The Misery Machine - The Men Who Hunt Sex Offenders

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

This week, Drewby and Yergy discuss the story of Stephen Marshall - a young man from Nova Scotia, Canada, who decided to take the law into his own hands, and hunt down known predators that he found listed on the Maine Sex Offender Registry, whilst visiting his father in Northern Maine. Also discussed at the cases of Patrick Drum and Cain Velasquez, who decided to take this same path. We also touch on YouTube's censorship of channels who make it a point to expose predators, and the challenges faced by creators in this genre.  Prada's Fundraiser: https://www.gofundme.com/f/please-help-save-prada Check out Hollie's masks here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/HollsNDolls Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Marshall_(murderer) https://murderpedia.org/male.M/m/marshall-stephen.htm https://medium.com/friday-night-crimes/vigilante-justice-maine-ac2b48663a0c https://www.linkedin.com/in/scotbradeen/ https://bangordailynews.com/2006/04/18/news/shooters-motive-sought-in-sex-offender-slayings/ https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2017/12/21/alleged-pedophile-dies-after-being-beaten-by-mob.html https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/whatsapp-child-sex-claims-leave-29-dead-in-indian-mob-hysteria-c56s9wfpb https://qz.com/1671916/the-global-movement-of-facebook-vigilantes-who-hunt-pedophiles/ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5876149/Disturbing-truth-Britains-growing-army-self-appointed-paedophile-hunters.html https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/12/the-vigilante-of-clallam-county/281968/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cain_Velasquez https://www.mmafighting.com/2022/5/6/23060161/cain-velasquez-granted-new-bail-hearing-in-may-plea-hearing-pushed-back-to-june https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/exclusive-video-captures-incident-involving-mma-legend-cain-velasquez/2827556/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCu0rFmNwWOPyvxcd9-hNj-A/about https://www.facebook.com/guardiansofthenorth/ https://registryreport.org/2018/05/25/vice-sex-offender-registries-result-in-vigilante-murder/

Many folks have very strong, valid opinions with regards to what should be done with some of the most depraved individuals that target our most vulnerable. We as creators want to help to fight against predators, but how are we and the rest of the true crime community able to do that when YouTube is taking down channels that are trying to expose these monsters? Today's story is about a young man in our home state of Maine that took it one step further and hunted these predators for sport. Quick note before we start, after YouTube threatened to terminate our channel, we were being extra careful with certain band words that we use, and a certain three-letter word is one of them, so please know that whenever we talk about an offender or offenders,

we are specifically referring to the kind that prey on minors and are listed on a registry. you and on with the episode. Stephen Marshall was born August 9th, 1985 in Fort Worth, Texas, to parents Ralph Marshall and Margaret Miles. When he was young, Stephen moved with his family to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and in the summer of 1993, Stephen went to live with his grandparents in Arizona, with his mother and little sister Sarah joining him later that fall. However, Stephen's father stayed behind in Canada, and when the family returned, there were changes in the Marshall household. In 1996, Ralph and Margaret divorced. During that same year, Stephen's mother had to pull him from school due to bullying incidents. In 1999, Stephen moved to

cul-de-sac, Idaho, to live with his father, who had served for three years as the voluntary mayor of the town and worked as executive director of the Clearwater Economic Development Corporation. In the year 2000, 14-year-old Stephen set up his own website. He posted links to web to sites with a, quote, sweetest picks of weapons that you can find anywhere, end quote, in lists of his personal dislikes including, quote, minorities getting special treatment, men who don't keep their women in line, asthma, women in general, the beautiful people, my job, cleaning, school, society, the disgusting commercialization of our daily lives, the economic system, capitalism, but it will do for now.

rich people, the United Nations, a world government, the feds, the man in his rules, civil oppression, and the Patriot Act of 2001, end quote. It should be noted that this was a boy in roughly the eighth grade writing this, so just keep that in mind. This wasn't an adult saying these things. Now, Stephen was described as a skinny young man who had been picked on at a school. He also shared his father's interest in guns. In fact, the bullying was severe enough that Stephen was once hospitalized. In April of 2001, when he was only 15 years old, Stephen was charged with aggravated assault after he brought an AR-15 rifle onto his lawn where two teenagers were fighting. He was placed on probation for six months,

order to attend a hunter safety course, write an apology letter, and a five-page paper on teen violence. The paper was entitled Guns in their relation to juvenile crime, which Stephen cited the NRA as one of his sources. In August of 2001, Dr. James Phillips conducted a mental health evaluation of Stephen as part of his probation. It found that, quote, Mr. Marshall's responses do suggest that he is often somewhat questioning of authority and distrusting of the motivations of others. He is likely to be quite introspective and calculating in his actions. This report later concluded, no significant psychopathology is present

that would have any impact on Mr. Marshall's ability to comply with the conditions of his informal adjustment or contribute to the likelihood of his commitment of future crimes, end quote. Later, Stephen's old classmate and friend Chance Coombs was charged with the essay of a minor, and he later pled guilty to intimidating a witness and third degree assault. Sorry about Prada. In 2003, Stephen's father, Ralph Marshall, moved to Colorado and subsequently rekindled a relationship with his first wife, and then moved to Holton, Maine, where he became the economic developer with the Holton ban of Malacetes, which is one of the Native American tribes here in Maine.

Meanwhile, Stephen briefly moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to live with a half-sister in her family, before moving back in with his mother, Margaret, and his stepfather in Kate Breton, Nova Scotia. Stephen attempted to enlist in the U.S. Army but was rejected due to his asthma. After the aforementioned fight, Stephen lived for a short period in a boarding house in the Whitney Pier neighborhood of Sydney, Nova Scotia, which he soon left after a fellow tenant, Francis Doyle, propositioned him, whom he later learned was a convicted offender. Later he told his father that he was upset that the man made a pass at him, but he was even more upset that he was living next door to a man that he did not know was an offender. Though he didn't dwell on the incident, he was protective of his younger sister and told his mother

that offenders, specifically the ones that target young kids, were the low lives and scums of the earth. By all accounts, Stephen's parents thought that their son was on track to get his life together. It was now the spring of 2006, and Stephen had converted to Christianity just a few months prior and got a job as a dishwasher. He had moved into an apartment on Regent Street and made friends with his housemates. He gave up smoking, took up jogging, and began thinking of his future. And part of that future was a move to Maine with his father, and the two of them began driving around looking for homes for Stephen. In a camouflage backpack, Stephen began carrying around survival gear in three books, The Art of War, the SAS survival guide, and a Bible. Stephen

also began to show signs of depression, and he would often faint at work. On April 15th, 2006, the night before Easter Sunday, as his father slept, Stephen took a cult AR-15 rifle and two 45-millimeter handguns from his father's safe, slipped out of a bedroom window, and drove off in his father's 2002 Toyota Tacoma, as his own vehicle had broken down on the drive to his house. But beyond the artillery that Stephen brought with him, he was armed with something else. a hit list. Stephen had looked up at least 34 names

on the Maine's online offender registry before targeting two of them, 57-year-old Joseph Gray of Milo, and 24-year-old William Elliott of Corinth. Both men lived in rural towns just north of Bangor, Maine, around a two-hour drive south from his father's home in Holton.

Joseph Gray's name was on the registry because he was convicted of S.A. of a 14-year-old girl in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1992. William Elliott, meanwhile, was convicted of having relations with a girl under the legal age in March of 2002 and was sentenced to four months in the Penobscot County Jail. It should be noted, Maine's legal age of consent is 16. At 3 a.m., just before dawn, Stephen shot and killed Joseph Gray while he was sleeping in his living room. Gray had fallen asleep while watching forensic files, and his wife Janice woke up and discovered his body after hearing their dogs barking at the sound of men's lives. voices. Around 8 a.m., Stephen arrived at William Elliott's mobile home and knocked on his door.

When he answered, Stephen shot him several times. The commotion roused the attention of Elliot's girlfriend who took a picture of the truck's license plate before Stephen managed to flee the scene. It's unknown why Stephen targeted Joseph Gray and William Elliott specifically, but one could surmise that it could be due to the fact that they lived in a somewhat close proximity to Holton. Of the 34 names on Maine's registry, Stephen wrote down the information of 29 of those 34. In addition to checking out Maine's registry, Stephen looked into the national database, as well as those in New Hampshire and Vermont. After abandoning his father's truck behind Sawyer Arena in Hayford Park on 13th Street in Bangor, Stephen took a Vermont bus lines coach to Boston, Massachusetts, where he found himself

surrounded by police. The day-long manhunt that stretched through these three states ended when police pulled over the bus. With the bus surrounded and no escape in sight, 20-year-old Stephen Marshall took his own life by shooting himself in the head with his father's 45-millimeter handgun while sitting in the 13th row behind the driver just outside of Boston's South Station. When paramedics arrived, they found a second handgun in Stephen's possession. No one else on the bus was injured, but five passengers who were splattered with blood were taken to the area hospitals to be examined. Stephen's laptop was recovered and analyzed by Detective Scott Bradine of the Maine Computer

Crimes Task Force, who coincidentally is my old landlord. The GPS tracking on Stephen's laptop painted a picture of his movements the evening and morning of the incidents and indicated that he had gone by the homes of the least four other men on Maine's registry, none of which who were harmed. These killings renewed the debate over the safety and fairness of posting the names of convicted offenders online. According to Stephen McCosland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, the registry is the most popular page visited on the state's website. One person that comes to mind is Patrick Drum, who himself suffered essay when he was a kid,

and he had a father who committed essay against other minors. He grew up. with this duty to protect others that he felt were in danger of S.A. And then he finally made a list of people who were on the registry for the worst offenses possible and managed to kill two of them before being apprehended. He is now permanently in solitary confinement because every time they try to release him into the prison's general population, he immediately tries to kill inmates who have offenses against minors. His case is an interesting one and we'd love to cover it at some point in the future. More recently there is the case of Kane Velasquez. which is still developing.

Kane was an NCAA All-American wrestler in college, and most notably was a two-time UFC heavyweight champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest MMA heavyweights of all time with wins over the likes of Brock Lesnar, Jr. Dors Santos, Antonio Bigfoot Silva, and Antonio Rodrigo Nogera. At the time of this recording, he is still the record holder

for the highest significant strike percentage in the heavyweight division at 57.62%. Most takedowns in the UFC heavyweight history at 34 completed takedowns, and most total strikes landed in heavyweight history at 1,464. Anyone who follows combat sports knows these are insane numbers for the heavyweight division. On February 28th of 2002, it is alleged that Kane chased after a truck carrying Harry Gularte Jr. as well as Gularte's mother and stepfather. Gularte Jr. was arrested prior to this incident and released on Bond.

The reason being was because Gularte allegedly committed S.A. on a minor while at a daycare. And the minor in question is a close family relative of Kane Velasquez. Now allegedly Kane proceeded to ram the truck with his SUV and then fired multiple rounds into the vehicle using a 40 caliber handgun. Gularte Jr. was unharmed, but his stepfather was struck by gunfire and received non-life-threatening injuries. Kane Velazquez was formally charged with one count of attempted first-degree homicide, as well as additional charges related to discharging the firearm and use of it in the attack. He is currently awaiting a bail hearing on June 10th after being denied his first one in March. This case is still developing, and it's one we plan to cover after it's been completed.

Since then, he's received an outpouring of support from the MMA community and Beyonds, with a hashtag Free Kane trending on Twitter for a period of time. Kane's lawyer produced 37 letters of support from many people in the MMA community such as Dana White, Habib Nirmagamatov, and Daniel Kormier. This case is notable because so often we hear people say, if somebody ever did this to my kid or my relative, I'd kill them. And, well, Kane is one of those few people who went and tried to do just that. Things like this happen in other countries, too. One such example is in India where rumors of trafficking in essay against minors led to vigilance. many mobs that have hunted down and killed at least 29 people suspected of committing such crimes.

More commonly what we see here in America and in the UK are groups of people who perform sting to try to lure these predators to public places and subsequently have them arrested. There are many such examples of this online, particularly on Facebook. There are many groups that exist such as hunted and confronted in America and guardians of the North in the UK. There are obvious dangers and criticisms of vigilantism, even when it comes to, to going after offenders such as this. And a proper deep dive of the benefits versus danger of vigilantism

would require its own video and is beyond the scope of today's episode. But there is one thing that I feel that we can speak upon, and that's YouTube's interference in creators who are simply trying to raise awareness about predators, trafficking rings, and sites and communities online that prey on minors. There is a video by a creator named Mama Max who has since stopped making YouTube content, and it's called Pick Aside You Side You

And this video goes into detail about YouTube's takedown of videos that have called out predators and predatory content on YouTube, all while leaving up the disgusting content from absolute scumbags that were called out to begin with. This led to the hashtag pick-aside YouTube to go viral on Twitter for a period of time. Now regardless of how you feel about Mama Max as a person, he features many creators on this video that talk about their experience with it. Very notably Anxiety War, who runs a channel based around catching and exposing predators. his content is routinely taken down. Also seen in the videos the host of the channel some ordinary gamers who was for a period of time focused on exposing predators and gaming communities

and he now no longer makes videos about it because he had numerous videos taken down on the subject and I believe he was threatened with channel termination. The video also features someone who most of you probably know is Mike, who is the host of a true crime channel called That Chapter. He touched on how YouTube's vague guidelines creates a constant moving target for true crime creators to avoid takedowns and getting banned because sometimes some true crime content is fine with YouTube, but then weeks or months later, it's not okay and you end up with a striker ban. True crime channels like JCS, who, to my knowledge, never even covered minors to begin with, have had a multitude of takedowns and ultimately left YouTube due to not being able to cover true crime without getting their content removed.

That chapter isn't even a channel that goes after predators, but it's a great example about how true. crime creators are now caught in the crossfire of these guidelines whether or not you mention minors in your content. A common misconception is that true crime YouTubers make a ton of money from YouTube ad revenue, and for most creators, this is absolutely false. As YouTube broadly demonetizes true crime content and channels, thereby keeping 100% of revenue from ads that are displayed on demonetized channels. Beyond demonetization, there is a much greater problem at play here. As many of you know, a huge plan for this channel once we hit 100k subscribers and the ability to go full-time with the podcast is to use the channel to make an email address solely for people to send us missing

persons alerts as soon as that person goes missing. And we would then get that info out into video form and get it up on the channel as soon as possible. With the 100K check mark and our subscriber base, I feel we would be able to get these alerts in front of as many eyes as possible and increase the likelihood that we will bring these people home. But given YouTube's guidelines, what are we to do about missing kids when we're no longer allowed to show pictures of them even with their faces blurred? I'm legitimately asking for suggestions here. We first came across this when we covered the Summer Wells case, who was a little girl who

went missing in Tennessee in June of 2021. We showed pictures of Summer in hopes that if anyone saw Summer, they could contact the authorities through the information we provided in the episode. YouTube repeatedly turned off our comments and hid the video from YouTube's suggested feeds and search, ultimately killing that video. And many of our subscribers told us they never got notified that we released the video, even the ones that had bell notifications turned on. This happened many more times whenever we covered cases of minors, alive or dead,

YouTube would follow the same process, and it led to our channel being throttled for months. Many people reached out to us thinking we had quit YouTube, and in reality, YouTube was keeping our videos from being shown to our subscribers. Then, as you know, we got a takedown of the Adrian Jones video with a timestamp of us showing a fully clothed picture of Adrian with his face censored, with the reason of endangering the safety of minors, while other channels get to show much worse of him without any issue whatsoever.

Obviously, this is frustrating for the growth of our channel, but what's really dangerous about this is we now have no way to help the cases of missing kids. Because based on YouTube's guidelines and their previous judgments against us, if we even show the face of a minor, we are endangering the safety of them. If you notice, we always use the word kids or minors. It's because these aren't banned words according to YouTube's AI. The word child is. We can't even say this word or write it in the comment section.

Sometimes we get away with it, but YouTube will delete our comments on our own videos with that word in it, and this has happened several times. With us in mind, how can we use our platform for good as far as raising awareness to minors who have suffered, ways in which CPS has failed kids, or more importantly, bringing missing kids home? We really do not know,

and we would appreciate your input or suggestions in the comment section. below. If you are a true crime creator and have suffered censorship or had your channel threatened by YouTube, I would really like to discuss with you what your situation has been like and how you've dealt with it going forward. If you are a listener and know of a channel dealing with similar things that we are, please recommend their channel to me down below, especially if you have contact information for them. I want to make it a point to talk to more true crime channels. I really don't feel like we as true crime creators talk to each other enough, and whenever I find myself in a YouTube creator group, it is very, very rare for me to find a current true crime creator. I found a couple

former creators that have quit due to issues like these, but rarely a current one. I think us staying silent in our struggles is doing nobody any favors, especially those that we want to help with our platform. I think there's a lot of problems in the true crime community, but overall, I think everyone is trying to do a lot of good. And I want to help the community grow and succeed, especially when YouTube is making people feel like they can't be true crime creators or is discouraging them from doing so. I especially want to help those that are devoted to raising awareness about systemic problems in the world, calling out predatory practices, and bringing missing people home. If you support what we're trying to accomplish with this channel and with the true crime community,

if you could hit that subscribe button, it would mean the world to us, and hopefully with raising our platform, we will be able to make positive future. change on YouTube. We also have a very wonderful group of people going that extra step to support us on Patreon. I will put their names up right now. I want to say welcome to one new patron this week, Catherine. Welcome. And shout out to our Levi-Tierre patrons, Levi, Holly, Chaka, Amelia, and Costa de Cadejo.

There's their lovely pictures right now. Very special shout out to our girl, you nasty tier, which features a number I can't say on YouTube because it's banned. Dom, thank you so much for supporting us and being as nashyre. nasty as you are. And a very, very special shout out to our highest tier Patreon supporters, Kiki and Melissa. There's their lovely pictures right now. Thank you so much for supporting us in the ways in which you do. And if you two want to support us on Patreon, patreon.com slash the misery machine. You get access to all of our secret episodes and you may even get a postcard.

A haunted one. Patreon.com slash the misery machine. There's halls and dolls, Holly's mask store. If you want access to the best quality masks we've ever worn, please go to Holly's Etsy down below. One last thing. If you could give all the good vibes, prayers, well wishes to our little being, Prada. She just had emergency surgery. She's doing okay right now. She's struggling a little bit. She's still with us and she's fighting. Our little being means so much to us and we want to keep her around for many more years. So please keep her in your thoughts and hopefully you will hear her mouthiness next week as well. But until next week, we love you. We love you. We love you. Bye.