September 22, 2025 • 47 mins
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Welcome to another episode of the Nighttime Scary Tales Podcast, where we explore the dark side of storytelling. Tonight, prepare for spine-chilling tales featuring original horror stories, eerie supernatural encounters, and real-life crime that reveals the darker aspects of human nature. Each story is designed to keep you on the edge of your seat long after it ends. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Share your most chilling moments by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. More haunting stories are coming, so keep your lights on and your doors locked. Sweet dreams… if you can find them!
Welcome to another episode of the Nighttime Scary Tales Podcast, where we explore the dark side of storytelling. Tonight, prepare for spine-chilling tales featuring original horror stories, eerie supernatural encounters, and real-life crime that reveals the darker aspects of human nature. Each story is designed to keep you on the edge of your seat long after it ends. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Share your most chilling moments by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. More haunting stories are coming, so keep your lights on and your doors locked. Sweet dreams… if you can find them!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Have you ever heard about that guy threw away a
laptop which had the key to a bitcoin wallad on it.
Some British dude called James Howells threw an old laptop
into the trash, then didn't realize the key was on
its hard drive till it was all the way down
at the city dump when he accidentally tossed it out.
The bitcoin was worth around eight million bucks, and by
(00:33):
twenty seventeen it was worth a hundred million, and now
in twenty twenty five, it's worth almost a quarter of
a billion dollars And that's right billion with a B.
And that guy's offered a huge reward, paid for his
own private forensics team. He's even tried suing the city
council members that he thinks stole it. But it doesn't
(00:55):
look like he's ever going to find that laptop, which
basically means the dude's got to live with the fact
that he lost almost a billion dollars into the trash.
It's a cruel world, right, and it doesn't get much
crueler than that. But when I first read about it,
all I remember thinking was, holy crap, dude, I could
get rich from that crypto stuff and This was his
(01:16):
back around spring of twenty twenty one, when I first
started looking into cryptocurrencies and reading about the markets, I
met some really cool people. And then in May of
twenty twenty one, one of my crypto buddies hit me
up with a tip that he thought I might find helpful.
A few months prior before we started talking, he'd spotted
a cryptocurrency named Luna that had jumped from fifty cents
(01:39):
per token to six bucks per token. Such a large
spike was obviously of interest to him, so he started
reading up on Luna to see what the deal was,
and what he read amazed him. It turned out that
Luna was just a reserve asset for something called Terra USD,
an algorithmic stable coin designed to retain a one to
(02:00):
one peg with the US dollar. I guess a lot
of people will appreciate me translating that into English, so
here you go. Ta USD was backed by a ton
of investors who all poured millions of dollars into the
company who created it, and that's kind of why it
was called a stable coin. With all that money behind it,
it couldn't fail, so it remained stable in price. Luna
(02:22):
on the other hand, was an asset that could fluctuate
in price per token, but since it was tied to
tara USD, it could never fluctuate too severely and was
almost guaranteed to rise in value over time. My buddy
told me that he'd waited for a slight dip to
buy in, and he did so at five bucks per token,
but just over a month later, that same five dollar
(02:44):
token was worth over four times as much at twenty
dollars and seventy one cents. The currency had then remained
somewhat stable for a while before suffering a minor crash,
dropping down to around five bucks again in May, and
that as when my buddy texted me saying it was
the perfect time to buy in. He told me he
(03:05):
was ninety nine percent sure that despite the brief wobble,
Luna was about to bounce back in a big way.
There was already talk of interest returning, no doubt because
of its ties to tara u s D, and my
buddy was so confident he bought a bunch more tokens
before he decided to text me. That was the thing
that really swayed me, and I remember joking with him saying, well,
(03:27):
if we go down, we go down together. And then,
since I had a grand total of four hundred and
ninety dollars saved, I bought a hundred Luna tokens at
four dollars and eighty one cents apiece. When I told her,
the girl that I was seeing at the time thought
I was nuts, and so did an off line friend
of mine named Chris. And when I say off line friend,
(03:48):
I mean Chris was both a friend in real life
that I knew from high school and some one who
didn't pay much attention to stuff online. He had an
Instagram account and had played a little Madden with random
dowushbags from time to time, but apart from that, he
was just a regular dude, more comfortable with the insides
of a car than a computer. He thought I was
(04:08):
out of my mind for spending almost five hundred dollars
on invisible coins, but he wasn't saying that come August time,
when Luna's value rose from ten to twenty than thirty
bucks per token, and I remember showing him my wallet
and he said, so, can you just cash out whenever
you want? And I explained that no, I had to
(04:29):
find a buyer first, but that was easy when a
token's value was on the up and up. Then, since
the app I was using did that for me, there
was a chance that I could make twenty nine hundred
dollars profit within less than an hour. And that's when
he went from thinking was all just a scam to
realizing there really was something that this whole crypto thing
(04:50):
had going on. He sat on my couch asked me
a bunch of questions about it, and I answered everything
as best I could give him my own limited experience.
I was He's honest, too, the same kind of honest
people had been with me, and told him it was
all effectively just gambling, but that in Luna, myself and
a whole bunch of other people had found something with
(05:11):
potential for long term stability. It was still a gamble,
but it was just about the safest bed out there
for the time being and for the remainder of twenty
twenty one. Chris would always ask about my crypto wallet
every time we hung out, and it was always good news.
Every time he was over, he'd see how much Luna
had risen in value, and he'd always make some offhand
(05:33):
comment about giving me a bunch of money so I
could turn him a quick profit. I didn't think that
was such a hot idea, and had always given him
the advice that I got watch the markets for a while,
get to know the system, and then be headstrong and
patient enough to make the right buys at the right time.
To really profit, you had to wait for a crash,
(05:54):
and by the holidays of twenty twenty one, when Luna
had risen from thirty to sixty to ninety three dollars
in change, it didn't look like one was coming anytime soon.
I told him i'd hit him up the moment one happened.
After a very brief drop which I didn't quite think
was the right time, Luna dipped all the way down
to around forty five bucks a token at the end
(06:16):
of January twenty twenty two. I gave him a call
and told him it was the perfect time to buy
himself in, and then, after talking him through the process
of obtaining a crypto wallet, I asked him how many
coins he wanted to buy. I don't really know what
I was expecting to hear. Maybe a figure similar to
my own, a nice round number like one hundred or fifty.
(06:37):
Given how much more expensive it was by then, and
so when Chris told me he wanted not one hundred,
but three hundred tokens, I was a little taken. Aback.
I thought I was being kind of wild fronting four
thousand bucks. Then there was Chris making an investment of
almost fourteen thousand dollars, and he was not a rich guy.
(06:59):
When I asked if he was sure, he seemed confident
as can be, and I guess he based that confidence
on what I told him. Every time Luna took a dip,
it came back stronger than ever. So just over a
month later, when it had risen from less than fifty
to over one hundred bucks a token, we both figured
he'd made the right choice. Chris's investment was now worth
(07:22):
almost thirty thousand dollars. He'd doubled his money, and as
he can imagine, he was very, very happy with me.
By the start of April twenty twenty two, Luna was
almost one hundred and twenty dollars per token, and my
buddy Chris was not only singing my praises every chance
he got, but seemed convinced that we were going to
be millionaires by the end of the year. I remember
(07:45):
one time. We were drinking in a bar after a
Red Sox game, and he started getting kind of emotional,
saying something like, Dude, I really appreciate what you've done
for me. This could change my whole life. I told
him I doubted that we'd beat that rich come the
end of the year, and that I was planning on
selling my tokens as soon as they had one hundred
and fifty dollars. I'd make an insane profit that way,
(08:08):
and if Chris did the same thing, he'd more than
triple his money. And then with a little patience, we
could wait for another stable coin to be minted, which
wouldn't be long in light of Luna's success, and then
start the process all over again. That was my theory anyway,
but Chris took it as gospel. I said what I
(08:29):
said to try and bring him back down to earth,
and maybe it was the bud light talking, but he says,
told you, dude, it might not be this year, but
we're going to get rich off the back of this thing,
and I got you to thank for it. In the moment,
I felt really proud of myself. Honestly, it was probably
going to make a ton of money off the back
of my Luna purchase, but I had also helped a
(08:51):
friend out too, not in a life changing way by
any means, but over time, if we played our cards right,
the passive income would probably prove the life changing. And
that was the start of April, and by the end
of the year, if the market trends persisted, Luna was
estimated to rise to somewhere around two hundred bucks a token.
(09:12):
But as the saying goes, man proposes and God disposes.
Just a few days after our drunken heart to heart
in that sports bar, when I felt on top of
the world for helping make Chris a little money, Luna
took a sharp dip, and then over the next two
weeks or so, it went from around one hundred and
twenty bucks per token to about seventy five bucks per token.
(09:36):
Chris called me for reassurance, and I told him what
I always did. Every dip was followed by a new peak.
It had been that way since Luna was created, and
all we had to do was wait a few days
for the value to creep back up. It didn't even
take twenty four hours. The next day Luna had shot
up from the floor price of seventy five dollars per
token to about a nicer ninety dollars per token, and
(10:00):
then after a little more fluctuation, it stabilized at around
ninety five dollars, with every expectation of increasing further in
value through May of twenty twenty two. Now May starts,
and just as predicted, Luna's prices rose again, And then
somehow I ended up coming down with this really terrible
case of something and was basically bedbound for a couple
(10:21):
of days, with the exception of trips to the bathroom
to puke or poop. And I remember checking my portfolio
at one point and seeing Luna had dipped to just
under seventy bucks per token, but I wasn't worried, and
I had every faith that it had to do its
usual thing of skyrocketing to a new high after a
period of fluctuation. A lot of stuff after that is
(10:43):
kind of hazy, and I remember passing out for at
least thirteen hours or so once the worst of the
sickness was out of me. But then when I woke
up at around three thirty a m. On May eleventh,
twenty twenty two, a date that will forever be burned
into my brain. I realized my entire way world had
been turned completely upside down. After tracking Luna's value, I
(11:06):
realized that maybe only an hour after I passed out,
around thirteen hours before, it had dropped from just below
seventy dollars to thirty three dollars per token. A couple
of hours later, it sank to sixteen dollars per token,
and then I literally watched it in real time as
it dropped a fifteen, then fourteen, then unlucky thirteen, right
(11:29):
before my very eyes. I never thought that I was
the fainting type. I had been in a bad accident
as a teenager and seen the meat on the inside
of my leg when the broken bone tore its way
through with the skin. I didn't feel light headed, I
didn't pass out. I just thought, uh oh, I need
an adult. But when I looked at my phone that morning,
(11:49):
I saw Luna's value falling and falling and falling, and
I had to sit back down on my bed to
keep from falling down. Actually, my head was spinning, my
chest felt tight, and I had to keep taking super
deep breaths to keep myself from I don't know, either
puking or passing out or descending into some kind of
mannic freak out. I started checking forums, message boards, and
(12:13):
group chats. I was in for any clue as to
what had happened. I hoped to god i'd read something reassuring,
something about Luna being set to bounce back after suffering
a glitch or miscalculation in the blockchain or whatever. But
I saw the opposite. Luna had crashed and it wasn't
coming back. But how the hell had such a stable
(12:33):
asset suddenly crashed and burned like that? Okay, so remember
how I told you about Luna being tied to that
terra USD and how that was tied to the US
dollar to keep everything nice and stable. Well that turned
out to be a lie. The dudes who created it
told everyone who was supposed to maintain a one to
(12:53):
one peg with the US dollar, But that was nothing
but a ruse to lure investors into what was ultimately
a kind of unconventional ponsy scheme. In other words, it
was a scam, a very well disguised one that fooled
a lot of people, and I fell for it too.
But then in doing so, I hadn't just lost four
(13:13):
hundred bucks of my own money. Chris had lost tens
of thousands of dollars and he was pissed. When I
woke up from my super sleep. One of the things
that had me suspecting something was wrong was the fact
that I had like fifty miss calls from Chris, along
with almost two dozen text messages too. I guess he
(13:36):
got an alert that Luna was crashing and then went
into full blown panic mode while I was passed out.
His text progressed from stuff like, Bro, are you seeing this?
And Dude, this cannot be happening right now to stuff
like pick up the effing phone, bro, and are you
ducking me right now? Pick up the phone. I remember
(13:57):
tapping the little call symbol very frantic, and then getting
nothing but rings until I hit voicemail. I told Chris
to call me back as soon as he was awake,
because even though his last call had come almost forty
minutes prior, I figured that he had to sleep since
four a m. Was fast approaching at that point. But
part of me doubted that he was asleep, mainly because
(14:17):
there was no way that I'd be sleeping if I
was in his position. And I was right because maybe
only fifteen to twenty minutes later, someone started buzzing my
apartment from downstairs. I have one of those little intercoms,
the kind with a little screen so you can see
and talk to the person buzzing you, and I had
a pretty good idea of who it was before I
(14:38):
saw it was Chris, but he didn't look angry. He
just looked almost deflated. I pressed the intercom button and
told him to come on up, and then I walked
back into my kitchen to turn on my coffee machine
and let it warm up. Because I figured that we
had a long and painful heart to heart ahead of us.
(14:59):
I grabbed two cups from the cabinet and then heard
Chris's footsteps in the hallway outside. I started walking to
the door and then said something to him like hey man,
I'll open up, and he responded by slamming what sounded
like a fist into the door before growling open the
f up. He sounded completely sauced, like drunk as a
(15:22):
goddamn skunk. So instead of just opening the door, I
took a look through the peep hole and then saw
Chris literally swaying back and forth on the other side
of the door. It wasn't like a dramatic swaying. It
was very subtle. But that's how drunk he had gotten himself,
so drunk he could barely stand. I remember how my
hands reached for the latch and door handle before suddenly
(15:45):
I paused. I had this flash of an ultra drunk
Chris smashing up my apartment like a bowl in a
china shop after some boozed up argument ascend it into violence.
I thought maybe I was just overthinking it, but no.
Sooner had that thought popped into my head, Chris slammed
his fist into the door again with a loud yell, saying,
(16:07):
open the effing door. We need to talk. And that
feeling came back fast, the one that made me think
letting him inside wasn't such a good idea, And so
I suggested he'd go back home and just sleep it
off so we can talk about it over the phone
come the morning. I even suggested I'd order him an
uber on my dime by way of an apology for
(16:27):
not picking up his calls. And then I was half
way into explaining how sick I'd been when something slammed
into the door so hard it made me jump back.
I figured he was trying to kick my door in
because I heard bam, then bam, and then bam, one
each harder than the last. I started yelling at Chris
(16:47):
to stop, and he gave the door a few more
kicks before he stopped. But then he launched into some sloppy,
drunk rant about how he was going to kill me
when he'd finish kicking my door down. I tried explaining
what happened with Luna, as in why it had crashed
and all that, but it was no good. He was
yelling too loud to hear me, and even if he wasn't,
(17:09):
I don't think he was lucid enough to even understand.
He kept saying open the door. James opened the door
in a way that honestly sounded like he was losing
his mind, and that alone scared the crap out of me.
But I also was faced with the very real possibility
of having to violently defend myself against one of my
best friends. And that's a feeling that I wouldn't wish
(17:30):
on my worst enemy, the kind that makes tears well
up in my eyes just thinking about it now, even
all these years later, And in the moment, I knew
I should call the cops, but I couldn't. I couldn't
do that to him. Part of me figured that I
could just talk him down, but the other part knew
I couldn't. I remember thinking that maybe just seeing me
(17:52):
holding a knife might shock some sense into him, but
I couldn't bring myself to go get one either. I
just kept saying, please, man, don't do this, this isn't you.
But Chris didn't stop, not until I heard some one
else out in the corridor yelling at him to stop.
I recognized that voice of my neighbor from down the hallway,
(18:13):
but I also recognized the fear and surprise in Chris's voice.
When I heard him angrily say back, okay, okay, I'll stop.
I knew my neighbor must have been pointing a gun
at him or something, because when I looked through the
peep hole, Chris literally had his hands in the air
as he backed away from the door. And then I
heard my neighbor yell at him to get out of
there before he gets himself shot. Chris kind of came
(18:36):
to his senses, I suppose, in that moment, and I
thank god that he didn't bring his own gun, and
I know he owns one, so we all quite literally
dodged a bullet with that one. And then maybe ten
or twenty seconds after my neighbor came to the rescue,
Chris staggered out of my apartment building and presumably went
to his car. I thanked my neighbor a whole bunch,
(18:57):
and he'd already called the cops. Some one arrived not
long after to ask what had happened, and while I
told him everything start to finish, I also said that
I didn't want to press charges against Chris because he
wasn't in his right mind. I remember telling the cop
about all the crypto we lost, and when I told
him the amount, he said, how much did you guys lose?
(19:19):
He couldn't believe it. He didn't even know what crypto
was really. Before he left, he advised me to keep
my distance from Chris for a couple of days. A
phone call might be an idea, as he might be
happy to hear that I wasn't pressing charges, but I
wasn't to do something stupid like show up on his doorstep,
otherwise it might be me getting a gun pointed in
(19:40):
my face. I tried calling, but he didn't answer. I
tried texting, but he didn't reply. I tried contacting Chris
on Instagram and he blocked me, and then I tried
asking his girlfriend and mutual friends to pass on messages,
but none came back. I figured he'd stay mad for
a few days, maybe a week or two tops, because
(20:00):
sooner or later he had to figure out that it
wasn't my fault. But as much as it breaks my
heart to say it, that didn't happen. And the way
Chris saw it, I was either dumb enough to have
lost him his money, or I was in on the
scam and I'd stolen it somehow, and either way, he
was done with me. I didn't know it at the time,
(20:21):
but that night, when he screamed at me from behind
a locked door, that was the last time we'd ever talk,
and there marked the end of my crypto journey. I
didn't throw away a laptop with almost a billion dollars,
but I threw away a friendship, and those are worth
more than money could ever buy. Born on September twentieth
(20:53):
of nineteen sixty one in Baltimore, Maryland, Sharon Rena Lopatka
was the first of four daughters born to mister and
Missus Abraham J. Denberg. As a young lady, she was
a canter at the Beth to Philo Synagogue in nearby Pikesville,
and was a part of her high school's sports teams
and choir club. Peers described her as being as normal
(21:15):
as you can get, and then sometime following her graduation
in nineteen seventy nine, she began dating a construction worker
named Victor Lapatka. Sharon's Orthodox parents didn't entirely approve of
the relationship, but that didn't deter her in the slightest.
She moved into his Hampstead tract house in nineteen ninety
(21:35):
and they married the following year. In nineteen ninety five,
Sharon and Victor were living in Elicate City, and to
bring in a little extra cash each month, Sharon began
an online advertising business based out of their home. Her
first venture, House of Dion, sold mail order home to
Corps guides for seven dollars apiece an advertisement on the website.
(21:57):
Read Home decorating secrets seen in the Push homes from
the New England States to the Hollywood Homes can now
be yours. Never published before. Quick easy ways to decorate
your home Sharon proved such an effective advertiser that she
was able to begin selling her copywriting skills for fifty
dollars per copy, and did so under the trading name
(22:18):
Classified Concepts. Victor, who was initially skeptical of a nascent
internet's money making potential, was as proud as he was
surprised by his wife's success. He encouraged her to continue
her enterprising ways, which resulted in Sharon's spending more and
more time on the Internet. In addition to her copywriting
(22:39):
and home decorps guide businesses, Sharon began managing the sales
department for several websites offering psychic readings to its users.
She also negotiated herself a percentage of sales from other services,
some with premium rate telephone numbers, by advertising them on
her websites. Within just a few short months, Sharon had
(22:59):
trained transformed their home computer into a home enterprise, and
it's clear she recognized the Internet's near limitless capacity for commerce. Yet, unfortunately,
in her quest to provide for her family, Sharon began
venturing into the CD underbelly of the Let's Read YouTube channel. Yet, unfortunately,
(23:21):
in her quest to provide for her family, Sharon began
venturing into the CD underbelly of the World Wide Web.
Even in the Internet's earliest years, the adult entertainment industry
fielded a strong presence, having recognized the potential for widespread
distribution and subscription based payment systems. Sharon was no different
(23:43):
and immediately saw what a huge demand there was for
an online adult entertainment. With her strengths lying in marketing,
Sharon offered her services to a number of distributors and
once again found a huge demand for her lucrative skill set.
Yet it wasn't long before Sharon and observed another pattern
of online behavior. The more extreme the adult entertainment, the
(24:06):
more money there was to be made. Cheron noticed that
those interested in the more extreme varieties, which depicted subjects
being restrained, hypnotized, or chloroformed, would pay double or sometimes
triple what consumers of milder varieties were willing to hand over,
and to her it was a no brainer. She could
(24:27):
receive up to three times her regular rate of pay
for the same amount of work, and so under the
pseudonym of Nancy Carlson, she once again raised her salary ceiling,
much to the delight of her husband as Sharon began
tailoring her online expertise to the more perverse and depraved,
She began selling her under garments in its, here that
(24:49):
her interests appeared to shift from professional to personal. She
transformed the mere pseudonym of Nancy Carlson into a full
blown online persona, and while visiting obscene chat rooms, would
pretend to be a three hundred pound dominatrix who starred
in several adult films. It believed Charon would offer a
(25:11):
certain kind of online chat session in exchange for cash,
which once again contributed to her ever rising revenue. But
somewhere along the way, her behavior took a dark turn.
She began posting advertisements which claimed her ultimate fantasy was
to be kidnapped, tortured, and killed by a massed stranger,
(25:32):
and did so with such authenticity that it generated a
huge amount of activity. Some offered to fulfill her fantasies,
while others, such as a user named Taneth, felt Sharon
was going too far. Tanneth, who claimed to be some
kind of online activist, appeared concerned for Sharon's mental health
and gently warned her of the potential consequences, but Charon
(25:54):
did not explain that her posts were eccentric entrepreneurialism, nor
did she claim that they were just unrealistic fantasies. Instead,
she replied, I want the real thing. I did not
ask for you to preach to me. It was a
Sunday morning on October thirteenth of nineteen ninety six when
Sharon told her husband she was driving over to Georgia
(26:17):
to meet some old friends. Her husband wished her a
safe trip, then when about his day as normal, but
Sharon was not headed to Georgia. Instead, she drove for
forty five minutes towards Baltimore's Pennsylvania station, then arrived in Charlotte,
North Carolina, at around eight forty five p m. Around
(26:37):
the same time she arrived in Charlotte, Sharon's husband noticed
a hand written note she left lying on the kitchen table.
It's not clear exactly what was written, but not only
did Sharon request that her husband refrain from searching for her,
but she wrote, if my body is never retrieved, don't worry.
Know that I'm at peace. Victor rushed to inform police
(27:00):
that his wife was missing and potentially in danger, but
it was already too late. Sharon had already met with
the man she'd made an unholy arrangement with, Robert Glass.
For nearly sixteen years, Robert Frederick Glass lived an unremarkable
life as a computer analyst working for the government of
Cataba County. He wed a woman named Sherry, with whom
(27:24):
he'd shared three children, and their marriage lasted fourteen happy
years until May of nineteen ninety six, when Sherry locked
onto her husband's computer. There in Robert's email account, Sherry
found several emails she later described as raw, violent, and
disturbing under the user names toy Man in Slow Hand.
(27:47):
Robert had secretly been visiting illicit chat rooms for years,
but he wasn't simply swapping pillow talk with like minded strangers.
He seemed to delight in the prospect of inflicting suffering
on the innoc and he did so in a way
that suggested it was far more than just a mere fantasy.
Sherry promptly filed for divorce, and, given the nature of
(28:10):
his indiscretion, Robert Glass lost access to his children. This
proved understandably devastating for Robert, but instead of pulling himself
away from such perversions and living a cleaner existence, he
poured himself into his depravities as a coping mechanism. Over
the months that followed, Robert sank deeper and deeper into
(28:32):
debauchery and grew steadily more fixated on the thrill of inflicting, suffering,
and taking lives. Then, eventually, in August of nineteen ninety six,
Robert Glass found one of Sharon's posts and the two
began an unhealthy and obsessive on line affair. They exchanged
nine hundred pages worth of e mails in just over
(28:53):
a month before eventually coming to a night merrish agreement
they would meet up. Then, after a few final days
of depravity, Robert would end Sharon's life. During the missing
person's investigation that followed her husband's report, detectives gained access
to Sharon's computer, and it's here they discovered the exact
(29:16):
nature of her communications with Robert Glass. Maryland detectives swiftly
contacted their North Carolina counterparts, who arranged for glasses home
to be put under surveillance. Officers then spent twenty four
hours staking out his house, but there were no sightings
of Sharon Lapatka, and then finally, on October twenty fifth,
(29:38):
a judge issued a search warrant for the home, and
police swooped in. Inside the house, officers discovered several of
Sharon's belongings in addition to bondage equipment and drug paraphernalia.
They also uncovered a three fifty seven magnum handgun along
with several computer discs which appeared to contain child exploitation material.
(30:00):
But it wasn't until officers searched the homes back yard
that they made the most chilling discovery of them. All.
Buried under a mound of soil around seventy five feet
from the house, officers unearthed body parts belonging to Sharon Lapotka.
Glass was at work when he was arrested, and then
(30:21):
after being charged with first degree murder, he was held
without bond at the Caldwell County Jail. He pleaded guilty
to voluntary manslaughter and exploitation charges on January twenty seventh
of the year two thousand and was sentenced to between
three and six years in the Avery Mitchell Correctional Institution.
(30:41):
Glass was also sentenced to an additional twenty seven months
on federal charges of second degree minor exploitation, to be
served consecutively in an interview conducted during his imprisonment, Glass
admitted to fulfilling Sharon's torture fantasy, but was quick to
add that her death was an accident. I don't know
(31:02):
how much I pulled the rope, he said, but I
never wanted to kill her. John Butts, the chief State
Medical Examiner of North Carolina, agreed with glasses claim that
the strangling was accidental. Police did not. They described the
death as intentional, and unfortunately for Glass, they had nine
hundred pages of written evidence to support their claim that
(31:25):
Sharon's murder was both intentional and premeditated. The Lopatka case
was reportedly the first in which a murder suspect was
put in custody by a police department based purely on
e mail evidence. Then, in its aftermath, most of the
media coverage emphasized the dangerous consequences of meeting strangers from
(31:46):
the Internet. Several people requested that a type of censorship
be created to better protect humans from killings like that
of Lapatka's. Scott Bradner, a consultant with Harvard University's Office
of Information Technology, vehemently disagreed, blaming the medium for the
difficulty of some people who exist in society is wrong,
(32:07):
he said. It's the Luddites of the world who claim
new technology is inherently evil. Sharon's case might be symbolic
of the risks associated with spending too much time online,
but her malady is not a new one. One evening
in September of the year seventeen ninety one, a Czech
composer living in London named Frantishek Kotswara decided to visit
(32:31):
a lady of the night. A few hours later, once
the pair had eaten dinner, Kotswara paid Susannah Hill two
shillings before requesting she castrate him. Hill refused, but agreed
to strangle Kotswara during intimacy, but then by the time
they were finished, he was dead, one of the first
(32:52):
recorded cases of what we might call carnal asphyxiation. Suzanna
Hill was charged with Frantishek kotswears murder, but following her
trial at the Old Bailey on September sixteenth, the jury
accepted her testimony and she was acquitted on all charges.
Robert Glass, on the other hand, received no such mercy.
(33:13):
He was incarcerated at the Avery Mitchell Correctional Institution in
North Carolina, then spent the next two years as an
exemplary prisoner who appeared racked with regret. The guilt seemed
to have weighed heavily on Glass's heart, too, because on
February twentieth of two thousand and two, just two weeks
before he was set to be released, he suffered a
(33:34):
massive myocardiol infarction. Glass was rushed to the Spruce Pine
Community Hospital, but was later pronounced dead at exactly one
thirty a m. The following morning. His death marked the
end of a terrifying chapter in the history of digital
criminality and illustrates what can happen when dark, violent fantasies
(33:54):
collide with a harsh light of reality. In the pre
dawn hours of a cool September morning back in nineteen
ninety eight, the sleepy English town of Charbury in Oxfordshire
was stirred by the low hum of police fans as
(34:16):
they converged from a small two story home on Crobory
of Villas. The detached house of faded Victorian property with
peeling paint in a small front yard was their target's
last known address. Intelligence suggested he lived alone and was
deeply paranoid, often keeping erratic hours and using multiple exits
and entrances. On the off chance he was being tailed,
(34:39):
a dog unit stood ready in case he attempted to
flee via the back garden, through which he had access
to the dense woodlands which surrounded the town. Acting on
a tip from the U. S. Federal Bureau of Investigation,
the dawn raid was timed for five a m sharp,
an hour when only the farmers working surrounding fields would
have stirred from their slumber. Oxfordshire Police had managed to
(35:02):
piece together a vast web of clues and evidence, including
private e mails and computer metadata, All had pointed back
to the terraced house on Croboro Villas, while suggesting its
resident was part of a colossal global network of child
abusing cyber criminals. At four fifty five a m. A
(35:22):
team of twelve tactically clad officers from Oxfordshire Police assembled
outside the house. One stepped forward, his fist hammering on
the door before yelt. Police opened the door. Now. While
no response came, a battering ram splintered the front door's
lock and the officers flooded inside. The ground floor was
(35:42):
a mess of stacked newspapers and unwashed dishes, with the
smell of old cigarettes hanging in the air. Torchbeams swept
the darkened rooms as officers moved methodically clearing the living
room and kitchen. Upstairs, they found twenty eight year old
Ian Baldock in a back bedroom, startled awake and scrambling
(36:02):
to pull on a jacket. Hands up, don't move, an
officer barked. Baldoc froze, his face, pale in the flashlight's glare.
He knew the game was up and that escape was impossible.
By six thirty a m. As first light crept over
the village, Baldock was being loaded into a police fan.
(36:23):
Drawn by the commotion, neighbors peered from windows, whispering about
the man they'd known as a quiet, shifty figure who
was rarely seen in local pubs such as Ye Old
Three Horseshoes. The raid disrupted the morning calm, with police
tape fluttering across the property an officers standing ground as
forensic teams arrived to carry away Baldock's computer. The seizure
(36:47):
and arrest resulted from months of solid work, with Baldock
being the first domino in a chain that would eventually
take down one of the world's largest child exploitation networks.
This is the story of Operation Cathedral, launched in nineteen
ninety eight. The advent of Operation Cathedral stands as a
(37:08):
pivotal moment in the fight against child exploitation on the Internet.
It specifically targeted the Wonderland Club, a secretive international child
exploitation ring that operated entirely online. The club's name, taken
from the Lewis Carroll story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, massed
a horrifying reality. They constituted a network of individuals who produced, shared,
(37:32):
and traded in child exploitation material on an unprecedented scale.
The operation, which involved law enforcement agencies from multiple countries,
not only dismantled the club, but also exposed the complexities
of combating cybercrime at a time when the Internet was
still relatively new. The investigation that led to Operation Cathedral
(37:53):
began in the United States in nineteen ninety six, when
the FBI uncovered evidence of a large scale child out
exploitation material network during an unrelated investigation into domestic cybercrime.
This initial discovery became part of a broader FBI operation
known as Innocent images, which aimed to combat the growing
(38:14):
problem of child exploitation on the Internet. As the operation progressed,
the FBI uncovered a group of individuals who were using
the Internet to share material. Yet after just a short
period of surveillance, it became clear that they were part
of a much larger international network, the Wonderland Club. The
(38:34):
Wonderland Club was not some loosely affiliated group of perverts,
but rather a rigorously structured hierarchy that enforced strict membership rules.
In order to join, prospective members not only had to
provide the organization with at least ten thousand images of
child exploitation, but they had to ensure these images had
not already been circulated within the group. This requirement made
(38:58):
sure that the club's life library of exploitation material grew
continuously and exponentially, making it one of the largest repositories
of such material in human history. The club operated online
using encrypted communication channels, which made it difficult for law
enforcement to track the identities of its members. They also
(39:20):
instituted a strict hierarchical structure, including ranks based on the
quantity and quality of the material contributed, with higher ranking
members having access to more exclusive content. It was later
revealed that the club had members in at least fourteen countries,
so given the international scope of the network, the FBI
reached out the law enforcement agencies in those countries to
(39:42):
coordinate a global response. The UK's National Crime Agency took
the lead, working closely with the FBI and other international
partners to gather intelligence and plan a coordinated takedown of
the network. This collaboration was essential, as the Internet's borderless
nature meant that no single country could tackle the problem alone.
(40:04):
One of the most significant challenges detectives faced in investigating
the Wonderland Club was the group's use of encryption and
other methods to conceal their activities. Members communicated almost entirely
through what are known as anonymous remailers, which strip identifying
information from emails and use encryption to protect the content
(40:24):
of messages and files. Additionally, the club's decentralized structure meant
that there was no single server or hub that could
be easily targeted. Instead, members shared material directly with one
another through peer to peer networks. To overcome such obstacles,
law enforcements employed a combination of traditional investigative techniques along
(40:47):
with cutting edge cyber forensics, undercover officers began infiltrating the
club by posing as potential members. Then, once they gained
access to the group's communications, they were able to begin
gathering evidence on individual crimes. But this was a delicate
and dangerous process, as any potential misstep could alert the
(41:08):
club's members to the investigation and cause them to scatter
into the darkest depths of the Internet. Another challenge was
the sheer volume of material officers had to sift through.
The Wonderland Club's library was estimated to contain over a
quarter of a million images and almost eighteen hundred videos
of child abuse stored on computers, discs, and other media.
(41:32):
Analysing this material in order to identify victims and perpetrators
required significant resources and expertise. It also forced agencies to
develop new tools and techniques to handle the scale of
forensic data, including cutting edge software programs that categorised and
matched images to known victims. Yet, while it would undoubtedly
(41:54):
be a force for good, the investigation also raised important
legal and ethical questions. For example, in order to gather evidence,
undercover officers had to engage with the club's members and,
in some instances view or even share exploitation material. This
raise concerns about the potential for law enforcement to inadvertently
(42:16):
contribute to the exploitation of children, even if it was
in the pursuit of justice. To address this, strict protocols
were put in place to ensure that any actions taken
by undercover officers were carefully controlled and that the focus
remained on identifying and rescuing victims. Yet the issue is
still reminiscent of a Friedrich Nietzsche quote from his work
(42:38):
Beyond Good and Evil, He who fights with monsters might
take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if
you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes
also into you. After two years of solid investigation, Operation
Cathedral culminated in a series of coordinated raids, which took
(43:00):
place on September second of nineteen ninety eight. Law enforcement
agencies in thirteen countries, including the UK, the U S, Australia,
Germany and Italy executed simultaneous search warrants, then swiftly arrested
suspects to prevent the club's members from warning one another.
In total, over a hundred individuals were arrested and a
(43:22):
vast amount of evidence was seized, including computers, hard drives,
and other digital storage devices. One of the most high
profile arrests was that of Gary Salt, a British Man
who was found to be a key member of the club.
Salt's home contained a large collection of exploitation material, and
he was later sentenced to twelve years in prison for
(43:43):
his despicable contributions. While over in the United States, the
FBI arrested a man from California who was found to
have over one hundred thousand images on his computer. Thankfully,
the raids led to the identification of several childs victims,
including a ten year old American girl who was rescued
after images of her abuse were found in the possession
(44:06):
of a club member. This underscored the real world impact
of the operation, as it not only dismantled the network,
but also saved children from ongoing exploitation. Despite the operation
being a complete success, the legal outcomes of Operation Cathedral
varied wildly depending on the jurisdiction. For example, in the UK,
(44:28):
several members of the Wonderland Club were convicted and received
significant prison sentences, but while the likes of Gary Salt
were sentenced to twelve years another member, David Hines, received
a sentence of just thirty months in prison. In the
United States, sentences were much more severe, with some individuals
receiving up to twenty years in prison for even the
(44:50):
most minor of involvements. But not all arrests led to convictions,
and in some cases insufficient evidence or legal technicalities resulted
in charge being dropped. There is, however, a silver lining
to that dark dark cloud, in that it exposes gaps
in legal frameworks, especially in countries where laws against child
(45:11):
exploitation are either outdated or insufficient to address the scale
and nature of the crimes. Naturally, this has led to
calls for stronger legislation and better international cooperation to combat
online child exploitation and brick by brick gaps in the
defenses are being filled. Operation Cathedral also had a profound
(45:34):
impact on law enforcement practices. It served as a model
for future efforts such as Operation Avalanche in two thousand
one in Operation Or in two thousand two, both of
which targeted similar networks. In response to the operation, several
countries introduced new initiatives aimed at improving online safety, including
(45:56):
public awareness campaigns and the development of software to block
access to harmful content. The operation also raised public awareness
about the dangers of the Internet, particularly for children, and
highlighted the need for education and resources to protect them
from online predators. By dismantling the Wonderland Club, law enforcement
(46:17):
agencies not only brought perpetrators to justice, but also rescued
victims and prevented further harm. The operation's legacy lives on
in the continued efforts to combat child exploitation online, serving
as a reminder about the progress that has been made
and the challenges that lie ahead. As the Internet continues
(46:38):
to evolve, so too must the strategies use to protect
the most vulnerable. But with determination, cooperation, and innovation, even
the most secretive and sophisticated criminal networks can be brought
to justice. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification
(47:00):
bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release
new videos every Monday and Thursday at nine p m.
Eastern Time, and there are super fun live streams on
Sundays and Wednesday nights. If you get a story, be
sure to submit them over at my email at Let's
Read Submissions at gmail dot com and maybe even hear
your story featured on the next video, and if you
(47:21):
want to support me even more, grab early access to
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click that big join button to hear about the extra
perks from members of the channel, and check out the
Let's Read podcast where you can hear all of these
stories and big compilations located anyway listen to podcasts all
links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends, and
(47:43):
remember to always work your front glutes.
Have you ever heard about that guy threw away a
laptop which had the key to a bitcoin wallad on it.
Some British dude called James Howells threw an old laptop
into the trash, then didn't realize the key was on
its hard drive till it was all the way down
at the city dump when he accidentally tossed it out.
The bitcoin was worth around eight million bucks, and by
(00:33):
twenty seventeen it was worth a hundred million, and now
in twenty twenty five, it's worth almost a quarter of
a billion dollars And that's right billion with a B.
And that guy's offered a huge reward, paid for his
own private forensics team. He's even tried suing the city
council members that he thinks stole it. But it doesn't
(00:55):
look like he's ever going to find that laptop, which
basically means the dude's got to live with the fact
that he lost almost a billion dollars into the trash.
It's a cruel world, right, and it doesn't get much
crueler than that. But when I first read about it,
all I remember thinking was, holy crap, dude, I could
get rich from that crypto stuff and This was his
(01:16):
back around spring of twenty twenty one, when I first
started looking into cryptocurrencies and reading about the markets, I
met some really cool people. And then in May of
twenty twenty one, one of my crypto buddies hit me
up with a tip that he thought I might find helpful.
A few months prior before we started talking, he'd spotted
a cryptocurrency named Luna that had jumped from fifty cents
(01:39):
per token to six bucks per token. Such a large
spike was obviously of interest to him, so he started
reading up on Luna to see what the deal was,
and what he read amazed him. It turned out that
Luna was just a reserve asset for something called Terra USD,
an algorithmic stable coin designed to retain a one to
(02:00):
one peg with the US dollar. I guess a lot
of people will appreciate me translating that into English, so
here you go. Ta USD was backed by a ton
of investors who all poured millions of dollars into the
company who created it, and that's kind of why it
was called a stable coin. With all that money behind it,
it couldn't fail, so it remained stable in price. Luna
(02:22):
on the other hand, was an asset that could fluctuate
in price per token, but since it was tied to
tara USD, it could never fluctuate too severely and was
almost guaranteed to rise in value over time. My buddy
told me that he'd waited for a slight dip to
buy in, and he did so at five bucks per token,
but just over a month later, that same five dollar
(02:44):
token was worth over four times as much at twenty
dollars and seventy one cents. The currency had then remained
somewhat stable for a while before suffering a minor crash,
dropping down to around five bucks again in May, and
that as when my buddy texted me saying it was
the perfect time to buy in. He told me he
(03:05):
was ninety nine percent sure that despite the brief wobble,
Luna was about to bounce back in a big way.
There was already talk of interest returning, no doubt because
of its ties to tara u s D, and my
buddy was so confident he bought a bunch more tokens
before he decided to text me. That was the thing
that really swayed me, and I remember joking with him saying, well,
(03:27):
if we go down, we go down together. And then,
since I had a grand total of four hundred and
ninety dollars saved, I bought a hundred Luna tokens at
four dollars and eighty one cents apiece. When I told her,
the girl that I was seeing at the time thought
I was nuts, and so did an off line friend
of mine named Chris. And when I say off line friend,
(03:48):
I mean Chris was both a friend in real life
that I knew from high school and some one who
didn't pay much attention to stuff online. He had an
Instagram account and had played a little Madden with random
dowushbags from time to time, but apart from that, he
was just a regular dude, more comfortable with the insides
of a car than a computer. He thought I was
(04:08):
out of my mind for spending almost five hundred dollars
on invisible coins, but he wasn't saying that come August time,
when Luna's value rose from ten to twenty than thirty
bucks per token, and I remember showing him my wallet
and he said, so, can you just cash out whenever
you want? And I explained that no, I had to
(04:29):
find a buyer first, but that was easy when a
token's value was on the up and up. Then, since
the app I was using did that for me, there
was a chance that I could make twenty nine hundred
dollars profit within less than an hour. And that's when
he went from thinking was all just a scam to
realizing there really was something that this whole crypto thing
(04:50):
had going on. He sat on my couch asked me
a bunch of questions about it, and I answered everything
as best I could give him my own limited experience.
I was He's honest, too, the same kind of honest
people had been with me, and told him it was
all effectively just gambling, but that in Luna, myself and
a whole bunch of other people had found something with
(05:11):
potential for long term stability. It was still a gamble,
but it was just about the safest bed out there
for the time being and for the remainder of twenty
twenty one. Chris would always ask about my crypto wallet
every time we hung out, and it was always good news.
Every time he was over, he'd see how much Luna
had risen in value, and he'd always make some offhand
(05:33):
comment about giving me a bunch of money so I
could turn him a quick profit. I didn't think that
was such a hot idea, and had always given him
the advice that I got watch the markets for a while,
get to know the system, and then be headstrong and
patient enough to make the right buys at the right time.
To really profit, you had to wait for a crash,
(05:54):
and by the holidays of twenty twenty one, when Luna
had risen from thirty to sixty to ninety three dollars
in change, it didn't look like one was coming anytime soon.
I told him i'd hit him up the moment one happened.
After a very brief drop which I didn't quite think
was the right time, Luna dipped all the way down
to around forty five bucks a token at the end
(06:16):
of January twenty twenty two. I gave him a call
and told him it was the perfect time to buy
himself in, and then, after talking him through the process
of obtaining a crypto wallet, I asked him how many
coins he wanted to buy. I don't really know what
I was expecting to hear. Maybe a figure similar to
my own, a nice round number like one hundred or fifty.
(06:37):
Given how much more expensive it was by then, and
so when Chris told me he wanted not one hundred,
but three hundred tokens, I was a little taken. Aback.
I thought I was being kind of wild fronting four
thousand bucks. Then there was Chris making an investment of
almost fourteen thousand dollars, and he was not a rich guy.
(06:59):
When I asked if he was sure, he seemed confident
as can be, and I guess he based that confidence
on what I told him. Every time Luna took a dip,
it came back stronger than ever. So just over a
month later, when it had risen from less than fifty
to over one hundred bucks a token, we both figured
he'd made the right choice. Chris's investment was now worth
(07:22):
almost thirty thousand dollars. He'd doubled his money, and as
he can imagine, he was very, very happy with me.
By the start of April twenty twenty two, Luna was
almost one hundred and twenty dollars per token, and my
buddy Chris was not only singing my praises every chance
he got, but seemed convinced that we were going to
be millionaires by the end of the year. I remember
(07:45):
one time. We were drinking in a bar after a
Red Sox game, and he started getting kind of emotional,
saying something like, Dude, I really appreciate what you've done
for me. This could change my whole life. I told
him I doubted that we'd beat that rich come the
end of the year, and that I was planning on
selling my tokens as soon as they had one hundred
and fifty dollars. I'd make an insane profit that way,
(08:08):
and if Chris did the same thing, he'd more than
triple his money. And then with a little patience, we
could wait for another stable coin to be minted, which
wouldn't be long in light of Luna's success, and then
start the process all over again. That was my theory anyway,
but Chris took it as gospel. I said what I
(08:29):
said to try and bring him back down to earth,
and maybe it was the bud light talking, but he says,
told you, dude, it might not be this year, but
we're going to get rich off the back of this thing,
and I got you to thank for it. In the moment,
I felt really proud of myself. Honestly, it was probably
going to make a ton of money off the back
of my Luna purchase, but I had also helped a
(08:51):
friend out too, not in a life changing way by
any means, but over time, if we played our cards right,
the passive income would probably prove the life changing. And
that was the start of April, and by the end
of the year, if the market trends persisted, Luna was
estimated to rise to somewhere around two hundred bucks a token.
(09:12):
But as the saying goes, man proposes and God disposes.
Just a few days after our drunken heart to heart
in that sports bar, when I felt on top of
the world for helping make Chris a little money, Luna
took a sharp dip, and then over the next two
weeks or so, it went from around one hundred and
twenty bucks per token to about seventy five bucks per token.
(09:36):
Chris called me for reassurance, and I told him what
I always did. Every dip was followed by a new peak.
It had been that way since Luna was created, and
all we had to do was wait a few days
for the value to creep back up. It didn't even
take twenty four hours. The next day Luna had shot
up from the floor price of seventy five dollars per
token to about a nicer ninety dollars per token, and
(10:00):
then after a little more fluctuation, it stabilized at around
ninety five dollars, with every expectation of increasing further in
value through May of twenty twenty two. Now May starts,
and just as predicted, Luna's prices rose again, And then
somehow I ended up coming down with this really terrible
case of something and was basically bedbound for a couple
(10:21):
of days, with the exception of trips to the bathroom
to puke or poop. And I remember checking my portfolio
at one point and seeing Luna had dipped to just
under seventy bucks per token, but I wasn't worried, and
I had every faith that it had to do its
usual thing of skyrocketing to a new high after a
period of fluctuation. A lot of stuff after that is
(10:43):
kind of hazy, and I remember passing out for at
least thirteen hours or so once the worst of the
sickness was out of me. But then when I woke
up at around three thirty a m. On May eleventh,
twenty twenty two, a date that will forever be burned
into my brain. I realized my entire way world had
been turned completely upside down. After tracking Luna's value, I
(11:06):
realized that maybe only an hour after I passed out,
around thirteen hours before, it had dropped from just below
seventy dollars to thirty three dollars per token. A couple
of hours later, it sank to sixteen dollars per token,
and then I literally watched it in real time as
it dropped a fifteen, then fourteen, then unlucky thirteen, right
(11:29):
before my very eyes. I never thought that I was
the fainting type. I had been in a bad accident
as a teenager and seen the meat on the inside
of my leg when the broken bone tore its way
through with the skin. I didn't feel light headed, I
didn't pass out. I just thought, uh oh, I need
an adult. But when I looked at my phone that morning,
(11:49):
I saw Luna's value falling and falling and falling, and
I had to sit back down on my bed to
keep from falling down. Actually, my head was spinning, my
chest felt tight, and I had to keep taking super
deep breaths to keep myself from I don't know, either
puking or passing out or descending into some kind of
mannic freak out. I started checking forums, message boards, and
(12:13):
group chats. I was in for any clue as to
what had happened. I hoped to god i'd read something reassuring,
something about Luna being set to bounce back after suffering
a glitch or miscalculation in the blockchain or whatever. But
I saw the opposite. Luna had crashed and it wasn't
coming back. But how the hell had such a stable
(12:33):
asset suddenly crashed and burned like that? Okay, so remember
how I told you about Luna being tied to that
terra USD and how that was tied to the US
dollar to keep everything nice and stable. Well that turned
out to be a lie. The dudes who created it
told everyone who was supposed to maintain a one to
(12:53):
one peg with the US dollar, But that was nothing
but a ruse to lure investors into what was ultimately
a kind of unconventional ponsy scheme. In other words, it
was a scam, a very well disguised one that fooled
a lot of people, and I fell for it too.
But then in doing so, I hadn't just lost four
(13:13):
hundred bucks of my own money. Chris had lost tens
of thousands of dollars and he was pissed. When I
woke up from my super sleep. One of the things
that had me suspecting something was wrong was the fact
that I had like fifty miss calls from Chris, along
with almost two dozen text messages too. I guess he
(13:36):
got an alert that Luna was crashing and then went
into full blown panic mode while I was passed out.
His text progressed from stuff like, Bro, are you seeing this?
And Dude, this cannot be happening right now to stuff
like pick up the effing phone, bro, and are you
ducking me right now? Pick up the phone. I remember
(13:57):
tapping the little call symbol very frantic, and then getting
nothing but rings until I hit voicemail. I told Chris
to call me back as soon as he was awake,
because even though his last call had come almost forty
minutes prior, I figured that he had to sleep since
four a m. Was fast approaching at that point. But
part of me doubted that he was asleep, mainly because
(14:17):
there was no way that I'd be sleeping if I
was in his position. And I was right because maybe
only fifteen to twenty minutes later, someone started buzzing my
apartment from downstairs. I have one of those little intercoms,
the kind with a little screen so you can see
and talk to the person buzzing you, and I had
a pretty good idea of who it was before I
(14:38):
saw it was Chris, but he didn't look angry. He
just looked almost deflated. I pressed the intercom button and
told him to come on up, and then I walked
back into my kitchen to turn on my coffee machine
and let it warm up. Because I figured that we
had a long and painful heart to heart ahead of us.
(14:59):
I grabbed two cups from the cabinet and then heard
Chris's footsteps in the hallway outside. I started walking to
the door and then said something to him like hey man,
I'll open up, and he responded by slamming what sounded
like a fist into the door before growling open the
f up. He sounded completely sauced, like drunk as a
(15:22):
goddamn skunk. So instead of just opening the door, I
took a look through the peep hole and then saw
Chris literally swaying back and forth on the other side
of the door. It wasn't like a dramatic swaying. It
was very subtle. But that's how drunk he had gotten himself,
so drunk he could barely stand. I remember how my
hands reached for the latch and door handle before suddenly
(15:45):
I paused. I had this flash of an ultra drunk
Chris smashing up my apartment like a bowl in a
china shop after some boozed up argument ascend it into violence.
I thought maybe I was just overthinking it, but no.
Sooner had that thought popped into my head, Chris slammed
his fist into the door again with a loud yell, saying,
(16:07):
open the effing door. We need to talk. And that
feeling came back fast, the one that made me think
letting him inside wasn't such a good idea, And so
I suggested he'd go back home and just sleep it
off so we can talk about it over the phone
come the morning. I even suggested I'd order him an
uber on my dime by way of an apology for
(16:27):
not picking up his calls. And then I was half
way into explaining how sick I'd been when something slammed
into the door so hard it made me jump back.
I figured he was trying to kick my door in
because I heard bam, then bam, and then bam, one
each harder than the last. I started yelling at Chris
(16:47):
to stop, and he gave the door a few more
kicks before he stopped. But then he launched into some sloppy,
drunk rant about how he was going to kill me
when he'd finish kicking my door down. I tried explaining
what happened with Luna, as in why it had crashed
and all that, but it was no good. He was
yelling too loud to hear me, and even if he wasn't,
(17:09):
I don't think he was lucid enough to even understand.
He kept saying open the door. James opened the door
in a way that honestly sounded like he was losing
his mind, and that alone scared the crap out of me.
But I also was faced with the very real possibility
of having to violently defend myself against one of my
best friends. And that's a feeling that I wouldn't wish
(17:30):
on my worst enemy, the kind that makes tears well
up in my eyes just thinking about it now, even
all these years later, And in the moment, I knew
I should call the cops, but I couldn't. I couldn't
do that to him. Part of me figured that I
could just talk him down, but the other part knew
I couldn't. I remember thinking that maybe just seeing me
(17:52):
holding a knife might shock some sense into him, but
I couldn't bring myself to go get one either. I
just kept saying, please, man, don't do this, this isn't you.
But Chris didn't stop, not until I heard some one
else out in the corridor yelling at him to stop.
I recognized that voice of my neighbor from down the hallway,
(18:13):
but I also recognized the fear and surprise in Chris's voice.
When I heard him angrily say back, okay, okay, I'll stop.
I knew my neighbor must have been pointing a gun
at him or something, because when I looked through the
peep hole, Chris literally had his hands in the air
as he backed away from the door. And then I
heard my neighbor yell at him to get out of
there before he gets himself shot. Chris kind of came
(18:36):
to his senses, I suppose, in that moment, and I
thank god that he didn't bring his own gun, and
I know he owns one, so we all quite literally
dodged a bullet with that one. And then maybe ten
or twenty seconds after my neighbor came to the rescue,
Chris staggered out of my apartment building and presumably went
to his car. I thanked my neighbor a whole bunch,
(18:57):
and he'd already called the cops. Some one arrived not
long after to ask what had happened, and while I
told him everything start to finish, I also said that
I didn't want to press charges against Chris because he
wasn't in his right mind. I remember telling the cop
about all the crypto we lost, and when I told
him the amount, he said, how much did you guys lose?
(19:19):
He couldn't believe it. He didn't even know what crypto
was really. Before he left, he advised me to keep
my distance from Chris for a couple of days. A
phone call might be an idea, as he might be
happy to hear that I wasn't pressing charges, but I
wasn't to do something stupid like show up on his doorstep,
otherwise it might be me getting a gun pointed in
(19:40):
my face. I tried calling, but he didn't answer. I
tried texting, but he didn't reply. I tried contacting Chris
on Instagram and he blocked me, and then I tried
asking his girlfriend and mutual friends to pass on messages,
but none came back. I figured he'd stay mad for
a few days, maybe a week or two tops, because
(20:00):
sooner or later he had to figure out that it
wasn't my fault. But as much as it breaks my
heart to say it, that didn't happen. And the way
Chris saw it, I was either dumb enough to have
lost him his money, or I was in on the
scam and I'd stolen it somehow, and either way, he
was done with me. I didn't know it at the time,
(20:21):
but that night, when he screamed at me from behind
a locked door, that was the last time we'd ever talk,
and there marked the end of my crypto journey. I
didn't throw away a laptop with almost a billion dollars,
but I threw away a friendship, and those are worth
more than money could ever buy. Born on September twentieth
(20:53):
of nineteen sixty one in Baltimore, Maryland, Sharon Rena Lopatka
was the first of four daughters born to mister and
Missus Abraham J. Denberg. As a young lady, she was
a canter at the Beth to Philo Synagogue in nearby Pikesville,
and was a part of her high school's sports teams
and choir club. Peers described her as being as normal
(21:15):
as you can get, and then sometime following her graduation
in nineteen seventy nine, she began dating a construction worker
named Victor Lapatka. Sharon's Orthodox parents didn't entirely approve of
the relationship, but that didn't deter her in the slightest.
She moved into his Hampstead tract house in nineteen ninety
(21:35):
and they married the following year. In nineteen ninety five,
Sharon and Victor were living in Elicate City, and to
bring in a little extra cash each month, Sharon began
an online advertising business based out of their home. Her
first venture, House of Dion, sold mail order home to
Corps guides for seven dollars apiece an advertisement on the website.
(21:57):
Read Home decorating secrets seen in the Push homes from
the New England States to the Hollywood Homes can now
be yours. Never published before. Quick easy ways to decorate
your home Sharon proved such an effective advertiser that she
was able to begin selling her copywriting skills for fifty
dollars per copy, and did so under the trading name
(22:18):
Classified Concepts. Victor, who was initially skeptical of a nascent
internet's money making potential, was as proud as he was
surprised by his wife's success. He encouraged her to continue
her enterprising ways, which resulted in Sharon's spending more and
more time on the Internet. In addition to her copywriting
(22:39):
and home decorps guide businesses, Sharon began managing the sales
department for several websites offering psychic readings to its users.
She also negotiated herself a percentage of sales from other services,
some with premium rate telephone numbers, by advertising them on
her websites. Within just a few short months, Sharon had
(22:59):
trained transformed their home computer into a home enterprise, and
it's clear she recognized the Internet's near limitless capacity for commerce. Yet, unfortunately,
in her quest to provide for her family, Sharon began
venturing into the CD underbelly of the Let's Read YouTube channel. Yet, unfortunately,
(23:21):
in her quest to provide for her family, Sharon began
venturing into the CD underbelly of the World Wide Web.
Even in the Internet's earliest years, the adult entertainment industry
fielded a strong presence, having recognized the potential for widespread
distribution and subscription based payment systems. Sharon was no different
(23:43):
and immediately saw what a huge demand there was for
an online adult entertainment. With her strengths lying in marketing,
Sharon offered her services to a number of distributors and
once again found a huge demand for her lucrative skill set.
Yet it wasn't long before Sharon and observed another pattern
of online behavior. The more extreme the adult entertainment, the
(24:06):
more money there was to be made. Cheron noticed that
those interested in the more extreme varieties, which depicted subjects
being restrained, hypnotized, or chloroformed, would pay double or sometimes
triple what consumers of milder varieties were willing to hand over,
and to her it was a no brainer. She could
(24:27):
receive up to three times her regular rate of pay
for the same amount of work, and so under the
pseudonym of Nancy Carlson, she once again raised her salary ceiling,
much to the delight of her husband as Sharon began
tailoring her online expertise to the more perverse and depraved,
She began selling her under garments in its, here that
(24:49):
her interests appeared to shift from professional to personal. She
transformed the mere pseudonym of Nancy Carlson into a full
blown online persona, and while visiting obscene chat rooms, would
pretend to be a three hundred pound dominatrix who starred
in several adult films. It believed Charon would offer a
(25:11):
certain kind of online chat session in exchange for cash,
which once again contributed to her ever rising revenue. But
somewhere along the way, her behavior took a dark turn.
She began posting advertisements which claimed her ultimate fantasy was
to be kidnapped, tortured, and killed by a massed stranger,
(25:32):
and did so with such authenticity that it generated a
huge amount of activity. Some offered to fulfill her fantasies,
while others, such as a user named Taneth, felt Sharon
was going too far. Tanneth, who claimed to be some
kind of online activist, appeared concerned for Sharon's mental health
and gently warned her of the potential consequences, but Charon
(25:54):
did not explain that her posts were eccentric entrepreneurialism, nor
did she claim that they were just unrealistic fantasies. Instead,
she replied, I want the real thing. I did not
ask for you to preach to me. It was a
Sunday morning on October thirteenth of nineteen ninety six when
Sharon told her husband she was driving over to Georgia
(26:17):
to meet some old friends. Her husband wished her a
safe trip, then when about his day as normal, but
Sharon was not headed to Georgia. Instead, she drove for
forty five minutes towards Baltimore's Pennsylvania station, then arrived in Charlotte,
North Carolina, at around eight forty five p m. Around
(26:37):
the same time she arrived in Charlotte, Sharon's husband noticed
a hand written note she left lying on the kitchen table.
It's not clear exactly what was written, but not only
did Sharon request that her husband refrain from searching for her,
but she wrote, if my body is never retrieved, don't worry.
Know that I'm at peace. Victor rushed to inform police
(27:00):
that his wife was missing and potentially in danger, but
it was already too late. Sharon had already met with
the man she'd made an unholy arrangement with, Robert Glass.
For nearly sixteen years, Robert Frederick Glass lived an unremarkable
life as a computer analyst working for the government of
Cataba County. He wed a woman named Sherry, with whom
(27:24):
he'd shared three children, and their marriage lasted fourteen happy
years until May of nineteen ninety six, when Sherry locked
onto her husband's computer. There in Robert's email account, Sherry
found several emails she later described as raw, violent, and
disturbing under the user names toy Man in Slow Hand.
(27:47):
Robert had secretly been visiting illicit chat rooms for years,
but he wasn't simply swapping pillow talk with like minded strangers.
He seemed to delight in the prospect of inflicting suffering
on the innoc and he did so in a way
that suggested it was far more than just a mere fantasy.
Sherry promptly filed for divorce, and, given the nature of
(28:10):
his indiscretion, Robert Glass lost access to his children. This
proved understandably devastating for Robert, but instead of pulling himself
away from such perversions and living a cleaner existence, he
poured himself into his depravities as a coping mechanism. Over
the months that followed, Robert sank deeper and deeper into
(28:32):
debauchery and grew steadily more fixated on the thrill of inflicting, suffering,
and taking lives. Then, eventually, in August of nineteen ninety six,
Robert Glass found one of Sharon's posts and the two
began an unhealthy and obsessive on line affair. They exchanged
nine hundred pages worth of e mails in just over
(28:53):
a month before eventually coming to a night merrish agreement
they would meet up. Then, after a few final days
of depravity, Robert would end Sharon's life. During the missing
person's investigation that followed her husband's report, detectives gained access
to Sharon's computer, and it's here they discovered the exact
(29:16):
nature of her communications with Robert Glass. Maryland detectives swiftly
contacted their North Carolina counterparts, who arranged for glasses home
to be put under surveillance. Officers then spent twenty four
hours staking out his house, but there were no sightings
of Sharon Lapatka, and then finally, on October twenty fifth,
(29:38):
a judge issued a search warrant for the home, and
police swooped in. Inside the house, officers discovered several of
Sharon's belongings in addition to bondage equipment and drug paraphernalia.
They also uncovered a three fifty seven magnum handgun along
with several computer discs which appeared to contain child exploitation material.
(30:00):
But it wasn't until officers searched the homes back yard
that they made the most chilling discovery of them. All.
Buried under a mound of soil around seventy five feet
from the house, officers unearthed body parts belonging to Sharon Lapotka.
Glass was at work when he was arrested, and then
(30:21):
after being charged with first degree murder, he was held
without bond at the Caldwell County Jail. He pleaded guilty
to voluntary manslaughter and exploitation charges on January twenty seventh
of the year two thousand and was sentenced to between
three and six years in the Avery Mitchell Correctional Institution.
(30:41):
Glass was also sentenced to an additional twenty seven months
on federal charges of second degree minor exploitation, to be
served consecutively in an interview conducted during his imprisonment, Glass
admitted to fulfilling Sharon's torture fantasy, but was quick to
add that her death was an accident. I don't know
(31:02):
how much I pulled the rope, he said, but I
never wanted to kill her. John Butts, the chief State
Medical Examiner of North Carolina, agreed with glasses claim that
the strangling was accidental. Police did not. They described the
death as intentional, and unfortunately for Glass, they had nine
hundred pages of written evidence to support their claim that
(31:25):
Sharon's murder was both intentional and premeditated. The Lopatka case
was reportedly the first in which a murder suspect was
put in custody by a police department based purely on
e mail evidence. Then, in its aftermath, most of the
media coverage emphasized the dangerous consequences of meeting strangers from
(31:46):
the Internet. Several people requested that a type of censorship
be created to better protect humans from killings like that
of Lapatka's. Scott Bradner, a consultant with Harvard University's Office
of Information Technology, vehemently disagreed, blaming the medium for the
difficulty of some people who exist in society is wrong,
(32:07):
he said. It's the Luddites of the world who claim
new technology is inherently evil. Sharon's case might be symbolic
of the risks associated with spending too much time online,
but her malady is not a new one. One evening
in September of the year seventeen ninety one, a Czech
composer living in London named Frantishek Kotswara decided to visit
(32:31):
a lady of the night. A few hours later, once
the pair had eaten dinner, Kotswara paid Susannah Hill two
shillings before requesting she castrate him. Hill refused, but agreed
to strangle Kotswara during intimacy, but then by the time
they were finished, he was dead, one of the first
(32:52):
recorded cases of what we might call carnal asphyxiation. Suzanna
Hill was charged with Frantishek kotswears murder, but following her
trial at the Old Bailey on September sixteenth, the jury
accepted her testimony and she was acquitted on all charges.
Robert Glass, on the other hand, received no such mercy.
(33:13):
He was incarcerated at the Avery Mitchell Correctional Institution in
North Carolina, then spent the next two years as an
exemplary prisoner who appeared racked with regret. The guilt seemed
to have weighed heavily on Glass's heart, too, because on
February twentieth of two thousand and two, just two weeks
before he was set to be released, he suffered a
(33:34):
massive myocardiol infarction. Glass was rushed to the Spruce Pine
Community Hospital, but was later pronounced dead at exactly one
thirty a m. The following morning. His death marked the
end of a terrifying chapter in the history of digital
criminality and illustrates what can happen when dark, violent fantasies
(33:54):
collide with a harsh light of reality. In the pre
dawn hours of a cool September morning back in nineteen
ninety eight, the sleepy English town of Charbury in Oxfordshire
was stirred by the low hum of police fans as
(34:16):
they converged from a small two story home on Crobory
of Villas. The detached house of faded Victorian property with
peeling paint in a small front yard was their target's
last known address. Intelligence suggested he lived alone and was
deeply paranoid, often keeping erratic hours and using multiple exits
and entrances. On the off chance he was being tailed,
(34:39):
a dog unit stood ready in case he attempted to
flee via the back garden, through which he had access
to the dense woodlands which surrounded the town. Acting on
a tip from the U. S. Federal Bureau of Investigation,
the dawn raid was timed for five a m sharp,
an hour when only the farmers working surrounding fields would
have stirred from their slumber. Oxfordshire Police had managed to
(35:02):
piece together a vast web of clues and evidence, including
private e mails and computer metadata, All had pointed back
to the terraced house on Croboro Villas, while suggesting its
resident was part of a colossal global network of child
abusing cyber criminals. At four fifty five a m. A
(35:22):
team of twelve tactically clad officers from Oxfordshire Police assembled
outside the house. One stepped forward, his fist hammering on
the door before yelt. Police opened the door. Now. While
no response came, a battering ram splintered the front door's
lock and the officers flooded inside. The ground floor was
(35:42):
a mess of stacked newspapers and unwashed dishes, with the
smell of old cigarettes hanging in the air. Torchbeams swept
the darkened rooms as officers moved methodically clearing the living
room and kitchen. Upstairs, they found twenty eight year old
Ian Baldock in a back bedroom, startled awake and scrambling
(36:02):
to pull on a jacket. Hands up, don't move, an
officer barked. Baldoc froze, his face, pale in the flashlight's glare.
He knew the game was up and that escape was impossible.
By six thirty a m. As first light crept over
the village, Baldock was being loaded into a police fan.
(36:23):
Drawn by the commotion, neighbors peered from windows, whispering about
the man they'd known as a quiet, shifty figure who
was rarely seen in local pubs such as Ye Old
Three Horseshoes. The raid disrupted the morning calm, with police
tape fluttering across the property an officers standing ground as
forensic teams arrived to carry away Baldock's computer. The seizure
(36:47):
and arrest resulted from months of solid work, with Baldock
being the first domino in a chain that would eventually
take down one of the world's largest child exploitation networks.
This is the story of Operation Cathedral, launched in nineteen
ninety eight. The advent of Operation Cathedral stands as a
(37:08):
pivotal moment in the fight against child exploitation on the Internet.
It specifically targeted the Wonderland Club, a secretive international child
exploitation ring that operated entirely online. The club's name, taken
from the Lewis Carroll story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, massed
a horrifying reality. They constituted a network of individuals who produced, shared,
(37:32):
and traded in child exploitation material on an unprecedented scale.
The operation, which involved law enforcement agencies from multiple countries,
not only dismantled the club, but also exposed the complexities
of combating cybercrime at a time when the Internet was
still relatively new. The investigation that led to Operation Cathedral
(37:53):
began in the United States in nineteen ninety six, when
the FBI uncovered evidence of a large scale child out
exploitation material network during an unrelated investigation into domestic cybercrime.
This initial discovery became part of a broader FBI operation
known as Innocent images, which aimed to combat the growing
(38:14):
problem of child exploitation on the Internet. As the operation progressed,
the FBI uncovered a group of individuals who were using
the Internet to share material. Yet after just a short
period of surveillance, it became clear that they were part
of a much larger international network, the Wonderland Club. The
(38:34):
Wonderland Club was not some loosely affiliated group of perverts,
but rather a rigorously structured hierarchy that enforced strict membership rules.
In order to join, prospective members not only had to
provide the organization with at least ten thousand images of
child exploitation, but they had to ensure these images had
not already been circulated within the group. This requirement made
(38:58):
sure that the club's life library of exploitation material grew
continuously and exponentially, making it one of the largest repositories
of such material in human history. The club operated online
using encrypted communication channels, which made it difficult for law
enforcement to track the identities of its members. They also
(39:20):
instituted a strict hierarchical structure, including ranks based on the
quantity and quality of the material contributed, with higher ranking
members having access to more exclusive content. It was later
revealed that the club had members in at least fourteen countries,
so given the international scope of the network, the FBI
reached out the law enforcement agencies in those countries to
(39:42):
coordinate a global response. The UK's National Crime Agency took
the lead, working closely with the FBI and other international
partners to gather intelligence and plan a coordinated takedown of
the network. This collaboration was essential, as the Internet's borderless
nature meant that no single country could tackle the problem alone.
(40:04):
One of the most significant challenges detectives faced in investigating
the Wonderland Club was the group's use of encryption and
other methods to conceal their activities. Members communicated almost entirely
through what are known as anonymous remailers, which strip identifying
information from emails and use encryption to protect the content
(40:24):
of messages and files. Additionally, the club's decentralized structure meant
that there was no single server or hub that could
be easily targeted. Instead, members shared material directly with one
another through peer to peer networks. To overcome such obstacles,
law enforcements employed a combination of traditional investigative techniques along
(40:47):
with cutting edge cyber forensics, undercover officers began infiltrating the
club by posing as potential members. Then, once they gained
access to the group's communications, they were able to begin
gathering evidence on individual crimes. But this was a delicate
and dangerous process, as any potential misstep could alert the
(41:08):
club's members to the investigation and cause them to scatter
into the darkest depths of the Internet. Another challenge was
the sheer volume of material officers had to sift through.
The Wonderland Club's library was estimated to contain over a
quarter of a million images and almost eighteen hundred videos
of child abuse stored on computers, discs, and other media.
(41:32):
Analysing this material in order to identify victims and perpetrators
required significant resources and expertise. It also forced agencies to
develop new tools and techniques to handle the scale of
forensic data, including cutting edge software programs that categorised and
matched images to known victims. Yet, while it would undoubtedly
(41:54):
be a force for good, the investigation also raised important
legal and ethical questions. For example, in order to gather evidence,
undercover officers had to engage with the club's members and,
in some instances view or even share exploitation material. This
raise concerns about the potential for law enforcement to inadvertently
(42:16):
contribute to the exploitation of children, even if it was
in the pursuit of justice. To address this, strict protocols
were put in place to ensure that any actions taken
by undercover officers were carefully controlled and that the focus
remained on identifying and rescuing victims. Yet the issue is
still reminiscent of a Friedrich Nietzsche quote from his work
(42:38):
Beyond Good and Evil, He who fights with monsters might
take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if
you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes
also into you. After two years of solid investigation, Operation
Cathedral culminated in a series of coordinated raids, which took
(43:00):
place on September second of nineteen ninety eight. Law enforcement
agencies in thirteen countries, including the UK, the U S, Australia,
Germany and Italy executed simultaneous search warrants, then swiftly arrested
suspects to prevent the club's members from warning one another.
In total, over a hundred individuals were arrested and a
(43:22):
vast amount of evidence was seized, including computers, hard drives,
and other digital storage devices. One of the most high
profile arrests was that of Gary Salt, a British Man
who was found to be a key member of the club.
Salt's home contained a large collection of exploitation material, and
he was later sentenced to twelve years in prison for
(43:43):
his despicable contributions. While over in the United States, the
FBI arrested a man from California who was found to
have over one hundred thousand images on his computer. Thankfully,
the raids led to the identification of several childs victims,
including a ten year old American girl who was rescued
after images of her abuse were found in the possession
(44:06):
of a club member. This underscored the real world impact
of the operation, as it not only dismantled the network,
but also saved children from ongoing exploitation. Despite the operation
being a complete success, the legal outcomes of Operation Cathedral
varied wildly depending on the jurisdiction. For example, in the UK,
(44:28):
several members of the Wonderland Club were convicted and received
significant prison sentences, but while the likes of Gary Salt
were sentenced to twelve years another member, David Hines, received
a sentence of just thirty months in prison. In the
United States, sentences were much more severe, with some individuals
receiving up to twenty years in prison for even the
(44:50):
most minor of involvements. But not all arrests led to convictions,
and in some cases insufficient evidence or legal technicalities resulted
in charge being dropped. There is, however, a silver lining
to that dark dark cloud, in that it exposes gaps
in legal frameworks, especially in countries where laws against child
(45:11):
exploitation are either outdated or insufficient to address the scale
and nature of the crimes. Naturally, this has led to
calls for stronger legislation and better international cooperation to combat
online child exploitation and brick by brick gaps in the
defenses are being filled. Operation Cathedral also had a profound
(45:34):
impact on law enforcement practices. It served as a model
for future efforts such as Operation Avalanche in two thousand
one in Operation Or in two thousand two, both of
which targeted similar networks. In response to the operation, several
countries introduced new initiatives aimed at improving online safety, including
(45:56):
public awareness campaigns and the development of software to block
access to harmful content. The operation also raised public awareness
about the dangers of the Internet, particularly for children, and
highlighted the need for education and resources to protect them
from online predators. By dismantling the Wonderland Club, law enforcement
(46:17):
agencies not only brought perpetrators to justice, but also rescued
victims and prevented further harm. The operation's legacy lives on
in the continued efforts to combat child exploitation online, serving
as a reminder about the progress that has been made
and the challenges that lie ahead. As the Internet continues
(46:38):
to evolve, so too must the strategies use to protect
the most vulnerable. But with determination, cooperation, and innovation, even
the most secretive and sophisticated criminal networks can be brought
to justice. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Click that notification
(47:00):
bell to be alerted of all future narrations. I release
new videos every Monday and Thursday at nine p m.
Eastern Time, and there are super fun live streams on
Sundays and Wednesday nights. If you get a story, be
sure to submit them over at my email at Let's
Read Submissions at gmail dot com and maybe even hear
your story featured on the next video, and if you
(47:21):
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click that big join button to hear about the extra
perks from members of the channel, and check out the
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stories and big compilations located anyway listen to podcasts all
links in the description below. Thanks so much, friends, and
(47:43):
remember to always work your front glutes.
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