Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hey everybody, Molly here, I don't have
Speaker 1: a new episode for you this week. I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 1: I promise I'll be back next week with a new
Speaker 1: Weird Little Guy for you. This rerun is almost a
Speaker 1: year old. The show is almost a year old. This
Speaker 1: was the second ever episode of Weird Little Guys, So
Speaker 1: if you haven't been a listener from the beginning, it
Speaker 1: might not be a rerun for you. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I promise I'll have something new for you next week.
Speaker 1: But for now, I hope you'll enjoy the story of Gerald,
Speaker 1: a man who loved historical reenactment, sex dolls, and writing
Speaker 1: online reviews of fast food restaurants. On October fourteenth to
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, the Battle of Cedar Creek was happening all
Speaker 1: over again. Originally fought on October nineteenth, eighteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: the crushing defeat meant Confederate troops could no longer maneuver
Speaker 1: through the Shenandoah Valley to march on Washington, and the
Speaker 1: Union victory was the last minute boost for Lincoln's reelection campaign.
Speaker 1: One hundred and fifty three years later, as re enactors
Speaker 1: in Middletown Virginia, milled around in their historically accurate wool
Speaker 1: uniforms and replica weaponry, waiting for the battle to begin.
Speaker 1: One of them found an alarming anachronism in the Sutler's tent,
Speaker 1: a pipe bomb. I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird,
Speaker 1: little guys. The Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation has held their
Speaker 1: annual re enactment of the battle since nineteen ninety, but
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen was a politically fraught time in America. On
Speaker 1: August twelfth, twenty seventeen, the Unite the Right rally in Charlesville,
Speaker 1: Virginia ended when a young rally attendee who kept a
Speaker 1: framed picture of Adolph Hitler on his nightstand, ran his
Speaker 1: car through a crowd of peaceful protesters marching on a
Speaker 1: closed street. He injured dozens and killed Heather Hire. Images
Speaker 1: of the crowd that day, with rally attendees carrying Confederate
Speaker 1: flags and swastikas side by side, flooded the national consciousness.
Speaker 1: Most Americans heard the word antifa for the first time
Speaker 1: that week. The national conversation about Confederate monuments, which had
Speaker 1: been simmering all year, boiled over the city council in Baltimore, Maryland,
Speaker 1: voted to remove their Confederate statues. Just two days later.
Speaker 1: The same week, the mayor of Lexington, Kentucky, asked his
Speaker 1: city council to approve the removal of the statues at
Speaker 1: their courthouse. A Confederate monument in Hollywood Forever Cemetery in
Speaker 1: LA was removed overnight. From Florida to California, Confederate monuments
Speaker 1: were removed, toppled, and vandalized. No one wanted to be
Speaker 1: the next Charlottesville. Six days after the rally, officials in Manassas,
Speaker 1: a small city outside of d C about two hours
Speaker 1: north of Charlottesville, announced they were calling off the annual
Speaker 1: Civil War Reenactment weekend scheduled for the end of August.
Speaker 1: The Washington Posts reported that the reenactors themselves were worried
Speaker 1: the quote racially charged atmosphere around the country over whether
Speaker 1: to remove Civil War monuments would lead to violence. So
Speaker 1: the concern was not whether it was appropriate to continue
Speaker 1: celebrating the Confederacy in the wake of the deadly rally,
Speaker 1: but rather anxiety about the possibility that Antifa America's new
Speaker 1: black clad boogeyman would target these events and these growing
Speaker 1: fears of persecution from the radical left were confirmed on
Speaker 1: September twenty third, when the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation received
Speaker 1: an ominous letter in the mail. Instead of a return haddress,
Speaker 1: the envelope bore a symbol that was fresh in their minds,
Speaker 1: a black circle containing a black flag overlaying a red flag.
Speaker 1: It was from Antifa. The letter inside read, you need.
Speaker 2: To cancel your coming up celebration of the Civil War
Speaker 2: on October thirteen, fourteen fifteen, twenty seventeen. If you choose
Speaker 2: to continue with this farce of history that clearly celebrates
Speaker 2: the war to keep African Americans in chains, then we
Speaker 2: have no choice but to come in protest. We will
Speaker 2: come and disrupt and cause problems for all those who
Speaker 2: attend the atrocity of history. Several hundred of our supporters
Speaker 2: will attend and slash tires, block traffic, harass patrons and reenactors.
Speaker 2: We will make Charlottesville look like a Sunday picnic. Many
Speaker 2: of us have dogs, so we'll bring dog feces to
Speaker 2: throw on people. We will also throw cups of human urine.
Speaker 2: We might resort to actually firing guns into the camps
Speaker 2: and at the reenactors will put poison in the water.
Speaker 2: You would use noise to disrupt the battles in sleep.
Speaker 2: These events must stop. Our local organizer tells us he
Speaker 2: is ready to go. You have been warned now. If
Speaker 2: it is not.
Speaker 1: Called off, we will destroy you.
Speaker 2: You have less than one month to issue a cancelation
Speaker 2: notice to it asap.
Speaker 1: Days before the event in October, the Cedar Creek Battlefield
Speaker 1: Foundation did announce publicly that they had received a threatening letter,
Speaker 1: but that the event would go on with increased security,
Speaker 1: and the details of the threat were not released, but
Speaker 1: speculation immediately turned to the Culture War, and after the
Speaker 1: bomb was discovered, the National Review wrote, the simplest and
Speaker 1: most logical explanation is that this is a new, violent
Speaker 1: extension of the effort to remove Confederate statues. The Federalists
Speaker 1: lamented that history itself was becoming another casualty in the
Speaker 1: culture War. The threatening letters continued for over a year,
Speaker 1: becoming increasingly gruesome and terrifyingly specific, targeting members of the
Speaker 1: board at Cedar Creek and their family members. Cedar Creek
Speaker 1: had to cancel the reenactment in twenty eighteen after one
Speaker 1: director of the Foundation resigned in fear for his family
Speaker 1: safety when the letter writer threatened to put a bomb
Speaker 1: under his mother's car. The new director started getting threats
Speaker 1: of sexual violence against her young daughters. The mayor of
Speaker 1: Gettysburg received a letter threatening to bomb the annual Gettysburg
Speaker 1: Remembrance Day parade. Would Antifa stop at nothing to destroy history?
Speaker 1: But it was at Antifa. It wasn't Antifa at all.
Speaker 1: It was Gerald. Gerald Leonard Drake born in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: eight in Michigan, loves the Civil War. In nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: his hometown paper, The port Here in Thymes, Harold wrote
Speaker 1: an article about his dedication to reenactment. He'd gotten a
Speaker 1: second job to save up the ten thousand dollars it
Speaker 1: would cost him to transport Judith, his five hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five pound replica Civil War canon, from Mission Wigan
Speaker 1: to Columbus, Georgia for the Chattahoochee Heritage Festival. Judith the
Speaker 1: Canon was named after his wife, Judy, who would file
Speaker 1: for divorce the following year. When he married his third wife,
Speaker 1: Donna in twenty ten, they took wedding photos in Civil
Speaker 1: War era address at the Historic Adams County courthouse in Gettysburg.
Speaker 1: They got two cats and named them Shiloh and Musket.
Speaker 1: But the world was changing. The world of eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: falls further away every day, no matter how historically accurate
Speaker 1: the brass buttons on your coat are. In twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: he posted a thread on a Civil War reenactment forum
Speaker 1: about a living history event he'd recently participated in a
Speaker 1: tour group. Was appalled that the re enactors, role playing
Speaker 1: as soldiers reading aloud letters from home, read a letter
Speaker 1: describing the brutal whipping of an enslaved person that was
Speaker 1: riddled with racial slurs. Though he felt that the event
Speaker 1: itself went well, he wrote that shit hit the fan
Speaker 1: afterwards and the liberals in the group had a bitch
Speaker 1: session about appropriate language.
Speaker 2: I guess what I'm asking here is, as living historians
Speaker 2: and reenactors, aren't we supposed to do as good of
Speaker 2: a job and impression of our ancestors as we possibly can.
Speaker 2: We used to get praise and accolades for doing a
Speaker 2: great first person impression. Let me know if anyone else
Speaker 2: is having this kind of trouble for being the best
Speaker 2: you can be.
Speaker 1: Surprisingly, even in twenty eleven, fellow users on the Civil
Speaker 1: War message board disagreed with Gerald. Their reenactment groups is
Speaker 1: committed as they were to historical accuracy, did not use
Speaker 1: the N word. One user, whose profile bears the badge
Speaker 1: for Member of the Year wrote that he is quote
Speaker 1: careful to avoid certain language in terms, always realizing that
Speaker 1: my performance is in the present century. To modern day
Speaker 1: folks who live in the present, it would not understand
Speaker 1: the customs, practices, and language of the nineteenth century with
Speaker 1: any real clarity. Another user, a former moderator of the forum,
Speaker 1: replied to a comment from Drake that he was looking
Speaker 1: for a less PC group, wrote that he can't imagine
Speaker 1: there is any group out there that would condone that
Speaker 1: kind of language, and all this achieves his bad publicity
Speaker 1: for reenactors, adding that those tourists surely all went home
Speaker 1: that day and told their friends about the racists they
Speaker 1: saw at the event. A year later, Drake posted again
Speaker 1: in the same Civil War forum, complaining that people are
Speaker 1: getting too hung up on safety, writing remember when reenacting
Speaker 1: used to be fun and mourning the old days when
Speaker 1: battle reenactments were more like real battle. Again. Fellow reenactors
Speaker 1: pushed back with one veteran reenactor, writing that he did
Speaker 1: indeed remember those days. He'd once had a costume ruined
Speaker 1: and gotten pretty serious burns when another reenactor shot him
Speaker 1: with a replica shotgun. Even in his chosen community of
Speaker 1: Civil War reenactors, Gerald was living in a version of
Speaker 1: the past that was becoming increasingly lonely. In October of
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, things really started to fall apart. His third
Speaker 1: marriage was on the rocks, and after what sounds like
Speaker 1: a pretty petty dispute, Gerald was kicked out of his
Speaker 1: Civil War reenactment unit as a volunteer at the Cedar
Speaker 1: Creek Battlefield. He'd heard a rumor that someone was planning
Speaker 1: to sneak into the reenactment without paying the registration fee.
Speaker 1: Gerald and his friend and fellow reenactor Daryl found this
Speaker 1: to be an outrageous offense and decided to print up
Speaker 1: flyers letting everyone know that Duffy Miller wasn't going to
Speaker 1: pay his entry fee and anyone who sees him should
Speaker 1: stop him. Duffy Miller, as it turns out, was their
Speaker 1: unit commander, and he was not pleased to see the posters.
Speaker 1: He kicks Gerald and Daryl out of the unit. Jerald
Speaker 1: continued volunteering at Cedar Creek, but it seems this incident
Speaker 1: was the end of his love for reenacting. Now. I
Speaker 1: can't find exactly how much it cost to register for
Speaker 1: the event in twenty fourteen, but the twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: registration fee is thirty five dollars, and I know from
Speaker 1: the forum post that's actually been increased in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years to cover the new security measures that
Speaker 1: they have to have, So you have to assume it
Speaker 1: was much less ten years ago. So the inciting incident
Speaker 1: for this entire debacle was a couple of old guys
Speaker 1: fighting about twenty bucks and the sanctity of Confederate reenactment.
Speaker 1: I guess, so what's a guy to do now, First
Speaker 1: they stop letting him say the N word, You're not
Speaker 1: even allowed to shoot each other anymore, and now he's
Speaker 1: kicked out of his unit entirely, a hobby he'd loved
Speaker 1: since the early nineties was being ruined. They weren't saying
Speaker 1: like wokeness back then, but I think if this happened today,
Speaker 1: Gerald would say that it was being ruined by woke
Speaker 1: He'd been left by three wives and now his own
Speaker 1: civil war unit didn't want him around, but he continued
Speaker 1: volunteering at Cedar Creek. He retired, He built and little models,
Speaker 1: He got into model rockets. He traveled the world, and
Speaker 1: he posted a lot, and apparently he held on to
Speaker 1: his anger about that incident at the twenty fourteen Cedar
Speaker 1: Creek Reenactment. I spent a lot of time combing through
Speaker 1: hundreds of pages of court documents, years and years of
Speaker 1: his posts on forums, but I can't quite sort out
Speaker 1: what the catalyst was in twenty seventeen. Why did he
Speaker 1: wait three years to put that bomb at Cedar Creek.
Speaker 1: Maybe he saw the news about the Manassas Reenactment getting
Speaker 1: canceled out of fear of political violence at the wake
Speaker 1: up Unite the Right and just got an idea, because
Speaker 1: within weeks of that news story, Gerald started writing letters.
Speaker 1: After his first letter to the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation
Speaker 1: in September, he followed up by placing an actual bomb
Speaker 1: at the event in October. The reenactment community is pretty
Speaker 1: small and the bomb was big news, but a rumor
Speaker 1: was going around on Facebook that a teenager had been
Speaker 1: arrested for the original letter, and then that was sort
Speaker 1: of conflated. As you know, people are posting and reposting
Speaker 1: and talking about the post that they saw. It was
Speaker 1: conflated to the idea that someone had been arrested for
Speaker 1: the bomb, and the rumor was very quickly disproven. No
Speaker 1: one was arrested, replacing the bomb in the vendor's tent,
Speaker 1: But the letter writer was frustrated. If they thought the
Speaker 1: culprit had been apprehended, they wouldn't be afraid anymore. John Buchheister,
Speaker 1: a vendor at the event who told a reporter that
Speaker 1: he was present when the bomb was found, was one
Speaker 1: of the posters in that Facebook rumor mill And there's
Speaker 1: nothing malicious here. He just reposted something that someone else
Speaker 1: had said that the would be bomber had been apprehended.
Speaker 1: I think there was a lot of relief in believing that,
Speaker 1: so a lot of people were posting it. But I
Speaker 1: guess our letter writer saw John Buchheister's post because on
Speaker 1: November thirteenth, twenty seventeen, he opened a letter addressed to
Speaker 1: his home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Like the first letter, the
Speaker 1: envelope was printed with the ANTIFA symbol in place of
Speaker 1: a return address, inside a typed letter read.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for putting on Facebook that a
Speaker 2: teenager was arrested for the threat to Cedar Creek. It
Speaker 2: was so much easier to bring in a bomb do
Speaker 2: something like this again for us. We are coming to
Speaker 2: Gettysburg parade and speech. Thank you again for all your
Speaker 2: help in the last terror event.
Speaker 1: That same week, a local newspaper in Gettysburg received a
Speaker 1: letter threatening the upcoming Gettysburg Remembrance Day parade. The letter
Speaker 1: threatened to drive trucks through the crowd at the parade,
Speaker 1: a troubling callback to the still recent vehicular murderer Unite
Speaker 1: the Right, and threatened to put sharpshooters in windows and
Speaker 1: on rooftops. The letter writer ended the note by giving
Speaker 1: a detailed description of the bomb at Cedar Creek quote
Speaker 1: for proof that we did the sea terror attack. But
Speaker 1: just as Cedar Creek had not canceled when they were threatened,
Speaker 1: the Gettysburg Rememberance Day parade was not canceled that year,
Speaker 1: but the route was significantly shortened to allow for a
Speaker 1: heavy police presence. S Chris Anders, a Republican political activist,
Speaker 1: wrote on Facebook, apparently Antifa and other hate groups are
Speaker 1: headed to try and cause problems this Saturday at the
Speaker 1: annual Remembrance Day parade, but he wrote that he would
Speaker 1: be marching with his brothers in gray rather than giving
Speaker 1: in to terrorists. There are nearly one hundred comments on
Speaker 1: this Facebook post, mostly agreeing that Dantifa must be stopped
Speaker 1: or offering questionable safety tips, like advising that you should
Speaker 1: use a wool scarf to protect yourself from tear gas.
Speaker 1: I have to assume that would only make things worse.
Speaker 1: I feel like wool is very absorbent. But one loan commenter,
Speaker 1: a reenactor from New England who rides with the First
Speaker 1: Main Cavalry, had a different theory. He wrote, I bet
Speaker 1: you five dollars that the perpetrator is a reenactor or
Speaker 1: former reenactor. No offense to anyone, but no one knows
Speaker 1: about rem Day beyond reenactors and locals. For it to
Speaker 1: be a target, someone would have to be aware of it,
Speaker 1: and there are plenty of other high profile, low security
Speaker 1: events with bigger crowd numbers to choose. From his comment,
Speaker 1: drew ire from the victimized Confederates, obsessed with the idea
Speaker 1: of a massive conspiracy from the radical left. He was,
Speaker 1: of course correct and now here's where things start to
Speaker 1: get really weird. Just some truly inexplicable behavior with deep
Speaker 1: weird roots. I mean, I guess that's the show, right,
Speaker 1: This guy's weird. But here's where it takes its super
Speaker 1: weird turn. Gerald is retired at this point, and when
Speaker 1: he's not traveling, he's volunteering. He's still volunteering at Cedar
Speaker 1: Creek even though he doesn't reenact anymore. But he's also
Speaker 1: volunteering at sky Meadows State Park. It's not entirely clear
Speaker 1: why a registered sex offender was allowed to volunteer at
Speaker 1: the state park alongside a high school student, but that's
Speaker 1: what it says in the affidavit. So I guess that
Speaker 1: one fell through the cracks at sky Meadows because while
Speaker 1: he did successfully petition to get himself removed from the
Speaker 1: sex offender registry in twenty twenty one, in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: the background check required for volunteers at state parks would
Speaker 1: have shown that he was a registered sex offender for
Speaker 1: a two thousand and four conviction in Ohio for sexual
Speaker 1: imposition and child endangerment. And again, I'll be so clear
Speaker 1: with you right up front, there's no allegation that Drake
Speaker 1: was involved in any inappropriate sexual conduct as a volunteer anywhere,
Speaker 1: not at the state park, not anywhere. So in the
Speaker 1: time period of these events, there's no allegation that he's
Speaker 1: touching any children or engaging in any inappropriate sexual conduct.
Speaker 1: But I'm not just telling you he's a registered sex
Speaker 1: offender to sort of point and laugh at that. As
Speaker 1: a circumstance, these things intersect. So in twenty eighteen, he's
Speaker 1: volunteering at the park with this teenage boy, and one
Speaker 1: afternoon in February, they're volunteering together. They're shooting the shit
Speaker 1: fill in the time, and Gerald, who is sixty at
Speaker 1: this point, is telling this teenage boy about his hobby
Speaker 1: of Civil War reenactment, which is very tragically in decline.
Speaker 1: The topic of the twenty seventeen reenactment at Cedar Creek
Speaker 1: comes up. I have to assume Gerald brought it up,
Speaker 1: because why would the seventeen year old boy have brought
Speaker 1: that up. But Gerald is telling the kid about some
Speaker 1: funny articles about that twenty seventeen event. He later emailed
Speaker 1: the teenager what appeared to be photographs of newspaper clippings
Speaker 1: about the bombing. But in these articles the bomb went off.
Speaker 1: The articles he emails this tea nag contained details of
Speaker 1: the bomb actually killing people, with more deaths caused by
Speaker 1: subsequent sniper fire. But we know the bomb didn't really
Speaker 1: go off. No one got shot, no one got hurt,
Speaker 1: nothing really happened. The articles he showed his young friend
Speaker 1: were completely fake. The federal agents investigating the case wrote
Speaker 1: that attempts to locate sources for these fake newspaper clippings
Speaker 1: turned up nothing. I mean, not even anything online showing
Speaker 1: these fake articles. Nothing, there's nothing. He must have made
Speaker 1: them himself, and that's where his sex offender status ties
Speaker 1: back in. In two thousand and three, he was indicted
Speaker 1: in Auglaize County, Ohio for gross sexual imposition, and shortly
Speaker 1: after he's indicted, someone start sending weird letters to the
Speaker 1: Auglais County prosecutor. The letters were made to appear as
Speaker 1: though they were sent by a member of the police
Speaker 1: department in Drake's hometown of Port Huron, Michigan, and they
Speaker 1: appeared to prove that Drake's second wife was a child abuser.
Speaker 1: The letter writer sent a forged polygraph report on Michigan
Speaker 1: State Police letterhead and a forged notarized statement from Drake's
Speaker 1: estranged wife, and when his home was eventually searched, police
Speaker 1: found a doctored page from the local newspaper. He had
Speaker 1: taken an actual newspaper and manually altered it with a
Speaker 1: false news story about his estranged second wife, Susan, pleading
Speaker 1: guilty to child abuse and endangerment. No such news story
Speaker 1: ever existed, and I can find no evidence that Susan
Speaker 1: was ever charged with such a crime. Maybe a more
Speaker 1: thorough journalist would have pushed harder for the details here,
Speaker 1: but court cases involving sexual abuse of a minor tend
Speaker 1: to be completely closed. Those documents are sealed unless someone
Speaker 1: was sitting in those hearings, and there's local news reports
Speaker 1: about the testimony. You're just you're not going to find it,
Speaker 1: and short of reaching out to the parties involved, there's
Speaker 1: no way from me to know exactly what led to
Speaker 1: Gerald Drake being convicted of sexual imposition and child endangerment
Speaker 1: or why he tried to frame his strange wife for it.
Speaker 1: But I can tell you that after his conviction, there's
Speaker 1: a note on the docket that the judge prohibited Drake
Speaker 1: from contacting his second ex wife and her minor daughter
Speaker 1: from a prior marriage. So I think we can get
Speaker 1: the gist of the situation without me asking a young
Speaker 1: woman why her stepdad, a man now in prison for
Speaker 1: making a bomb, was court ordered to stay away from
Speaker 1: her when she was ten. Take from that what you will.
Speaker 1: The relevant kernel of that story, though, is those fake
Speaker 1: newspaper articles. In two thousand and three, he's manually cutting
Speaker 1: and pasting by hand and xeroxing his creations to disguise
Speaker 1: the alterations. He's arts and craftsing his way into an
Speaker 1: alternate reality where his ex wife is the one in
Speaker 1: dangering children, not him. And in twenty eighteen, he's doing
Speaker 1: it again. He's making fake newspaper clippings about what he
Speaker 1: wished were real. He's showing this teenage boy a reality
Speaker 1: where the bomb did go off and the people who
Speaker 1: snubbed him died. And while he was in jail for
Speaker 1: that sex offense a short eight months in an Ohio
Speaker 1: County jail, he made another art project of sorts. In
Speaker 1: September two thousand and four, the Auglais County Sheriff's office
Speaker 1: reached out to the FBI Field office in Cleveland. Gerald
Speaker 1: had been trying to make friends in jail by showing
Speaker 1: off his knowledge of explosives. He produced eight pages of
Speaker 1: hand drawn diagrams and instructions for creating a pipe bomb,
Speaker 1: a CO two cartridge bomb, a Coleman fuel bomb, a
Speaker 1: propane tank bomb, and diagrams about how to modify the
Speaker 1: kind of inert grenades you can buy as antiques or
Speaker 1: at the Army surplus store, and how to turn them
Speaker 1: back into live grenades. And the diagram of the pipe
Speaker 1: bomb he drew in jail in two thousand and four
Speaker 1: is remarkably similar to the device he made in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: It doesn't appear that anything ever came of the incident
Speaker 1: in the jail back in two thousand and four. You know,
Speaker 1: the Sheriff's office contact of the FBI, and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: we've got these weird drawings. What do you guys think
Speaker 1: about this. There's no indication that there was follow up
Speaker 1: from there, but apparently they held on to them. Those
Speaker 1: drawings remained in a filing cabinet somewhere in Ohio for
Speaker 1: twenty years. It's kind of surprising that they still had
Speaker 1: those drawings in twenty nineteen, but they are included in
Speaker 1: the affidavit for the search warrant, so in the spring
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen, he seems pretty content with his hobbies.
Speaker 1: He's making fake newspaper articles about his bomb going off
Speaker 1: and showing them to a kid he volunteers with based
Speaker 1: on his eBay review history. He's painting miniature models of
Speaker 1: Godzilla and Frankenstein, both five stars from Gerald, and he's
Speaker 1: getting into model rocketry. In March, he took a solo
Speaker 1: vacation to Amsterdam. His trip Advisor account provides a pretty
Speaker 1: robust log of his travels. He wasn't a big fan
Speaker 1: of the Jewish History Museum, titling his review not really
Speaker 1: for Gentiles and writing that he felt shorted by the
Speaker 1: lack of artifacts from the death camps at the Holocaust Museum.
Speaker 1: He felt that it had been quote scrubbed of shock
Speaker 1: due to the new PC way all museums are going.
Speaker 1: He felt the same way about the Dutch Resistance Museum,
Speaker 1: writing if you were looking for the story of the
Speaker 1: full account of atrocities done on the citizens, well this
Speaker 1: display doesn't have it it. Like many museums today have
Speaker 1: had to lighten up on their truth so as not
Speaker 1: to offend anyone. He did, however, really enjoy the Museum
Speaker 1: of Prostitution and his visit to the Red Light District.
Speaker 1: In a later post on a forum for sex doll owners,
Speaker 1: he boasted that he is familiar with the female condoms
Speaker 1: he uses to keep his dolls clean because he's used
Speaker 1: them in European brothels. And for what it's worth, the
Speaker 1: Anne frank House got his seal of approval as a
Speaker 1: World War II history buff. He loved the Ripley's Believe
Speaker 1: It or Not Museum, and he was deeply upset that
Speaker 1: his hostel did not provide a t additional American breakfast
Speaker 1: with quote hot meats. I don't know why you would
Speaker 1: expect a cheap hostel in Amsterdam to have American breakfast,
Speaker 1: but he was not satisfied, and just as an aside
Speaker 1: about his trip Advisor reviews, I think that was my
Speaker 1: favorite thing about researching this. He loves to review the
Speaker 1: cell site location data in one of the search warrant
Speaker 1: affidavits shows that he likely dropped off that very first
Speaker 1: threat letter at a USPS drop box in a strip
Speaker 1: mall near the Dulles Airport just before boarding an Air
Speaker 1: France flight from DC to Madrid on September twenty first,
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen. So while his letter threatening to throw piss
Speaker 1: and shit at Civil War reenactors was making its way
Speaker 1: to Cedar Creek, he was on his way to Spain.
Speaker 1: He hated the bullfighting, but he raved about the burger
Speaker 1: king on Plaza de Castilla. Apparently the burger king at
Speaker 1: home is always getting his order wrong. He had to
Speaker 1: go all the way to Spain to get his whopper
Speaker 1: with no onions and no pickle. The burger king in
Speaker 1: his hometown only gets four stars from Gerald. And since
Speaker 1: visiting Italy in April twenty seventeen, he rated four different
Speaker 1: Italian restaurants in Winchester, Virginia, based on how the pizza
Speaker 1: measures up to the pizza in Rome is given out
Speaker 1: two just like Rome's, and two were failures according to Gerald.
Speaker 1: So maybe he's done. Maybe it's out of his system.
Speaker 1: Three threatening letters and one bomb that didn't go off,
Speaker 1: and then he's back to his hobbies. But on June nineteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, his local newspaper ran a story about the
Speaker 1: upcoming reenactment at Cedar Creek. The event was just four
Speaker 1: months away and the board of directors wanted everyone to
Speaker 1: know that the reenactment weekend would have additional security after
Speaker 1: the incident the year before. Days after the paper ran
Speaker 1: that story, a pair of identical letters were mailed to
Speaker 1: the newspaper, the Winchester Star and the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation.
Speaker 1: Like the first letters, the envelopes had a symbol where
Speaker 1: the return address should be, But for some reason, these
Speaker 1: letters a version of the anti fascist symbol with the
Speaker 1: red flag on top and the black flag behind, which
Speaker 1: is reversed from the original letters. I think he probably
Speaker 1: just downloaded a new image and didn't notice that it
Speaker 1: was different. I don't think he realized he was signaling
Speaker 1: a preference for anarchism over communism, or vice versa. You know,
Speaker 1: both versions of that symbol exist and are perfectly real
Speaker 1: and valid and are used by different people, but they
Speaker 1: are in fact different symbols and do mean something slightly different.
Speaker 1: I don't think Gerald knew that. And this time both
Speaker 1: letters were addressed to Joe Derezzo, the president of the
Speaker 1: foundation's board, and they threatened to kill his mother with
Speaker 1: a car bomb if he didn't call off the reenactment
Speaker 1: in October. Dereza later told agents that he took the
Speaker 1: threat seriously enough that he began checking underneath his mother's
Speaker 1: car for explosive devices. But the language in the letters
Speaker 1: was odd and oddly specific. Though the Winchester Star article
Speaker 1: didn't actually mention what those increased security measures would be,
Speaker 1: the letter writers seemed to know. One of the private
Speaker 1: discussions the board had was about banning spectators from bringing
Speaker 1: bags of any kind to the event, but they were
Speaker 1: worried that this would be an issue for people like
Speaker 1: parents with diaper bags. The letter writer said there were
Speaker 1: quote many ways for us to sneak in a surprise,
Speaker 1: specifically mentioning putting a bomb inside of a diaper bag.
Speaker 1: And the board had also quietly been in contact with
Speaker 1: the local sheriff's office about providing metal detectors, and the
Speaker 1: letter writer seemed to know this too, boasting that he'd
Speaker 1: already outsmarted their security.
Speaker 2: We now have plastic bombs, so metal detectors are useless.
Speaker 2: We have found a man that's going to pose as
Speaker 2: an enactor to drive in some kind of fertilizer bomb.
Speaker 2: We have coolers, thermoses, water bottles, all made into small IEDs.
Speaker 1: And in the completely real and very serious way that
Speaker 1: real Antifa terror cells sign off their terror some threat letters.
Speaker 1: The letter writer explained why the bomb didn't work in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: We are the ones that did it to you last year.
Speaker 2: We used a bad bomb guy. His mercury switch and
Speaker 2: rocket launch wire didn't work on the pipe bomb covered
Speaker 2: in nuts. Just so you know we are real and returning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just so you know we're real. Okay, it's such
Speaker 1: a weird mess, but silly or not. The letters recipient
Speaker 1: was terrified they were threatening to blow up his mom,
Speaker 1: and there really was a real bomb the year before,
Speaker 1: so you know he's not bluffing. You already know he
Speaker 1: really can build a bomb. So you can't laugh it
Speaker 1: off while it's happening. But in hindsight, what a goofy
Speaker 1: ass sign off? Just so you know, we had a
Speaker 1: bad bomb guy last year, but we're very real and
Speaker 1: we fixed that. Okay, we're real. A sixth letter, the
Speaker 1: third in this second batch, was sent to John Buchheister,
Speaker 1: that vendor in Pennsylvania who had spoken to the media
Speaker 1: about being there when the bomb was discovered in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: He'd gotten a letter in the first batch too, thanking
Speaker 1: him for spreading that rumor that someone had been arrested
Speaker 1: for placing the bomb. Confusingly, the letter he got in
Speaker 1: July twenty eighteen was addressed to Joe, just like the
Speaker 1: letter sent to Joe Derezo the same week, and it
Speaker 1: seemed to be speaking to Joe Derezzo asking for him
Speaker 1: to call off the event, which presumably Durezzo could do
Speaker 1: as president of the board. But John Buchheister is just
Speaker 1: a guy in Pennsylvania who sells antiques and Civil War reproductions.
Speaker 1: This letter, like the others, threatened to kill Derezo's mother.
Speaker 2: Since we can't seem to get to to stop this
Speaker 2: celebration of a war to keep men in chains, maybe
Speaker 2: if we go after your volunteers that help out, you
Speaker 2: will stop this. I like the idea of burning your
Speaker 2: mother alive in a car bomb.
Speaker 1: Days after these letters were received, the Foundation announced on
Speaker 1: July third, twenty eighteen, they were calling off the reenactment
Speaker 1: in October. You know, they got that letter in twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen and they decided we're going to soldier On, We're
Speaker 1: going to have the event, and then there was a
Speaker 1: real bomb. People were really in danger. So when they
Speaker 1: got this second set of letters. In the middle of
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, they decided, we got to call it off.
Speaker 1: It's not safe. What if the bomb goes off this year.
Speaker 1: We know this guy's not bluffing, we know he got
Speaker 1: a bomb in the tent last year. We can't risk it.
Speaker 1: And on the Civil War Talk Forum, that online forum
Speaker 1: where Gerald's been posting for years, reactions were mixed. A
Speaker 1: lot of users agreed that it was the right thing
Speaker 1: to do. It's just not worth the risk people bring
Speaker 1: their children, their families. Others didn't think it was right
Speaker 1: to let the terrorists win, with one poster noting that
Speaker 1: he never stopped going to NASCAR races after nine to eleven.
Speaker 1: I don't know that NASCAR was like a big target
Speaker 1: for al Qaida, but he's been carrying that weight for years,
Speaker 1: I guess. But some posters were starting to ask questions
Speaker 1: like why Cedar Creek and why only Cedar Creek. It's
Speaker 1: not the largest or most high profile reenactment, even in
Speaker 1: just the immediate area. I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've ever spent time in Virginia, but most of that
Speaker 1: part of Virginia just is as hip will wear a
Speaker 1: battlefield every town has When every town has a plaque
Speaker 1: and Cedar Creek was a Union victory, wouldn't these people
Speaker 1: be happier targeting a reenactment of a Confederate win. And then,
Speaker 1: after pages and pages of going back and forth about
Speaker 1: this decision on the forum, Gerald himself weighed in.
Speaker 2: I volunteer at Cedar Creek from what we have been told,
Speaker 2: and this is not for general release. The foundation has
Speaker 2: received threats of bodily harm to the board members. They're
Speaker 2: families and everyone that helps out. Then there is the
Speaker 2: very high cost of security. It is sad that we
Speaker 2: live in a world with such a hostile climate to
Speaker 2: the Confederacy, and PS has taken battle flags out of
Speaker 2: all its stores, and statues are being taken down here
Speaker 2: in Virginia, schools, streets, parks, anything named about the Confederacy
Speaker 2: is being changed. I do not know if they will
Speaker 2: officially announce the reason or reasons for this decision. Last
Speaker 2: year they refused to say much, and rumors were all
Speaker 2: over the place. We all need to maybe send some
Speaker 2: money to the foundation for expenses, as this was their
Speaker 2: only way of raising funds. With the fall of so
Speaker 2: many Confederate symbols and events going by the wayside, I
Speaker 2: now can feel what my ancestors did when the actual
Speaker 2: Confederacy fell.
Speaker 1: So he is victim and perpetrator here lingering in the
Speaker 1: comment section, watching his fellow Civil War enthusiasts argue about
Speaker 1: how the community should respond to what he has done.
Speaker 1: It's like in every police procedural drama where the killer
Speaker 1: returns to the scene of the crime just to take
Speaker 1: in the aftermath and again, just as suddenly as the
Speaker 1: letters began, they stopped again. He got what he wanted.
Speaker 1: The event was canceled in October, just before the now
Speaker 1: canceled event would have been approaching, Joe Derezo resigned as
Speaker 1: head of the foundation's board. He didn't feel the board
Speaker 1: was taking the threat seriously enough, although it's unclear what
Speaker 1: discussions were taking place behind closed doors because there'd been
Speaker 1: no threats in several months and the event was already canceled,
Speaker 1: so I don't know what prompted him to resign just then.
Speaker 1: In October and the local paper, The Winchester Star, ran
Speaker 1: an article about Derezo's resignation, and like clockwork, a few
Speaker 1: days after the article ran, the letter started up again.
Speaker 1: The foundation got a letter addressed to Deurezzo, who again
Speaker 1: had just resigned, saying we're sorry to see you go,
Speaker 1: and moving on to threatening the foundation's new acting director,
Speaker 1: Jeanette Schaeffer, and I'm sorry it gets gross here. I mean,
Speaker 1: none of this was good, but it gets gross again.
Speaker 1: I'm always on the fence about repeating things like this, right,
Speaker 1: Like is this just for shock value? Does this add
Speaker 1: information to the story? Do you need to know exactly
Speaker 1: what he said in order for the story to make sense?
Speaker 1: But given his prior conviction for a crime of a
Speaker 1: sexual nature involving a young girl, I think it does matter.
Speaker 1: He wasn't just saying whatever he thought would be the
Speaker 1: scariest and the nastiest, Like this kind of ties back
Speaker 1: into his own past. The letter writer told Derezo that
Speaker 1: his quote pretty mother and bald headed dad were safe
Speaker 1: now that he'd resigned, But quote, if Jeanette Schaeffer thinks
Speaker 1: she is safe, well she is right, but her children
Speaker 1: are not. If she puts together a reenactment to celebrate
Speaker 1: keeping men in chains, we will come after her girls.
Speaker 1: We have a convicted rapist that was love to introduce
Speaker 1: them to his penis. There are letters that are a
Speaker 1: lot more graphic than this. When it comes to the
Speaker 1: sexual threats to those girls, it's in the court record.
Speaker 1: If you're interested in that, I don't see the value
Speaker 1: in proceeding further. You get it at this point. But again,
Speaker 1: even though these letters are obviously very frightening, there's something
Speaker 1: off about them. The letter writer seems to know way
Speaker 1: too much about the specific inner workings of the Cedar
Speaker 1: Creek Battlefield Foundation. He knows a lot about the personal
Speaker 1: lives of these individuals and the way that they interact
Speaker 1: in this space, and the way they run this organization,
Speaker 1: which again is not large. This is not a massive,
Speaker 1: significant operation. This is a pretty small, regional, annual event.
Speaker 1: One of the letters in this batch threatened to shoot
Speaker 1: a man named Pat as he opens up the visitor
Speaker 1: center in the morning, and members of the board told
Speaker 1: federal investigators that since those threats in June, the visitor
Speaker 1: center was only open on a limited basis, and not
Speaker 1: many people knew about that. You'd have to be really
Speaker 1: close to the operation to know that Pat, who is
Speaker 1: the board's only full time employee, sometimes opened up the
Speaker 1: visitor center in the morning alone. And the letter tried
Speaker 1: to cast blame on a ract in the organization, claiming
Speaker 1: that their inside knowledge came from a man named Sean Mowbray.
Speaker 1: But Mowbray hadn't been a volunteer with the organization since
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. But in twenty fourteen, Mowbray was at the
Speaker 1: center of that dispute that got Gerald kicked out of
Speaker 1: his re enactment unit. And it's not just the letters
Speaker 1: that seemed to be escalating in intensity. The same way
Speaker 1: he sent that letter threatening to rape those girls, Drake
Speaker 1: posted on the subredit for his hometown of Winchester, Virginia,
Speaker 1: asking for recommendations for a good lawyer. He owned a
Speaker 1: lot of antique and reproduction firearms and was an enthusiastic
Speaker 1: hobbyist in black powder weapons, but he wanted a real gun,
Speaker 1: a gun that shoots real bullets, and when he went
Speaker 1: to buy one, the store refused to sell him anything
Speaker 1: after pulling a background check. Now, his own account of
Speaker 1: the situation is sort of murky and one sided, and
Speaker 1: some of the details I've been able to verify indicate
Speaker 1: that he's not telling the truth. But it appears that
Speaker 1: despite having no felony record, that's true his conviction for
Speaker 1: child endangerment comes up on his record as a domestic
Speaker 1: violence conviction, so they wouldn't sell him a gun because
Speaker 1: of that. There's no information in any of the hundreds
Speaker 1: of pages of court documents I read that gives me
Speaker 1: any real insight into why he may have wanted to
Speaker 1: buy a gun that week in particular. But if I
Speaker 1: were one of the people who had gotten one of
Speaker 1: those letters, that timing would take my breath away. He
Speaker 1: also traveled to Paris thought October, somehow squeezing it into
Speaker 1: his busy schedule of threatening letters. He loved the Louver
Speaker 1: and Notre Dame, noting in his review that the movie
Speaker 1: The Hunchback of Notre Dame really doesn't do it justice,
Speaker 1: and he visited several notable World War two historical sites.
Speaker 1: He'd posted on Readit earlier that month that he was
Speaker 1: thinking of getting into World War II re enacting because
Speaker 1: the Civil War scene was dying out. McDonald's and Five
Speaker 1: Guys in Paris both got four stars from Gerald, with
Speaker 1: run review saying seeing McDonald's in Paris was like seeing
Speaker 1: an old friend to me. Cheap and consistent food that
Speaker 1: is the same flavor around the world, fair enough, But
Speaker 1: when he got home, it was back to business, firing
Speaker 1: off a letter to the mayor of Gettysburg on Halloween,
Speaker 1: again threatening to bomb the annual parade. The letter demanded
Speaker 1: that the mayor quote canceled the flying of Confederate flags
Speaker 1: and posted on Facebook, then we will leave you alone.
Speaker 1: Don't and someone is going to die. The ninth and
Speaker 1: final letter was sent to the Cedar Greek Battlefield Foundation
Speaker 1: after the embattled organization announced in December twenty eighteen that
Speaker 1: they would be holding the reenactment in twenty nineteen. This
Speaker 1: letter was addressed to Pat, the foundation's only full time employee,
Speaker 1: that guy that opens the visitor center sometimes. The letter
Speaker 1: asked him, would you like to bury your sister? Your brother?
Speaker 1: We could also just kill you when you sit alone
Speaker 1: in the visitor center. We have a guy that likes
Speaker 1: to rape. We could send him to visit your sister.
Speaker 1: What followed were some sexual threats against the director's daughter
Speaker 1: that really aren't fit to repeat the I mean, they're gross.
Speaker 1: It's definitely the most specific letter in terms of the
Speaker 1: actions being threatened and the particular victims being threatened in
Speaker 1: a way that feels specific enough to be alarming. What
Speaker 1: makes a quote unquote true threat. In the eyes of
Speaker 1: the law is kind of a moving target. You never
Speaker 1: really know where the line is where a federal prosecutor
Speaker 1: is going to say, I'm taking that one to a
Speaker 1: grand jury. But in my experience reading cases like this,
Speaker 1: mailing someone a letter that tells them exactly, when, where,
Speaker 1: and how you plan to kill them, that's usually pretty serious.
Speaker 1: The law does not like to see that. But by
Speaker 1: this time, the defense already know it's Gerald. By the
Speaker 1: time Pat is reading this absolutely unhinged letter threatening to
Speaker 1: rape and kill his sister, the FBI has already gotten
Speaker 1: Gerald's phone records from Sprint. They've been conducting physical surveillance,
Speaker 1: with an FBI agent following him to his storage unit
Speaker 1: and then returning later with a bomb dog to sniff
Speaker 1: around the door. And again suddenly the letter stopped. But
Speaker 1: this time there's no explanation. When the letter stopped before
Speaker 1: it was because he got something that he wanted, but
Speaker 1: this time they just stop. In a letter to the
Speaker 1: court before his sentencing, Gerald claims he came to his
Speaker 1: senses sometime in December twenty eighteen and realized that what
Speaker 1: he was doing was wrong. It seems a little bit
Speaker 1: more likely to me that one of the FBI agents
Speaker 1: following him around said something to him. And that's not uncommon.
Speaker 1: I've read plenty of threatening communications cases where the agent
Speaker 1: writing the affidavit describes his first conversation with a guy
Speaker 1: about threatening to behead a senator or something. Sometimes they'll
Speaker 1: come to a guy's door and say, hey, did you
Speaker 1: post this? Because you can't do that, don't do it again.
Speaker 1: And the only reason we're reading the affidavit is because
Speaker 1: the guy didn't stop posting. So the next conversation had
Speaker 1: a very different tone. And I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: what happened here. It doesn't say. And for as insanely
Speaker 1: detailed as the documents supporting these search warrants are, there's
Speaker 1: some really important details missing right here. If they were
Speaker 1: following him around in November of twenty eighteen, while these
Speaker 1: letters are still being sent, why wasn't he arrested until
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. It's clear they spent all of twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen investigating the case. There are search warn't applications here
Speaker 1: for his phone, his storage unit, his house, his Google account,
Speaker 1: and warrant served on his cell phone provider for his
Speaker 1: cell location data. The warrants were executed at various times
Speaker 1: throughout twenty nineteen, with the physical search of his home
Speaker 1: and his storage unit happening in October twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 1: they have him dead to rights. The cell site location
Speaker 1: data puts him at the mailboxes where the letters were
Speaker 1: mailed on the days that they were mailed. For some
Speaker 1: of the letters, he drove out of state to mail
Speaker 1: them far from his home, So we have the GPS
Speaker 1: coordinates showing him leaving his home in Winchester, Virginia, driving
Speaker 1: to a strip mall in Pennsylvania where there's a USPS
Speaker 1: drop box, and then coming back home. And we know
Speaker 1: that on the days that he did that, the letter
Speaker 1: was picked up that mailbox and processed at that sorting facility,
Speaker 1: so it's there's not a lot of other explanations for
Speaker 1: why he's driving to these mailboxes on these days. And
Speaker 1: they found the image file for that Antifa logo that
Speaker 1: was printed on the envelopes on a thumb drive in
Speaker 1: his house. We have drone footage from the twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: re enactment showing his car approaching the area where the
Speaker 1: bomb was found shortly before it was placed there. But
Speaker 1: they gathered all of this evidence. I mean more evidence
Speaker 1: than I've ever seen laid out in documentation like this.
Speaker 1: I mean pages and pages of maps showing his GPS
Speaker 1: coordinates on the days the letters were mailed. They gathered
Speaker 1: all this evidence, and they did nothing with it. The
Speaker 1: documents associated with all of these search warrants were sealed.
Speaker 1: That's normal. Usually you keep that sealed until the arrest
Speaker 1: is made, so nobody knew that his house had been
Speaker 1: searched except Gerald. I assume Gerald knew. I think he
Speaker 1: had to know. But after six months, the ceiling order expired.
Speaker 1: That can happen. I think in most cases they're sort
Speaker 1: of set to auto expire after a certain amount of time.
Speaker 1: But you'll see in cases where they haven't made a
Speaker 1: move yet, the prosecutor will apply to continue ceiling. It's
Speaker 1: not uncommon. I think in this case, they must have
Speaker 1: forgotten to file a motion to continue the ceiling. That's
Speaker 1: the only explanation I can think of for why they
Speaker 1: would let these warrants get unsealed when they weren't ready
Speaker 1: to charge him. But the ceiling order expired and somebody
Speaker 1: noticed immediately, because the very same day, Justin Rolick wrote
Speaker 1: an article for Courts with the headline disgruntled Civil War
Speaker 1: reenactor allegedly framed Antifa by fabricating threats against his unit.
Speaker 1: Journalists don'trite their own headlines, but somebody's got to do
Speaker 1: something about that. That's a mouthful. And the next day
Speaker 1: the Washington Post ran an article with the headline, a
Speaker 1: Civil war reenactment group got threats from Antique. It was
Speaker 1: a disgruntled actor. FBI says again the headlines, what are
Speaker 1: we doing, folks. But even after these two articles ran
Speaker 1: in February of twenty twenty, the case sat still. Well,
Speaker 1: because I can't say that because there was no case.
Speaker 1: He hadn't been charged. He did retain an attorney at
Speaker 1: this point, and she told the Washington Post that he
Speaker 1: had no idea why he was being investigated, which, like comene, yes,
Speaker 1: you do, you do. And it wasn't until September of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, just days before the five year statute
Speaker 1: of limitations would run out for that first letter sent
Speaker 1: in September twenty seventeen, that Gerald Drake was indicted by
Speaker 1: a federal grand jury. The last bit of his Internet
Speaker 1: activity I can find before his arrest on October six,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two is a post he made the afternoon
Speaker 1: before he spent a few hours replying to posts on
Speaker 1: a forum for sextal enthusiasts, with his final message being
Speaker 1: praised for a customer service representative named Patrice at a
Speaker 1: Canadian company called Sex Doll Queen. Patrese always answers his
Speaker 1: emails and once sent him a free sex doll head
Speaker 1: as compensation after ups damaged the case his doll arrived in.
Speaker 1: There's no explanation for the nearly three years between solving
Speaker 1: the case and arresting the perpetrator. And maybe it's like
Speaker 1: those cases I mentioned before where they give a guy
Speaker 1: a talking to and they say, you know, if I
Speaker 1: have to come back, it's game over, but you know,
Speaker 1: just knock it off. But I've seen cases like that,
Speaker 1: and usually it's mentioned there will be some sort of
Speaker 1: incident that brings the agent back to his door. But
Speaker 1: there's no indication here of any new conduct, certainly no
Speaker 1: charged conduct in the years between the search warrant and
Speaker 1: the arrest warrant. Right, So if they did all this work,
Speaker 1: they search his house, you know, hypothetically they say to him, hey, Bud,
Speaker 1: knock it off, or we have to charge you. If
Speaker 1: that had happened, you would assume that there would be
Speaker 1: some new incident, but there's not. Maybe it was a
Speaker 1: change in office priorities, or somebody wanted this one close specifically,
Speaker 1: And there was some turnover in the US Attorney's office
Speaker 1: in Virginia's Western District during that time period, but nothing
Speaker 1: that really coincides with this timeline. The assistant US attorney
Speaker 1: whose name is on that warrant in twenty nineteen left
Speaker 1: to become a judge in March of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: The US Attorney in the Western District left to become
Speaker 1: a judge in March twenty twenty. The current US attorney
Speaker 1: was sworn in in October twenty twenty one. And that's
Speaker 1: a lot of in and out, but none of that
Speaker 1: does anything to explain how this case got lost. From
Speaker 1: October twenty nineteen to September of twenty twenty two, I
Speaker 1: spent way too much time, like browsing press releases and
Speaker 1: looking at LinkedIn pages and trying to sort of track
Speaker 1: the patterns in the federal indictments coming out of this
Speaker 1: office to try to make these pieces fit together, and
Speaker 1: they just don't. They don't. There's no obvious rationale for
Speaker 1: this timeline, and I don't expect they're going to tell us.
Speaker 1: Drake pled guilty in April twenty twenty three in an
Speaker 1: agreement that dropped most of the charges. He only had
Speaker 1: to plead guilty to one count of possessing an unregistered
Speaker 1: explosive device and one count of stalking. The stalking count
Speaker 1: was specifically regarding the letter sent to Joe Derezo. Accounts
Speaker 1: related to the letters sent to everybody else were dropped
Speaker 1: in exchange. And that's normal. This is really common. Data
Speaker 1: published by the Pew Research Center last year shows nearly
Speaker 1: ninety percent of people charged for the federal crime just
Speaker 1: plead guilty. They take plea agreements. Eight percent of cases
Speaker 1: end up dismissed, leaving only two point three percent of
Speaker 1: people charged with the federal crime who actually take their
Speaker 1: case to trial. The system desperately needs people to plead guilt,
Speaker 1: which is a huge motivator for overcharging. Right, you say
Speaker 1: to a guy, hey, we got you on twenty counts.
Speaker 1: You're going away for one hundred and ten years, but hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we can make a deal for twenty years, and
Speaker 1: then you've saved the United States government, the cost of
Speaker 1: a trial. It's not a great setup overall, right, that
Speaker 1: our justice system requires that we not actually pursue justice,
Speaker 1: because if everyone actually pursued justice in the form of
Speaker 1: the jury trial you're entitled to, the system would collapse.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would fall apart instantly. Just something to
Speaker 1: think about. So when you look at this and you
Speaker 1: see that most of these charges got dropped, it's not
Speaker 1: because they didn't think they could prove those charges at trial.
Speaker 1: They just didn't want to pay for a trial, and
Speaker 1: nine years in prison is enough. So yes, technically he
Speaker 1: is only guilty legally of building the bomb and sending
Speaker 1: the letters to Joe Derezo threatening to blow up his mom.
Speaker 1: The letters threatened to rate Pat's sister and Jeanette's daughters
Speaker 1: are among those dropped counts. So in the eyes of
Speaker 1: the federal government, he is not guilty on those counts,
Speaker 1: not because he was acquitted. He was not found not guilty,
Speaker 1: but he is not guilty of them in the sense
Speaker 1: that he was not prosecuted for those they were dropped.
Speaker 1: Common sense and hundreds of pages of court documents lays
Speaker 1: out a pretty convincing case that can lead you to
Speaker 1: your own conclusion, but the law is what the law is.
Speaker 1: He is not guilty of those things. He's currently serving
Speaker 1: his nine year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institute in Myeland, Michigan.
Speaker 1: He asked for a placement in Michigan to be closer
Speaker 1: to his son. He'll be seventy two when he's released
Speaker 1: in twenty thirty. The government has not yet responded to
Speaker 1: his motion to seal certain case documents related to the
Speaker 1: dropped counts. He wrote a letter from prison in December
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three that certain information in his indictment has
Speaker 1: caused problems for him when other inmates check his paperwork.
Speaker 1: He doesn't get specific, but I assume the threats of
Speaker 1: graphic sexual violence aren't exactly helping him win friends and
Speaker 1: influence people, even if those counts were dropped in the
Speaker 1: plea agreement. Again, he's not guilty of those things, but
Speaker 1: it's in the indictment. So in the end, it turns
Speaker 1: out Antifa never threatened to pour cups of piss on
Speaker 1: Confederate War reenactors or drive a car through the Gettysburg parade.
Speaker 1: Who's just Gerald, a weird little guy, who's Maddie got
Speaker 1: kicked out of his Civil War club. Weird Little Guys
Speaker 1: as a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched,
Speaker 1: written and recorded by me, WHILEI kunger. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The show is edited
Speaker 1: by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme news was
Speaker 1: composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely
Speaker 1: read it, but I almost certainly will not answer it.
Speaker 1: It's nothing personal. I don't answer any of my emails.
Speaker 1: You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other
Speaker 1: listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post
Speaker 1: anything that's going to make you one of my Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys