Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hey, this is Weird Little Guys, but
Speaker 1: there's no new weird little guy this week. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are definitely more weird little guys crawling out of
Speaker 1: the woodwork every day, and I've got a couple of
Speaker 1: stories about them in development, but this episode isn't a
Speaker 1: new guy. Sorry about that. We're a couple of months
Speaker 1: into the show now and I just wanted to take
Speaker 1: a minute to do a little navel gazing. So this
Speaker 1: is just a little mini episode to check in on
Speaker 1: how it's going, talk about what we're doing here, and
Speaker 1: shoehorn in some fun facts and odds and ends that
Speaker 1: got left on the cutting room floor of past episodes.
Speaker 1: If we're being totally honest here, I just didn't get
Speaker 1: it together this week. I lost a few days of
Speaker 1: research and writing time to a trial at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this month, and lost another couple of days to
Speaker 1: travel for a family obligation this week, and it just
Speaker 1: didn't come together in time. I thought I had a
Speaker 1: topic that I could turn around quickly, but sometimes a
Speaker 1: story that seems really straightforward turns out to be anything.
Speaker 1: But I found a surprising and strange twist to a
Speaker 1: story that I thought I knew, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: give it the time it deserved to flesh it all
Speaker 1: the way out. So we're doing something different this week,
Speaker 1: but the timing is pretty good. We're about three months
Speaker 1: into this thing, and I have some reflections on the
Speaker 1: process so far. I think the biggest realization I've had
Speaker 1: so far is that I may have overextended myself a
Speaker 1: little bit. If that wasn't obvious in what I'm doing
Speaker 1: right now, what was I a person who dropped out
Speaker 1: of college, mainly because I have a very adversarial relationship
Speaker 1: with the concept of do dates thinking. When I signed
Speaker 1: up to write what is basically a twenty page research
Speaker 1: paper every week, I mean, just a baffling decision on
Speaker 1: my part. But I think it's going okay, don't you.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a fourth wall in podcasting,
Speaker 1: but if there is, I'm kind of constantly knocking on it.
Speaker 1: I'm always right there on the edge of the story.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you. There will be a few stories I
Speaker 1: tell you on this show that I am reluctantly, accidentally,
Speaker 1: haphazardly actually in not just as the narrator but as
Speaker 1: a chaotic little sidecarre And this little episode is sort
Speaker 1: of a meta commentary on the storytelling process. So I'm
Speaker 1: busting through that fourth wall like the kool Aid Man today.
Speaker 1: I totally get it. If you're not into that, you
Speaker 1: can just come back next week when I have a
Speaker 1: whole new Weird Little Guy for you. But in the
Speaker 1: years I've been doing this kind of work, I've always
Speaker 1: been in conversation with the audience, and it feels so
Speaker 1: strange to me now that I'm adjusting to this new
Speaker 1: medium of podcasting, just not to have that at all.
Speaker 1: Those conversations weren't always good. I'll refer you back to
Speaker 1: the comment I made a second ago about being an
Speaker 1: unwitting side character in some Weird Little Guy's journeys to
Speaker 1: Federal prison. But I always felt like I was telling
Speaker 1: a story to people who were speaking back to me.
Speaker 1: I was getting their reactions and their input and their perspectives,
Speaker 1: and sometimes that is part of the story while I'm
Speaker 1: still telling it. And maybe that's a weakness or a
Speaker 1: flaw or a dead giveaway that I didn't go to
Speaker 1: journalism school or whatever, but it's the way I know
Speaker 1: how to do the work that feels meaningful to me.
Speaker 1: And I'm too old to change now. I alluded to
Speaker 1: it a bit in the minisode honoring the anniversary of
Speaker 1: Heather Hire's death back in August, but my introduction to
Speaker 1: covering court cases and the weird little guys at the
Speaker 1: center of them came from my own personal need to
Speaker 1: understand the men who came here to Charlottesville for the
Speaker 1: Unite the Right rally in twenty seventeen. When the handful
Speaker 1: of men who'd been charged for the acts of violence
Speaker 1: they committed that day first started appearing in court in
Speaker 1: late twenty seventeen early twenty eighteen, I was coincidentally unemployed,
Speaker 1: so I had a lot of spare time to go
Speaker 1: to and just watch. So I did, and I started
Speaker 1: doing it just for myself. I didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: going on, and I wanted to see. I wanted to know.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what it was I needed to know,
Speaker 1: or how I was going to find it out, but
Speaker 1: I had the time, and I just sat and I watched,
Speaker 1: and I started posting about what I was observing online.
Speaker 1: I guess that's very millennial core of me, but I
Speaker 1: realized very quickly that there was a hunger in this
Speaker 1: community for information about those proceedings that was more personal,
Speaker 1: less detached than the coverage that was being offered by
Speaker 1: traditional media outlets. I mean, if you just wanted the facts,
Speaker 1: there was plenty of news. National outlets were still sending
Speaker 1: reporters to a lot of those hearings, but there's something
Speaker 1: missing from that kind of coverage. People wanted the facts,
Speaker 1: of course, and I did my best in those early
Speaker 1: days to get those facts right. But they wanted more
Speaker 1: than that. They wanted to be in conversation with those facts.
Speaker 1: They wanted to be informed, but they wanted to be
Speaker 1: angry too, and they deserved to be. They wanted to
Speaker 1: know the ugly truth about what was going on, but
Speaker 1: they wanted it presented to them in a way that
Speaker 1: felt affirming and grounded in what they already knew to
Speaker 1: be true. They wanted to feel heard and to ask questions,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to know not just what, but why.
Speaker 1: And I did too, So I did my best to
Speaker 1: collect every detail and to make myself available to provide
Speaker 1: context where I could, and comfort if I could. I
Speaker 1: took on the role of audience surrogate for people in
Speaker 1: my community who couldn't spend all day in court. I
Speaker 1: hate to doubt myself as someone who reads the comments.
Speaker 1: It's very embarrassing, but I am and I've seen some
Speaker 1: feedback that some listeners don't care for what they call
Speaker 1: my habit of editorializing, putting my own voice and my
Speaker 1: own judgment and my own feelings into the story. There
Speaker 1: were some reviews taking issue with what they believed to
Speaker 1: be a put on affect, this melodramatic flourish and the
Speaker 1: way that I speak. That is, unfortunately just the way
Speaker 1: that I talk. And I've got a pretty thick skin
Speaker 1: when it comes to things like death threats. But I'm
Speaker 1: surprisingly sensitive to what is completely sane and valid criticism.
Speaker 1: You know, some weird little guy can post online about
Speaker 1: how he wants to carve his name into my chest
Speaker 1: and fuck my corpse or you know whatever, and I
Speaker 1: can take that in stride. But a perfectly normal person
Speaker 1: thinks I talk too fast. That's going to send me
Speaker 1: into a spiral. You know, I'm working on that, Okay.
Speaker 1: I am pacing myself. I've been doing exercises where I
Speaker 1: practice reading my script with the timer I'm trying. So
Speaker 1: I did sit with that feedback about my narrative style
Speaker 1: being too personal or too emotional, and ultimately I decided
Speaker 1: to disregard it. This is the only way that I
Speaker 1: know how to tell stories that weigh heavily on the soul,
Speaker 1: because I learned how to do it while trying to
Speaker 1: tell stories that were deeply personal for me and for
Speaker 1: the audience, I was communicating them too, And because I
Speaker 1: learned how to tell these stories in that context, I
Speaker 1: know it's important. It's not for everyone, and that's okay,
Speaker 1: and it's not better than or even a substitution for
Speaker 1: more traditional journalistic approaches to telling these kinds of stories.
Speaker 1: But there is a place for this kind of storytelling.
Speaker 1: I'm a human being trying to make sense of the
Speaker 1: world that we live in, and I hope that I
Speaker 1: can try to help you do that too. I don't
Speaker 1: just want to present you the facts of a case,
Speaker 1: the timeline of a story of a man's life, of
Speaker 1: a trial. I'm not just showing you the most fucked
Speaker 1: up thing I can find for shock value. I want
Speaker 1: us to try to understand what all of this means together.
Speaker 1: When I take you on these little journeys into the
Speaker 1: story of some weird little guy, we aren't just staring
Speaker 1: evil in the face for something to do. We're taking
Speaker 1: its mask off to really understand a moment in history
Speaker 1: and to place a particular guy into his proper context.
Speaker 1: There is one moment in my work that I have
Speaker 1: held on to like a life preserver. On the days
Speaker 1: I find myself asking what am I even doing? Is
Speaker 1: this worth it? What am I adding to the world
Speaker 1: by doing this at all? And I hope this person
Speaker 1: doesn't mind me sharing it. I don't know who they are,
Speaker 1: so I can't ask. It's something so close to my
Speaker 1: heart that I almost don't want to let it out
Speaker 1: into the world. I don't want to cheapen it or
Speaker 1: wear it out by saying it out loud. See this
Speaker 1: isn't actually my first attempt at a podcast. Back in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, James Alex Fields Junior went on trial for
Speaker 1: murder for Heather Hire's murder, and for two and a
Speaker 1: half weeks, I sat on a bench in a courtroom
Speaker 1: that was too crowded to hold the people of Charlottesville
Speaker 1: who were desperate to see some approximation of justice done.
Speaker 1: So I sat on that bench and I took notes
Speaker 1: furiously for eight hours every day. I think I gave
Speaker 1: myself carpel tunnel, and then I came home and I
Speaker 1: wrote a script, and then I recorded a little episode
Speaker 1: on the floor of my closet because it was the
Speaker 1: only place in my apartment where you couldn't hear the
Speaker 1: noise from the cars outside. And I was recording and
Speaker 1: editing until three am every night, and then getting back
Speaker 1: in my car a few hours later to go back
Speaker 1: to court. And I didn't know anything about podcast editing.
Speaker 1: I still don't. I don't do that, and I didn't
Speaker 1: do a very good job of it. I really just
Speaker 1: cut out the parts where I was audibly crying. It's
Speaker 1: still online somewhere. It's not very good. I'm not recommending it.
Speaker 1: If that trial happened today, I would write that story
Speaker 1: very differently. I wish I knew then what I know
Speaker 1: now about the law about writing, about editing, about storytelling.
Speaker 1: But I did the best I could. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: meant for everyone to hear. It wasn't for all of you.
Speaker 1: It was a labor of love for my community, for
Speaker 1: people I knew needed to hear those facts, but from
Speaker 1: someone who cared about them and would treat them with
Speaker 1: a fierce gentleness, someone who understood that they were afraid
Speaker 1: and wounded and angry, and someone who were did their
Speaker 1: right to be that way. They wanted to know the
Speaker 1: boring little details of what happened inside that courtroom, but
Speaker 1: the cool, neutral detachment of a nightly update on CNN
Speaker 1: felt like a slap in the face. So I did
Speaker 1: my best, and I found myself asking those questions a
Speaker 1: lot that month. Why am I doing this? I'm not
Speaker 1: even good at this. What does it add to this
Speaker 1: glut of coverage of this trial for me to do this,
Speaker 1: for me to try to tell this story and to
Speaker 1: put this out. It was a long, brutal and gruesome trial.
Speaker 1: There was graphic testimony about blood and tissue embedded in
Speaker 1: the shattered windshield of the car. Doctors showed us X
Speaker 1: rays and autopsy reports. James Alexfield's junior was being tried
Speaker 1: not just for murder, how they hire, but for the
Speaker 1: injuries he'd caused to eight of the dozens of people
Speaker 1: badly injured in that attack, And each of those eight
Speaker 1: victims testified about their injuries. I tried to treat each
Speaker 1: victim with the care and tenderness they deserved, not just
Speaker 1: choosing the most salacious details about the horrors they'd endured.
Speaker 1: And then one night I got a message from a stranger.
Speaker 1: It was about the podcast. This stranger, this gentle soul,
Speaker 1: had been one of the street medics who was there
Speaker 1: on Fourth Street when it happened. They had rendered aid
Speaker 1: that saved people's lives. They were understandably pretty traumatized by
Speaker 1: what they'd seen that day, and they were having trouble
Speaker 1: consuming coverage of the trial. But someone had passed along
Speaker 1: to them a detail that I had included that had
Speaker 1: been left out a lot of other coverage of the trial.
Speaker 1: This street medic had a crystal clear memory of the
Speaker 1: moment they covered a woman's compound leg fracture so she
Speaker 1: couldn't see it. Amidst the chaos and the screaming and
Speaker 1: the blood. They had the presence of mind to make
Speaker 1: sure that this woman they did not know and would
Speaker 1: never see again, didn't have to see her own bone
Speaker 1: sticking out of her flesh. And they did the best
Speaker 1: they could with the medical supplies they had on their
Speaker 1: backpack to splinter leg and to stop the bleeding and
Speaker 1: to keep her calm until an ambulance came, and then
Speaker 1: they went home. They didn't know that woman. They didn't
Speaker 1: know her name, there was no way to follow up,
Speaker 1: so they'd been left wondering for more than a year.
Speaker 1: Was she okay? They'd lost sleep asking themselves, did I
Speaker 1: do it right? Did I help her? Can she walk?
Speaker 1: Did I make a mistake in that moment that costs
Speaker 1: someone their mobility? And when that woman took the stand
Speaker 1: a trial, she testified about the medic covering the bone
Speaker 1: sticking out of her leg. She said she didn't know
Speaker 1: how bad it was until she got to the hospital,
Speaker 1: and she said on the stand that she's okay now.
Speaker 1: She has a metal rod in her leg, but she's okay.
Speaker 1: She can walk without pain. Her life isn't over, She's
Speaker 1: moving on. And that wasn't headline news. It was just
Speaker 1: nine minutes on the stand. I know it was nine
Speaker 1: minutes because I bought a little digital watch all those
Speaker 1: years ago, and I still obsessively timestamp my handwritten notes,
Speaker 1: marking the time several times per page off in the margins.
Speaker 1: She was one of nine witnesses who testified that day alone,
Speaker 1: and the brief moment in her nine minutes of testimony
Speaker 1: where she said she's okay now didn't make it into
Speaker 1: the newspaper, it wasn't on MSNBC, it wasn't in the
Speaker 1: wire stories. But for someone out there in the world,
Speaker 1: it was everything. It was closure and it was peace.
Speaker 1: And for six years, that single moment of peace that
Speaker 1: I got to give to a stranger who had risked
Speaker 1: their life to save someone else's has been a north
Speaker 1: star for me. It's a lighthouse in the storm when
Speaker 1: I can't remember why I'm writing anything at all. And
Speaker 1: now years later, I'm not just writing about local cases
Speaker 1: for a local audience, but I try to carry that
Speaker 1: same level of responsibility to my audience with me. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to weave together stories of terrible men who did
Speaker 1: terrible things in a way that shines a light into
Speaker 1: the darkness, rather than leading you into that darkness and
Speaker 1: leaving you there to fend for yourself. I'm not always
Speaker 1: going to get it right, I know that, but I
Speaker 1: promise you I am agonizing about the ethics of this
Speaker 1: work to the point of madness. I'm doing my best,
Speaker 1: and I want to navigate what that means for us
Speaker 1: collectively together. So that's all I have to say about
Speaker 1: my personal style of narration today. But this is an
Speaker 1: ongoing conversation, and it's one I'll never be done having,
Speaker 1: and I'll try to have it with you. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of things about podcasting I did not know
Speaker 1: when I started doing this show, and some things I
Speaker 1: didn't even know enough to know I didn't know them.
Speaker 1: It didn't even occur to me until I was a
Speaker 1: handful of episodes deep that I forgot to tell you
Speaker 1: who makes the show possible at all? God bless them.
Speaker 1: None of them said anything to me about it. I
Speaker 1: left myself a little reminder to record some kind of
Speaker 1: closing credit segment, but it's buried under a stack of
Speaker 1: other reminders for things like change furnace filter and email
Speaker 1: National Archives about that transcript again, both of which I've
Speaker 1: been meaning to do for weeks now. Actually, I'm going
Speaker 1: to get up and change that filter right now. While
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it, and while I'm checking things off
Speaker 1: my to do I have to take a little sidebar
Speaker 1: to gush a little bit about the team at Cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. This show would not exist at all if
Speaker 1: executive producer Sophie Lichterman hadn't come up with the idea.
Speaker 1: Given it its name, convinced me that I could do
Speaker 1: it convinced the network that I could do it, and
Speaker 1: then held my hand for months while I figured out
Speaker 1: what She already knew that this show was the perfect
Speaker 1: way to tell these stories. Maybe she just wanted me
Speaker 1: to stop derailing other conversations with my excited outbursts about
Speaker 1: some new weird guy that I found, and she thought
Speaker 1: she could get some peace if she found me another
Speaker 1: outlet for that. And the show wouldn't get done every
Speaker 1: week if not for supervising producer Ian Johnson. There's so
Speaker 1: much business stuff that happens that I am blissfully unaware of.
Speaker 1: I don't know how the show gets into your phone.
Speaker 1: I just type my little scripts every week. I think
Speaker 1: Ian takes care of the rest of that. All of
Speaker 1: the research and note taking and conspiracy theorizing and writing
Speaker 1: is done by me. Apparently some podcasts have like a
Speaker 1: separate guy who does the research. But even if such
Speaker 1: a guy were to present himself to me, the research
Speaker 1: is my favorite part. I would never let that go.
Speaker 1: The moment each week when I have to close my
Speaker 1: two hundred browser tabs and stop researching so I can
Speaker 1: start writing is always bittersweet. How I wish I could
Speaker 1: do twice as much research and half as much writing,
Speaker 1: to be honest. But if that's all there was to
Speaker 1: the show, just research and writing, it would be unlistenable.
Speaker 1: Every week I read my little script into my microphone
Speaker 1: in my home office and I think, oh, no, oh,
Speaker 1: that was a mess. I'm thinking it right now. I'm
Speaker 1: reading into my little microphone in my home office. It's
Speaker 1: three in the morning, and this file is late, and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, oh, no, you know, I'm retaking lines fifteen times.
Speaker 1: I burped into the microphone more times than I'm willing
Speaker 1: to admit. I'm so sorry, Rory. I'm always having to
Speaker 1: stop and look up something like how to pronounce some
Speaker 1: town in Michigan, because you know, they don't say it normal,
Speaker 1: and I know I'd never hear the end of it
Speaker 1: if I just read it, assuming they would say it
Speaker 1: like the rest of the world, like myland, Michigan. It
Speaker 1: says Milan. It says Milan. That's a city we've all
Speaker 1: heard of, but it's Mylan. And there are still, to
Speaker 1: this day takes that have to be cut because you
Speaker 1: can hear my voice thickening with grief. That's the sound
Speaker 1: of the tears threatening to spill over it's someone else's
Speaker 1: job to edit that out now. But if it ever
Speaker 1: stops happening, I think the show is over. If I
Speaker 1: can do this without feeling it at all, then my
Speaker 1: heart has gotten too hard and it's time to stop.
Speaker 1: It's time to close my laptop and walk away and
Speaker 1: walk into the sea, because I've lost my humanity. But
Speaker 1: every week, somehow, my editor Rory Gagan returns to me
Speaker 1: something that I barely recognize, something all cleaned up and beautiful,
Speaker 1: with perfectly placed music beds. And that music, I've seen
Speaker 1: so many listeners asking about the opening theme that was
Speaker 1: created just for the show. Why the incredibly talented Brandon Dickert.
Speaker 1: This is another one of those podcasting things that I
Speaker 1: never even thought to wonder about. But of course, course
Speaker 1: it's someone's job to make custom music for a show.
Speaker 1: And when Sophie told me it was time to brainstorm
Speaker 1: what kind of music we wanted for the show, I
Speaker 1: completely froze. How could I possibly know what kind of
Speaker 1: musical vibe I'm trying to create here? I mean, how
Speaker 1: is it even possible to describe a sound you've never heard? Like?
Speaker 1: I know music can evoke an emotional response, but the
Speaker 1: idea of reverse engineering. That is like asking me to
Speaker 1: translate hieroglyphics. It felt impossible, What does that even mean?
Speaker 1: So I sent her a bunch of very stupid ideas
Speaker 1: and she was very patient with me. I had a meltdown.
Speaker 1: I was googling things like spooky sounding music, Comma not
Speaker 1: scary and whimsical spooky tunes. I just panicked and I
Speaker 1: sent more a bad ideas And I've just gone back
Speaker 1: to my email now to see what it was that
Speaker 1: I finally came up with that was good enough for
Speaker 1: the experts to work with. And who was a bulleted
Speaker 1: list that says Twin Peaks theme interstitial music for an
Speaker 1: evil NPR broadcast, a riff on the X Files theme,
Speaker 1: question mark, David Lynch's Elephant Man theme but more lively,
Speaker 1: and Tim Burton spooky but goofy, something like Danny Elfman.
Speaker 1: And I could not have had such good luck if
Speaker 1: I planned it. Brandon Dickert wrote back, I play in
Speaker 1: a band with the bass player from Oingo Boingo, so
Speaker 1: I'm very familiar with the Elfman vibe. What he's just
Speaker 1: casually in a band with John Avila, No big deal.
Speaker 1: So when people compliment the music, and I say, I know,
Speaker 1: isn't it incredible? I'm not tooting my own horn. I
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with that. I'm just so impressed
Speaker 1: and grateful for the theme Brandon Dicker wrote for me,
Speaker 1: and as for the show itself, I think I'm getting
Speaker 1: the hang of it. One problem I will absolutely never
Speaker 1: have is a lack of ideas. I am never going
Speaker 1: to run out of guys. There are, in fact, entirely
Speaker 1: too many guys. I have a running list of episode
Speaker 1: topics i'd like to get to that's a year long already,
Speaker 1: and every week my research into one weird little Guy
Speaker 1: turns up at least one or two new options for
Speaker 1: guys who probably need their own episode. If anything, the
Speaker 1: problem is I lose a whole day of research time
Speaker 1: every week to tracking down some strange loose end that
Speaker 1: really just needs to get added to the list for
Speaker 1: a future episode. And every weird Little Guy I do
Speaker 1: get to is just bursting at the seams with strange
Speaker 1: facts and side stories that end up cut because I
Speaker 1: just don't have the stamina to weave together every thread.
Speaker 1: When the first episode came out, I was kicking myself
Speaker 1: because I forgot to include a particularly funny little tangent
Speaker 1: that episode was about Kevin alfred Strom, the neo Nazi
Speaker 1: pedophile who was the original source of a quote often
Speaker 1: misattributed to Voltaire back when he got arrested for possession
Speaker 1: of child sexual abuse material. He's actually living here in
Speaker 1: the Charlottesville area. A strange coincidence. I suppose it really
Speaker 1: makes you wonder what it is about this place that
Speaker 1: attracts Nazis. But two years after he completed his very
Speaker 1: brief federal sentence, he started a blog. And that's not
Speaker 1: really surprising. He was an early adopter of the format,
Speaker 1: and he'd been running the online publication for the neo
Speaker 1: Nazi organization National Alliance for many years. He has a
Speaker 1: lot of websites, so Kevin Strow making a website isn't
Speaker 1: the surprising thing here. But this one didn't have his
Speaker 1: name on it. In fact, he didn't want anyone to
Speaker 1: know that it was his website at all. It was
Speaker 1: made to look like a local news website for the
Speaker 1: Charlottesville area, and it had a number of posts about
Speaker 1: innocuous local goings on. This was back in twenty ten.
Speaker 1: That was the year that we had a really wild
Speaker 1: late season snowstorm just unbelievable amount of snow for this area.
Speaker 1: So there were a couple of posts on this quote
Speaker 1: unquote local news blog about the weather, about enforcement of
Speaker 1: the city's snow removal ordnance, and the giant mountain of
Speaker 1: snow in the Barracks Road shopping Center parking lot that
Speaker 1: we all called Mount Chipotle for months before it finally
Speaker 1: melted away. But mixed in with these low stakes, low
Speaker 1: cool public interest stories and what looked like a high
Speaker 1: school essay about the film Nosferatu written by his teenage son,
Speaker 1: there were a couple of opinion pieces about how this
Speaker 1: Kevin Strom guy really isn't so bad and you know,
Speaker 1: he was railroaded by a politically motivated prosecution because of
Speaker 1: his pro white beliefs. And aside from a few weirdly
Speaker 1: personal attacks on Strom's ex wife and those uncomfortable pro
Speaker 1: pedophilia op eds, the site was like seventy percent normal.
Speaker 1: I mean that other thirty percent is really really not normal.
Speaker 1: But most of the posts were normal, and most of
Speaker 1: the content isn't about Kevin Strong. But the site's IP
Speaker 1: address provides us a little clue. A lot of websites
Speaker 1: were created using that same IP address, like a lo
Speaker 1: like over one hundred a lot, and a lot of
Speaker 1: those websites definitely belong to Kevin Strom because they are
Speaker 1: things like his personal website, Kevin Alfredstrom dot com, his
Speaker 1: Ham radio website, his third wife's personal blog, several websites
Speaker 1: belonging to National Alliance, websites devoted to Strome's hero, the
Speaker 1: anti semit revelop Oliver, and a bunch of Nazi themed
Speaker 1: parked domains with no content on them, things like minecomf
Speaker 1: dot net and Turnerdiaries dot org. Some of the sites
Speaker 1: don't have any immediately clear connection to Kevin Strom or
Speaker 1: obvious pro Nazi content, so it kind of looks like
Speaker 1: he may have been earning money on the side doing
Speaker 1: perfectly normal web development work. So I've put a reminder
Speaker 1: on my to do list to check out what kinds
Speaker 1: of clients we're hiring a not seed pedophile to make
Speaker 1: their business website. In twenty ten, and for all the
Speaker 1: time I spent detailing Gerald Drake's Internet activities in the
Speaker 1: second episode one about the Civil War reenactor using a
Speaker 1: fake anti fascist group as cover for the bomb threats
Speaker 1: he was sending his former friends, I forgot to tell
Speaker 1: you about his hobby of pretending to be a cop
Speaker 1: on Reddit. I mean, his trip Advisor reviews were a
Speaker 1: rich vein of content, from Burger King in Madrid to
Speaker 1: five guys in Paris. The man absolutely loved to tell
Speaker 1: you about a fast food meal in a faraway place.
Speaker 1: And I spent hours reading his posts on the sex
Speaker 1: Doll Forum. Quite frankly, it would have been malpractice if
Speaker 1: I didn't tell you that the last thing he did
Speaker 1: before getting arrested by the FBI was post about the
Speaker 1: great customer service at a company called sex Doll Queen.
Speaker 1: I left out some of the nastier sex doll stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, I saw things that I wish I hadn't,
Speaker 1: and it just felt superfluous to tell you that he
Speaker 1: bought a doll second hand at an estate sale, But
Speaker 1: when he, in turn was trying to sell it on
Speaker 1: the sex Doll forum, he assured the other users that
Speaker 1: not only had he never used it, but he knew
Speaker 1: the dead guy he bought it from never used it either,
Speaker 1: because he was too sick before he died, So it's
Speaker 1: basically brand new. But I can't believe I forgot to
Speaker 1: tell you he spent years cosplaying as a retired cop
Speaker 1: on Reddit dot com. He had a bunch of posts
Speaker 1: spanning several years where he claimed to be a retired
Speaker 1: police officer, and that's just simply not possible. He worked
Speaker 1: for twenty five years for the Saint Clair County, Michigan
Speaker 1: Road Commission as an equipment welder. It's not like he
Speaker 1: has a LinkedIn. I can't pin this down with absolute certainty,
Speaker 1: but I'm assuming he lost that job when he went
Speaker 1: to jail for sexual imposition of a minor in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, and so that would mean he got
Speaker 1: that job when he was twenty years old. And he
Speaker 1: certainly didn't become a cop in his fifties after becoming
Speaker 1: a registered sex offender. He couldn't even buy a gun
Speaker 1: at a store, let alone carry one for work. So
Speaker 1: he was never a cop, I'm really sure of that.
Speaker 1: But he was never a Confederate soldier either. He just
Speaker 1: liked pretending to be those things, and sometimes it seemed
Speaker 1: like he liked imagining being a cop, like it was
Speaker 1: part of a kind of sexual fantasy for him, like
Speaker 1: in this post from twenty seventeen, pulled over a car
Speaker 1: for speeding and as I walked up to it, I
Speaker 1: see it as driven by the most drop dead gorgeous
Speaker 1: blonde I have ever seen in my crummy life. My
Speaker 1: brain overrode my mouth and I set out loud. What
Speaker 1: was I thinking? God, I'd love to fuck that. She
Speaker 1: heard me and smiled. She knew she wasn't getting a
Speaker 1: ticket from me or this post, also from twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: did undercover and we were even allowed to do small
Speaker 1: amounts of drugs and did hook up with the babes.
Speaker 1: A good undercover officer becomes the creep to not be
Speaker 1: called out. But in a lot of the posts where
Speaker 1: he's claiming to be a former cop, he's definitely trying
Speaker 1: to use that as a position of perceived authority to
Speaker 1: lend more weight to his opinion. Usually that opinion is
Speaker 1: about something really racist. On a post about racial differences
Speaker 1: in standardized test scores, Gerald claimed that when he was
Speaker 1: a police officer, they had a special, dumbed down version
Speaker 1: of the sergeant's exams for black officers because otherwise they'd
Speaker 1: never get promoted. He claimed that black officers would get
Speaker 1: points on their exam just for spelling their own names right.
Speaker 1: But it's worth noting that Gerald misspelled the word sergeant
Speaker 1: in his post about this, And a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that get left out are just these strange little
Speaker 1: tangents you didn't even know you were missing out on,
Speaker 1: like how Gerald had a poshmark account that he used
Speaker 1: to buy designer panties for his sex dolls. But other
Speaker 1: things that I accidentally leave out or just run out
Speaker 1: of room for are things that you might have been
Speaker 1: left wondering about. Like in the Very Black episodes, I
Speaker 1: devoted a lot of time to the side story of
Speaker 1: the Casanova Lounge, the only gay bar in Somerset County,
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania in the late nineties. But by the time the
Speaker 1: Casanova Lounge's story ended, Very Black wasn't part of it anymore.
Speaker 1: So I just sort of left that thread dangling, and
Speaker 1: I did see some listeners asking about whatever happened to
Speaker 1: Pat Kramer and her bar. The Casanova Lounge closed its
Speaker 1: doors in two thousand and one after a tumultuous four
Speaker 1: years in existence. The Kramer sold the property to Madeline
Speaker 1: and Barry Layman, who turned it into a private banquet
Speaker 1: space for Christian events. They renamed the building Baca House,
Speaker 1: with Baca being the Hebrew word for a half shekel.
Speaker 1: In Exodus, Abaca is listed as the amount paid as
Speaker 1: an annual temple tax for the use of the sanctuary,
Speaker 1: and the building was used for church groups, baby showers,
Speaker 1: wedding receptions, ladies, Bible studies. Around two thousand it was
Speaker 1: started being used for actual church services, and it was
Speaker 1: for many years a Somerset County polling location. The layman
Speaker 1: sold the property in twenty fourteen to one of those
Speaker 1: troubled youth outdoor adventure camps run by a former Marine
Speaker 1: drill sergeant, but the Kramer stayed in the hospitality industry.
Speaker 1: They opened a restaurant in another town nearby and ran
Speaker 1: it for more than a decade before they finally retired.
Speaker 1: In the episode, I mentioned that some of the patrons
Speaker 1: at the Casanova called Pat Kramer mother, and as she aged,
Speaker 1: she still did most of the cooking at her own restaurant,
Speaker 1: and in her last few years in her restaurant kitchen,
Speaker 1: her customers called her nana. Her husband, Mary at Kramer,
Speaker 1: passed away in twenty twenty two, but Pat's still out
Speaker 1: there enjoying her retirement. And on that note, maybe I
Speaker 1: don't need to say this. I hope. I don't need
Speaker 1: to say this, but please don't take it upon yourself
Speaker 1: to find or contact the subjects of the show, any
Speaker 1: of them. Don't find the weird little guys or their victims,
Speaker 1: or their neighbors, or their families, or the side characters
Speaker 1: and their stories. I'm not sure why that's an urge
Speaker 1: people sometimes feel, but if you do feel that pull,
Speaker 1: please resist it. After the Frank Sweeney episodes came out,
Speaker 1: I saw that a listener to the show had sought
Speaker 1: out and found a social media profile belonging to Frank's
Speaker 1: German girlfriend, and they posted a link on her page
Speaker 1: to the episode about him. And you know, if Frank
Speaker 1: were to find this episode on his own and listen
Speaker 1: to it, that's one thing. I have no control over that.
Speaker 1: But there's no need to tap the glass, so to speak, right,
Speaker 1: need to insert yourself into that process. It's just kind
Speaker 1: of weird and rude, and it doesn't feel right to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't stop you from doing it. I'm
Speaker 1: just telling you it would be my preference that you
Speaker 1: not do that. I try not to provide unnecessary personal
Speaker 1: details about people, and I change the names of the
Speaker 1: victims in Frank's story. But I don't want to have
Speaker 1: to worry about listeners of the show using my research
Speaker 1: to harass anyone. So enjoy the stories, talk about them
Speaker 1: amongst yourselves, tell me what you think of them, but
Speaker 1: please don't seek out the people in these stories to
Speaker 1: tell them what you think of their lives, especially when
Speaker 1: it comes to people who found themselves a part of
Speaker 1: these stories through no fault of their own. People like
Speaker 1: the Cramers, So let's keep in touch, you and me.
Speaker 1: I'm not great at that in my personal or professional lives,
Speaker 1: but I'd like to have that line of communication open.
Speaker 1: I set up an email address for the show. It's
Speaker 1: Weird Little Guys Podcast at gmail dot com, So if
Speaker 1: you'd like to send me a message that's just between
Speaker 1: the two of us, that's the best way to do it.
Speaker 1: A lot of listeners have reached out to me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: either by tweeting at me or at the network, or
Speaker 1: by direct message to me, and I do try really
Speaker 1: hard to read all of your messages, but it's really
Speaker 1: easy for those to get buried or lost in the shuffle.
Speaker 1: But if you send an email to the show, at
Speaker 1: least they'll all be in one place where I can
Speaker 1: always find them again. Again. I'm not promising this means
Speaker 1: I'll get any better at answering anybody, but at least
Speaker 1: this way, I'll know where all of the messages I'm
Speaker 1: not answering even are, so I can properly orient my
Speaker 1: anxiety about that. And if you've got something to say
Speaker 1: about the show that isn't something you want to keep
Speaker 1: between the two of us, you could post it on
Speaker 1: the subreddit. I sound like, go grandma right now. I
Speaker 1: think I'm probably not using the right Internet terminology. Just
Speaker 1: before the show launched, Ed Zitron, the host of Better Offline,
Speaker 1: gave me some absolutely fucking unhinged advice. Honestly, Ed he
Speaker 1: told me that I should go ahead and make my
Speaker 1: own subreddit for the show, that I should be the
Speaker 1: moderator of that subreddit, and that I should engage directly, often,
Speaker 1: and if necessary, adversarially with the listeners. And I think
Speaker 1: Ed does do that on his subreddit. I have a
Speaker 1: lot of respect Fred, and I really enjoy his show,
Speaker 1: but I think what I told him at the time
Speaker 1: was I would rather lay down in traffic than do
Speaker 1: any of that. As human beings, we are simply not
Speaker 1: wired to know this much about what strangers think of us,
Speaker 1: and that sounded like a recipe for madness. But I'm
Speaker 1: also very weak, and when I saw that someone else
Speaker 1: had created a subreddit for the show, I couldn't help myself.
Speaker 1: I thought I could play it cool and pretend I
Speaker 1: wasn't checking in on the posts every week, but I
Speaker 1: ended up creating a Reddit account so that I could
Speaker 1: pop in and answer questions occasionally. So if you're so inclined,
Speaker 1: you could go there and post your thoughts or feelings
Speaker 1: or questions or whatever. Be nice. Though I'm not the
Speaker 1: moderator of that space, I don't know the person who is.
Speaker 1: But don't make their life hard. Don't make anybody's life
Speaker 1: hard if you can help it. And please don't be weird,
Speaker 1: whether you're sending an email to me directly, or posting
Speaker 1: on the subred or leaving a review or whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: the old thing seeing like no one is listening, love
Speaker 1: like you've never been hurt, and dance like no one
Speaker 1: is watching. Well, I've got a slightly different version that's
Speaker 1: been more useful to me in my life, and it's
Speaker 1: email like you're going to get subpoenaed and post like
Speaker 1: you're going to have to hear it read back to
Speaker 1: you in a hostile tone during a deposition. Because if
Speaker 1: you don't want to explain the joke to your mom,
Speaker 1: your boss, or a federal judge, don't write it down.
Speaker 1: That's just some free life advice for you in general.
Speaker 1: But really, please don't email me something that's going to
Speaker 1: make you the subject of an episode. I already have
Speaker 1: too many ideas on the list, and I really don't
Speaker 1: want to have to put your picture on my red
Speaker 1: stream board. Weird Little Guys the production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonmedia
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.