I Planned to Kill My Rapist: The Untold Story of David Holthouse

David Holthouse is an investigative journalist, writer, producer, and filmmaker, whose work centers mainly around uncovering the monsters walking amongst us. 

Connect with David: https://www.davidholthouse.com/ 

I Planned to Kill My Rapist: The Untold Story of David Holthouse  

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About the host:

Bert Martinez is a successful entrepreneur and best-selling author. Bert is fascinated by business, marketing, and entrepreneurship. One of Bert’s favorite hobbies is to transform the complicated into simple-to-understand lessons so you can apply them to your business and life. Bert is also obsessed with exploring the mindset of the high achievers so you can follow their secrets and strategies.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
All right, let's see.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
All right, you ready, yep, okay, let's see cut this
up three two, one. Welcome. I'm excited today David hold
House is joining me. And David Holt House is known
as a gonzo journalist and documentary filmmaker, and you got

(00:40):
to check him out. He's got just a massive uh
what do you call it? A catalog of different things
that he's done. Some are available on Amazon, some are
available on Netflix, Hulu, you name it. Just go to
David Holdhouse dot com. You can check out stuff there.
Thank you so much for joining.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Thanks for having me on, man, appreciate it. You bet?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
All right? So I got to ask you, uh, how
do you get started? Because you've done just incredible different things.
I think one of your documentary has to do has
to deal with a de a dea agent infiltrating the
actual the Mexican drug cartel. Then you have one about
lorraina bobb it. I mean, so, from one end to

(01:27):
the other, how did you get started?

Speaker 3 (01:29):
Well? Man, I mean it really it goes back to
high school. Some buddies of mine and I started an
underground newspaper in high school, and once I saw the
sort of power of journalism to influence people's thinking about
their situation in life. I was sold, and so you know,
I started, I started writing professionally, you know, even at

(01:50):
the university level. So I was I was a Gonzo
magazine journalist for twenty five years, and then you know,
I started making documentaries about about a decade ago and
have always been attracted to, you know, stories sort of
on the margins, and in particular, you know, criminal subcultures.
It's been my sort of bread and butter.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Gotcha, And what's interesting about America is America really is subcultures.
We are all about subcultures, whether it's let's say a
dark subcultural subculture, or even our own families. Every family
unit is a subculture, so you know it. To me,

(02:33):
it's very intriguing because you think you know something and
then there's that there's that superficial level. One of the
things I want to talk to you about is your
latest program with the Harry Krishnas. So you know, when
I think about Harry Christnas, you think about the guys
at the airport, you think about the Beatles, it's this
very superficial stuff and then you look at your documentary

(02:56):
and you're like, oh, my gosh, this is it's another
crime syndicit.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Right, yeah. I mean when I was first of that's
been the only project that I've done that I didn't
have a hand in conceiving of and developing the project
for The Jump. That series had already been sold to
Peacock when I was approached to direct it. But as
soon as they said the words Harry Krishna hit Man,
I was sold. I was like, I'm in because, like
you man, I mean, I remember when I was a

(03:21):
kid seeing the Harry Christiana is in the airports, you know,
like selling flowers and slicting donations, and I always associated
them with the nineteen sixties, you know, counterculture. Like you said,
the Beatles. George Harrison became a hardy Christiana. He converted
you know that song My Sweet Lord, that's you know,
that's about Yeah. But as I got into it, my

(03:42):
mind was kind of blown. I didn't realize like, they're
part of a spiritual tradition that vastly predates Christianity. I
mean it just goes, you know, way back, and so
it had. The Harry Christian movement was not at all
like an American invention. It was just the guru came
over from India at just the right time, which is
to say, you know, the early mid nineteen sixties, and

(04:03):
was able to rapidly accumulate devotees from within this sort
of hippie counterculture movement. You know a lot of people
that had sought enlightenment through psychedelics had kind of hit
a plateau with where acid or mescaline would get him.
And he was like, basically like, you know, let me
show you how to climb the mountain the right way.
But you know, it was that that series is about

(04:26):
organized crime, and the Harry Christian movement is pretty dark.
I mean, goes. What happened was when the founding guru died.
He was you know, when he came to America first,
and I think nineteen sixty four, he was already pretty
old dude, and you know, he passed away in the
seventies and he sort of anointed eleven of his followers

(04:48):
to try and carry on the movement here in the US.
But they were, without fail, young men, and several of
them you could say, we're not spiritually prepared to be gurus, okay,
because to be r guru in that movement is to
be a conduit to the divine. In other words, you
could say that they're regarded as a god on earth,
and some of them kind of walk the righteous path,

(05:10):
but others took a really dark turn once they had
that sort of power. And the worst among the lot
was a guy by the name of Keith Ham whose
Christian name was Kirtan Nanda, who started a Harry Krishna
commune that's still there. And I would say, I would
emphasize an underscore is now a place I think of positivity.
It's called Nuvern Dobbin. For Dobbin in India is the

(05:32):
town where Krishna sort of frolicked with cow maidens the
story goes okay, and it's a very deeply spiritual place,
a place of pilgrimage for all followers of Krishna in India,
and you'll see lots of Western followers. Harry Krishna is
there in India well. So Nuvern Dobbin was a commune.
Is a commune in the hills of West Virginia, probably

(05:52):
about two hours from Pittsburgh. Is the closest major airport,
and I mean it's pucked way back up there in
the hills. So especially in the nineteen eighty you know, seventies, eighties,
even early nineties, before cell phones, before the internet. Once
devotees were up there, they were really sort of under
the grip of this of their guru, Kirton Nenanda, and

(06:14):
you know, he had enforcers, you know, some of these
guys that one of the worst of the lot was
a Vietnam vet, you know, who kind of found his
way had probably had a lot of PTSD issues and
found his way to the Harry Christian movement and a
lot of Harry Krishna temples around the US. If they
had sort of a problematic devotee that they didn't know
quite to do what to do with, they'd buy him
a bus ticket to Pittsburgh and then Kerton Nanda's crew

(06:35):
would go pick him up and bring him up into
the hills and he'd find a use for him. You know.
He was good at that. Yeah, so I thought, so,
I thought.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
I thought, for a second, you were going to tell
me they would discipline him, But no, they put him
to work.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah, they put him to work. Yeah, yeah, but he
in some cases he disciplined people by having them, you know, murdered.
And there's really they found several bodies up there in
those woods around that commune over the years, and I'm
sure there's quite a few more that have yet to
be discovered and probably never will.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
So the ultimate transition, right right, right, Wow, that's incredible.
And and to your point about giving these immature, you know,
young men all that power. Look, it's tough. It's tough

(07:27):
for old mature men to handle it. I mean you
look at look at our look at our political system,
another subculture, and and you see sometimes the different things
that that these politicians do, especially if if they think
that they have a lot of power, some of them,
especially nowadays, I think the curtain of shame has been

(07:48):
lifted and it's like do whatever you want. It's the
wild wild West. But could you imagine being a twenty
something with and you're being told that you're almost to
God and people people are flocking to you and tell
you how awesome you are. That's that would be hard
to take and and not have it go to your head.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah. I mean they had for practical purpose, practically speaking,
unlimited power and wealth because the Harry Christian movement had
a lot of money. They had a lot of money
coming in through both you know, sort of legal and
other than legal means that that the guru in in
West Virginia, Kretin Nenanda, that we that we and that
series is on Peacock by the way, anybody wants to

(08:29):
watch it. Christian is on Peacock. You know. He had
these crews of young attractive women that would go out
and they would just invent charities and they would work
you know, NASCAR races and rock concerts and college football games,
and then they started selling just counterfeit, you know, unlicensed
college football merchandise at college football games and they made millions.

(08:49):
They would come back, you know, in Vans to the
commune up in the up in the mountains, and Kirtan
Nenanda would sort of lay on this sort of throne
and they would just dump bags of money on so
he was just literally wallowing in money when they would
get back, and you know he yeah, I mean it
was uh. I think it really went to their heads,
some of them put that way.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Sure, And when you think about it in that in
that environment, not only are these people bringing you millions
of dollars, but they're not expecting a commission, right, They're
just doing it for you know, free, or close to
as close as you can to free. I'm sure they
got some food and they I don't know what else,
but they're not expecting a commission.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
No, not at all. I mean they they they were.
One of the things, even to Harry Christians today is
you renounce material possessions, you renounce your own wealth. You know,
you you are living by the beneficence of Krishna, right
and so, and that's that's true today. I mean that's
most of the followers today, like most of their money
goes right into the into the church. But that said, again,

(09:53):
I just want to be clear that in my opinion,
the heart the hardy christna Iskon is is the church.
They dealt with their dirty laundry in a more much
more open way than some other religious organizations have, and
I think they're they're well on the path of legitimate
legitimacy today.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yes, and so again, just like a lot of other
religions and cult they had an issue especially this uh Kanda, yeah,
thank you. Uh he he became a pedophile or he
I guess he was always a pedophile.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
What's your tea was? Yeah? I think he always was. Yeah,
And that was that was one of the things. Is
he really like he really prayed on the on the
young boys uh in the commune in a pretty pretty
horrific fashion. And uh and there were other And that's
one of the things is that the Christians back then,
they followed a sort of rigid tradition that's still practiced

(10:49):
in India today among among Christian devotees. Of kids are
separated from their parents at a fairly young age and
put in guruakoules, which is kind of like a boarding
school because even for the parents like to be the
ultimate sort of like pure devotee, you renounce all attachments
and even including attachments to your own offspring. Now, not
all of them choose that intense of a path. There's

(11:12):
different sort of levels okay of renouncement of attachments, but
some parents in India especially still do that. But Cretananda
insisted on it. And then net result of that was
that children and all including all young boys were separated
from their mother and father and a lot of cases
their moms were gone a lot of the time out
there raising money, you know, scamming and scamming money for

(11:34):
caretin Nanda and the kids were physically separated from their
parents and put under the tutelage of you know, some
pretty nefarious characters and and and frankly, you know, we're
very vulnerable to abuse by Cretinnnanda and other you know,
pedophiles that were that were part of that system. I mean,
I think pedophiles, most of not all of them live

(11:55):
to the that's their purpose in life, Okay, most of them.
Their purpose in life is to be a pedif so
they're constantly seeking out environments or hunting for environments where
they can have access to vulnerable children. And so for
that type of criminal, a situation like that Hari Krishna
Commune in the seventies and eighties was a perfect hunting ground.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Sure. And you know, from what I've from what I've
observed or read, some pedophiles have a specific age group.
Once a child gets certain you know, gets to be
a certain age, they they definitely move on to the
next one.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
Yeah, it's usually puberty is kind of a point of delineation.
You know. There's predators that that I mean, this is
this is sort of horrific even voice, but it's the
fact of the matter. There's predators that prefer kids that
are going through or have gone through puberty, but are
not yet well into their teenage years, and then might
think most pedophiles prefer kids that are, you know, prepubescent,

(12:54):
so sure, yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
And like you said, he was probably a pedophile forever,
uh whatever, whatever happened to him that that sent him
down that road, and he was now he has unlimited power,
smart in the sense of separating the kids from any
kind of parental guidance or protection. And as a parent,

(13:23):
that's to me, he's got to be the craziest thing
to say, oh, yeah, here's my child. Yeah whatever.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah, And a lot of those parents really regret having
made that decision, you know. But it was eventually his undoing.
I mean, there'd always been rumors about kirtanand and kids,
but his devotees never really believed him. And then finally
and the the he had the Tirta was his hit man,
was was his enforcer. And Tirta actually went to prison
for murdering some devotees that had dared to challenge the guru.

(13:52):
But he kept his mouth shut. He never rolled over
on Kirtinnanda. But then one day kirtin Nanda was abusing
this young boy in a win a Bago the commune
and it was witnessed by multiple devotees in a way
that he couldn't possibly deny. And as soon as the
dude in prison that was doing life heard that from
multiple people that he trusted, he immediately, to his credit,

(14:12):
went to the authorities and like, okay, I'm ready to
testify against kirtan Ananda. And that's what finally did him in.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Yeah, that's interesting. There's there's so much there to unpack.
I mean, the one thing that, like you mentioned, the
devotees that absolutely will not what do you call it,
that believed the guru or the or the leader to
their almost to their detriment. I mean, and in some

(14:41):
cases even if they see something horrific, they'll excuse it
or justify it or whatever. But it's amazing to me
how much evidence needs to be I guess amount before
somebody changes their mind.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Right, right, it needed to be that indisputable, like eight
different people seeing the curtains literally part on this Winnebago
and witnessing this in a way that just could not
be swept under the rug. Because there's been plenty of
accusations and and you know, by the way, the guy
was thoroughly corrupt. I mean, he had you know, they
bought him a new like brand new suv or luxury
car like every year, when most of the devotees you know,

(15:25):
on the commune were living a very you know, sort
of basic lifestyle.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Right.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
I will say this though, the Hardy Christians then and now,
the food is fantastic in that movement. They really eat well, man,
They really eat well, especially if you like Indian Indian cuisine.
I mean it's it's awesome. And they feed any anybody
that shows up, any any you know, Harry Christiana church
or commune, they'll feed you. And in you know, in

(15:50):
the hills of West Virginia, that goes a long way
for some people. There are people that they get by
there by with with what the Hardy Christians provide.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
So that's interesting. It's interesting too that it's in West
Virginia because when I think of West Virginia, there's always
again another subculture. You have these militias out there as well. Yeah,
and so it's just like when I think of Harry Christians,
I'm again I'm thinking of California and and and things
of that nature. I never would have thought West Virginia.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
Right, And it took a while, it took decades for
them to achieve a sort of peaceful coexistence with the locals.
You know, there's still some tension there from time to time,
but it's now it's like, you know, the second or
third generation of locals have been living, you know, in
close proximity to the Harry Christians. Now it's just part
of life there. But when they first located, when the
commune first opened, there was you know, things got a

(16:40):
little hairy, especially when some of the local kids like
joined joined the Harry Christians. You know, there were guys
that would show up with guns, you know, demanding their
kids back, and there was some violence on the commune
as a results of that.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
Sure, I could definitely see that. Yeah, isn't that also
a John Dimper song? Right West Virginia? Almost heave it?

Speaker 3 (16:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we wanted we wanted to use
that song in the in the in the show, but
John Denver's estate, the price that they were asking was
a bit too high.

Speaker 2 (17:09):
Yeah, I could see that. That is wild all right.
So so just for the for the audience, and I
had to look it up. What is a gonzo journalist?

Speaker 3 (17:23):
Yeah, yeah, good question. I mean it's the Gonzo Journals.
Was really born in the late nineteen sixties and the
most famous practice practitioners Hunter S. Thompson, who I've often
referred to as my patron saint. But what defines gonzo
journalism first and foremost is to discard the notion of

(17:43):
objectivity in what you're writing. You're not necessarily you may
be striving to be fair, but you're not striving as
a journalist to be objective. You you embrace your own
point of view and opinions and you express those in
your reporting. Now, that's not nearly as radical a concept
today as it was even when I started out in
the late eighties and early nineties. You know, it was

(18:04):
still sort of like that was verboten right to mainstream
journalists even think of that. That was going against the code.
So that's first and foremost. And you could also say that,
you know gonzo journalism often the writer has a very
strong voice. No gonzo journalist, true gonzo journalist sounds like
any other true gonzo journalists. It encourages individualism and often

(18:31):
has a fascination with the darker corners of society, and
doesn't necessarily judge criminals to be bad people simply because
they're breaking the law.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Interesting. Interesting, Yeah, So as a gonzo journalist, you're not
going undercover. You're literally just you're jumping into that culture,
and as long as they like you and trust you,
you're going to stay there until you're done collecting enough
for the store.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
Right, right, Like Hunter S. Thompson's first book was Hell's Angels,
and that's exactly what he did. He embedded with the
Hell's Angels, lived among them, wasn't undercover, didn't join the
Hell's Angels. They understood from the jump that he was
a journalist that was doing a story on them, but
it just really took the time to do the story right.
And my own methodology is to spend days, if not weeks,

(19:24):
within a subculture before I ever take out a pen
and pad or a tape recorder and do an interview.
Just give it proper time for them to get used
to me and vibe me out and get comfortable with
my presence being a part of things, whether it's that's
a Chicano street gang or Militia's or Harry Christians or whatever,
right you know, and and and then and then start

(19:45):
to do the reporting once you're already sort of fully
embedded in the world. So you can't rush it to
do it right. You can't rush it. You can't be
in a hurry.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
You got all right, So walk me through this again.
The Mexican street gang there, do you just what? Contact
the leader and say this is who I am. I
want to get to know your gang and eventually do
a story about it. They check you out and they
say yes or no.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
In that particular instance, that happened in the in Phoenix
in the nineteen nineties, and there was a there was
a terrible gang war going on between Chicano gangs and
the Phoenix metropolitan area. I mean, I think it was
like it was really confusing network of alliances. There were
at least ten different separate street gangs involved, and that
you know, they were racking up a body count. And

(20:34):
I heard through a sort of source that there was
the leader of the biggest and most powerful gang that
was called the La Victoria Locus was trying to broker
some kind of peace and so that was my end.
So like hey man, you know, I kind of got
word to him like I'm interested, come talking about what

(20:55):
you're trying to do to like tamp down the violence.
And that got me a sit down with him, and
then out of that sit down, I was like, you know,
I think there's an even like bigger story here about
the culture of your barrio, about the history of your set,
you know, which dated back to right when some guys
got back from World War Two, some World War Two veterans,

(21:16):
they sort of started the gang, if you will, And
that's how I got that story going. Yeah, you got
to find an end, you know. It's not as it's
better to have some sort of specific ask or some
sort of specific entree in the world other than just hey,
I just want to start hanging out with you guys.

(21:37):
Although I lived on I lived on the street with
with street kids in Tempe, Arizona, and I think it
was ninety eight for a few weeks, and with those kids,
I could just show it and be like, hey, I
just want to knock around with you guys for a
while and write a story about it. That was that
was fine, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Wow, that is pretty cool. And so you also did
a story if I'm not mistaken about was it Nazis
or skinheads or yeah?

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Now, and that that was different that I did do undercover.
That did okay, Yeah, I had that was one sort
of subculture that I don't think any outsider is really
ever going to be welcome into, and so my sort
of any any efforts I made to get a sit

(22:21):
down with any leader or to just come observe on
their events, it was like hard no or no response
at all. And in two thousand and two, there was
an event that was going to be held near Denver,
Colorado called the Rocky Mountain Heritage Fest that was a
neo Nazi gathering of neo Nazi groups and other white
supremacists from all over the country, and an investigator with

(22:46):
the Anti Defamation League contacted the editor of my paper
I was at that time. My main job was writing
for Westward, which was an alternative weekly paper that was
part of the Village Voice media empire, and my editor
at the time was pretty legendary journalist named Patty Calhoun,
and ADL approached her and was like, do you have
any journalists will be interested in learning how to go

(23:06):
undercover as a neo Nazi skinhead? And she was like, oh, yes,
I got just the guy for that. So you know,
long story short, I spent a couple of weeks like
learning how to walk and talk and sort of like
cramming on neo Nazi ideology, listening to the music, reading
the books, the magazines, etc. Thinking that this would just
be a one off that I would that I would

(23:26):
sort of infiltrate this event, write the story, and be
done with it. But I what I found was a
movement that was far better funded and better organized and
more frankly fascinating than I expected. And so I started
going undercover at neo Nazi events in other cities where

(23:48):
the Village Voice chain had a paper and write a
story for that paper, And that eventually became where I
went to work for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which
is a nonprofit civil rights law firm based in the
Deep South that for decades has done investigation into the
into the white supremacist movement. So I went to work
for them for five years.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah all right, Wait, So when you say you went
to work for them in what capacity.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
Doing investigative journalism on hate groups rice supremacists, hate groups
including a fair amount of undercover work, gotcha, which at
that time had evolved to it to include you know,
border militias as well as like your more traditional ku
Klux Klan and you know Nazi skinheads, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
It's incredible. All right. So you're when you're doing this stuff,
whether it's undercover or just i'll use the term, you're
embedding yourself in this culture.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
Right.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Are you? Are you afraid you're going to pick anything up?
I mean, I imagine some of these people that you meet,
maybe not so much in the undercover world, but when
you get to meet somebody and they know who you are,
you're going to develop friendship, some kind of connection there.
Do you take anything away with you from from all

(25:07):
these different subculture things that you've done.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean I'll say that I think
I understand what you're asking and and and the only
way to to really practice that kind of gonzo journalism
properly is to give yourself over to the subculture somewhat
to some degree. For example, you know, with with with

(25:33):
neo Nazi organizations, there is a powerful sense of belonging
that can be intoxicating. I mean, that's one of the
reasons why they have any success attracting members. It's not
just the hateful ideology, it's also the sense of belonging
when there's a lot of kind of lost boys. I mean,
most of their members are male, right, that have no

(25:54):
sense of identity, that have no sense of culture that
you know, don't have it, didn't have a great upbringing,
are aren't tight, don't have a lot of family that
finds something in those groups that they've been looking for.
And so the only way, especially when I was working undercover,
to make it seem like I belonged, was to give
myself over to that that sense of group identity in
a way. Uh. And I'd be lying if I said

(26:17):
that it wasn't occasionally attractive or a rush. You know,
it was back to the back to the story about
the street gangs in Phoenix in the nineties. There was
one point where I'd been embedded with those guys long
enough that I was in one of their I guess
you'd call a safe house. It's a place where nobody
necessarily lived there. People were free to crash there, and

(26:38):
there's all kinds of contraband in this place. And and
one of them spotted a tactical team on the side
of the house and they and they thought that that
house is about to get raided. And one of them
handed me a gun, and it was like, this is
this is getting ready to go down. And I was like,
what the you know, hell do I do now? And

(27:00):
fortunately it turned out that they that that the tactical
team was hitting a meth lab that was right across
the street from the safe house. So it was like
but it was a nervous like ninety seconds man, where
I was really thinking, like what do I do here?
You know, on the one hand, I can't start shooting
at cops. On the other hand, I can't be seen
by these guys to be anything other than somebody that

(27:23):
will be willing to defend their house with them. So
I was in a I was gonna tie spot.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah, that would have to be very alarming because you're, again,
like you said, you don't want to do anything. I
definitely want it. You don't want to shoot another person,
especially police officer, but at the same time, you don't
want to upset these guys. Wow, that that would be
That would be super scary. I I just don't know
what I would do in a situation like that, And

(27:51):
any other close calls.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yeah, there's there's there's been a there's been a few.
I mean there's a couple of times where I where
I had to I was undercover where for one reason
or another, you know, somebody got suspicious of me and
I had to I had to do some fancy footwork
one time. I one time I slipped up and I
called a guy dog I used to. I was like, yeah, dog,
it's right over there. I was giving directions. And as

(28:16):
soon as the word left my mouth, I mean, that's
just not the kind of slang that you know, white
supremacists used, I was like, I know, I was in
trouble one time. One close call was that very first
undercover assignment I did, and the the the ADL investigator
that that trained me was like, you gotta go. You
got to borrow a car I was driving. I think

(28:37):
up a SOB at the time. She's like, nope, not that.
You got to borrow a car American made, not too new,
you know, preferably at Sedan and so like, I borrowed
a buick from a from a friend of mine and
I went through every inch of it, I thought, and
getting rid of all of her stuff. And like, the
one move I made that was really smart is I
had a neo Nazi rock band CD in the disc player.

(29:00):
And this I think may have saved my life because
what happened was at some point these guys. The guys
that were running security for this event were called the
hammer Skins, and the hammer Skins were like, for one,
they're sober most of them, they're straight edged, they don't
drink new drugs, they're smarter than your average skinhead, and
they were sort of the stormtrooper elite of the movement,

(29:21):
at least at that point in time. And they weren't
buying my act totally. And they searched my car and
underneath the passenger side floormat where I hadn't picked it
up to look was an Annie DeFranco CD and Annie
DeFranco for those that maybe watching this that aren't aware,
it was a lesbian folk singer, okay, And they were

(29:42):
basically like, what the hell is this?

Speaker 2 (29:44):
You know?

Speaker 3 (29:46):
But then they went to see what I had in
my CD player and they turned it on and it
was Screwdriver or some other hate rock bands. So that
at least bought me enough goodwill to like think up
a story fast. And that story was basically like, look,
this is a friend of mine's car, you know, you
know she's into that stuff I'm not. And then they're like, well,
is she white? I was like, yes, she's definitely white,
and they said, okay, well maybe you can bring her

(30:07):
out to the concert tonight and we can like start
trying to educate her. So that was that was a
tense moment. Yeah, that was a tense moment.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
All right. So I have to ask you, did you
bring her out to the concert?

Speaker 3 (30:19):
No?

Speaker 2 (30:19):
I didn't, that would be such a Hey. I know
I just borrowed your car, but I need you to
do one other favor form right right, all right? So
your your your most current project is Ukraine. Yeah, and
I know you're it's still in development. But what can
you tell us about this project?

Speaker 3 (30:42):
Well, it's I have to keep it a little bit
under wraps, but it's basically about the secret history of
Ukraine and what the true nature of Ukraine is and
is not from the collapse of the Soviet Union up
to present day. So it's not necessarcessarily about the war
that's going on, but it's definitely set against the backdrop

(31:04):
of the war in Ukraine, and we'll ask some pretty
serious questions about could the war have been averted, how
it could have been averted, and do some pretty I
think serious investigation into how the US State Department may
have misplayed their hand a few times in Ukraine in
a way that led to the war. Yeah. Yeah, I

(31:28):
mean we have a history of going back, at least
as far as the Vietnam War, kind of back in
the wrong horses in other countries. And I think that
we did that in Ukraine, like declared some guys to
be bad guys when maybe they weren't, declared some other
guys to be good guys maybe they weren't. And here
we are.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Well and I could see that. I mean, look, our
intelligence network, as good as it is, is not infallible, right,
you know, we saw that with George Bush Junior, for
lack of better terms, with the WMDs, right, And and
they had all this supposedly had all this intelligence that

(32:08):
that Hussein had all those WMDs and he didn't have any.
And interestingly enough, I've always thought that the that they
would have left Saddam Hussein alone but for the fact
that he wouldn't cooperate. He was kind of, you know,
a thorn in their side, and so they had to
take him out. But I think if you would have cooperated,

(32:30):
if you would have if he would have had some
kind of diplomatic relationship with us, they probably would have
left them alone, maybe forever, but at least for a
much longer period of time.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, you know, And it's interesting too, how like personal
personal grudges right, can also affect things. I think George W.
Bush was really pissed off that Saddam Musin had tried
to have his dad assassinated. Okay, So I think like
that actually that that that personal level animosity actually drove
some major foreign policy decisions.

Speaker 4 (33:02):
Sure, yeah, it would be uh, it would be I
think crazy not to think that it that it didn't
influence their decisions.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
All right, So back to the Ukraine, based on the
information that you've developed so far, your take on US
helping Ukraine did it? Did it? Did it bolster your
support or did it weaken your support? As far as
the US helping Ukraine.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
Definitely, spending time in Ukraine on the ground there definitely
bolstered my support for the US back in Ukraine. And
there's and I think there's two aspects to it. One
is it just being ethically and morally the right thing
to do. I mean, one of my big questions when
I when I'm going into Ukraine. And first of all,
by the way, as an American citizen. It is shockingly

(33:51):
easy to get into Ukraine. It is. It's it's like
you just you just walk, if you walk across the
border from Romania or Moldova or Poland, and it's easier
to get into Ukraine than it is to walk into
Tijuana from San Diego. I was like, that's it really okay?
All right, so US passport, you're in. Okay. So not

(34:12):
that I'm necessarily encouraging anyone to do what I'm just saying,
as a matter of practical logistics, it's very easy to
get into Ukraine these days, even you know, in the
state of war that's going on. But one of my
first questions going in was, Okay, like, there's an argument
out there that Ukraine is basically Russia, and that Putin
is basically just taking back territory that is culturally and

(34:34):
ethnically Russian, and so what's the big problem. That's not
true in my opinion. That may be true of some
of those eastern territories that Russia has taken over, but
the part of parts of Ukraine that I visited, I'm
telling you, like, we Americans have more in common with
Canadians than those Ukrainians have in common with Russians. That's
not to say that there aren't some you know, venn

(34:56):
diagram overlap between their cultures. You know, a lot of
people in Ukrainian speak Russi, for example, but they are
distinct people. And it's a cliche to describe a populace
as being freedom loving people, but it really applies accurately
to Ukrainians, is what I found. They love the idea
of being a free democracy. They are determined to root

(35:18):
out the corruption at the highest levels of their government,
which continues to be a major problem for them and
has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And
they really like hold American in high esteem and the
idea of a republic and the sort of representative democracy
that at least America is striving for in high regard

(35:38):
in a way that I haven't found in other former
Soviet satellite countries. Okay, Like I don't want to just
I don't want to castigate any other people in general.
I'm just saying that, like in Poland or in Russia,
I haven't found the same sort of like thirst for
freedom that I really found among the Ukrainian people. And
it was hard there not to also just the tremendous

(36:02):
sense of unity in that country at this point in
the war. You know, given how much conflict and division
there is in the United States, to be in a
place where you can just feel the cohesion among the
people was really enthralling, okay, and impressive and inspiring to me.
And we've kind of let them down a few times,

(36:23):
like we the US back when they gave up their
nuclear arsenal, you know, in the nineties, we assured them,
you know, we've got your back on this. And then
when Russia went into Crimea, you know, in twenty fourteen,
you know, just to ten years ago, we we you know,
basically pleaded slash demanded that they stand down and not

(36:45):
start fighting, and gave them an assurance that we would
stop Russia from from further encroaching on their territory. That
we didn't we didn't really stick to that commitment. So
that's the ethical and moral argument. Just setting that aside.
Being in Ukraine and having Iranian rones fired in my
general direction really kind of opened my mind to the

(37:07):
dangers of the tendrils of this war that's going on
in the Middle East and this war that's going on
in Ukraine. Reaching out to one another in a way
that could plausibly start World War three, Meaning like you
start to look at things like, Okay, Russia is getting
drones from Iran and shooting them at Ukraine. Putin had
a delegation from Hamas visit the Kremlin back in March. Okay,

(37:32):
there's Israeli special forces on the ground in Ukraine working
with Ukrainian resistance fighters behind enemy lines. It's like, I'm sorry,
as World War three started and I didn't get the memo.
I mean, this little story, you know, the points of
connection between these two conflicts and different parts of the world.
And so I just think, setting aside the whole ethical,
moral question, I just think it's in our interests to

(37:53):
help Ukraine tamp this down as quickly as possible, and
I think that the best way to do that is
for them to be negotiating with Russia from a point
of strength. Look, I don't think that I don't think
that Putin's ever going to give that territory he's taken back. Okay,
I think Kukraine has lost that, But I got the
sense in talking with the people in Ukraine that they

(38:14):
would be willing to give up that territory, not all
of them, but a strong majority would be willing to
give up that territory because that those eastern provinces did,
they were culturally Russian. Stalin resettled those after there was
a huge famine in Ukraine in the middle of the
last century, and those were the first areas that he

(38:35):
resettled those parts of Ukraine with Russians from the interior
of Russia. And so the point being is that Ukrainians
believe they could lose those territories and still culturally remain Ukraine.
It would sting a little bit economically because there's some
there's some valuable natural resources there. But they're like, look,
we could give that up and still be Ukraine. But
they're only going to do that if they have an assurance,

(38:56):
security assurance that Putin's not going to come back for
another bite at the apple in five years. So, but
to even negotiate that kind of a settlement where maybe
it's some quote kind of like DMZ like we have
in North South Korea. It's not perfect, but it's worked
since the nineteen fifties. It's kept the peace right and
I think that that may be the best, the best,
worst option. But to even do that they need to

(39:19):
be negotiating with Putin from a point of strength. They
need to be it needs to be a real stalemate.
And for that they needed They need more. They need
artillery shells, they need F sixteens, they need drones, they
need everything we can give them to sort of like
hold Putin at bay. So that's my take. I know
reasonable minds can disagree on this. That's just my opinion

(39:40):
after having been there.

Speaker 2 (39:43):
And I would say that I think that the only
thing that would concern me would be what you said
about Putin coming back five seven years from now. I'm saying, hey,
knock knock here, I am I want the other piece now, right.
And and people have made the, uh, the analogy between

(40:05):
what Putin's doing and what Hitler did, and I think
it's I think it's a good analogy because that was
the same reason that Hitler said, Hey, I'm just gonna
take this little territory because originally Poland did belong to
us and we lost it or whatever his his deal was,
and and I'm just gonna take this little bit. I'm
just gonna take this little bit, and before you know it,

(40:26):
he's taken over France and he was trying to take
over Britain and and so I think it is a
very slippery slope. And I agree with your take. We
do have to come when I say we, we in
the US and Ukraine have to come from a position
of strength. And I think that the current administration their

(40:49):
their strategy. You've already said this a couple of times.
We we've flubbed we flubbed it a few times, and
and trying to get resource resources to Ukraine because of uh.
I think it was the Republicans who voted it down
once and and I can't remember it. But because the
fact that to your point, we're not we're not unified anymore.

(41:12):
We have all this we call it UH, we're we're
we're bickering so much within ourselves. There's so much division
we can't manage our way out of a paper bag.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Mm hm.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
So So until until that changes, I think I think
it's gonna be uh. I think it's mean, I think
it's gonna be tough.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
Or yeah, I mean, I'm from Alaska, and just earlier
this week, you know, there was a Russian official that
referred to Alaska as our meaning Russia as Alaska. And
he wasn't joking, man. I mean, and then that that
sort of bizarre interview that Putin did with Tucker Carlson
wasn't as bizarre I think as a lot of people
took it to be. I think that that Tucker Carlson

(41:53):
was baffled during the first twenty minutes when Putin is
like laying out all these historical references to history from
centuries ago, from the four hundreds of eight hundreds. But
my takeaway from that is that Putin really regards himself
as this historical figure that's destined to return Russia to
a state of being an empire, okay, and to do that,
he's got to start regaining the territory, starting with Ukraine

(42:16):
that that at various points in history were part of
the Russian Empire. So, in other words, he thinks of
himself as a reconquering czar. I think that that's that's
my read on the dude, meaning that he's not going
to stop unless he's forced to stop. Okay. There are
some commonalities there with you know, with with with with
with the Third Reich and just driven by the nationalism

(42:38):
and not this sort of you know, genocidal hatred maybe,
But and I think there's some validity of the argument
that we shouldn't necessarily have been handing out NATO membership cards,
you know, like they were a crackerjack box prizes, right,
I mean, because Lithuania is a NATO country, we have
a mutual defense treaty with them. Okay, well look how

(42:58):
close that is to you? And that's definitely on you know,
Putin's snack menu down the road. So if we let
him have Ukraine and then he rolls tanks into a
NATO country, then what happens? Man? Then we were faced
with either going to war with Russia or throwing the
NATO treaty onto a dust bin. Neither of those are

(43:20):
good options. That's not a good look.

Speaker 2 (43:22):
Nope, absolutely correct. And and a lot of people don't
know this, but at one point Alaska was was a
Russian territory.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
Right, Sorry she said that. Yeah, very Alaska kid learns
that in grade school? But yeah, that's really yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
I did. Look, I didn't learn that in grade school.
I didn't learn it in American history. I learned it,
I remember, but I only learned it like ten years ago.
And it blew me away because you would think that
would be brought up at one point, right in a
high school or wherever you study American history. Oh, by
the way, yeah, this territory, we got that from Alaska.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
Yeah, and given how much oil there it was and
remains in Alaska, it was a steal.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
It was absolutely It's amazing to me. But yeah, that
would be uh, that would be something that again I
would say, the average American does not know. I mean,
they hear about us would call it. In the history books,
at least from what I remember, it talks about when
Alaska became a state, but not who we got it from,

(44:26):
which again I found that to be fascinating. All right,
So I want to talk about something that I found
it to be exceptionally brave of you to talk about,
and that was what happened to you as a seven
year old kid, where unfortunately you got raped. I don't

(44:46):
know how else to say. You've said this a couple
of times in some of the articles, and my hats
off to you. I thought it was very brave because
this is something that isn't talked about very much, and
and how you know, I guess my first question is

(45:07):
when did you decide to start talking about this terrible event?

Speaker 3 (45:12):
Yeah, that's a good question, and I'm going to answer it,
but I'll say it's a lot easier. So I think
it's a lot more common for victims of childhood sexual
assault to speak up now than it was when I
first started to address it publicly, which was in two
thousand and four, twenty years ago. It's not necessarily easy,

(45:33):
but there are far more of us that are that
are out, if you will, as survivors. But to answer
your question, I mean, I always I'd always kept what
happened a secret. And what happened was I was raped
by the teenage son of family friends in the fall
nineteen seventy eight, when I was seven years old, and
I never told anyone, you know, And I kept it

(45:58):
a secret until two thousand and two when I just
sort of found out by chance that that the rapist
was living, uh in the same I was living in
Denver and he was living in a suburb of Denver,
And for some reason, that just triggered what I now
understand to be if my full blown sort of post

(46:19):
traumatic stress disorder episode. Sure, and I mean I was
just like sleepless nightmares, flashbacks, you know, the whole thing.
But I found peace by deciding to kill this man.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
I think, by the way, it's a very natural thing.
You know, I'm not going when I when I read that,
I'm going, Yeah, that's what I would have done.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
Yeah, well, good people. Yeah, you know I've read about
how how about some people sometimes when when they decide
to commit suicide, they sometimes like find a sense of peace. Uh.
You know, I'm not ever an advocate for suicide, but
I will just say that that for me, it was
something similar. When I decided to commit a murder, all
of a sudden, I felt peaceful, a sense of peace

(47:08):
I hadn't felt in weeks. And so I actually started,
you know, plotting to carry this out. The aforementioned Chicano
Street gang from the nineteen nineties. I traveled to Phoenix
and I got a I got a weapon from them
that had been altered in such a way by a
sort of not sort of by one of their gunsmiths.
They know how to alter weapons to defeat ballistics and

(47:31):
ballistics you know, forensic ballistics checks. And so I was
pretty serious about it. And then just by by a happenstance,
my mom and dad were going they just decided to
finally pack up my sort of childhood Bendroum at the
house I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and they found
a diary that I had written about the rape a

(47:52):
few years after it occurred, when I was ten or
eleven years old, and they confronted me with the diary
in such a way that I didn't have time to lie,
and as I as soon as they asked me if
it was true, and I paused for a few seconds,
they knew that it was true. Yeah. So and it
turned out that my mom then immediately called the rapist
mom and you know, told her what her son had done,

(48:13):
et cetera. And so as soon as I knew that,
I knew I couldn't go through this murder plot because
the whole basis for it was would be there was
nothing to tie me to this despict There was no
obvious motive, There's nothing to connect me to it other
than the fact that our parents had been friends in
Alaska twenty five years ago. So but as soon as
my mom called his mom, it was like, well, you know,

(48:34):
now I'm suspect number one. So I decided to write
about it instead, and I wrote a piece called Stalking
the Boogeyman that was then later adapted as a play
that was you know, was played in several cities around
the world, and you know, it was opened off Broadway
about ten years ago in twenty fourteen. So yeah, I'm
I'm I'm out with it, you know. And I try

(48:55):
and be an advocate for survivors, and especially male survive
of childhood sexual assault, because when I was growing up,
one of the reasons that I never told anybody is
that there was this sort of stereotype or cliche in
our society that persists today that if you are a
male survivor of childhood sexual assault, you are almost destined

(49:17):
to become an offender yourself. And there's no denying that
in many cases, that is the truth, that that pedophiles
were themselves abused as kids, sexually abused as kids. But
I think that there are far more of us, and
by us, I mean survivors that hurt ourselves rather than

(49:39):
hurting other kids, you know, that sort of turn that
destructive impulse like inward. I mean, there's a lot of
self destructive behaviors that are very common to victims of
childhood sexual assault.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
And you think that happens because you're walking around with
guilt and shame and fear, and so is that why
you're hurting yourself pain and pain?

Speaker 3 (50:02):
I think that I think those that I don't know,
I don't. I don't, I don't. Let me be very
clear about this. I'm firm believer in capital punishment for
for a childhood people that pray on children I have.
That's like the one crime that I think is is
I think it is the worst crime because it kills
whoever that person was going to be if if you
hadn't done that to them. So I equate it with murder.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
But I agree with you. I mean, it destroys that
person that your child hit. Your childhood ended at seven
years old.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
Yeah, yeah, but what you what you the takeaway from
from someone treating you like that is that you're not
worth very much. And I just I in my own case,
I didn't place for a lot of for the first
sort of third of my adult life, I didn't place
a lot of value on my own existence, and that
was the reason why I was able to undertake a
lot of the really dangerous assignments I did. Meaning I

(50:57):
see a direct line now from that from that childhood
trauma to my career path, and.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
It makes total sense to me too, because again, if
you think you're worthless or not worth very much, then yeah,
it doesn't matter whether I live or die, I'll volunteer
for something risky and dangerous. Makes to me, it makes sense.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I mentioned that that legendary editor
of mine, Patty Calhoun, when I came to her with
this story idea, I was like, you know, I was
raped when I was a kid. I've been planning to
kill a guy. Now I can't. I'd like to write
about it. Her immediate reaction was, this explains so much
about you. I was like, what are you talking about.
She's like, this explains why you are the way you are,
old House, believe me. And I didn't see it. I

(51:41):
was just like whatever. But then you know, a little
bit further down the road, I realized, yeah, she was right.
That did explain me at that time so well.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
And the thing that fascinated me about the article, so
first of all, you're plotting his murder, his death, which
I think is is good. And but but then the
other thing, which I find just as good, is that
you you don't you don't necessarily forgive him, but in

(52:13):
the in the article, you wouldhold his name. You you give
him a break. I'll say that you don't forgive him,
but you kind of give him a break because you
could have you could have used his name and and
and and you didn't talk about this.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
Yeah, you know, and that was I. Yeah. The article
is called Stalking the Boogeyman. You can find it on
my website. I mean if use Google, and I'm sure
you can find it easily. The article ends with a
confrontation between me and the man who who raped me.
And I went into it and I had and I

(52:49):
recorded the whole conversation I had. I was carrying a
backpack that had a gun, a different gun, my own gun,
and and uh, but it was wired for sound. And
so I got recording the conversation. And I did that
because my intention going into that confrontational meeting with him
was to get evidence that I could use to convince

(53:09):
the newspaper's lawyers, if not the police, to hold him
to account. As it turned out, the statute of limitations
that already expired in Alaska, there's no way he was
going to be charged with that rate. But I at
least needed to have this evidence for the newspapers lawyers
in order for them to feel comfortable using his name.
But once I met with him, I wasn't sure that

(53:31):
I wanted to use his name anymore. And so again
Patty Calhoun, my editor, said, I mean it was getting
close to deadline. To press deadline, she said, this way,
you do, go into a room, write two endings. Write
one ending where you name him, and write one ending
where you don't, and we'll just look at it purely
from a storytelling perspective and just decide which feels like
a stronger ending. So that's what we did, and it
felt like a stronger ending to not name him, because

(53:54):
the idea is, you know, these people are among us,
and they look you know, there's no thing that's not
like they have a scarlet, you know, p on their
forehead for pedophile. Right, It's like it can be anybody,
and they are anybody, priests, coaches, et cetera. And so
as parents, it pays to be very wary.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Absolutely. I think there's a video, not only a YouTube,
but on social media and this gentleman had interviewed a pedophile,
and the pedophile basically says, I'm looking for children either
with single moms that are busy or or where fathers

(54:32):
are not really involved in that child's life.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
Yeah, and I.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
Thought, what an incredible strategy. It makes sense and in
this video should be broadcasted to you know, in every school, junior, high,
high school, you know, religious organization, because the people that
we trust the most are the ones that are going

(54:59):
to probably, uh what do you call it rape ar children?

Speaker 3 (55:03):
Yeah, because unfortunately, like we talked about before, pedophiles seek
out access to kids, whether it's a heart udition or
commune or youth sports league. And it's just that's that's
really that's really a drag for all of the like
good coaches out there, right and good youth pastors out there,
that they have to fall under sort of a cloud
of suspicion. But it would still you know, behoove any
parent to to to be very very careful your kids

(55:27):
spending time with. Now in my case, I mean, you know,
my dad was very much part of my life, but
my parents were together, and I don't think that they
were you know, that that I was, that I was
in any way deemed vulnerable by this guy. I think
he was just an ambush predator. And there are those
kinds of pedophiles as well that just like strike quickly
and with violence, and uh, they're there's they're they're minority,

(55:51):
but that is some of them have that methodology, which
is in my case, was a very violent you know,
sexual assault.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
Right. And on top of that, he he threatened your life.
He threatened your family's life, if I remember the article correctly. Yeah,
I mean so, so not only are you dealing with
this trauma, but the added weight responsibility that this guy

(56:18):
could harm my family. He could be telling me the truth.
I don't know. It's an empty threat or it could
be real. And based on the fact that I just
had this violent experience, I'm going to lean towards believing
the guy.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
Yeah. Well, and yeah, and when you're seven too, it's
basically like, this is a monster. I mean, there are
monsters right, There are monsters in the closet. Like all
your childhood fears have come to be realized. This is
a monster. This is somebody that looked like somebody that
was cool and that wanted to hang out with you,
and that was like a friend of your family that
you know, that quickly could do something, could like rape you,

(56:50):
you know, could threaten you with a samurai sword and
scare the hell out of you and then and then
violently rape you. And that's a monster. And so that's
how you conceive of them, perceive them as a kid.
And so then when a monster said I'll come to
your house and kill your parents, you believe them, man,
you believe.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
Them absolutely, absolutely, all right. So in the article, and again,
correct me if I'm wrong, one of the one of
the things that you talked about is that he had
kind of convinced you that this was a that your
experience was one off. I mean that that that he
had not done this to anybody else, But later on

(57:24):
you found out different, and and and so you eventually
do name him in a different article.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Is that right?

Speaker 3 (57:31):
I did? I wrote? It was yeah, yeah, that's right,
it was. It was more than a decade later. It
was more than No, it was about a decade later. Sorry,
was about ten years later. I wrote a follow up
piece called Outing the Boogeyman. And what happened was I
you know, I told him, I wrote, I sent him

(57:52):
a letter right before the original article Stalking a Boogeyman
was published. I said, look, this article is coming out,
I'm not going to name you. I almost that was
my plan, but I'm not going to name you, but
there's enough details in here that it's going to give
your past a good heart shake. And if anybody else
comes to me and says that you rape them when
they were a kid in Alaska or anywhere else, like
game on, I'm going to write another piece. I'm going
to name you. Well. Almost a decade passed and I

(58:17):
was testifying in support of some anti child abuse legislation
in Juno, which is the capital of Alaska. So I
was testifying before a legislative committee. And after I testified,
two different people who didn't know one another came up
and one said he also raped me when I was
a kid, and the other said he raped my husband

(58:37):
and my husband's brother when they were kids. Wow, And
so I you know, in the one case the person
was saying he raped me, I talked with them. I
believed them. In the other case, I went and met
with the woman's husband. Didn't meet with his brother because
he didn't want to talk to me, but met with
the woman's husband, found him to be very credible. Thought
these people were telling the truth. And so then I

(59:00):
did publish a follow up article which I which I
named the guy. So yeah, and did.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
Anything happened to him that did he get fired? Did?

Speaker 3 (59:09):
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah,
I know that. The only thing I do know is
that he had been involved in youth sports and he
was no longer you know, kind of allowed to do that.
That's the only thing that I know happened as a consequence.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
Well, that's good, that's it. You probably saved somebody's life there.
And this thing, this law eventually got overturned, right, because
again I believe there was you read. I read an
article where I think, thanks to your help and some

(59:42):
of the other people in Alaska, the statute of limitations
of ten years is no longer a thing. It's it's
forever childhood.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
He's no longer a statute limitations on on on raping
kids in Alaska. That's something that's a crime that can
come that, like murder, you can be charged with at
any point for the your life.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Yeah, and I wish I wish that would be adopted
nationwide because I think it needs to be treated that harshly.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
Yeah, I agree with that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Yeah, it's incredible that that somebody at a at a
young age would have to deal with that and and
lose their their childhood and and then they carry that
with them. My uh, my niece had a similar experience
with her grandfather, and it was both my nieces were

(01:00:35):
molested or abused by their grandfather. So this goes to
show what you're talking about. This is anybody. Yeah, and
and what was so interesting is that one of my
nieces was able to put it in a box. And

(01:00:55):
when she finally talked about it, she was very matter
of factly she said, this is what happened to me.
I I've dealt with it, I've moved on, I've locked
it up. I'm good to go the this. My other niece,
who was the younger one, uh, took to substance abuse. Yeah,
and and uh unfortunately ended up passing away. She fell

(01:01:18):
asleep at the wheel and and and uh and passed
away that way. But it's just something that that one
incident for for my younger niece changed her life changed
the trajectory a very happy like all kids are. Most
kids are very happy. Uh, even even even when you

(01:01:40):
look at something. Uh. These kids that are that are
that are grown that are they're having to grown up
in a worn torn country. Right as long as they
have family they tend to be happy people, right, but
this one event when they get sexually abused or rape
or it's changes, it takes that happiness away. And so yeah,

(01:02:03):
I think a national a national law making that that
statue limitations forever. I think that's that would be a
great help for a lot of people.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
Yeah, I mean the damage that it does to society
is tremendous. I mean, if you look at if you
look at drug addicts, if you look at criminals, if
you look at homeless people, you'll find in many, if
not most cases, a history of childhood trauma and very
often childhood sexual trauma. That's just the truth, man. So
it's it creates very very damaged people.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Yeah, yes, I agree, I agree, And it's again it's
it's something that our politicians are are slow to act on.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
Yeah, And I just I mean, look, man, when I
was when I was a kid seventies eighties, it was
frankly tabooed even kind of talked about it in the
way that you and I are right now. So there's
been progress. And in that I think it's probably kids,
at least when they become adults, are are have more
of an opportunity or an imitation to to to deal

(01:03:03):
with it openly, even if it's just dealing with it,
you know, internally with themselves about what happened to them
in a way that they understand that it's not tragically,
it's not at all a rare occurrence. It's actually common. Yeah.
Absolutely is still kind of a terrible secret that we
all conspire to keep under the surface because it's very
uncomfortable to talk about.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
I agree, I think I think that, Yeah, it's I
think it's one of those things that first of all,
people don't know how to bring it up. And so
if you don't know how to bring it up, how
do you know, you know, then you don't know how
to talk about it. Yeah, and just just playing sex good,
normal sex for most people is a hard subject to approach.

(01:03:47):
I got to talk to my kids about the birds
and the bees? How do I do that?

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
And so if you can't, if you can't approach normal sex,
then approaching a a rape is almost a non starter.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
I wanna, I wanna again thank you for for for
sharing that story. I think it helps people and and
uh I hope everybody will uh well, uh, I don't know,
just make a note that their pedophiles are all over
the place, their grandfathers, their priests, their rabbis there, you
name it, They're everywhere, and we have to be very

(01:04:29):
vigilant when it comes to our children. All right, So
I want to talk about one of your other projects,
which I found rather confusing, just because the name of
the project is Sasquatch. It's on Hulu, and and so
I thought it was going to be about Bigfoot. Bigfoot,

(01:04:51):
and it kind of is. But talk about this. It's
a very interesting take. It's a the it's three episodes
are about an hour or so each. But give us
the background story, so because it's true.

Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
So I mean, it's when I was in nineteen ninety three,
for a very short time, I worked on a dope farm,
weed farm in the Emerald Triangle. The Emerald Triangle is
the region of northern California that's you know, famous, slash
infamous for growing really high grade weed. So it's Mendocino
Trinity and Humboldt Counties that's the Emerald Triangle. And I

(01:05:33):
was in northern Mendocino County working on a weed farm,
and there was all this sort of like chatter among
the you know, they call them trimmigrants because these kids
like show up during harvest season, you know, to work
on weed farms, helping the harvest and trim the buds
for sale. And there was all this chatter about like

(01:05:54):
how this there was this you know, sort of hostile
band of sasquatch that had been had been like harassing
weed growers, especially that had had weed farms way back,
you know, up in the woods, well off the road
system where they'd have to hike in with backpacks and stuff.
And there was just all these rumors basically that there
were these hostile you know sasquatch that were that were

(01:06:17):
harassing you know, marijuana farmers. And then one night there
was I was at a house for these guys showed
up and they claimed that they had just been at
the site where where they'd found three guys dead on
a weed farm and they'd clearly been killed by a sasquatch.
And I didn't at the time. I was like, I

(01:06:39):
don't think that probably a sasquatch killed three people. But
I think these guys, these guys seem freaked out enough
that I think they may have just seen three dead bodies.
I didn't think that they were just you know, pulling
some kind of hopes, let's put it that way. And
so I just kind of like filed it away as
a bizarre experience and didn't think about it until about

(01:07:01):
four years ago. Kind of was at a position in
my career where I could where I could was fishing
around for the next idea for the next the next
series to work on. It was like, well, I wonder
what will happen if I if I try and find
out if there was any validity to that, to that story,
or find or there was. Clearly there was a lot

(01:07:21):
of chatter about violent Sasquatches in northern Mendosino County and
nineteen the fall of nineteen ninety three, and there was
these guys that claimed that they'd seen three victims that
had been killed by a sasquatch. So I was like, well,
I'll just I'll start making some calls and see if
I can find anybody else that heard this story. And
after a bunch of dead ends, I started to hit

(01:07:42):
on people that were like, yeah, you know, I heard
that story, and as a matter of fact, I know
I know something more about what the truth behind that
that legend of the three dead bodies killed by a
sasquatch is and so I don't want to I don't
want to say anymore other than to say, go watch
it on Hulu. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah. That's the premise of

(01:08:03):
the show, is like trying to track down the source
of this source of this legend.

Speaker 2 (01:08:08):
And it's done very well. So I'm gonna put all
the all the different shows in the all the different
links to your shows here on the podcast, because the
the Sasquatch one is riveting from you know, from the
very get go. I think within like three or four minutes,
you get hooked and you want to know, okay, what's

(01:08:30):
going on? Yeah, all right, So I got to ask you,
as a were you trimming the pot plants? What were
you doing?

Speaker 3 (01:08:42):
I wasn't actually trimming buds. I was just sort of
tending to plants. I mean, I think it was the
particular farm I was at. It was some of it
was moving plants into you know, spaces where they could
then be harvested, and and that was a lot of
my I was unskilled labor, Okay, I was unskilled. Were
moving you know, potted weed plants around to different you

(01:09:03):
know locations. Basically, Yeah, okay, all right, all right, so
guys check it out.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
It's Sas Squats, It's on Hulu. You'll find it very
entertaining and it goes by really quick. I want to
ask you about your grandfather. This was one of these
little pearls and I wasn't expecting, so talk about your
grandfather there in Kansas City.

Speaker 3 (01:09:30):
Yeah, so my dad. When I was in Ukraine in
February and March, my dad died actually, and so I am.
His death freed me to talk about this because I
made my dad a promise, and that promise was I
wouldn't talk about this publicly until he was gone. Now

(01:09:50):
he's gone and I'm free to talk about it publicly.
So here we go. And this was a family mystery.
I'm like, I'm meaning my my grandfather's on my dad's side.
I identity or who he was or how he lived
his life. It was just a real like HEAs didn't
talk about it, you know, not only with my with
my mom and dad, but even like you know, extended family.

(01:10:11):
I could. I just sensed as a kid it was
a no go zone. And once I became an adult,
I started to pick up, you know, pieces of information
here and there. And then once I became an investigative journalist,
you know, I figured out how to like dig for
records and you know, how to work within law enforcement archives,
et cetera. So and then finally, very late in his life,
my dad opened up about about his father. So the

(01:10:33):
upshot is this is that my dad, my grandfather, rather
my dad's dad, whose name was Carlton Holdthouse, was there's
no other way to put it, was a gangster. He
worked in the Kansas City outfit. He's his he he
grew up on a farm and his family family was
fairly prosperous. But then his father, my great grandfather, was

(01:10:56):
killed in a in a train accident. And then the
Great Depression hit and so suddenly my grandfather, Carlton Hotels,
went from being he was kind of like the man
in the house all of a sudden, and the depression
hit and farming was no longer the you know, no
longer providing economically. So he somehow he started playing in

(01:11:18):
high stakes poker games in Kansas City, and somehow the
parlayed that into becoming a member of al Capone's outfit
in Kansas City. And he in the early forties, he
had robbed some post offices and post offices back then
they had these kind of money orders, but they're more

(01:11:39):
like bearer bonds. It was like it was like a
certificate that you could immediately exchange for cash with no
questions asked. So it's a modern equivalent today of a
bearer bond. And so post offices were like banks. They
were frequently robbed, and he'd robbed a series of post offices.
The cops were after him, and he had stashed my mom,
of my dad and my grandmother at a farmhouse in Missouri,

(01:12:02):
and he and told him to wait there. And the
plan was is that they were going to run to Alaska.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):
And they were there for a couple of weeks, and
he showed up to get him with a partner of
his partner in crime, and the cops had laid an
ambush and there was a shootout, and my grandfather was
caught and was went to prison for a long time.
His partner, however, got away and did run up to
Alaska and I you know, and became one of kind

(01:12:33):
of the founding fathers of Alaska. I mean. And then
the first the first clue about any of this that
I got was in the late eighties, This guy, my
grandfather's partner, died and when he died, the governor of
Alaska ordered that the flag statewide be flown at half
masted to honor him, and my dad that night got
drunk and let a few things slip, you know. I mean,

(01:12:55):
he thought it was funny, but also it triggered something
in him, you know, his own childhood, and he like
had a few whiskeys more than he usually did, and
like let a few things slip about his grandfather. And
that was when I first kind of like got on
the case, if you will. Yeah, but I am the more. Look,
my whole career has been based around the fact that

(01:13:18):
that criminals feel comfortable around me. That's true in Sasquatch, Okay,
that's true with the street gangs, even with the neo Nazis.
I just and I think that if I hadn't been
a journalist or a storyteller documentary filmmaker, I probably would
have been a criminal of some kind. And the more
I found out about my grandfather, the more that made
sense to me. I think it's literally in my blood.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
Yeah, to me, it makes sense too. And what's interesting
about your grandfather is that he's not the only grandfather
gangster out there. I mean, you look at the JFK family, right,
Father rampfothered to some, but Joseph Kennedy was also an outlaw.

Speaker 3 (01:14:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:05):
And let me tell you, when you're an outlaw and
you're making that kind of money as an outlaw, I
bet you he you know, besides being a bootlegger, there's
he probably did a few other things to protect his territory.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
I mean, because because it's the old saying, right when
when drugs are involved, guns, our guns are there too,
you know, to enforce.

Speaker 3 (01:14:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
Yeah, and so you got drugs in this case, it
was alcohol, but still it was it was an illegal substance,
which means you also have cash. Somebody's carrying a gun.

Speaker 3 (01:14:38):
Oh yeah, I mean I found I found some letters,
you know, some family some letters between my great grandmother,
Carlton's mom and other family members in which she was
lamenting the influence of a guy that she called Jelly
over my grandfather. And I am not one hundred percent sure,
but I'm ninety five percent sure that that's a reference
to a guy by the name of Jelly B. Nelson,

(01:14:59):
who was I mean, some people have heard the Kansas
City massacre that was a big shootout between cops and
Kansas City gangsters at the at the train station in
Kansas City. That's still there, and so I, you know,
that's the latest avenue that I'm investigating. But I'm pretty
sure that that that that my grandfather was working with
Jelly Ban Nelson, who was very violent gangster.

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
That's incredible, David. I've had such a great time getting
to know you and and learning about you know, your
background and some of the stuff that you've done. It's
exhilarating to say the least. And I you know, you
have one of these careers that you that is probably

(01:15:42):
never ever going to be boring because you can you're
you're always going to a different place and starting call
not necessarily in new life, but almost in new life, right,
because once you embed yourself in these subcultures, it is
a brand new beginning.

Speaker 3 (01:15:57):
Yeah. I mean, that's one of the ones things that
really drew me to journalists and then by extension, documentary
filmmaking is it's like an all access pass to places
that you would never otherwise go and meeting people that
you would never otherwise meet.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Yeah, that's incredible. Well, thank you. Thank you so much
for stopping by and and I'd love to have you
back again.

Speaker 3 (01:16:15):
Sounds good, Thanks David. All right, man, we're out, okay.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
I appreciate that. I I'm just just like I said,
I'm amazed at at the different things that you've done
and and uh and I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:16:31):
Thank you, man. Yeah, enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
All right, have a good one, speculator, but bye.