Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClane Smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In our last episode, The
Speaker 1: new Sphere, we took a bit of a dive into
Speaker 1: the digital world to look at some of the ways
Speaker 1: in which the Internet might be impacting our way of life,
Speaker 1: and in particular the way in which we receive and
Speaker 1: share information, as explored in the episode The Myth that
Speaker 1: the slender Man has been considered by some academics to
Speaker 1: constitute a new form of folklore, which, due to the
Speaker 1: rapidity and mechanics of how we communicate online, can quickly
Speaker 1: embed itself in collective cultures. One of the frequent criticisms
Speaker 1: of where we are now in terms of our relationship
Speaker 1: to the net is its propensity to fuel and spread
Speaker 1: fake news and provide of an error of truth to
Speaker 1: completely fictitious events. As the Internet becomes our public forum
Speaker 1: for sharing and discussing ideas, more often than not it
Speaker 1: is through this portal that we develop much of our
Speaker 1: sense of the world, as such, as demonstrated by the
Speaker 1: attempted murder of Paint and Loutner in twenty twelve. What
Speaker 1: achieves validity online can quickly achieve solidity in the real world.
Speaker 1: It isn't only since the invention of the Internet, of course,
Speaker 1: that people have behaved and acted based on fallacious information, however,
Speaker 1: such as the global reach and speed with which information
Speaker 1: can spread online, not to mention the self reflective manner
Speaker 1: in which many of our social media platforms collate the
Speaker 1: information that we see. Never before have we been so
Speaker 1: susceptible to misinformation. The so called slender Man stabbing was
Speaker 1: not the first incident of its kind, and it certainly
Speaker 1: wasn't the last. It all started with a text, or
Speaker 1: rather a series of texts, sent to multiple women by
Speaker 1: former member of the US House of Representatives Antony Wiener,
Speaker 1: back in early twenty thirteen. The then forty seven year
Speaker 1: old Wiener, who was married at the time to political
Speaker 1: staffer whom Abadin, was fighting for his professional and personal life,
Speaker 1: having been publicly outed for engaging in numerous cases of
Speaker 1: extramarital sexting. Despite the embarrassment to his partner and the
Speaker 1: derailing of his career as a public servant by twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: the incident was finally beginning to fade from the news
Speaker 1: cycle as the far more pressing issue of who between
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was going to win the
Speaker 1: presidency that year held the nation in its grip. But
Speaker 1: then in August of that year, it happened again, only
Speaker 1: this time things were a little different. By then, whom
Speaker 1: Abadin was acting as a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: in what remains one of the most bitterly fought and
Speaker 1: closely contested presidential elections of living memory. What also made
Speaker 1: it more complicated was that one of the individuals that
Speaker 1: Weena was found to have been sexting was only fifteen
Speaker 1: years old. Weena was subsequently investigated by the FBI for
Speaker 1: the offense of transferring obscene material to a minor, and
Speaker 1: as a result, had various communication devices confiscated, including a
Speaker 1: laptop which he shared with his wife. Earlier that year,
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton was very publicly investigated by the FBI for
Speaker 1: failing to disclose thousands of emails she sent vi a
Speaker 1: private email server. As a result, a number of Clinton's
Speaker 1: opponents accused her of deliberately trying to hide incriminating evidence.
Speaker 1: During her time as a public servant, Clinton had long
Speaker 1: been considered a shady operator by many who opposed her
Speaker 1: run for the presidency, but now there appeared to be
Speaker 1: some legitimacy to their claims. The FBI's investigation, however, centered
Speaker 1: on the more practical issue of whether Clinton had sent
Speaker 1: classified information outside of the official channels, either negligently or
Speaker 1: to deliberately hide it from the official archive, either of
Speaker 1: which would constitute a federal offense. In the end, however,
Speaker 1: the FBI dropped their investigation when it was concluded that
Speaker 1: no offense had been committed. The story, it seemed, was finished.
Speaker 1: That was until the FBI opened up Weener's laptop, only
Speaker 1: to find a whole host of further email exchanges between
Speaker 1: whomer Abodin and Hillary Clinton that had not previously been investigated.
Speaker 1: A few days after this story broke erupting from somewhere
Speaker 1: out of the intersection between the sordid nature of Weener's crime,
Speaker 1: his relationship to whomer Abodin, and in turn, her connection
Speaker 1: to Hillary Clinton, a strange rumor began to grow on line.
Speaker 1: On October thirtieth, twenty sixteen, the following message was published
Speaker 1: on Twitter via the handle at David Goldberg n Y.
Speaker 1: Rumors stirring in the NYPD that Whomer's emails point to
Speaker 1: a pedophilia ring, and Hillary Clinton is at the center
Speaker 1: in the febrile atmosphere of such a bitterly fought presidential election,
Speaker 1: where so many of those on each side of the
Speaker 1: political divide saw the prospect of a failed outcome for
Speaker 1: their candidate as nothing less than an existential catastrophe. At
Speaker 1: David goldberg Enwyse tweet seemed to strike a nerve. Before
Speaker 1: long it had been retweeted six thousand times, But then
Speaker 1: it began to snowball and gain traction elsewhere, most notably
Speaker 1: in the forums of Reddit and the infamous online messaging
Speaker 1: board four Chan. Then, almost as if it were part
Speaker 1: of some kind of co ordinated campaign, another series of
Speaker 1: emails was suddenly exposed, this time belonging to John Podesta,
Speaker 1: the chairman of Clinton's presidential campaign. Podesta's emails had actually
Speaker 1: been hacked back in March of that year by a
Speaker 1: cyber spine group based out of Russia known as Fancy Bare. However,
Speaker 1: it wasn't until late October that twenty thousand pages of
Speaker 1: emails from Podesta's account appeared on wikileaques. Just as the
Speaker 1: rumors about the apparent Hillary Clinton led chart sex rig
Speaker 1: were beginning to spiral out of control. Hidden among John
Speaker 1: Podesta's emails was a message sent in June twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: from the artist Marina Abramovitch to John's brother, Tony Podest,
Speaker 1: a well known Democratic Party donor. It said, Dear Tony,
Speaker 1: I am so looking forward to the spirit cooking dinner
Speaker 1: at my place. Do you think you'll be able to
Speaker 1: let me know if your brother is joining? Or my love, Marina,
Speaker 1: what was spirit cooking exactly? Some people began to wander.
Speaker 1: A quick search of the term brought up a piece
Speaker 1: of art by the same name, which was made by
Speaker 1: A Bramovich back in nineteen ninety six. The piece was
Speaker 1: essentially a cookbook full of pseudo aphrodisiac recipes, containing strange
Speaker 1: instructions like how the reader should sprinkle fresh morning yurine
Speaker 1: over nightmare dreams, or to mix fresh breast milk with
Speaker 1: fresh sperm milk on earthquake nights. One also encouraged the
Speaker 1: reader to cut deep lee into the middle finger of
Speaker 1: your left hand with a sharp knife and eat the pain.
Speaker 1: The work was designed purely as a way to provoke
Speaker 1: and evoke thoughts about the body. To some, However, its
Speaker 1: true meaning was something entirely different. Clearly, they believed Abramovich
Speaker 1: was some kind of monstrous satanic occultist, and her connection
Speaker 1: to Hillary Clinton via the Podesta Brothers was irrefutable evidence
Speaker 1: that something very disturbing was going on at the heart
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party. It was Friday November fourth in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, less than a week before the presidential elections,
Speaker 1: when James Alaphantus suddenly noticed a string of strange comments
Speaker 1: on his Instagram account accusing him of being a pedophile.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand and six, Alaphantus and his then
Speaker 1: business partner, Carol Greenwood opened a pizza rear and ping
Speaker 1: pong venue at fifty thirty seven Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. They named it Comet Ping Pong. By twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: Comt Ping Pong had cemented itself as one of the
Speaker 1: trendier spots in the area with its raw, hipster esthetic,
Speaker 1: live music events, and gourmet pizza menu. As revealed in
Speaker 1: the Podesta emails, Comet Ping Pong had also been touted
Speaker 1: as a possible venue to host a political fundraise of
Speaker 1: that year for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Alaphantas's boyfriend also
Speaker 1: happened to be David Brock, founder of the media watchdog
Speaker 1: group Media Matters for America and one of the most
Speaker 1: influential figures in the Democratic Party around that time. Confused
Speaker 1: by the sudden spate of accusatory messages, Alaphantus showed them
Speaker 1: to some of his younger staff members, who promptly went
Speaker 1: on line to see if they could get to the
Speaker 1: bottom of it. What they found astonished them. Due to
Speaker 1: its mention in John Podesta's emails, Comet Ping Pong had
Speaker 1: been pulled into the sex's ring rumors too. Alaphantus's instagram
Speaker 1: had subsequently been scoured for evidence of involvement in satanism
Speaker 1: or pedophilia, and so too was the pizzeria and everything
Speaker 1: connected to it, from the layout of the menus to
Speaker 1: the restaurant's interior design. Anything from a picture of a
Speaker 1: toddler standing in a supermarket shopping basket posted to Aliphantus's
Speaker 1: Instagram to a mural painted on the restaurant walls six
Speaker 1: years previously were confirmed as evidence that Comet Ping Pong
Speaker 1: was being used as the key venue for the Satanic
Speaker 1: child abuse. Some even began to speculate that the mere
Speaker 1: mention of cheese pizza anywhere was code for child pornography.
Speaker 1: Three days after James Aliphantus was first called a pedophile,
Speaker 1: online hashtag pizza gate appeared for the first time on Twitter.
Speaker 1: This was tweeted thousands of times over the next few
Speaker 1: days and weeks, most prominently by what were later found
Speaker 1: to be bots running through servers coming out of the
Speaker 1: Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Vietnam. Hillary Clinton would go on
Speaker 1: to lose the twenty sixteen election, though there has been
Speaker 1: much debate about the true impact of the reopening of
Speaker 1: the investigation into her emails only six weeks before the election.
Speaker 1: Since the margin by which she lost was so slim,
Speaker 1: many have argued, not unreasonably, that the investigation cost her
Speaker 1: the presidency. If some were hoping that her loss would
Speaker 1: put an end to the Bizaar pizza Gate conspiracy, however,
Speaker 1: they would be very much mistaken. Soon the conspiracy was
Speaker 1: jumping from online forums to full scale reports from various
Speaker 1: citizen journalist organizations like Alex Jones's info Wars, which gleefully
Speaker 1: promoted the story. One info War's video titled Pizza Gate
Speaker 1: is Real was watched over two million times. On November sixteenth,
Speaker 1: the online provocateur, often described as an old right political activist,
Speaker 1: Jack but Sobiec, streamed alive video of himself visiting the pizzeria,
Speaker 1: where he then proceeded to film an innocent children's party
Speaker 1: taking place in the restaurant's back room. Though he found
Speaker 1: no evidence of a satanic child abuse ring, many praised
Speaker 1: him online for his supposedly valiant efforts to get to
Speaker 1: the truth of the rumors. The following day, the website
Speaker 1: to the Vigilante Citizen published an article forensically detailing the
Speaker 1: various pieces of apparent evidence that the restaurant had links
Speaker 1: to a child's sex ring. Once again, pictures of children
Speaker 1: taken from James Alifantas's instagram were highlighted, as well as
Speaker 1: the imagery used in Comet Ping Pong's menu and branding.
Speaker 1: An image of two Ping Pong paddles crossed over at
Speaker 1: the handle was alleged to be a clear nod to
Speaker 1: the low go of a blue and pink heart tied together,
Speaker 1: said to mean child lover in pedophile circles. By then,
Speaker 1: the truth if it had ever mattered at all, was
Speaker 1: completely irrelevant. Just through the sheer will of its believers
Speaker 1: and the repeated proliferation of the rumors, the conspiracy had
Speaker 1: taken on a life of its own. It had grown
Speaker 1: arms and legs, and, like Freddy Krueger's tongue lapping out
Speaker 1: from a phone in a teenager's dream, it was starting
Speaker 1: to manifest in the real world. It began smallish at first,
Speaker 1: with simple phone calls to the restaurant, with callers demanding
Speaker 1: to know the truth about Hillary Clinton and the depraved
Speaker 1: sex ring. Then came the death threats. Sometimes the phone
Speaker 1: barely stopped ringing from opening to close. Early on December fourth,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, twenty eight year old Edgar Madison Welch or
Speaker 1: just Madison to his friends, woke up at his home
Speaker 1: in Salisbury, North Carolina, and rolled out of bed. After
Speaker 1: getting dressed, the father of two young daughters told his
Speaker 1: girlfriend that he had some things to do and left
Speaker 1: the house. From there, he took a three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty mile drive to Washington, where, at some time just
Speaker 1: before three pm, he parked up outside the Comet Ping
Speaker 1: Pong pizzeria pulled an R fifteen assault rifle out of
Speaker 1: the boot and proceeded to march into the restaurant. Inside.
Speaker 1: Startled diners took one look at the rifle and dashed
Speaker 1: outside to safety as Welch pressed on, clearly looking for something.
Speaker 1: The man later said he'd simply driven there with the
Speaker 1: intention of taking a look at the place for himself,
Speaker 1: but by the time he arrived he changed his plans.
Speaker 1: Spurred on by the thought of innocent children being sexually abused,
Speaker 1: he decided to arm himself before stepping inside in case
Speaker 1: anyone there needed rescuing. After pointing the gun at one
Speaker 1: staff member, he continued into the ping pong room at
Speaker 1: the back, and then on into the kitchen. One of
Speaker 1: the many rumors about the venue was that located somewhere
Speaker 1: within it was a secret room leading to a set
Speaker 1: of tunnels that were used by members of the apparent
Speaker 1: child sex ring to ferry live and dead children in
Speaker 1: and out at the restaurant, but Welch found no such thing.
Speaker 1: Police arrived soon after, and after a series of shots
Speaker 1: were heard from inside, they shouted for Welch to give
Speaker 1: himself up. The man did as they said, walking quietly
Speaker 1: out of the restaurant with his head on his hands
Speaker 1: and into the middle of the street, from where he
Speaker 1: was handcuffed and arrested. When asked later why he didn't
Speaker 1: think he'd found any abused children on the property, he
Speaker 1: admitted that regrettably, the intel he had probably wasn't a
Speaker 1: hundred percent. The story shocked the nation, while many who'd
Speaker 1: previously advocated for the conspiracy were forced to face up
Speaker 1: to the likely reality that Comet Ping Pong had not
Speaker 1: been quite what they thought it was. It seemed then
Speaker 1: the story might finally be put to bed, but then
Speaker 1: something new came to light. Welch, it turned out, had
Speaker 1: at one time been a bit part actor, and then
Speaker 1: it all made sense again. His strange trip to the restaurant,
Speaker 1: his arrest, and subsequent claim that there was nothing strange
Speaker 1: going on at all and clearly all been an act.
Speaker 1: Welch too, was one of them. Unexplained. The book and audiobook,
Speaker 1: featuring stories that have never before been featured on the show,
Speaker 1: is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes,
Speaker 1: and Noble Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements have unexplained,
Speaker 1: including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain
Speaker 1: Smith Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with
Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own
Speaker 1: you'd like to share. You can reach us online at
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and
Speaker 1: Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward slash Unexplained Podcast