Speaker 1: Hey, Alphabet boys, listeners, this is Trevor Aronson. I'm here
Speaker 1: to tell you about a new series from me and
Speaker 1: Western Sound, Into the Madness. It's a very different kind
Speaker 1: of series from me and well, a different kind of
Speaker 1: series altogether, something very unique. Into the Madness is a
Speaker 1: seven part investigation of the twenty twenty two mass shooting
Speaker 1: in Highland Park, Illinois, a devastating attack during a Fourth
Speaker 1: of July parade in the Chicago suburbs. Prosecutors charged Bobby
Speaker 1: Cremo with the mass shooting. Creamo was a SoundCloud artist
Speaker 1: who went by the stage name Awake the Rapper, but
Speaker 1: the mass shooting near Chicago was part of something insidious.
Speaker 1: Cremo had created an elaborate game, complete with cryptic videos,
Speaker 1: a book of numbers, and an eerie online presence designed
Speaker 1: to see a conspiracy theory about the massacre. Into the
Speaker 1: Madness is a deep dive into the events leading up
Speaker 1: to the mass shooting and the story of a woman
Speaker 1: who became a confidant to Cremo and the final player
Speaker 1: in his twisted game. Drawing from dozens of interviews in
Speaker 1: more than forty eight hours of recorded calls with Cremo,
Speaker 1: I tell a story that will challenge everything you think
Speaker 1: you know about mass shootings, conspiracy theories, and the fragile
Speaker 1: boundary between reality and illusion. Into the Madness explores the
Speaker 1: rise of nihilistic extremism, the role of technology and fostering extremism,
Speaker 1: and America's collective dissent into conspiracy thinking. You're about to
Speaker 1: hear the first chapter of this series. To listen to
Speaker 1: the full series, search for Into the Madness in the
Speaker 1: Audible app or follow me Trevor Aronson on the Audible app.
Speaker 1: You can start listening today when you sign up for
Speaker 1: a free thirty day trial. Here's chapter one. A warning,
Speaker 1: this series contains graphic language and descriptions of violence and death.
Speaker 1: It also contains recordings of a man accused of committing
Speaker 1: mass murder. We advise listener discretion among researchers. A violent
Speaker 1: extremist A theory about a new type of threat is emerging.
Speaker 1: Doomers extremely online young men who have embraced a bleak,
Speaker 1: nihilistic outlook. They don't kill for a cause. The theory
Speaker 1: suggests they don't kill to advance an ideology. They kill
Speaker 1: because they believe and nothing at all. This idea is
Speaker 1: reflected in an online video created by a suburban Chicago
Speaker 1: man named Robert Krema the Third, or Bobby as he's known.
Speaker 2: Where am I going?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't care. There is no past
Speaker 3: or future, just the now. I need to leave now.
Speaker 3: I need to just do it. It is my destiny.
Speaker 3: Everything has led up to this. Nothing can stop me,
Speaker 3: not even myself. Is there such thing as free will?
Speaker 3: Or has this been planned out like a cosmic recipe?
Speaker 1: After posting this video, Bobby was arrested for committing a
Speaker 1: mass shooting during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois,
Speaker 1: which left seven people dead and forty eight others injured.
Speaker 1: Police found surveillance footage showing Bobby dressed as a woman
Speaker 1: earbuds in walking to and from the rooftop where the
Speaker 1: shots were fired, and on the sidewalk they found a weapon.
Speaker 1: It discarded AR fifteen style rifle registered to Bobby. After
Speaker 1: his arrest, prosecutors announced that Bobby had confessed.
Speaker 4: He was questioned in the Highland Park Police department. He
Speaker 4: was read his miranda, warnings, offered attorneys, etc. He went
Speaker 4: into details about what he had done. He admitted to
Speaker 4: what he had done.
Speaker 1: The video Bobby posted before the shooting seemed to suggest
Speaker 1: that he had been signaling about his plans all along.
Speaker 1: I need to just do it, Bobby said. Nothing can
Speaker 1: stop me, not even myself. But the video is more
Speaker 1: than a cryptic prelude to the shooting. It acts as
Speaker 1: a trailer, an introduction to something bigger. Bobby posted a
Speaker 1: series of videos online, each one part of a dark,
Speaker 1: twisted game, a puzzle he created for anyone willing to
Speaker 1: play along. Bobby didn't carry out the Highland Park mass
Speaker 1: shooting for political reasons. He wasn't driven by ideology. His
Speaker 1: motive was simpler. He did it as part of a game.
Speaker 1: Bobby Kremo appears to be proof of the Doomer theory.
Speaker 1: But here's the most unsettling part the game Bobby created.
Speaker 1: It didn't end with the shooting.
Speaker 5: Okay, in yougording none?
Speaker 1: No, this is real.
Speaker 5: This holy was a false slight, void by the people
Speaker 5: who hide behind the FBI.
Speaker 1: The witnesses are actors. The interview, even from his jail
Speaker 1: cell as he waits trial, He's still pulling the strings,
Speaker 1: still playing the role of game master with a player
Speaker 1: on the outside.
Speaker 6: The suspect in the Highland Park parade. Massacre has kept
Speaker 6: his phone privileges despite some concerning behavior. The Chicago Sun
Speaker 6: Times is reporting that a woman recorded a phone call
Speaker 6: with the suspect, and Robert Kremo claimed that the shooting
Speaker 6: was quote false flag and that the FBI orchestrated it.
Speaker 6: He also names two alleged FBI agents.
Speaker 1: And Bobby's reality warping game isn't over.
Speaker 7: It's not so much just like a bunch of puzzle
Speaker 7: pieces thrown together. There's meaning behind it.
Speaker 1: This is the story of a new kind of threat,
Speaker 1: a new kind of killer, not one driven by any
Speaker 1: sort of traditional ideology, but by a performative need for
Speaker 1: an audience, like an Internet troll brought to life as
Speaker 1: a mass shooter. I'm Trevor Aronson from Western Sound. This
Speaker 1: is Into the Madness an audible original Chapter one. The
Speaker 1: journalist and the murderer's friend.
Speaker 7: So okay, So none of my friends were really into
Speaker 7: like the LOFI or the SoundCloud rap at that time,
Speaker 7: but I was. And I was the huge dork for
Speaker 7: being into SoundCloud rap. They all made fun of me
Speaker 7: for it, So I was really surprised to find out
Speaker 7: that they were going to have a SoundCloud rapper come through.
Speaker 7: I was really excited. Though.
Speaker 1: This is Jamie, or, as she prefers, James, her nickname.
Speaker 1: You'll hear her refer to by both names, Jamie or James.
Speaker 1: She first meets Bobby Kremo in a club in Indiana
Speaker 1: in November twenty sixteen, when the hip hop subgenre known
Speaker 1: as SoundCloud rap is beginning to reshape American music. The
Speaker 1: music streaming platform SoundCloud disrupted the industry by allowing independent
Speaker 1: artists to cultivate their own followings, cutting out the record
Speaker 1: label middleman, and pushing the boundaries of what hip hop
Speaker 1: can be. With its emo, grungesthetic SoundCloud rap stood apart
Speaker 1: from the brash, chest beating bravado of more commercial hip hop.
Speaker 1: Its lyrics often romanticize Xanax and suicide, set against down
Speaker 1: tempo beats that are purposely distorted and degraded, as if
Speaker 1: the songs are playing from an old, worn out cassette.
Speaker 1: Jamie was surprised to learn that a SoundCloud rapper from
Speaker 1: Chicago was coming to a club in her small Indiana town.
Speaker 7: And Bobby came in and introduced himself to the owner,
Speaker 7: and I was standing up front talking to all of them,
Speaker 7: and he introduced himself to me, and he's got like
Speaker 7: this languid type of like it's almost like velvety, quiet
Speaker 7: voice all the time. So he introduced himself to me,
Speaker 7: and at that time, I remember I'm looking like a
Speaker 7: kid with like a backwards cap, and he was just like, hey,
Speaker 7: what's up. I'm Bobby, and I was.
Speaker 1: Like, hey, just sixteen years old. Then, Bobby only had
Speaker 1: two tattoos, a small cross on his finger and the
Speaker 1: eye of Horace on his arm. Most of the famous
Speaker 1: SoundCloud rappers had tattoos on their faces, necks, and hands,
Speaker 1: a trademark look for SoundCloud rap, but Bobby at the
Speaker 1: time didn't have much ink. So when Bobby introduced himself
Speaker 1: to Jamie, she never imagined this was a SoundCloud rapper
Speaker 1: from Chicago. He just didn't look the part.
Speaker 7: He didn't say Hi, I'm awake the rapper. He just
Speaker 7: said hey, what's up, I'm Bobby until it was time
Speaker 7: for him to go on, and then I was like, oh, so, okay,
Speaker 7: so this probably is gonna suck. This is going to
Speaker 7: be a horrible show because it's like this quiet little kid, like,
Speaker 7: what what SoundCloud rapping is? He going to do when
Speaker 7: he talks like this and he's so self spoke, canna apply.
Speaker 7: But he was really good. It was really good. I
Speaker 7: wish I had video of it to show you. I wish,
Speaker 7: but I don't.
Speaker 2: So I stop for a second and think to myself,
Speaker 2: and so need you or anything else? I will mortal
Speaker 2: in these pages that discontinue. I'm an issue why he
Speaker 2: made in some swing patient and Brent away the sleepways
Speaker 2: so much or not enough at all.
Speaker 1: They talked more after the show Drugs.
Speaker 7: It's just he wasn't trying to like dominate the room.
Speaker 7: He wasn't interested in like chatting about a bunch of bullshit,
Speaker 7: which I'm not good at small talk. I don't care.
Speaker 7: He wasn't on his phone, he wasn't taking a bunch
Speaker 7: of selfies. I'm not interested in that either. Like he
Speaker 7: was very in the moment and watching everybody, and that's
Speaker 7: what I tend to do. So we were very content
Speaker 7: to be off to the side, just kind of having
Speaker 7: a quiet conversation about like nothing. But I immediately felt
Speaker 7: very connected to him and like comfortable with him, Like
Speaker 7: I just I just genuinely liked him. I really liked him.
Speaker 1: Something about Bobby drew Jamie in. She felt she understood
Speaker 1: him even from that one brief encounter. Back then, Jamie
Speaker 1: was a nursing school. She didn't have much time for
Speaker 1: friendships and relationships, but she and Bobby kept in touch
Speaker 1: off and on.
Speaker 7: Was just Snapchat and Instagram that I followed him on,
Speaker 7: but he tends to disappear from the Internet from time
Speaker 7: to time completely. He would just rip everything down and
Speaker 7: delete everything, and I tend to do the same.
Speaker 1: Thing over the next few years. Through their sporadic exchanges
Speaker 1: amid Bobby's repeated houdiniacs on social media, Jamie catches fleeting
Speaker 1: glimpses of Bobby. As he changes, Bobby gets more and
Speaker 1: more tauch hues, he begins to resemble the other SoundCloud artists,
Speaker 1: the number forty seven etched into his right temple, a
Speaker 1: tally mark beneath his right eye, and the word awake
Speaker 1: scripts it elegantly above the other coiled around his neck,
Speaker 1: a thorny rose stem across his knuckles, and black ink
Speaker 1: f U c K l O VE fuck love. Other
Speaker 1: than meeting at that club, the relationship between Bobby and
Speaker 1: Jamie exists entirely online. It's been months since they'd communicated,
Speaker 1: and then comes July fourth, twenty twenty two, the annual
Speaker 1: parade in downtown Highland Park, Illinois. Hundreds of people line
Speaker 1: the streets, some sitting in folding chairs. A marching band plays,
Speaker 1: and floats promote local businesses and politicians. What you're about
Speaker 1: to hear from that morning is disturbing. At ten fourteen am,
Speaker 1: the gunshots begin in first most assume it's fireworks, that
Speaker 1: what happened harmless. Then the crowd erupts in panic. On
Speaker 1: July fourth, twenty twenty two, Gamie's at home nursing a
Speaker 1: bird with a broken wing and looking through videos on YouTube.
Speaker 7: I was trying to find soothing bird music for an
Speaker 7: angry bird. But then I saw that there was this
Speaker 7: live on because there was this active shooting in you know,
Speaker 7: Highland Park, Chicago, which I have other friends that live
Speaker 7: in that area and not just Bobby. So I was like,
Speaker 7: oh my god. So I turned it on and just
Speaker 7: started kind of following it throughout the day, from pretty
Speaker 7: much the time that they went live on the news
Speaker 7: until he was arrested. So I had no idea it
Speaker 7: was Bobby. I was just following it because I was
Speaker 7: home well the ten search for the gunman lasted for hours,
Speaker 7: of course, until we finally heard police caught the suspect
Speaker 7: in Lake Forest near Wesley and US Highway forty one.
Speaker 7: Here's a map theory. It wasn't until they showed the
Speaker 7: picture of him sitting in the back of the cop car,
Speaker 7: because like they showed the live of him being arrested.
Speaker 7: I watched all of that unfold. But then I saw
Speaker 7: the picture of him in the back of the cop car,
Speaker 7: and it was the eyes, like he his eyes are
Speaker 7: very unforgettable. He's got they're almost they're sad. Even when
Speaker 7: he's happy, he's just they're like puppy dog eyes all
Speaker 7: the time kind of they're very unforgettable, very memorable. So
Speaker 7: there's a picture of him that was posted and he's
Speaker 7: sitting in the back of a cop car and he's
Speaker 7: looking up at an officer. And that was when it
Speaker 7: kind of hit me that, like, Okay, I know him,
Speaker 7: I do know him, and he did not, like he
Speaker 7: didn't look right in the face to me, And I
Speaker 7: was like, this has to be like some kind of
Speaker 7: a psychotic break or something like, there's no way that
Speaker 7: this person that I met and talked to has done
Speaker 7: these things that they're saying.
Speaker 8: Fourth of July is great, love it, but it gets
Speaker 8: old sitting like trying to get your seat because people
Speaker 8: go out like a day before and put their chair
Speaker 8: down in all of this.
Speaker 1: This is Rachel Walstein, a longtime resident of Highland Park, Illinois.
Speaker 1: She's talking about the city's popular Fourth of July parade. She,
Speaker 1: her mom, and one of her kids decided to skip
Speaker 1: the crowd at the parade instead get breakfast nearby in
Speaker 1: downtown Highland Park.
Speaker 9: As soon as we got out of the car, I
Speaker 9: heard fireworks, like really loud, and we saw everybody just
Speaker 9: running and strollers turned over and absolute chaos. And then
Speaker 9: we went to a coffee shop in Highwood, which is
Speaker 9: the next town over, and I mean we understood then
Speaker 9: when had happened, and they just tried to wrap our
Speaker 9: minds around it. I mean, it was like it was
Speaker 9: crazy because Highland Park, first of all, I've always felt
Speaker 9: incredibly safe here and just that you know, something like
Speaker 9: that could happen in our town and on the Fourth
Speaker 9: of July, and it just it didn't make any sense
Speaker 9: until people started calling me and texting.
Speaker 8: Me saying it's the Where's Waldo guy?
Speaker 1: The Where's Waldo guy? That's Bobby Cremo. After the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election, Rachel had been active in protest in the
Speaker 1: Highland Park area against Donald Trump's Stopped the Steal movement,
Speaker 1: which promoted to lie that Trump had been cheated out
Speaker 1: of the presidential line. This is a video Rachel recorder
Speaker 1: during one of the counter protests. Across the street. In
Speaker 1: the middle of the crowd waving Trump flags stands Bobby Cremo.
Speaker 1: He's dressed in black jeans, black converts, round glasses, and
Speaker 1: a red striped shirt with a stocking cap, looking like
Speaker 1: where is Waldo? But instead of participating in the protest,
Speaker 1: he's just standing there looking blankly holding a can of
Speaker 1: red bull.
Speaker 9: So I started diving into his background because I knew
Speaker 9: what I knew about these Stopped the Steel rallies and
Speaker 9: Hyland Park is a third Jewish We have more juice
Speaker 9: per capita than New York. And I had started to
Speaker 9: see some things being posted online, and then also people
Speaker 9: were sending me things saying that you know, he had
Speaker 9: this discord channel. I'll calleds and take a look at
Speaker 9: these posts we grabbed.
Speaker 1: After the shooting Bobby Krimo left behind a massive digital footprint,
Speaker 1: dozens of videos, multiple Twitter accounts, messages on discord servers
Speaker 1: and online forums, and a whole discography of his music.
Speaker 1: As Awake the Rapper, Rachel starts sifting through Bobby's materials,
Speaker 1: which leads her to believe that Bobby is a far
Speaker 1: right Trump supporter and an anti Semite. He posted offensive
Speaker 1: statements about Blacks, Asians, and Jews on an obscure website,
Speaker 1: and his videos appear to reference Christian nationalism and right
Speaker 1: wing political movements. Among the videos Rachel finds is one
Speaker 1: of Bobby wearing black jeans, a black hoodie, and red
Speaker 1: and white high tops, painting the words God's Not Dead
Speaker 1: on the side of his house. It's a reference to
Speaker 1: the low budget Christian propaganda film starring Kevin Sorbo, the
Speaker 1: actor best known for his role as Hercules in the
Speaker 1: nineties TV series. The photos and videos of Bobby at
Speaker 1: Stop This Deal, and another picture of him draped in
Speaker 1: a Trump flag lead Rachel and much of the news
Speaker 1: media to assume that Bobby had been radicalized by Trump's rhetoric,
Speaker 1: that this is an act of far right political violence.
Speaker 1: Bobby had named a discord Channel SS, and he also
Speaker 1: had those two letters tattooed on his hand. Rachel assumed
Speaker 1: that Bobby's SS is a Nazi reference, but much of
Speaker 1: Bobby's online in real world presence is tailored to create
Speaker 1: these kinds of illusions. At first glance, it seems to
Speaker 1: confirm whatever narrative you expected, but on closer inspection it
Speaker 1: raises more questions. The SS on Bobby's hand could have
Speaker 1: been for Nazi stormtroopers. Rachel's conclusion isn't outlandish under the circumstances,
Speaker 1: but it isn't accurate for Bobby SS stands for Sleepy
Speaker 1: squad rap Collective yet formed he attended Stop the steal rallies,
Speaker 1: so he must have been a Trump supporter, but he
Speaker 1: was dressed as Where's Waldo? Was he really a Trump
Speaker 1: supporter or was it all some form of performance an
Speaker 1: elaborate troll. The reason it's easy to assume Bobby Cremo
Speaker 1: is ideological is that he had borrowed images and symbols
Speaker 1: from various sources religious texts, political movements, video games, movies,
Speaker 1: altering them slightly to create a branded, but ultimately superficial
Speaker 1: identity for himself. The videos Bobby left behind on the Internet,
Speaker 1: borrowed heavily from other hip hop artists and online culture
Speaker 1: more broadly, filled with references to memes, video games, internet jokes,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Some of the videos are just
Speaker 1: music videos for a wake the rapper, like this Onegad Bobby,
Speaker 1: his hair dyed red and pulled in the pigtails, is
Speaker 1: wearing welding goggles and what appears to be a cheap,
Speaker 1: oversized astronaut Halloween costume. He's dancing and walking through a
Speaker 1: deli in Convenienced or his father once owned in Highland Park, Illinois.
Speaker 4: This smell of you.
Speaker 3: Running out in Time's.
Speaker 1: Other videos are intentionally cryptic. In this video, Bobby stands
Speaker 1: just inches from the camera. All you can see is
Speaker 1: his face from the nose up, framed by his tattoos.
Speaker 1: He's staring intently at something off camera, the glow of
Speaker 1: a screen reflecting in his eyes. In the background, you
Speaker 1: can hear a track from Mike Wallace's nineteen fifty eight
Speaker 1: interview with Brave New World author Aldus Huxley. Right off
Speaker 1: the bat, let me ask you this as you see it,
Speaker 1: Who and what are the enemies of freedom here in
Speaker 1: the United states in another video, which the news media
Speaker 1: play up to dramatic effect, Fallow in the shooting, Ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, welcome you. Bobby stands in what seems to
Speaker 1: be a classroom cladden, a long sleeved black T shirt
Speaker 1: emblazoned with a large, bright yellow smiley.
Speaker 10: Face, your eyes on my mind and cutey with the
Speaker 10: fast I wanna makeumon. I'm running at its arm shotty
Speaker 10: his good class, smoke and show.
Speaker 1: Then about halfway through the video, Bobby, seated at school desk,
Speaker 1: reaches into his backpack. The screen goes black and the
Speaker 1: music turns ominous. Bobby reappears, his head encased in a
Speaker 1: black helmet fitted with a GoPro camera. He wears a
Speaker 1: tactical vest, holding an Ammo cartridge for an AR fifteen
Speaker 1: style rifle. He lets bullets tumble from his hand onto
Speaker 1: the classroom floor. Although no gun is ever seen, the
Speaker 1: intent is unmistakable. A grim visual commentary on school shootings,
Speaker 1: but in the aftermath of the Highland Park Parade shooting,
Speaker 1: this portrayal took on an ominous and unsettling sognificance, as
Speaker 1: if he were role playing his future crime. Viewed in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the Highland Parks shooting. Bobby's videos and
Speaker 1: images seem to suggest he's planning the attack and hinting
Speaker 1: at it for months, but it's hard to say if
Speaker 1: that's truly what they communicate. Seen in isolation, the messages
Speaker 1: aren't so clear. After mass shootings and other tragedies. There's
Speaker 1: a tendency to search for meaning to make sense of
Speaker 1: what happened, but in that search it's easy to confuse
Speaker 1: noise for signal. A few years after Bobby meets Jamie
Speaker 1: in Indiana, he starts to cultivate a life in the
Speaker 1: darker corners of the Internet, where racist and fascist commentary
Speaker 1: often flourishes, including forums where users share extremely violent videos
Speaker 1: and then make fun of other suffering. However, Bobby's writings
Speaker 1: in these forums aren't truly ideological. He's ironic and nihilistic,
Speaker 1: not serious. That's the culture of these forums. Everything's a
Speaker 1: joke or fodder patrolling, even a gruesome death captured on video.
Speaker 1: Extremism researchers believe this kind of radical nihilism, a philosophy
Speaker 1: that no information can be trusted and nothing is what
Speaker 1: it seems, has the potential to transform into violence just
Speaker 1: as Islamus extremists in the West became radicalized by watching
Speaker 1: propaganda for al Qaeda or the Islamic State. The theory
Speaker 1: goes the so called dumers may become radicalized by the
Speaker 1: modern Internet, which left algorithms can become a personal fire
Speaker 1: hose of conspiracy theories and misinformation. The Dumer idea suggests
Speaker 1: a total lack of belief can be just as radicalizing
Speaker 1: as a dogmatic belief. After the Fourth of July mass shooting,
Speaker 1: the assailant drops the rifle on a sidewalk in Highland
Speaker 1: Park before fleeing the area. The rifle traces back to
Speaker 1: Bobby Cremo. Several hours later, police pull over Bobby while
Speaker 1: he's driving his mother's silver Honda Fit on a road
Speaker 1: just outside Highland Park. Here's what reportedly happens during those
Speaker 1: several hours. Bobby, dressed as a woman, drives to his
Speaker 1: dad's house. He changes it to men's clothing. From there,
Speaker 1: he heads to Northbrook, another Chicago suburb, where he apparently
Speaker 1: stops for a drink of water. Bobby continues on to Wisconsin, where,
Speaker 1: just outside Madison, he buries his phone in the parking
Speaker 1: lot of an auto body shop. Then Bobby returns to
Speaker 1: the Chicago area, where he's arrested. Police say Bobby considered
Speaker 1: but abandoned a plan to attack a second parade in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: He h had another rifle in the car. Bobby's action
Speaker 1: suggests some sort of panic, a plan that didn't work out,
Speaker 1: or maybe there wasn't much of a plan at all.
Speaker 1: Back in Indiana, Jamie's watching the man hunh play out live.
Speaker 1: She's shocked to learn that her distant friend might have
Speaker 1: committed the mass shooting.
Speaker 7: At first, I thought, Okay, it's got to be like
Speaker 7: a mental health thing. It's got to be some kind
Speaker 7: of undetected, undiagnosed, untreated, ignored mental health kind of crisis thing.
Speaker 7: That has to be what's happening here? That was my
Speaker 7: first thought.
Speaker 1: Just like Rachel Walkstein, Jamie starts examining as much of
Speaker 1: Bobby's digital footprint as she can, But Jamie comes to
Speaker 1: a much different conclusion than Rachel and the media do.
Speaker 1: She finds the videos strange. She starts to wonder is
Speaker 1: Bobby trying to send a message. Inconsistent and contradictory news
Speaker 1: reports from the crime scene, which are not uncommon following
Speaker 1: violent chaotic events, only fuel Jamie's suspicions. It's not that
Speaker 1: Jamie thinks Bobby wasn't there at the crime scene. He
Speaker 1: clearly was. The surveillance video of Bobby dressed as a
Speaker 1: woman and his rifle left on the sidewalk are indisputable
Speaker 1: pieces of evidence. But Jamie thinks the real story might
Speaker 1: be more more complicated than the one told in the
Speaker 1: news media and in court filings. Why else, Jamie's thinking goes,
Speaker 1: would there be so much conflicting information. For example, on
Speaker 1: the day of the shooting, a man at the parade
Speaker 1: tells the news media he saw the gunman on the street,
Speaker 1: even though the shellcasings were found on a rooftop.
Speaker 11: I had a good look at this guy who was
Speaker 11: not on a rooftop. He was on the street. He
Speaker 11: was right behind the street post that had a stop
Speaker 11: sign on it, and he was shooting from behind. That
Speaker 11: this information about being on a rooftop. Just because there
Speaker 11: was an access to the rooftop doesn't mean he was there.
Speaker 1: And there are other odd or conflicting reports. The shooter
Speaker 1: fired more than seventy rounds, but fifteen of those bullets
Speaker 1: were fired not into the crowd, but instead into a
Speaker 1: knee wall on the roof, and the Highland Park Police
Speaker 1: tell the news media that they believed Bobby had planned
Speaker 1: the attack for weeks, but the FBI leader says he
Speaker 1: had planned it for years.
Speaker 7: That math does not math for me. There's a whole
Speaker 7: lot of math doesn't math, but that especially does not.
Speaker 1: So Jamie sets out to investigate. She requests to be
Speaker 1: added to Bobby Krima's contact list in jail. There, he
Speaker 1: has access to a tablet that, depending on the restrictions,
Speaker 1: let some text and call people on the outside.
Speaker 7: And I waited and I waited and I waited for
Speaker 7: him to message me back, and it took a while,
Speaker 7: but he did answer me.
Speaker 12: Hello, this is a prepaid debit call from It's Bobby Cremo.
Speaker 12: This call is from a correctionion facility, and it's subject
Speaker 12: to monitoring and recording. Thank you for your thing.
Speaker 7: Like, hey, how are you? It took about god about
Speaker 7: a month, but once he was given the tablet, he
Speaker 7: started texting and calling NonStop and it was like nothing
Speaker 7: ever happened, like we had just met at the venue yesterday.
Speaker 7: Wait to done.
Speaker 5: I'm doing nothing. What are you doing?
Speaker 7: You're doing something?
Speaker 1: I'm always doing nothing in time. As Jamie gets Bobby
Speaker 1: to open up, she starts recording her conversations with him,
Speaker 1: making more than forty eight hours of tape. Been all.
Speaker 1: She wants to know more about the shooting, and the
Speaker 1: recordings give her a record.
Speaker 5: What are you doing?
Speaker 7: He never addressed anything for a very long time, and
Speaker 7: I didn't ask.
Speaker 10: How's the weather?
Speaker 7: Every single day he asks the same three questions, What's
Speaker 7: for dinner, how's the weather? What am I wearing every day?
Speaker 1: What's for dinner?
Speaker 7: Dinner? Like I'm thinking about dinner like Bobby, it is okay,
Speaker 7: it's you're an hour behind. Well, I just ate a
Speaker 7: huge fucking breakfast burrito. Actually, I was very careful not
Speaker 7: to ask him any questions other than you know, do
Speaker 7: you need anything? Are you okay?
Speaker 5: I'm being yellman and doing him in pain.
Speaker 7: I don't know what human things.
Speaker 5: Walking and talking and cooping, sure, researching.
Speaker 7: I don't think I started pressing him for answers until
Speaker 7: this past summer. But initially, no, I didn't ask him
Speaker 7: anything because I knew he wasn't going to say anything.
Speaker 1: Most of the calls are just hours of meaningless banter.
Speaker 1: Bobby sounds lonely, like he's just using Jamie as someone
Speaker 1: to talk to. It's also clear that Bobby is keenly
Speaker 1: aware he's being recorded not by Jamie but by jail officials.
Speaker 1: When he talks about the shooting or conspiracies about the shooting,
Speaker 1: he speaks obliquely.
Speaker 5: See I've been here. I've been around many mountains, I've
Speaker 5: been over many hells. I've gotten over every single one
Speaker 5: of them. Here, I said, blacked out, and it's big.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm living in my very own episode in
Speaker 5: the Twilight Zone, where everybody thinks of cartoon character and
Speaker 5: they're living in their own little cartoon world.
Speaker 7: I don't take you're a cartoon character.
Speaker 1: None of it is real. That's Bobby insisting that we're
Speaker 1: all witnessing a staged reality, with him cast unwillingly as
Speaker 1: the villain the mass shooter. Jamie responds with sympathy. I
Speaker 1: don't think you're a cartoon character, she says, echoing his words.
Speaker 1: But how much of that sympathy is genuine and how
Speaker 1: much is part of her own cartoon character to coax
Speaker 1: Bobby into talking more about the shooting and what led
Speaker 1: up to it, that's unclear in these early conversations I.
Speaker 7: Don't think you're a cartoon character, Bobby.
Speaker 5: Of course, all I ever want is for the truth
Speaker 5: that he knows.
Speaker 7: But that's what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 5: But if you then I don't put my hope in it,
Speaker 5: because I know that God is my witness and no
Speaker 5: matter what, it will always be all right. You know.
Speaker 5: They can beat me, torture me, start me, all the
Speaker 5: things that they've done, but all He've ever done walk
Speaker 5: the truth, you know, that's all that they're But even
Speaker 5: the content, I don't care what they say.
Speaker 12: I don't care what they do.
Speaker 7: It has nothing to do with me.
Speaker 5: I'm just in the middle.
Speaker 4: Of it, you know.
Speaker 1: At times, Bobby weaves Christian themes into his monologues. He
Speaker 1: claims to be on the right side, walking in the
Speaker 1: light of God, but he also alludes to a vast
Speaker 1: government conspiracy.
Speaker 4: I'm just simply a pawn.
Speaker 5: You're pond, We're all pause, We're not we're not the
Speaker 5: most rich in powerful. We're just you know, humans for
Speaker 5: them to suck every out of the life and money out.
Speaker 1: At other times, he's just plain cryptic. No one's telling
Speaker 1: the truth, he says.
Speaker 5: People nowadays all around have become sick, whatever it is,
Speaker 5: they no longer desire to create a healthy relationship or
Speaker 5: or hell, you.
Speaker 12: Have one minute, Bobby.
Speaker 5: The amount of people who why nowadays is both people
Speaker 5: and that's fundamentals.
Speaker 7: Are you gonna call me back?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 12: You put me back?
Speaker 7: Please?
Speaker 11: Why?
Speaker 7: I'm not finished?
Speaker 12: I have thank you for you being global girling Jesus Christ.
Speaker 7: This fucking guy, this fucking guy.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Jamie's frustration seeps through Bobby's cryptic, meandering responses testing
Speaker 1: her patients. Each direct question she poses is met with
Speaker 1: vague evasions, as if he's playing a game only he understands.
Speaker 1: And there's another concept in the conversations the birds. Jamie
Speaker 1: often records their calls outside under the canopy of trees
Speaker 1: near Indiana Yard, where bird feeders dangle lazily. The bird song,
Speaker 1: a gentle, almost hypnotic chorus, becomes a quiet, persistent ampanion
Speaker 1: to their exchanges.
Speaker 5: Dude, it's a pre paid get it call from Bobby.
Speaker 1: During their conversations, Jamie and Bobby build a playlist, which
Speaker 1: becomes a way for Jamie to keep Bobby engaged when
Speaker 1: he refuses to answer her questions or is too cryptic.
Speaker 7: So the duration of these calls, most of the time
Speaker 7: is spent with him wanting me to play him music
Speaker 7: because he no longer has the ability to strain music
Speaker 7: on his own. So most of the calls can you
Speaker 7: play me a song? Can you play me a song?
Speaker 7: Can you play me a song? Like yeah, I can.
Speaker 7: Can you answer a fucking question for me, because I'd
Speaker 7: love to know what the fuck it is you're doing.
Speaker 7: But after that there wasn't really much conversation because all
Speaker 7: he wanted he just wanted to hear music.
Speaker 1: One of the songs they add to the playlist no
Speaker 1: psycho Killer. By talking heads, you're.
Speaker 5: Saying, well, but you're not saying anyone.
Speaker 7: Yeah, this is like a big, perfect song. So totally
Speaker 7: apropro of you.
Speaker 1: That Jamie is playing the song psycho Killer to an
Speaker 1: alleged psycho killer is not lost on her.
Speaker 7: You're adding, you have a psychokiller, Bobby, we can't say.
Speaker 7: You can't say hey, hey, hey, we can't say the
Speaker 7: name of that.
Speaker 1: On the phone, Jamie keeps playing songs for Bobby, trying
Speaker 1: to build this trust, and when the moment seems right,
Speaker 1: she has questions about the case. Slowly she starts asking
Speaker 1: him about the year leading up to the shooting. She
Speaker 1: wants to know about a website he frequented that hosted
Speaker 1: extremely violent videos, and about a mysterious Skype call that
Speaker 1: was always running and never disconnected. Both the website with
Speaker 1: the violent videos and the skype call also became primary
Speaker 1: interest for the FBI during its investigation of the Highland
Speaker 1: Park shooting.
Speaker 7: How do I find this Skype group?
Speaker 5: Wh then you know, girls talk about like walking on
Speaker 5: the bed here.
Speaker 7: Or I'm so happy to talk to you about those
Speaker 7: things after you answered this one question for me and
Speaker 7: then I'm done.
Speaker 1: Jamie has become intrigued with the series of videos Bobby
Speaker 1: uploaded to the Internet before the shooting. The videos are
Speaker 1: filled with numbers, symbols, and cryptic references that seem to
Speaker 1: connect to each other, leading to what appears to be
Speaker 1: a cipher, a twenty seven page book of numbers. It
Speaker 1: appears that Bobby created a puzzle. Jamie asked Bobby how
Speaker 1: to solve it, but he never gives her clues, only
Speaker 1: pushes her to keep playing the game, and the calls
Speaker 1: between them aren't one sided. Sometimes Bobby asked Jamie to
Speaker 1: take on specific tasks.
Speaker 5: Okay, so I would like you to figure out the yeah,
Speaker 5: the the green captures green recoring and been on top
Speaker 5: of that, yeah yeah yeah, So on top of that
Speaker 5: and the event had that found you create that ghetto
Speaker 5: ass thing that he tried to do, or he set
Speaker 5: up another phone on top of it looking poying at it.
Speaker 1: So Jamie gives me copies of these phone recordings because
Speaker 1: she wants my help to investigate what led up to
Speaker 1: the Highland Park shooting. If we could dig into Bobby's
Speaker 1: life during the year before the attack, maybe we could
Speaker 1: solve the riddle he created and uncovered the message hidden
Speaker 1: in those twenty seven pages of numbers. That's Jamie's goal.
Speaker 1: Jamie also tells me that she started to toy with
Speaker 1: a provocative theory. Buried in Bobby's massive digital footprint are
Speaker 1: multiple references to the FBI. In some of his photos,
Speaker 1: he's wearing a black hat with FBI written across the
Speaker 1: front in white letters. In one video, he refers to
Speaker 1: an FBI agent. Jamie believes Bobby is trying to send
Speaker 1: a message.
Speaker 7: That was a smoke signal and nobody picked.
Speaker 11: Up on it.
Speaker 1: That's why she came to me in the first place.
Speaker 1: I've spent much of my career investigating the FBI, so
Speaker 1: she asked me for my help, and I agree, but
Speaker 1: I don't tell Jamie that I see a very different story.
Speaker 1: Jamie wants me to investigate what led up to the
Speaker 1: Highland Park shooting. Maybe she thinks Bobby had been coerced,
Speaker 1: maybe the FBI was behind it. But from the start
Speaker 1: I know that won't be the case. The story I
Speaker 1: want to tell, the story I will tell, is about
Speaker 1: how Jamie becomes the final player in a violent domer's
Speaker 1: twisted game. But even I couldn't have anticipated where this
Speaker 1: story would lead. Into the Madness explores the rise of
Speaker 1: nihilistic violence, the role of technology and fostering extremism, and
Speaker 1: America's collect to dissent into conspiracy thinking. All seven chapters
Speaker 1: are now available on audible. Search for Into the Madness
Speaker 1: on the Audible app, or follow me Trevor Aronson on
Speaker 1: the Audible app. You can start listening today when you
Speaker 1: sign up for a free thirty day trial. For more
Speaker 1: on Into the Madness or my other reporting projects, subscribe
Speaker 1: to my newsletter at Trevor Aaronson dot com. Subscribers receive
Speaker 1: news and updates, as well as promo codes to access
Speaker 1: new releases,