're
returning listener, welcome back, and if you're new here this
podcast it moves from the very darkest of places to
the lightest. But before we get there, I want to
tell you a little bit about why I am here
and why this matters. When I was thirteen years old,
I was groomed online, lord from my home, kidnapped and
(00:23):
held captive by an online predator. It was a landmark
case that was the first of its kind. Miraculously, I
was rescued by the FBI. I was so incredibly lucky.
Soon after my rescue, I began sharing my story publicly
to raise awareness and to protect others. And I've been
(00:44):
speaking and advocating now for over twenty years, and through
that I have worked with and become close friends with
some really amazing people, people who fight to protect children
and families every day. These are the people who are
in the trenches and they walk into nightmares that most
people can't begin to fathom. But they also hold such
(01:07):
light and joy, even if they have to hold on
to it so tightly. Okay, So speaking of that, last weekend,
I went to something called a serial Killer Speakeasy. This
is a thing. It's like a traveling show and it's
an immersive true crime experience where you sip on themed
(01:29):
cocktails while actors play serial killers like Dahmer and Geen.
And it's marketed as this fun kind of night out.
And I went because I wanted to see it for myself.
I knew it would be triggering. I knew I would
probably get offended, and I wanted to walk into that
and see. And actually I was just I was really curious, like,
(01:52):
what the heck are these people going to do here?
Were they going to glorify murder? Were they going to
water down details? Were people going to get hammered and
do the limbo with the Dahmer and Gan? Like what
was going to happen? So we went to dinner before
I went with my boyfriend and to go this alone.
(02:14):
And I didn't expect a lot of people to be there.
I thought there'd be just like a small crowd. I
was wrong. I thought we went to the wrong place.
So we get to this place and there is a
line out the door, like it's hard to find parking.
When I say a line out the door, I mean
two hundred plus people showed up like this was really
really popular. So once we got there, somebody got on
(02:35):
stage and they basically went through various horrific stories.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Momat day, our gay.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I payple mom, no mom, A promise, nobody else, and
they handed out drinks dressed as different serial killers, like
Dahmer handed me a drink, and some of these drinks
had body parts and they were themed, and Dahmer's drink
(03:16):
was named after the apartment number where he committed his crimes.
It was it was twisted, and it was offensive. But
what was the most disturbing thing wasn't necessarily what they
were putting on. It was kind of the audience.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
The next man wasn't dangerous because he was different.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
The danger was that he wasn't. This is the one
and only Jeffrey. People got really tipsy. The drinks were
pretty strong, and as they got tipsy and tipsy or
and tipsier, they got more and more inappropriate. The show
(04:00):
itself it went to the edge of acceptable, but it
did also talk about the crimes being real and awful.
It was that audience that took it too far. They
joked and they laughed about things, and it was utterly shocking,
and I was really really disturbed. There was even this
group of friends that dressed up like different serial killers,
like they were cose playing. They were having fun. They
(04:21):
were so excited about this, like that was they were
fans of true crime and these were I don't want
to say these were heroes to them, but they were
characters and not real people who did real horrific things.
It was the embodiment of true crime as entertainment, which
is something we talk about a lot on here, that
(04:42):
difference between true crime and real crime, and we will
get really deep into that in this episode, because there
is a place where fascination with true crime and horror
turns really dangerous. Fascination is okay, wanting to learn more
is okay. I like true crime myself. Here I am
(05:02):
hosting a true crime podcast. This isn't something that a
world that I don't understand, but it's important to not
be consumed by it and to not peer into the
darkness until it takes over, which can happen really easily,
and it's something that my next guest has to do
every single day. I am so excited to introduce you
to a friend of mine who is a little bit
(05:23):
mysterious and When I say that, I mean that he
is here with a code name, So we're not going
to use his real name, and we're also not going
to mention what agency he works with. But his title
is that he is a task for his officer who
investigates Internet crimes against children and chod exploitation. And Ron
Swanson is a spirit animal and you'll see why. But
(05:43):
today I'm going to kind of hold your hand and
lead you into that darkness that you sometimes peer into.
But fair warning, we're going to be talking about some
really really disturbing cases, and we're going to be laughing
together about absurd and kind of inappropriate things, but we're
also going to be sharing some messages of how to
(06:05):
better our lives the whole. Really, this episode runs the
gamut of WTF. So let's get into this and say
hello to code named Rusty. Rusty, thank you so much
for being here. We've gone over your title sort of
in short, what do you do?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I hunt bad guys? Kind of the what a lot
of people would say, the worst of society.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Okay, so what does that actually mean? Are you like Batman? Like,
what do you What does that actually mean? What does
your day to day work? Look like what is rusty
to day?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
That is an ambition of mine that would be really cool.
I love gadget, so I need to do this. Basically,
I go after the the kind of the heavier hitters
of the child exploitation world. Yeah, I just I try
to focus on the larger cases, so not so much
(07:04):
the the things that would be handled more to a
local level. I try to focus on things that would
be of a federal nexus.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Okay, so you said that you go after the heavy hitters.
What what does that mean? Are these like large networks?
Are they all hands on offenders or is it especially heinous?
What makes somebody a heavy hitter heavy hitters?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
There's no like definition. This is just my O thing.
I would say something that would designate a heavy hitter
would be like an enterprise level you know, exploit or
somebody who is part of maybe like a dark web
like enterprise, a website or something like that. Also significant
(07:53):
period to peer sharing, anybody who is doing a large
falling in of distribution, enticement, production, that type of thing.
Not so much the collectors and the people that are
just viewing and looking at it. I try to focus
(08:15):
on the people that are more behind the distribution and
creation would be kind of the level of which I
tried to keep my cases.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
So not just the possession side, but the creation and
the distribution of it.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Not to mitigate possession, but you can't do everything. So
what I try to focus on is more of the
production side, or more of the distribution side, more of
the people who are bringing this out into the world.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
You mentioned the dark Web, and when people hear the
dark Web, they get kind of excited. It's this dark,
mysterious secret place woo, right, and people talk about like
the creepypasta stories basically, and like the Red Room and
all of that. Can you tell me a little bit
about the dark web? And like there, I know there's
(09:10):
different levels, right, there's the dark Web and the clear
web and the what are those levels?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
All the webs all the webs, So the Internet is
not just like one place, and increasingly it's becoming even
more dynamic. But in general we can simplify it into
three main categories. There's more, but we'll just stick with
(09:38):
just three main categories. So there's like the world Wide Web.
This is the you know website Google stuff, so you
you know www dot whatever, dot com. This is that
stuff that you see, so basically anything that you're looking
at on a normal web browser. Then there's the deep web.
(10:03):
So a lot of people confuse the dark web with
the deep web, where they use it interchangeably, and it
is not interchangeable. They're two totally different things. The deep
web is where like business records and things that are
accessible through the Internet but aren't necessarily something that you
can google. This would be more like, you know, business records,
(10:25):
things that are stored not immediately accessible, like think like
the library, all the books on the shelf. You can't
really see what's in all the books on the shelf,
but they're there, they're available, so it's not it's not secret,
it's not like that. It might be behind like a
(10:46):
security barrier if it's like your medical records or whatever.
But that's on the deep web. So that's a huge,
huge chunk.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Of the boring stuff, the boring files.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, it's just where all the all the stuff is, right,
So the the the step step the world Wide Web
is more like the interface by which you access all
this other stuff. So then you have the dark web.
The dark web is not something that you get to
by accident. You have to know how to get there.
(11:16):
You have to download software that does not come on
your computer. There's no way you can accidentally access the
dark Web. There's just multiple steps that you have to take.
Most people are having to do a fairly significant amount
of research to figure out, Okay, what do I need
to do this, how do I need to configure it?
(11:39):
And then how do you get wherever you're going on
the dark Web? The dark Web that originally didn't really
have a very good search function at all, like you
pretty much had to know exactly where you wanted to go.
It's a little bit better now for that. It's a
little more user friendly. However, it still very much a
(12:02):
you know, like the wild West. So most people are
not surfing the dark Web. They are going to specific
places that they already know about. So they'll go to
a forum or someplace, they'll find a link that is
a dark Web link that will only work on special
browsers that are designed to run on the dark Web,
(12:24):
and so they already know, hey, this is the place
I want to go, and they just pop that into
their browser once it's configured, and then they can go
look at it. They're not generally just like cruising around
looking for stuff because things on the dark Web don't
live long. They're up and they're down. A lot of
these things don't hang out a long time because most
(12:45):
of it's nefarious and either they're doing it to hide
or gets taken down or whatever. Most things aren't sitting
there for a long time.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So you mentioned that you can't just stumble at it,
and I know that offenders do not lack any amount
of excuses. They are are ready with to say the
most absurd excuses. Have you heard that before? Have they said,
do you like, oh, I just just end it up there.
I don't know how I got on the dark Web.
I just was clicking and there I was.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
I've had a few people in the past tell me
that I think it's common knowledge enough now that they
know that, they can't, you know, lie about that, and Mike,
that's just a ridiculous statement, and everybody knows it. I
really haven't had anybody tell me that it was an
accident lately. What I have had people say is when
(13:36):
they're doing peer to peer and they're like, oh, yeah,
I just I thought I was downloading a movie or something.
There is a lot of configuration that occurs with peer
to peer. That is also software that does not come
standard on any computer. You have to research what kind
of peer to peer network that you intend to use,
(13:59):
find the right software before it can figure it the
right way so that you can actually effectively do the
peer to peer file sharing and stuff like that, and
then you have to like find people that have what
you want and all that. And yeah, I mean, if
you're technically proficient, like you'll figure it out. But this
isn't something that you just like sit down and just
(14:21):
know how to do. You have to go and do
some research about it and decipher how the stuff works,
find out, you know, where where are people going, where
are they finding, you know, the goodies, And so you
don't just accidentally, Oh I thought I was downloading you know,
whatever the new Avengers movie is, and oh it was
(14:42):
two terabytes of child porn. What happened? You know? Now
that does happen?
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, that makes that makes sense. So you've spent some
amount of time then on the dark web trying to
find out what people are doing, and in your investigations.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah, I mean I have definitely familiarized myself with what's
there and how it works the other side of that too,
is I have to know how this stuff works because
I have to be able to testify that it's complicated
to get there. So you know, no, this isn't something
that's on your computer normally, and this isn't something that
you would download for any other reason, like it doesn't
(15:25):
work for other stuff, because that's what it's for. So yeah,
I have to I go through. Every now and then
I'll actually go through and I'll reset up a network,
either configure a dark web browser or set up some
of the period of peer software and just record the
number of steps, keystrokes and settings and everything that you
have to do to make that happen. So it's not
(15:48):
like oh, install, hit go, No, there's like all this
stuff you have to do, so you know, there might
be twenty seven different steps that you actually take to
actually get to the point where it works. And so
every now and then I'll do that and I'll actually
record that processes. Software changes, as there's updates and everything.
You just kind of have to keep current with how
(16:10):
this stuff works so you can testify to it. And
that way, you also know what when you're talking to
these guys and they're actually explaining something that you know
what they're talking about.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Is there a lot of really terrible material on the
dark Web. Like I said before, there's a lot of rivers.
And people will say that they've gone to the dark
web and they've seen this and this and this, and
I don't know how true some of that is. But
one of the things that people talk about is snuff
films and films where people are their lives are ended
(16:44):
on camera. And I've done a bit of research into
that over the years, and I've read a lot about
it being a hoax. And the reason that it's gotten
so disturbingly personal to me is that from the investigation
in my own case, they discovered that there was talk
(17:04):
about him ending my life in a stuff film. So
when I did research on it later on and read
all of this bit about Charlie Sheen finding some video
and that was a hoax, and then this was a
hoax and that was a hoax, and like, if you
look it up overall, it says it was a hoax.
Kind of curious, is that ring true to you or
(17:25):
their truly videos like that?
Speaker 2 (17:28):
So let me back up a little bit. So, Yeah,
as far as like what is on the dark web,
pretty much the main reason that people use the dark
web is so that they can look at unusual things, right,
so all the illegal stuff, things that won't live on
the regular Internet, or things that are that are so
(17:50):
graphic that they're very very hard to find on the
regular Internet, or they want to use the anonymity of
it and they don't want anybody to know that they're
looking at terrible stuff. So the type of things that
are on the dark web, or you know, there's been
the Silk Road and it's fifty iterations after it keeps
(18:10):
getting taken down and reinvented. You know, the drug market,
murder for higher pretty much all the illegal activity, lots
of prostitution, human trafficking, literally all the way to like
buying a child, stuff like that. I mean, they're really
twisted stuff. Snuff films extreme extreme hurtcore where somebody's actually tortured,
(18:37):
not just you know, we're not talking like fifty shades
of gray, you know, getting some spanks or something like that.
I'm talking like losing parts of your body or you know,
extremely beaten things that are not consensual. That kind of
stuff flips on the dark Web. As far as snuff films,
(18:57):
they definitely do exist. I've seen enough films real ones.
There's also a lot of simulated because most people don't
want to die and they do want to make content.
There's one guy that I'm thinking of that he actually
does a lot of like suicide films. How does he
do a lot of them because he's not actually committing suicide,
(19:18):
but it really looks like it. And so you know,
there there are people that have filmed their suicides and
you'll find that on the dark web and all the
cartel stuff. You know, any any kind of like terrible
thing is going to be there. But there are there
are lots of I guess you could call those, you know, hoaxes,
in that they're simulated and they're not actually real, but
(19:40):
they might be intentionally made to look like that, not
to be a hoax, but to be to satisfy that
itch for somebody.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Right, it's that that fantasy played out enough that it
looks real enough. That's very disturbing and it makes me
think about how. I don't know how this happened. I
end up with the work that I do and researching
(20:10):
some pretty dark parts of humanity and being directly involved
in it. I somehow ended up on this Facebook group
that I haven't joined, and I don't know how it
keeps showing up. I tried to leave a comment once
and it was like, you can't do this, you're not
a member, and I was like, oh, okay. But it
is a group where they essentially share gore videos and
(20:38):
for a while, these things would just be posted and
they were incredibly disturbing to just be like scrolling through
and seeing it. But they were people who were completely
and are completely fascinated with the cartel videos and this
video and that video, and everything has some sort of
catchy name to it, or it's part of a series
or that kind of thing, and there is this fascination
(21:02):
that people have with the dark parts of humanity and
with gore. And now we see so much gore in
real life, like you can go on to social media,
and within the last just few years, just society has
seen several people be brutally murdered in various ways, and
(21:27):
those have just been uncensored and publicly available in many ways,
and it's led people to look for darker and darker content.
But there is this fascination with gore, and what I
see it lead to are these different groups that are
(21:50):
really involved in enjoying that violence that is very extreme,
if you will. And I know something that you are
a bit of an expert in is the n vees,
the nihilistic extremists, and I wanted to talk a little
bit about that with you. I know, we want to
come back later and have maybe an entire episode where
(22:12):
we really dig into this, because it is it is
deep and darker than every time we talk about it.
I learned something new that I'm just like, Okay, I
need to take I need to take a breath. I
need to take a breath right now. This is this
is a lot of my friends, this is this is
this is, this is my life, this is my circle
(22:34):
of friends. I was talking to talking to Eric about
it earlier, actually my boyfriend. How how I've learned to
to kind of let the stuff roll off of me
that I can talk about it and then just go
back to life. That it is part of life and
it's disturbing, but it's it's there and we have to
be able to face it. But you have become sort
(22:55):
of a well, I don't want to say sort of
an expert. You've become very much an expert in NVES
because you work directly with it, and we'll come back
later in another episode and really dig into that, But
for now, can you just tell me about it at
a very high level, because this is new to people.
They are just their eyes are just opening to this.
(23:16):
I have seen it in the presentations that I've given.
I've had kids who've come up to me and they've
certainly been victims of these different groups years ago, before
this had become something that had hit the news. But
can you tell people what you know in a very
high level.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, I mean I always feel weird if somebody calls
me an expert on something I do know. I know
some things about it. But so the term, the NVE
term is new that came about in twenty twenty five
in one of the court papers in Federal Court is
(23:53):
where that term was officially designated. Prior to that, this
general thing, which I'll explain in a moment, was called
seven six four or the community or There's been a
variety of names for it. Now. Sometimes people just call
it sadistic exploitation. That's part of it, but it's bigger
(24:16):
than just that. So I like the term ENVE, the
nihilistic violent extremism for the catch all term because seven
six four is a specific thing that's one of the groups.
But these groups are there's a lot of differences between them.
(24:36):
There's a lot of similarity between them, but not all
groups are into the exact same thing. It's not just
different ones that do the same stuff. They definitely have
their own identities. Sometimes they go to war with each
other too, which is kind of interesting, But in general,
they're all en vees. So I do like that term.
(24:56):
A fifteen year old kid came up with seven six
four it messed up on a Minecraft forum. He was
talking to a guy from a kind of a precursor
group called Cult, and he got this great idea and
he's like, oh man, this is awesome. I'm gonna, you know,
(25:17):
run with with your inspiration and change it and make
it my own.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
And that's so light bulb went off on his head.
He was like, Oh, this could be mine. I could
run with this.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
What if I combine satanism with like misanthropy and child
born and we'll just smash all that together, all the things. Yeah. So, anyway,
these groups in general share some common traits. A lot
(25:48):
of them are are just into chaos for Chaos's sake.
They hate society, they hate organization and peaceful living. They
are in general all wanting to bring about chaos. There's
a term called accelerationism, which applies to many of these
(26:08):
groups in slightly different ways depending on whatever their goals are.
But accelerationism is where you do things to try to
bring about a result. So you're you're trying to hasten
the collapse of society or whatever whatever your goal is.
(26:30):
So that that's kind of the the idea behind acceleration
of that's a big component to a lot of these groups.
But in general, you have a lot of correlation with
with Satanic ideas, sometimes actual double worship. There's one group
called Order of Nine Angles that is very much into
(26:51):
the Satanism devil worship side of things. Then you've got
a group another one that's called No Lives Matter that
is an offshoot of a seven six four ideology. They
used to be buddies. They actually had posters where they
would like put their stuff together. They were so happy,
and then the No Lives Matter people kind of got
(27:14):
more hardcore and they decided they didn't care about the
devil worship stuff, and they didn't really care about the
child porn, but they really liked the violence and the
destruction and the you know, acceleration as an aspect of
like just bringing down society. So they broke from the
seven six four group and they wanted to just just
do the violent mayhem stuff. And so, you know, not
(27:37):
to call everybody seven and six four isn't really accurate,
but they do. These guys are in general, a lot
of them do a lot of swatting. They do a
lot of sex stortion. They do a lot of causing
people to do things they don't want to do, like
(27:58):
hurt themselves, cut their bodies, carve things into their skin,
like user names or whatever, you know, I love you know,
whatever the discord name is or something like that. A
lot of them are SEM six four especially, they are
One of the goals that they have often is that
(28:23):
they want to cause somebody to actually commit suicide. So
they want to groom somebody into a pattern of behavior
that ultimately ends and then live streaming their suicide, which
has happened a few times. So kind of in general,
that's that's like a super quick overview of seven to
six four what's going on. They they look for victims,
(28:48):
They groom them some. A lot of times the victims
themselves are actually turned into members later and kind of
multi level their way out of victimhood by bringing in
other people. So it's kind of like a super awful
Ponzi scheme mixed with a street gang and double worshipers.
(29:10):
So it's like all the bad things worlled up in
one in one thing. They do money laundering, they do
violent acts, they do school shooters, school shootings, they do
you know, bomb threats, they do just anything awful. They're
one of these groups is into it.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
So they just want to make the world. Like there's
people who want to make the world a better place,
like you and I, and then there's people, I guess
who just want to make the world a terrible place,
and that's what they actively do. And they sound chaotic
themselves but also relatively organized. Is there honor amongst them
or can anybody be turned into a victim in any moment?
(29:48):
Is there some sort of hierarchy because it almost sounds
like cult behavior but also just like a bunch of
critters running around.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
And justly cult behavior. So as with anything, everything is
a hybrid, right, there's no like hard set. This is
how it is. Some of these groups have a clear
leader or clear leadership. Some of them are very into
like more of an ideology where everybody is there's no
(30:18):
real leader, it's just everybody's kind of going the same direction.
Some of them are more cellular, where you have like
groups within the group. Uh, it's it's everything, it's all
of those. They often victimize each other and themselves and
other groups competing groups. That type of thing that happens
a lot. There's a lot of cannibalism that goes on
(30:40):
within these groups. If they haven't found a new victim,
somebody's going to pay the price, right, so they're going
to They're going to get somebody to do whatever it
is they want them to do, you know, carve the
name in or you know whatever, kill their cat or something.
So it just yea being a member doesn't like remove
(31:02):
you from the effect of it or something like that.
Everybody pays the tax. Some people. It's even like a
periodic thing where if you haven't introduced somebody new, you know,
within the month, then you now have to do whatever.
So you have an incentive to recruit. Actually have like
full on recruiting drives and manuals. Actually have like a
(31:25):
recruiting manual. It's pretty wild some of these groups do. Yeah, yeah,
I have a No Lives Matter a grenade handguy guide
that they actually stole from al Qaeda, translated it to
English and adapted it for their own purposes. But it's
teaching how to make like improvised explosives and stuff. Got
(31:49):
another one. I think it's seven sixty four. Pretty sure
it's seven six four, But it's a it's a recruitment guide.
It literally tells people not spec typically like go to
this chat room, but it's like, go to these types
of places, and these are the type of people that
you're looking for as easy or likely candidates for for
(32:13):
being groomed to do you know, sexual exploitation or other stuff,
you know, hurting themselves or just whatever whatever it is
that they want them to do. So yeah, there's there's
They've actually written like field guides for this stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
And I would bet right now that there are people
who are listening to this and thinking, oh, this has
to be rare, This has to be somewhere else, this
has to be unlikely to happen or be involved in
my world directly. Is this is? Are they a really
big group. But is this far reaching.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Common all over the world. They're They're all over Europe
right now, I'm thinking of a livestream suicide on Instagram
of a kid that lived in the UK. There's an
ongoing trial for the seven six four member for that.
It's been going on for about a year and a half.
(33:18):
I know Russia has their own their own groups over
there that are the same thing. It's just the Russian
version of everything. So, you know, it's literally the other
side of the world. I don't know that. I can't
remember the exact statistic. Cash Battel was in front of
(33:39):
Congress last year and delivered a speech and it's something
like five hundred percent. It's gone up in the in
a year of the exploitation and activity from the NB groups.
So it is, it is exploding. It's not just increasing,
it's exploding exponentially. They have a huge reach. And when
(34:00):
you look at the broad footprint that these groups have,
it's it's not just extortion, it's not just you know,
se sam production, it's not just any of that. It's
all of these things. It's it's bomb threats at schools.
A lot of people may be aware that, you know,
there's been these rashes of bomb threats or or hoax
(34:23):
shootings at schools that have gone out. I mean just
far and wide all over the place. I mean literally
just hop on the internet look in your area. I'm
sure it's happened in the last couple of years. A
lot of times these are going to be en VE
affiliated either groups or people, not everybody. Yeah, I have
to have like a card, you know, I'm a card
carrying member of seven to six four. You know, you
(34:46):
can you can just be into this stuff and participate
in this type of activity. So it's not like there's
like an official membership or something sometimes, so.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
This is something that parents really need to watch out
or when and I say parents and you're talking about schools.
Are there all age groups involved in this? Are there
really young kids up to adults?
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, I mean, you know, with technology and everything, it's
always gonna skew a little bit younger. But I mean
there's been if you look in the last couple of years,
there's been multiple seven six four members and other NVE
members that are that are in their forties that have
been charged and are in some phase. There's a lot
(35:30):
of pending cases right now. That are involved in this stuff,
So it takes a while to get through court. Since
this is a fairly new phenomenon that's going on, a
lot of these cases are actually still pending, but there
you can look them up.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
And then many people who get involved in this start
out as victims you said, and then there's sort of
a recruiting process and you can get out of it.
Do those victims who fall into this some times, do
they ever come forward and get help? Is does that
happen often where they're like, Oh, this is too far,
(36:08):
I can't handle this anymore.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
So I mentioned and I'm bad with names, so I
can't remember the kid's name. I feel bad about that.
But the livestream suicide that happened in the UK, with
the cases still depending on that guy, I think I
think the seven six four members is called White Tiger.
(36:31):
Might be wrong, but I think it's White Tiger anyway. Originally,
the kid that actually committed the suicide was contacted by
another victims slash affiliate of this seven six four group
that White Tiger was a part of, and this girl
(36:55):
helped groom the victim who wound up killing them. So
and then after everything went down, she actually came forward
and kind of blew the whistle on what was going on. So, yes,
sometimes people do come out of this. It's there's not
(37:17):
like a there's no rules. So some people, you know,
we'll be into this line of thinking for a while
and then they'll they'll get out of it and get
over it or whatever. There can be pushed back from
the group, just like with a like a criminal gang,
where they make it very difficult to leave. But a
lot of times, being the Internet, you may kind of
(37:39):
just be able to kind of get out of it.
Now you may have to abandon your entire identity and
just start over, but you know, if you really want out,
that's an option. So it's a little bit easier than
like a street gang where these guys are in your
neighborhood and you're having to deal with this and they're
going to come around. So there definitely is a lot
of people that kind of go in and out of
(38:01):
these groups.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah, and as fans meot to say it, sorry, as
people who like chaos and destruction and disorder, I would
gather that they may not be a very overly organized group.
It makes me think of I don't know if you've
(38:25):
ever seen Doctor Horror sing a long blog with the
deo Patrick Harris. It's amazing, but uh, he's a villain
in it, and he has this one song and there's
this line in it that's like anarchy that I run
and uh, it kind of makes me think of almost
that mentality. You have to you have to watch.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
It, but I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
You have to, you have to watch it. It's it's
it's funny, and it's very short. Sadly, it's it's beautiful. Uh,
but yeah, there's there's like some pretty pretty bad there's
like a lead of evil kind of thing in it.
But it kind of makes me think of that. My
mind is going like, oh, where where can we find humor.
(39:08):
Let's let's escape for a moment. But yeah, this is
this is frightening because there's so much there's so much
struggle right now with mental health and and so often
(39:28):
the kids who disclose to me or who come up
to me, they are they're self harming. Almost all of
them who have come up to me who have been
victims of something in way or another have self harmed.
So this is becoming part of that culture that leads
potentially also to this But I'm also wondering where are
(39:53):
these Where are they recruiting people there? You said they
have posters and things. I don't know are they They're
not posting on like on telephone poles and saying like,
come join our group. We have cookies, right, come to
the dark side. We have cookies. What how are they
finding people?
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Do you like cookies?
Speaker 1 (40:11):
He got really excited about the cookies for a moment.
The cookies.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
A good place.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
So maybe you get to go undercover and you'll get
some dark.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
So well, I do go undercover sometimes, but yeah, they
not not the kind you eat. Yeah, digital cookies. That's
a really geeky, nerdy joke there, so hopefully somebody appreciate that. Yeah.
So one of the main places that they go to
(40:46):
find likely candidates people that are kind of already sort
of in the mindset of doom and gloom and bad things.
It's hard to get somebody who's like really positive and
like everything things go on their way and be like, hey,
do you want to come like worship Satan and do
child born And they're going to be like no, so
(41:07):
you know you don't really want to start sound good?
Yeah I don't think so. So A lot of times
they're looking at mental health, you know, forums or any
place where people are seeking help, you know, getting advice.
There's lots of places, you know, redded there's just a
(41:28):
million places where where people gather and talk about things.
So topic groups will just call it wherever those are
that deal with mental health. They really like identity issues
where you're just struggling with whatever your identity is. That
could be a sexual identity, that could be just whatever
whatever internal identity struggle you have. Those are all great
(41:50):
because you're already you don't even know who you are,
you know what I mean, So you're already unstable. But
they definitely play into those things. Kind of referencing back
to the example of the UK incident. The kid that
wound up committing suicide was having sexual identity issues and
(42:12):
so that's that's where this connection was made, was in
a forum where they were trying to have like an
open dialogue about questioning things, and the wrong person saw
it and we've dried in. So definitely the mental health
in all of its forms, any type of place where
(42:36):
the people of like mind commune for those things. They
also pull a lot from the true crime community that
is also a huge recruitment area because these are already
people that are interested in you know, gore or violence
or you know, maybe even school shooters or serial killers
(42:59):
or you know kind of stuff. So if you get
somebody who's already kind of generally okay with this topic,
it's really easy to move that along and kind of
groom that that line of thinking into whichever direction you
want that to go. So right off hand, like, those
(43:19):
are some of the main groups of people that are
that are consistently recruited. The true crime is a whole
other deal. There's actually an entire like category of NB
called true crime. And it's not the you know, Netflix
documentary stuff. It's it's it's different. It's more of a
(43:43):
worship of of the people that are doing the true crime,
the serial killers or the mass violence people, school shooters, whatever.
They're the people that are not just interested in like,
oh my goodness, what does humanity do to itself? I
just this is shocking, oh, right.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Like the healthy fascination.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
That right, Or people are like interested in the investigation,
how did they catch that guy? You know, you know,
like you know, there's I've seen a bunch of them,
you know, there's all these these shows they've made, you know,
the first forty eight stuff like that, you know, where
it's like, oh man, I want to know, like how
did they do this, how did they figure this out?
How did they finally catch this guy?
Speaker 1 (44:26):
I want to get into the mind of the perpetrator.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah, when you start to to you know, look at
you know, like Dylan Cleebold or somebody, and you're like, wow,
he is he is really cool, Like I want to
know all about you know, his life and like start
to model that. That's where you start getting into more
of the the other true crime community, which is the
(44:51):
ones that are glorifying this stuff. And they're definitely where
a lot of the the mass violence people have either
come from or at least touched that community in one way,
shape or form. You know. They they've had that fascination,
they get inspiration from it. They're they're getting a whole
(45:12):
different thing out of it than a you know, normal
person who's looking at like the investigation. They're they're not
getting that that inspiration and stuff out of these guys.
They're they're looking at, you know, more of the mechanical
like how did they get caught? Stuff, or just the
shock value of like, oh, I can't believe this happened,
that kind of thing, but the other people are looking
(45:34):
at it as hero worship.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
And when you say Dylan Gleebold, I you're referencing the
Columbine shooters, So Dalan Glebold and Eric Harris.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
And yeah, they're super popular in this this movement. Any
of the main mass violence people are usually idolized within
this group. They were kind of the first of the
really significant mass violence actors that are kind of within
(46:09):
this this type of movement, and so that's why they're consistently,
you know here worshiped, you know, kind of across the boards.
There's a ton of people that really follow them.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
That was like really the first big story that impacted
so many of us as kids. And for people who
did not grow up with that being the story and
they would just do research, they would see that certainly
as one of one of the first big stories. So
these are people who are are really idolizing and worshiping
(46:50):
these people and looking up to them, is what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Yep. Sometimes even have a romantic interest. There's a term
for that now is I can't remember what it is,
I forgot, but it's an actual, like clinical term for
being romantically or or sexually interested in these these bad
(47:17):
actors that are doing this stuff. And you know, that's
definitely part of the movement too. I mean, if if
you've reached that situation, it's really easy to groom you
into other similar conduct when you're already that far in.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
When I think about the the violence that is happening now,
a common term that comes up is is in cell
And why I don't want to dig in that too deeply.
Is that part of this culture at all?
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Not really? I mean everything in one way, shape or
form sort of overlaps and stuff. You can be an
insell and be into you know, the envy eas stuff
you can also not.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
When I think about people who are really into true crime,
so many of them are women. So does that mean
that a lot of people in these groups are women?
Is it is it a lot of men in just
a few women and girls, or is it really like
(48:28):
an equal mix.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
I don't really know about the demographics. I would say
that that there's a lot of both. I don't know.
I couldn't like give a quantitative percentage or something like that.
There's definitely a lot of girls get into it more
on the level of like the true crime, you know,
(48:54):
kind of through that avenue or through the mental health,
but they are more more apt to develop the fascination
and romantic attachment that that whole side of it. The
guys that I don't really know how to how to
(49:14):
describe exactly why everybody finds a fascination with it. Some
of it is like a power thing. You know, this
is a way they see these guys that have done
these things as being very powerful. They're like, they're like
owning their situation, and you know, this is their their
rage against the world, and this is you know, the
(49:34):
way they expressed it, and so they'll they'll kind of
idolize them for that reason. Maybe not like a sexual thing,
but it's more like a you know, just true inspiration,
like wow, they they I've had these same thoughts and
they actually made it happen kind of thing. So there's
there's definitely a good number of both. It's not just
(49:57):
like a bunch of guys or you know, it's a
bunch of girls. I don't know if it's you know,
fifty to fifty or whatever, but I have definitely investigated girls,
multiple girls who were looking to do mass shootings and
that type of thing, which is really interesting to me.
I had a one of the very first cases that
(50:18):
involved a bunch of people spread across the United States
and even outside of the United States, who were actively
planning their own mass violent acts, sometimes together. Huh is it?
Speaker 1 (50:38):
Oh goodie?
Speaker 2 (50:38):
Oh yeah, So they were each planning their own thing.
A couple of them were actually gonna do like a
like a Columbine style and team up, but they were
helping each other flesh out their plans. So they were
critiquing and helping and assisting and offering advice to come
(50:59):
up so that everybody can have like the best experience possible.
And then they even had a great idea that you know, hey,
what if we instead of just everybody doing their own
thing in the best way, what if we combine our
efforts and do it in a systematic way so that
(51:19):
it has the greatest possible like synergistic impact. Right, So
either do it at the same time or do it
in like a succession or something like that. That that
was the they're a great idea. It did not come
to fruition, so multiple arrests were made and disruptions of
(51:42):
this whole I guess we'll call it a network, and
everybody got addressed that that was dealing with whatever aspect
of whatever component they had of that. There was also
so you had the people that were actually going to
do the thing, and he had all like the encouragers too,
(52:02):
So there's kind of an outer ring of people that
we weren't going to be involved in, you know, the
shooting or whatever, but they were encouragers and enablers. So
but yeah, all these people were discovered, but that was
one of the first situations like that that had really
(52:25):
come to light, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Thank goodness they got them. I'm just I'm imagining these
people getting together and having like official zoom meetings with
like the AI summarizing it and sending it to them
at the end with next steps.
Speaker 2 (52:44):
If that had happened today, it probably would have. Yeah. Wow,
no telling, there's some weird people out there. I'm just
saying there's definitely some weird people.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
Well we reopened it with like kind of joking that
you're like Batman, and these just really do sound like
Gotham villains to me.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
Yeah, sometimes some of these people are like over the top.
I've definitely had you know, not just envy stuff, but
like looking at all the bad people. I've had some
really strange folks. It's just shocking that they're walking around
with everybody else seemingly normal, you know, but not right.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
They're the just people who are in your lives, who
are kind and open the door for you and well,
have a great day. Maybe maybee. They might not say
have a great day. They might be like, have an
awful day. So I want to switch gears entirely, and
let's just like take a breath for a moment, because
that's that was uncomfortable. Yeah, you like, I did it.
(53:55):
I'm good. I breathed. That was Yeah. It's scary because
it sounds like something that somebody would write in a
book or what is the worst case scenario for humanity
to get involved in? And here it is in your
everyday line of work.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
There's some dark corners.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
Yeah, yes, this is a room that people are just
entering and starting to look in. And it's scary to
talk about. I always worry about talking about things in detail,
and I know you and I are very careful when
we have these discussions, and certainly anything public. I don't
want to teach anybody or encourage anybody. I don't want
(54:41):
somebody listening to this because we are going we know
high true crime community, right, Hi, it's you. Please don't
be fascinated in this. Don't look into this. There's nothing
there's nothing good that can happen, and only bad can
be really bad. It's not a fun adventure, it's not
(55:01):
a journey.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
Let me say this. I've dealt with a lot of
people in my career so far. I couldn't possibly tell
you how many cases I've worked. It's a large number.
I've done this a rather long time. I've spent the
majority of my career in investigations, so the vast majority,
(55:26):
almost almost all of it in investigations. So there's been
a lot. I don't know anybody, and I've interviewed many suspects.
I don't know anybody who wound up being happy doing
the thing that they were doing. That goes from me, know,
(55:47):
just drugs. I've never met a drug dealer who was like, man,
it's the best decision I ever made. This is awesome.
Love it like it's never happened. I've never once had
that conversation. I've never talked to anybody who was into uh,
see Sam and they're like, oh, this is great, you know,
like it's I don't know why everybody doesn't do it. Literally,
(56:08):
no one ever says that these are miserable people. They
the number of people that tell me after everything is
kind of like chilled out and that you know, the
arrest has been made. The number of people that say,
I'm so glad you're here. I've been waiting for this
day for years, for so long, I'm so glad it's
(56:33):
finally over, you know, some whatever iteration of that. That
is a very very common thing to hear. Not every time,
but very common. This is a lot of weight to
drag around with you, you know, if you're if you're
into these these you know, nefarious lifestyles because you never
(56:59):
can really trust any buddy. You're always waiting to see
if you're going to get caught. It's just a lot
of stress. People you know that are into more of
the violent side of stuff, like the NBA stuff, these
are extremely unhappy people. Anybody who is like starting to
(57:20):
dabble in this, I've never never talked to a kid
who was cutting themselves and doing all this stuff that
enjoyed it. It was always a like ongoing crisis that
they didn't even fully recognize in the beginning. But there's
literally no positive side of the entire process. And even
(57:43):
if it feels positive at the moment that you're in it,
because you're kind of blinded by all the the darkness
around you, after you've stepped out of that, there's just
such a different perspective on it. I'm about to have
a conversation with one of these girls next week, and
(58:08):
I'm very curious to see, you know, what she's going
to say now that she is out of it, and she's,
from what I hear, has turned a corner, and so
it's going to be very interesting conversation. I always like
to see a success story too, because she was definitely
in a dark place. So I'd like to see, you know,
some redemption. That'd be great. I don't get to see
(58:29):
a lot of positivity in what I do.
Speaker 1 (58:32):
So she got out of it, that's amazing. We should
all take a moment and just like send her some
positive feelings and vibes, and by the time anybody hears this,
you'll have already met with her.
Speaker 2 (58:46):
So I had five cases at the same time open
on her more total, but there were five at one time.
That's a lot of yeap. Oh, so being victimized in
one way, shape or form. So yeah, so it's good.
(59:08):
I'm really looking forward to it. I love positive outcomes.
I just don't get to see them very often, so
whenever one comes along, I'm like, yes, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (59:18):
Yeah. I just I always always just say I hope
they find I hope they find their way and that
they move on from it and they can look back
and go, wow, that was really bad. But I am
happy now. I'm so glad. I am the best version
of of myself and I'm proud of myself for for
(59:40):
overcoming that. So I love that you're you're going to
get to go go see her and that there's a
positive to this. That's that's that's wonderful.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
Yeah, so hopefully a good day coming up.
Speaker 1 (59:55):
Yeah. Now you've said you've been, You've you've obviously investigated
more cases than like you can count on your fingers
and toes. But did you always think you're going to
go into law enforst And I'm listening to you and
I said you're an expert, and you kind of back
on that a little bit, But is this like, were
(01:00:16):
you a kid that was like running around with wearing
a badge or did you just fall into this.
Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
One of my biggest regrets is that I did not
do military service. So I've always been very interested in
in the military, and I always wanted to be in
the military. And I'm not even sure exactly how it happened,
but when when I was in college, I found out.
(01:00:47):
I've always liked guns, so anything where I can shoot something,
I'm always happy about that. So maybe that's why I
like the military. I don't know, but I found out
about an Explore post that has that was in my area,
and that's actually it's Boy Scouts affiliated. It's not like
(01:01:09):
I mean, it's kind of part of the Boy Scouts's
kind of not at least this post was basically its
own thing. It was very very minimally affiliated, and it
was a Explore post with a police department, and so
I was like, well, I'll check that out. Maybe it'll
just be something fun. And I started checking it out
(01:01:30):
and saw that the post was really about to fail,
and so I ended up becoming like the commander of
the post, and I revitalized it and took it from
like three people to like twenty five people was wow,
pretty decent size for an exporer post. That's kind of
a lot. There's a lot of kids in one spot.
And we were doing all kinds of cool stuff. And
(01:01:53):
because we were a little bit older, we weren't like
the younger boy scout age. You know, we're a little
bit older because we were all in college. We were
doing all kinds of fun stuff. So we were shooting,
We're doing you know, like like light swat type stuff.
By the time it was done, we were having a
lot of fun. So we also had a great group
(01:02:14):
of guys at the police department that allowed us to
do more and do a lot of cool stuff. So
from there I started working, actually getting paid, working at
the police department doing stuff, and I just kind of
I was like, you know, I kind of like this.
I just like the unpredictability of the job. I like
(01:02:37):
the aspect of, you know, hunting. I've always been a hunter.
I like finding the bad guy, you know, doing doing
the stock, sneaking around at night, finding people in dark corners.
I just enjoyed it. So I just like slowly kind
of got into it and then wound up, you know,
(01:02:58):
spending the next I don't know, twenty five years there
and the rest is history. Forget to go do the
military service. So you know, I don't have that, but
I have. I have been in service, you know, to
my community and my nation for all that time, you know,
(01:03:19):
protecting the homeland. So it wasn't off in foreign places
fighting wars, but I was still doing something important. I feel.
Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Yeah, you're absolutely fighting so many wars right now. It's
a it's a different battlefield for sure, but it's a
it is a global one.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
Yeah. I never get to come home from deployment. So
that's kind of the difference too, is there's never really
a downtime. You're just always in it. So it's it's
a little different in that respect.
Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
Did you think that you'd fall into this particular department.
Is this something that you wanted to do, or did
it just like for you handed it one day and
said this is the work you have to do.
Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Oh no, I definitely picked where I'm at, specifically working
you know, internet crimes against children or any type of
like sexual exploitation type thing that, in my opinion, is
not something you should force on somebody. They have to
(01:04:28):
be able to handle the subject matter, not just like
sit there and deal with it, but actually like do
a good job and actually be productive within it. So
a lot of people, a lot of what I do
has a very high burnout rate. People will get into
because they want to help kids or whatever, and then
(01:04:49):
they see how awful and just evil, evil evil, And
when you stare true evil in the in the face,
you know it'll get to you. So a lot of
people just can't keep doing it. Like They'll do it
for a little while and they'll leave. You kind of
have to just be the right kind of person to
(01:05:12):
hang in there for the long term. It's definitely not
for everybody. I don't think anybody should be assigned to
this type of work. I think they should select it.
It should be voluntary, right.
Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
I do agree with that it would be awful to
it would in some ways almost be a victimization of
that person if they had to be traumatized in that
particular way. I have to say that I agree with
you there and that burnout is okay in some ways.
(01:05:51):
That it is so important to be able to know
when you have hit that endpoint and to walk away
and to take care of yourself. And I see a
lot of the ICAC officers that I know, just keep
pushing and pushing and pushing through. And I've had some
of them really break down and cry to me, who
are who are unable to spend time almost with their
(01:06:13):
young children because they are having triggers and flashbacks to
two things that they have seen, which is heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
I could I could understand that. Yeah, yeah, it's just
it's one of those things. You just there's a large
push right now within kind of the industry for for
wellness and you know, check ins and you know, mental health.
Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
Didn't used to be there, didn't used to be at all.
Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
It's fairly recent. I it's just in the last few
years it's really become a thing. And I mean, I
think that's good. I mean it's I'm I'm like a
I don't know, freak of nature in my ability to
compartmentalize and like I literally have to sit here and
think about a case to even remember it. It's so compartmentalized.
(01:07:09):
I just don't have that issue where I think about
stuff at home or you know, any of that. But
I know a lot of people do, and it's something
that they need to know, respect that and make sure
they're not damaging themselves over time. Because I mean, you're
looking at terrible stuff that should not exist, Like zero
(01:07:30):
percent of what I work on should exist, and so
it's all different levels of awful.
Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
That's a rat for Part one with Rusty and well,
that was fascinating and horrifying. I told you right now.
I'm so excited to share a part two with you
next where he shares really compelling stories. He takes us
on a deep dive into the darkest parts of this
through his eyes, and then he pulls us out back
into hope. And we'll also talk about if he thinks
the evil is just too strong to stop and why exactly.
(01:08:02):
He calls Ron Swanson his spirit animal. So I will
see you in part two. Thank you so much for
tuning in. We really appreciate it. We'll be releasing new
episodes every Thursday. Make sure you check out our YouTube
channel and hit us up on our social media on
at Alicia kosatpod for extra content around each episode, and
(01:08:22):
please remember to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Hello, and welcome to the Alicia Kazack Podcast. If you're
returning listener, welcome back, and if you're new here this
podcast it moves from the very darkest of places to
the lightest. But before we get there, I want to
tell you a little bit about why I am here
and why this matters. When I was thirteen years old,
I was groomed online, lord from my home, kidnapped and
(00:23):
held captive by an online predator. It was a landmark
case that was the first of its kind. Miraculously, I
was rescued by the FBI. I was so incredibly lucky.
Soon after my rescue, I began sharing my story publicly
to raise awareness and to protect others. And I've been
(00:44):
speaking and advocating now for over twenty years, and through
that I have worked with and become close friends with
some really amazing people, people who fight to protect children
and families every day. These are the people who are
in the trenches and they walk into nightmares that most
people can't begin to fathom. But they also hold such
(01:07):
light and joy, even if they have to hold on
to it so tightly. Okay, So speaking of that, last weekend,
I went to something called a serial Killer Speakeasy. This
is a thing. It's like a traveling show and it's
an immersive true crime experience where you sip on themed
(01:29):
cocktails while actors play serial killers like Dahmer and Geen.
And it's marketed as this fun kind of night out.
And I went because I wanted to see it for myself.
I knew it would be triggering. I knew I would
probably get offended, and I wanted to walk into that
and see. And actually I was just I was really curious, like,
(01:52):
what the heck are these people going to do here?
Were they going to glorify murder? Were they going to
water down details? Were people going to get hammered and
do the limbo with the Dahmer and Gan? Like what
was going to happen? So we went to dinner before
I went with my boyfriend and to go this alone.
(02:14):
And I didn't expect a lot of people to be there.
I thought there'd be just like a small crowd. I
was wrong. I thought we went to the wrong place.
So we get to this place and there is a
line out the door, like it's hard to find parking.
When I say a line out the door, I mean
two hundred plus people showed up like this was really
really popular. So once we got there, somebody got on
(02:35):
stage and they basically went through various horrific stories.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Momat day, our gay.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I payple mom, no mom, A promise, nobody else, and
they handed out drinks dressed as different serial killers, like
Dahmer handed me a drink, and some of these drinks
had body parts and they were themed, and Dahmer's drink
(03:16):
was named after the apartment number where he committed his crimes.
It was it was twisted, and it was offensive. But
what was the most disturbing thing wasn't necessarily what they
were putting on. It was kind of the audience.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
The next man wasn't dangerous because he was different.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
The danger was that he wasn't. This is the one
and only Jeffrey. People got really tipsy. The drinks were
pretty strong, and as they got tipsy and tipsy or
and tipsier, they got more and more inappropriate. The show
(04:00):
itself it went to the edge of acceptable, but it
did also talk about the crimes being real and awful.
It was that audience that took it too far. They
joked and they laughed about things, and it was utterly shocking,
and I was really really disturbed. There was even this
group of friends that dressed up like different serial killers,
like they were cose playing. They were having fun. They
(04:21):
were so excited about this, like that was they were
fans of true crime and these were I don't want
to say these were heroes to them, but they were
characters and not real people who did real horrific things.
It was the embodiment of true crime as entertainment, which
is something we talk about a lot on here, that
(04:42):
difference between true crime and real crime, and we will
get really deep into that in this episode, because there
is a place where fascination with true crime and horror
turns really dangerous. Fascination is okay, wanting to learn more
is okay. I like true crime myself. Here I am
(05:02):
hosting a true crime podcast. This isn't something that a
world that I don't understand, but it's important to not
be consumed by it and to not peer into the
darkness until it takes over, which can happen really easily,
and it's something that my next guest has to do
every single day. I am so excited to introduce you
to a friend of mine who is a little bit
(05:23):
mysterious and When I say that, I mean that he
is here with a code name, So we're not going
to use his real name, and we're also not going
to mention what agency he works with. But his title
is that he is a task for his officer who
investigates Internet crimes against children and chod exploitation. And Ron
Swanson is a spirit animal and you'll see why. But
(05:43):
today I'm going to kind of hold your hand and
lead you into that darkness that you sometimes peer into.
But fair warning, we're going to be talking about some
really really disturbing cases, and we're going to be laughing
together about absurd and kind of inappropriate things, but we're
also going to be sharing some messages of how to
(06:05):
better our lives the whole. Really, this episode runs the
gamut of WTF. So let's get into this and say
hello to code named Rusty. Rusty, thank you so much
for being here. We've gone over your title sort of
in short, what do you do?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I hunt bad guys? Kind of the what a lot
of people would say, the worst of society.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Okay, so what does that actually mean? Are you like Batman? Like,
what do you What does that actually mean? What does
your day to day work? Look like what is rusty
to day?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
That is an ambition of mine that would be really cool.
I love gadget, so I need to do this. Basically,
I go after the the kind of the heavier hitters
of the child exploitation world. Yeah, I just I try
to focus on the larger cases, so not so much
(07:04):
the the things that would be handled more to a
local level. I try to focus on things that would
be of a federal nexus.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Okay, so you said that you go after the heavy hitters.
What what does that mean? Are these like large networks?
Are they all hands on offenders or is it especially heinous?
What makes somebody a heavy hitter heavy hitters?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
There's no like definition. This is just my O thing.
I would say something that would designate a heavy hitter
would be like an enterprise level you know, exploit or
somebody who is part of maybe like a dark web
like enterprise, a website or something like that. Also significant
(07:53):
period to peer sharing, anybody who is doing a large
falling in of distribution, enticement, production, that type of thing.
Not so much the collectors and the people that are
just viewing and looking at it. I try to focus
(08:15):
on the people that are more behind the distribution and
creation would be kind of the level of which I
tried to keep my cases.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
So not just the possession side, but the creation and
the distribution of it.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Not to mitigate possession, but you can't do everything. So
what I try to focus on is more of the
production side, or more of the distribution side, more of
the people who are bringing this out into the world.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
You mentioned the dark Web, and when people hear the
dark Web, they get kind of excited. It's this dark,
mysterious secret place woo, right, and people talk about like
the creepypasta stories basically, and like the Red Room and
all of that. Can you tell me a little bit
about the dark web? And like there, I know there's
(09:10):
different levels, right, there's the dark Web and the clear
web and the what are those levels?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
All the webs all the webs, So the Internet is
not just like one place, and increasingly it's becoming even
more dynamic. But in general we can simplify it into
three main categories. There's more, but we'll just stick with
(09:38):
just three main categories. So there's like the world Wide Web.
This is the you know website Google stuff, so you
you know www dot whatever, dot com. This is that
stuff that you see, so basically anything that you're looking
at on a normal web browser. Then there's the deep web.
(10:03):
So a lot of people confuse the dark web with
the deep web, where they use it interchangeably, and it
is not interchangeable. They're two totally different things. The deep
web is where like business records and things that are
accessible through the Internet but aren't necessarily something that you
can google. This would be more like, you know, business records,
(10:25):
things that are stored not immediately accessible, like think like
the library, all the books on the shelf. You can't
really see what's in all the books on the shelf,
but they're there, they're available, so it's not it's not secret,
it's not like that. It might be behind like a
(10:46):
security barrier if it's like your medical records or whatever.
But that's on the deep web. So that's a huge,
huge chunk.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Of the boring stuff, the boring files.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Yeah, it's just where all the all the stuff is, right,
So the the the step step the world Wide Web
is more like the interface by which you access all
this other stuff. So then you have the dark web.
The dark web is not something that you get to
by accident. You have to know how to get there.
(11:16):
You have to download software that does not come on
your computer. There's no way you can accidentally access the
dark Web. There's just multiple steps that you have to take.
Most people are having to do a fairly significant amount
of research to figure out, Okay, what do I need
to do this, how do I need to configure it?
(11:39):
And then how do you get wherever you're going on
the dark Web? The dark Web that originally didn't really
have a very good search function at all, like you
pretty much had to know exactly where you wanted to go.
It's a little bit better now for that. It's a
little more user friendly. However, it still very much a
(12:02):
you know, like the wild West. So most people are
not surfing the dark Web. They are going to specific
places that they already know about. So they'll go to
a forum or someplace, they'll find a link that is
a dark Web link that will only work on special
browsers that are designed to run on the dark Web,
(12:24):
and so they already know, hey, this is the place
I want to go, and they just pop that into
their browser once it's configured, and then they can go
look at it. They're not generally just like cruising around
looking for stuff because things on the dark Web don't
live long. They're up and they're down. A lot of
these things don't hang out a long time because most
(12:45):
of it's nefarious and either they're doing it to hide
or gets taken down or whatever. Most things aren't sitting
there for a long time.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So you mentioned that you can't just stumble at it,
and I know that offenders do not lack any amount
of excuses. They are are ready with to say the
most absurd excuses. Have you heard that before? Have they said,
do you like, oh, I just just end it up there.
I don't know how I got on the dark Web.
I just was clicking and there I was.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
I've had a few people in the past tell me
that I think it's common knowledge enough now that they
know that, they can't, you know, lie about that, and Mike,
that's just a ridiculous statement, and everybody knows it. I
really haven't had anybody tell me that it was an
accident lately. What I have had people say is when
(13:36):
they're doing peer to peer and they're like, oh, yeah,
I just I thought I was downloading a movie or something.
There is a lot of configuration that occurs with peer
to peer. That is also software that does not come
standard on any computer. You have to research what kind
of peer to peer network that you intend to use,
(13:59):
find the right software before it can figure it the
right way so that you can actually effectively do the
peer to peer file sharing and stuff like that, and
then you have to like find people that have what
you want and all that. And yeah, I mean, if
you're technically proficient, like you'll figure it out. But this
isn't something that you just like sit down and just
(14:21):
know how to do. You have to go and do
some research about it and decipher how the stuff works,
find out, you know, where where are people going, where
are they finding, you know, the goodies, And so you
don't just accidentally, Oh I thought I was downloading you know,
whatever the new Avengers movie is, and oh it was
(14:42):
two terabytes of child porn. What happened? You know? Now
that does happen?
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, that makes that makes sense. So you've spent some
amount of time then on the dark web trying to
find out what people are doing, and in your investigations.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Yeah, I mean I have definitely familiarized myself with what's
there and how it works the other side of that too,
is I have to know how this stuff works because
I have to be able to testify that it's complicated
to get there. So you know, no, this isn't something
that's on your computer normally, and this isn't something that
you would download for any other reason, like it doesn't
(15:25):
work for other stuff, because that's what it's for. So yeah,
I have to I go through. Every now and then
I'll actually go through and I'll reset up a network,
either configure a dark web browser or set up some
of the period of peer software and just record the
number of steps, keystrokes and settings and everything that you
have to do to make that happen. So it's not
(15:48):
like oh, install, hit go, No, there's like all this
stuff you have to do, so you know, there might
be twenty seven different steps that you actually take to
actually get to the point where it works. And so
every now and then I'll do that and I'll actually
record that processes. Software changes, as there's updates and everything.
You just kind of have to keep current with how
(16:10):
this stuff works so you can testify to it. And
that way, you also know what when you're talking to
these guys and they're actually explaining something that you know
what they're talking about.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Is there a lot of really terrible material on the
dark Web. Like I said before, there's a lot of rivers.
And people will say that they've gone to the dark
web and they've seen this and this and this, and
I don't know how true some of that is. But
one of the things that people talk about is snuff
films and films where people are their lives are ended
(16:44):
on camera. And I've done a bit of research into
that over the years, and I've read a lot about
it being a hoax. And the reason that it's gotten
so disturbingly personal to me is that from the investigation
in my own case, they discovered that there was talk
(17:04):
about him ending my life in a stuff film. So
when I did research on it later on and read
all of this bit about Charlie Sheen finding some video
and that was a hoax, and then this was a
hoax and that was a hoax, and like, if you
look it up overall, it says it was a hoax.
Kind of curious, is that ring true to you or
(17:25):
their truly videos like that?
Speaker 2 (17:28):
So let me back up a little bit. So, Yeah,
as far as like what is on the dark web,
pretty much the main reason that people use the dark
web is so that they can look at unusual things, right,
so all the illegal stuff, things that won't live on
the regular Internet, or things that are that are so
(17:50):
graphic that they're very very hard to find on the
regular Internet, or they want to use the anonymity of
it and they don't want anybody to know that they're
looking at terrible stuff. So the type of things that
are on the dark web, or you know, there's been
the Silk Road and it's fifty iterations after it keeps
(18:10):
getting taken down and reinvented. You know, the drug market,
murder for higher pretty much all the illegal activity, lots
of prostitution, human trafficking, literally all the way to like
buying a child, stuff like that. I mean, they're really
twisted stuff. Snuff films extreme extreme hurtcore where somebody's actually tortured,
(18:37):
not just you know, we're not talking like fifty shades
of gray, you know, getting some spanks or something like that.
I'm talking like losing parts of your body or you know,
extremely beaten things that are not consensual. That kind of
stuff flips on the dark Web. As far as snuff films,
(18:57):
they definitely do exist. I've seen enough films real ones.
There's also a lot of simulated because most people don't
want to die and they do want to make content.
There's one guy that I'm thinking of that he actually
does a lot of like suicide films. How does he
do a lot of them because he's not actually committing suicide,
(19:18):
but it really looks like it. And so you know,
there there are people that have filmed their suicides and
you'll find that on the dark web and all the
cartel stuff. You know, any any kind of like terrible
thing is going to be there. But there are there
are lots of I guess you could call those, you know, hoaxes,
in that they're simulated and they're not actually real, but
(19:40):
they might be intentionally made to look like that, not
to be a hoax, but to be to satisfy that
itch for somebody.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Right, it's that that fantasy played out enough that it
looks real enough. That's very disturbing and it makes me
think about how. I don't know how this happened. I
end up with the work that I do and researching
(20:10):
some pretty dark parts of humanity and being directly involved
in it. I somehow ended up on this Facebook group
that I haven't joined, and I don't know how it
keeps showing up. I tried to leave a comment once
and it was like, you can't do this, you're not
a member, and I was like, oh, okay. But it
is a group where they essentially share gore videos and
(20:38):
for a while, these things would just be posted and
they were incredibly disturbing to just be like scrolling through
and seeing it. But they were people who were completely
and are completely fascinated with the cartel videos and this
video and that video, and everything has some sort of
catchy name to it, or it's part of a series
or that kind of thing, and there is this fascination
(21:02):
that people have with the dark parts of humanity and
with gore. And now we see so much gore in
real life, like you can go on to social media,
and within the last just few years, just society has
seen several people be brutally murdered in various ways, and
(21:27):
those have just been uncensored and publicly available in many ways,
and it's led people to look for darker and darker content.
But there is this fascination with gore, and what I
see it lead to are these different groups that are
(21:50):
really involved in enjoying that violence that is very extreme,
if you will. And I know something that you are
a bit of an expert in is the n vees,
the nihilistic extremists, and I wanted to talk a little
bit about that with you. I know, we want to
come back later and have maybe an entire episode where
(22:12):
we really dig into this, because it is it is
deep and darker than every time we talk about it.
I learned something new that I'm just like, Okay, I
need to take I need to take a breath. I
need to take a breath right now. This is this
is a lot of my friends, this is this is
this is, this is my life, this is my circle
(22:34):
of friends. I was talking to talking to Eric about
it earlier, actually my boyfriend. How how I've learned to
to kind of let the stuff roll off of me
that I can talk about it and then just go
back to life. That it is part of life and
it's disturbing, but it's it's there and we have to
be able to face it. But you have become sort
(22:55):
of a well, I don't want to say sort of
an expert. You've become very much an expert in NVES
because you work directly with it, and we'll come back
later in another episode and really dig into that, But
for now, can you just tell me about it at
a very high level, because this is new to people.
They are just their eyes are just opening to this.
(23:16):
I have seen it in the presentations that I've given.
I've had kids who've come up to me and they've
certainly been victims of these different groups years ago, before
this had become something that had hit the news. But
can you tell people what you know in a very
high level.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Yeah, I mean I always feel weird if somebody calls
me an expert on something I do know. I know
some things about it. But so the term, the NVE
term is new that came about in twenty twenty five
in one of the court papers in Federal Court is
(23:53):
where that term was officially designated. Prior to that, this
general thing, which I'll explain in a moment, was called
seven six four or the community or There's been a
variety of names for it. Now. Sometimes people just call
it sadistic exploitation. That's part of it, but it's bigger
(24:16):
than just that. So I like the term ENVE, the
nihilistic violent extremism for the catch all term because seven
six four is a specific thing that's one of the groups.
But these groups are there's a lot of differences between them.
(24:36):
There's a lot of similarity between them, but not all
groups are into the exact same thing. It's not just
different ones that do the same stuff. They definitely have
their own identities. Sometimes they go to war with each
other too, which is kind of interesting, But in general,
they're all en vees. So I do like that term.
(24:56):
A fifteen year old kid came up with seven six
four it messed up on a Minecraft forum. He was
talking to a guy from a kind of a precursor
group called Cult, and he got this great idea and
he's like, oh man, this is awesome. I'm gonna, you know,
(25:17):
run with with your inspiration and change it and make
it my own.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
And that's so light bulb went off on his head.
He was like, Oh, this could be mine. I could
run with this.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
What if I combine satanism with like misanthropy and child
born and we'll just smash all that together, all the things. Yeah. So, anyway,
these groups in general share some common traits. A lot
(25:48):
of them are are just into chaos for Chaos's sake.
They hate society, they hate organization and peaceful living. They
are in general all wanting to bring about chaos. There's
a term called accelerationism, which applies to many of these
(26:08):
groups in slightly different ways depending on whatever their goals are.
But accelerationism is where you do things to try to
bring about a result. So you're you're trying to hasten
the collapse of society or whatever whatever your goal is.
(26:30):
So that that's kind of the the idea behind acceleration
of that's a big component to a lot of these groups.
But in general, you have a lot of correlation with
with Satanic ideas, sometimes actual double worship. There's one group
called Order of Nine Angles that is very much into
(26:51):
the Satanism devil worship side of things. Then you've got
a group another one that's called No Lives Matter that
is an offshoot of a seven six four ideology. They
used to be buddies. They actually had posters where they
would like put their stuff together. They were so happy,
and then the No Lives Matter people kind of got
(27:14):
more hardcore and they decided they didn't care about the
devil worship stuff, and they didn't really care about the
child porn, but they really liked the violence and the
destruction and the you know, acceleration as an aspect of
like just bringing down society. So they broke from the
seven six four group and they wanted to just just
do the violent mayhem stuff. And so, you know, not
(27:37):
to call everybody seven and six four isn't really accurate,
but they do. These guys are in general, a lot
of them do a lot of swatting. They do a
lot of sex stortion. They do a lot of causing
people to do things they don't want to do, like
(27:58):
hurt themselves, cut their bodies, carve things into their skin,
like user names or whatever, you know, I love you know,
whatever the discord name is or something like that. A
lot of them are SEM six four especially, they are
One of the goals that they have often is that
(28:23):
they want to cause somebody to actually commit suicide. So
they want to groom somebody into a pattern of behavior
that ultimately ends and then live streaming their suicide, which
has happened a few times. So kind of in general,
that's that's like a super quick overview of seven to
six four what's going on. They they look for victims,
(28:48):
They groom them some. A lot of times the victims
themselves are actually turned into members later and kind of
multi level their way out of victimhood by bringing in
other people. So it's kind of like a super awful
Ponzi scheme mixed with a street gang and double worshipers.
(29:10):
So it's like all the bad things worlled up in
one in one thing. They do money laundering, they do
violent acts, they do school shooters, school shootings, they do
you know, bomb threats, they do just anything awful. They're
one of these groups is into it.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
So they just want to make the world. Like there's
people who want to make the world a better place,
like you and I, and then there's people, I guess
who just want to make the world a terrible place,
and that's what they actively do. And they sound chaotic
themselves but also relatively organized. Is there honor amongst them
or can anybody be turned into a victim in any moment?
(29:48):
Is there some sort of hierarchy because it almost sounds
like cult behavior but also just like a bunch of
critters running around.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
And justly cult behavior. So as with anything, everything is
a hybrid, right, there's no like hard set. This is
how it is. Some of these groups have a clear
leader or clear leadership. Some of them are very into
like more of an ideology where everybody is there's no
(30:18):
real leader, it's just everybody's kind of going the same direction.
Some of them are more cellular, where you have like
groups within the group. Uh, it's it's everything, it's all
of those. They often victimize each other and themselves and
other groups competing groups. That type of thing that happens
a lot. There's a lot of cannibalism that goes on
(30:40):
within these groups. If they haven't found a new victim,
somebody's going to pay the price, right, so they're going
to They're going to get somebody to do whatever it
is they want them to do, you know, carve the
name in or you know whatever, kill their cat or something.
So it just yea being a member doesn't like remove
(31:02):
you from the effect of it or something like that.
Everybody pays the tax. Some people. It's even like a
periodic thing where if you haven't introduced somebody new, you know,
within the month, then you now have to do whatever.
So you have an incentive to recruit. Actually have like
full on recruiting drives and manuals. Actually have like a
(31:25):
recruiting manual. It's pretty wild some of these groups do. Yeah, yeah,
I have a No Lives Matter a grenade handguy guide
that they actually stole from al Qaeda, translated it to
English and adapted it for their own purposes. But it's
teaching how to make like improvised explosives and stuff. Got
(31:49):
another one. I think it's seven sixty four. Pretty sure
it's seven six four, But it's a it's a recruitment guide.
It literally tells people not spec typically like go to
this chat room, but it's like, go to these types
of places, and these are the type of people that
you're looking for as easy or likely candidates for for
(32:13):
being groomed to do you know, sexual exploitation or other stuff,
you know, hurting themselves or just whatever whatever it is
that they want them to do. So yeah, there's there's
They've actually written like field guides for this stuff.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
And I would bet right now that there are people
who are listening to this and thinking, oh, this has
to be rare, This has to be somewhere else, this
has to be unlikely to happen or be involved in
my world directly. Is this is? Are they a really
big group. But is this far reaching.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Common all over the world. They're They're all over Europe
right now, I'm thinking of a livestream suicide on Instagram
of a kid that lived in the UK. There's an
ongoing trial for the seven six four member for that.
It's been going on for about a year and a half.
(33:18):
I know Russia has their own their own groups over
there that are the same thing. It's just the Russian
version of everything. So, you know, it's literally the other
side of the world. I don't know that. I can't
remember the exact statistic. Cash Battel was in front of
(33:39):
Congress last year and delivered a speech and it's something
like five hundred percent. It's gone up in the in
a year of the exploitation and activity from the NB groups.
So it is, it is exploding. It's not just increasing,
it's exploding exponentially. They have a huge reach. And when
(34:00):
you look at the broad footprint that these groups have,
it's it's not just extortion, it's not just you know,
se sam production, it's not just any of that. It's
all of these things. It's it's bomb threats at schools.
A lot of people may be aware that, you know,
there's been these rashes of bomb threats or or hoax
(34:23):
shootings at schools that have gone out. I mean just
far and wide all over the place. I mean literally
just hop on the internet look in your area. I'm
sure it's happened in the last couple of years. A
lot of times these are going to be en VE
affiliated either groups or people, not everybody. Yeah, I have
to have like a card, you know, I'm a card
carrying member of seven to six four. You know, you
(34:46):
can you can just be into this stuff and participate
in this type of activity. So it's not like there's
like an official membership or something sometimes, so.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
This is something that parents really need to watch out
or when and I say parents and you're talking about schools.
Are there all age groups involved in this? Are there
really young kids up to adults?
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Yeah, I mean, you know, with technology and everything, it's
always gonna skew a little bit younger. But I mean
there's been if you look in the last couple of years,
there's been multiple seven six four members and other NVE
members that are that are in their forties that have
been charged and are in some phase. There's a lot
(35:30):
of pending cases right now. That are involved in this stuff,
So it takes a while to get through court. Since
this is a fairly new phenomenon that's going on, a
lot of these cases are actually still pending, but there
you can look them up.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
And then many people who get involved in this start
out as victims you said, and then there's sort of
a recruiting process and you can get out of it.
Do those victims who fall into this some times, do
they ever come forward and get help? Is does that
happen often where they're like, Oh, this is too far,
(36:08):
I can't handle this anymore.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
So I mentioned and I'm bad with names, so I
can't remember the kid's name. I feel bad about that.
But the livestream suicide that happened in the UK, with
the cases still depending on that guy, I think I
think the seven six four members is called White Tiger.
(36:31):
Might be wrong, but I think it's White Tiger anyway. Originally,
the kid that actually committed the suicide was contacted by
another victims slash affiliate of this seven six four group
that White Tiger was a part of, and this girl
(36:55):
helped groom the victim who wound up killing them. So
and then after everything went down, she actually came forward
and kind of blew the whistle on what was going on. So, yes,
sometimes people do come out of this. It's there's not
(37:17):
like a there's no rules. So some people, you know,
we'll be into this line of thinking for a while
and then they'll they'll get out of it and get
over it or whatever. There can be pushed back from
the group, just like with a like a criminal gang,
where they make it very difficult to leave. But a
lot of times, being the Internet, you may kind of
(37:39):
just be able to kind of get out of it.
Now you may have to abandon your entire identity and
just start over, but you know, if you really want out,
that's an option. So it's a little bit easier than
like a street gang where these guys are in your
neighborhood and you're having to deal with this and they're
going to come around. So there definitely is a lot
of people that kind of go in and out of
(38:01):
these groups.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah, and as fans meot to say it, sorry, as
people who like chaos and destruction and disorder, I would
gather that they may not be a very overly organized group.
It makes me think of I don't know if you've
(38:25):
ever seen Doctor Horror sing a long blog with the
deo Patrick Harris. It's amazing, but uh, he's a villain
in it, and he has this one song and there's
this line in it that's like anarchy that I run
and uh, it kind of makes me think of almost
that mentality. You have to you have to watch.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
It, but I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
You have to, you have to watch it. It's it's
it's funny, and it's very short. Sadly, it's it's beautiful. Uh,
but yeah, there's there's like some pretty pretty bad there's
like a lead of evil kind of thing in it.
But it kind of makes me think of that. My
mind is going like, oh, where where can we find humor.
(39:08):
Let's let's escape for a moment. But yeah, this is
this is frightening because there's so much there's so much
struggle right now with mental health and and so often
(39:28):
the kids who disclose to me or who come up
to me, they are they're self harming. Almost all of
them who have come up to me who have been
victims of something in way or another have self harmed.
So this is becoming part of that culture that leads
potentially also to this But I'm also wondering where are
(39:53):
these Where are they recruiting people there? You said they
have posters and things. I don't know are they They're
not posting on like on telephone poles and saying like,
come join our group. We have cookies, right, come to
the dark side. We have cookies. What how are they
finding people?
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Do you like cookies?
Speaker 1 (40:11):
He got really excited about the cookies for a moment.
The cookies.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
A good place.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
So maybe you get to go undercover and you'll get
some dark.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
So well, I do go undercover sometimes, but yeah, they
not not the kind you eat. Yeah, digital cookies. That's
a really geeky, nerdy joke there, so hopefully somebody appreciate that. Yeah.
So one of the main places that they go to
(40:46):
find likely candidates people that are kind of already sort
of in the mindset of doom and gloom and bad things.
It's hard to get somebody who's like really positive and
like everything things go on their way and be like, hey,
do you want to come like worship Satan and do
child born And they're going to be like no, so
(41:07):
you know you don't really want to start sound good?
Yeah I don't think so. So A lot of times
they're looking at mental health, you know, forums or any
place where people are seeking help, you know, getting advice.
There's lots of places, you know, redded there's just a
(41:28):
million places where where people gather and talk about things.
So topic groups will just call it wherever those are
that deal with mental health. They really like identity issues
where you're just struggling with whatever your identity is. That
could be a sexual identity, that could be just whatever
whatever internal identity struggle you have. Those are all great
(41:50):
because you're already you don't even know who you are,
you know what I mean, So you're already unstable. But
they definitely play into those things. Kind of referencing back
to the example of the UK incident. The kid that
wound up committing suicide was having sexual identity issues and
(42:12):
so that's that's where this connection was made, was in
a forum where they were trying to have like an
open dialogue about questioning things, and the wrong person saw
it and we've dried in. So definitely the mental health
in all of its forms, any type of place where
(42:36):
the people of like mind commune for those things. They
also pull a lot from the true crime community that
is also a huge recruitment area because these are already
people that are interested in you know, gore or violence
or you know, maybe even school shooters or serial killers
(42:59):
or you know kind of stuff. So if you get
somebody who's already kind of generally okay with this topic,
it's really easy to move that along and kind of
groom that that line of thinking into whichever direction you
want that to go. So right off hand, like, those
(43:19):
are some of the main groups of people that are
that are consistently recruited. The true crime is a whole
other deal. There's actually an entire like category of NB
called true crime. And it's not the you know, Netflix
documentary stuff. It's it's it's different. It's more of a
(43:43):
worship of of the people that are doing the true crime,
the serial killers or the mass violence people, school shooters, whatever.
They're the people that are not just interested in like,
oh my goodness, what does humanity do to itself? I
just this is shocking, oh, right.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Like the healthy fascination.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
That right, Or people are like interested in the investigation,
how did they catch that guy? You know, you know,
like you know, there's I've seen a bunch of them,
you know, there's all these these shows they've made, you know,
the first forty eight stuff like that, you know, where
it's like, oh man, I want to know, like how
did they do this, how did they figure this out?
How did they finally catch this guy?
Speaker 1 (44:26):
I want to get into the mind of the perpetrator.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Yeah, when you start to to you know, look at
you know, like Dylan Cleebold or somebody, and you're like, wow,
he is he is really cool, Like I want to
know all about you know, his life and like start
to model that. That's where you start getting into more
of the the other true crime community, which is the
(44:51):
ones that are glorifying this stuff. And they're definitely where
a lot of the the mass violence people have either
come from or at least touched that community in one way,
shape or form. You know. They they've had that fascination,
they get inspiration from it. They're they're getting a whole
(45:12):
different thing out of it than a you know, normal
person who's looking at like the investigation. They're they're not
getting that that inspiration and stuff out of these guys.
They're they're looking at, you know, more of the mechanical
like how did they get caught? Stuff, or just the
shock value of like, oh, I can't believe this happened,
that kind of thing, but the other people are looking
(45:34):
at it as hero worship.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
And when you say Dylan Gleebold, I you're referencing the
Columbine shooters, So Dalan Glebold and Eric Harris.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
And yeah, they're super popular in this this movement. Any
of the main mass violence people are usually idolized within
this group. They were kind of the first of the
really significant mass violence actors that are kind of within
(46:09):
this this type of movement, and so that's why they're consistently,
you know here worshiped, you know, kind of across the boards.
There's a ton of people that really follow them.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
That was like really the first big story that impacted
so many of us as kids. And for people who
did not grow up with that being the story and
they would just do research, they would see that certainly
as one of one of the first big stories. So
these are people who are are really idolizing and worshiping
(46:50):
these people and looking up to them, is what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (46:56):
Yep. Sometimes even have a romantic interest. There's a term
for that now is I can't remember what it is,
I forgot, but it's an actual, like clinical term for
being romantically or or sexually interested in these these bad
(47:17):
actors that are doing this stuff. And you know, that's
definitely part of the movement too. I mean, if if
you've reached that situation, it's really easy to groom you
into other similar conduct when you're already that far in.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
When I think about the the violence that is happening now,
a common term that comes up is is in cell
And why I don't want to dig in that too deeply.
Is that part of this culture at all?
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Not really? I mean everything in one way, shape or
form sort of overlaps and stuff. You can be an
insell and be into you know, the envy eas stuff
you can also not.
Speaker 1 (48:07):
When I think about people who are really into true crime,
so many of them are women. So does that mean
that a lot of people in these groups are women?
Is it is it a lot of men in just
a few women and girls, or is it really like
(48:28):
an equal mix.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
I don't really know about the demographics. I would say
that that there's a lot of both. I don't know.
I couldn't like give a quantitative percentage or something like that.
There's definitely a lot of girls get into it more
on the level of like the true crime, you know,
(48:54):
kind of through that avenue or through the mental health,
but they are more more apt to develop the fascination
and romantic attachment that that whole side of it. The
guys that I don't really know how to how to
(49:14):
describe exactly why everybody finds a fascination with it. Some
of it is like a power thing. You know, this
is a way they see these guys that have done
these things as being very powerful. They're like, they're like
owning their situation, and you know, this is their their
rage against the world, and this is you know, the
(49:34):
way they expressed it, and so they'll they'll kind of
idolize them for that reason. Maybe not like a sexual thing,
but it's more like a you know, just true inspiration,
like wow, they they I've had these same thoughts and
they actually made it happen kind of thing. So there's
there's definitely a good number of both. It's not just
(49:57):
like a bunch of guys or you know, it's a
bunch of girls. I don't know if it's you know,
fifty to fifty or whatever, but I have definitely investigated girls,
multiple girls who were looking to do mass shootings and
that type of thing, which is really interesting to me.
I had a one of the very first cases that
(50:18):
involved a bunch of people spread across the United States
and even outside of the United States, who were actively
planning their own mass violent acts, sometimes together. Huh is it?
Speaker 1 (50:38):
Oh goodie?
Speaker 2 (50:38):
Oh yeah, So they were each planning their own thing.
A couple of them were actually gonna do like a
like a Columbine style and team up, but they were
helping each other flesh out their plans. So they were
critiquing and helping and assisting and offering advice to come
(50:59):
up so that everybody can have like the best experience possible.
And then they even had a great idea that you know, hey,
what if we instead of just everybody doing their own
thing in the best way, what if we combine our
efforts and do it in a systematic way so that
(51:19):
it has the greatest possible like synergistic impact. Right, So
either do it at the same time or do it
in like a succession or something like that. That that
was the they're a great idea. It did not come
to fruition, so multiple arrests were made and disruptions of
(51:42):
this whole I guess we'll call it a network, and
everybody got addressed that that was dealing with whatever aspect
of whatever component they had of that. There was also
so you had the people that were actually going to
do the thing, and he had all like the encouragers too,
(52:02):
So there's kind of an outer ring of people that
we weren't going to be involved in, you know, the
shooting or whatever, but they were encouragers and enablers. So
but yeah, all these people were discovered, but that was
one of the first situations like that that had really
(52:25):
come to light, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Thank goodness they got them. I'm just I'm imagining these
people getting together and having like official zoom meetings with
like the AI summarizing it and sending it to them
at the end with next steps.
Speaker 2 (52:44):
If that had happened today, it probably would have. Yeah. Wow,
no telling, there's some weird people out there. I'm just
saying there's definitely some weird people.
Speaker 1 (52:56):
Well we reopened it with like kind of joking that
you're like Batman, and these just really do sound like
Gotham villains to me.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
Yeah, sometimes some of these people are like over the top.
I've definitely had you know, not just envy stuff, but
like looking at all the bad people. I've had some
really strange folks. It's just shocking that they're walking around
with everybody else seemingly normal, you know, but not right.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
They're the just people who are in your lives, who
are kind and open the door for you and well,
have a great day. Maybe maybee. They might not say
have a great day. They might be like, have an
awful day. So I want to switch gears entirely, and
let's just like take a breath for a moment, because
that's that was uncomfortable. Yeah, you like, I did it.
(53:55):
I'm good. I breathed. That was Yeah. It's scary because
it sounds like something that somebody would write in a
book or what is the worst case scenario for humanity
to get involved in? And here it is in your
everyday line of work.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
There's some dark corners.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
Yeah, yes, this is a room that people are just
entering and starting to look in. And it's scary to
talk about. I always worry about talking about things in detail,
and I know you and I are very careful when
we have these discussions, and certainly anything public. I don't
want to teach anybody or encourage anybody. I don't want
(54:41):
somebody listening to this because we are going we know
high true crime community, right, Hi, it's you. Please don't
be fascinated in this. Don't look into this. There's nothing
there's nothing good that can happen, and only bad can
be really bad. It's not a fun adventure, it's not
(55:01):
a journey.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
Let me say this. I've dealt with a lot of
people in my career so far. I couldn't possibly tell
you how many cases I've worked. It's a large number.
I've done this a rather long time. I've spent the
majority of my career in investigations, so the vast majority,
(55:26):
almost almost all of it in investigations. So there's been
a lot. I don't know anybody, and I've interviewed many suspects.
I don't know anybody who wound up being happy doing
the thing that they were doing. That goes from me, know,
(55:47):
just drugs. I've never met a drug dealer who was like, man,
it's the best decision I ever made. This is awesome.
Love it like it's never happened. I've never once had
that conversation. I've never talked to anybody who was into uh,
see Sam and they're like, oh, this is great, you know,
like it's I don't know why everybody doesn't do it. Literally,
(56:08):
no one ever says that these are miserable people. They
the number of people that tell me after everything is
kind of like chilled out and that you know, the
arrest has been made. The number of people that say,
I'm so glad you're here. I've been waiting for this
day for years, for so long, I'm so glad it's
(56:33):
finally over, you know, some whatever iteration of that. That
is a very very common thing to hear. Not every time,
but very common. This is a lot of weight to
drag around with you, you know, if you're if you're
into these these you know, nefarious lifestyles because you never
(56:59):
can really trust any buddy. You're always waiting to see
if you're going to get caught. It's just a lot
of stress. People you know that are into more of
the violent side of stuff, like the NBA stuff, these
are extremely unhappy people. Anybody who is like starting to
(57:20):
dabble in this, I've never never talked to a kid
who was cutting themselves and doing all this stuff that
enjoyed it. It was always a like ongoing crisis that
they didn't even fully recognize in the beginning. But there's
literally no positive side of the entire process. And even
(57:43):
if it feels positive at the moment that you're in it,
because you're kind of blinded by all the the darkness
around you, after you've stepped out of that, there's just
such a different perspective on it. I'm about to have
a conversation with one of these girls next week, and
(58:08):
I'm very curious to see, you know, what she's going
to say now that she is out of it, and she's,
from what I hear, has turned a corner, and so
it's going to be very interesting conversation. I always like
to see a success story too, because she was definitely
in a dark place. So I'd like to see, you know,
some redemption. That'd be great. I don't get to see
(58:29):
a lot of positivity in what I do.
Speaker 1 (58:32):
So she got out of it, that's amazing. We should
all take a moment and just like send her some
positive feelings and vibes, and by the time anybody hears this,
you'll have already met with her.
Speaker 2 (58:46):
So I had five cases at the same time open
on her more total, but there were five at one time.
That's a lot of yeap. Oh, so being victimized in
one way, shape or form. So yeah, so it's good.
(59:08):
I'm really looking forward to it. I love positive outcomes.
I just don't get to see them very often, so
whenever one comes along, I'm like, yes, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (59:18):
Yeah. I just I always always just say I hope
they find I hope they find their way and that
they move on from it and they can look back
and go, wow, that was really bad. But I am
happy now. I'm so glad. I am the best version
of of myself and I'm proud of myself for for
(59:40):
overcoming that. So I love that you're you're going to
get to go go see her and that there's a
positive to this. That's that's that's wonderful.
Speaker 2 (59:52):
Yeah, so hopefully a good day coming up.
Speaker 1 (59:55):
Yeah. Now you've said you've been, You've you've obviously investigated
more cases than like you can count on your fingers
and toes. But did you always think you're going to
go into law enforst And I'm listening to you and
I said you're an expert, and you kind of back
on that a little bit, But is this like, were
(01:00:16):
you a kid that was like running around with wearing
a badge or did you just fall into this.
Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
One of my biggest regrets is that I did not
do military service. So I've always been very interested in
in the military, and I always wanted to be in
the military. And I'm not even sure exactly how it happened,
but when when I was in college, I found out.
(01:00:47):
I've always liked guns, so anything where I can shoot something,
I'm always happy about that. So maybe that's why I
like the military. I don't know, but I found out
about an Explore post that has that was in my area,
and that's actually it's Boy Scouts affiliated. It's not like
(01:01:09):
I mean, it's kind of part of the Boy Scouts's
kind of not at least this post was basically its
own thing. It was very very minimally affiliated, and it
was a Explore post with a police department, and so
I was like, well, I'll check that out. Maybe it'll
just be something fun. And I started checking it out
(01:01:30):
and saw that the post was really about to fail,
and so I ended up becoming like the commander of
the post, and I revitalized it and took it from
like three people to like twenty five people was wow,
pretty decent size for an exporer post. That's kind of
a lot. There's a lot of kids in one spot.
And we were doing all kinds of cool stuff. And
(01:01:53):
because we were a little bit older, we weren't like
the younger boy scout age. You know, we're a little
bit older because we were all in college. We were
doing all kinds of fun stuff. So we were shooting,
We're doing you know, like like light swat type stuff.
By the time it was done, we were having a
lot of fun. So we also had a great group
(01:02:14):
of guys at the police department that allowed us to
do more and do a lot of cool stuff. So
from there I started working, actually getting paid, working at
the police department doing stuff, and I just kind of
I was like, you know, I kind of like this.
I just like the unpredictability of the job. I like
(01:02:37):
the aspect of, you know, hunting. I've always been a hunter.
I like finding the bad guy, you know, doing doing
the stock, sneaking around at night, finding people in dark corners.
I just enjoyed it. So I just like slowly kind
of got into it and then wound up, you know,
(01:02:58):
spending the next I don't know, twenty five years there
and the rest is history. Forget to go do the
military service. So you know, I don't have that, but
I have. I have been in service, you know, to
my community and my nation for all that time, you know,
(01:03:19):
protecting the homeland. So it wasn't off in foreign places
fighting wars, but I was still doing something important. I feel.
Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Yeah, you're absolutely fighting so many wars right now. It's
a it's a different battlefield for sure, but it's a
it is a global one.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
Yeah. I never get to come home from deployment. So
that's kind of the difference too, is there's never really
a downtime. You're just always in it. So it's it's
a little different in that respect.
Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
Did you think that you'd fall into this particular department.
Is this something that you wanted to do, or did
it just like for you handed it one day and
said this is the work you have to do.
Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Oh no, I definitely picked where I'm at, specifically working
you know, internet crimes against children or any type of
like sexual exploitation type thing that, in my opinion, is
not something you should force on somebody. They have to
(01:04:28):
be able to handle the subject matter, not just like
sit there and deal with it, but actually like do
a good job and actually be productive within it. So
a lot of people, a lot of what I do
has a very high burnout rate. People will get into
because they want to help kids or whatever, and then
(01:04:49):
they see how awful and just evil, evil evil, And
when you stare true evil in the in the face,
you know it'll get to you. So a lot of
people just can't keep doing it. Like They'll do it
for a little while and they'll leave. You kind of
have to just be the right kind of person to
(01:05:12):
hang in there for the long term. It's definitely not
for everybody. I don't think anybody should be assigned to
this type of work. I think they should select it.
It should be voluntary, right.
Speaker 1 (01:05:26):
I do agree with that it would be awful to
it would in some ways almost be a victimization of
that person if they had to be traumatized in that
particular way. I have to say that I agree with
you there and that burnout is okay in some ways.
(01:05:51):
That it is so important to be able to know
when you have hit that endpoint and to walk away
and to take care of yourself. And I see a
lot of the ICAC officers that I know, just keep
pushing and pushing and pushing through. And I've had some
of them really break down and cry to me, who
are who are unable to spend time almost with their
(01:06:13):
young children because they are having triggers and flashbacks to
two things that they have seen, which is heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
I could I could understand that. Yeah, yeah, it's just
it's one of those things. You just there's a large
push right now within kind of the industry for for
wellness and you know, check ins and you know, mental health.
Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
Didn't used to be there, didn't used to be at all.
Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
It's fairly recent. I it's just in the last few
years it's really become a thing. And I mean, I
think that's good. I mean it's I'm I'm like a
I don't know, freak of nature in my ability to
compartmentalize and like I literally have to sit here and
think about a case to even remember it. It's so compartmentalized.
(01:07:09):
I just don't have that issue where I think about
stuff at home or you know, any of that. But
I know a lot of people do, and it's something
that they need to know, respect that and make sure
they're not damaging themselves over time. Because I mean, you're
looking at terrible stuff that should not exist, Like zero
(01:07:30):
percent of what I work on should exist, and so
it's all different levels of awful.
Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
That's a rat for Part one with Rusty and well,
that was fascinating and horrifying. I told you right now.
I'm so excited to share a part two with you
next where he shares really compelling stories. He takes us
on a deep dive into the darkest parts of this
through his eyes, and then he pulls us out back
into hope. And we'll also talk about if he thinks
the evil is just too strong to stop and why exactly.
(01:08:02):
He calls Ron Swanson his spirit animal. So I will
see you in part two. Thank you so much for
tuning in. We really appreciate it. We'll be releasing new
episodes every Thursday. Make sure you check out our YouTube
channel and hit us up on our social media on
at Alicia kosatpod for extra content around each episode, and
(01:08:22):
please remember to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
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