WEBVTT - The Civil War False Flag 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:06.560 Coozo Media. 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:11.280 On October fourteenth, twenty seventeen, the Battle of Cedar Greek 0:00:11.400 --> 0:00:16.000 was happening all over again. Originally fought on October nineteenth, 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:19.720 eighteen sixty four, the crushing defeat meant Confederate troops could 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:22.560 no longer maneuver through the Shenandoah Valley to march on Washington, 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:25.040 and the Union victory was the last minute boost for 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:29.240 Lincoln's reelection campaign one hundred and fifty three years later, 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:32.479 as reenactors in Middletown, Virginia milled around in their historically 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:35.440 accurate wool uniforms and replica weaponry waiting for the battle 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:39.040 to begin, one of them found an alarming anachronism in 0:00:39.080 --> 0:00:45.560 the sutler's tent, a pipe bomb. I'm Mollykonger, and this 0:00:46.280 --> 0:01:05.400 is weird, little guys. The Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation has 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:08.160 held their annual re enactment of the battle since nineteen ninety, 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:12.000 but twenty seventeen was a politically fraught time in America. 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:15.640 On August twelfth, twenty seventeen, the United the Right rally 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:18.600 in Charlesville, Virginia ended when a young rally attendee who 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:21.399 kept a framed picture of Adolf Hitler on his nightstand, 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:24.479 ran his car through a crowd of peaceful protesters marching 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:28.600 on a closed street. He injured dozens and killed Heather Hire. 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:33.160 Images of the crowd that day, with rally attendees carrying 0:01:33.200 --> 0:01:38.039 Confederate flags and swastikas side by side, flooded the national consciousness. 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:42.720 Most Americans heard the word antifa for the first time. 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:47.080 That week, the national conversation about Confederate monuments, which had 0:01:47.120 --> 0:01:52.800 been simmering all year, boiled over. The city council in Baltimore, Maryland, 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:55.440 voted to remove their Confederate statues just two days later. 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:58.680 The same week, the mayor of Lexington, Kentucky, asked his 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:00.880 city council to approve the rows removal of the statues 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:04.640 at their courthouse. The Confederate monument in Hollywood Forever Cemetery 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:09.239 in LA was removed overnight. From Florida to California, Confederate 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:14.000 monuments were removed, toppled, and vandalized. No one wanted to 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:18.720 be the next Charlottesville. Six days after the rally, officials 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:21.320 in Manassas, a small city outside of DC about two 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:24.200 hours north of Charlottesville, announced they were calling off the 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:27.280 annual Civil War Reenactment Weekend scheduled for the end of August. 0:02:28.480 --> 0:02:31.560 The Washington Posts reported that the reenactors themselves were worried 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:35.320 the quote racially charged atmosphere around the country over whether 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:40.200 to remove Civil War monuments would lead to violence. So 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:43.000 the concern was not whether it was appropriate to continue 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:45.960 celebrating the Confederacy in the wake of the deadly rally, 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:51.320 but rather anxiety about the possibility that Antifa America's new 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:56.560 black clad boogeyman would target these events. And these growing 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:00.120 fears of persecution from the radical left were confirmed on 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:03.640 September twenty third, when the Cedar Greek Battlefield Foundation received 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:07.799 an ominous letter in the mail. Instead of a return haddress, 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:10.480 the envelope bore a symbol that was fresh in their minds, 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:15.800 a black circle containing a black flag overlaying a red flag. 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:23.079 It was from Antifa. The letter inside read, you. 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:25.799 Need to cancel your coming up celebration of the Civil 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:30.320 War on October thirteen, fourteen fifteen, twenty seventeen. If you 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:33.440 choose to continue with this farce of history that clearly 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:36.720 celebrates the war to keep African Americans in chains, then 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:39.400 we have no choice but to come in protest. We 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:42.200 will come and disrupt and cause problems for all those 0:03:42.240 --> 0:03:45.600 who attend the atrocity of history. Several hundred of our 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:49.960 supporters will attend and slash tires, block traffic, harassed patrons 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:54.160 and reenactors. We will make Charlottesville look like a Sunday picnic. 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:57.480 Many of us have dogs, so we'll bring dog feces 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:00.040 to throw on people. We will also throw cups of 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:03.200 human urine. We might resort to actually firing guns into 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:05.520 the camps and at the re enactors. We will put 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:08.120 poison in the water. We will use noise to disrupt 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:11.600 the battles in sleep. These events must stop. Our local 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:14.160 organizer tells us he is ready to go. You have 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:17.160 been warned. Now. If it is not called off, we 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:19.920 will destroy you. You have less than one month to 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:22.479 issue a cancelation notice to it asap. 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:28.680 Days before the event in October, the Cedar Creek Battlefield 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:32.240 Foundation did announce publicly that they had received a threatening letter, 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:35.080 but that the event would go on with increased security, 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:38.200 and the details of the threat were not released, but 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:42.320 speculation immediately turned to the culture war, and after the 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:45.919 bomb was discovered, The National Review wrote The simplest and 0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:49.200 most logical explanation is that this is a new, violent 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:53.680 extension of the effort to remove Confederate statues. The Federalists 0:04:53.720 --> 0:04:56.880 lamented that history itself was becoming another casualty in the 0:04:56.880 --> 0:05:00.920 culture war. The threatening letters continue for over a year, 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:06.080 becoming increasingly gruesome and terrifyingly specific, targeting members of the 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:10.640 board at Cedar Creek and their family members. Cedar Creek 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:14.040 had to cancel the reenactment in twenty eighteen after one 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:16.440 director of the foundation resigned in fear for his family 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:18.599 safety when the letter writer threatened to put a bomb 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:21.919 under his mother's car. The new director started getting threats 0:05:21.960 --> 0:05:26.040 of sexual violence against her young daughters. The mayor of 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:29.000 Gettysburg received a letter threatening to bomb the annual Gettysburg 0:05:29.080 --> 0:05:34.920 Remembrance Day parade. Would Antifa stop at nothing to destroy history? 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:40.640 But it wasn't Antifa. It wasn't Antifa at all. 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:41.560 It was Gerald. 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:46.760 Gerald Leonard Drake born in nineteen fifty eight in Michigan, 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:51.559 loves the Civil War. In nineteen ninety six, his hometown paper, 0:05:51.600 --> 0:05:54.200 The port here In Times, Harold wrote an article about 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:57.760 his dedication to reenactment. He'd gotten a second job to 0:05:57.760 --> 0:05:59.760 save up the ten thousand dollars it would cost him 0:05:59.760 --> 0:06:02.239 to try and sport Judith his five hundred and twenty 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:06.160 five pound replica Civil War canon from Michigan to Columbus, 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:11.000 Georgia for the Chattahoochee Heritage Festival. Judith the Canon was 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.680 named after his wife, Judy, who would file for divorce 0:06:14.839 --> 0:06:18.719 the following year. When he married his third wife, Donna 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:21.839 in twenty ten, they took wedding photos in Civil War 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:24.800 era address at the historic Adams County Courthouse in Gettysburg. 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:29.200 They got two cats and named them Shiloh and Musket. 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:34.760 But the world was changing. The world of eighteen sixty 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:38.440 falls further away every day, no matter how historically accurate 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:42.120 the brass buttons on your coat are. In twenty eleven, 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:44.479 he posted a thread on a Civil War reenactment forum 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:48.560 about a living history event he'd recently participated in a 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:51.520 tour group. Was appalled that the re enactors, role playing 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:54.719 as soldiers reading aloud letters from home, read a letter 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:57.600 describing the brutal whipping of an enslaved person that was 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:01.600 riddled with racial slurs. Though he felt that the event 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:05.880 itself went well, he wrote that shit hit the fan afterwards, 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:09.200 and the liberals in the group had a bitch session 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:11.400 about appropriate language. 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:17.160 I guess what I'm asking here is, as living historians 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:19.600 and reenactors, aren't we supposed to do as good of 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:22.600 a job and impression of our ancestors as we possibly can. 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:25.040 We used to get praise and accolades for doing a 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:27.920 great first person impression. Let me know if anyone else 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:29.760 is having this kind of trouble for being the best 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:30.200 you can be. 0:07:33.120 --> 0:07:36.320 Surprisingly, even in twenty eleven, fellow users on the Civil 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:40.920 War message board disagreed with Gerald their reenactment groups is 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:44.760 committed as they were to historical accuracy, did not use 0:07:44.800 --> 0:07:49.000 the N word. One user, whose profile bears the badge 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:51.960 for Member of the Year wrote that he is quote 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:55.640 careful to avoid certain language in terms, always realizing that 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.360 my performance is in the present century to modern day 0:07:58.400 --> 0:08:01.920 folks who live in the present would not understand the customs, practices, 0:08:01.960 --> 0:08:04.480 and language of the nineteenth century with any real clarity. 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.440 Another user, a former moderator of the forum, replied to 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:10.480 a comment from Drake that he was looking for a 0:08:10.760 --> 0:08:14.680 less PC group, wrote that he can't imagine there is 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:17.560 any group out there that would condone that kind of language, 0:08:17.720 --> 0:08:21.720 and all this achieves is bad publicity for reenactors, adding 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:24.520 that those tourists surely all went home that day and 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:27.280 told their friends about the racists they saw at the event. 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:30.960 A year later, Drake posted again in the same Civil 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:33.760 War forum, complaining that people are getting too hung up 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:37.720 on safety, writing remember when reenacting used to be fun 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:41.000 and mourning the old days when battle reenactments were more 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:45.720 like real battle Again. Fellow reenactors pushed back, with one 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:49.600 veteran reenactor writing that he did indeed remember those days. 0:08:50.120 --> 0:08:52.760 He'd once had a costume ruined and gotten pretty serious 0:08:52.800 --> 0:08:55.800 burns when another reenactor shot him with a replica shotgun. 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:01.000 Even in his chosen community of Civil War reenactors, Gerald 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:02.680 was living in a version of the past that was 0:09:02.720 --> 0:09:08.320 becoming increasingly lonely. In October of twenty fourteen, things really 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:11.800 started to fall apart. His third marriage was on the rocks, 0:09:12.679 --> 0:09:16.080 and after what sounds like a pretty petty dispute, Gerald 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:19.880 was kicked out of his Civil War reenactment unit. As 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:22.160 a volunteer at the Cedar Creek Battlefield. He'd heard a 0:09:22.200 --> 0:09:24.760 rumor that someone was planning to sneak into the reenactment 0:09:25.240 --> 0:09:29.720 without paying the registration fee. Gerald and his friend and 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:33.400 fellow reenactor Daryl, found this to be an outrageous offense 0:09:33.679 --> 0:09:36.840 and decided to print up flyers letting everyone know that 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:39.480 Duffy Miller wasn't going to pay his entry fee and 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:43.960 anyone who sees him should stop him. Duffy Miller, as 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:47.160 it turns out, was their unit commander, and he was 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.240 not pleased to see the posters. He kicks Gerald and 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:56.120 Daryl out of the unit. Jerald continued volunteering at Cedar Creek, 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:58.160 but it seems this incident was the end of his 0:09:58.280 --> 0:09:59.320 love for reenacting. 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:00.839 Now. 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:03.520 I can't find exactly how much it cost to register 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:06.200 for the event in twenty fourteen, but the twenty twenty 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:08.880 four registration fee is thirty five dollars, and I know 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.599 from the forum post that's actually been increased in the 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:14.400 last couple of years to cover the new security measures 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:17.000 that they have to have, so you have to assume 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:21.520 it was much less ten years ago. So the inciting 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:24.800 incident for this entire debacle was a couple of old 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:29.720 guys fighting about twenty bucks and the sanctity of Confederate reenactment. 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:34.160 I guess, so what's a guy to do now? First 0:10:34.200 --> 0:10:36.600 they stop letting him say the N word, You're not 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:39.559 even allowed to shoot each other anymore, and now he's 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:42.800 kicked out of his unit Entirely a hobby he'd loved 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:47.000 since the early nineties was being ruined. They weren't saying 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:50.480 like wokeness back then, But I think if this happened today, 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:53.280 Gerald would say that it was being ruined by woke 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:57.199 He'd been left by three wives and now his own 0:10:57.240 --> 0:11:00.800 civil war unit didn't want him around. But he continued 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:05.600 volunteering at Cedar Creek. He retired, He built and painted 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:10.280 little models, got into model rockets, He traveled the world, 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:16.360 and he posted a lot, and apparently he held on 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:18.679 to his anger about that incident at the twenty fourteen 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:22.400 Cedar Creek reenactment. I spent a lot of time combing 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:25.920 through hundreds of pages of court documents, years and years 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:28.880 of his posts on forums, But I can't quite sort 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:32.800 out what the catalyst was in twenty seventeen. Why did 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:36.319 he wait three years to put that bomb at Cedar Creek. 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:40.320 Maybe he saw the news about the Manassas reenactment getting canceled. 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:42.200 Out of fear of political violence at the wake up 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:46.400 Unite the Right and just got an idea because within 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:53.439 weeks of that news story, Gerald started writing letters. After 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:56.400 his first letter to the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation in September, 0:11:56.840 --> 0:11:59.280 he followed up by placing an actual bomb at the 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:04.960 event in October. The reenactment community is pretty small, and 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:09.120 the pipe bomb was big news, but a rumor was 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:12.199 going around on Facebook that a teenager had been arrested 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:15.200 for the original letter, and then that was sort of conflated. 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:17.760 As you know, people are posting and reposting and talking 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:20.520 about the post that they saw. It was conflated to 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:23.600 the idea that someone had been arrested for the bomb, 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:27.480 and the rumor was very quickly disproven. No one was 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:30.800 arrested replacing the bomb in the vendor's tent, but the 0:12:30.880 --> 0:12:34.800 letter writer was frustrated. If they thought the culprit had 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:39.600 been apprehended, they wouldn't be afraid anymore. John Buchheister, a 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:41.600 vendor at the event who told a reporter that he 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:44.000 was present when the bomb was found, was one of 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:47.240 the posters in that Facebook rumor mill and there's nothing 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:50.360 malicious here. He just reposted something that someone else had 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:54.000 said that the would be bomber had been apprehended. I 0:12:54.000 --> 0:12:56.319 think there was a lot of relief in believing that, 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:59.080 so a lot of people were posting it. But I 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.760 guess our letter writer saw John Buchheister's post, because on 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:06.199 November thirteenth, twenty seventeen, he opened a letter addressed to 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:10.360 his home in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Like the first letter, the 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:12.760 envelope was printed with the ANTIFA symbol in place of 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:17.280 a return address. Inside a typed letter read. 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:22.880 Thank you so much for putting on Facebook that a 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:25.439 teenager was arrested for the threat to see her creek. 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:28.160 It was so much easier to bring in a bomb. 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:31.360 Do something like this again for us. We are coming 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:34.640 to the Gettysburg parade and speech. Thank you again for 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:36.679 all your help in the last terror event. 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:42.199 That same week, a local newspaper in Gettysburg received a 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:46.720 letter threatening the upcoming Gettysburg Remembrance Day parade. The letter 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:49.040 threatened to drive trucks through the crowd at the parade, 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:52.360 a troubling callback to the still recent vehicular murderer Unite 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:56.160 the Right, and threatened to put sharpshooters in windows and 0:13:56.200 --> 0:14:00.280 on rooftops. The letter writer ended the note by giving 0:14:00.320 --> 0:14:03.560 a detailed description of the bomb at Cedar Creek quote 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:06.600 for proof that we did the Cedar Creek terror attack. 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:10.800 But just as Cedar Creek had not canceled when they 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:14.480 were threatened, the Gettysburg Rememberance Day parade was not canceled 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.640 that year, but the route was significantly shortened to allow 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:21.920 for a heavy police presence. As Chris Anders, a Republican 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:26.120 political activist, wrote on Facebook, apparently Antifa and other hate 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:28.680 groups are headed to try and cause problems this Saturday 0:14:28.680 --> 0:14:32.080 at the annual Remembrance Day parade, but he wrote that 0:14:32.160 --> 0:14:34.320 he would be marching with his brothers in Gray rather 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:38.120 than giving in to terrorists. There are nearly one hundred 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:41.280 comments on this Facebook post, mostly agreeing that Dantifa must 0:14:41.320 --> 0:14:45.560 be stopped or offering questionable safety tips, like advising that 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.640 you should use a wool scarf to protect yourself from teargas. 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:52.440 I have to assume that would only make things worse. 0:14:52.920 --> 0:14:57.760 I feel like wool is very absorbent. But one loan commenter, 0:14:57.920 --> 0:14:59.960 a reenactor from New England who rides with the First 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:05.680 Main Cavalry, got a different theory. He wrote, I bet 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:08.640 you five dollars that the perpetrator is a reenactor or 0:15:08.720 --> 0:15:12.720 former reenactor. No offense to anyone, but no one knows 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:16.280 about rem Day beyond reenactors and locals. For it to 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:18.520 be a target, someone would have to be aware of it, 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:22.160 and there are plenty of other high profile, low security 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:26.840 events with bigger crowd numbers to choose. From his comment, 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:29.600 drew ire from the victimized confederates obsessed with the idea 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:33.240 of a massive conspiracy from the radical left. He was, 0:15:33.280 --> 0:15:50.360 of course correct. And now here's where things start to 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:55.320 get really weird. Just some truly inexplicable behavior with deep 0:15:56.000 --> 0:15:58.840 weird roots. I mean, I guess that's the show, right, 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:01.920 This guy's weird. But here's where it takes its super 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:06.400 weird turn. Gerald is retired at this point, and when 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:09.960 he's not traveling, he's volunteering. He's still volunteering at Cedar 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:12.840 Creek even though he doesn't reenact anymore, but he's also 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:17.360 volunteering at sky Meadows State Park. It's not entirely clear 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:20.040 why a registered sex offender was allowed to volunteer at 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:23.160 the state park alongside a high school student, but that's 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:25.000 what it says in the affidavit. So I guess that 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:28.000 one fell through the cracks at sky Meadows because while 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:30.600 he did successfully petition to get himself removed from the 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:34.240 sex offender registry in twenty twenty one, in twenty eighteen, 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:38.600 the background check required for volunteers at state parks would 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:40.880 have shown that he was a registered sex offender for 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:44.360 a two thousand and four conviction in Ohio for sexual 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:49.920 imposition and child endangerment. And again, I'll be so clear 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:53.080 with you right up front, there's no allegation that Drake 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:58.040 was involved in any inappropriate sexual conduct as a volunteer anywhere, 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:00.520 not at the state park, not anywhere in the time 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:04.760 period of these events. There's no allegation that he's touching 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:09.399 any children or engaging in any inappropriate sexual conduct. But 0:17:09.440 --> 0:17:11.520 I'm not just telling you he's a registered sex offender 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:15.720 to sort of point and laugh at that. As a circumstance, 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:21.199 these things intersect. So in twenty eighteen, he's volunteering at 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:24.320 the park with this teenage boy, and one afternoon in 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:27.159 February they're volunteering together. They're shooting the shit fill in 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:30.560 the time and Gerald, who is sixty at this point, 0:17:30.640 --> 0:17:33.359 is telling this teenage boy about his hobby of Civil 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:38.080 war reenactment, which is very tragically in decline. The topic 0:17:38.119 --> 0:17:40.720 of the twenty seventeen reenactment at Cedar Creek comes up. 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:44.720 I have to assume Gerald brought it up, because why 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:46.959 would the seventeen year old boy have brought that up? 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:50.480 But Gerald is telling the kid about some funny articles 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:54.680 about that twenty seventeen event. He later emailed the teenager 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:58.440 what appeared to be photographs of newspaper clippings about the bombing. 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:04.600 These these articles, the bomb went off. The articles he 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:09.439 emails this teenager contained details of the bomb actually killing people, 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:14.560 with more deaths caused by subsequent sniper fire. But we 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:17.720 know the bomb didn't really go off. No one got shot, 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:23.560 no one got hurt, nothing really happened. The articles he 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:27.600 showed his young friend were completely fake. The federal agents 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:30.159 investigating the case wrote that attempts to locate sources for 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:33.800 these fake newspaper clippings turned up nothing. I mean, not 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:37.919 even anything online showing these fake articles. Just nothing. 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:38.560 There's nothing. 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:42.919 He must have made them himself, and that's where his 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:46.520 sex offender status ties back in. In two thousand and three, 0:18:46.600 --> 0:18:51.040 he was indicted in Auglaize County, Ohio for gross sexual imposition, 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:56.520 and shortly after he's indicted, someone starts sending weird letters 0:18:56.560 --> 0:19:00.359 to the Auglaize County prosecutor. The letters were made to 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:02.159 appear as though they were sent by a member of 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:05.200 the police department in Drake's hometown of Port here On, Michigan, 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:09.520 and they appeared to prove that Drake's second wife was 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:14.000 a child abuser. The letter writer sent a forged polygraph 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:17.840 report on Michigan State Police letterhead and a forged notarized 0:19:17.840 --> 0:19:21.480 statement from Drake's estranged wife, and when his home was 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:25.680 eventually searched, police found a doctored page from the local newspaper. 0:19:26.560 --> 0:19:30.520 He had taken an actual newspaper and manually altered it 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:33.560 with a false news story about his estranged second wife, Susan, 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:38.000 pleading guilty to child abuse and endangerment. No such news 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:40.399 story ever existed, and I can find no evidence that 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:44.040 Susan was ever charged with such a crime. Maybe a 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:47.840 more thorough journalist would have pushed harder for the details here, 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:51.040 but court cases involving sexual abuse of a minor tend 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:55.320 to be completely closed. Those documents are sealed unless someone 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:57.919 was sitting in those hearings, and there's local news reports 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:00.600 about the testimony. You're just you're not to find it, 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:04.440 and short of reaching out to the parties involved, there's 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:07.240 no way for me to know exactly what led to 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:11.199 Gerald Drake being convicted of sexual imposition and child endangerment 0:20:11.960 --> 0:20:14.119 or why he tried to frame his strange wife for it. 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:18.160 But I can tell you that after his conviction there's 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:20.560 a note on the docket that the judge prohibited Drake 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:23.840 from contacting his second ex wife and her minor daughter 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:26.520 from a prior marriage. So I think we can get 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:29.880 the gist of the situation without me asking a young 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:32.679 woman why her stepdad, a man now in prison for 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:36.040 making a bomb, was court ordered to stay away from 0:20:36.040 --> 0:20:38.800 her when she was ten. Take from that way you 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:42.440 will the relevant kernel of that story, though, is those 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:46.879 fake newspaper articles. In two thousand and three, he's manually 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:50.879 cutting and pasting by hand and xeroxing his creations to 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:55.160 disguise the alterations. He's arts and craftsing his way into 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:57.600 an alternate reality where his ex wife is the one 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:01.560 in endangering children, not him, And in twenty eighteen he's 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:04.600 doing it again. He's making fake newspaper clippings about what 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:08.560 he wishes were real. He's showing this teenage boy a 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:11.320 reality where the bomb did go off and the people 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:15.280 who snubbed him died. And while he was in jail 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:17.760 for that sex offense a short eight months in Ohio 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:23.480 County jail, he made another art project of sorts. In 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.600 September two thousand four, the Auglais County Sheriff's office reached 0:21:26.600 --> 0:21:30.600 out to the FBI Field office in Cleveland. Gerald had 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:32.960 been trying to make friends in jail by showing off 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:36.720 his knowledge of explosives. He produced eight pages of hand 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:40.359 drawn diagrams and instructions for creating a pipe bomb, a 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:43.920 CO two cartridge bomb, a Coleman fuel bomb, a propane 0:21:43.920 --> 0:21:47.200 tank bomb, and diagrams about how to modify the kind 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:50.240 of inert grenades you can buy as antiques or at 0:21:50.280 --> 0:21:53.280 the Army surplus store and how to turn them back 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:57.880 into live grenades. And the diagram of the pipe bomb 0:21:57.960 --> 0:22:00.680 he drew in jail in two thousand and four. He's 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:05.080 remarkably similar to the device he made in twenty seventeen. 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:08.640 It doesn't appear that anything ever came of the incident. 0:22:08.640 --> 0:22:10.399 In the jail back in two thousand and four, you know, 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:12.840 the sheriff's office contact of the FBI, and they said, Hey, 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:14.520 we've got these weird drawings. What do you guys think 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:17.320 about this. There's no indication that there was follow up 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:21.520 from there, but apparently they held on to them. Those 0:22:21.600 --> 0:22:25.200 drawings remained in a filing cabinet somewhere in Ohio for 0:22:25.440 --> 0:22:28.919 twenty years. It's kind of surprising that they still had 0:22:28.960 --> 0:22:32.320 those drawings in twenty nineteen, but they are included in 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:35.840 the affidavit for the search warrant. So in the spring 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:38.920 of twenty eighteen, he seems pretty content with his hobbies. 0:22:39.560 --> 0:22:42.360 He's making fake newspaper articles about his bomb going off 0:22:42.400 --> 0:22:45.760 and showing them to a kid he volunteers with based 0:22:45.800 --> 0:22:48.600 on his eBay review history. He's painting miniature models of 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:52.960 Godzilla and Frankenstein, both five stars from Gerald, and he's 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:56.520 getting into model rocketry. In March, he took a solo 0:22:56.600 --> 0:23:01.160 vacation to Amsterdam. His trip Advisor count provides a pretty 0:23:01.240 --> 0:23:04.440 robust log of his travels. He wasn't a big fan 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:07.840 of the Jewish History Museum, titling his review not really 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:11.280 for Gentiles, and writing that he felt shorted by the 0:23:11.359 --> 0:23:14.640 lack of artifacts from the death camps at the Holocaust Museum. 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:17.520 He felt that it had been quote scrubbed of shock 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:20.560 due to the new PC way all museums are going. 0:23:21.800 --> 0:23:24.119 He felt the same way about the Dutch Resistance Museum, 0:23:24.160 --> 0:23:26.359 writing if you were looking for the story of the 0:23:26.400 --> 0:23:29.040 full account of atrocities done on the citizens, well this 0:23:29.160 --> 0:23:33.439 display doesn't have it. It Like many museums today have 0:23:33.560 --> 0:23:36.080 had to lighten up on their truth so as not 0:23:36.119 --> 0:23:40.959 to offend anyone. He did, however, really enjoy the Museum 0:23:41.000 --> 0:23:43.720 of Prostitution and his visit to the Red Light District. 0:23:44.720 --> 0:23:47.000 In a later post on a forum for sex doll owners, 0:23:47.040 --> 0:23:49.400 he boasted that he is familiar with the female condoms 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:52.440 he uses to keep his dolls clean because he's used 0:23:52.480 --> 0:23:55.919 them in European brothels. And for what it's worth, the 0:23:55.920 --> 0:23:58.119 Anne frank House got his seal of approval as a 0:23:58.119 --> 0:24:01.159 World War II history buff the Ripley's Believe It or 0:24:01.200 --> 0:24:04.320 Not Museum, and he was deeply upset that his hostel 0:24:04.359 --> 0:24:09.920 did not provide a traditional American breakfast with quote hot meats. 0:24:10.680 --> 0:24:13.120 I don't know why you would expect a cheap hostel 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:17.000