SERIALously - 294: 764 Network: Extremist Cult Preying on Children Through Discord

Starting point is 00:00:00 764 764 764 764 local collective luring children into dark abusive acts. Sheriff, we're talking about an online terror group that targets teens for suicide, murder, mass shootings. How worried should parents in Palm Beach County be that it's happening here? Man, this guy's got some weird stuff in his car, bro. He was doing these threats with her knowledge and with some of her input. Before it started, she was a child who was on the honor roll. She had a lot of friends, and then slowly that started to change. Police! Turn around! I've been an investigative reporter for decades, and this is about the most disturbing

Starting point is 00:00:41 story I've seen. Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialist League. Imagine your 10 year old is in their room playing an online game like Roblox. Now imagine the child they think they're chatting with online is actually an adult with deviant, disturbing and dangerous intentions. We've tried to tell this story, and nobody's listened, nobody believes it. It's too obscure, it's too obscene. Coming in very quietly into your homes, and you don't even realize that they're there,

Starting point is 00:01:34 and that's why it's really important for parents to do their diligence to not allow devices to become the new conversational piece or the new babysitter for our kids. We all know that the internet can be an incredible tool, a place to connect, to learn, to create, but in the wrong hands, it can become something so much darker.

Starting point is 00:01:56 Hey guys, I'm Annie Elise. We are back with an all new episode of Serialistly today, and today we are diving into one of the most disturbing online cases that I have ever come across. It's the 764 network, and you may have heard me talk about it a little bit on Headline Highlights a couple of months ago. I first briefly mentioned it there, but after digging deeper, I realized that this case needs its own full deep dive because

Starting point is 00:02:25 I feel as though everyone should be aware of what is going on with 764, what they're doing so that you don't become a potential victim or target, your children, and some of the things that this online cult, which I'm just going to call it like it is, this online cult is doing is more barbaric than I have ever seen in some of the worst true crime cases I have ever covered, and that is saying a lot. We're talking about a digital cult here, a group that is just hiding in plain sight

Starting point is 00:02:56 across servers like Discord, different gaming servers, all where this violent content, this manipulation, and this exploitation is running rampant. And the victims are more than times often children. Now I want to give a huge trigger warning here because this episode, sexual exploitation of minors, animal cruelty, torment, devious behavior, you name it. So please take care while listening and we are gonna jump right in. Today's case takes us to Stephenville, Texas, a town that's known as the cowboy capital of the world, thanks to the fact that it hosts

Starting point is 00:03:42 more professional rodeos than literally any other place on earth. Now as you might expect, it's also a town that is deeply rooted in church culture. Where showing up to worship on Sunday morning isn't just common, but it's almost expected. Family and small-town values, they run deep here for better or for worse, and it's a place that many people proudly call home. But for 15-year-old Bradley Cadenhead, Stephenville never really felt that way to him. The kids he went to church with bullied him, turning what should have been a safe space into really anything but that. And it wasn't just church.

Starting point is 00:04:18 Bradley struggled to connect with anyone. He was just a complete loner, and frankly, he liked it that way. In his mind, trusting people, it only led to more hurt. So instead of trying to fit in, he kept himself. Alone. Alone felt safer. And as sad as his situation was, don't get me wrong here. Bradley had also been in trouble from a very young age. To be honest, he's kind of the perfect example of what can happen to young kids when they have just full, complete, total, uninterrupted access to the internet with zero limits and zero barriers. And this was all in spite of the fact that his parents, Jeff and Heather,

Starting point is 00:04:56 were very well known in the community. They were known for being kind and generous and for being involved with the church. They had solid reputations. They were the type of family where it meant something if you said that you were their kids and it meant something good. So Jeff and Heather had four children in total, Bradley and his three half siblings. And Jeff and Heather's number one priority was making sure that all of them had this like very good,

Starting point is 00:05:19 very loving Christian family. They wanted to be sure that God and their church was a big part of all four of their children's lives. So every Sunday they woke up, they got dressed, and they went to church. It wasn't just a routine or even something that was an option anymore, it was just their entire lifestyle. That was what they did. Rinse, recycle, repeat. Literally, even if one of the kids was ever sick or busy, it did not matter. They still had to find a way to get themselves to church that Sunday morning. They also were never allowed to miss Bible studies

Starting point is 00:05:49 during the rest of the week. And from what I can tell, things really started changing when Bradley was around six years old. He was around kindergarten or first grade, not really sure depending on when, you know, the year cycle started. Very young, but unfortunately not too young to be bullied. And it all started with the kids at Bible study, which I have to just say is very very sad because from a bully's perspective, if you can't behave yourself after learning about peace, love, caring for your neighbor, being in church, where can you? Like where are these people safe, right? If you're getting bullied in church by these people in church, like there's no hope outside of church really, right? Now I don't know exactly what they started picking on him about, but it got to the point that he didn't want to go to church

Starting point is 00:06:33 anymore. And that was a huge shock because before this point, he actually really did like church. He wasn't the sort of kid to ever get bored during the service or start squirming in his seat or just like dozing off and looking the other direction, he always loved it. So when he started saying that he didn't want to go to church anymore, it was a huge shock for both Jeff and Heather. But once they got over their shock, Jeff and Heather both responded to Bradley's request very differently. His mom Heather felt bad for him.

Starting point is 00:07:02 Church had always been important to her, but she also didn't think that it was worth forcing Bradley to go if it was hurting his mental health. Jeff, on the other hand, believed that Bradley just needed to tough it out. He just needed to get a thicker skin, because to him, faith came before feelings, like point blank period, the end. And the difference in opinion between the two of them,

Starting point is 00:07:22 it caused a lot of growing tension at home. Eventually, Heather stopped going to church altogether herself. Now, whether it was a shift in her beliefs or just a break from the routine, she was no longer showing up on Sundays. And Jeff did not take that lightly. He kept attending himself,

Starting point is 00:07:39 and he also made sure that Bradley and all of the other kids came with him. But naturally, it kind of turned into this situation of like, well, you know, if mom doesn't have to go, why do I have to go? That kind of thing. So what started as this simple or relatively simple disagreement about Sunday mornings and who would and wouldn't go to church, it spiraled into a full-blown family divide. And as the stress inside their home grew, Bradley turned to the one place that nobody was monitoring, the one place where he felt like he could be himself and nobody was bullying him or making fun of him. And that was the internet. The problem was, Bradley

Starting point is 00:08:16 was online without any parental supervision. No one was checking what he was watching. No one was double checking that the sites that he would visit were safe or age appropriate. He just had full reign on the internet. And by the time Bradley was just eight years old, he was regularly watching all kinds of videos that no child should look at. Some that no person in general should ever look at. I mean, period, regardless of their age. I mean I'm talking porn, violent videos, videos of people being tormented, and lots of other just horrific and really disturbing and gory stuff. But Bradley wasn't just watching this stuff. He was drawn to it. He was obsessed even. And the more disturbing it was, the more that

Starting point is 00:09:01 he wanted. And as time went on, he just kept pushing it further and further, looking for the next best thing, something even more twisted. I am sure a lot of you have heard about the GLP-1 market and everybody taking them, but I'm sure you've also heard how it is so difficult to get your hands on Ozempic, Wegovi, or any of those medications. Not only is it difficult to figure out if you qualify, but then negotiating with your insurance provider becomes like this whole other headache that you need to worry about. And it can become a nightmare, especially if you feel like it's something that really is going to have positive effects on your life. And if you're curious about Ozempic or Wegovi, but not sure if your insurance covers it,

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Starting point is 00:10:46 covers GLP-1s for free. Go to ro.co.safe for black box warning and full safety information about GLP-1 medications. Okay everybody, first and foremost, I have to say thank you. I posted an Instagram story a couple weeks ago asking for your suggestions for new Ollie Pop flavors to try

Starting point is 00:11:05 because I was only drinking the vintage cola and the orange cola flavor one. And you gave me so many helpful tips of different ones to try. And I seriously love all of them. Now, if you haven't been with me on my Ollie Pop journey for the last month, that's okay. Let me basically break it down for you.

Starting point is 00:11:22 You know, I live for Diet Coke, or I should say I used to live for Diet Coke. But then Oli Popp reached out and became a sponsor of the show, and it has changed the game for me because I feel like all of us have some sort of relationship with soda, whether you drink it every day like I do, or it reminds you of maybe like a childhood memory, whatever it is. But they use functional ingredient blends that support digestive health and they offer this very delicious alternative to traditional sodas.

Starting point is 00:11:51 Which, so you're still getting that like taste and flavor, everything that the mainstream sodas would give you, but you're not getting the trade off. And also, let me just throw this out there. A regular Coke has 39 grams of sugar, whereas their vintage Cola has only two grams of sugar. It is so different and so healthy. I remember my dad once told me drinking a can of soda

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Starting point is 00:12:30 That was like my jam. Their orange squeeze only has five grams of sugar compared to Orange Fanta, which has 44 grams of sugar. It has like completely blown my mind and changed my habit and my day to day. And right now you can get a free can of Olypop. Buy any two cans of Olypop in store and Olypop will pay you back for one of them. It works on any flavor at any retailer. Just go to drinkolypop.com slash AE. Olypop is sold online on drinkolypop.com,

Starting point is 00:13:00 also on Amazon, and it's available in almost 50,000 retailers nationwide, including Costco, Walmart, Target, Publix, Whole Foods, Kroger, and HEB. So again, go to drinkolipop.com slash AE and get a free can of Olipop. And still drop me all those flavors because I am expanding and trying all of them now. all of them now. Now from the moment that Bradley started watching all of these violent and disturbing videos online, he started to feel different from all of the other kids, but not in a good way. The red flags just started popping up and they just kept coming and coming and coming.

Starting point is 00:13:43 So then, fast forward two years later, when he was just about 10 years old, his family dynamic, as he knew, had completely shifted. Not only had there been that toxic family divide inside the house, but now his mother, Heather, had finally moved out. So as it turned out, the tension that had been simmering for quite some time at that point

Starting point is 00:14:03 finally had reached a breaking point, and Heather was now ready for a change. And from what I've gathered, even before she officially moved out, she had been out partying a lot, kind of having her independent life, living on her own, trying to reevaluate her life or figure out who she was as a person. And she was often drunk, and not nearly as involved as she could have been. Now just based on context clues, it seems likely that Bradley's three half-siblings were from Heather's previous relationship, meaning that Jeff was not their biological father. I haven't been able to confirm that for sure, but after Heather moved out, Jeff ended up getting full custody of Bradley, and the other siblings all more or less kind of disappeared from the narrative, so that's what makes me think that Bradley was his only

Starting point is 00:14:48 biological child in the mix. I don't know, maybe they stayed with their mom, maybe they went to go live with their own dad, assuming there was a different dad or a dad in the picture, I'm not really sure. Again, I could be wrong, that's just the assumption that kind of lines up with what we do know. But the point is that once it came to be just Jeff and Bradley, Bradley's mental health really took a turn for the worse.

Starting point is 00:15:09 His family was falling apart. He wasn't happy, and he didn't have any healthy way of coping with any of this. So, like unfortunately many young kids do, he began self-harming, specifically through the method of cutting. And when he wasn't engaging in any of that, he was just always online. Night or day, it didn't matter. Sometimes both. He was just

Starting point is 00:15:31 constantly online looking for even more shocking and upsetting content that he had viewed previously. And nobody kept tabs on him. It didn't matter if Bradley was home with his dad or out visiting his mom. None of them had any sort of blockers on their internet. None of them were monitoring it to make sure that it would stop him from visiting inappropriate sites. Neither of them were checking his browsing history to see what he was up to, and he just had complete freedom on the web. And he was using that freedom in a very unhealthy way. Then that began to escalate and he started acting out in public places. Now at first it was just at church. His Bible study teacher said that he purposefully was disruptive in classes all the way to the

Starting point is 00:16:14 point where they would just have to shut down the class altogether because none of the other kids could focus, they couldn't listen, they weren't paying attention, it was just too disruptive. But then, apparently, Bradley started wondering what it would be like to become a, quote, well-known school shooter. The idea of it? It thrilled him. There was the fact that he liked blood, gore, and seeing other people in pain, which is all very concerning things, considering we know that's how a lot of these school shooters often are, but also there was this added layer to it that he could get back at all of these kids who had once bullied him. It could be retribution,

Starting point is 00:16:54 retaliation. Now keep in mind this was now in 2018 when he was 13 years old. He was only in eighth grade yet he had so much hate and so much anger in his heart. Now, I don't know if the whole school shooter idea was just this fantasy for Bradley, or if it was something that he was making plans on and was actually going to make a reality, but he definitely was not very secretive about where his mind was going. Apparently, he was constantly making different types of comments to his classmates about how any day now he was going to bring a gun to school, he was going to kill a bunch of people, and one student ended up overhearing him talking about it with someone else. Which, that's really all it took. The whole situation finally was being taken very seriously, as it should have been. Now given Bradley's track record and the fact that many of these individuals who go to school trying to inflict

Starting point is 00:17:45 this type of violence show similar warning signs early on, it was a relief that this was not brushed off. And based on everything else that you'll hear in this episode, I can confidently say to you that he absolutely did seem capable of following through. That's of course just my opinion, who knows, it didn't come to fruition, but you'll understand why as I get into more of this here. So a police report was filed and Bradley was charged with making terroristic threats and he ended up being put on juvenile probation for it, all by the ripe age of 13 years old. Now I'm not sure what specific precautions were taken regarding his return to the school, but I would have to imagine that something was put in place. I can't imagine they would just allow you to waltz back in there without any sort of precautions,

Starting point is 00:18:29 but I don't know. And you know what? Honestly, maybe not. Maybe there weren't any precautions taken because his teacher ended up telling the police that she didn't feel safe around him at all. She had overheard him talking about making bombs, modifying guns with silencers, and she even said that she overheard him talking to friends about these videos that he would watch that he described as killing videos. The next year when Bradley was just 14 years old, he was actually sent to a juvenile detention center for violating his probation, and the violation was that he was still watching violent, gory, graphic, just very upsetting videos.

Starting point is 00:19:05 So literally by this point, the courts knew that there was an issue, and they had directly told him that he needed to stop, but he either didn't care, or he just was an addict and simply couldn't help himself. He was even going on social media bragging about how much he loved violence. His friends—not his friends in real life, but his friends in the way that you have friends online, would see all of these posts. And from what they could tell Bradley almost seemed proud of himself. He wasn't asking for help, it was almost as though he was confident. He was boastful. He thought that he was special because he

Starting point is 00:19:39 liked all of this other stuff that people found disturbing and upsetting, but it didn't faze him. So because of that, he was different. He was special. And he ended up making it his entire personality. It didn't matter how much trouble he ever got into or how off-putting everybody found him, Bradley's whole thing was looking at violent videos online. Now, Juby obviously didn't get him any better, but still, he was seeing counselors and professionals now.

Starting point is 00:20:08 And when some of them started to notice this behavior and also noticed the signs of the self-harm because he was still doing that, and coupled that with his obsession with violence, they ended up forcing him to go get therapy. The problem with that is that therapy is really only effective when you want to change, when you come to it with an open mind, with a willingness to hear what the counselor or therapist has to say. And that was definitely not the case with Bradley. The more time that he spent with the mental health professionals, the more defiant he

Starting point is 00:20:38 became, the more angry he was. He didn't like people telling him what to do, and that's what therapy felt like to him. He felt like someone was telling him what to do, and that's what therapy felt like to him. He felt like someone was telling him what to do. So basically, Bradley was just completely not cooperative, not interested in doing better. There were red flags all over the place, but ultimately when his sentence was over, there were no grounds to hold him in that juvenile detention center anymore. So because of that, he ended up being sent home. And naturally, he wasn't any better once he got home. He was constantly just breaking curfew, continuing to watch very disturbing stuff online, getting in fights with his parents, just non-stop. It was constant turmoil,

Starting point is 00:21:16 constant chaos. He even allegedly assaulted his mother, Heather, at one point, though I will say not a lot is really mentioned about this particular incident. On top of all of that, he ended up in the hospital more than once for nearly overdosing on Tylenol and cough syrup. By the time he was 15 years old, his parents Jeff and Heather were just kind of at a loss. They didn't know what to do. A strict upbringing with a lot of church, obviously, had not helped. Juvenile detention hadn't helped.

Starting point is 00:21:44 Giving Bradley the freedom to go online however much he wants didn't help. juvenile detention hadn't helped, giving Bradley the freedom to go online however much he wants didn't help, therapy hadn't helped, what was going to help this kid? They didn't know what to do. They were at a loss. So since they were running out of ideas, Jeff and Heather decided to have Bradley live with his mom for a while. Technically, Jeff still had full custody, but the hope was that this change of scenery and maybe a different parenting style would help Bradley, help him in a way where nothing else had before. So he moved in with Heather during the summer before his freshman year of high school. And over that summer, he did seem to be doing okay.

Starting point is 00:22:18 It's not like his personality changed completely, but at least there were no real major issues with him. No self-harm that was serious enough that he needed to be hospitalized. No crazy outbursts or toxic behavior. But then school started again. And with it came all of Bradley's problems and struggles. And just one week into the school year, in 2020, he decided to drop out of school. And I will say this, it took his parents a while to notice that he dropped out.

Starting point is 00:22:48 In their defense, they both had jobs full time and it's not exactly like Bradley announced to them that he was cutting class and truant and going to ditch and drop out and all of these things. But basically every morning he would act like he would go to school, wait for his mom Heather to leave to go to work, but then instead of going to school,

Starting point is 00:23:04 he would just stay home all day, Stay home all day and use the internet. So by the time she and Jeff realized what had been going on, it had been a while. And Jeff and Heather had very different reactions to the news. In Heather's case, she thought that they shouldn't get involved at all. Kind of like, you know what, if Bradley wants to drop out, fine, fuck it, just let him. Let's see what happens. Let's see. Nothing else has worked so far. And I don't know if she was kind of just giving up on him at this point, or if maybe she thought that the only way Bradley would learn would be by dealing with the consequences of his own behavior, but her reaction was basically to do nothing. Jeff, on the other hand, was not having it. For weeks, every morning he went to Heather's house to try and persuade Bradley to go to

Starting point is 00:23:47 school, but Bradley wouldn't even open up the front door to let Jeff in. He certainly also wasn't going to pack up his books and actually go to school just because his dad was now asking him to and kept asking him to. So with all of these failed efforts, eventually Jeff gave up too. So they contacted the school's office to officially get Bradley off the school's enrollment list because they didn't wanna have to deal with any sort of legal troubles

Starting point is 00:24:12 that would come with being related to truancy. So that was that. Bradley was just not a student anymore. And from then on, all Bradley did was just sit in his room and play video games, just surf the web, play video games, look up gross videos and photos. He didn't have a job, he didn't have any real friends, he didn't really have any reason to leave the house.

Starting point is 00:24:34 And eventually, he began looking for ways to get more thrills because he wanted to avoid being bored. So this meant spending much more time online, more than he already was, and he wanted to just start meeting new people. And even though Bradley had always struggled to make friends in real life, he was very good at meeting strangers on the internet. He was especially very good at meeting people who were just as troubled as he was. So one day Bradley met a fellow player on Minecraft. And like Bradley, this other person loved watching gory videos and scary videos. So this was kind of like a revelation for Bradley. He had never realized that there was

Starting point is 00:25:11 this pocket of other people who felt the same way he did, who thought about these videos the same way he did. It was thrilling for him. He finally found someone just like him, even though in reality the only thing that they had in common was actually like super, super disturbing. But from there he met even more people like that, more people who loved violence. So he ended up building this sick little community of very disturbed strangers who were all just like him. And all of these people were just hyping each other up, telling one another that the things that they liked were valid, like, you know, okay, it's nothing we should be ashamed about. It's nothing we need to try and change. We're different from everyone. We're better than everyone. And when Bradley talked with them, he felt understood.

Starting point is 00:25:54 He felt accepted in a way that he had never felt in his real world life. So eventually Bradley started a Discord chat where everybody could just talk with one another whenever they wanted, even if they weren't logged into Minecraft. And Discord, if you're not familiar, because trust me, it took me a while to figure out what Discord was too, think of it almost as like a chat room on your phone, and you don't have. But basically you're kind of like anonymous. You just go off your screen name and you can share videos, photos, talk, you know, via text. I think there's a way to even set up streaming where you can play video games or watch people play video games on there. I don't know how fancy it is. Again, I'm kind of like a boomer in that regard, but it's basically this server type app. So he creates this for all of these like-minded friends that he has met.

Starting point is 00:26:46 And he called the server 764. Apparently the name was inspired by his hometown of Stephenville, Texas, because the zip codes in that area all start with 764 numbers. And I think it's safe to say that names were important to Bradley, because he used a different name

Starting point is 00:27:02 whenever he was on 764. And I don't mean like a username that he had so he could stay anonymous. He wanted to be an entirely different person. He didn't wanna be called Bradley. He now wanted to be called Felix. So now that this was created, each time that Bradley met someone on Minecraft

Starting point is 00:27:19 who seemed to share his same interests and his same unhealthy obsessions, he would invite them in. He would invite them over to the 764 Discord server and it was super active. It had a lot of users, a ton of different like sub channels and threads where people could talk about whatever

Starting point is 00:27:36 and it was kind of fostering its own little community. Now the most popular topics within Discord were of course the exact sorts of violent content that everybody had bonded over in the first place. People were trading all sorts of photos and videos that featured violence, gore, animal torment, sexually explicit content involving minors, CSAM material, I mean the list went on and on. And some of these channels, just to give you a little flavor for what it was all about, some of them were called like Harm Nation, Slit Town, Leak Nation, just some gross things. And Harm Nation was basically exactly what it sounded like. It was people and animal being hurt,

Starting point is 00:28:19 harmed, or tormented. It was a super popular channel too within the server. It had a lot of posts and a lot of these posts were people begging for even more content and for that new content to be even more extreme, just as though they were becoming desensitized to the already explicit material being shared. They wanted something more. Now Slittown, that was dedicated to videos and pictures of people self-harming themselves, and I'm trying to be very careful with my words here because I don't want to trigger anybody, but Slitt also goes with cutting. You can get the inference there, you understand. And Leak Nation,

Starting point is 00:28:57 well that was a place where people could share things that they weren't supposed to. Kind of like how a whistleblower might leak information about their company doing things wrong, except these leaks were more sensitive, more graphic, more private material. We're talking about nude photos that were mostly from minors. So pretty much it was the worst of the worst. But the extreme content? It didn't scare people off. The people on the 764 network were constantly finding new users to bring in, new users to add to their sick little community,

Starting point is 00:29:30 which it may not surprise you to hear that the internet is chock full of very disturbed and unhealthy people. And Bradley and his friends, they were now experts in finding them. And the really sickening thing is that some of the people that Bradley and the others had recruited in weren't even into this stuff. They were victims. And the way they were brought in is because the leaders of 764 were very much into things like control and exploitation.

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Starting point is 00:31:59 Bradley and the others started seeking out young kids, especially girls, and they sought them out to torment them. And to drive home just how disturbing this was, I want to tell you some of these victims' stories. This first story is from a minor, so for obvious reasons, I am not going to share her real name, but I will call her Maddie. She was a 14-year-old girl from Oklahoma. She had met Bradley while playing Minecraft, and he seemed nice enough at first. Then one day, they started talking about how Maddie was a huge fan of horror movies. To

Starting point is 00:32:30 Maddie, it really was no big deal. Lots of people like horror movies. Scream, saw, you name it. And it's fair to say that people can, for entertainment, enjoy watching someone get killed in, say, the movie A Quiet Place or a fictional movie. It's not like you like violence in real life just because you like scary movies. But once Maddie had admitted that she liked horror, Bradley figured that she was kind of like this perfect person to invite to the 764 Discord. So Maddie joined the chat. But it was pretty obvious from day one that she wasn't into any of this. She didn't like seeing the bloody pictures of people who were hurt. She didn't like hearing about the sexual crimes. She didn't like any of it. But Maddie also was feeling pretty divided because even though she didn't like 764,

Starting point is 00:33:15 she did like Bradley. He had been nice to her in their Minecraft chats and he seemed like he liked her in a romantic way as well. And as a 14- old girl, Maddie hadn't really had many chances to date or get to know different boys in that kind of way. So she didn't wanna spoil what she might've had with Bradley by leaving the Discord server and angering him. She thought she wanted to just be the cool girl, go along with it, you know, make him like her. So they exchanged some flirty messages

Starting point is 00:33:42 and then Bradley told her that he had a crush on her, that the feelings were totally mutual. And then that's when things really took a turn, because Bradley begged and pleaded for Maddie to send him nude photos. And because she trusted him, liked him, wanted to impress him, she didn't. It felt a little risky, it felt a little scary, but she genuinely believed that she could trust Bradley. She didn't think that he would ever do anything bad with these photos. But then, the moment she sent these pictures, Bradley changed.

Starting point is 00:34:14 As it turned out, he never liked her. He never respected her. This whole crush had been a complete lie. All he had been trying to do was get Maddie to let her guard down, and it worked. So now that he had Maddie's nudes, now that he got what he wanted, he planned to use them to blackmail her. Bradley threatened Maddie that if she didn't do everything that he told her to do, he was gonna leak the nudes to the rest of the chat. So with that, this 14 year old girl, she was terrified, right? She felt trapped. She felt betrayed. She was petrified and she didn't know what else to do. Her fear was that if she went to her parents and told them what was going on,

Starting point is 00:34:49 that they would just blame her for sharing the nudes in the first place. So even though she now wanted nothing to do with Bradley or 764, she felt stuck and she agreed to do whatever he said. And what Bradley said, it is seriously so sick. I have to warn you before I tell you the rest of this story because it is super upsetting. He told Maddie that she needed to cut herself, to take photos and videos of all of it, and then take those photos and videos and post it in the 764 Discord chats. He also instructed her that she needed to mutilate her pet hamster. And again, she had to film it, photograph it, and post all of the proof afterward. And like I said, Maddie felt like she

Starting point is 00:35:32 had no other choice. She was a 14-year-old girl terrified, so she did what he asked. Which is so evil and deranged because imagine how scared she must have felt to have to do that to her pet hamster, to herself, because she carried so much shame about these nude photos of herself that were now being used as blackmail against her. It is horrible. And the really scary thing to think about in all of this, or I should say one more scary thing because there is a lot of scary stuff already as we know, but Bradley was not the sort of person who kept his word.

Starting point is 00:36:08 Obviously not. He would make deals and then he wouldn't follow through. So I don't know if he ever did end up leaking Maddie's nudes or not, but I do know that he let the threat of a leak just hang over her, just ruin her life. He also never deleted the photos. So he always had this sick leverage and he

Starting point is 00:36:26 always had the option to go back and ask her to do more disgusting and disturbing things. Another victim, who I'll call Eve, had a similar experience, except it was even worse, if you can believe it. So here's another trigger alert just because things are about to get even more sickening, if you believe that's even possible. But Eve was from the Midwest, and I don't know her exact age, but I do know that she was a younger teenager. And like Maddie, she had met Bradley on Minecraft. One thing led to another, and Bradley invited her to the Discord server, but just like with Maddie, she wasn't really big on what she was seeing. However, Bradley knew just what to say to make her feel completely won over, smitten like everything was okay.

Starting point is 00:37:05 He was very, very sweet and he pretended, of course, that he had a crush on her. It was all the same moves he did with Maddie all over again. And I get why he didn't change his pattern, because it worked for him. He lured Eve in and right when he asked Eve to send nude photos of herself to him, she did. And once again, he turned off like a light switch and then he used those nude photos to blackmail her, instructing her to do terrible things with the threat that he was going to leak those photos if she refused. And to make matters even worse, he told Eve that if she didn't listen, he was going to come to her house and he was going to hurt her little brother. Which I don't know how credible that threat was.

Starting point is 00:37:42 I don't know if Eve had told him her address at some point. I'm not sure, or if maybe he was just very good at bluffing, but Eve believed him. She was panicking. So when Bradley instructed her that she needed to get on a video call with him and do sick, twisted things live, she agreed, again and again.

Starting point is 00:38:02 Once, he made her go into the bedroom closet so that her parents couldn't walk in and see what she was doing. Then, he instructed her that she had to carve his username into her skin. She also had to carve a bunch of other usernames into her skin as well. Another time, he instructed her and forced her

Starting point is 00:38:18 to strangle the family cat. Once, he also forced her to cut off the head of her pet hamster. And when Eve tried to refuse this, saying, no, no, no, I can't do that, it is all too much, he said, quote, bite the head off or I'll fuck your whole life up. And he loved every second of this. He relished in it, just watching her suffer, playing God, instructing these young girls to do whatever he wanted them to do because it was like something sick, some fantasy in his mind. He loved watching them struggle, watching them in pain.

Starting point is 00:38:51 And it was something that he also bragged about to all of the other people on the 764 network. In the chats, he was also saying very disgusting, horrible things like, quote, I'm known for being a pedophile. Other users even started joking about it and called him the CP God, which CP is an abbreviation for child porn. And this nickname took because he even changed the outfit on his character in the Minecraft game. The character wore a t-shirt and on the t-shirt, it said, I love CP.

Starting point is 00:39:21 It's just insanity, disgusting and like vile. And his friends, they had their own victims too. It wasn't just everyone bowing down to Bradley and hyping him up and him being, you know, the ringleader in all of this. They of course had to impress him too, all on their own. And look, it gets even worse with Eve, if you can believe it, and I'm sorry to say it,

Starting point is 00:39:42 but it's true. One time Bradley instructed Eve that she had to go fill the bathtub up all the way. Then she had to get inside of it and she had to hurt herself until the water was completely red. And I mean not only is that incredibly horrifying to think about, but it is so dangerous. Now luckily Eve survived that day, but Bradley just acted like this was all just so funny, so entertaining. He and his friends even sent her regular messages where they would encourage her and torment her telling her that she should take her own life. Luckily, she never listened to

Starting point is 00:40:16 any of those suggestions. But again, and I know it just keeps getting sicker and sicker, but Bradley was not a man of his word, like I said before. So even though Eve was doing everything that he told her to do, Bradley and his friends got their hands on some of Eve's personal information. Things like where she lived, what school she went to, details like that. And they began harassing her and making her life an absolute living hell. They will encourage them sometimes to commit suicide. They will encourage them to do cutting. They will encourage them to harm their pets. They're using basically psychological warfare on children. That's right. They gain the trust and then they continue to

Starting point is 00:40:55 build that trust to the point where they have power and the ability to blackmail the child. Basically, there were several times where Bradley and his loyal followers would call Eve's school. They would ask to speak with her principal and then they would tell the principal that she was trying to murder animals. Of course they didn't mention the fact though that she was being forced into doing all of these things. They definitely would have had to tell on themselves to do that, but they were just making her out to be the monster in all of this. And the point in all of that is that at one point there were too many calls for this principle to ignore.

Starting point is 00:41:28 They couldn't explain it away as a prank or a crank call or anything like that. Eventually they had to call the police and they had to report what they were hearing. Now the good news is nothing came of it and Eve didn't get into any sort of legal trouble, not at all. But still, I mean, how much stress and how much harassment can one person handle, especially a minor, a young teen whose frontal lobe isn't even fully formed, who's so impressionable, who just wants to fit in and is desperate to not rock the boat? I mean, it's the perfect victim, the perfect target.

Starting point is 00:42:02 And this also enrages me, because you would think that if the police had done an investigation into the animal killing, that at some point, perhaps they would have talked to Eve and she could have explained what was going on and that Bradley and his like 764 cronies were all behind it. But that didn't happen. The police basically just looked the other way. Eve was entirely still on her own.

Starting point is 00:42:43 Now, as truly awful as Eve and Maddie's stories were, those were just two out of very many. I could be here all day and still not be able to cover every single victim and all of the trauma that they went through. Some victims have understandably been silent, hoping to put all of the trauma behind them, while others have spoken out, sharing their stories, warning the next generation of kids who could be groomed and blackmailed online. One victim, Trinity, and her mom actually did a whole mini documentary with the YouTube channel, The Fifth Estate. It's about 40 minutes long, so I'm not going to recap the entire thing here, but I would definitely recommend checking them out on your own time and watching this.

Starting point is 00:43:15 They loved watching me in pain. They fed my tears and I fed their desires. I told them I loved it. I told them I wanted more, but in truth I was their desires. I told them I loved it. I told them I wanted more. But in truth, I was their mindless slave. My name is Trinity. I was 14 when I was groomed by members of 764, and I was exploited for three years. It just became so painful. I didn't feel real.

Starting point is 00:43:44 I didn't feel like a human being. We've tried to tell this story and nobody's listened. Nobody believes it. It's too obscure. It's too obscene. Abuse was very familiar to me, especially from a male, especially like manipulative abuse. I had something happen to me when I was really young. I was sexually assaulted by a family member. He stopped assaulting me and I felt like I still needed that. I still needed that male validation in a terrible way. That's really sick and twisted. I met these people on accident.

Starting point is 00:44:14 One of my friends was showing me these gore videos on Discord. Invited me to one of them and then I ended up, like, talking in those servers. I saw lots of girls naked, covered in blood, lots of starving girls. There was a video of a girl who hung herself on her closet. I was like, oh my God, this is terrible, but I also wanted to fit in.

Starting point is 00:44:37 So a lot of people came to me and asked me to do things for them. And because I was literally a mind fuck, like, I did it. They would say, like, if you cut my name into your body, then I own you. Now, the reason that I really like this documentary in particular is because Trinity's mom gets to share what this whole experience was like for her. For her as a parent of one of the victims. And I think that sometimes, especially with this case in particular, there's like this stigma that these victims all have these bad parents who either aren't present, aren't

Starting point is 00:45:11 attentive, aren't looking into what their kids are doing online. And while yes, we can always advocate for more safety precautions, not all of these parents are bad parents. I felt helpless and scared. And I was so sad for her. So sad for her. And I just didn't know how to I didn't know what to do. I wanted them to find evidence that Trinity was being exploited. I wanted them to find evidence of the child pornography because I knew she wasn't the only one.

Starting point is 00:45:40 I wanted them to find all of the cutting pictures. I'll never forget them. They're imprinted and burned in my brain for the rest of my life. And Trinity's mom isn't the only parent that has come forward. And although a lot of these stories are the same, each parent spreading awareness

Starting point is 00:45:54 is still incredibly important. Some of these parents, of course, don't wanna show their faces or use their real voice for personal reasons, but I still wanted to play some of these clips for you. They wanted her to take her life. And she was terrified. The mother also asked that I replace her voice with a computer generated one,

Starting point is 00:46:12 but the words are all hers. Some of them got her to cut their usernames into her, and basically what they are requesting from the victims just keeps getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And the swatting happened because she wouldn't kill one of our cats. So that was the same person who had been trying to get her to take her life. Now, if you're a regular Discord user,

Starting point is 00:46:32 you might be listening to this episode and thinking to yourself like, how was this even allowed? I mean, after all, the Discord rules say that you're not supposed to post violent content, illegal content, harass people, I mean, none of it. So basically everything that Bradley and the others were doing should have gotten 764 shut down immediately. But in reality, it wasn't that simple. For a few reasons. The first being that very few people were ever willing

Starting point is 00:46:58 to report him. Most of the people in the chats were either victims who pretty much had no say in anything out of fear, or they were people who were just like Bradley. Because remember, he was just the one who started all this, and he somehow managed to find other very deeply disturbed people just like himself. And he wasn't the only one in this entire group doing these things either. If a newbie ever spoke up and told the moderators that they should report him, they were the ones who would get kicked out. It was almost like there was just this like cloak of protection for this group. The second problem was that even if a person's account

Starting point is 00:47:31 is deactivated, they can just keep making accounts. So the few times that any of his accounts actually were successfully reported and taken down, it didn't block him from creating other usernames and getting right back online. All he had to do was make a new account. And it was honestly a very simple thing for him to do and for everybody else in the server.

Starting point is 00:47:51 Now, of course, Discord has done a bit of damage control since all of this has come out. They claim that each of Bradley's accounts would have only been active for a day or two before they would have removed them for illegal or abusive activity, which yes, could be true, but the problem was there was still this whole Discord server as a whole.

Starting point is 00:48:09 It wasn't just limited to him or to them. And each time he would get banned, he would just come back with a vengeance. And he saved his worst anger for whoever had reported him. If he could figure out who had done it, or even if he ever had his suspicions, he would message them terrible things. He also acted like it would have been impossible to keep him banned for life. He would send messages like, try harder next time, I'm back, just like taunting them, toying with them.

Starting point is 00:48:37 Which think about it, if you're the one who reported him, and he's right back online the next day, and he's like, hey, try harder next time, like harder next time. Like, now you're my target, I'm after you. You wouldn't have much faith in the system, would you? You wouldn't probably report him again because you're scared he's just gonna pop right back up or that you're gonna put a target on your back. It's just so reckless and disheartening. He also then would get his friends to assist in the harassment as well.

Starting point is 00:49:03 Basically just piling on and making it obvious where they all stood, that they were all in allegiance together. They all stood with Bradley. So basically Bradley was acting like he was never going to get caught. But the truth was that the more often that he got banned, the more the reports did go through, the more that Discord finally felt like they had to take action. So finally they forwarded all of the information that they had on like they had to take action. So finally, they forwarded all of the information that they had on this server to the FBI. And they also sent it to the National

Starting point is 00:49:29 Center for Missing and Exploited Children. This was in January of 2021. Now once Bradley realized that he was being investigated, he didn't get spooked. He didn't start to like cower away. He bragged about it. He posted over and over and over again about how he had been reported to the FBI, how it had now been up to 15 times that he had been reported to them, and according to him, quote, they hadn't done shit. It wasn't until August of that same year

Starting point is 00:49:58 that the local Stephenville police came knocking on Heather's door. This time, they had a search warrant, and they had an estimated 58 tips about Bradley and all of the dirty, disgusting, and disturbing things he was doing online. But Bradley, he wasn't concerned in the slightest. He just calmly walked outside, no fear in his eyes, no sense of urgency, nothing. It was like he believed he was invincible, even with the literal police there to take him away.

Starting point is 00:50:27 The officers also noted in their reports that his hair was a mess, he had like a serious case of body odor, that he was just disgusting, and it was pretty clear that he hadn't pried himself away from the computer in days. So then the search began. And in Bradley's room, officers found his laptop that was full of all of the disgusting images and videos that he had just been proudly writing about on the 764 chats—what he had been boasting about for months. There were pictures of at least 20 different girls, all minors, and all performing sexual acts.

Starting point is 00:51:00 Kids whose body parts were bloody and branded with things like, I heart CP 764 or Brad is a pedo. These were literal words that were carved into their bodies. And that was just what was on his laptop, not even the nastiness that was in the 764 chats themselves. So Bradley was arrested and he was charged with nine counts of possession and promotion of child material. I tried to look up why he was charged with the counts of possession and promotion of child material. I tried to look up why he was charged with the things that he was charged with. I mean, the charges against him are pretty obvious, yes, but I was more so curious why there weren't more things included such as like

Starting point is 00:51:36 blackmail, animal cruelty, things like that. But regardless, he still had a pretty hefty list of charges against him. So Bradley's trial began in March of 2023, when Bradley was now 18 years old, and he pleaded guilty to all of the charges. And this is really interesting because you hear a lot about people pleading guilty as part of a plea deal, right? Trying to get a lighter sentence or to get some of the charges dropped, but that wasn't the case here. Now my guess is that Bradley probably just realized that there was too much digital evidence and there was no way he was getting out of this,

Starting point is 00:52:10 so why fight it? Or maybe it was because he was so proud that he wanted to be like, yeah, I am guilty and take ownership of all of that. I'm not really sure. But regardless, he was sentenced to 80 years in prison, which is not necessarily a life sentence considering he's only 18, but works for me. Now, as crazy as it might sound, given how cruel Bradley

Starting point is 00:52:31 was in all of this, there has been some pushback from people who think that the sentence is too harsh. Which, I'm going to read a statement from Bradley's father, Jeff. Bradley was only 15 years old when he committed his crimes. I don't say that in an attempt to excuse it, but to point out that he was also a victim at some point. I pray that he will get the help that he needs to heal from what was done to him, and that he will come to understand what he did to others. I also pray that his victims will find peace and healing, and they won't continue the cycle by victimizing others.

Starting point is 00:53:04 Some people don't agree that Bradley was ever a victim. Some on the other hand do. I personally don't know much about his childhood, but if he was showing all of those red flags at 6 years old and an interest in that kind of material so early on and forcing other people to do that, I don't know that that necessarily entirely aligns with being a victim yourself. I think some people are just born bad, honestly, but curious to know what you think. Now the other really messed up thing in all of this is that after Bradley's arrest, he became very famous in certain corners of the internet. Almost like a hero to people who enjoyed all of

Starting point is 00:53:40 the same sick disturbing stuff that he did. And even after the original 7.6.4 network server was shut down, other people have now created spin-offs, other new boards that accomplish the same kind of thing, as though 7.6.4 was the inspiration and now there's all these spin-off series around it. And these new ones are popping up everywhere, not just on Discord, but also on other apps that are designed to help people connect, to chat, to share files, whether it's Signal, video game servers, Discord, you name it. And the FBI regularly releases

Starting point is 00:54:16 warnings to parents that they should watch what their kids are doing online, you know, especially now trying to steer them away from these new reincarnations of 764. But sadly, it seems like this kind of content is everywhere. So far in the United States alone, the FBI has investigated at least 250 cases that are related to the 764 network. And get this, there are 55 different regional FBI offices all over the nation. And every single one of those offices has had to handle at least one 764 case. And don't get me wrong,

Starting point is 00:54:51 there have been countless arrests from all over the world, but there have also been thousands of victims and who knows how many predators. That's why it's more important than ever if you are listening to this episode and you are a parent, you need to take this episode as a warning. Figure out what your kids are doing online,

Starting point is 00:55:10 give them guidance and use apps that block inappropriate websites if you can. Be that annoying parent, be that helicopter parent. And I'm not shaming any of the parents in this case whose children were victims, I just want all of the kids, all of our kids to be happy, healthy, and as safe as possible. And you can't be too safe these days. With the rise of AI, with these servers, you have to be in their face. Technology is developing at such a rapid speed, it's difficult to keep up. So unless you are in it and looking and being that parent, even if you don't want to

Starting point is 00:55:43 invade their privacy while they're awake, do when they're asleep, I don't care. But like, you need to know what your kids are doing online. The FBI has even created a list of potential warning signs in children, which I want to include because I think it is incredibly important. This list includes, but is not limited to, kids engaging in self-harm or expressing dangerous ideations, suddenly becoming more withdrawn and moody, sudden changes in eating, sleeping, or dressing habits, pets being harmed or dying under mysterious circumstances,

Starting point is 00:56:14 kids mutilating themselves by carving words or symbols into their skin, and writing in blood or anything that looks like blood. So hopefully if you pay attention, you can help other kids before it's too late. I know that this episode was very deep, very heavy, and very unsettling so I appreciate you sticking with me. Until the next one guys, be nice, don't kill people, stay off discord, and stay the hell away from anything that appears to be the 764 network.

Starting point is 00:56:45 Alright, take care. Bye.

SERIALously - 294: 764 Network: Extremist Cult Preying on Children Through Discord

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