Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. It was a little after five point
Speaker 1: thirty pm on a Friday evening when the first Nine
Speaker 1: When One call came in. The property manager at a
Speaker 1: gated condo complex in Tampa sounded almost like she was
Speaker 1: asking a question when she told the operator that a
Speaker 1: man had walked into the leasing office and announced that
Speaker 1: he'd just killed two people. What a strange thing to
Speaker 1: say to a lobby full of maintenance technicians and a
Speaker 1: woman who was just trying to check her mail. Maybe
Speaker 1: it didn't quite sink in right away that he meant it.
Speaker 1: He left the office and started walking as she dialed
Speaker 1: nine when One she followed him, telling the operator that
Speaker 1: he kept grabbing the back of his pants as he walked,
Speaker 1: as if there was something heavy tucked into his waistband.
Speaker 1: The police were already en route when the second call came.
Speaker 1: Woman on the other end of the line this time
Speaker 1: was calling from a smoke shop and a strip mall
Speaker 1: across from the apartment complex. She was crying hysterically, barely
Speaker 1: able to get the words out. There was a man
Speaker 1: in the store pointing a gun at her. When the
Speaker 1: police arrived, Devon Arthur's was holding a handgun in one
Speaker 1: hand and a bottle of Coca Cola in the other.
Speaker 1: He was ready to surrender, but he wanted to finish
Speaker 1: his soda first. Once he was in handcuffs, an officer
Speaker 1: asked him if anyone was hurt. He responded cryptically saying
Speaker 1: that there were people he'd hurt out back in the confusion,
Speaker 1: his hostages had seized the opportunity to run out the
Speaker 1: back door away from this ball little situation. So the
Speaker 1: officer assumed that he meant one of those people had
Speaker 1: been injured, but they were all unharmed. The officer again
Speaker 1: asked him, who is hurt. He replied calmly, oh, the
Speaker 1: people in the apartment. But they aren't hurt. They're dead.
Speaker 1: I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird, Little guys. This
Speaker 1: is a story that I've mentioned in passing a few
Speaker 1: times before. It's always just a quick aside, a sort
Speaker 1: of hand waving acknowledgment of that time two members of
Speaker 1: Adam Woffin were murdered by their roommate. It was a
Speaker 1: pivotal moment in the history of that now defunct neo
Speaker 1: Nazi terrorist organization. So it comes up in just about
Speaker 1: any story involving any member of Adam Woffin, but I've
Speaker 1: never really bothered to explain it. I'm usually busy trying
Speaker 1: to get somewhere else. I was thinking about it again
Speaker 1: this week because I was thinking about Brandon Russell, the
Speaker 1: founder of Adam Woffen. These murders usually come up when
Speaker 1: I mentioned Brandon Russell because they're kind of what put
Speaker 1: him in federal prison the first time. Not because he
Speaker 1: committed them. He didn't. He wasn't even home when it happened,
Speaker 1: but it was his name on the lease at the condo,
Speaker 1: and it was his name written in sharpie on the
Speaker 1: cooler full of explosives police found in the garage. Brandon
Speaker 1: Russell did his time for having that little bomb workshop,
Speaker 1: and he's since been convicted again, this time for conspiring
Speaker 1: to blow up the power grid in Baltimore. If you're
Speaker 1: listening to this episode the day it came out, he
Speaker 1: might be sitting in front of a federal judge right
Speaker 1: now receiving his sentence. I'm not psychic, so I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell you how long he's going away for this time around.
Speaker 1: But that upcoming sentencing got me thinking about how he
Speaker 1: ended up there, and that story starts with these murders.
Speaker 1: I hadn't intended to focus so much on the murders themselves.
Speaker 1: I didn't think there was really all that much meat
Speaker 1: to the story. Most of the news articles I've read
Speaker 1: in the past kind of say the same thing, just
Speaker 1: those broad strokes. I was already familiar with Devin Arthur's
Speaker 1: shot and killed Andrew Onischuk and Jeremy Himmelman in the
Speaker 1: apartment they shared with Brandon Russell. All four men were
Speaker 1: members of Adamoffen, and the investigation into the murders led
Speaker 1: to the discovery of the explosives in the garage. The
Speaker 1: explosives belonged to Brandon Russell, and he was federally charged
Speaker 1: for possessing them. His federal case doesn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of detail to it because he pled guilty pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: and Devin Arthur's criminal case wasn't federal. But then I
Speaker 1: remembered this happened in Florida. People love to make jokes
Speaker 1: about the Florida Man, the idea that people in Florida
Speaker 1: are uniquely predisposed of committing bizarre crimes. Florida man throws
Speaker 1: live gator at fast food cashier. Florida man leads cops
Speaker 1: on high speed horse chase. Florida man Rob's convenience store
Speaker 1: a dressed as Spider Man all real headlines, But people
Speaker 1: in Florida aren't actually more likely than people from anywhere
Speaker 1: else to crash a car into a grocery store while
Speaker 1: high on meth or whatever else. This mythical Florida man
Speaker 1: is getting up to. Florida just happens to have some
Speaker 1: of the broadest public records laws in the country, making
Speaker 1: it incredibly easy for journalists to quickly gain access to
Speaker 1: police reports and court records. I wish every weird little
Speaker 1: guy would do his weird little crimes in the state
Speaker 1: of Florida, because it makes my job so much easier.
Speaker 1: In this case, it means I was able to read
Speaker 1: hundreds of pages of police reports, watch police interrogation videos,
Speaker 1: and view court records not just for this murder case,
Speaker 1: but filings from the murderer's parents' divorce. And it painted
Speaker 1: a slightly different picture from the one I had in
Speaker 1: my head. But as always, let's start before the beginning.
Speaker 1: Adam Woffen was an international network of neo Nazis. It
Speaker 1: was one of several organizations that formed out of relationships
Speaker 1: that started on an online forum called Iron March. Iron
Speaker 1: March first appeared online in twenty eleven, launched by a
Speaker 1: Russian nationalist named Alisher Mukitnadoff. In its six years online,
Speaker 1: it was an incubator for neo Nazi ideology around the world.
Speaker 1: Fascist organizations like National Action in the United Kingdom, Adam
Speaker 1: Woffen and the United States, Tschidas in Lithuania, and Antipodean
Speaker 1: Resistance in Australia were all born on this forum. Existing
Speaker 1: organizations grew and networked, and they recruited online posters into
Speaker 1: real life terror cells. The site disappeared without explanation one
Speaker 1: day in November of twenty seventeen. There was plenty of
Speaker 1: speculation about why the site went dark, but Mukitnadov declined
Speaker 1: to answer any questions about it when he hung up
Speaker 1: on a reporter from the BBC in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: One.
Speaker 1: Theory popular among American neo Nazis is that there was
Speaker 1: international governmental pressure to shut the site down because of
Speaker 1: these murders. The birth date of Adam Waffen is typically
Speaker 1: offered as October twelfth, twenty fifteen. That's the day Brandan
Speaker 1: Russell posted a thread on the forum formally announcing the
Speaker 1: group's existence. There were a handful of posts that refer
Speaker 1: to the group by name that pre date that announcement thread,
Speaker 1: and there are photographs of Russell holding an Adam off
Speaker 1: and flag that were taken in the late spring and
Speaker 1: summer of twenty fifteen, so it did exist prior to October.
Speaker 1: But his claim in that post that the group had
Speaker 1: existed for three years already is unlikely, especially considering that
Speaker 1: he hadn't founded the group alone. His co founder was
Speaker 1: a teenage boy named Devon Arthur's. Devin Arthur's was young.
Speaker 1: He was born in nineteen ninety nine. His parents separated
Speaker 1: when he was five, but didn't actually file for divorce
Speaker 1: until twenty ten. The divorce was contentious, and it dragged
Speaker 1: on for years. The court appointed a guardian ad item,
Speaker 1: an attorney whose role is to advocate for the best
Speaker 1: interests of the child. In one letter to the court
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, the guardian ad litem noted that Devan
Speaker 1: was taking the divorce much harder than most children in
Speaker 1: his position, and he was having behavioral problems. In twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: his parents agreed in mediation that Devon should be evaluated
Speaker 1: by a child behavioral specialist, which his mother claimed in
Speaker 1: subsequent filings never happened. In the fall of twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: when he was still living primarily with his father, he
Speaker 1: ordered a copy of Mine Kampf of of Amazon. When
Speaker 1: the package arrived in the mail, his father opened it,
Speaker 1: saw what was inside, and refused to let his son
Speaker 1: have the book. After Devon physically confronted his father over
Speaker 1: the text, his dad kicked him out. According to his
Speaker 1: mother's filings in the divorce case, his father abandoned him
Speaker 1: at her house. The estranged couple lived in different counties,
Speaker 1: so the sudden move meant that he had to change
Speaker 1: schools midyear. He only ended up attending his new school
Speaker 1: for a few months. He dropped out of school later
Speaker 1: that year before finishing the tenth grade. Devon Arthur's joined
Speaker 1: the Iron March Forum in March of twenty fifteen, just
Speaker 1: a few days before his sixteenth birthday, and the same
Speaker 1: month he dropped out of high school. By April of
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, Arthur's and Russell were hanging out in person
Speaker 1: after realizing they both lived in the Orlando area. In
Speaker 1: the fall of twenty fifteen, when Russell announced that Adam
Speaker 1: Woffin was open for new members. He claimed the group
Speaker 1: already had chapters in Chicago, Texas, Boston, New York, Kentucky, Alabama, Ohio, Missouri, Oregon,
Speaker 1: and Virginia, with more than forty members nationwide. A private
Speaker 1: message that Arthur sent another user around that same time, though,
Speaker 1: puts that number closer to fifteen, mainly in Central Florida,
Speaker 1: though there was a small cell of just three guys
Speaker 1: in the Chicago area. When Brandon Russell bragged in November
Speaker 1: that the group had met up to do quote a
Speaker 1: lot of activism, what he actually meant was that he
Speaker 1: and Devon had gone to the University of Central Florida
Speaker 1: to hang up racist flyers. It was a group of two,
Speaker 1: but the pair were close. In separate police interrogations on
Speaker 1: the night of the murder, both Brandon Russell and Devon
Speaker 1: Arthur's told police that they were the best of friends,
Speaker 1: and they had been for years. When Russell joined the
Speaker 1: National Guard in twenty sixteen, he left Arthur's in charge
Speaker 1: of Adam Woffin. At first, things seemed to be going
Speaker 1: really well for Arthur's as the group's interim leader, he
Speaker 1: was recruiting and vetting new members, and he was even
Speaker 1: trying to get some new chapters off the ground. In April,
Speaker 1: he exchanged messages with a prospective new member in the
Speaker 1: Boston area, one of the men he would murder a
Speaker 1: year later. In May of twenty sixteen, he organized a
Speaker 1: flyering campaign in Boston. There were only two Adamoffin members
Speaker 1: in the Boston area at the time, a woman who
Speaker 1: posted under the username Rexa, and the young man Arthur's
Speaker 1: had just approved for membership, Andrew Onischuk. A few weeks later,
Speaker 1: Rexa got a direct message from Slavros, the site's moderator,
Speaker 1: who is widely believed to be the site's founder, Alexander Mukitnadoff.
Speaker 1: He sent her a link to a now deleted post
Speaker 1: on Twitter showing that someone had made the connection between
Speaker 1: the flyers and the Iron March users who'd put them up.
Speaker 1: The post claims that there were two known Adam Woffen
Speaker 1: members in the Boston area and that one of them
Speaker 1: was a student at MIT. The post didn't actually reveal
Speaker 1: her name, but she was panicking, how could they know
Speaker 1: any of that? What else did they know? She begged
Speaker 1: Slavros to wipe out her account history, writing can you
Speaker 1: delete my account here please? Or delete all my posts please?
Speaker 1: I go to university. I cannot be involved with this.
Speaker 1: If they find me, my entire life is ruined. But
Speaker 1: he refused, saying that it would only make her look
Speaker 1: even more guilty if the posts were deleted now, and
Speaker 1: she had nothing to worry about anyway. He assured her
Speaker 1: that there was simply no way for anyone to access
Speaker 1: her IP address. They didn't know it at the time,
Speaker 1: but an anti fascist researcher had made an account on
Speaker 1: Iron March and tricked several users into clicking a link
Speaker 1: that recorded their IP addresses. She clicked it from a
Speaker 1: school computer, revealing her to be a student at MIT.
Speaker 1: Without knowing how this person knew exactly where she was,
Speaker 1: they had to consider the possibility that someone had sold
Speaker 1: her out. She insisted in her messages with Slavros that
Speaker 1: despite Devin Arthur's recent conversion to Islam, they were still
Speaker 1: on good terms, and he assured her that he hadn't
Speaker 1: said anything to anyone. The forum was buzzing that week.
Speaker 1: The interim leader of Adam Woffen had announced his conversion
Speaker 1: to Islam. Sometime in May of twenty sixteen, Devon Arthur's
Speaker 1: updated his Iron March profile. Older archived versions of his
Speaker 1: user profile show that he'd listed his location as quote
Speaker 1: Dixie Land and his ideology as Confederate national Socialism. With
Speaker 1: this new update, he now lived in the Land of
Speaker 1: non Believers and he identified as a Salophist national socialist.
Speaker 1: There was apparently a bit of a blow up over
Speaker 1: this conversion in the massive data dump of leaked posts
Speaker 1: from Iron March. This threat isn't there. It was deleted
Speaker 1: by the moderators pretty quickly, so it wasn't there to
Speaker 1: scrape when researchers pulled everything off the site later. But
Speaker 1: the moderators didn't delete people's direct messages about the thread,
Speaker 1: and those private conversations are in the data. Despite what
Speaker 1: Devin Arthurs would later claim, his conversion to Islam wasn't
Speaker 1: a renunciation of his prior beliefs, it was a twisted
Speaker 1: evolution of them. In one direct message, a user who
Speaker 1: saw the thread before it was deleted said that Arthur's
Speaker 1: plan to convert other Adam Waffen members to Islam. He
Speaker 1: failed to convince the forum that his newfound commitment to
Speaker 1: jihad was the right direction for American neo Nazis, and
Speaker 1: he was banned from the website. Slavrose threatened to cut
Speaker 1: ties with Adam Woffin entirely, but several members of the
Speaker 1: group said they'd convinced Arthur's to step down as interim
Speaker 1: leader until Brandon Russell returned from army training. Two other
Speaker 1: members would step up to run the group. Ironically, one
Speaker 1: of those new interim leaders was also a Muslim convert.
Speaker 1: David Cole Tarkington had converted to Islam more than two
Speaker 1: years before Devon Arthur's did, and it doesn't appear to
Speaker 1: have been a secret. Tarkington was a major recruiter for
Speaker 1: Adam Woffen, bringing in at least eleven new members to
Speaker 1: the group in twenty sixteen, including John Cameron Denton, the
Speaker 1: man who would go on to lead the group after
Speaker 1: Russell went to prison. But when Arthur's was being interviewed
Speaker 1: by that homicide detective, he said that after he converted,
Speaker 1: he realized his prior beliefs had been wrong, that the
Speaker 1: hate left his heart, and guided by the Koran, he
Speaker 1: came to understand that there was no point in wanting
Speaker 1: to kill people. Of other races. A lot of the
Speaker 1: news coverage takes his statements at face value. He killed
Speaker 1: his roommates because they were Nazis, and since his conversion
Speaker 1: he wasn't anymore. But I have a really hard time
Speaker 1: believing that. We talked a little bit about the idea
Speaker 1: of this strange melding of neo Nazism and interest in
Speaker 1: Islamic extremism a few weeks ago, in the episode about
Speaker 1: Nicholas Young, the DC Metro transit cop with the Nazi
Speaker 1: tattoos who went to prison for trying to send gift
Speaker 1: cards to Isis. And it seems like an obvious contradiction.
Speaker 1: How can a neo Nazi be a Muslim? Don't white
Speaker 1: supremacists hate Muslims? They do, of course, But it's more
Speaker 1: complicated than that. It's a contradiction, sure, but plenty of
Speaker 1: people live in contradiction. And there's a lot of overlap too.
Speaker 1: Even neo Nazis who would never entertain the idea of
Speaker 1: a conversion are willing to talk about the possibility of
Speaker 1: finding common cause with people they see as allies in
Speaker 1: anti Semitism, people whose commitment to armed extremism is appealing
Speaker 1: to them, and all of the finer points of syncretic fascism,
Speaker 1: aside Devon Arthur's didn't know what he believed. His conversion
Speaker 1: happened in a Minecraft chat. Several friends he met through
Speaker 1: the online game converted around the same time, and it
Speaker 1: seems like for some of them it was a bit.
Speaker 1: One of those friends later told Rolling Stone that Devin's
Speaker 1: version of Islam was weird. Quote. It wasn't true Islam.
Speaker 1: It was more about idealizing the prophet Muhammad as a
Speaker 1: white arian. You know, Muhammad as an ideal male form.
Speaker 1: I don't know, he says, you know, but I don't
Speaker 1: know what he's talking about, and it is unkind I
Speaker 1: think to cast out on the sincerity of someone's religious conversion,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to He was extremely online line. His
Speaker 1: exposure to Islam was through memes and jokes in a
Speaker 1: chat room populated by teenage gamers who met on four Chan.
Speaker 1: He was a high school dropout with absent parents. He
Speaker 1: was struggling with mental illness. He never spoke to in
Speaker 1: a mom about his religious path. When it came to
Speaker 1: reading the Koran, he was entirely self taught, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like he didn't get it, but taking a face value,
Speaker 1: Devin Arthur's was Muslim in his own way. The other
Speaker 1: neo Nazis didn't like it, and he was kicked off
Speaker 1: the Iron March Forum. He was forced to step down
Speaker 1: as interim leader of Adam Woffin, but he wasn't kicked
Speaker 1: out of Adam Woffin, and he didn't even stay off
Speaker 1: of Iron March. He still logged in to use the
Speaker 1: site under Brandon Russell's account, and he stayed best friends
Speaker 1: with Brandon Russell. In October of twenty sixteen, months after
Speaker 1: this blow up, he and Brandon traveled to Massachusetts together
Speaker 1: to visit Adam Woffin's Boston cell, which at the time
Speaker 1: consisted of just two members, Andrew Onischuk and Jeremy Himmelman.
Speaker 1: They'd both joined the group that year and quickly became
Speaker 1: very close friends. Several of Jeremy's friends in Boston met
Speaker 1: Devon Arthur's and Brandon Russell during that trip, and they
Speaker 1: all said the same thing. These guys are fucking weird.
Speaker 1: They cannot behave in a normal fashion. Jeremy Himmelman's sister
Speaker 1: begged him to get these people out of the apartment
Speaker 1: that the siblings shared they wouldn't stop drawing swastikas on
Speaker 1: things and making Holocaust jokes. Devon kept calling her a
Speaker 1: dumpster slut. Another friend of Jeremy's said quote, it was
Speaker 1: very obvious that they were mentally unstable people. A few
Speaker 1: months later, in January twenty seventeen, Jeremy Himmelman flew down
Speaker 1: to Florida to visit Brandon after he faked a suicide
Speaker 1: attempt as a joke. It was a cruel joke. I mean,
Speaker 1: it would be cruel in any context, but Brandon almost
Speaker 1: certainly knew that Jeremy had tried several times in the
Speaker 1: last few years to end his own life, so of
Speaker 1: course he dropped everything to be there when he believed
Speaker 1: Brandon had nearly died. Two months later, in March of
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, back home in Massachusetts, Jeremy Himmelman attempted suicide
Speaker 1: for a fourth time after an argument with his roommates.
Speaker 1: He survived. His girlfriend and his parents say that it
Speaker 1: was a wake up call for him. He was ready
Speaker 1: to leave Adam Waffin behind. It wasn't good for him.
Speaker 1: These weren't his friends. This wasn't a path forward, but
Speaker 1: he didn't have any other path forward either, and he
Speaker 1: was having trouble cutting ties. He didn't leave the chats.
Speaker 1: He was still best friends with Andrew on Ashuk and
Speaker 1: he didn't have a lot else to do, so when
Speaker 1: Brandon Russell invited them both back to Florida, they went
Speaker 1: that same month. In March of twenty seventeen, Brandon Russell's
Speaker 1: grandmother co signed e lease for him. It was a
Speaker 1: nice little condo in a gated community in Tampa. Sometime
Speaker 1: in early April, he and Devin moved in, and that's
Speaker 1: when he started begging Andrew on Ashuk and Jeremy Himmelman
Speaker 1: to come down and visit, come down and spend the
Speaker 1: summer with us. He promised them a rent free summer
Speaker 1: in Florida. They could go fishing, there was a pool,
Speaker 1: it would be fun. Andrew and Jeremy regretted it almost immediately.
Speaker 1: Barely a week into their stay, they were already talking
Speaker 1: about going home early. His two bedroom condo wasn't big
Speaker 1: enough for four men. Andrew and Jeremy shared the smaller bedroom,
Speaker 1: Devin slept in the living room, and Brandon kept the
Speaker 1: larger bedroom for himself. Brandon was gone along on top
Speaker 1: of being in the National Guard, he had a job
Speaker 1: at a shooting range. Andrew and Jeremy got temporary jobs
Speaker 1: at a recycling plant, but Devin just sat in the
Speaker 1: living room all day on the computer. The place was messy.
Speaker 1: No one did dishes. I was going to say, I
Speaker 1: assume they didn't even own a vacuum cleaner, but I
Speaker 1: did see one in the crime scene photographs. It was
Speaker 1: pushed up against the wall in the living room, underneath
Speaker 1: the North Korean flag. They barely even had any furniture.
Speaker 1: The room that Andrew and Jeremy shared didn't have a bed.
Speaker 1: It was just a futon and a mattress on the floor.
Speaker 1: This wasn't the fun Florida summer they'd imagined. Devin was
Speaker 1: weird and annoying, and things were tense. They wanted to
Speaker 1: go home. On May seventeenth, Andrew Anashuk told his parents
Speaker 1: that he was going to come home early. He told
Speaker 1: his mom that he planned to stay another week just
Speaker 1: to finish out his temp job. He didn't feel right
Speaker 1: walking away from it. Just two days later, though, on Friday,
Speaker 1: May nineteenth, he'd changed his mind. He had to go,
Speaker 1: and he was going to leave on Monday. Jeremy Himmelman
Speaker 1: called his girlfriend that day to lament Andrew's decision. He
Speaker 1: was going to miss Andrew, but things had gotten too
Speaker 1: uncomfortable in the apartment. That same day, May nineteenth, Brandon
Speaker 1: Russell left the condo early in the morning. He had
Speaker 1: National Guard drill that weekend had to report in that day.
Speaker 1: Devin was, as always, at home on the computer all day.
Speaker 1: Around five pm, Jeremy was texting with his girlfriend back
Speaker 1: home in Massachusetts. At five four pm, she asked him
Speaker 1: if they could FaceTime. I'm hanging out with Devin and
Speaker 1: Andrew right now, maybe later, he replied with a heart emoji.
Speaker 1: She said she might take a nap, and he joked
Speaker 1: that she was probably going to fall asleep for seven
Speaker 1: hours again like she had last time. His phone was
Speaker 1: still resting on his stomach under his right arm when
Speaker 1: crime Scene Texts photographed his body a few hours later.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you exactly what happened in the fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes between five oh five pm and five twenty pm.
Speaker 1: When Jeremy sent his last text to his girlfriend at
Speaker 1: five oh five, nothing was wrong. He seemed relaxed. He
Speaker 1: said that he was hanging out with his roommates, and
Speaker 1: he gave no indication that anything was amiss. She knew
Speaker 1: all about the ongoing tension in the apartment. Who would
Speaker 1: have mentioned it if anything out of the ordinary was happening.
Speaker 1: But at five point twenty Devon Arthur's called his father
Speaker 1: and told him that he'd just killed two people. There's
Speaker 1: no dispute about the basic facts. Devon Arthur's shot Andrew
Speaker 1: Anoschuk and Jeremy Himmelman with a Wasser ten that's a
Speaker 1: Romanian version of an AK forty seven. Based on the
Speaker 1: medical examiner's report, both men would have died instantly from
Speaker 1: multiple shots to the head and torso fired from the
Speaker 1: rifle at close range. They were both in the bedroom
Speaker 1: they shared. Jeremy was lying on the futon and Andrew's
Speaker 1: body was on the floor near the bathroom door. Devon
Speaker 1: left the rifle on the couch in the living room,
Speaker 1: picked up a clock seventeen, and walked out of the apartment.
Speaker 1: He walked over to the leasing office, where he announced
Speaker 1: what he'd done to two maintenance texts, the property manager
Speaker 1: and a resident, and then he walked across the street
Speaker 1: into the strip mall and entered the smoke shop, where
Speaker 1: he held the store clerk and two customers hostage at
Speaker 1: gunpoint until the police arrived. He's never denied what he did.
Speaker 1: Quite the opposite. All he wanted to do was tell people.
Speaker 1: He called his dad, he called his mom. He told
Speaker 1: the people in the leasing office, he told the people
Speaker 1: in the smoke shop. He told every officer he encountered
Speaker 1: after his arrest. But as he continued to tell and
Speaker 1: retell this story, it changed a little. In a report
Speaker 1: written by the officer who transported him to the police
Speaker 1: station that night, it's noted that Arthur's was talking almost constantly,
Speaker 1: offering up spontaneous statements, and though no one was asking
Speaker 1: him questions, the officer wrote, Arthur's continued to repeat his
Speaker 1: story and would add more details each time. Devon's account
Speaker 1: of the actual physical sequence of events remains pretty consistent,
Speaker 1: and it mostly matches up with the physical evidence. It's
Speaker 1: his recollection of his internal monologue and his motivations that
Speaker 1: change Throughout the evening. It was a little after one
Speaker 1: in the morning, nearly eight hours after the murder, by
Speaker 1: the time a Tampa homicide detective turned on the camera
Speaker 1: to record a formal interview with Devon. Arthur's and by
Speaker 1: that time he'd had plenty of time alone to think,
Speaker 1: and over the course of this two hour interrogation, you
Speaker 1: can hear him convincing himself of the story that he's
Speaker 1: come up with.
Speaker 2: I hear Jeremy he grabs my karana, he says, you
Speaker 2: every book at fairy Tales here, and that set me
Speaker 2: over to and I remember kind of b where I
Speaker 2: shot them both and I didn't I wasn't thinking clearly.
Speaker 1: This part is probably pretty close to the truth. It's
Speaker 1: the same thing he said in the back of the
Speaker 1: patrol car right after he was arrested. He killed them
Speaker 1: because they made fun of him, because they mocked his religion,
Speaker 1: because they disrespected his faith, because they were bullying him
Speaker 1: pretty relentlessly, and he'd had enough. And there is plenty
Speaker 1: of proof that that had been going on, so it's
Speaker 1: no surprise that it would have happened again that evening.
Speaker 1: I think this first story is the truth. He was
Speaker 1: sitting in the living room cleaning the rifle when Jeremy
Speaker 1: and Andrew started teasing him again. He'd spent the entire
Speaker 1: day on the computer in an encrypted group chat full
Speaker 1: of other members of Adam Woffen, and on that particular day,
Speaker 1: the chat was making fun of him again. He was
Speaker 1: reaching a boiling point and he snapped. And unfortunately, in
Speaker 1: the moment that he snapped, he happened to already have
Speaker 1: a rifle in his hands, and in that split second
Speaker 1: where he made the decision to pull the trigger, that's
Speaker 1: what he was thinking about. He shot them because they
Speaker 1: made fun of him. But as the reality of this
Speaker 1: situation settled in, that didn't really feel like a good
Speaker 1: enough explanation. It may not have even been a conscious choice.
Speaker 1: He may have eventually convinced himself that this is true,
Speaker 1: but within an hour he's adding details to the narrative,
Speaker 1: and the more time he has to think about it,
Speaker 1: the clearer his new story becomes.
Speaker 2: I remember what I was sitting in that tube or
Speaker 2: whatever He's pacing back and forth.
Speaker 3: I'm like, and I'm like thinking to myself, which cube
Speaker 3: in the holding some alcohol? Just data?
Speaker 4: I remember, like I.
Speaker 3: Was thinking, like, you know, how could I have done this?
Speaker 3: And stuff like that? And the only things that could
Speaker 3: that I could rationalize was.
Speaker 2: Like, you know, if I hadn't done that, if I
Speaker 2: hadn't shut this organization down by doing this they'd be
Speaker 2: a lot more people dead than just two people.
Speaker 3: From that organization.
Speaker 1: I was really struck by this language. It's a little
Speaker 1: too on the nose that he keeps literally using the
Speaker 1: word rationalize as he's describing his thought process to the officer.
Speaker 1: I think he's still processing what he's done. I guess
Speaker 1: witnessing a murder is very traumatic, even if you were
Speaker 1: the one who did it. He's still processing that experience.
Speaker 1: He's still processing seeing his friend's dead body, and he's
Speaker 1: coming to terms with it. He's trying to understand his
Speaker 1: own actions and figure out how he's supposed to live
Speaker 1: with them, and he's externalizing that entire thought process in
Speaker 1: a recorded interview with a homicide detective.
Speaker 4: And the thing that keeps from rational about this is that, like,
Speaker 4: I feel what I've done is horrible in the sense
Speaker 4: of that human life has been us and I feel sad.
Speaker 2: I feel like an animal, and I feel like they
Speaker 2: should be a costal somewhere that's you know, became that
Speaker 2: medicine or.
Speaker 3: Something like that to help me.
Speaker 2: And I want you to know that, like I realized
Speaker 2: the full extent of like you know, their families are
Speaker 2: going to feel very bad about this their loved ones,
Speaker 2: and I feel the utmost.
Speaker 3: Bad about that.
Speaker 2: But I also realized that these people, of what they
Speaker 2: were planning with the explosives that were down downstairs.
Speaker 3: What would tell me about that's? What's that all about?
Speaker 2: It? Adam thought the division is a terrorist organization. It's
Speaker 2: a n Aanazi organization. Part of it before I can
Speaker 2: through it.
Speaker 1: By the time he's sitting in that interrogation room at
Speaker 1: one in the morning, he's the hero of the story.
Speaker 1: He understands that it was a great tragedy to have
Speaker 1: had to take those lives, But if you really think
Speaker 1: about it, didn't he save countless lives by doing it.
Speaker 1: I think it's the only way he can cope. He
Speaker 1: told one of the officers on the scene shortly after
Speaker 1: his arrest that he couldn't get the image of his
Speaker 1: friend's dead bodies out of his mind. He said he
Speaker 1: had no idea how much blood can come out of
Speaker 1: a human body. He has to find a way to
Speaker 1: convince himself that there was a good reason for it.
Speaker 1: He feels like a monster, so he's trying to find
Speaker 1: a way to be a hero. But he's lying an
Speaker 1: organization that he was part of his conversion. He had
Speaker 1: converted a year ago, and he still lived with the
Speaker 1: group's leader. He still participated in the group's private chats.
Speaker 1: He was still privy to the group's secret internal operations.
Speaker 1: He went on group outings and road trips. When Adam
Speaker 1: Woffin went camping, Devin was there. When Adam Woffin did
Speaker 1: training drills in the woods, Devon was there. Just a
Speaker 1: month before the murders, he accompanied Brandon Russell on a
Speaker 1: trip to Detroit, Chicago, and Boston for the purpose of
Speaker 1: buying and selling guns. Remember, they live in Florida. It's
Speaker 1: pretty easy to buy a gun in Florida, so I
Speaker 1: don't think they were buying guns in places like Chicago
Speaker 1: or Boston. So you'll have to use your imagination to
Speaker 1: fill in the gaps here. Maybe they were selling guns
Speaker 1: purchased in Florida to members of the group operating in
Speaker 1: areas where it was harder to buy them. If Devin
Speaker 1: Arthur's had abandoned his prior beliefs, if he was so
Speaker 1: disgusted with neo Nazism, why was he participating in this.
Speaker 1: He could have moved back in with either one of
Speaker 1: his parents. He could have called the FBI. He could
Speaker 1: have just stayed home when the neo Nazi terrorist group
Speaker 1: went out into the woods to practice shooting drills for
Speaker 1: the race war, but he didn't do any of that.
Speaker 1: He's telling this officer now in May of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: that he was no longer a member of Adam Woffen
Speaker 1: and hadn't been since his conversion a year earlier, and
Speaker 1: I just don't think that's true. I think he's lying,
Speaker 1: maybe even to himself. He sounds, for the most part,
Speaker 1: fairly lucid in this interview, but half a dozen psychiatrists
Speaker 1: and forensic psychologists would eventually agree that he was profoundly
Speaker 1: mentally ill. So a lot of this is maybe just
Speaker 1: trying to cope with his own actions. But I don't
Speaker 1: think it's just coping. I think he realizes he has
Speaker 1: a bargaining chip here, because throughout the interview he keeps
Speaker 1: asking to speak with the FBI, and he says he
Speaker 1: has important information that they'll want to hear.
Speaker 2: If I could get like a meeting with an FBI
Speaker 2: agent or something like that, I can shut down not
Speaker 2: just Adam Vopham, but at several other.
Speaker 4: Organizations, like probably with a bunch dissultates that.
Speaker 3: I would very much like to do that.
Speaker 1: He's pretty relaxed through most of the interview, but several
Speaker 1: times he asks if what he's saying in the interview
Speaker 1: is confidential, and when he's talking about that, he gets
Speaker 1: very anxious, and the officer tells him that police reports
Speaker 1: do eventually become public record, but he assures him that
Speaker 1: sensitive information like the things he's talking about, can be
Speaker 1: held back from public view. And he tells him that
Speaker 1: what you say to me here just for the investigation,
Speaker 1: nobody's going to see this video. Now. Remember, cops can
Speaker 1: lie to you. Cops can always lie to you. It's
Speaker 1: always okay for them to lie. Because I watched the
Speaker 1: video of this officer telling Devin Arthur's that no one
Speaker 1: would ever watch the video. He wants to tell the
Speaker 1: FBI everything he knows about Adam Woffen, but he's very
Speaker 1: worried that people will know he talked. He's worried that
Speaker 1: members of the group will target him if they find out.
Speaker 2: And then on the other hand, if I somehow get
Speaker 2: some kind of plea bargain from this and then I
Speaker 2: get released, I might get killed by somebody else like
Speaker 2: that gets relieved, especially since I know that I unless
Speaker 2: whatever information you can rely shuts down the group with
Speaker 2: our ladies.
Speaker 3: Guys are just a commission. Well, that's the main thing.
Speaker 3: That's why I'm mainly helping y'all.
Speaker 1: Again, he's being very explicit here. You know, when he's
Speaker 1: rationalizing his actions, he says out loud, I'm rationalizing my actions.
Speaker 1: And now that he realizes he might have information to
Speaker 1: trade for favorable treatment, he says, hey, maybe I'll get
Speaker 1: a plea bargain out of this. He's saying the quiet
Speaker 1: part very loud, and what he's saying is that he
Speaker 1: wants to talk to the FBI about the bombs. I
Speaker 1: imagine a cop usually takes you pretty seriously if you
Speaker 1: start talking about bombs, just in case, even if you
Speaker 1: are spinning a pretty fanciful sounding tale. And in this case,
Speaker 1: even though what he's saying does sound a little far fetched,
Speaker 1: they're listening carefully because they know there's some truth to it,
Speaker 1: because they've already seen the explosives. Before Devon Arthur's ever
Speaker 1: mentioned the presence of explosive material inside the condo, the
Speaker 1: officers who arrived first on the scene saw enough to
Speaker 1: make them cautious. The first officer to enter the apartment
Speaker 1: wrote in his report that on his initial walkthrough of
Speaker 1: the scene, he opened the closet in the other bedroom,
Speaker 1: the one that belonged to Brandon Russell, and on a
Speaker 1: shelf in the closet where you would normally keep sweaters
Speaker 1: or something, there were several Geiger counters, a significant number
Speaker 1: of batteries, and a lot of matches. Another officer found
Speaker 1: a backpack near the front door that contained electric matches
Speaker 1: and some kind of device that looked like it might
Speaker 1: be an ied. They weren't entirely sure what they were
Speaker 1: looking at, but they knew enough to know that somebody
Speaker 1: else needed to be the one looking at it. So
Speaker 1: they confirmed that the two victims were deceased and not
Speaker 1: in need of any medical help. The apartment was otherwise empty,
Speaker 1: and then they evacuated the neighboring apartments while they waited
Speaker 1: for the bomb squad And so backing up to this
Speaker 1: point in our timeline, When Devon Arthur's was arrested at
Speaker 1: the smoke shop, he was put into a police car
Speaker 1: and he told the officers that his two roommates were
Speaker 1: dead inside their home, which was in the complex across
Speaker 1: the street, but he couldn't remember the unit number. They'd
Speaker 1: only just moved in a month before, but he offered
Speaker 1: to show them which one it was if they would
Speaker 1: drive him there. And so, as the police car is
Speaker 1: pulling up outside the condo, they can hear someone screaming inside,
Speaker 1: and as the officers are approaching the residence, a man
Speaker 1: dressed in military fatigues came out the front door. He
Speaker 1: is hysterical, unable to respond to their questions, collapses onto
Speaker 1: the ground, sobbing, crying, and he's screaming, Jeremy is dead.
Speaker 1: That was Brandon Russell. He'd arrived home some time in
Speaker 1: that very small window of time after the murders, but
Speaker 1: before the police arrived. He wasn't there when it happened,
Speaker 1: but by the time the police get there, he is.
Speaker 1: The property manager said that she saw him driving erratically
Speaker 1: through the parking lot when she was standing outside after
Speaker 1: dialing nine one one, so he had to have gotten
Speaker 1: home after five thirty, but before five forty five. He
Speaker 1: was detained by the officers on the scene for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: They just watched him walk out of an apartment with
Speaker 1: two dead bodies inside. They don't know what they're dealing with.
Speaker 1: So around six p m. Those officers who first entered
Speaker 1: the apartment saw some things they thought they needed a
Speaker 1: bomb squad for Brandon Russell and Devon Arthur's are both
Speaker 1: handcuffed and sitting in separate police cars right outside, and
Speaker 1: both men, separately and for their own reasons, voluntarily disclosed
Speaker 1: to the police that there are explosives inside the house.
Speaker 1: Devon is starting to realize that he wants the police
Speaker 1: to know that the people he killed were very bad men,
Speaker 1: and that maybe they were going to use those bombs
Speaker 1: to hurt innocent people. And at this point he adds
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't kill innocent people. I had plenty of
Speaker 1: opportunities tonight to kill innocent people, even those responding officers,
Speaker 1: and I didn't do it. For Brandon, he's just trying
Speaker 1: to get out ahead of the problem he knows is coming.
Speaker 1: The cops already saw some suspicious material inside the condo,
Speaker 1: but they hadn't looked in the garage yet, so he
Speaker 1: told a detective that they would find some things in
Speaker 1: there that they should know about. He said that in
Speaker 1: the garage there's potassium chlorate thorium, which is a radioactive material,
Speaker 1: rocket propellant, and a compound called h M D T
Speaker 1: Hexamethylene triperoxide diamine is a highly volatile explosive compound. It
Speaker 1: is dangerous to handle, it is dangerous to store. It
Speaker 1: is insane to keep it in your garage when your
Speaker 1: garage is directly underneath your living room. He did fail
Speaker 1: to mention to the officer that there was also some
Speaker 1: ammonium nitrate in there, but the bomb squad found it anyway.
Speaker 1: Russell told the officer on scene that they are going
Speaker 1: to find that stuff in the garage, but he wants
Speaker 1: them to know that it's only there for fueling model rockets.
Speaker 1: But as he's sitting there in handcuffs trying to convince
Speaker 1: the officer that those explosives in the garage are just
Speaker 1: for his hobby, he asks if he's ever going to
Speaker 1: see his family again, because he knows what this looks like,
Speaker 1: and it looks bad. He's stuck to the li though
Speaker 1: he's just a model rocket enthusiast having a very traumatic day.
Speaker 1: At some point, both men were separately transported to the
Speaker 1: police station to await their interrogations, and during Devin's interrogation,
Speaker 1: he has a very clear idea of exactly what the
Speaker 1: bomb squad is going to find in the house. He
Speaker 1: knew what was in the house, where it was and
Speaker 1: how it got there.
Speaker 2: Yes, there is a nuclear materials and in that in
Speaker 2: that garage, there is some nuclear material what's in that
Speaker 2: garage that in Asia MTD and those explosives, Yes, some
Speaker 2: ceremonium nitrate and believe and I know that there's some
Speaker 2: radiated materials that he was able to bring in through
Speaker 2: the Bahamas and because because he's a Bahamian citizen, he's
Speaker 2: able to bring it and bring it in.
Speaker 1: And more than that, he was willing to tell anyone
Speaker 1: who would listen what the group planned to do with
Speaker 1: those materials.
Speaker 3: But the things that they were planning were horrible. They're
Speaker 3: planning bondings and stuff like that on countless people. They're
Speaker 3: planning to kill civilian life. Well did they do with
Speaker 3: the specific in their blessed.
Speaker 2: Power lines? Nuclear reactors, synagogues? Things like that.
Speaker 1: He knew all the details of the group's plans. He
Speaker 1: knew what Adam Woffin was going to do because he
Speaker 1: was a member of Adam Woffin. He's in the chats
Speaker 1: where these things are being discussed. He's in the living
Speaker 1: room where these things are being discussed, and by the
Speaker 1: time he's in that interrogation room, he's convinced himself that
Speaker 1: that's why he murdered his roommates. It wasn't some petty
Speaker 1: personal dispute, It wasn't because they were bullying him. It
Speaker 1: was because he had to do it. He had to
Speaker 1: stop them before they could hurt innocent people. And of
Speaker 1: course the detective did specifically ask about the model rockets.
Speaker 2: You guys, don't build model rockets and go out back
Speaker 2: and down them, offer the or amount of the firewors
Speaker 2: for the July.
Speaker 3: Now, there's not that, none of that. It's all literally
Speaker 3: there specifically to kill Bean.
Speaker 1: Is this probably the truth? I think so to some degree. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not to spoil the ending, but Brandon Russell was convicted
Speaker 1: earlier this year for a separate plot to destroy electrical infrastructure.
Speaker 1: He's also alleged to have co authored some of the
Speaker 1: Terrogram collective manuals that advise other neo Nazis on how
Speaker 1: to go about carrying out their own attacks. It's not
Speaker 1: at all hard to believe that he was thinking about
Speaker 1: and talking about these things as he's building bombs in
Speaker 1: his garage in twenty seventeen and wasn't a model rocket enthusiast.
Speaker 1: He did work on a project involving a model rocket
Speaker 1: as a member of the engineering club at the University
Speaker 1: of South Florida, but that was in twenty thirteen and
Speaker 1: he had since dropped out because he couldn't pass calculus.
Speaker 1: There were no model rockets in the condo. An explosives
Speaker 1: expert wrote in a report that no one would use
Speaker 1: HMTD to power a model rocket. It's too volatile. It's
Speaker 1: too volatile for pretty much everything. The military doesn't use it.
Speaker 1: It fell out of favor in mining decades ago, but
Speaker 1: it is possible to make it home if you're not
Speaker 1: afraid of accidentally blowing your fingers off if the workshop
Speaker 1: gets too warm, so it's still popular among terrorists. At
Speaker 1: the end of his interview, Arthur says, again quite plainly,
Speaker 1: if I hadn't done this, there would have been attacks.
Speaker 1: He's sure of it now. That's why he did it.
Speaker 1: He's sure at this point that he'd actually always thought that,
Speaker 1: and that was what he was thinking before it happened.
Speaker 1: Throughout his interview, Arthur's is asking to speak to the FBI.
Speaker 1: He's insisting that they need to hear what he has
Speaker 1: to say, and they keep sort of pushing him off, saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can think about that. You know, we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: That's later. He doesn't know that an FBI agent is
Speaker 1: watching a video feed from the next room, and he's right.
Speaker 1: The FBI was very interested in what he had to say,
Speaker 1: because shortly after that interview wrapped up, the same detective
Speaker 1: sat down with Brandon Russell, and this time that FBI
Speaker 1: agent is in the room. They talked to Brandon for
Speaker 1: a little over an hour. The detective had him sign
Speaker 1: a form confirming that he'd been informed of his Miranda rights,
Speaker 1: but he was also told that he wasn't in custody,
Speaker 1: he wasn't being detained, he's not under arrest, and he's
Speaker 1: free to leave it any time. He signed the form,
Speaker 1: and he agreed to talk without a lawyer, which I'm
Speaker 1: fine with him doing, but you listener, never talked to
Speaker 1: the police without a lawyer. They talked a lot about
Speaker 1: the murders. Obviously, he's talking to a homicide detective in
Speaker 1: a homicide investigation. They talked about Devin and Andrew and Jeremy,
Speaker 1: how they all come to be friends, how they met
Speaker 1: online and then in person, how that friendship had fallen
Speaker 1: apart over Devon's conversion to Islam. Brandon says Devon's conversion
Speaker 1: was never an issue for him, and I think that's true.
Speaker 1: He insisted that what was going on in the house
Speaker 1: was all just banter, just regular ball busting, teasing between friends.
Speaker 1: After the detective rephrases the question half a dozen times,
Speaker 1: he reluctantly agrees that, yeah, Jeremy and Andrew crossed the
Speaker 1: line sometimes. Maybe they were bullying him and Devin was
Speaker 1: having a hard time with it, but he said it
Speaker 1: had never gotten physical and he never thought anyone would
Speaker 1: get hurt. He also said Adam Waffin was just a
Speaker 1: club for people with shared political interests, and they liked
Speaker 1: to do outdoor activities together. He did agree that those
Speaker 1: shared beliefs were national socialism, and he got a little
Speaker 1: animated when he started complaining that schools only teach lies
Speaker 1: about Hitler. For the most part, though, Who's mumbling and
Speaker 1: his body language is guarded and anxious. He's sitting sort
Speaker 1: of folded in on himself, slouching down with his legs
Speaker 1: crossed and his arms folded tightly across his chest. He's tired,
Speaker 1: he's traumatized, but he's scared, and he insists throughout this
Speaker 1: conversation that everything they found was legal, It was legally obtained,
Speaker 1: he wasn't planning to do anything nefarious with it, and
Speaker 1: it was all related to his hobby of building model rockets.
Speaker 1: After about an hour of this, the detective's tone changes.
Speaker 1: He's been sort of yes, ending him, just letting him talk,
Speaker 1: getting him to open up, talking about his hobbies, not
Speaker 1: passing any kind of judgment, and Brandon Russell has been
Speaker 1: portraying himself and his organization as what the detective calls,
Speaker 1: you know, knuckleheads horsing around, you know, just kids having fun.
Speaker 1: But if we look on your computer, what are we
Speaker 1: going to find? Is it just jokes and camping trips
Speaker 1: or are we going to find that you've made explicit threats?
Speaker 1: Are you saying things like he'll all jews right? What
Speaker 1: are you saying? Are you making the kind of threats
Speaker 1: that could lead to federal charges? And at first Brandon
Speaker 1: tries to answer the question. He says, you know, only
Speaker 1: ever as a joke, I've never said that non satirically,
Speaker 1: and they press him a little hard what kinds of
Speaker 1: things are you saying? And then he just mumbles that
Speaker 1: maybe he needs a lawyer, So the questions stop there.
Speaker 1: He's not under arrest, he can leave at any time,
Speaker 1: and if he wants a lawyer, they're not going to
Speaker 1: ask him any more questions. He can go, but he
Speaker 1: can't go home though. The ATF has only just arrived
Speaker 1: and they still haven't finished clearing the house of explosive material.
Speaker 1: And until the ATF clears the scene, the medical examiner
Speaker 1: can't take the bodies away, so he's not going to
Speaker 1: be able to get into that condo anytime soon. So
Speaker 1: Russell asks the detective to call his dad. He doesn't
Speaker 1: ask if he can use the phone to call his dad.
Speaker 1: He a twenty two year old member of the military,
Speaker 1: is asking this other adult man, will you call my dad?
Speaker 1: He doesn't actually know his dad's phone number, and his
Speaker 1: cell phone is still inside the condo, but he says,
Speaker 1: you know, you can just call the Palm Beach County
Speaker 1: Sheriff's office and ask for him by name. He's a
Speaker 1: deputy there, or maybe it's West Palm Beach. He can't
Speaker 1: actually remember he and his dad aren't close. He wasn't
Speaker 1: around when Branda was a kid, and they don't really
Speaker 1: get along now. But he tells the FBI that he's
Speaker 1: going to drive to Palm Beach and stay with his dad.
Speaker 1: His mom still lives in the Bahamas, so he doesn't
Speaker 1: really have anywhere else nearby he can go, so a
Speaker 1: little after six am on Saturday morning, a Tampa police
Speaker 1: officer dropped Russell off outside the condo. The Explosive Ordnance
Speaker 1: Disposal team had finished with the scene, so detectives were
Speaker 1: just now arriving to conduct their search. One of those
Speaker 1: detectives went inside and got his keys for him. In
Speaker 1: her report, she notes that when she entered his bedroom
Speaker 1: to look for his keys, she saw a large framed
Speaker 1: photograph of Timothy mcveay on his dresser. An explosives enforcement
Speaker 1: agent from the ATF confirmed to the FBI sometime early
Speaker 1: Saturday morning that the materials they found did meet the
Speaker 1: legal definition of a destructive device. What they found in
Speaker 1: that garage was enough to bring federal charges, but by
Speaker 1: the time the ATF agents were done examining the scene
Speaker 1: and writing of their findings, the FBI had already let
Speaker 1: him go he was gone. He said he was going
Speaker 1: to his dad's house in West Palm Beach, but he didn't.
Speaker 1: When FBI agents contacted his family, they said they hadn't
Speaker 1: heard from him. Instead of going to his dad's house
Speaker 1: to get some rest, he'd driven straight to the home
Speaker 1: of another Adam Woffin member. He told him about the murders,
Speaker 1: and he said he needed to get away for a
Speaker 1: while to clear his head. But his friend didn't just
Speaker 1: toss a few T shirts and a toothbrush into a
Speaker 1: backpack like you might expect someone to do for a
Speaker 1: spur of the moment weekend away. Instead, he withdrew all
Speaker 1: of the money from his bank account, quit his job,
Speaker 1: and got into Russell's car, heading south. When deputies apprehended
Speaker 1: Russell in the Florida Keys a day later, the rifles
Speaker 1: they'd bought at a sporting goods store were still in
Speaker 1: their manufacturer's packaging. We'll pick back up next week with
Speaker 1: the year's long ordeal in court of resolving Devon Arthur's
Speaker 1: mental competency and Brandon Russell's first trip to federal prison.
Speaker 1: Hopefully by then we'll know how his story ends. He
Speaker 1: is scheduled to be sentenced for his second foiled plot
Speaker 1: on August seventh. Until then, I don't know. Make sure
Speaker 1: your teenage son isn't accidentally converting to a memified version
Speaker 1: of Islam in a neo Nazi Minecraft chat, and don't
Speaker 1: store volatile explosives in a cooler in your garage. Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys is the production of cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: It's research, written and accorded by me on the kunger Our.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. The show
Speaker 1: is edited by the wildly talented Bory Gigan. The theme
Speaker 1: music was composed by Brad Dickard. You can email me
Speaker 1: at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I
Speaker 1: will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.
Speaker 1: It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
Speaker 1: show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.
Speaker 1: Just don't post anything that's going to make you one
Speaker 1: of my Weird Little Guys