WEBVTT - CZM Rewind: The Civil War False Flag 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:12.880 Cool Zone Media. Hey everybody, Molly here, I don't have 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:15.800 a new episode for you this week. I'm sorry about that. 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:18.919 I promise I'll be back next week with a new 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:23.599 Weird Little Guy for you. This rerun is almost a 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:28.240 year old. The show is almost a year old. This 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:31.920 was the second ever episode of Weird Little Guys, So 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:34.680 if you haven't been a listener from the beginning, it 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:38.240 might not be a rerun for you. Like I said, 0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:41.040 I promise I'll have something new for you next week. 0:00:41.520 --> 0:00:45.320 But for now, I hope you'll enjoy the story of Gerald, 0:00:45.960 --> 0:00:51.360 a man who loved historical reenactment, sex dolls, and writing 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:59.800 online reviews of fast food restaurants. On October fourteenth to 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:03.800 twenty seventeen, the Battle of Cedar Creek was happening all 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:08.880 over again. Originally fought on October nineteenth, eighteen sixty four, 0:01:09.560 --> 0:01:12.320 the crushing defeat meant Confederate troops could no longer maneuver 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:15.080 through the Shenandoah Valley to march on Washington, and the 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:18.360 Union victory was the last minute boost for Lincoln's reelection campaign. 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.240 One hundred and fifty three years later, as re enactors 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:25.319 in Middletown Virginia, milled around in their historically accurate wool 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:27.960 uniforms and replica weaponry, waiting for the battle to begin. 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:32.240 One of them found an alarming anachronism in the Sutler's tent, 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:41.440 a pipe bomb. I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird, 0:01:41.480 --> 0:02:00.480 little guys. The Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation has held their 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:03.800 annual re enactment of the battle since nineteen ninety, but 0:02:03.920 --> 0:02:08.000 twenty seventeen was a politically fraught time in America. On 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:11.000 August twelfth, twenty seventeen, the Unite the Right rally in Charlesville, 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.760 Virginia ended when a young rally attendee who kept a 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:17.040 framed picture of Adolph Hitler on his nightstand, ran his 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:19.400 car through a crowd of peaceful protesters marching on a 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:25.440 closed street. He injured dozens and killed Heather Hire. Images 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:28.359 of the crowd that day, with rally attendees carrying Confederate 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:32.320 flags and swastikas side by side, flooded the national consciousness. 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:37.440 Most Americans heard the word antifa for the first time 0:02:37.480 --> 0:02:41.800 that week. The national conversation about Confederate monuments, which had 0:02:41.800 --> 0:02:47.480 been simmering all year, boiled over the city council in Baltimore, Maryland, 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.160 voted to remove their Confederate statues. Just two days later. 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:53.400 The same week, the mayor of Lexington, Kentucky, asked his 0:02:53.440 --> 0:02:55.680 city council to approve the removal of the statues at 0:02:55.720 --> 0:02:59.440 their courthouse. A Confederate monument in Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:04.400 LA was removed overnight. From Florida to California, Confederate monuments 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:08.800 were removed, toppled, and vandalized. No one wanted to be 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:14.040 the next Charlottesville. Six days after the rally, officials in Manassas, 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:16.400 a small city outside of d C about two hours 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:19.280 north of Charlottesville, announced they were calling off the annual 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:21.920 Civil War Reenactment weekend scheduled for the end of August. 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:26.239 The Washington Posts reported that the reenactors themselves were worried 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:30.000 the quote racially charged atmosphere around the country over whether 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:34.880 to remove Civil War monuments would lead to violence. So 0:03:34.920 --> 0:03:37.640 the concern was not whether it was appropriate to continue 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:40.680 celebrating the Confederacy in the wake of the deadly rally, 0:03:41.320 --> 0:03:46.000 but rather anxiety about the possibility that Antifa America's new 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:51.280 black clad boogeyman would target these events and these growing 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.760 fears of persecution from the radical left were confirmed on 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:58.320 September twenty third, when the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation received 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:02.520 an ominous letter in the mail. Instead of a return haddress, 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.200 the envelope bore a symbol that was fresh in their minds, 0:04:05.880 --> 0:04:10.480 a black circle containing a black flag overlaying a red flag. 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:18.279 It was from Antifa. The letter inside read, you need. 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:20.760 To cancel your coming up celebration of the Civil War 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:25.400 on October thirteen, fourteen fifteen, twenty seventeen. If you choose 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:28.760 to continue with this farce of history that clearly celebrates 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:31.560 the war to keep African Americans in chains, then we 0:04:31.600 --> 0:04:34.400 have no choice but to come in protest. We will 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.080 come and disrupt and cause problems for all those who 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:40.800 attend the atrocity of history. Several hundred of our supporters 0:04:40.839 --> 0:04:45.720 will attend and slash tires, block traffic, harass patrons and reenactors. 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:49.600 We will make Charlottesville look like a Sunday picnic. Many 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:52.279 of us have dogs, so we'll bring dog feces to 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.760 throw on people. We will also throw cups of human urine. 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.280 We might resort to actually firing guns into the camps 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:01.159 and at the reenactors will put poison in the water. 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:03.839 You would use noise to disrupt the battles in sleep. 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:07.440 These events must stop. Our local organizer tells us he 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:10.440 is ready to go. You have been warned now. If 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:10.880 it is not. 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.320 Called off, we will destroy you. 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:15.560 You have less than one month to issue a cancelation 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:17.160 notice to it asap. 0:05:20.680 --> 0:05:23.440 Days before the event in October, the Cedar Creek Battlefield 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:26.960 Foundation did announce publicly that they had received a threatening letter, 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:29.799 but that the event would go on with increased security, 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:32.920 and the details of the threat were not released, but 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:37.039 speculation immediately turned to the Culture War, and after the 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:40.599 bomb was discovered, the National Review wrote, the simplest and 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:43.919 most logical explanation is that this is a new, violent 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:48.359 extension of the effort to remove Confederate statues. The Federalists 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:51.599 lamented that history itself was becoming another casualty in the 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:55.640 culture War. The threatening letters continued for over a year, 0:05:55.800 --> 0:06:00.760 becoming increasingly gruesome and terrifyingly specific, targeting members of the 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:05.360 board at Cedar Creek and their family members. Cedar Creek 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:08.720 had to cancel the reenactment in twenty eighteen after one 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:11.159 director of the Foundation resigned in fear for his family 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:13.240 safety when the letter writer threatened to put a bomb 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:16.680 under his mother's car. The new director started getting threats 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:20.720 of sexual violence against her young daughters. The mayor of 0:06:20.760 --> 0:06:23.719 Gettysburg received a letter threatening to bomb the annual Gettysburg 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:29.039 Remembrance Day parade. Would Antifa stop at nothing to destroy history? 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.120 But it was at Antifa. It wasn't Antifa at all. 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:40.679 It was Gerald. Gerald Leonard Drake born in nineteen fifty 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:45.360 eight in Michigan, loves the Civil War. In nineteen ninety six, 0:06:45.400 --> 0:06:48.240 his hometown paper, The port Here in Thymes, Harold wrote 0:06:48.240 --> 0:06:51.719 an article about his dedication to reenactment. He'd gotten a 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:53.840 second job to save up the ten thousand dollars it 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:56.680 would cost him to transport Judith, his five hundred and 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:00.240 twenty five pound replica Civil War canon, from Mission Wigan 0:07:00.320 --> 0:07:05.160 to Columbus, Georgia for the Chattahoochee Heritage Festival. Judith the 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:08.679 Canon was named after his wife, Judy, who would file 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:13.080 for divorce the following year. When he married his third wife, 0:07:13.120 --> 0:07:16.320 Donna in twenty ten, they took wedding photos in Civil 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:19.520 War era address at the Historic Adams County courthouse in Gettysburg. 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:24.239 They got two cats and named them Shiloh and Musket. 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:29.480 But the world was changing. The world of eighteen sixty 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:33.120 falls further away every day, no matter how historically accurate 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:36.880 the brass buttons on your coat are. In twenty eleven, 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:39.200 he posted a thread on a Civil War reenactment forum 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:43.240 about a living history event he'd recently participated in a 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:46.200 tour group. Was appalled that the re enactors, role playing 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:49.440 as soldiers reading aloud letters from home, read a letter 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:52.320 describing the brutal whipping of an enslaved person that was 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:56.320 riddled with racial slurs. Though he felt that the event 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.640 itself went well, he wrote that shit hit the fan 0:07:59.720 --> 0:08:03.440 afterwards and the liberals in the group had a bitch 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:07.520 session about appropriate language. 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:11.840 I guess what I'm asking here is, as living historians 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:14.320 and reenactors, aren't we supposed to do as good of 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:17.320 a job and impression of our ancestors as we possibly can. 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:19.760 We used to get praise and accolades for doing a 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:22.600 great first person impression. Let me know if anyone else 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:24.480 is having this kind of trouble for being the best 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:24.920 you can be. 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:31.040 Surprisingly, even in twenty eleven, fellow users on the Civil 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:35.640 War message board disagreed with Gerald. Their reenactment groups is 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:39.480 committed as they were to historical accuracy, did not use 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:43.680 the N word. One user, whose profile bears the badge 0:08:43.720 --> 0:08:46.720 for Member of the Year wrote that he is quote 0:08:47.160 --> 0:08:50.360 careful to avoid certain language in terms, always realizing that 0:08:50.400 --> 0:08:53.080 my performance is in the present century. To modern day 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:55.480 folks who live in the present, it would not understand 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:58.320 the customs, practices, and language of the nineteenth century with 0:08:58.320 --> 0:09:02.520 any real clarity. Another user, a former moderator of the forum, 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:04.880 replied to a comment from Drake that he was looking 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:09.120 for a less PC group, wrote that he can't imagine 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:11.360 there is any group out there that would condone that 0:09:11.480 --> 0:09:14.479 kind of language, and all this achieves his bad publicity 0:09:14.480 --> 0:09:18.400 for reenactors, adding that those tourists surely all went home 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:21.080 that day and told their friends about the racists they 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:24.920 saw at the event. A year later, Drake posted again 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:27.320 in the same Civil War forum, complaining that people are 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:31.560 getting too hung up on safety, writing remember when reenacting 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:34.280 used to be fun and mourning the old days when 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:39.240 battle reenactments were more like real battle. Again. Fellow reenactors 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:42.760 pushed back with one veteran reenactor, writing that he did 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:46.240 indeed remember those days. He'd once had a costume ruined 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:49.400 and gotten pretty serious burns when another reenactor shot him 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:53.400 with a replica shotgun. Even in his chosen community of 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:56.599 Civil War reenactors, Gerald was living in a version of 0:09:56.640 --> 0:10:01.120 the past that was becoming increasingly lonely. In October of 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:05.400 twenty fourteen, things really started to fall apart. His third 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:08.400 marriage was on the rocks, and after what sounds like 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:11.480 a pretty petty dispute, Gerald was kicked out of his 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:15.640 Civil War reenactment unit as a volunteer at the Cedar 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:18.160 Creek Battlefield. He'd heard a rumor that someone was planning 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:22.160 to sneak into the reenactment without paying the registration fee. 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:26.600 Gerald and his friend and fellow reenactor Daryl found this 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:29.480 to be an outrageous offense and decided to print up 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:33.160 flyers letting everyone know that Duffy Miller wasn't going to 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:36.240 pay his entry fee and anyone who sees him should 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:40.080 stop him. Duffy Miller, as it turns out, was their 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:44.600 unit commander, and he was not pleased to see the posters. 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:49.080 He kicks Gerald and Daryl out of the unit. Jerald 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:52.079 continued volunteering at Cedar Creek, but it seems this incident 0:10:52.160 --> 0:10:55.680 was the end of his love for reenacting. Now. I 0:10:55.720 --> 0:10:58.360 can't find exactly how much it cost to register for 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:01.120 the event in twenty fourteen, but the twenty twenty four 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:03.800 registration fee is thirty five dollars, and I know from 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:06.559 the forum post that's actually been increased in the last 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.200 couple of years to cover the new security measures that 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:11.840 they have to have, So you have to assume it 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:16.640 was much less ten years ago. So the inciting incident 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:19.920 for this entire debacle was a couple of old guys 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:24.440 fighting about twenty bucks and the sanctity of Confederate reenactment. 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:28.920 I guess, so what's a guy to do now, First 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.280 they stop letting him say the N word, You're not 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:34.240 even allowed to shoot each other anymore, and now he's 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:37.520 kicked out of his unit entirely, a hobby he'd loved 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:41.720 since the early nineties was being ruined. They weren't saying 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:45.199 like wokeness back then, but I think if this happened today, 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:48.000 Gerald would say that it was being ruined by woke 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:51.920 He'd been left by three wives and now his own 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:55.480 civil war unit didn't want him around, but he continued 0:11:55.559 --> 0:12:01.439 volunteering at Cedar Creek. He retired, He built and little models, 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:06.080 He got into model rockets. He traveled the world, and 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:11.120 he posted a lot, and apparently he held on to 0:12:11.240 --> 0:12:13.760 his anger about that incident at the twenty fourteen Cedar 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:17.320 Creek Reenactment. I spent a lot of time combing through 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:20.720 hundreds of pages of court documents, years and years of 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:23.720 his posts on forums, but I can't quite sort out 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:27.600 what the catalyst was in twenty seventeen. Why did he 0:12:27.640 --> 0:12:31.000 wait three years to put that bomb at Cedar Creek. 0:12:32.120 --> 0:12:34.640 Maybe he saw the news about the Manassas Reenactment getting 0:12:34.640 --> 0:12:36.760 canceled out of fear of political violence at the wake 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:40.839 up Unite the Right and just got an idea, because 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:46.080 within weeks of that news story, Gerald started writing letters. 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.400 After his first letter to the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:53.760 in September, he followed up by placing an actual bomb 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:58.640 at the event in October. The reenactment community is pretty 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:03.720 small and the bomb was big news, but a rumor 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:06.440 was going around on Facebook that a teenager had been 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.160 arrested for the original letter, and then that was sort 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:12.079 of conflated. As you know, people are posting and reposting 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:14.560 and talking about the post that they saw. It was 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:17.640 conflated to the idea that someone had been arrested for 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:21.840 the bomb, and the rumor was very quickly disproven. No 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:24.160 one was arrested, replacing the bomb in the vendor's tent, 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:28.960 But the letter writer was frustrated. If they thought the 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:33.959 culprit had been apprehended, they wouldn't be afraid anymore. John Buchheister, 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:36.200 a vendor at the event who told a reporter that 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:38.640 he was present when the bomb was found, was one 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:41.640 of the posters in that Facebook rumor mill And there's 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:44.920 nothing malicious here. He just reposted something that someone else 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.640 had said that the would be bomber had been apprehended. 0:13:48.679 --> 0:13:51.000 I think there was a lot of relief in believing that, 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:53.800 so a lot of people were posting it. But I 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:57.480 guess our letter writer saw John Buchheister's post because on 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:00.960 November thirteenth, twenty seventeen, he opened a letter addressed to 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:05.040 his home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Like the first letter, the 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:07.439 envelope was printed with the ANTIFA symbol in place of 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:12.000 a return address, inside a typed letter read. 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.600 Thank you so much for putting on Facebook that a 0:14:17.640 --> 0:14:20.800 teenager was arrested for the threat to Cedar Creek. It 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:23.640 was so much easier to bring in a bomb do 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:26.160 something like this again for us. We are coming to 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:29.760 Gettysburg parade and speech. Thank you again for all your 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:31.400 help in the last terror event. 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:36.880 That same week, a local newspaper in Gettysburg received a 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:41.440 letter threatening the upcoming Gettysburg Remembrance Day parade. The letter 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:43.760 threatened to drive trucks through the crowd at the parade, 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:47.040 a troubling callback to the still recent vehicular murderer Unite 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:50.880 the Right, and threatened to put sharpshooters in windows and 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:54.960 on rooftops. The letter writer ended the note by giving 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:58.200 a detailed description of the bomb at Cedar Creek quote 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:02.960 for proof that we did the sea terror attack. But 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.160 just as Cedar Creek had not canceled when they were threatened, 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:09.560 the Gettysburg Rememberance Day parade was not canceled that year, 0:15:10.240 --> 0:15:12.560 but the route was significantly shortened to allow for a 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:17.440 heavy police presence. S Chris Anders, a Republican political activist, 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:21.280 wrote on Facebook, apparently Antifa and other hate groups are 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:23.600 headed to try and cause problems this Saturday at the 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:27.200 annual Remembrance Day parade, but he wrote that he would 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:29.600 be marching with his brothers in gray rather than giving 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:33.400 in to terrorists. There are nearly one hundred comments on 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:36.560 this Facebook post, mostly agreeing that Dantifa must be stopped 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:40.640 or offering questionable safety tips, like advising that you should 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:43.280 use a wool scarf to protect yourself from tear gas. 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:47.120 I have to assume that would only make things worse. 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:52.440 I feel like wool is very absorbent. But one loan commenter, 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:54.880 a reenactor from New England who rides with the First 0:15:54.920 --> 0:16:00.400 Main Cavalry, had a different theory. He wrote, I bet 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:03.320 you five dollars that the perpetrator is a reenactor or 0:16:03.400 --> 0:16:07.440 former reenactor. No offense to anyone, but no one knows 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:11.000 about rem Day beyond reenactors and locals. For it to 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:13.200 be a target, someone would have to be aware of it, 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:16.880 and there are plenty of other high profile, low security 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:21.560 events with bigger crowd numbers to choose. From his comment, 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:24.320 drew ire from the victimized Confederates, obsessed with the idea 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:27.920 of a massive conspiracy from the radical left. He was, 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:45.080 of course correct and now here's where things start to 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:50.040 get really weird. Just some truly inexplicable behavior with deep 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:53.560 weird roots. I mean, I guess that's the show, right, 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:56.640 This guy's weird. But here's where it takes its super 0:16:56.640 --> 0:17:01.120 weird turn. Gerald is retired at this point, and when 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:04.680 he's not traveling, he's volunteering. He's still volunteering at Cedar 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:07.560 Creek even though he doesn't reenact anymore. But he's also 0:17:07.640 --> 0:17:12.040 volunteering at sky Meadows State Park. It's not entirely clear 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:14.720 why a registered sex offender was allowed to volunteer at 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:17.840 the state park alongside a high school student, but that's 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:19.720 what it says in the affidavit. So I guess that 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:22.720 one fell through the cracks at sky Meadows because while 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.320 he did successfully petition to get himself removed from the 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:28.960 sex offender registry in twenty twenty one, in twenty eighteen, 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:33.359 the background check required for volunteers at state parks would 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:35.560 have shown that he was a registered sex offender for 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:39.080 a two thousand and four conviction in Ohio for sexual 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:44.640 imposition and child endangerment. And again, I'll be so clear 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:47.800 with you right up front, there's no allegation that Drake 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:52.760 was involved in any inappropriate sexual conduct as a volunteer anywhere, 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:54.960 not at the state park, not anywhere. So in the 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.680 time period of these events, there's no allegation that he's 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:02.840 touching any children or engaging in any inappropriate sexual conduct. 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:05.800 But I'm not just telling you he's a registered sex 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:09.560 offender to sort of point and laugh at that. As 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:15.200 a circumstance, these things intersect. So in twenty eighteen, he's 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:18.480 volunteering at the park with this teenage boy, and one 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:21.400 afternoon in February, they're volunteering together. They're shooting the shit 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:24.760 fill in the time, and Gerald, who is sixty at 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:27.679 this point, is telling this teenage boy about his hobby 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:31.360 of Civil War reenactment, which is very tragically in decline. 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:34.880 The topic of the twenty seventeen reenactment at Cedar Creek 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:38.359 comes up. I have to assume Gerald brought it up, 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:41.320 because why would the seventeen year old boy have brought 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:44.159 that up. But Gerald is telling the kid about some 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:48.760 funny articles about that twenty seventeen event. He later emailed 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:52.400 the teenager what appeared to be photographs of newspaper clippings 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:57.359 about the bombing. But in these articles the bomb went off. 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:01.960 The articles he emails this tea nag contained details of 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:05.840 the bomb actually killing people, with more deaths caused by 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:10.359 subsequent sniper fire. But we know the bomb didn't really 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:14.200 go off. No one got shot, no one got hurt, 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:19.280 nothing really happened. The articles he showed his young friend 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:23.480 were completely fake. The federal agents investigating the case wrote 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:26.280 that attempts to locate sources for these fake newspaper clippings 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:30.480 turned up nothing. I mean, not even anything online showing 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.320 these fake articles. Nothing, there's nothing. He must have made 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:38.960 them himself, and that's where his sex offender status ties 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:41.919 back in. In two thousand and three, he was indicted 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:47.399 in Auglaize County, Ohio for gross sexual imposition, and shortly 0:19:47.400 --> 0:19:51.480 after he's indicted, someone start sending weird letters to the 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:55.600 Auglais County prosecutor. The letters were made to appear as 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:57.320 though they were sent by a member of the police 0:19:57.320 --> 0:20:01.000 department in Drake's hometown of Port Huron, Michigan, and they 0:20:01.080 --> 0:20:05.160 appeared to prove that Drake's second wife was a child abuser. 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:09.679 The letter writer sent a forged polygraph report on Michigan 0:20:09.760 --> 0:20:13.560 State Police letterhead and a forged notarized statement from Drake's 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:17.879 estranged wife, and when his home was eventually searched, police 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:21.520 found a doctored page from the local newspaper. He had 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:25.560 taken an actual newspaper and manually altered it with a 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:29.080 false news story about his estranged second wife, Susan, pleading 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:32.960 guilty to child abuse and endangerment. No such news story 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:35.480 ever existed, and I can find no evidence that Susan 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:38.920 was ever charged with such a crime. Maybe a more 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:42.520 thorough journalist would have pushed harder for the details here, 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:45.800 but court cases involving sexual abuse of a minor tend 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:50.000 to be completely closed. Those documents are sealed unless someone 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:52.639 was sitting in those hearings, and there's local news reports 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:55.320 about the testimony. You're just you're not going to find it, 0:20:56.400 --> 0:20:59.120 and short of reaching out to the parties involved, there's 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:01.960 no way from me to know exactly what led to 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:05.919 Gerald Drake being convicted of sexual imposition and child endangerment 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:08.840 or why he tried to frame his strange wife for it. 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:12.880 But I can tell you that after his conviction, there's 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:15.280 a note on the docket that the judge prohibited Drake 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:18.560 from contacting his second ex wife and her minor daughter 0:21:18.600 --> 0:21:21.240 from a prior marriage. So I think we can get 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:24.600 the gist of the situation without me asking a young 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:27.399 woman why her stepdad, a man now in prison for 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:30.720 making a bomb, was court ordered to stay away from 0:21:30.760 --> 0:21:34.680 her when she was ten. Take from that what you will. 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:37.520 The relevant kernel of that story, though, is those fake 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:42.080 newspaper articles. In two thousand and three, he's manually cutting 0:21:42.080 --> 0:21:46.080 and pasting by hand and xeroxing his creations to disguise 0:21:46.119 --> 0:21:50.000 the alterations. He's arts and craftsing his way into an 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:52.359 alternate reality where his ex wife is the one in 0:21:52.440 --> 0:21:56.480 dangering children, not him. And in twenty eighteen, he's doing 0:21:56.480 --> 0:21:59.480 it again. He's making fake newspaper clippings about what he 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:03.720 wished were real. He's showing this teenage boy a reality 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.240 where the bomb did go off and the people who 0:22:06.240 --> 0:22:10.080 snubbed him died. And while he was in jail for 0:22:10.119 --> 0:22:12.399 that sex offense a short eight months in an Ohio 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:18.199 County jail, he made another art project of sorts. In 0:22:18.240 --> 0:22:20.960 September two thousand and four, the Auglais County Sheriff's office 0:22:21.000 --> 0:22:25.240 reached out to the FBI Field office in Cleveland. Gerald 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:27.400 had been trying to make friends in jail by showing 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:31.199 off his knowledge of explosives. He produced eight pages of 0:22:31.240 --> 0:22:34.520 hand drawn diagrams and instructions for creating a pipe bomb, 0:22:34.960 --> 0:22:38.119 a CO two cartridge bomb, a Coleman fuel bomb, a 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:41.600 propane tank bomb, and diagrams about how to modify the 0:22:41.680 --> 0:22:44.840 kind of inert grenades you can buy as antiques or 0:22:44.840 --> 0:22:47.640 at the Army surplus store, and how to turn them 0:22:47.680 --> 0:22:52.360 back into live grenades. And the diagram of the pipe 0:22:52.400 --> 0:22:54.280 bomb he drew in jail in two thousand and four 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:59.760 is remarkably similar to the device he made in twenty seventeen. 0:23:01.240 --> 0:23:03.320 It doesn't appear that anything ever came of the incident 0:23:03.359 --> 0:23:05.119 in the jail back in two thousand and four. You know, 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:07.560 the Sheriff's office contact of the FBI, and they said, hey, 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:09.240 we've got these weird drawings. What do you guys think 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:12.040 about this. There's no indication that there was follow up 0:23:12.040 --> 0:23:16.240 from there, but apparently they held on to them. Those 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:19.920 drawings remained in a filing cabinet somewhere in Ohio for 0:23:20.160 --> 0:23:23.680 twenty years. It's kind of surprising that they still had 0:23:23.680 --> 0:23:27.000 those drawings in twenty nineteen, but they are included in 0:23:27.040 --> 0:23:30.520 the affidavit for the search warrant, so in the spring 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:33.600 of twenty eighteen, he seems pretty content with his hobbies. 0:23:34.280 --> 0:23:37.080 He's making fake newspaper articles about his bomb going off 0:23:37.119 --> 0:23:40.480 and showing them to a kid he volunteers with based 0:23:40.480 --> 0:23:43.320 on his eBay review history. He's painting miniature models of 0:23:43.359 --> 0:23:47.680 Godzilla and Frankenstein, both five stars from Gerald, and he's 0:23:47.680 --> 0:23:51.240 getting into model rocketry. In March, he took a solo 0:23:51.320 --> 0:23:55.879 vacation to Amsterdam. His trip Advisor account provides a pretty 0:23:55.960 --> 0:23:59.160 robust log of his travels. He wasn't a big fan 0:23:59.200 --> 0:24:02.560 of the Jewish History Museum, titling his review not really 0:24:02.600 --> 0:24:06.000 for Gentiles and writing that he felt shorted by the 0:24:06.080 --> 0:24:09.280 lack of artifacts from the death camps at the Holocaust Museum. 0:24:09.800 --> 0:24:12.240 He felt that it had been quote scrubbed of shock 0:24:12.480 --> 0:24:15.280 due to the new PC way all museums are going. 0:24:16.520 --> 0:24:18.840 He felt the same way about the Dutch Resistance Museum, 0:24:18.840 --> 0:24:21.080 writing if you were looking for the story of the 0:24:21.080 --> 0:24:23.760 full account of atrocities done on the citizens, well this 0:24:23.880 --> 0:24:28.159 display doesn't have it it. Like many museums today have 0:24:28.280 --> 0:24:30.760 had to lighten up on their truth so as not 0:24:30.840 --> 0:24:35.680 to offend anyone. He did, however, really enjoy the Museum 0:24:35.680 --> 0:24:38.440