Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 525 - The Franklin Conspiracy: Satanic Panic or a Real Cover-Up?

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

When a massive financial scandal erupted in Omaha in the late 1980s, allegations soon followed that politically connected power players were involved in something far darker: an interstate child sex-trafficking ring filled with ritual abuse, blackmail, and murder. Were the most horrifying claims surrounding the Franklin scandal products of Satanic Panic—or did investigators stumble onto a very real conspiracy that powerful people desperately wanted buried? Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Global satanic pedophile ring. Those four words make a lot of people's buttholes instinctively clench. Those words have also become associated, thanks to a lot of conspiracies that are supposed to lead to a secretive group of satanic pedophiles being nothing but smoke, but no actual fire, with whack-a-doodle lunatics who spend their days in weird, obscure corners of the whip. And occasionally, what is discussed in those weird, generally pretty obscure corners, makes its way into the real world.

This is exactly what happened during 2016's PizzaGate, a topic I covered back in December of 2017, when people worried that Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats were running a satanic pedophile ring out of the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria, even though said restaurant said pizzeria has no fucking basement, literally never, ever has had a basement. They used various social media platforms,

especially Twitter, to make unfounded and untrue, but still viral allegations. PisaGate's entire argument was based in debunked lies first posted by an account at David Goldberg, New York, on Twitter, now thought to be a bot account, and its lies were then spread mainly by other bot accounts, Russian bot accounts, in an attempt to sow division leading up to the 2016 presidential election, and it worked. Trump's man-crush Putin doing the same kind of shit back then that he's still doing now. The dark claims of PizzaGate would later find new life under the wider, holy hot, hot, steaming pile of. a dumb shit brain-dead Q-Anon conspiracy umbrella in a subsection of that conspiracy known as PitoGate. And these and other nonsense, conspiracy claims, have had real-world consequences not only in politics but in everyday life. In June of 2018, a group calling itself veterans on patrol stumbled onto an apparent homeless encampment in Tucson, Arizona, helped along by social media and with signal boots from junk sites such as big league politics.com and conspirators.

sites like the Free Thought Project.com, the group claimed they found a site used by satanic globalist child sex traffickers. Before long, Semex, the Mexican-owned cement company, whose property the camp happened to be on, was accused of being involved in a non-existent pedophile ring. In the end, of course, police found no evidence that the location was ever used for any nefarious activity. then in August of 2018, both Portland's voodoo donuts and Toronto Canada's sweet Jesus ice cream shop, they were targeted by internet instigators who accused the businesses of housing satanic pedophiles. Why? Probably because both are very irreverent towards Christianity. I mean, one is using Jesus' name to sell ice cream.

The other openly proclaim some sort of sugary association with voodoo. That kind of shit scares, frankly the dumbest people in society. There's a bookstore, not far from course. Cortal Lane. I met the owner, and she talked to me about how, because they had a pride sticker in the window and also sold tarot cards, they got numerous death threats from local Christian extremists. Credible enough death threats to get the police heavily involved. Law enforcement, of course, found no connection between sweet Jesus ice cream and voodoo donuts, just like there was no fucking connection between any kind of satanic shit and this bookstore, not far from here. there was no connections to globalist satanic pedophile rings. Of course they didn't find a connection between these places and satanic pedophile rings.

So are satanic pedophile rings a myth? I can't say no with 100% uncertainty because I don't know literally everything going on in the world and everything that has ever gone on in the world. Child exploitation is certainly not a myth. International underage sex trafficking. Certainly not a myth. Globally, children make up nearly four out of every. every 10 identified victims of human trafficking, because trafficking is a hidden underground crime, exact annual totals are impossible to pin down, but international estimates point to millions of

children impacted worldwide at any given time. Fucking crazy. But are self-professed Satanists doing this? People who, as the conspiracies go, worship evil, dress up in black robes, and do crazy shit with pentegrams and blood rituals and sacrificing small innocent animals. I fucking doubt it. When we did our episode on Satanism, we learned that that's not how most of Satanism works. Most Satanists don't actually believe in Satan.

There's no core text. It's not really a real religion, as counterintuitive as that sounds. They believe that what is written in the Bible, including references to Satan, is just a bunch of silly bullshit, a fairy tale for people to cling to when life gets hard, confusing, and scary. However, researching the Franklin conspiracy did make me wonder in moments if a satanic global pedophile ring might have existed or might still exist. When news broke in June of 1988 that a set of prominent individuals in Omaha, Nebraska

were allegedly involved in a child sex trafficking ring, some details about the victim's experiences certainly seemed to point to the idea that they were in the thick of a real life, honest to God, global satanic pedophile ring. People in their 20s who had been young teenagers when they had been taken to parties, allegedly, reported lurid details of ritual abuse,

including child sacrifice, men lighting candles, chant and dark voices. At the center of all of this was one man, Lawrence E. King Jr., who ran Franklin Community Federal Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska, and had seemingly embezzled damn near $40 million, a man with connections to high-ranking politicians and businessmen, not just in Omaha, but nationwide.

And all of us left people wondering, how far towards the top did this all go? Was there truly, in Omaha, Nebraska, of all places, a global Satanist pedophile ring, like the headquarters for such a thing, operating right under everybody's noses. What was the real story here? And what was hysteria?

The Franklin conspiracy. It's fascinating. Right now on another conspiracy exploring, not today, Satan, edition of TimeSuck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to TimeSuck. Well, happy Monday and welcome

and welcome back to the cult of the curious. I'm Dan Kempens. master sucker and you are listening to TimeSuck and some of you have been listening for 10 years now. So thank you so much. Hail Nimrod. Hail Lusufina. Praise be to good boy, Bojangles and Glory B to Triple M. This past Friday, September 18th, 2026 was the 10 year anniversary of the show.

And like I said last week, we have some really cool 10 anniversary or 10 year anniversary merch in the store at Logan Designed over at bad magic productions.com. A huge thank you to anyone who is still enjoying the show on this 523rd consecutive Monday release. 523 Mondays in a row of a new episode every single Monday. And a couple non-Monday episodes thrown in as well, not counting the short sucks. A lot of content. And I feel so grateful that so many of you have listened to it all. Also, I'm recording this a little exhausted right now, but also rejuvenated simultaneously. Just got back from Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp a few days ago, and just a massive thank you to everybody who came out.

It was truly my favorite one. I think I said that every year, and it's true every year. It legit felt magical. I'm so glad that Kyle Canane could come out and headline the stand-up show, one of my favorite comics, and just a great dude. So thankful that Doug Mellard could emcee the whole event again. He just got better and better each event. Thankful for the astonishing legends and true crime campfire crews performing live shows. I was so happy that one of my favorite online influencers,

the incredibly intelligent and brave Monty Mater, came to just hang out, chat with Lindsay and I. The Choose Your Own Adventure, I was calling it Choose Your Own Nightmare, live interactive nightmare fuel show, some of the most fun I've ever had on stage. I've got to figure out how to do more of those. Man, and I have to, and I got to share all this, rather, with my wife, my best friend, my co-host, Lindsay,

my daughter Monroe came out, my daughter who I'm helping take to college in just a few days. So I got to get a bunch of content done before we head out. And a lot of other friends and family, like my sister and Will XX, Eddie and Greg, a bunch of wonderful members of the bad magic community were all there. And my heart is very full. Five out of five stars, for sure. It felt extra special that it just happened to coincide with like 10 years of time suck.

No notes. Very grateful that we will also be doing the crime wave at Sea Cruise next year to, you know, to keep the live show vibe, the community hang going. And yeah, just thanks to everybody who has ever come out to any of our events, to a stand-up show of mine over the years, to a live podcast, to any of it. Thanks to anybody who's ever bought merch from the store, left a kind review, told a friend about the show, sent in an email, said hi to me out in the wild, support us on Patreon, and just most of all, to those of you who have listened week in week out and just kept us going. So much love for you. And now, in honor of 10 years, time to suck a topic that I've probably gotten more requested. to look into over the last decade than any other topic that we haven't already done.

And I kept kind of putting it off being, I don't know if there's enough here to it. It just doesn't sound credible. And once we dug in, it's like there actually is so much to this. And it's such a fascinating and disturbing episode. So, yep, yep, yeah. Let's get into it. Today's episode is thorny, say at least. While many of our episodes on conspiracy theories over the years have ended up just debunking, outlandish and pretty fucking ridiculous claims, you know, showing step by step how evidence was stretched to fit a narrative, a bunch of nonsense.

The Franklin scandal is definitely not that simple at all. You know, usually our best research sources set about dismantling the madness in these kind of episodes. But two of our primary sources for today, journalist Nick Bryant, former Nebraska State Senator John DeKalek. camp, well, their books actually validate some of the most unsettling aspects of this story. Nick Bryant, an award-winning investigative journalist with three decades of experience focused on child welfare, stated it plainly in his 2012 book, The Franklin's Scandal, a story of power brokers, child abuse, and betrayal. Contrary to the legions of government and media personnel who have labeled Franklin as a mere conspiracy theory, overwhelming corroboration and documentation confirm both the existence of an interstate pedophile network and a government cover-up thereof.

This is not a conspiracy theory. It is an account of a conspiracy. Unlike other government conspiracies that have been acknowledged Watergate, Iran-Contra, Co-Intel Pro, etc. Franklin hasn't been exposed in the authoritative media as a bona fide conspiracy. In fact, mainstream media seems to have colluded in the cover. cover up, and thus it has been relegated to the dustbin of conspiracy theories. Indeed, if I hadn't come across the U.S. Customs report on The Finders, I never would have pursued this story because of its absolute implausibility. But implausible does not mean contrary to fact.

That's a powerful quote. And this is a very respected investigative journalist. The finders, real quick, were a secretive, are possible. Well, I think they might be done now. Anyway, definitely were. A secretive communal group, alternative lifestyle movement founded in the Washington, D.C. area in the late 1960s by former U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Marion Petty.

The came to national attention in 1987 after two members were arrested for misdemeanor child abuse, and the investigation that followed led to accusation, excuse me, that the group was a satanic ritual cult, an international pedophile ring or a front-kidnapping ring, operated by the CIA or some combination of those. Back to the Franklin conspiracy, when a veteran journalist and a decorated state senator reports that the official narrative is wrong

and then a massive cover-up did actually happen, you know, it makes it a lot harder to brush off than something akin to QAnon. Once you start digging into Franklin, there is a lot that cannot be, you know, easily made sense of. You have a real verified financial collapse with over $38 million in federal credit union funds unaccounted for.

Where did that money go? what goods and or services were purchased with it and were some of them sexual and or, you know, elicit in nature. Also at the center of it, you have Larry King, a high-flying political operative with direct lines to Washington, D.C. power brokers. And you have sworn testimonies given under penalty of perjury, a million-dollar civil judgment awarded to a victim in federal court, and a lead legislative investigator whose plane mysteriously broke apart in midair just as he claimed to have secured hard photographic evidence. all of this points to something very shady having gone on. But was it satanically shady? Or do Brian DeCamp have more in common with PizzaGate and QAnon conspiracy lore and their theorists and your run-of-the-mill satanic panic folks?

Then they'd like to admit. Could they be right about some of this, but wrong about other parts? Well, let's see what we can find out in today's time suck timeline. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time. Suck timeline. Larry King's father, Lawrence King, Sr., grew up in Omaha, was nicknamed Pancho his kid. That nickname followed him into adulthood, and as Pancho King came of age in the 1920s,

1920s, Omaha, the county seat of Douglas County, was on its way to become in the world's leading livestock market, overtaken Chicago in 1955. During Pancho King's late teen years, he found employment in these growing meatpacking plants, and of course he did. He's fucking Poncho King. Where's Poncho King supposed to work with that name? At a daycare, as a ballet instructor, selling women's shoes at Macy's? No, that motherfucker works with blood.

Poncho King kills them cows. Packs that meat, baby. In the end, one such meat packing plant, the Swift Company, would go on to employ him for over 40 years. He started at Swift on the bottom rung, literally, according to the source, literally skinning hogs. Sweet Jesus. But gradually worked his way into a supervisory position. Pancho King's the name. Skinning hogs is my game.

That's actually terrifying. Meanwhile, Pancho King married his teenage sweetheart, Veneta Swansea in 1942, and they ultimately settled into a clapboard house that was flanked by the roaring Union Pacific Road on one side and the wafting smell of stockyards on the other. Veneta, 10 years in, I'm still continually surprised by the name variety.

Veneta and Pancho, King, Hogskinner, would go on to have six children. Lawrence Jr. was their second child, oldest son, born September 7th, 1944. The kings were devout Presbyterians, and they attended North Omaha's Calvin Presbyterian church every Sunday bringing all the kids along. Larry Jr. was a tall husky kid who thrived in the church. He was an excellent singer. His parents would even get him singing lessons, and he would go on to become a notable fixture in the church's choir. But middle-class life demanded more of a young man, more of

Son of Pancho King Hogskinner. Than just singing hymns and going to school. As a student at Omaha Central High School, King worked as a waiter at the Ritzie Blackstone Hotel. The downtown hotel was a local symbol of Omaha's elegance, even kept a small fleet of limousines for visiting dignitaries. All of this made quite the impression on young Larry King. The Blackstone Hotel offered the teenage working class king

his first portal into the dazzling world of the rich, a world where people could have whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it. like kids in cages waiting to be butt-fucked by Satan's. Am I right? I mean, that's what everybody really wants deep down, right? I mean, isn't it? That's what Satan is always pushing us all towards. Come on, just grab him.

Grab that sexy little guy. Right out there by the swing. Come on, come on, get him, Cummins. It'll be fun. Just take him home, put him in a little cage, buy an industrial vat a lotion and get to butt-fucking. Come on, stop being such a pussy. Stop being such a weak little cook, bait a bitch,

and butt-fuck that kid. No, not today, Satan. Get out here enough. Somebody might just ruin their life If their Bluetooth connection Fucked up And a bunch of co-workers Just heard them listening to that last part

I'm sorry, no, we do have to let you go You've done a great job overall But a lot of your co-workers No longer feel safe Around somebody that they know listens to a podcast You know, where the host is talking about Satan and butt-fucking kids

But for real Hogskinner Jr. wondered how he might become heart of the world of the rich. At first, he thought about becoming a doctor. After graduating from Omaha Central High School in 1962, King enrolled at Omaha University, where he eventually decided to go the pre-med route. Omaha University, now the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Omaha University, originally at Presbyterian School, at the time Larry King went there, though, I think it was more secular. Larry soon became disillusioned with pre-med, signed up for a four-year stint in the Air Force

in 1965, where he would rise to the rank of sergeant. During his stint in the Air Force, he married Alice Ploschet, whom he had met in Chicago. And what was he doing in the Air Force? Well, a 1973 article in the Omaha Sun would be the very first media mention of Larry King, and it would shed some light on his time in the service, or give him an opportunity to advance his own version of events. Not as much fact-checking back then as now, you know, due to things not being digitized back then.

According to the article, the Air Force sent King to Thailand to be an information specialist as the Vietnam War was raging and he handled top secret military communications. King also told the reporter that after his honorable discharge in the Air Force, he took classes at the American Banking Institute in Omaha. But it's not entirely clear if that's true either. King's own resume would state that he was a 1972 graduate of the University of Nebraska with a bachelor's in business administration.

But the 1973 article made no mention of that degree. We do know that around 1969, at the age of 25, King, it entered the management training program of First National Bank in downtown Omaha, and this environment was perhaps unsurprisingly for the middle of the 20th century, pretty white. The Omaha Sun reported that King, who worked in the bank's computer section, and a janitor were the bank's only two black employees, and it didn't seem like the bank was keen on promoting either of them anytime soon. I was dissatisfied with my advancement there, King said in the article. So in August of 1970, King left his job at First National with no employment prospects.

Luckily for him, fate would step in. Later that year, a key organizer of the faltering two-year-old Franklin Community Federal Credit Union. Ask Poncho King, Hog Skinner, if he wanted to take it over because a few years back, Poncho had successfully headed up the employees' credit union at the Swift Company, I guess. Pancho declined too many hogs to skin and other pens, I guess. But he suggested that the Franklin Credit Union hire his son, his good boy, who always goes to peep in the potty junior as his manager. And just like that, junior was interviewed, given the job before the year was up.

One of King's first moves, as Franklin's manager, was conscripting a young blonde-haired dude named Tom Harvey to manage the books. Harvey was a former high school teacher, and it was rumored amongst Franklin employees that he'd been fired from his teaching job for fondling a male student. Ah, shit! Satan got him. God damn it. Satan caught him in a weak moment. Just come on, just tell him it's a biology experiment. You teach him about blood flow How if you put your hand on a soft penis And squeeze and stroke His member will become engorged And if you want to get rid of the extra blood

You just keep squeezing and stroking Until it shoots out the pressure juice Oh stop it, Satan! Enough! God damn it! You always find the creepiest ways of explaining shit! King had reportedly... I don't know why the devil was Southern there for a second King had reportedly met Harvey at the University of Omaha Both were ostensibly Presbyterians

Harvey's mother, Mary Jane, was a Presbyterian church bigwig, also came aboard at Franklin. And for the time being, it seemed like all three were legitimately hard at work, trying to save this new struggling credit union, especially Lairbear. The 1973 Omaha Sun article lauded King for his diligence and industrious as he worked, quote, 18-hour days trying to keep things afloat. Interestingly, the Oracle of Omaha, famed investor Warren Buffett, owned the Omaha's son and his wife, Susie, was a benefactor to the Franklin Credit Union. Was this article in an attempt to save Franklin by talking it up in the press? Probably. Omaha's an article was likely written as a puff piece to boost King's image.

It also contained a pair of interesting peculiarities, as it described up-and-comer Larry King. The peculiarity, that's a tough word for me to say, the peculiarities revolved around the King's relocation from North Omaha to a large rambling home in the affluent Omaha suburb of Ponca Hills. The paper reported that King renewed FBI acquaintances recently when a heroin trafficker who lived in King's neighborhood was busted, and FBI agents suggested a king that he moved out of North Omaha. If the FBI renewed its acquaintances with King, that would imply that they already had a relationship. Why? What does that mean? It's never explained. But put together with a lot of other puzzle pieces, this will add fuel to the conspiracy fire. As you will see, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that some FBI agents in the Omaha area may have been doing some shady, disturbing shit along with Larry King, which might be part of the reason that, you know, he was never properly investigated as far as sexual crimes. The second peculiarity involved the King's relocating in the first place to a lavish house in an opulent suburb inhabited by millionaires.

At the time of the article, the Franklin Credit Union's total assets hovered around. $100,000 and Larry King reportedly never received more than $17,000 a year from the credit union during his tenure there. Keep that number in mind. Dude never made more legitimately, legally, than $17,000 a year, but lived a very lavish lifestyle. Nobody seemed to look too deeply into that discrepancy at the time, and for the time being the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union, would keep chugging along. In 1974, four years after taking the helm of Franklin, Franklin or King, excuse me, created the Consumer Service Organization, the CSO as a satellite nonprofit affiliate of the credit unit. In public, the CSO was presented as an outreach program to assist poor and minority communities in North Omaha with budget planning, consumer advocacy, and financial management resources. So how did it work?

CSO became a master receiver of welfare, disability, and social security checks for many residents of North Omaha. whereupon CSO officers would then set up accounts for the recipients and give them financial counseling for how to best spend their money. The CSO as a non-profit would also get to apply for grants from charities, which they would then receive and use to set up programs that would help people lift themselves up out of poverty. Sounds great. King sure thought so. In public, King loudly praised the virtues of the CSO for providing, quote, a hand-up

and not a handout. And, of course, Franklin's holding soon blossomed. by millions of dollars. But things were not nearly as legit as they seemed. Many Franklin executives, especially King, started to use the CSO money, and this is documented, as their own personal slush fund,

treating themselves to this or that on the non-profits' time. So stealing from the poor, they were publicly proclaiming to be helping. Sometimes they would simply borrow from the bank itself, used forged letterheads from religious and charitable groups to filter money back in and hide missing funds, zero interest loans they would take out for themselves

that maybe they paid back maybe they didn't that kind of shipped and when the CSO faced shortages or bills King would funnel illicit money from Franklin's high interest

certificate of deposit Ponzi scheme program into the CSO and what was this program well a certificate of deposit a CD is a theoretically safe savings vehicle from a bank or a credit union

you lock in your money for a set time and return the bank gives you a set interest rate king and his executives marketed for Franklin CDs to large out-of-state entities offering inflated interest rates 2% to 3% above the standard market rate at the time. And how are they paying out this inflated interest?

Well, by shrewd investing, of course, by being smarter than everybody else, thanks to getting a little inside information from Satan, or by selling more and more CDs. They just kept paying people who wanted out with more money from people who had just got in, classic Ponzi scheme style. corporate powerhouses like mutual Omaha, Union Pacific, and the Qat Corporation, a Fortune 500 Omaha-based contractor, as well as several religious organizations,

including Boys Town and the American Baptist Church, lined up to give Franklin grants and purchase more and more of its CDs and soon lots of money flown into Franklin all the time. Boys Town, they're going to come up again, a lot actually. So let's take a moment to learn some about them. Learn a bit. Boys Town founded in 1917 by Father Edward Flanning,

Probably the world's most famous orphanage. A 1938 movie Boys Town starring Spencer Tracy's father Flanagan and Mickey Rooney. A young Mickey Rooney is a lovable, rascally delinquent branded the orphanage into the national consciousness. Here's a little bit from the trailer. Boys Town is real. It is a drama greater than the imagination of Hollywood's best storytellers. Four thousand boys have passed through this city of little men. And now the drama, the laughter, the hearty,

the triumph of all these boys is crystallized in the story of one young renegade who came from the back streets into conflict with the one man who could save him there's little Mickey Rooney fighting fighting on the streets throwing his life away I'll just stop at one second out of this next quote is that what this is all about you're gonna take my life because I owe the state something where was the state when a lonely starving kid cried himself to sleep in a flop house with a bunch of drunks tramps and hobos poor guy, his life could have been fucking saved,

if only the boys down would have taken him in as a kid. Also, drunks, tramps, and hobos. I mean, I guess that trio could be rough. Probably mostly because of the drunks. I feel like I'd have a pretty good time, though, with tramps. A great time, actually. Maybe the best time. The hobos, they might be fun, too.

For some reason, the movie didn't seem to mention all the allegations of physical and sexual abuse. Weird. The film garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and Tracy's portrayal of Father Flanagan, won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Over the years, three additional movies about Boys Town would follow. Boys Town rose from humble origins near downtown Omaha

to eventually become an incorporated village, 10 miles west of the city, the village of Boys Town, Nebraska, now has this very own zip code, has for decades, post office and police force. Pretty funny that an actual town is called Boys Town. According to the 2010 census, 42.8% of Boys Town is Girl. They're barely hanging on.

This is a town of mostly boys. Mon Senior Nicholas Wegener, a native of Nebraska, sat at the helm of Boys Town from the time of Father Flanagan's death in 1948 until 1953. Under Father Wagner, Boys Town doubled in residence, expanded his educational, vocational, athletic, and arts programs, but also was rocked by a financial scandal. In 1972, the Omaha Sun, after being tipped off by Warren Buffett, found that Boys Town was hoarding vast assets,

reported it had a net worth of $209 million. Yet it continued to aggressively solicit donations as if it didn't have that much money. Continued to solicit donations, even though the passive income being made by that money was more than enough for its annual budget. And at the time of the scandal, Boys Town only had approximately 900 residents.

The enormous wealth amassed by the orphanage was rather jarring to many. The scandal marked the end of Wagner's tenure of Boys Town, which I feel is unfortunate because it does not seem that he ever fucked any kill. kids, right? I think priests should be graded on a curve. I mean, yeah, maybe he's hoarding a lot of money. Maybe stealing some of the donations. But was he using that extra money to wine and dine kids? No. Was his priest dick unfamiliar with the soft skin of a young boy's butthole? If so,

then overall, pretty fucking awesome priest by prestanders. Father Robert Hupp would replace him. No rumors about him fucking kids either. Hup made a pair of sweeping refurb. forms during his 12-year reign as Boys Town's executive director. He replaced Boys Town's dormitories with the family home program where residents live in home supervised by married couples called family teachers. And the orphanage also began admitting girls. And then a little bit more on Boys Town in a bit. Back to King right now.

As all of this money mischief was going on, King also cultivated a relationship with President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Samuel Pierce. Under Pierce, HUD would send a lot of money towards Franklin Credit Union. Indeed, Franklin solicited a million dollars in HUD grants in 1981 alone. The U.S. Department of Health Education and Welfare also gave Franklin thousands, some of which would be put into the CSO, you know, additional thousands. Some of which would be put into the CSO, so things look legit, while most of it would simply be skimmed off the top by Larry and other shady Franklin executives. They had themselves a fucking cash machine. Taking money earmarked for needy families,

a lot of taxpayer money and just lining their pockets with it. If anyone ever looked too closely, Franklin was confident that it had the media on its side, not only the Omaha Sun, but also the Omaha World Herald. Indeed, the Omaha World Herald's publisher, Harold Anderson, seemed to be a strong ally of both King personally and the Franklin Credit Union. Larry King was very connected, big time in Omaha, and connections are a huge part of this conspiracy. In addition to the World Herald, also depositing thousands and thousands of dollars into the credit union's still ongoing Ponzi scheme, Anderson was chairman of Franklin's advisory board. Anderson regularly attended Franklin's annual meetings, dispensing smiles and handshakes.

Anderson would even head a 1984 Franklin Fund Drive that would raise almost $700,000, enabling King to build a bedroom in the credit union's basement. I'm sorry, what was that? Bedroom? A bank basement bedroom. You might be wondering, why the fuck was there a bedroom in the basement of a credit union? Well, for the kids. For the children. It was to make impoverished children's lives better, of course.

It's always about the kids. There had been a lot of complaining amongst the kids about how uncomfortable the cages down there were. The kids, they'd had it up to here, to be honest, with being fucked in cold, dirty cages. I mean, to be clear, they didn't want to be fucked at all, especially not by some Omaha Satanists. But they did collectively agree that if they had to be fucked by Omaha Satanus, They would rather be fucked atop a basement bed than inside a basement cage. Now, in this dimension, uh, King told a Franklin employee that the bedroom served two functions. It allowed him to unwind.

Ha, ha. And it also housed a live-in security guard. What? What was that, Larry? So you're just openly sharing a bed with your live-in security guard now. Well, that's weird. That's fucking really weird. Uh, and it gets weirder.

The room seemed like, uh, like a kind of a hotel room. The bedroom was furnished with a brass bed, uh, fluffy, white comforter, a really nice stereo, big TV, and probably so much fucking loop in the dresser. But that's not mentioned in sources. It's probably mentioned in some 4-channel Reddit post, though, if you look hard enough. The security guards didn't seem to be doing much securing, according to one former security guard who was interviewed for our main source today, the Franklin scandal. He alleged one of his first official duties as a Franklin security guard was to suck Larry King's

dick in the basement bedroom. So that was, you know. how they were sharing that bed, I guess. A son of a hog skinner getting his hog skinned, one might say, in a bank basement bedroom. What a world. This guy was at least an adult, though, an adult who maybe he didn't understand how security worked very well.

Wait, Larry, you're sure about this? Wait, you're telling me, if you come in my mouth, that it will make it harder for someone to break in and steal our money. Huh. That don't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me But I guess that's why they don't pay me to big bucks You know Okay, all right

I'll follow your lead I guess I'll get to suck it in your dick For somebody breaks in, okay And King didn't stop there Frankly become his own personal ATM As I mentioned earlier He flaunted this He moved into a second Ponca Hill home

Big-ass mansion Overlooking the Missouri River He started driving a Corvette Well I'm sorry He was driving a Corvette. He also now was driving a Mercedes and sporting several diamond rings and a bejewed watch that cost $65,000. So the dude who never officially made more than $17,000 a year from the credit union living in a mansion, driving a Mercedes and a Corvette and wearing a $65,000 watch. And no one thinks, that seems fucking messed up.

We should investigate this guy. Within just a few years, King's lifestyle also included a security. accession of Learjet trips, limos, dinners at five-star restaurants, in just as six months before Franklin closed, this motherfucker racked up over $1.1 million on six different credit cards. Little over a million dollars on an Amex card alone. He spent almost $200,000 on limos, over $45,000 on chartered planes, another $45,000 plus on jewelry, and almost $150,000. on florists, on various florists. Almost 150 grand on flowers over the course of six months alone.

How many fucking people was this dude whining and dining? How much that debt was, you know, all that money, spent on people who's bribed in some form? That is something to think about as we go forward. Larry also had his hand in a diverse array of business ventures, including restaurants and bars, like as an investor. But again, how the fuck is he getting that investment money? He doesn't make that much money. He even bought Omaha's Showcase Lounge.

bought a historic music venue, once hosted performers like Duke Ellington, Red Fox, Bobby Bland. It's fucking insane that he was able to get away with any of this for even one month, let alone many years. And let's now check out the first time

that somebody finally ratted on Larry King. Somebody was like, this isn't right. After today's first or two, Mitcho sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads ever again, please sign up to be a space editor on Patreon, help us make multi-charitable contributions,

get the catalog ad-free episodes three days early, and more. Now let's head to 1984 and look at what happens when somebody finally tries to report Larry for embezzlement. Early in 1984, a Franklin employee wrote a memo that documented king's embezzlement of funds from the CSO and evidence of his Ponzi scheme. After the employee wrote the memo, he was immediately fired. And his complaints were written off as the vindictive rantines of a bitter former employee. His former Franklin employee did not just give up, though. he met with the director of Nebraska's Department of Banking and Financing. He talked to a representative of the NCUA, the National Credit Union Administration,

this independent federal agency created by Congress to regulate charter, supervise federal credit unions. But nobody seemed to fucking care. Nobody looked into the allegations, despite how painfully obvious it was anyone willing to look that Larry King, at the very least, was stealing millions of dollars a year. again the dude who made less than $17,000 a year flying around on fucking charter jets regularly and then you know getting picked up by a limo service and spent an almost $25,000 a month on flowers

just on flowers. Why was no one willing to look? Well maybe because a lot of people whose job it should have been to investigate him where people King had compromising evidence on evidence that ensured their silence and complicity. Whatever the real reason was, no one seemed very interested in looking into what was going on at Franklin.

Indeed, though the National Credit Union Administration required federally insured credit unions to be audited every year. With that exception, Franklin would not be audited in 1984 or 85 or 86 or 87 or 88. According to a former Franklin executive, when auditors would show up every now and then, King would holler sum to the effect of phone Washington. After King talked to quote Washington as in D.C., the auditors would begrudgeonly make a hasty retreat. This, of course, later fueled speculation that King had connections that ran possibly all the way to the White House. And who was president at this time? Ronald Reagan. So, was President Reagan a kidfucker? A satanic kidfucker.

I mean, according to, you know, some of the more extreme conspiracists, if the White House was complicit, then he was running the White House, then maybe. I don't think so. More and more investigators were curious How was King managing to live this way? He was so brazen about it all. It was only matter of time before he got caught. You can't pay everybody to look the other way. In December of 1988,

a Des Moines Register article quoted an NCUA investigator discussing King in the Franklin Credit Union said, we'd sit around having a beer in Omaha 10 years ago and wonder where he was getting all the money to pay for his lifestyle. For some reason, though, they still would not or could not look into it, not quite yet. perhaps the reason for that King was still getting

a little help from his friends friends in D.C. In his 20s, King had been a Democrat and a diehard supporter of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern who was walloped by the greatest

most morally sound super awesome, very handsome, not crazy at all, actually pretty ugly for sure a fucking corrupt stick up his ass motherfucker whose corpse

I wish I could dig up and shit on. Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential race but then as King's personal fortunes took off as his corruption grew, he switched his political alliance over to the Republicans in 1981. Make it that way you will. King's early musical training gave him a niche amongst Republicans

when it came to belt and out the star-spangled banner. His national anthem debut for a Republican audience came in 1982 at a national black Republican council dinner. President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, were in attendance, and they were reportedly quite impressed with the King's. booming a baritone. Legend has it. They were so moved,

so impassioned, that after the performance, the first couple beat a hasty retreat to their hotel suite, where the first lady was passionately spit-roasted by President Reagan and his Secretary of Defense,

Casper Weinberger, while the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, massaged the interior of Reagan's colon with his beef hawk. And then when Nance started to yell out that she was about to come,

the rest of Reagan's cabinet rushed it. for an old-fashioned W.HB. You know what I mean? Old W.H.B. White House Bukaki. Rumor has it. HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce came the most that night,

which earned him the prize of killing, then eating the heart of the scared, naked kid in a cage who was forced to watch the spit roast. Why are you cringing right now? If that upset you, don't get fucking mad at me. That's a legend. I'm just sharing it, and I don't know who came up with it,

or where you can even read about it, or if it's ever been written down or talked about before, legends are slippery. Meanwhile, King kept trying to make a name for himself. King was the founder and chairman of the Nebraska Frederick Douglass Republican Council. And the next year in 1983, he was the focus of a reception honoring him for his service to the Republican Party, both locally and nationally. The reception held at Omaha's upscale Regency Hotel had so many individuals praising Larry King that presentations were limited to a mere 90 seconds each. truly big fans of what he was doing

or had he been sharing his ill-gotten gains with them or doing worse things with them and that's why they wanted to praise him. Hobnobbing with Nebraska's Republican elite, just an appetizer for King. He also began to become a force in Republican politics at the national level. Drawing once again on his musical talents,

King opened the 924 GOP convention in Dallas with a rendition of the national anthem that many presents that day found spectacular. I don't really like it. He sounds to me like a knockoff opera singer. That's not really my thing. But, okay, I'll play a little clip.

Ladies and gentlemen, the chair now recognizes Lawrence King, Jr., a member of the Nebraska delegation for the singing of the national anthem. I've never understood why people have to sing that song so fucking weird. It's never just like a normal. like singing voice. Oh, say, can you see? Like, not that I'm a good singer, but they always Oh, she can you see by the

What the fuck? I'm always just like, why? Where did this tradition start? Of just singing that fucking song like a jackass. Like a fucking weird, old-timey, fat opera singer with a giant fucking Viking helmet. Oh, can you see? Okay.

I'm a bit surprised how angry that made me. Apparently, a fucking opera singing is a trigger for me. King had a busy time at that convention in Dallas. In addition to singing, he threw his biggest bash yet, renting out the South Fork Ranch, a huge opulent sprawling white mansion, surrounded by grazing horses for a 600-ish-person party. At this party, this is documentary.

committed teenage cowgirls wearing navy satin tights vests cowboy hats scantily clad handed out yellow roses to the GOP faithful paul praise be glory be to gilead not creepy at all let's get those young girls in here come on let's get those young girls in here that we can respectfully admire let's come on get those 15 year olds in here with the fucking tight shorts so uh 60 year olds can just you know respectfully glance at them that's not fucking weird that's not reminiscent of Jeffrey Epstein and his creepy fucking rape island. A resplendent king, attired in white and sporting a thick gold chain, served the conservative church-going good Christian patriot party gores, ribs, baked beans,

coleslop, bacon, pie, and probably some underage pussy. I can't verify the last part. Not in this occasion. HUD's secretary, Samuel Pierce, attended the shindig. I mentioned him earlier. As a guy, as a guy, funneling seven figures of government money to king's nonprofit, and as the winner of the Nancy Reagan White House Bukaki. As did Ronald Reagan's daughter, Maureen, who was photographed hugging King and smiling admiringly.

And for King, these connections would pay off. Two months after Reagan's landslide victory over Walter Mondale, the 1984 presidential race, the Washington Post published an op-ed by King, Why Blacks Should Be Republican. Wearing King touted the substantial gains made by African-Americans under Republican policies. They love to deregulate. That's what he said, with his opera voice. Oh, they love to deregulate, which makes it easier to steal. I'm living. Prove they look the other way, and we can all have a day.

King's entrance into big-time Republican politics, not just being at show-stopping baritone fucking carnival entertainment, would come through the National Black Republican Council. King reportedly wore several hats for the council. He was vice chairman for finance and also participated with his nominating committee and development committee. Moreover, King reportedly served as an advisor

to its youth committee. Uh-oh. King seemed to be particularly interested in children. His resume stated that he was on Head Starts board of directors, regional president of the girls club, and on the executive committee of the Campfire Girls. King's resume also mentioned that he was

secretary treasurer of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Planned Parenthood. that's weird right for a republican in 1984 uh 1984 the regan administration would impose a new policy that prevented any foreign funding from going to health care providers that performed abortions and i guess it wasn't 84 when this is earlier than that but anyway reggae would do that in 84 uh which i get actually i mean he made the right call i mean a lot of good old boys they're working fucking hard to fuck those kids and they wanted something to show for their efforts right what's

the point of fucking these kids if you can't get a rape baby God bless. Three years later, 1987, Reagan was established the gag rule, preventing family planning clinics that receive federal money from providing abortion counseling and another good call. Very smart, so wise. No scared teen raped by her father should ever be offered a way out from having that incest baby.

Praise be, glory be to Gilead. So righteous. God, I love a righteous, godly patriarch. Not afraid to make some uppity teenage rape victim have to pay for her sin of having tits. Seriously, why would King be in favor of access to family planning? birth control, treatment for STIs. Well, perhaps he was allegedly engaged in less civic-minded pastimes, perhaps because of that.

Around this time at the max, when Omaha's popular gay bars, King is said to have met a 29-year-old man named Charlie Rogers. What? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. It felt like they were insinuating that Larry King is homosexual in this, or at least bisexual in this situation. That's impossible. A closet? it a closet gay Republican. A closet gay Christian Republican, that's never happened. That's

ludicrous. Everybody knows Jesus' powerful magic destroys devil juju that turns godly straits into evil gays. Larry had to be the only guy in history who was like that if it was even possible. It's just, it's too bad that the late great super straight Lindsey Graham couldn't have taught him how to pray that pesky gay away. Rogers, a bodybuilder was six feet tall and 180 pounds. A lean, hot, hard father daddy dripping in glitter. He had a thither. He had a thawed thick head of brown hair, brown eyes, ruggedly handsome features. Probably a pretty nice cock. He owned a lawn care service.

Also worked as a bouncer at the max. And interactions between Rogers and King not limited to the bar. This is documented. Apparently at some point, Larry bought Rogers a gold deerskin coat. For $2,810. Fuck yeah, bro. That's quite a coat. I've never had a coat like that.

Mm-mm. That's some kind of Liberacee meets fucking Daniel Boone coat. Deerskin and gold? You kidding me? that's not a combination you see every day. Of course that shit cost almost three grand back in the 80s, which would be almost 10 grand now, right?

Golden hides? Those can't be cheap. King also sent Rogers dozens of flowers, bought him a closet full of other accessories, including an 18-carat gold bracelet. He's just a platonic friend, a bracelet that had Charlie engraved

on the bracelets top side and from the boss, engraved on the other side. Mm-hmm. No fucking way. Ignore the rumors that Charlie paid for that bracelet and blow jobs and butt play.

get out of here, that's just a fucking smear campaign. Straight fucking guys, Christian straight guys can have gay friends they buy jewelry for and roses. And it's very platonic. In Roger's pocketbook of telephone numbers, the name King was accompanied by five different numbers. Dude had fucking secret lives, hidden from other secret lives, apparently. A couple weeks prior to November of 1986,

Roger stopped by his mom's house for a roast beef dinner. And that is not a euphemism. It was a regular roast beef dinner. It was not some kind of spit roast. not with mom. He did this every Sunday. And on this occasion, he said something that troubled her. He told that he had a plane ticket to Washington, D.C., but decided not to use it,

asked if she wanted to fly to D.C. instead. And his mom declined her son's offer, but later would think that there was something very, very shifty about this. Indeed, later investigators would find that the Franklin Credit Union had purchased the ticket for Rogers. He was slated to fly out of Omaha at 11.25 a.m. Make a stopover in Minneapolis, arrive in D.C. at 4.35 p.m., That same day, he would leave D.C. at 8 p.m. And after another stop over Minneapolis, be back home in Omaha by 10.57 p.m.

So he was only supposed to be in D.C. for three and a half hours. Just enough time for a quick fuck. Several quick fucks. What's going on here? In the weeks that followed, Roger seemed extremely paranoid. But nobody could tell why. One day he told his sister, I think I'm in trouble and alluded to live in some kind of double life. She had no idea what he was talking about. When she pressed him on it, he said that he had been enmeshed with Larry fucking King,

son of a hog skinner for a couple of months and he had taken several trips with him primarily to Washington D.C. for something he wouldn't say, something that made him a lot of money. He said he'd received $50,000 roughly from King for these trips already. Man, King just throwing money around like it's not real. He said he wanted out and if anything happened to him,

his sister should contact Douglas County Deputy Attorney Bob Sigler. Why him specifically were others in local law enforcement and politics compromised? then just a week or so after this conversation on November 10th, 1986, Charlie Rogers found dead in his apartment with a fatal gunshot blast to the head. So that's not suspicious at all.

The stock of his 12-gauge shotgun rested between his legs. The barrel of the gun pointed at his head, his TV is on, there is no suicide note. Strangely, his apartment's front door was locked, but the door to his third floor deck unlocked. Though Roger's death officially ruled a suicide, his relatives and friends,

positive that was not the case. they were certain he had been murdered and that this was a cover-up. Later that same day, November 10th, Rogers' father phones Bob Sigler, just like Charlie had mentioned, to his sister, but now Sigler will not give him any answers.

The deputy maintained that he had no idea why Charlie Rogers had insisted he be contacted specifically if Rogers turned up dead or went missing. Sigler would say that their only connection was that Sigler had handled a few misdemeanor cases for Rogers when he was in private practice. Maybe Sigler had changed since he knew Charlie.

Maybe somebody had gotten to him. He would strangely refuse to release the autopsy report when Omaha World Herald reporter James Allen Flannery, excuse me, approached him and asked for it, even though releasing autopsy reports was standard practice, but not this time. Then things got weirder still. A puzzled Flannery wandered over to Sigler's office to ask him some questions, and Sigler not receptive at all to Flannery's questions, even though they had spoken about many, many cases in the past and had gotten along just fine. But now he exploded. There's no interview here, he yelled. I don't affirm, I don't deny, I don't have any comment. Sigmundle then made a comment

The struck Flannery's especially strange He asked Flannery of Omaha World Herald Publisher Harold Anderson, Flannery's boss, knew he was poking around into Roger's death. And the way he said it, it sounded like a threat.

Flannery kept digging. He was, as any good journalist would be now, even further intrigued. I mean, how could he not be? Who is hiding what? During his continuing investigation, he would eventually obtain Rogers' address book.

Flannery then phoned one of the numbers in the little black book, left his name and number on a man's answer machine. Shortly thereafter, Flannery received a call from that man's sister. The sister told Flannery that he had stumbled onto a national prostitution ring. And now before moving forward, that's fucking crazy. Let's back up and talk about somebody else.

A very different kind of person than the ones we have covered so far, a young girl named Ulyss Washington. Back in 1977, Nebraska authorities found that Washington's biological mom was unfit to raise her three daughters. Ulyss, who was eight years old, Tracy, who was six, and Tasha, who was only two at that time. You know, she was unfit to raise these girls due to her ongoing heroin addiction. The sisters subsequently became ward to the state and were placed in the home of Jarrett and Barbara Webb, who quickly adopted the girls and gave them their last name. Seemingly, the webs were just do-gooders who liked helping kids in bad situations.

Seemingly. Indeed, over the following years, the Webb's also adopted two other children, Wally and Robert. and three additional foster siblings were placed in their home, Kevin and fraternal twins, Kia and Ken. So who were these people? The tall, thin, socially withdrawn, 41-year-old Jared Webb was a 20-year employee of the Omaha Public Power District, a utility company that supplied electricity to the greater Omaha area, and he also sat on the Franklin Credit Union's Board of Directors for two years. So another buddy of son of a hog skinner. Barbraud described as short, large, and outgoing,

39 years old, cousin of Larry King, related to son of the hog skinner. And their lives seemed pretty wonderful. The Webs lived in a lovely blue and white ranch house that surrounded by rolling acreage, surrounded by or shrouded by oak trees, but as they later alleged, the Washington sisters quickly discovered

that the Webb's house was far from a paradise, but was truly a hell. On the first night in their new home, Tracy and Tasha couldn't stop crying. Tasha wet herself, and instead of helping the two, two-year-old calmed down, Barbara Webb allegedly tied her to a doorknob, beat her, and then left her hanging from the doorknob all night.

This is a fucking two-year-old. Extreme child abuse towards a toddler like that. Fuck prison. Right? Somebody who's found guilty of that. Just give me a gun, a couple bullets, so I can make it slow, make sure they suffer. Let me take this bitch out to the woods, a little trip that only I come back from. If you have ever tied up a fucking two-year-old to a doorknob, beat them and left them all night,

all for crying over being taken away from their mom. there's zero chance that you're a good person who just had a bad night. I wish nothing but the very, very worst view. I hope you fucking die soon and painfully. The three sisters would suffer repeated beatings over the next several years with everything from an extension cord to an actual fucking bullwhip to a rubber hose, a black strap dubbed the railroad prop, a two-foot strip of thick black rubber perforated with holes.

God damn. Anything can set the webs off, apparently, and lead to a severe beating, getting a C or lower in school in some class, using the telephone without permission, breaking a glass, chewing gum, quote, making noise when shutting off a light switch, folding their clothes improperly, or failing to tell Barbara when they had their periods.

During the beatings, the children were generally required to remove all of their clothes, and the beatings could last for five minutes or persist for well over an hour in some cases. Naked beatings. If you make a lot of it, kid get naked and beat them for an hour more. First off, you're a fucking pito.

And second, fuck you for the fucking physical abuse. That is not fucking in the realm of acceptable discipline. Just go ahead and kill yourself. You're a fucking monster. The children were also denied food and brainwashed into believing that the webs were the only ones who would have ever taken them in. Barbara burned the girl's family pictures, repeatedly told them that their bio mom was no good in a slut. Oh, man. And these are Christians.

just like Jesus would want them to act, you know? Just, I remember, I remember, you know, I know I'm not a Christian, but I do remember reading like, you know, some verses where Jesus like, fuck those sluts. You know, like, he would say stuff like that. He's like, I don't fucking love those sluts. I love everybody except for sluts, right? That's Jesus.

With her gustyed up biological and adoptive children in tow, Barbara Webb attended Omaha 7th Day Adventist Church almost every Saturday and sang in the choir. And I do hate that when I first read the passage about them beating their kids. As savagely as they did, my immediate thought was, I bet they're Christians. A decade of research into the worst people on Earth has consistently reaffirmed from me over and over, that pedophiles, serial killers, child abuse, etc., in the U.S., at least, frequently have strong ties to Christianity.

However, I should say this, it would be intellectually dishonest to me, not to mention that numerous academic peer-reviewed studies have shown that overall abuse rates, not altogether that different between religious and non-religious households. And that includes, you know, Christianity and other religions. it's not a religious problem it's a human problem religious people just tend to use notions of God or the devil to justify doing

the same evil shit that non-religious people do which makes me a little anger when you outsource your responsibility for shit that just is a huge fucking pet peeve of mine when people don't take responsibility for the fucking horrible things they do most abusers in the U.S. are either Christians or tied culturally to Christianity

simply because most people in the U.S. are either Christians or tied culturally to Christianity. it's a numbers game. If most of the U.S. was Muslim, I would be talking about how many Discussy Muslim creeps there are. If most of the U.S. were atheists, I'd be talking about all the fucking atheist creeps.

Too many fucking humans being creeps. It's always been the goddamn problem. Apparently, Barbara had a honeycoated voice, just like her cousin, Larry King. The webs also took the kids to Uncle Larry's house. Oh, fuck. As well as to Swalrays hosted by King. The webs made Ulyss attend functions,

the North Omaha Girls Club, where Larry served as president. Ulus would later say that these gatherings gave her the creeps because they always included approximately 15 older men And these dudes always seemed to be leering and salivating Over the 20-year-so teenage and pre-teen girls present Just like Epsi and his buddies And then Eust would claim something far more shocking Ulylis would claim that she was at King's home watching TV

When foster parents Lara Lara and Barbara Larry and Barbara Webb Entered the room She said Larry unlocked one of the room's cabinets handed Barbara Webb a number of videotape cassettes, which she then slipped into a large handbag. Shortly afterward, the webs were out on the town, forgot to lock their bedroom door,

and according to Ulyss, she and other children, found these tapes a little bit later, popped one of them into the Webb's VCR, and she claimed it explicitly showed, quote, teenagers engaged in sex. The children also discovered pornographic photos, tucked away in the web's dresser, presumably also of kids.

Despite the alleged abuse in pedophilia, Barbara would receive multiple glowing articles about her foster family in the Omaha World Herald and even be awarded Nebraska's foster care mother of the year one year. Meanwhile, UlyS. Desperly trying to get away from this house. In November of 195, when UlyS was around 16, meaning she had reportedly suffered

eight years of abuse at the hands of the Webs by this point, she managed to find her biological grandma, Opel Washington. She hightailed it out of the Webb's house, made it to Opel's home in Omaha. Her sisters would join her for a few days and the three started to plan a more permanent escape. Maybe they thought the police could help them. But when Opel reportedly placed a call to the Omaha Police Department,

the responding officer said to have told her that the Washington sisters had been legally adopted by the Webs and lived in Washington County, meaning that this was a matter out of OPD's jurisdiction. Meanwhile, the Webb's had phoned the OPD, alleging Opel had kidnapped the kids, and soon they would be brought back into hell. Upon their return to the Webb Home, later DSS, Nebraska Department of Social Services documents report the three sisters were pushed into chairs, hit and screamed at. The webs barked stuff like you are dead to us, called the sisters whores and bitches,

right? Again, you know, as the good lord instructs us. As punishment, webs made the sisters clean and scrubbed their house the entire night and into the morning. 10-year-old Tasha became too exhausted to continue scrubbing, so the webs heaved her onto the kitchen counter

and shook her every time she appeared to be fallen asleep. Thankfully, all this would lead to DSS, to social workers again, becoming more involved and within a few days the webs finally consented to allow Ulyss and Tracy but not the younger Tasha to leave with DSS personnel. Ulyss and Tracy would ultimately be placed

in the foster home of Ronald and Kathleen Sorensen now. But Ulyss' problems far from over. Her trauma scars ran deep, of course they did. Sorosans soon discovered and they would report this that she would sleep in the closet, felt safer to be hidden there to her. Luckily, bit by bit, Eulis started to open up telling Kathleen

about a, quote, friend who had been raped by her adoptive father and then also brought to orgies to be raped by other men. Finally, Ulyss admitted what Kathleen already suspected that Jared Webb, foster parent of the year, solid Christian man, had been sexually abusing her for years. And if that allegation was true, then you know that the other sisters were getting raped as well. On January 21st, 1986, Kathleen Sorensen drove Ullis and Tracy to the sheriff's office, where a female NSP officer interviewed them separately. Ulyas stated to the investigating officer

That she was initially molested by Jarrett Webb After living in the Webb's home for approximately a year So the first molestation occurred when she was only nine or ten years old Very prepubescent According to her, Jared Webb would make Ulyss take a nap with him And then quote Played with all her parts of her body, all the parts Then over the next three years when Barbara was not home

Jarrett Webb would threaten her with the whipping If she didn't accompany him into the Webb's bedroom for more of this plane DSS personnel began to investigate these allegations. Meanwhile, in February of 1986, Ulyss and Tracy had their relinquishment hearing. The Webb's lawyer attended the hearing, but the webs were conspicuously absent. In a strange twist, the presiding judge ruled that Ulylis and Tracy were, quote, uncontrollable, so the webs were voluntarily relinquishing their parental rights. Okay.

The judgment made absolutely no mention of the inhumane abuse and torment, even though DSS documents had already catalogued numerous confirmed incidents. was the judge also compromised. Later in February, Tasha Washington would be taken out of the Webb's custody as well, thankfully, and Tasha would confide to Patricia Rothmeier, her new foster mom, that she had been forced to perform oral sex on an uncle who visited the webs. Was that Uncle Larry? But then to the utter shock of DSS personnel and the new foster families who had taken the sisters in, in March of 1986, a judge ruled that Tasha and another foster kid, Robert,

would be returned to the Webb household. with a, quote, rehabilitation plan, return to the fucking household where this little girl has alleged that her, you know, she's been molested. So two of the three sisters have alleged sexual abuse and then one of them is going back.

A DSS document mentioned that Tasha's allegations of sexual abuse had not been properly investigated. Kathleen Sorensen and Patricia Rothmire were stunned that they had not been called to testify on their children's collective behalf. What was going on here? How the fuck did the webs get away with no one investigation. Was it possibly

thanks to the FBI? According to DSS documents, a DSS social worker who had made home visits to families renewing their foster care licenses had at some point a very bad feeling about the webs. She wrote a letter to her superiors, explaining her suspicions about the webs, and in doing so also

found that many of the DSS files pertaining to the web children had gone missing. The social worker said later that FBI agents contacted her and told her it would be in her best interest to forget get this information. That's fucking crazy. This is not some random person saying this.

This is a government. This is a social worker. They tend to be pretty credible people saying that the FBI was like, back the fuck off of this investigation. Why would the FBI have been protecting them? Well, as Eulis grew more and more comfortable with her new foster mom, Kathleen Sorson, she started to expand on what she had initially confided it, that it was not just Jared Webb who had molested her. She said that the Webb's powerful cousin, one, Lerner,

Larry King, Hogskinner's son, had flown her and some other kids via a chartered plane to Chicago in the fall of 1984. After exiting the plane, she said they had ridden in a limousine to a fancy hotel in Chicago where Larry informed her that she should be going to a party that night. Prior to the party, she said that Larry King came into her room, gave her some black negligee to wear. She said he then escorted her to the party, ordered her to sit like a mannequin on a little, quote, pedestal. while she sat she said a group of men that she recognized from the plane entered the room and started to eat hors d'oeuvres and then more people kept coming

most of them older men once the party was in full swing she noticed the older men were giving money to king and leaving with some boys who had been flown over with her as well though she said she did not see any explicit sexual acts between the boys and the men she did claim she saw the older

men hugging and kissing boys who were these older men approximately 45 minutes in the party she recognized a nationally prominent politician entered the gathering, she said. Some conservative politician. She said he was greeted by Larry King

and accompanied by a pair of bodyguards. This prominent politician, not named in sources, unfortunately, then allegedly slipped away with the former Boys Town student. The New York trip, Ulysses' second with Larry, would allegedly happen the following spring in February or March.

She claimed that she left school early on a Friday was driven to King's home, that a limousine then collected her in King and drove them to the airport to the same chartered plane she had been on before. On the plane were two older female, quote, hookers, she said, and two young girls no older than seven years of age, and also King's son.

In New York, she said she was once again forced to wear negligee without underpants, sit on a pedestal, poised like a mannequin, and at one point, she said she was surrounded by some older men who just started to openly masturbate in front of her. My God, Ullis would end up missing school the following Monday and Tuesday, Tuesday later found out that a secretary from the school

phoned the webs about her absence and the webs told the school that she was sick. So they knew and they were covering it up, allegedly. All of this, of course, deeply troubled Kathleen Sorson and she had to do something about it. She relayed Ulysses' allegations about Larry King and Boys Town students to Duly Walters, a friend of hers who worked at Boys Town.

Walters then approached the then director of Boys Town, father Valentin Peter, told him about Ulyss's allegations. Father Peter, that's fucking fantastic. Seemingly to his credit, Father Peter, there's also a fucking person with the last name of Boner coming up. So that's good. We have Peter and Boner in this one.

Peter said that, you know, she should check out, check out, you know, investigate further. Walters proceeded to interview Ulyss and Kathleen Soroson on three occasions in March of 1986. Tracy Washington, Ulysses' middle sister, and a friend of the Sorosens, Kirsten Hallberg, also present. Julie Walters brought Boys Town yearbook to the second interview and Ulyss and Tracy identified numerous former students who they alleged were involved with King. So, you know, all three sisters, all three Washington sisters, you know, making allegations. Now, after the interviews, Walters penned a 43-page handwritten report on Ulyss and Tracy's information.

And she wasn't done. Walters then began to ask about King's affiliation with Boys Town and Boys Town employees and quickly discovered that the Franklin Credit Unit employed a Boys Town teacher on the surface maybe that's fine. After all, both are decent-sized employers, but in light of what she'd already learned, it troubled her. And she'd heard some suspicious rumors now as well.

She heard that a yellow limited edition Pontiac-Togen sports car leased by King had repeatedly proud the Boys Town campus and three Boys Town teachers had been spotted driving that car. Walters mentioned the rumors to Father Peter, who said he would look into it. But then it doesn't seem he did

because nothing came from this and he never reported back. meanwhile kirsten hallberg the close friend of the sorescence went back to work for utah holly went to work not back went to work for utahali which is a a residential psychiatric facility in omaha for adolescent girls there kirsten would uh quickly find herself even more deeply embroiled in this candle she had previously worked at the residential facility in 1921 uh but had taken time off oh that's right that's i remember from my previous note sorry that she yeah nothing matters but she's going back here not a first time there uh she took some time

off from working to have her two kids. Now her new duties included admitting the girls, administering their treatment plans, one-on-ones, overseeing their conduct, and driving them to activities. Before I share Franklin-related details, she gathered from a new patient in 1986. Time for our second-to-two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors, hope you heard some deals you liked. Now let's head to the summer of 1986 and meet another child who claimed to have been caught up in a pedophile ring. In June of 1986, she was tasked with the intake duties for 12-year-old Shanetta Moore. On one of

the early conversations, Hallberg inquired if Moore had any hobbies or pastimes, and Moore replied that she once frequent in the North Omaha Girls Club. Hallberg was aware of King's affiliation with the girls club, and perhaps trying to play cool, asked more if she happened to know the web girls. Moore said yes.

She did know, Eulis and Tracy. And when Kirsten then tried to dig deeper, the 12-year-old became acutely distressed, suddenly blurted out that she had been involved in a prostitution and pornography ring. Apparently not led into that, just blurted it out on her own.

This is fucking insane. And sadly, so very believable to me, especially after all the Epstein scandal shit. I am glad I'm doing this episode after that because it's definitely changed my perspective, right? Just after, you know,

seeing how hard this current administration has worked to not release that info, despite all the campaign promises to do exactly that, no real follow-up investigations, no important arrests, Of course not, because no one is implicated more than fucking Trump. And he's not going to arrest or implicate himself.

Corrupt and powerful people with no real moral compass or center love to do corrupt and powerful shit. And since they truly only care about themselves at a very deep pathological level, I can 100% see them, not just wanting to sexually abuse children if they have that sort of perverted desire, but just doing it. And then doing everything in their power, their immense power, to shame, gaslight, destroy victims pointing the fingers at anybody else if they think it'll take the focus off themselves ooh man when you truly feel no shame when you when you not only don't care about anybody else but

you're just at your core an exceptionally cruel human being who actually gets off on dishing out pain nothing's off limits right we've learned that with certain serial killers why not pretend to be religious right so you can have greater access to kids and fuck them uh who cares how that damages them because they're not you so they don't matter to you i'm not sold on satan being the culprit still, not at all, but rich and powerful people being part of a national or international child rape ring, you know, even if it goes all the way to the White House, one to 100% open to believing that type of conspiracy, because we know that sick fucks like that exist. Back to our story, Shoneta Moore told Kirsten Hallberg she had attempted to break

away from the sex ring and that her mother was then raped in reprisal. This claim was actually validated somewhat by a police report. According to that report, at around 3 a.m. on June 15th, 9.86, Moore's mother was in bed sleeping when a short, thin, African-American male, wearing a nylon stocking over his face, slipped into her bedroom, put a butcher knife to her throat, and in a high-pitched voice said,

Where's Shannetta? Then proceeded to rape her. After the rape, Moore's mom called to police, but the responding officers told Moore's mother that she needed to collect herself. Good God. Then phone the OPD if she wanted to make a formal complaint. after collecting herself,

whatever the fuck that means, that's so condescending. Moore's mom phoned the OPD the next day, and the police did fuck all about it. Later, a sergeant who had initiated a follow-up investigation noted that the responding officers didn't even write up a police report, offered to take the victim to the hospital,

contact the crime lab. unbelievably, they did advise Moore's maternal grandfather that he should probably fix that door, the one the perpetrator had broken into the house, you know, so they didn't, you know, enter again. So they literally alleged, well, not allegedly in this case, they literally told him to destroy evidence. Unsurprisingly, the assailants was never apprehended. Meanwhile, at the psychiatric facility, 12-year-old Moore then shut down emotionally and refused to discuss this ring any further.

Carson Hallberg still believed her, kept poking around, found other kids making similar claims. The more girls that Kirsten talked to, the more concerned she got. A second girl also made allegations of being in a child prostitution and pornography ring, and then a third, but then both, declined to speak about it in detail. They seemed too scared to her. Nobody at the facility seemed to want to go to the police with any of this were people at the facility somehow complicit as well. Within a few months or just scared about, I don't know, losing funding, something.

Within a few months, Holberg would think that they were complicit, though. She heard unsubstantiated rumors that girls were sneaking off a campus in the middle of the night and she voiced her concerns to a coworker. And then her concerns quickly made their way back to her supervisor who dismissively informed her that everything is fine. Shortly after that, someone at the else at the facility, not Hallberg, called the police. But given how she had been pursuing leads,

her supervisors seemed to think she had done that. Kirsten then called into a meeting and grilled about who she knew at the Douglas County Sheriff's office. Hallberg replied that she hadn't blown the whistle. She was just trying to figure out what the hell was going on to girls in her care. The next day, Hallberg phoned the Douglas County Sheriff's Department

to request that the PD notify her superiors that she was not the one who made the call in question. then later that day Hallberg's supervisor approached her said she was in quote deeper trouble for requesting that the sheriff's phone her superiors to reiterate that Hallberg had not made the initial call shortly thereafter the Douglas County Sheriff's Department conducted what has been described in sources as a pornography investigation at Utah Holly but the sheriff's department ultimately cleared the facility of any illicit activity during the investigation however Hallberg noticed that 12 year old Moore was quote extremely fearful Hallberg asked more for reluctance to speak had anything to do with the facility itself and Moore replied, quote, it was too big. And if Hallbard continued to pry, she would, quote, get hurt. Then the decision of whether or not to investigate further would be taken out of Hallberg's hands. March 5, 1987, her superior and two administrators summoned her to a meeting and informed her that Utah Holly was suspending her for five days.

They said Hallberg had been, quote, over-involved with residents beyond a therapeutic level. At the meeting, Hallberg voiced her concerned about Alice King, sitting on Uda Holly's board, right? This is Larry King's wife. And according to Hallberg, her supervisor's boss exploded and started to scream at her. Then just five days later,

on March 10th, Hallberg would be given the option of resigning from Utah. When she refused, she was promptly fired. So what's Larry King up to now? Well, spending a lot of time in Washington, D.C., naturally,

just having a fucking time of his life. Getting that hogged skin, baby. This is a man's world. Jam! A little more James Brown felt appropriate. As King became a fixture of Republican politics at the national level, he rented a swanky townhouse on California Street Northwest near Embassy Row started to throw fabulous parties.

A 1987 guest list from one of his D.C. parties included people like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, then chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Gene Kirkpatrick, New York Congressman Jack Kemp, Nebraska Congressman Hal Dobb. King also started to make hefty contributions. to Republicans in their causes and sponsored Republican fundraisers. He sheld out $23,500 to Citizens for America, a conservative group run by the infamous lobbyist,

Jack Abramoff, which assisted Oliver North in garnering support for the Nicaraguan Contras. King also gave a generous donation to Republican K. Orr in her successful 1926 bid to become Nebraska's governor and naturally sang the national anthem at her inaugural ceremony. Oh, say, you,

probably something like that. But of course, the big election to worry about was the one coming up in 1988, the presidential election. As the Reagan administration was in its waning days, King apparently had high hopes for the presidential aspirations of New York Congressman Jack Kemp. Kemp, a former NFL quarterback, actually a fucking great one. Seven-time pro bowler in the 60s was a present-day golden boy of the Republican Party. President George H.W. Bush, who ended up winning, would later appoint Kemp,

the secretary of HUD and Kemp would be Bob Dole's running mate when the latter made his 1996 presidential bit. But what kept him from actually getting the presidency? Well, rumors of homosexuality plagued Kemp for decades. And every good social conservative knows you cannot be president if you're gay. Why? Well, because God. Because God, because shut the fuck up. But don't worry about it.

Because stupid. You can eat shellfish in the White House. They love lobster dinners, even though that's an abomination. But you cannot follow the Bible in a million other ways. and that's fine, that's 100% fine. Just don't be gay. Glory to Gilead. It's very smart, very wise.

In fact, Kemp was asked about his purported homosexuality during a 1986 interview on NBC's Today Show, and he categorically denied the rumors. Kemp would always insist that the genesis of the rumors dated back to the 1960s. When he was a part-time aide to then-California governor Ronald Reagan, as well as a quarterback for the Buffalo Bills, at the time, Kemp co-owned a Lake Tahoe Ski Lodge with the second Reagan aide,

who apparently threw, quote, homosexual parties. for other Reagan staffers and more at the lodge. What? What? A secretly gay Republican fucking other gay Republicans. Huh. That reminds me of when the gay dating app grinder shut down. Again, for a bit after a huge usage spike in Milwaukee for the 2024 Republican National Convention. Sometimes I think the GOP might actually stand for it.

Get out, pussy! Gross! Get out here! Oh, cocks only! We're trying to watch a lot of MMA and football, God damn it. We're straight alpha males, incessantly watching ripped sweaty dudes rassel around, tackle and grab it to other dudes, because it gets this fucking rock hard for Christ.

Rock hard for Christ and is ripped, Aryan, abs and biceps, not gay. If you're fucking super hard for super ripped, Aryan sexy Christ. The latter Reagan 8 resigned amidst contention of his homosexuality. But Kemp said he had just purchased a lodge as an investment and never visited it. But being associated with this guy had linked him to gay sex ever since. Back to 1988, that year, the New York Post reported that King made his party rounds in New York City and D.C. proudly displaying a Jack Kemp for President Button. Simultaneously, King kicked in cash to Kemp's 1988 presidential bid and to a Kemp political action committee. King's plan to host a Kemp fundraiser at his home, his florist report that no expenses were spared for the Kemp fundraiser. Dude loved to buy flowers. Indeed, floral arrangements were scattered throughout the house and outside. King even had the floors. make some float flower arrangements for the pool. Kemp, however, canceled the fundraiser at the last minute.

The two men's political partnership would, however, continue. King and Kemp would team up at the 1988 Republican Convention in New Orleans. Two months before the convention, King formed the Council of Minority Americans, which then sponsored a 100 grand gala in Nola. Jack Kemp, Alexander Hague, former president, Gerald Ford, were on the council's host committee. The convention would be another great moment for Larry's political resume. at the convention, after probably singing the national anthem again,

Oh, she kaiusk! Something like that. He probably got his hog-skinned by gaggles of crying kids. That's the rumor. Rumor is when the video stopped playing, shortly after he came all over him. Everybody in the room rose to their feet, gave him a standing ovation that lasts another 10 minutes,

not a dry eye or dry puss or limp dick in the house. No, no, he screened a video, though. A 10-minute video that featured King and Kemp as he urged African-Americans to vote for W. George H.W. Bush in the upcoming election. Meanwhile, not long after Uda Hali terminated Kirsten Holberg for asking too many goddamn questions, she landed a job at Richard Young Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Omaha. There's so many great names.

We've got a Boner. We've got a Peter. We got a Mr. Peter and a Mr. Boner. I don't think we've met Mr. Boner yet, but he's coming up. And we have a facility called Dick Young, essentially. Come to Dick Young, if you're feeling unhinged. A little young Dick. We'll get your mind all straightened out.

While Hallberg was employed at Richard, Dick Young, Sharnetta Moore, the girl Hallberg tried to help two years earlier when the then 12-year-old told her she's being raped and prayed around the country for other pedophiles. When Shannana Moore was discharged from you to Holly and returned her mother's home and enrolled in an alternative high school. The two women seemingly had no reason to cross paths again, but they would.

In June of 1988, Moore phoned Hallberg and said she had been confiding in her school counselor, who wanted to check in with Hallberg and learn more about Moore's time. at the hospital. The three agreed to meet on June 27th, but on the eve of their meeting, Moore phoned Hallberg and Kirsten's ears. She sounded suicidal. Hallberg placed a frantic call to the school counselor, asked for his advice. The counselor suggests that Hallberg pick up Moore and take her home for the night. After Hallberg and Moore

made it back to Hallberg's home, Moore became despondent, started to sob and shake. Moore told the hospital worker that she wanted to end her life because it would be far less painful that if they decided to murder her. If they find out I've talked to Mawked, Moore cried. They will torture other kids in my name. This is crazy shit. The next morning, Hallberg, drove Moore to see her school counselor. The counselor later told Hallberg that Moore had told him, quote, everything about Larry King. As the counselor and Hallberg talked further, Moore sounded like she was increasingly suicidal. She refused to promise the counselor or Hallberg that she would not hurt herself, so the counselor decided that she needed to be hospitalized. The counselor opted to hospitalized more at Richard Young Hospital, but said he required the consent of Moore's mother. Also, told Hallberg that it was important that Moore's mother be told about her daughter's allegations about the pedophile ring. Hallberg was stunned. She had assumed that Utah Holly staff had already told Moore's mother about what her daughter had told her while she was working there, but no, they did not mention it, which was not normal. At the new hospital, Moore would gradually

get better, and finally she would tell the whole story. She said in the winter of 1983, when she was just nine years old, she started to attend the North Omaha Girls Club where she met an older man named Ray. who also befriended four or five other girls at the girls club. More thought Ray was a volunteer at the girls club, described him as an overweight, 40-year-old-ish, African-American male, 5-7 or 5-8. She said that Ray transported the girls to various locations in a white van and that all the girls would be blindfolded for these rides.

On the first trip, he took the girls to an abandoned building where he then passed around a joint. After Ray and the girls smoked, they sat around the building, talked for a while, and then he returned them to the girls' club. up. So the grooming has begun. To more it seemed harmless because she was young and innocent and didn't know what grooming looked like. Ray spent the next three or four weeks driving the girls to the abandoned building and smoking with him. Then one night he said that he wanted to bring them

to a quote party. And that's where they supposedly went. The men had said party were in their mid-thirties more acclaimed and they all initially sat around and talked to the girls about their problems. Then they started to drink, take drugs with the girls. And after the girls were quote wasted, the men began to rape them. She said the girls did not have a choice of who would have sex with them. They were just grabbed by some man who would force them to do whatever he wanted them to do.

Moore said she attended parties like this for approximately six months before she was taken to her first quote, power meeting in the summer of 1982. And this is where shit supposedly started to get satanic. This meeting was apparently held in an abandoned shack and Moore told hospital personnel that candles and other weird stuff were at these power meetings.

More identified the men by pseudonyms, calling them ace, King's horses, Jerry Lucifer, and Mike. According to her, the men were dressed in robes, adorned with upside-down crosses, and the leader wore a long black cape and gold skull rings on his fingers. More than the girls were told that the room would start spinning, and when the room did indeed start spinning, she realized she had been drugged, and everything got fuzzy.

She would remember that at approximately 7 p.m., she was locked in a small room with a Caucasian baby girl. More than the infant were alone in the room, she said, for, I don't know, five hours. At around midnight, she claimed the men opened the door to, find more holding this little girl, they then took the infant from her, told her that she would achieve power by killing someone she really loved. When she wouldn't kill anybody, uh, baby, uh, the men ritualistically murdered the baby. This is actually what she claimed. After the baby was allegedly murdered, more divulged to hospital personnel that she became hysterical and one of the

men had to hold her down. More than disclosed that she was forced to remain locked in the small room for approximately 24 hours. When she, while she sat in the dark, she said she heard men whipping and beating some of the other girls. The men then drove more to a park near her house, dropped her off. Moore said she felt days as she wandered home. And upon entering the house, her mom gave her a beating for having been missing for two days. All in all, she said, she would be part of four additional sacrifices and numerous other parties, one of which Larry King was definitely president.

This was the first time King's name was brought up in connection with any such parties aside from Ulyss-Washington's statements. And pretty extreme claims, I must say, doesn't mean they're not. true, but pretty out there in the sense that speaking to somebody who has spent an untold number of hours, trying to find at least somewhat credible, you know, some credible claims of, you know, extreme true crime and cult and conspiracy stories connected to Satanism, only to almost always come up empty-handed, these type of claims are almost never corroborated by hard evidence and usually wreak of abused victims being asked leading questions by others worried about Satanism,

you know, leading to satanic panic-fueled false memory syndrome. Now let's take a break from this new development and back up a little bit again before moving forward. Around this same time, some other people were starting to get more and more curious about Larry King's extracurricular activities. A few months before more was hospitalized. At Richard Young Hospital, Larry King's name started to surface at the Omaha Police Department regarding the exploitation of children. Others were making claims as well, and then something else suspicious happened. In the upcoming months, OPD, Chief Robert Watman, would declare in the newspapers that King had been thoroughly investigated and that the allegations had, quote, no substance, but numerous bystanders were left skeptical of his assurances.

How did he know with such certainty that Larry King was not involved in anything nefarious? Right? It's a lot of smoke, but no fire. Rumors of a friendship between the police chief and king were rapidly spreading throughout the OPD. Was this motherfucker also compromised? It appears so. Shortly after this investigation was dropped after budding head with Omaha mayor, Mike Boyle, Chief Wadman was fired for insubordination in November of 1996. Apparently, Boyle alleged that he had disagreed with Wadman and, In response, Wadman had him followed and harassed by, you know, police officers working in his fucking city, like the city he's mayor of.

But then, Wadman was mysteriously reinstated. And upon Wadman's reinstatement, as OPD chief, Larry King sent him a fabulous bouquet of flowers. Of course, flowers. So many flowers. He had the biggest flower budget of anybody ever. Might be nothing, might be yet another piece of a very interesting and troubling puzzle. In May of 1988 now, a very thin, 24-year-old man with dishwater blonde hair and a mustache standing approximately 5 foot 11 and weighing 150 pounds,

approached a 17-year-old girl working at an Omaha supermarket. The man introduced himself as Rusty Nelson. The fucking names are killing me. Rusty Nelson sounds like a euphemism for some sort of unnecessary and unwanted sex move involving a headlock variation and someone on their period.

Just, I don't want a Rusty Nelson, no! And he informed the girl he was a photographer. He told her that he was taking pictures for Easter seals and just happened to be looking for red-haired models. Gave her his card, proposed that she stopped by his studio for a photo shoot sometime. Later that day, the girl called Nelson, left a message on his answering machine.

He called her back almost immediately, and they set up an appointment. The girl requests that her mom accompany her, and Nelson said that was fine. Nelson's studio was located in the Twin Towers, a pair of luxury apartment buildings near downtown Omaha, and as they entered,

he offered both the mom and daughter, strawberries and champagne, as one does. Right? When you fucking have a 15-year-old girl come to your penthouse, you know, or whatever, your condo, your studio for a photo shoot, you give her and her mom strawberries and champagne immediately. And then things started to seem more off. The mom's first red flag shot up when Nelson disclosed that his, quote, boss kept the apartment well stocked because he initially said to her that he was self-employed.

So who's his boss? The mom and daughters spent the next five or so hours with Nelson. They became increasingly uncomfortable as Nelson made. repeated references to photographing the girl in her birthday suit in front of mom he's doing this. Imagine what he would have done if mom hadn't been around. As Nelson clicked away in his camera, the girl's mom started to peek at photographs scattered through his apartment and to her horror. She spotted several pornographic photos of girls who appeared as young to her as 12 years old. With that, mom decided it was time to have more of that champagne.

I mean, right? She can't handle this shit sober. No, she decided to leave to get the fuck out. And she called the police as soon as she got home. During the subsequent investigation, the owner of the Twin Towers told the police that Nelson resided in an apartment that was sublet to him by guess who rented it, guess who had a lease, yes, Larry King. If you guess Satan, that's close.

In addition to renting out that apartment, King also rented a penthouse in the Twin Towers, outfitted with lavish couches and large beds. All of this on less than $17,000 a year. By the end of June, 1988, Shannetta Moore's initial confessions at Richard Young Hospital had prompted a staff member named Dr. Schilling to phone the OPD. Officers soon arrived to the hospital to interview Moore, who had recently turned 15. They wanted to know, had Moore ever been photographed? And she said, yes, I have been many times, like photographed nude.

Moore told the officers that at the age of nine, she and a handful of other girls, had been transported from the girls' club to a studio and photographed naked. She said the adults who participated in photographing the children were the leaders of the girls' club. Fuck. She also indicated that other prominent individuals were involved, including doctors and lawyers, and Larry King. Specifically, she said the words Larry King, but not that Larry King. Actually, this Larry King.

A luxury you can't live without. A luxury I can't live without coffee. I really like good coffee. It's not a luxury. You can get it anywhere. I guess, yeah, like good coffee. What's my... I love coffee, too.

I like my socks. Socks. Your socks, would you put in your shoes? Yeah, I really love them. I like kind of like, you know, cozy feet. You're attracted to your socks. I'm attracted to really nice running socks. Like, I'm always looking for good running socks. That's not a luxury, though. Coffee and socks are not a luxury. All right, give me a luxury. What luxury should I have?

Private plane. Larry, I'm on duck tails. That was Larry King interviewing, former, you know, former TV interviewer, Larry King interviewing actor Danny Pouty. How did he not think that, what other kind of socks were? would there be other than socks for shoes. Also, Pat Sejack said to have been involved. Or maybe not. Maybe I made that up. Maybe, no, and maybe not that Larry King.

No, just our Larry King. But I kept thinking about the other Larry King this whole time and I had to make some kind of reference. In a follow-up conversation, Moore would say that she believed Larry King, bad Larry King, Hogskinner's son, not awkward TV interviewer who I never understood how he was so famous, was supporter and participant of both the child pornography and the devil's worship. She also talked about a sex and drug party

At one of King's residences Where she witnessed three or four teenage boys Performed oral sex on each other And I know this is fucked up And I apologize in advance And probably shouldn't share this out loud But my brain is so weird And I have been pretty exhausted

The past few days But my brain is so weird That when I first read that allegation My brain skipped over the trauma involved And got hung up on the numbers Just on the math When I read three or four I immediately thought

Well, obviously it was four not three because that's the only way the math checks out right it's that way with four two pairs of people can each blow each other and nobody's left out but then another even more horrific intrusive thought corrected the first one it was like no three still works uh you just wouldn't get to blow the person blowing you number one would blow number two while number two blew number three while number three blew number one like it was a perfect circle a human centipy but with dicks and not butts again i apologize I've just read about so much trauma that in moments, I'm so jaded.

It's like I forget what I'm actually reading about. And I just focus instead on weird phrases or other inconsequential peripheral details. Refocusing on what's important again. Moore said the residence was on Wirt Street in North Omaha, but she couldn't provide the exact address. This was not the only time. She was a bit vague and didn't provide police

with proper place or exact person to go investigate. In the report on the conversation, the officer wrote down that Moore became evasive and lacked specificity. I hate that word. Specificity. Fuck you. Specificity. There we go. Specificity. I figured it out, but I'll forget the next time I see it.

Which talked about King. Making it evident to him that she was reluctant to provide further details. So the big question here is, was she just scared or was she making parts of this up or making all of it up? Probably not all of it because officials who oversaw the state's foster care system were starting to hear more murmurs about King being a fucking creep, particularly executive director of the foster care review board, then 34-year-old Carol Stitt. Actually, Stitt had a previously heard of King. In December of 1987, Tasha Washington's DSS files had belatedly made their way to Stitt in the board, and she was horrified about how the Washington girls, all three of them had slipped through the cracks. At the end of January of 1988, Stitt had called an executive committee meeting of the board to discuss the DSS's findings. they decided to investigate all of the kids

who had passed through or were currently living out the web home, those allegedly super creepy foster parents connected to King. Within months of the board's executive committee meeting in January, additional accounts of Larry King's exploitation of children started to make their way to Stitt.

In early May, a DSS employee approached it and asked her point blank, Are you aware of Larry King and his activities with our children? A few weeks later, Kirsten Hallberg, and Stitt exchanged phone calls that intensified Stitt's concerns,

Hallberg, whom we met and talked about quite a bit previously, told Stitt about the girls at Utah Holly, who reported being amassed in some kind of child sexual exploitation ring. There was at least three girls there claiming that. Hallberg had added that a young man hospitalized that Richard Young also made allegations now of sexual abuse. The king had participated in to hospital personnel. And that wasn't even the craziest part.

Hallberg told Stitt that she had recently attended a child exploitation conference in Kansas City, and at that conference, a Kansas City Police Department detective approached her and inquired if and when Nebraska authorities were willing to address the Larry King child abuse issue. A lot of fucking smoke here. A lot. Way too much, it seems to me, for there not to be a fire. You know, who didn't know about Larry King? Carol Stitt felt that she could take this straight to the top.

On July 13, 1988, Stitt met with Nebraska governor K. Orr, and Orr directed her to take any necessary measures needed to investigate these allegations. Hell yeah, right? Sounds promising. Nope, she fucking gaslit her. Stid set up a second meeting with the governor to discuss the allegations further or inexplicably canceled and then never followed up

to set up another meeting. Remember when Larry King donated to K.O.R.'s re-election campaign? Huh, seems fucking suspicious now. Stitt then followed up by writing Nebraska's Attorney General, by writing Nebraska's Attorney General, Robert Spire, requested an investigation. Spire did not get back to her with anything promising, another dead.

Stitt kept pursuing the allegations and heard a stunning rumor. A lawyer named Dennis Carlson, who worked at the Nebraska Bar's counsel for discipline, told her that the investigation of King was, quote, super sensitive and being concealed from Chief Wadman because Chief Wadman and King were such good friends. This was seemingly confirmed for Carlson when Nebraska's assistant attorney general, William Howland, said that the Attorney General's office would have to oversee any investigation in the King's activities because the OPD, might be too compromised.

More suspicious connections. So fucking many. And I know it's getting hard to keep all these different people, you know, straight, by the way. But don't worry about that. Just focused on the totality of all the allegations, all the connections, all the, a lot of allegations made by, you know, people of note. That is what makes all of this so hard to dismiss, in my opinion. August and turned into September, September turned into October, and accuser, Sharnetta Moore's accusation still had not been interviewed by anybody else. Now that lawyer Dennis Carlson started to get, or now that lawyer, excuse me,

Dennis Carlson started to get suspicious. Was the AG's office also in on this and covering for King? When Dennis Carlson pressed, Assistant A.G. Howland for information, Howland said things were proceeding, but couldn't say more. To Dennis, that seemed to indicate that the FBI was getting involved. But were they going to get involved in a good, don't worry about it kind of way? Or in a bad, oh, they're going to cover this up because too many important people, including members of the FBI, are implicated kind of way.

Well, seemingly the latter. An OPD in our office communication to Chief Wadman would say that the head of the robbery and sexual assault unit assembled the units officers and told them that the feds had ordered the OPD to, quote, slow down or back off the Larry King investigation. Wadman, of course, would claim that such a meeting never happened. So the plot just continues to thicken. Then on November 22nd, Dennis Carlson talked with an OPD officer who said that the OPD had undergone reorganization and that the King investigation was still active.

but was it really? Sure didn't seem like it. Despite various sources alleging King's use and abuse of children and Julie Walter's report being circulated amongst at least three branches of the state's law enforcement, Ulyss Washington, the first victim I spoke about in-depth, the poor girl given to that bat-shit crazy foster couple, along with her two sisters, had yet to be interviewed by anyone in an official capacity, right?

The claims of her two sisters also not being followed up on. The feds would then shut down the Franklin Credit Union, Friday, November 4th, 1988. But not for the reason you might think. Indeed, the Fed said that they initially closed their credit union because of vague, financially unsound practices, making it seem like the situation could be fixed, and that everything could go back to normal soon. King expressed that as well. We will take immediate action to determine the facts and to decide on the appropriate response.

He said at a press conference, the day after Franklin was closed. My brain made him say all that in the same kind of cadence he would sing with. at the Star-Spangled Banner. We will take media action. That's probably annoying. On Monday, employees of the National Credit Union administration set up shop at Omaha's federal courts building as hundreds of bewildered Franklin depositors gathered to file claims to try to get their stolen money back.

Meanwhile, World Herald ran an article commenting on the vital role Franklin served for Omaha's underprivileged community and quoted a depositor saying, they have given strong support to the poor, the disabled, and single parents. But also stole tens of millions of dollars from the poor. Things would soon go from bad to worse for the credit union. Just a week after Franklin's closing, the feds acknowledged that $30 million had vanished, a figure that would soon climb higher, quite a bit higher, so much money, and that Franklin had been hawking illegitimate high-interest CDs from coast to coast.

Shortly after the feds announced the missing $30 million, they said that Larry King, hog Skinner's son, kept a second set of books. The feds then announced that Larry King had taken at least $34 million and still counting. Where had the money gone? On November 18, 1988, Nebraska's politicians would get involved. Unique in the U.S., Nebraska has a single chamber system. An amendment passed in the 1930s, discarded the state's House of Representatives

and created the unicameral consisting of 49 senators from 49 legislative districts, no lower House of Representatives. These 49 senators now unanimously approve legislative resolution 5, which called for an investigation into the credit union's failure. Senator Lauren Schmidt, who chaired the Unicameral's banking committee, drafted Resolution 5, assuming that what was going on at Franklin was just another mundane instance of financial fraud in the banking industry. Schmidt would soon find out it was not that at all. It was connected to so much more. Shortly after the Franklin Committee formed to investigate the credit union, Schmidt received a an anonymous phone call.

The caller urged Smith not to pursue the investigation into Franklin under the auspices of being a good Republican because he said it would, quote, reach the highest levels of the Republican Party. How many kids was Ronald Reagan fucking? Or was it Nancy? Was Nancy Reagan? A satanic kid fucker. That sick, bobble-headed bitch.

Just say no. Just say no to fucking kids, Nancy. You creep. How about that? How about just say no? fucking kids. How about you stop pegging the kids, Nance? How about you stop dressed up like a witch, but like a witch that only wears leather, but not much of it. Leather outside of the silicone ball gag and butt plug. And how about you stop taking kids for trips in your magic broom,

quote, unquote, which is your pegging dick stick, Nancy. A quick actual sex rumor about Nancy Reagan. According to Kitty Kelly's best-selling biography of Nancy Reagan, Nancy, quote, was renowned in Hollywood for performing oral sex. back in the days before her last name was Reagan, back when she was Nancy Davis, again according to Kitty, she was known to give the best blowjob in Tintletown. Quote,

not only in the evening, but in offices. That was one of the reasons that she was very popular on the MGM studio lot. That's the fucking quote. Search Nancy Reagan's throat goat, and you will find more information.

The video for that little Diddy was nothing but Nancy Reagan clips. Refocusing once again, more information about King would make its way to the Unicameral. On December 12th, 1988, the Unicameral's executive board had a closed door meeting where North Omaha Democratic Senator Ernie Chambers

brought up the foster care review boards, information, and discussed how law enforcement had neglected to investigate the sexual abuse allegations. All right, disgusting. Disgusting. How dare that dangerous America-hating radical leftists want to hold anybody accountable for pedophilia? or at least for protecting pedophiles. It's not American.

Then out of nowhere, the FBI would take control. Shonnetta Moore would be the first victim to be interviewed by the FBI and the Nebraska State Police. Their tactics were questionable. Moore had spent five months at Richard Young Hospital before being discharged to the care of her mom. At the time, Moore's mom, excuse me, was staying with her grandma in North Omaha, and factored a few blocks from King's Wirt Street residence. For some reason, though, the FBI wanted to re-hospitalize her before interviewing her. which more understandably did not want.

And this is absurd. Why did this happen? She would be committed again to Richard Young Hospital against her wishes. The psychiatrist who admitted Moore then ordered that Moore was to have no contact with her previous caregivers, including Kirsten Hallberg, odd. I mean, maybe on one level, this is understandable. Perhaps they thought Kirsten was feeding her information. Wanted to make sure that more what she was saying came from her own experiences.

Perhaps they were trying to prevent any satanic panic nonsense from going on. But then another odd thing would happen. The day of Moore's initial interview by the FBI and the police, state police, Nebraska, excuse me, December 19th, 1988, Hallberg received an anonymous phone call. You and your friend are doing the wrong thing trying to bust up my boy, Larry King. Now it's too late. Now I'm turning into a bloodhound. That's all the caller said. What?

I wonder how mad somebody calling with a weird threat like that would get if instead of getting scared or getting angry, you just reacted by playing very, dumb. You act like they literally were turned into a dog in that scenario. And you just had a lot of questions about it. Whoa. What? Seriously. Right now? Right now you turn into a bloodhound? How do you know? Like, do you have a tail?

Did your ears just get long, floppy? What happened? Which curse? Somebody used a genie wish against you? Did you eat something that did that? Bad shellfish? You know, maybe. Something related to a nut allergy. Hello? Hello? Maybe some version of that would be a way to get like a stalker,

some kind of psycho just to leave you alone. And I'd just be so weird when they contact you that they don't want to talk to you ever again. They don't want to ever see you again. I'm going to fucking kill you, you stupid bitch. You'll never hear me coming. You'll never be safe. Probably a library, though.

What? The fuck do you say? Probably a library, though. No, I fucking know what you just said, but that doesn't mean me any sense. What does that mean? I'd hear you coming. A library.

It's quiet. What the fuck are you talking about? The library is quiet. I hear you coming. You know, you probably wouldn't get me there. Oh, you think it's a fucking joke now? You think it's a fucking joke? We'll see who's laughing when I slit your fucking throat.

I mean, you obviously. What? Well, I mean, I can't laugh. My throat slit. I wouldn't have the air to make the sound. So you'll be laughing. That scenario, I guess, you know. Maybe.

I don't know what would make you laugh. I'd probably do like a weird dance or mime something. don't know. You probably have to do a weird. Stop saying confusing shit. Sorry, I just meant if my throat was slit and I wanted to make you laugh, I couldn't tell you a joke because I wouldn't have air to talk. So I'd have to use my body to shut the fuck up. God damn it. I just come over here and kill you right fucking now. Because I could, you know, right now. I could come over there. I could be on you in seconds. Hey, hey, say something. Oh, sorry, you told me shut the fuck up. I was trying to respect your wishes. I don't know. I can't. I can't. I can't.

can't find anywhere. I think you're lying. Could you move so I can see you? What? You said you kill me in a second so you got to be close, but I've been walking around outside my place. I can't find you. Why would you fucking, why would you want to find me? Because I give you a hug. Maybe we could talk and have a drink. You sound like you could use that. I feel bad if you genuinely. And scene. That probably went on way too long. I got a little bit lost in that. But you get it. Anyway, Richard Young. More was first visited by Douglas County Attorney and an individual on the hospital staff who made it clear to her that she would not be allowed to go home if she did not talk to the FBI agents. And that's crazy. When the agents got there, it felt to her like they were

deliberate trying to keep her off balance, trip her up, using tactics like promising they would not interrupt her when she began to tell her story, then quickly interrupting her. As a result, according to Moore, there was discrepancies in her story. She initially described five homicides to Richard Young Hospital personnel, but she only described three to the FBI, as she claimed because they were rushing her. FBI agents then knocked on Opel Washington's front door on December 28th, looking for Eulis, Tracy, and Tasha. The children's grandma would also later report feeling intimidated by these investigators

to the point that she would not initially let them into her house. Instead of arranging another time and location to meet, the agents wedged themselves through her front door and aggressively pressed her to provide the whereabouts of her granddaughters, which she would not give them. She told the FBI agents that if they wanted to meet with her granddaughters, she would have to meet with Senator Ernie Chambers first before she talked further with them.

Instead of accepting that, the NSP and FBI tracked down Ulyss the following day and according to Ulyss grilled her for three to four hours. They then had her come to Omaha's FBI field office the next day where they grilled her for an additional three to four hours. Despite feeling harassed by these agents, even though she's the victim, Ulyss's story stayed the same.

Right? The story was that her foster parents abused her. They got child porn from Larry King, that her foster dad raped her, that Larry King raped her, brought her around for others to rape at these parties. Meanwhile, the unicameral went into regular session on January 7th, 1988, and Schmidt's legislative resolution 5 was again ratified January 10th. The new Franklin Committee would have a sweeping mandate to determine what happened, how it happened,

who was involved, and what could or should have been done, and by whom to prevent it, not only when it came to the fraud, but the sexual abuse allegations as well. Schmidt was named the subcommittee's chair and chambers, its vice chair, a conservative corn farmer and a liberal city slicker, having to work together to figure out what the hell is going on. The committee would soon name Lincoln-based attorney Keith Naylor as his chief counsel. And what Naylor would find, as he investigated, was extremely troubling. He wrote to the committee in February of 1989,

what appears to be documented cases of child abuse and sexual abuse dating back several years with no enforcement action taken by the appropriate agencies is mind-boggling. The information that became public in 1988 relative to Larry King's family connections with one of the principles is a cause for further concern. And yet, the FBI didn't seem to think so. A February 5th, 1989, World Herald article by James Allen Flannery quoted the FBI's Nick O'Hara, who said that the FBI had maybe one or two follow-up interviews to conduct, but after dozens of interviews, he concluded that there was no substance to the initial allegations. They said they only had one or two follow-up interviews left, but with the first of the following.

when they said that, they still had not interviewed Larry King, the prime suspect. The article also gave King and Barbara Webb the supposedly evil foster mom an opportunity to defend themselves. It's all hearsay and it's all garbage, said King. Barbara would say of the Washington sisters, they are not telling the truth, we don't know anything about this. FBI agents and NSP would, in fact, finally interview King and his word street residence February 10th, 1989. After the Red King, his Miranda rights, a seemingly benign chat ensued. where King denied everything, the transport of children, kiddie porn, drug involvement, even homosexuality.

Overall, King adamantly maintained that he had never, quote, throw nasty parties at the Twin Towers. He said the closest one of his swaleys ever came to depravity was when he had hired a couple of belly dancers for his birthday party two years earlier. How are they not falling up with how the fuck do you even own a place at the Twin Towers and have money to throw a party at $17,000 a year? He owned up to a subletting to Twin Towers apartment to Rusty Nelson

and that Nelson might have accompanied him to New York on a business trip. He said that Nelson was, quote, mentally deranged. Then why the fuck you bring him around? Why was he an openly gay bar bouncer, someone not part of the very politically conservative, this man's known social circle? Why was he traveling with King on a business trip? Why did he have multiple phone numbers for King?

Why did King buy him tens of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and shit? He didn't seem to supply an answer to questions like that because no one fucking asked him. King then said that he was a good thing. friend of World Herald publisher Harold Anderson, OPD Chief Wadman, and Nebraska Attorney General Spire. But because of the unsavory rumors, he said nobody wanted to acknowledge their friendship with him or to admit that they had attended his fabulous parties. Was he saying that to insinuate that if they dig deeper and find unsavory shit about his parties, they will not be only implicating

him, but also some of their bosses? He next said that even some FBI agents had frequented his parties in the past, and then he proceeded to stare down one of the FBI agents questioning him, one of the FBI agents present, and named him as one of the attendees. Balsy move. Take me down. I take you down. Your move agent. It's like a movie. King concluded the interview by saying that he never lied and that he would be more than willing to take a polygraph, but they would never give him one. In June, the Franklin Committee issued a subpoena that required assistant attorney General Howland to give over any report relating to the investigation, but the Attorney General's office refused to honor the subpoena. They said they couldn't give them the files because somebody else

at the Attorney General's office already had them. What? So many things are happening that wreak of a lot of people being involved in some type of conspiracy. As the Attorney General's office, Stonewall the committee and the OPD, NSP, and FBI declared that the King-related child abuse allegations had no substance, despite the fact that there sure seemed to be a lot of substance, residents of Omaha began to look on all of this in horror, right? Is nobody going to do anything? Some of them formed a group called concerned parents over this. Initially, its members met at an Omaha church

and did only attract a trickle of attendees at first, but as the cover-up of King's activities intensified, their ranks started to swell. On June 22nd, 1989, the Franklin Committee held public hearings. In the weeks leading up to this, Senator Lauren Schmidt would get anonymous calls, threatening that his kids would be orphans unless he stopped investigation.

but to his credit he still went ahead with it. The hearing would subpoena the foster care review boards, Carol Stitt, Dennis Carlson, Attorney General Spire, assistant attorney general Howland, and several investigators for testimony. The OPD officers would finally admit during questioning that they hadn't ever interviewed a single victim. What the fucking fuck?

This is absurd. Then soon after the hearing, lawyer Kirk Naylor, recently assigned to be chief investigator into the Franklin scandal, would abruptly resign. The rumor was somebody scared him, away. His replacement would be John Stevens Berry, and he did actually seem to get some shit done. Barry and his law firm quickly negotiated the committee's access to the previously withheld Nebraska Attorney General's reports and to the financial records of Larry King

and the credit unit impounded by the NCUA. Barry did something else as well. He hired Gary Caradori, the CEO of the Lincoln-based Kara Corp Incorporated, which provided a wide array of security and investigative services to assist with the investigation, a group where there was no rumors of them having been compromised. So we're getting outside investigative help now because all of the local law enforcement agencies seem to be compromised. On August 21st, Caradori and his team pledged into the Franklin investigation. It was hard to shock this veteran investigator, a guy who had run a detective agency

for decades, but the Franklin investigation would indeed shock him. Caridore's wife, Sandy, a middle school English teacher, was soon approached by an old family friend who used to work for Lincoln Telephone. and that friend warned them that their phones had secretly been tapped. Gary already suspected that because when he arranged meetings over the phone, FBI agents would already be at the designated place when he got there. He's not a suspect in anything. That's fucking crazy and so suspicious that the FBI has tapped his phone.

A subpoena was served on Lincoln Telephone, but then the company refused to honor it. On September 14th, 1989, while Carradori and his wife were out with friends and their two sons were at home sleeping, somebody broke into their house about 10 p.m. Caradori's oldest son heard the family's dogs barking, then he heard a door being opened and then slammed. But he never saw the trespasser. Caradory filed a trespassing report with the Lincoln Police Department, but the intruder was never apprehended in the crime seemingly never investigated.

Gary would continue with the investigation and find some important evidence. He found receipts that revealed that King chartered Lear jets on an almost weekly basis. That led him to a pilot who informed Caradori that he had piloted King, two teenage boys, and a teenage girl to L.A. recently. Why the fuck is the married manager of a local Omaha credit union traveling with three minors who are not his children to L.A. on a private jet? Another charter plane service would hand over its records to him, itineraries listing numerous children. Children, again, not related to one Larry King, children whose names had already surfaced

previously during this investigation, the investigation into Larry being a creep. then while Caradori scanned the itineraries, he came across one name, or I'm sorry, one file that had a sticker on it denoted a previous FBI inquiry. The FBI had looked into all of this, or at least part of it, but never opened a formal investigation. Shady as fuck. Making it much more shady. Caridori was now slapped with a federal subpoena that demanded he surrender Franklin evidence to the FBI, everything he had accumulated. They wanted to know what he'd found. weeks later he would see the files at a committee hearing,

except this time all the incriminating information relating to the interstate transportation of children he had found, that's fucking gone. He claimed that shit had been deleted. So much Epstein investigation vibes. Then Caradori would hear about an interesting case making its way through the courts. On September 22nd, 1989, a Douglas County judge imposed an exceedingly harsh three to four-year sentence on 21-year-old Alicia Owen for two bad check convictions. the respective amounts of those two checks, less than $800 or the total amount.

This was interesting to Caradori because Alicia Owen, one of the names he had written down because it was on one of those chartered flight itineraries. At least one. On October 30th, Gary made his way to the Nebraska facility for women at York at York to interview her. What he found was not a hardened criminal. Owen stood 5'4, weighed about 150 pounds in her brown state-issued prison garb. she had a thick mane, a curly brown hair, and hazel eyes, her rounded face, tentative voice, and mannerisms had the qualities of a timid teenager, even though she had turned 21 the month before.

She was initially very hesitant to discuss her past, but Caridori persuaded her to get into it. And she told him that she came from a deeply religious family. Her parents, Al and Donna, had been married nearly 25 years. Al was the owner of a small construction company. The couple had four kids, with Alicia being the second oldest. Owen's parents enrolled her in a strict parochial school, which she attended for from kindergarten through sixth grade. Then she would go to a public school

from seventh grade onward. At the age of 13 or so, Owen said she started to develop a rebellious streak. And that was what prompted her to scent into a series of illicit activities. She said she was 14 when she allegedly met a group of boys' town students, including a guy named Jeff Hubble at an outdoor dance in August of 1983.

Hubble invited Owen to the party, a party the following Friday night, promising that there would be cocaine and alcohol. On Friday night, Hubble and a friend picked up Owen. drove her to the Twin Towers. They arrived at the party between 9.30 and 10 p.m. And then it was not the kind of high school party, Alicia expected. She said the living room had a fully stocked bar, plush furniture,

a big screen TV, right at this fucking Twin Towers place. We've been here before in the story because King has two spots there. She said on the big screen TV, a porno was playing featuring two dudes fucking each other who looked like they were underage. Lines of Coke were splayed on a mirrored table next to a maroon couch, the living room's large windows offered a spectacular view of downtown Omaha. She remembered the party's guests not typical for a high school party. She said they looked like it was around 20 minors and six adults.

These adults watched the minors play the so-called 501 game, as in Levi 501s, which involved the minors unbuttoning each other's jeans using only their teeth and their toes. By the time Alicia Owen got home at 1.30 a.m., she didn't know what the fuck to think. But intrigued, next Friday, she would end up going back. At that second party, Owen said she became extremely drunk, drinking champagne and shots of cognac, as the kids again played the 501 game. And this time she joined in.

At one point, she said she stood up and stumbled towards the bathroom, accidentally entered one of the bedrooms instead, where she saw a young boy who she said looked like he was in his early teens, sucking Larry King's dick. Still, despite seeing that, she would attend her third party at the Twin Towers three weeks later. And if you're like, why the fuck is she going back again? Well, because she's 14. Were you making a lot of great decisions of 14? I wasn't.

Were you drawn to things that were taboo at that age? I was. I would have probably went back too. Especially if some cute girl I liked would have asked me to, and I thought my parents would never find out. At this third party, the 14-year-old Alicia Owen said she had sex with an older man named Rob. And who was Rob? Well, she claimed she later realized this was Omaha Police Chief,

Robert Watman, one of fucking Larry King, best buds. And he was allegedly apparently very interested in continuing to see this 14-year-old girl. Wobman would allegedly go on to buy her address. And after picking her up from school one day, he took her to a French restaurant where the staff brought them down to the basement. He told her to put on the dress, then pulled down his pants and started to jerk off. Can this fucking shit be real? At her next Twin Towers party, three weeks later, Owen said she decided that was it. She was getting out. But when she tried to, you know, leave, you know, Larry King threatened her, threatened her life and the lives of her family members.

Owen said she then began to meet with Wadman on sporadic Wednesday afternoons, engaging in group sexual encounters, and also flew with Larry King to L.A. and to Kansas City, where she was forced to have sex with still other older men. She claimed she would stay in this pedophile ring for the rest of her high school career, and that after she had officially aged out of the ring's business, she was then brought in on drug trafficking, which was how she ended up writing all those bad checks. Caradori would have two more interviews with Owen on November 7th and November 21st. And as crazy as some of her claims seem,

a 22-year-old named Troy Boner. I had told you. I fucking told you Boner was showing up. And I read some court transcripts. His last name is legitimately Boner. Boner would subsequently verify Owen's account, including graphic descriptions of extremely sadistic child sex orgies that corresponded to the abuse endured by Owen.

For example, Troy talked about a party at the Woodrow him in Tower, where he alleged that he was forced to suck his best friend Danny King's dick. Danny not related to Larry King. Troy also said that Larry King then fucked him anally and then put a cigarette out on his ass when he was done. This shit is so insane. Sadly, though, these witness statements were not the smoking gun the investigator was hoping

for. There were a number of discrepancies concerning the dates and precise locations of the events they mentioned. Could mean they were lying. Could also mean they were seriously traumatized, serially sexually sexually, sexually, and abused kids with undeveloped brains who understandably got very upset about, you know, rehashing these events

and messed up some details. And I will say when it comes to kids and like, you know, like, where if something happened, you know, the exact date, the exact place. If you don't have kids, maybe don't understand, but like talking to my teenagers, they don't fucking pay attention. They hop in a car, they go somewhere. They don't think anything of it.

You know, if I ask them later, yeah, but where were you guys? I don't know. I think maybe this place or, wait, maybe it could have been that place. and not like a sneaky way. And it genuinely like, I don't know, I was in the back seat fucking not paying attention

looking on my phone kind of way. Her brains are all over the place. Hurting their credibility. Owen had admitted to drug and alcohol abuse during her teenage years and Boner was a self-confessed drug addict. So somebody thought, you know, some thought maybe they'd gotten things mixed up.

Caradori didn't personally doubt their stories, though, but he knew their accounts would be easy to dismiss by a jury. Their accounts did give him more incentive to push further in his investigation, though. And by mid-December of 1989, Caradori had accrued approximately 21 hours of victim testimony. As the Franklin committee members were confronted with Caridori's mounting evidence,

they became increasingly perplexed about where to turn because of the growing distrust of state and federal and local law enforcement agencies due to who the accounts pointed out. I mean, who do you turn to when person after person implicated, right, leads back to Larry King and leads to just, you know, more people in local law enforcement. On December 18, 1989, the Franklin Committee held a press conference in Lincoln, announcing they would hand over their 21 hours of videotape testimony to Nebraska's Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney for Nebraska. In an open letter, it added,

the members of the committee are dismayed by the fact that no state or federal investigative bodies interviewed any of the witnesses we have, even though they were discovered by our investigative efforts after a fairly short time and with a very small budget. The committee submitted the footage December 27, 1989. Attorney General Robert Spire and U.S. Attorney Robert Lawner's now forced to act since no longer had the luxury of saying the allegations were baseless. And they would or at least pretend to. They promised they would act. In addition to pledging immediate action by the Nebraska State Police, Spire called upon the Douglas County judges to impanel a grand jury to probe the child abuse abuse allegations.

But then that would not happen. The investigation would be squashed again. On January 17, 1990, top officials from the U.S. attorney's office, Nebraska Attorney General's office, FBI, NSP, and OPD, met to discuss the Franklin investigation. Why the fuck are all these groups meeting about this? Why doesn't the investigation proceed in a very straightforward way? In my mind, there's just one answer to that question because the people implicated are powerful and connected, because they have powerful political connections, Epstein-level connections. At this meeting, the FBI played its federal

Trump card. The FBI would conduct the impending investigation and interview the victims, but only on FBI terms. On January 18, 1990, parsing response to this John DeCamp sent a memo to reporters at the World Herald and Lincoln Journal stating that the public is rapidly losing faith in its fundamental institutions of government because of the way law enforcement entities have conducted their investigations into the allegations. And who is John DeCamp? How is he involved? Well, a highly decorated Vietnam vet, DeCamp had made a name for himself by organizing Operation Baby Lift as a civilian in 1975, in which he had spearheaded evacuating almost 3,000 orphaned Vietnamese children from the war-torn country. DeCamp had begun his election campaign for the Nebraska State Senate

while still stationed Vietnam. He was elected, served four terms as a Nebraska state senator from 1971 to 1987, during which he primarily positioned himself as a strong advocate for veterans. The first event that led to his involvement with his Franklin bullshit was DeCamp being Senator Lauren Schmidt's personal attorney. When Schmidt turned to him for legal, he was he was legal advice about it all, the camp suggests that Smith approach FBI agent Nick O'Hara. DeCamp accompanied Smith to the Omaha FBI where Schmidt initially had a one-on-one with O'Hara. The camp then joined them, and as he would allege, O'Hara gave both men a grave warning. He contended that anybody who cast aspersions on police chief Robert Wadman's character

would be subjected to the full wrath of the FBI. Why the fuck are they threatening him? the second event was the publishing of a Lincoln Journal article titled Franklin Witness says DeCamp offered to help in suing state police state comma police. It reported that DeCamp had out of the blue volunteered to represent Shonnetta Moore, quoting her as saying he wants to sue the police department and the state for like negligence. When the article had called him for comment, DeCamp had explicitly said to the reporter that Moore had originally phoned him. But the article would say it was the other way around. Even worse, although more ultimately opted not to retain DeCamp, a week after the article appeared, the Nebraska Bar Association informed DeCamp that his license to practice law was under investigation

because he may have attempted to solicit legal business in an illegal way. DeCamp was fucking pissed. He felt they slanted him on purpose, they twisted his words on purpose, now he decided to publicly lay his accusations out on the table. The so-called DeCamp memo called out Larry King and four other prominent Nebraskaans as, quote, the centerpieces in a coordinated program of child abuse. DeCamp insisted the names in his memo were not garnered through the committee, nor had he watched Caradori's videotapes and said he would say that the five names were part of a ubiquitous buzz in Omaha bars and coffee shops and on the city's street corners that had been going on for years, even though the names had been quietly and carefully covered up by the press.

And then before everyone could react to this, who would show up at President George H.W. Bush. Bush rolled into town to speak at a February 7th, 1990 fundraiser for Governor or a fellow Republican. Larry King considered the president a personal friend and proudly displayed a picture himself and Bush at the Franklin Credit Union. King now planned to attend the Bush or fundraiser. Excuse me, but in Secret Service discovered King's plan. They quickly rerouted him to the courthouse, where magistrate cop ordered King to undergo a mental health evaluation at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, with no delay. King waved a hearing on Koff's ruling.

This is all very weird. And immediately found himself en route to Springfield. So now he's leaving the state in the custody of two U.S. Marshals. Cop's preemptive decision on King's mental health made without a motion from fucking anybody was extremely atypical. And the magistrate did not feel inclined to explain or defend his ruling. When questioned about his decree, he simply stated the decision speaks for itself. The outspoken Senator Ernie Chambers who had resigned from the Franklin committee the previous July thinking it was just a bunch of bullshit, they weren't doing anything,

would now think that he knew why this happened. Powerful people at the national level, Chambers surmised, have more to gain by Larry King being eliminated than standing trial. People have sufficient power to cause him to be sent to Springfield in the first place. So, read, powerful kid fuckers don't want to be caught for kid fucking, so they make sure this dude will never go to trial by using every legal maneuver at their disposal, even ones whose legality is questionable at best. Springfield's chief psychiatries

diagnosed King with a probable delusional paranoid disorder. Grandios type. This is out of nowhere. King was returned to Omaha on March 18th and roughly two weeks later, again March before Magistrate Kopp. Koppembraced his diagnosis

of a probable delusional paranoid disorder. No one's talked about his mental health before in a negative way, other than he's a fucking pervert, and ruled that King's, quote, intellectual system of grandiosity leads to disorganization of thought processes which gravely impairs the ability

of Mr. King to withstand a lengthy trial. In other words, King is just suddenly declared out of nowhere unfit for trial. Also, the judge completely seals his psychiatric report. Right? The shady shit just keeps pointing to a massive cover-up. U.S. District Judge William Cambridge

would then rule that King be taken, quote, forthwith to a different U.S. medical facility in Rochester, Minnesota. bizarrely, U.S. attorney, launers, who would have been part of the prosecution against Larry King, if he would have went to trial, did not object to Cambridge's maneuver and actually seemed to be thrilled by this chain of events. That reaction is far from normal. It is in the best interest of the defendant to get back into treatment, remarked Launers.

Fucking, who was not in this motherfucker's pocket? King would now get to enjoy a five-month sabbatical at the U.S. medical facility in Rochester, Minnesota as a pre-trial detainee. While psychiatrists were diagnosing King as delusional, Omaha World's columnist Peter Citron, alleged by the victim to have been at many of King's parties, would be at the epicenter of a second surprise. At approximately 6 p.m. on February 22nd, 1990, OPD officers converged on the 50-year-old Citron at Omaha's Oxarbon horse racing track, Oxarbon, and he was arrested for the

felonious sexual assault of two kids. Citrin's charges stemmed, not from the Franklin pedophile ring, though, but from his sexual molestation of two boys ages 11 and 13, who lived in his neighborhood, and he was arrested. and did, quote, chores for him. Allegations of him fucking abuse and other kids related to Franklin, those just go nowhere. On the night of Citrin's arrest, the OPD executed a search warrant at his home.

The OPD officers who raided Citrin's house found assorted assortment of 8mm films, videos, pictures, and magazines. Citrin's prize kiddie porn collection included magazines with the following titles. Young boys and masturbation, Chicken Little, naked boyhood, Boyland, Young and Ready,

boy heat Like young Young boys in Falay show Teenage masturbation Young boys in sex play Oh boy Kids

Naked boyhood Boys boys boys And young boys in sodomy For fuck sake So disturbing that there is so much Demand for shit related to kid fucking There's a variety Of underground magazines

Also hate that my brain Is now thinking about How these magazines Might have a lot Like full page ads You know Like are they set up like regular magazines? I doubt

it probably just you know probably no ads in those but why my brain wants there to be ads which would mean that there was an ads team you know working for these magazines people handling you know random business inquiries so uh so you want a full page color cross promo ad okay for kit cats and uh dodge ram b series vans that's correct and uh you want to have a photo of said van next to a next to a school uh with a guy holding a kit cat bar in the words uh written as if it's a math equation across the bottom to say Kit Kat plus Ram tough equals sexy brat plus butt stuff. Is that right? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, we can run it across two magazines for one month for $5,000 or a little more bang for your buck. Three magazines for the same month for $6,000. I'd recommend Boy Heat, Chicken Little, Young Boys and Sodomy,

are three most popular titles. Definitely our best deal. I'd love to save you some money if I can. Yeah, this is so disturbing. It's so fucking insane. There are actual monsters like this in real life. I just fucked up jokes in books and movies. And it's insane that this arrest with all these fucking videotapes and shit will not lead to other members being arrested of a supposed ring. Like who, there had to be other people taking these fucking videos.

I don't know. The next day, Citron pled not guilty to the charges. Also maintained to the press that he was arrested, that what he was arrested for had nothing to do with the wider Franklin scandal. That's weird that he, uh, is just fucking volunteering that. Nobody in any official capacity disagreed with him, despite the fact that he was a noted ally and, you know,

good friend of kings. In the end, Citron would be allowed to plead no contest, did two counts of felony child molestation, which he said he did in order to save himself in the boys, the trauma of trial. Yeah, he did it for the boys. To save the boys, he was fucking, the trauma of going to trial and talking about him fucking them.

Is it illegal to say that reading about this makes me think about Epstein, which makes me want a huge sinkhole to open up somewhere beneath a certain very important building in Washington, D.C. And when that sinkle collapses, it fucking kills everyone in that building. I don't think that's illegal, just to want a natural event like that to happen. Under the terms of Citrin's plea agreement, he would also be absolved of additional charges stemming from the OPD seizure of his huge cash of child porn.

That's fucking weird. They just let him walk away from that, right? Probably because that would incriminate other fucking people. Following his plea, Citrum was sentenced to between three, Oh, and eight years in prison for two counts of child molest. So he molesting these two kids has all this fucking child porn. Videos of so many other kids and, you know, let's give him three years. Meanwhile, even though his main suspect was scrawled away, Gary Caradori still investigating.

By the time of Larry King, convenient hospitalization and Citrin's arrest and then fucking weird charges, Caradori found himself treading a treacherous minefield that required him to navigate, tapped phones, repeated intimidation, harassment of victims and witnesses, and himself and his family. And it was about to get even harder for him. to investigate. In February, Caracorp, Caridore's investigation and security company, was slapped with its first federal subpoena. The subpoena ordered Caracorp to surrender every single shred of its evidence regarding individuals named in the DeCamp memo. What the fuck? Somehow Omaha's KMTV Channel 3 obtained a copy of the subpoena and broadcast excerpts of it. The subpoena would be the first of many leaks

that state and federal law enforcement would pin on Caradori and the Franklin Committee. Now let's talk about some attacks on victims. March 5th, 1990, a victim named Danny King. Once again, no relation to Larry. A victim who had said he had been on several of the flights Alicia Owen told investigators about and the kid who Troy Boner claimed he was forced to give a blowjob to, started to recant his story. Danny now said that he had made the whole thing up in conjunction with Troy Boner. The FBI debriefing of Troy's interview would state that the motives behind Boner's actions were to sue Larry King, so Boner and Danny King would, quote, get a lot of money.

And that Alicia Owen had lied about her story to, quote, get herself. out of jail. Could be true, I guess. Or the FBI or other nefarious characters pressured him into taking back his statements. Troy Boner would later say that the FBI had came after them. According to a later 1993 affidavit of Boners, after Danny King recanted FBI agent subjected Boner to a torrent of threats and he ultimately concluded that he must either, quote, lie or die.

Originally by March 20th, 1990, he had recanted his story to and then included a news story about Gary Caradori. As Troy told it at the time, Gary had pitched him on a scheme, said that Larry King and his company were terrible men anyway, and that Caradori would help owners sue them for millions of dollars

and also help get a friend out of jail because why not? Yeah, great story. This was supposedly why Troy gave his statement. A statement supposedly fed to him by Caradori after cross-referencing with Alicia Owen's story. So whose idea was it to pin the blame on Caradori? That's unclear.

Alicia Owen, however, doesn't seem to make all this. stuff add up because she would refuse to break and change her story. On April 10th, York's Visitors Register would show that the FBI agents paid a final visit to her. She said the FBI made her a very attractive offer. If she

recanted her story and told their story, she would be granted freedom, but she refused. Then, just like with the subpoena on Caracorp, Gary's 21 hours of victim testimony inexplicably ended up at an Omaha TV station, even though it was supposed to be with the Attorney General's office. The other stations

in Omaha also acquired Caradore. tapes and they became quite a spectacle on Omaha nightly news, stories of trauma repeated over and over, you know, to be dissected by people who for the most part did not believe them thought their tales were too outlandish. This was nothing short of a catastrophe for any hopes of prosecuting these fuckers, these alleged fuckers, because now new victims almost certainly will not come forward, and they didn't. Not in any large number. Still, Gary would not give up.

By May of 1990, Caradori had compiled a lead list of 271 people. who may have been victims, perpetrators or witnesses of child abuse, related to this Franklin conspiracy. He then gave this list to the Franklin Committee so they would start the process of formally tracking down and interviewing them. That same month, Caradori managed to videotape a fourth victim, Paul Bonassi, whose name he had gleaned from a member of concerned parents, that a group that formed in response to all this, the response to the police not doing shit about it. The now-22-year-old Bonassi was incarcerated at the Lincoln Correctional Center.

In November, within weeks of Franklin's fall, he had been charged with two counts, a sexual assault on a child. His victims were two boys, 13 and 9, right, a case of the victim becoming the assailant. Benasi, like Alicia Owen, claimed that shortly before his incarceration, he was warned to make himself scarce and to talk to no one.

After Benassi's arrest, the court appointed a psychiatrist, Dr. Beverly Mead, to determine if Benassi was a mentally disordered sex offender. Mead would interview Benassi six times and conclude in April of 1990 that Benassi was not a mentally disorder, but rather that he did suffer from multiple personality disorder or MP.

M. P. D. Mead felt the, quote, principal personality Paul has, has no wish to molest children, is quite religious, and is not inclined to have homosexual interests. So how had Paul gotten this way? If he was that way. Now known as D.I.D., disassociative identity disorder, MPD, a very controversial diagnosis. Born in the Omaha area, the Nassi, the second youngest of six kids. His parents divorced when he was a toddler, and he had minimal contact with his biological dad when he was growing up. His mother's second husband, a allegedly repeatedly beat Bonassi and his siblings. In fact, he told Dr. Mead that he remembered his stepdad chopping up the kid's toys with an axe. Bonassi's mom and her second husband divorced after he severely battered her, and her third husband would mostly ignore the kids. At the age of nine or ten,

Bonassi claimed he turned to drugs and child prostitution at the age of nine or ten when his, quote, friends showed him a park where pedophiles cruised for kids. There, Benassi would perform sexual favors for money. By the age of 12, Mead wrote, Bonassi was heavily ammished in drugs, child prostitution and reportedly Satanism.

But he didn't share details of the supposed Satanism. He said he attended a lot of parties where he served as a young male prostitute. Meadreport on Bonassi ended on a perplexing note. Quote, without treatment, it is conceivable. And this is probably what happened in the contact with a little boy, that if placed in an unusual circumstance, an alternate personality, might temporarily take over and commit such an act of fondling, although it is also true that such behavior will be stopped

or at least quickly checked by another alternate personality, which would disapprove of such behavior. It all gets quite complicated. It sure does. Maybe it got quite complicated because Dr. Beverly Mead was a shitty psychiatrist. Gary Caradori and Karen Ormiston would videotape Bonassi for approximately seven hours at the Lincoln Correctional Center.

Then on June 11th, Caradori wrote a letter to renowned defense attorney Gary Spence, requesting his representation, just in case anybody was thinking of making him take the fall for the child abuse scandal. And then at some point, he claimed to have found out something very important, the smoking gun he had been searching for. Apparently, he claimed a witness came forward with photos, actual physical evidence and lots of

it that would prove most of the victim's stories were correct. In early July, this witness made several attempts to contact his deputy investigator at Caracorp, Karen Ormondson, saying he had to tell her something important. And then right before this person was to meet with Caridori, an accident occurred. On July 9, 1990, Caradori, accompanied by his eight-year-old son, Andrew James, aka AJ, flew his 1994 single-engine, Piper Saratoga from Lincoln to Chicago. And this was not part of the investigation. The two were headed to see the July 10th Major League Baseball All-Star game.

In the hours before the flight took off, he made several calls to his wife, Sandy Caridori, to Franklin Committee Chair, Lauren Schmidt, and to Donna Owen, Alicia Owen's mom. Speaking with Lauren Schmidt, Gary was unequivocal regarding exactly how the photos would be the final nail in the coffin, he said, Lauren, we have to be. them by the short hairs. Then it was time for the baseball game. And on the night of July 10th, Caradourian A.J. attended the All-Star game, which ended shortly before midnight, and they then flew out of Chicago's Midway Airport around 151 a.m.

July 11th. But then, wouldn't you know it? Approximately an hour later, their plane crashed in a strange way. Harold Cameron, a corn farmer, who lived near Ashton, Illinois, heard an explosion and his fields went outside to look, but it was dark, and the four-foot-high corn made, uh, you know, looking around for something difficult. so he didn't call anybody. The record of the plane would not be spotted until daybreak when a medical helicopter and deputies from the Lee County Sheriff's Department were the first responders to the crash site.

Parts of the plane were scattered up to 1,800 feet from the fuselage, the remains of Gary and AJ Caradori found as well, and the plane seemed to have just fallen apart in mid-flight. How convenient? The National Transportation Safety Board stated almost immediately that Caradori's plane, quote, broke up in flight. but the, quote, exact mechanism for the plane's breakup was unknown. You know, sometimes planes, they just fall apart mid-flight. It happens quite often. That's why a lot of people are afraid to fly. You know, will your plane make it to its destination?

Or will it do that, you know, typical plane thing where it just kind of falls apart in the sky? Two days after the crash, the NTSB and the Lee County Sheriff announced that the crash entailed no signs of foul play. Interestingly, AJ's little backpack and Caradori's 35-millimeter camera will return to a grieving Sandy Caradori relatively undamaged, but the film in Caridori's camera had been taken out and returned inexplicably developed. Why the fuck are they developing his film? Who did that?

What photos may have they thrown out? May they have thrown out? Caridori's sturdy leather briefcase, excuse me, a birthday present, Sandy, never returned. Did that briefcase hold some of the photos? He was talking about? Then on July 13th, FBI agents descended upon Caracorp and served it with a federal subpoena, it ordered Caracorp to surrender any and all of its Franklin evidence to federal authorities immediately. In addition to Franklin evidence, the subpoena demanded a litany of additional

documents, caridore's expenses, Caracorp's payroll records, invoices for services billed, telephone records, checkbooks, receipts for build and unbuild expenses, tax statements, and on and on. Also included demands for any location of safe deposit boxes or off-site business documents storage facilities. All of this looked wildly insensitive to say the least. and just suspicious. In response to criticism of the subpoena's timing, U.S. Attorney Launer simply replied that it's not always possible to be polite. On July 23, 1990, within two weeks of Gary Caridori's conveniently timed demise,

the Douglas County Grand Jury released its whopping 40-page report on the Franklin sex abuse allegations. The World Herald would break the story with a headline that says, Grand Jury says abuse stories were a carefully crafted hoax. In other words, nobody believed the victims. of Alicia Owen, one juror even said, I can't imagine Alicia being around a man and not having gone to bed with him.

That's a fucking, that's a wild statement to make about anyone. I've been around a lot of hypersexual people over the course my life. I mean, I hosted a show on the Playboy Channel for two years at one point. Interviewed numerous porn stars and people starring in group sex reality shows work down the hall from porn stars,

you know, worked a couple cubicles down when I had to prep stuff from the host of a Swinger show that were very sex positive and open and all that. And I never thought that about any of them. Never thought that about anyone. This is the kind of shit that frankly, an ignorant, pea-brained, uptight, religious zealot

who thinks a woman who isn't a virgin on a wedding night is a slut. That's what they say. This is fucking nonsense. The report would basically put this in a more respectable fashion, writing of Alicia. We think that Owen may have been sexually abused during her early years, but not by the people and in the way she has alleged. Owen being a promiscuous young woman

Has had many experiences from which To draw the details of her allegation What, that's a fucking weird thing to say again? There's plenty of porn out there anybody You can be a virgin And fucking make up shit Why do you have to say it like that? They're basically saying

Ah, she's just a slut, don't believe her Right? This attitude One of the fucking many reasons Social conservatives are some of my least favorite people And I just fucking despise them more as I get older I'm currently friends with zero people who think like that as far as I know.

I'm fucking done with those people. I can't handle that specific kind of stupid anymore. I've been around too much of it. Fuck that shit. After saying goodbye to it, I now have the best friend group I've ever had in my life. Do not miss that kind of fucking, well, you know, she's fucking, you know,

he's been around. Fuck off. Of Paul, they would say simply, Benassia was perhaps the most pathetic witness to appear during the entire proceedings. A lot of judgment in the report directed at the freshly dead Gary Kemp. Caradori as well. The report concluded that he fed information to the victims he interviewed.

He led the witnesses, quote, and the videotapes were stopped and started at suspicious intervals with the substance of the witnesses' stories changing. But why would Caradori feed them these rumors in the first place? Was he just an evil guy who wanted to somehow make money off of this? Did he have a history of doing things like this before during his decades of investigative work? Doesn't seem so. The grand jury thought that the false stories originated from a fired employee of Boys Town who might have, quote, fueled the fire of rumor and innuendo because of personal grudges but refused to name someone as a source of the stories and that Caradori got caught up in his bullshit. That former employee was Michael Casey. Casey had apparently

fired, been fired from Boys Town in 1974 for allegedly stealing confidential files, trying to sell a TV series based on the school, according to the Washington newspaper, the Ellensburg Daily record. He had also claimed that he was in contact with Patty Hurst, granddaughter of William Randolph first while she was kidnapped, which turned out to be a lie. As the grand jury would state, we believe Boys Town was written into the Franklin script stemming from Michael Casey's resentment of his termination from Boys Town. He attempted to slander and harass both the institution and its administrative staff. Casey has made public statements that he would get even with Boys Town.

Then they drew the line to another person, Steve Brown. As our investigation progressed, they said, wrote, we became increasingly concerned with a relationship between KKAR radio stations manager Steve Brown and Michael Casey. During 989, when the hoax was in its inception, Casey lived with and worked out of Brown's house and the two freely exchange information. They each received and passed on unsubstantiated rumors and gossip. Apparently in their view, this whole thing was created by Casey and then spread by Brown via his radio station. Casey, the grand jury alleged, quote, endeavored to uncover the real Franklin story listing to street rumors, spending time with members of Omaha's gay community and seeking out potential victims

slash witnesses. He contacted many people through telephone conversations, written communication, and personal interviews. The grand jury would also make some pretty stunning and unusual indictments. Alicia Owen was indicted on eight counts of perjury, while Paul Benassi indicted on three counts. Despite all of that, the grand jury bizarrely seemed to think that some of the allegations were true, but unconnected with Franklin. Follow me here.

They argued that Peter Citrin, was guilty of molestation, writing evidence was presented which showed Citrin having inappropriate sexual contact with male minors. This was further substantiated by his having been found guilty on two such charges by Judge Merritt Warren. But they argued that, quote, no connection has been forced or, excuse me, found to link Citrin with the Franklin Credit Union, nor any of its principles. It appeared that he also was written into the script because of his known homosexual and pedophile behavior. The other person indicted for sexual-related causes was Alan Baer, a known friend of Larry King's,

a wealthy Omaha businessman, who was the former owner of J.L. Brandeis department stores. But once again, though they thought he was guilty of something, the grand jury said it had nothing to do with Franklin. Nothing has anything to do with Franklin ever. They apparently, quote, did have testimony from certain witnesses about sexual involvement with bear. Evidence also showed that these witnesses received substantial amounts of money or other valuables in exchange for sex.

As such, we find that Bear enticed other persons to become prostitutes or to commit acts of prostitution by giving them money or items of value. therefore we believe Bear committed the offense of pandering and we have handed down an indictment against him for that offense. We have found no direct connection between Alan Baer and King or the Franklin Credit Union other than limited social and business dealings. Many of the allegations made by Alicia Owen and Paul Bonassi about Bear are not true. It appears Bear was written into the script because of his wealth and well-known homosexuality.

The jury seemed to think that this pandering did not occur with underage individuals and had nothing to do with the trafficking ring. And what about Larry King? Quote, we also found probable cause to believe that King on numerous occasions used money or items of value to, quote, entice, invigal, persuade, encourage, or procure men in their late teens or early 20s to engage in acts of prostitution with him, and therefore he committed the crime of pandering, the grand jury wrote. Speaking of King, he would magically be restored to full sanity about five weeks after the Douglas County, Grand Jury released this report. God, how convenient. That's amazing. He then returned to Omaha at the end of August

to await the results of its financial fraud investigation The same federal grand jury later indicted King and multiple officers of the credit union With embezzlement of funds There was so much evidence In 1991, King pled guilty to assisting in embezzling around $39 million Sentenced to 15 years in prison

The same year, Paul Benassi filed a civil suit against Larry King In fact, Bonassi and John DeCamp would pursue several federal little civil lawsuits Against King and other alleged pedophiles but U.S. District Court Judge Warren Erbaum dismissed all but one of the lawsuits filed by DeKamp. When King failed to report to that final lawsuit, Judge Erban granted Benasi a default judgment against King. DeKamp then requested a hearing on the single issue of damages and called Benassi to the stand, along with other witnesses who corroborated his accusations of molestation.

And Judge Erban listened to the testimony and awarded Benasi a $1 million judgment. This judgment was really where the Satanism angle seemed to be most prominent. Judge Erban wrote in his decision, Between December 1980 and 1988, the complaint alleges the defendant king continually subjected the plaintiff to repeated sexual assault, false imprisonments, infliction of extreme emotional distress,

organized and directed satanic rituals, forced the plaintiff to scavenge for children to be part of the defendant king's sexual abuse and pornography ring, forced the plaintiff to engage in numerous sexual contacts with the defendant king and others and participate in deviate sexual games and masochistic orgies

with other minor children, the defendant king's default has made those allegations true as to him. The issue now is the relief to be granted monetarily. Just a passing reference to satanic rituals there.

Yeah, just very, very, I mean, do they just say that, but no details. No talk of anybody knew they were satanic. Judge Erban would also write, quote, the now uncontradicted evidence

is that the plaintiff has suffered much. He has suffered burns, broken fingers, beatings of the head and face, and other indignities by the wrongful actions of the defendant king. In addition to the misery of going through the experiences just related over a period of eight years, the plaintiff has suffered the lingering results to the present time. He is a victim of multiple personality disorder, involving as many as 14 distinct personalities, aside from his primary personality. He has given up a desired military career and received threats on his life. He suffers from sleeplessness, bad dreams, has difficulty

holding a job, is fearful that others are following him, fears getting killed, has depressing flashbacks and is verbally violent on occasion, all in connection with the multiple personality disorder caused by the wrongful activities of the defendant king. King appealed this judgment, but then withdrew his appeal. Meanwhile, Alicia Owen ultimately convicted of perjury in 1991, sentenced to nine to 15 years in prison, her sentence notably harsh for a perjury case,

which some would take as evidence of how seriously the jury took the damage to the alleged pedophiles' reputations. Others like John DeCamp would think that it was retribution for never going back on her original story. Soon, John DeCamp would take control of the narrative. In 1992, DeCamp released a book titled The Franklin Coverup. In it, he alleged that the conspiracy theories about a sex trafficking ring were true, and that's the investigation by the NSP and FBI had covered up the abuse.

But he also made two claims that were pretty much absent from all the media coverage before, that the ring was amassed in Satanism, and it also implied that the ring was connected to the CIA. Why? Well, it's not clear. On the first point, there, the Satanism stuff, seems like DeCamp overstated Satanism's role in the victim stories of abuse. And why might he do that?

Well, it goes back to the CIA. During the credit union's demise, several rumors were wafted around Lincoln and Omaha that some of Franklin's cash have been covertly diverted to the CIA in its efforts to support the Nicaraguan Contras fight against the communist Sandanistas.

The Lincoln Journal even once mentioned the murmurs in an article, but then it reported, quote, there is no evidence to support. the rumors. John DeCamp thought differently, though. He was good friends with a guy named William Colby, who had directed the CIA's Phoenix program in South Vietnam from 1968 to 1971. And I didn't measure this before. This is important. The Phoenix program is sketchy as fuck. No, actually not sketchy. No, evil as fuck. It was a covert counterinsurgency operation. This is all documented,

coordinated by the CIA during the Vietnam War to identify and dismantle the political underground of the Viet Cong. It combined military intelligence, police reports, informants to build dossiers on suspected communist sympathizers. Subjects faced local security councils rather than formal trials, allowing for detention without trial for up to two years. And during that detention? Oh, tortured ruthlessly. Tens of thousands of people, many of them civilians, would die horrific deaths thanks to the Phoenix program. According to investigative journalist Douglas Valentine, the following torture methods were used. Rape. Gang rape.

Rape using eels. Yes, eels. Snakes or hard objects. Rape followed by murder. Electrical shock, a.k.a. the bell telephone hour. Rendered by attaching wires to the genitals or other sensitive parts of the body, like the tongue. The water treatment? The airplane.

In which a prisoner's arms were tied behind the back and the rope looped over a hook on the ceiling, suspending the prisoner in mid-air after which he or she would. would be beaten, beatings with rubber hoses and whips, and the use of police dogs to mall prisoners. A military intelligence officer Kay Barton Osborne would testify that he personally witnessed, quote, the use of the insertion of the six-inch dowel into the canal of one of my detainees' ears, and the tapping through the brain until dead, the starvation to death in a cage of a Vietnamese woman who is suspected of being part of the local political education cadre in one of the local villages, the use of electronic gear such as a sealed telephone attached to both the women's vagina and the men's testicles to shock them into submission.

It is estimated that between 40,000 and 82,000 people died thanks to torture or execution, just outright execution or assassinations carried out by the Phoenix program. And we would never know about it had it not been for investigative journalists reporting to Congress members who had, you know, or Congress. and then Congress members having the balls to open up congressional hearings. God, really hope. We have more congressional hearings in the fucking future that lead to some justice for a lot of the shit that's been going on recently. William Colby directed that program and then Captain John DeCamp, one of Colby's Phoenix subordinates.

So these guys fucking knew what kind of evil shit. First hand, the U.S. government is capable of because they've been a part of it. They'd help carry it out. They've been complicit. Colby had developed a paternal affection for the brash young Nebraska. and over the years they had remained very close. De Camp had even introduced Senator Lauren Schmidt and Colby in 1983. Before that, Colby became the director of the CIA,

a position he'd hold from 1973 to 1976. And why did he leave the CIA? Well, his tenure there had not started off well. Shortly after he assumed leadership, the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East broke out an event that surprised the American intelligence agencies. Then President Nixon blamed Colby for not seeing that coming. And it was a tough road from there. Then in 1975, Colby appeared before the U.S. Senate's

select committee to study governmental operations with respect to intelligence activities, commonly called the Church Committee after its chairman, Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho. Love me some Frank Church, truly one of Idaho's finest. In front of a national televised audience, Colby candidly confessed to assassination initiatives, mind control programs that have been shrouded from the American public, shit like former suck subject Project M.K. Ultra and the Phoenix program. That won him the wrath of high-ranking intelligence officials and President Gerald Ford. Ford fired him as CIA director and Colby was replaced by then-onvoy to China future president George H.W. Bush.

In 1977, Colby founded a D.C. law firm, Colby Miller and Haynes, where he worked on public policy issues. Then in 1988, when the Franklin scandal broke, Colby was considered for the Franklin Committee's Chief Counsel. But Schmitt's fellow committee members shot down Colby's appointment by a narrow margin, four to three. The dissenting committee members felt that Colby's $250 an hour rate would quickly exhaust the committee's $100,000 budget, even though Colby made it clear he was willing to lower his standard hourly rate. To John DeCamp, that was extremely suspicious. He would go into claim that the CIA was involved in the ring

in some way in his book, but wouldn't say exactly how. And he would get even more suspicious about the CIA's involvement later. More on that, just a bit further down the timeline. Perhaps the vagueness actually helps his book gain notoriety. Far-right political figures like the Christian nationalist lunatic Bo Gritz and underground newsletter publishers, heavily promoted DeCamp's book, framing the case as proof of a global,

Luciferian New World Order. Jesus Christ. That message would spread further in 1993 when a British broadcaster called Yorkshire Television produced a documentary titled Conspiracy of Silence. The 50-minute film told the tale of an interstate pedophile ring that plundered boys' town for underage prostitutes and pandered kids to a cabal of powerful pedophiles in D.C.,

though it did not include the stuff about Satanism. But that documentary would never air. Its director Tim Tate would maintain that the Discovery Channel commissioned the documentary but then pulled the plug for the production, saying it wasn't right for them. Of course, to conspiracy theorists, this looks like proof of yet another cover-up.

Circulating bootleg copies of the unfinished documentary, which was preceded by a scrolling preamble that stated that the program was to be shown in the Discovery Channel, but, quote, influential members of Congress had prevented the program from airing and ordered all copies destroyed. Fueled claims of a cabal controlling the media to shield elite Satanus. Why Satanus, though?

Even though the doc did not talk about Satanus. I think because millions of Americans, especially in the 80s and 90s, have been obsessed with satanic cabals. Alluding to satanic involvement is a great way to market your fucking product. It's sexy. It gets people talking. And importantly, it risks far less backlash than if you point the finger at Christian conservatives, right? No one's worried about angering the satanic demographic.

That group far too small, too disconnected, not committed enough to Satanism because it's not a real religion. It's reaction to religion. But TV networks are definitely worried about pissing. off and losing the Christian demographic, right? It could ruin their business. I've definitely just for sharing truth. I mean, that's probably like the fucking main thing that's got me in trouble here. People like, you're sending emails that I don't share being like, man, I'm fucking out. You're too hard on Christians. I'm fucking sharing shit that comes across, I come across in source. I'm not making it up. I wish it wasn't fucking true.

In May of 1996, 76-year-old William Colby's body washes up on the banks of Maryland's Wycomico River, the guy who once ran the Phoenix program, had been missing for nine days. The Maryland Medical Examiner's office in Baltimore concluded that Colby had fallen out of his canoe as a result of a heart attack or a stroke and then suffered hypothermia and drowned. But to people like John DeCamp and a growing number of Franklin conspiracy theorists, this did not make sense. Why would the elderly Colby, he was 76, decided to go canoeing alone on the cold blustering night of April 27th when the winds were gusting at 25 miles an hour? Colby had left his radio and computer on when he went canoeing, and it was later reported that his dinner lay on the dining table half eaten. Why did he rush out to canoe? Then there was a matter of how his body was discovered in the first place.

The day Colby's canoe was found, Coast Guard crews started to search the Y Comico for his body, and the Coast Guard ultimately scoured the river in banks for eight days with divers, sonar equipment, draglines, dogs. Colby's body not found. Then on May 6, his body magically washes ashore very close to where his canoe was first spotted. You know, like where they found it. Had he even died in the river? or was he taken somewhere? Torture for information and killed, poetic really, considering what he did in Vietnam, and then his body dumped in the river? What the fuck was going on? Did his death have to do with any of the many enemies he had made during his time in the CIA? Or did it have something to do with the Franklin case in particular? John DeCamp, of course, would think it was to do with Franklin. According to DeCamp, Colby disclosed to him shortly before his death that he had become disillusioned with the CIA's use of children for sinister agendas and was determined to make the agency accountable for past abuse of kids. But DeCamp has never been able to provide any proof of this claim or any other of his more shocking claims.

He would claim to get close in 1997 when he alleged that he got a phone call from Oregon authorities telling him that they had arrested one Rusty Nelson, right, that photographer we mentioned early in the episode, a guy who did the photo shoot with a 17-year-old and her mom, dude with the name that sounds like an illicit sex move involving a partial headlock and menstruation, who then gave DeCamp some pictures that according to DeCamp would, quote, almost certainly prove the truth of the children's stories. but the camp said those photos were stolen from him and destroyed. Hmm. He would continue to maintain his claims and claim that, you know, he and his family were targeted for what they knew all the way until his death in July of 2017 at the age of 76.

Died at 76 just like his former CIA boss. April of 2001, Larry King, Hogskinner's son, paroled after nine years and ten months behind bars. After getting released, King has kept a very low profile has not granted interviews about the Franklin matters, nor has he attempted to return to political or public life. A 2023 CNN report on the enduring mysteries of the Franklin scandal noted that King declined to respond to inquiries sent to him.

Today he's approximately 82 years old. I doubt we will hear anything else from him. It sucks that he gets to fucking live a free life. If any of this shit is true, and I think it is. Now let's get out of here and discuss all this a bit more post-timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely.

This is fucking wild, right? I found all of this is especially intriguing. Let's dissect it all. I mean, something dark was happening in Omaha in the late 1980s. But separating the real corruption from the surrounding panic

is, you know, it's a challenge, even still today. Here's what we do know. We know that Lawrence E. Larry King, Jr., president of the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union, weird opera-like singer of the Star-Spangled banner, embezzled around $39 million through fraudulent practices.

And he used all that money to fund a very lavish lifestyle, luxury cars, expensive clothes, chartered flights, with teens on board some of them, prime real estate, lots of bouquets, while cultivating deep ties to national Republican figures and conservative causes. On paper, King was a devout church-singing philanthropist, in reality a scheming political operative whose financial theft destroyed a community institution and harmed or ruined, who knows how many people financially, and landed him a 15-year federal prison sentence, even though he would serve less than 10. And as his financial house of cards collapsed, explosive allegations emerged.

Accusations surfaced that linked King and other prominent figures to widespread child sexual abuse, including a couple of accounts that sounded distinctly Satanic. We also know that very quickly King was being protected. Someone, or a whole lot of someone's rather, in the Nebraska State Police, the FBI, elsewhere in the justice system of both Nebraska and the U.S. at the national level, seemed to be looking out for him, doing things like quickly declaring him mentally unwell, hiding him in a federal facility while some of his cronies were charged with things like sexual abuse. Perhaps the FBI or NSP or even the CIA

even went so far as to sabotage the plane that lead investigator Gary Caridori was flying on on a warm night in July of 1990 killing him and his young son. But why? Why was all this being buried? For former Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp, the answer was simple yet unimaginable. King was merely a node in a vast satanic child trafficking network

allegedly run by intelligence agencies to corrupt or blackmail elites and bring them to heal. And remember, DeCamp has documented personal experience in doing evil covert shit overseen by the U.S. government within the Phoenix program, right? Suspected VC weren't just being tortured via traditional methods. Some people were being gang raped, raped with hard objects. People raped with fucking animals like snakes and eels. People have an electrical node hooked up to their testicles, live wires shoved in their vaginas. People suspended naked from ceilings beaten with various objects. I mean, it doesn't get much more evil than that. If a U.S. agency would have to be able to, if a U.S. agency would have been. protect people doing that, if they would oversee people doing that, why not be involved in people fucking kids? DeCamp detailed his theory about the Franklin scandal in his 1992 book and the abrupt cancellation of the 1993 Discovery Channel documentary conspiracy of silence permanently entrenched the theory into the American conspiracy law. In DeCamp's view, the only reason there would be such a sweeping cover-up was if whatever at the top was exceedingly bad,

you know, not only child abuse bad, but satanic child abuse bad. The fact that official grand juries both state and federal ultimately declared the claims of the organized ring to be a hoax and prosecuted one victim heavily for perjury only seemed to add fuel to this fire frame. Even more fuel will be added with the DeCamp's 1992 book and a follow-up movie 1993 conspiracy of silence. But is that view true? Well, obviously the CIA wouldn't and isn't going to confirm or deny that they have been richly abusing children. But I think we can back up and see how and why John DeCamp got there. In John DeCamp's mind, there was no other way to link the FBI. NSP, Boys Town, the Franklin Credit Union, and the myriad of other organizations that had some role in the sexual abuse of underage kids unless it went straight to the top and was sufficiently bad, you know, bad enough that it involves Satanism.

The most evil thing in John DeCamp's distinctly Christian worldview, even though the Christian man worked in the Phoenix program. But the supposed VC being tortured, killed and raped, you know, by him, people underneath him, essentially. you know, there were commies. So of the devil, and the devil must be fought by any means necessary. But for real, I can see why he wanted to believe he was fighting the forces of satanic evil. But I think that view too easily leads to what Larry King likely did being discredited. It's too over the top. Shit does not need to be satanic to be evil.

Consider the position Larry King built for himself over nearly two decades. Throughout the 70s and 80s, he was sitting at the exact intersection of every pillar of authority in Omaha. First is all the money. Through the credit union, he controlled tens of millions of dollars and the financial futures of many members of the community. And he was dispersing this money left and right. You know, he was just handing out money throwing lavish parties. He was a moral pillar too serving as a vocal church school and member of the community, a moralist GOP and good standing, a noted philanthropist. He also held the keys of power funding national political campaigns and hosting high profile elites.

And he was already protected through his personal ties with people like chief of police, Robert Wadman, and ties to the local news. papers and some kind of tie that we don't understand to the FBI from a young age. So what happens when the guy at the center of all of that goes down? Well, it risks exposing every institution that claimed to protect the community, either as being complicit and directly being involved or as being utterly incompetent. In other words, everybody needed to protect their own asses when he goes down. When John DeCamp saw a dozen independent agencies, all acting in lock step to suppress the damage and deduced a top-down national conspiracy, he was ignoring the fact that institutions don't

need a master coordinator or an agency directive or some satanic cabal linkage to start closing ranks. They all simply do that at a raw self-preservation, whether or not they are directly involved. A prosecutor hesitates because pulling one threat unravels their own career. Police officers back off because their superiors are implicated. Politicians distance themselves or stall inquiries because exposure could destroy their party's brand and hurt their career. It's all selfish, you know. It's all selfishly motivated. And, you know, maybe many of them were directly involved.

Maybe many of them did sleep with underage victims. Victims they might have believed were consenting somehow or victims they knew they were raping. But as for the accusations of actual Satanism, I highly fucking doubt it. Most of the reports by victims don't speak about any rituals. In my gut, I think a few people may have exaggerated embellished claims. But just because somebody's lying about certain aspects of a story, it doesn't mean the whole story's lie. Think about the classic fishing tale. just because somebody says that the rainbow trout they caught was 18 inches long,

when it was closer to 12, that doesn't mean they didn't catch a trout. They just didn't catch a trout as big as they're claiming. Just because somebody lies and says that kids are being sacrificed and satanic rituals are being performed in addition to kids being raped, that doesn't mean that kids aren't in fact being raped. Or maybe some people did see some weird shit. But the people doing that creepy shit were not actually satanic.

There are so many trauma researchers and criminologists specializing in severe abuse networks who often report that perpetrators in high-level rings will often cosplay. They will often use extreme bizarre or mock occult rituals for psychological control. It creates profound disorientation and fear

ensuring that children who cannot distinguish between real and stage supernatural threats believe their abusers have omnipresent power over them. So, did that play a role? Maybe. And yet there's yet another theory that we haven't mentioned. In some views, what authorities did in Franklin was something called poisoning the well,

a.k.a. the ultimate cover story. In this view, shady powers had amplified the stories of Satanism, beef them up so that law enforcement, grand juries, and the press would naturally view claims of devil worship or human sacrifice as utterly absurd, allowing them to toss out the entire case as a satanic panic hoax

rather than prosecuting the real world criminal network underneath. Is that what happened? maybe probably all of this reminds me so much of the more recent and far more publicized epstein scandal and i don't think that shit was satanic either which many people have claimed alleged victim alicia owen the woman who went to prison for perjury uh you know thanks to her claims of sexual abuse spoke to a reporter for omaha magazine just this past march about how seeing the claims of a lot of the epstein victims uh seeing how they were scrutinized and mocked by politicians in the public on social media reopened some old wounds she said that one morning on her her TV screen, there was this show playing in the background as she's getting ready for work. And this woman from New York on this morning show starts to tell the story about being 15 years old about a friend who promised easy cash and about walking into Jeffrey Epstein's townhouse believing she would give a simple massage and leave with $200 folded in her pocket. She spoke about skipping school without her mom knowing about wanting the money and a little

independence, realizing too late what the invitation actually required, being blackmailed to keep quiet. Owen said she went cold when she heard that because the claims reminded her of her own experience. What really nailed it for me was hearing how it started for that girl, she said, a friend saying it's no big deal, you'll get 200 bucks. When you're 15 and you don't have money, that sounds like the world. You don't think about how quickly it can change. Owen then paused and said, as she was talking, it just broke me. I understood it was the same tactics, that I didn't have to happen to either of us, and that it's all about power. Owen was 17 when the credit union publicly fell, she said she was frightened enough to leave Omaha for six months as investigators closed in.

Some people who were involved died in ways that weren't clear or publicized, she said. I ran away initially because I didn't want to end up in a garbage bag in the desert. After intervention from state senator Ernie Chambers, she was granted educational release after six and a half years behind bars, and she graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2000 with a degree in computer information management. She used her computer skills to bring the travel agency her mom owned into the digital age and has done very well. years later she was contacted by investigative journalist Nick Bryant who was working on a book about the Franklin scandal. Nick Bryant, also the guy, later credited with first obtaining and publishing Jeffrey Epstein's

little black book in 2015. After seven years of research on Bryant's party, published the Franklin scandal, a story of power brokers, child abuse and betrayal in 2009. And when Bryant later turned his attention to Epstein, the similarities between the two cases were shocking, he said. Quote, there were accounts of Epstein molesting multiple girls and the there was a grand jury in Florida that declared he hadn't molested a single girl. So I got this vibe that Epstein was very much like Franklin, just my intuition.

Then I got down there, and I got the black book and started calling the victims, and they told me about being put on planes. And one told me about being flown to an island. At that point, I felt like Epstein and Franklin were very, very similar. It's a carbon copy. Epstein, we did a two-part on him years ago, was, of course, a wealthy financier with powerful political and social connections, great friends. with Donald Trump arrested in 2019 on federal sex trafficking charges

after years of allegations that he had abused underage girls. Long before his very suspicious death in jail, while awaiting trial, sure looks like he was fucking murdered to stay quiet, experts had pointed to a pattern of institutional protection that allowed the abuse to continue for years. Also remember all the talk from victims of Epstein's sexually deviant friends being secretly videotape while having sex with underage kids on his island. Well, what happened to those tapes?

Trump's Justice Department Convenientially's never found them Why? I think Because Trump is on some of them Doing horrible shit like raping kids And I think Trump is smart enough to know That as long as those tapes were never leaked Never found if they were just destroyed

When people like me say these kinds of things His supporters will just fucking laugh at me Write me off as having Trump derangement Syndrome being a fucking Trump basher, whatever How convenient, how morally convenient There are rumors that Epstein taped many, many powerful people fucking kids. You know, including Clinton, and I will say this, I have no allegiances to any

fucking party. No fucking party owns my mind. I don't, if Clinton did the same shit, then fucking kill them both. I go, fuck what party they're part of. Anybody molesting kids fucking death. I think Epstein had blackmail on a ton of different people, got a ton of different people involved with his creepy shit, knowing that then, you know, bringing him to justice would be very tricky because it would bring down so many institutions that people don't want to have brought down. It'll make a lot of people scared to get involved and give a lot of people incentive for a cover-up, you know, out of self-preservation. How fucking sad, but also how human. Brian noticed the same system with Franklin. What stuck out to him was not just the abuse, but the entire machine,

he said, was designed to protect it, quote, the involvement of the Department of Justice and federal law enforcement. Brian said when asked about the most important structural similarity between Franklin and Epstein. And then another quote, the common denominator is children that are getting pimped out. But the amazing amount of federal firepower that has been used to cover it up, that's a major similarity. In both cases, he said accusations implicated wealthy people with political connections. Accusers face swift public backlash and sustained scrutiny of their credibility, often accompanied by warnings about the personal cost of speaking out. Survivors in both cases described fear of retaliation and reputational damage long before investigators reached any conclusions.

Both cases, Bryant has argued, relied on intermediaries, including young people recruiting other young people to maintain access and distance. Unlike the Epstein case, which resulted in federal charges and multiple corroborating accounts, the Franklin investigation did not produce criminal convictions related to trafficking or abuse at all, though. Brian has said of Franklin and Epstein, I see them as features of the same system. I've come to believe that black male plays an endemic role in our political process. He referenced multiple scandals involving senior members of Congress and examples of how

personal secrets are weaponized. He recalled an analogy offered by Rusty Nelson. a child pornographer who once supposedly helped Brian recover blackmail pictures stashed in the mountains of Colorado. He said that once your compromise is like you're on a beautiful yacht

and it's a beautiful day and you can have anything you want on that yacht Brian said. But if you decide to get off that yacht the people on the yacht are going to make sure that you're out. Brian also said that because the case initially broke publicly

before the news of the Bill Clinton Monica Lewinsey scandal and the suing of the Catholic Church in so many scandals, everyday people were naive, unwilling to believe what survivors were saying. No one wants to believe that their government is covering up child sex trafficking, Brian said. And if you cover up a crime, you're aiding and abetting that crime. So ultimately, the government is aiding and abetting child sex trafficking.

When the Epstein case entered public consciousness, Brian saw significant progress. He said Epstein has come much further than when I started Epstein justice three years ago. But now that Epstein is kind of woven into the American zeitgeist, I think there's a real opportunity to make sure that Franklin's and Epstein's don't have. happen anymore. There's a tremendous number of Americans that are outraged by it, Brian said. Yeah, I'd fucking hope so. And it's a matter of marshalling support from them. Still, he remains skeptical of ongoing disclosures. Quote, the document release has been a joke, Brian said, referring to the heavily redacted Epstein files. I mean, I released more incriminating information on Jeffrey Epstein in 2015 than Pam Bondi did when the first documents were released. Representative Thomas

Massey put it more starkly on a comment, Brian frequently cites, or in a comment, Brian frequently side saying, until we see rich men being perp walked to jail, this is still a cover-up. So, my final verdict, I think the Franklin scandal is real. To what extent I don't know. I don't think it's satanic, but I do think Larry King out of Omaha, Nebraska had very powerful connections across the country and that he and many other powerful people routinely sexually abused kids. One's a global? Not enough evidence of that, so probably not, probably a national child sex ring. And again, probably not satanic. In my experience, after all the research I've done,

you don't need to worry about some boogeyman Satanist, nearly as much as you need to worry about some upstanding member of your church. It's not the guy in the bushes. Not some stranger out in the dark nine times out of ten that you need to be afraid of. It's your neighbor. It's a family member. It's a guy you voted for.

Those are the people you need to keep a much closer eye on, the ones hiding in plain sight. The ones with the clean cut, haircuts, we don't swear much and seem like fucking moral rocks. God damn it, there is too many stories about those motherfuckers being the creepiest predators out there. Time for some takeaways. Time suck. Top five takeaways.

Number one, Larry King Jr., president of the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union in Omaha, ran a massive financial fraud scheme through fake accounts and fraudulent certificates of deposit. But just as investigators were closing in, something else would come out. Number two, while state and federal authorities audited the credit. units, missing millions, young adults, mostly former foster children, and ex-boys town residents came forward with shocking claims. They alleged King hosted lavish parties involving the sexual abuse of minors, drug distribution, and high-profile political figures. The Nebraska legislator formed the Franklin Committee in 1989 specifically to figure out what had happened, how it had happened,

and who was responsible. Number three, both the 1990 Douglas County State Grand Jury and a federal grand jury determined the sexual abuse allegations to be unfounded, formerly characterized the fair is a carefully crafted hoax. Following a grand jury findings, or grand jury findings that key accusers had fabricated testimony, prosecutors indicted several of the individuals making the allegations. Prominent accuser Alicia Owen was convicted of perjury in 1991 and would serve over six years in prison. To some, this was evidence of a massive cover-up, but it was far from the only shady thing that had happened when it came to Franklin. In July of 1990, the most suspicious and tragic incident would occur when Gary Caridori's plane crashed en route to Nebraska from Chicago, killed.

killing him and his young son, AJ. The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the crash, attributing it to structural failure slash in-flight breakup. But this has always struck people as somewhat shady, especially given the fact that his possessions, some of them potentially containing incriminating evidence were missing. Rest in peace, Gary, and AJ. Number four, John DeCamp, an influential former Nebraska State Senator and legal representative for several key accusers, rejected the official grand jury findings, asserting that local authorities, the FBI, and the CIA, systematically suppressed the investigation. And this is a guy who worked for the CIA.

In his 1992 book, The Franklin Coverup to Camp argued that Larry King's operation was not an isolated criminal network, but rather a node in a CIA run, satanic child abuse and blackmail syndicate designed to compromise powerful elites. But is that true?

I think possibly, except for the Satanist part, we do know the CIA has involved in some evil shit, but Satanic Abol? As the old saying goes, the simplest explanation is likely the best. Larry King was an incredibly powerful man whose abuse of the system made people look like fellow criminals or idiots. Of course, they would want to protect him, to protect themselves, unless that's just what they want you to think.

And number five, new info, aside from the scandal, Omaha doesn't typically have a reputation as a particularly interesting place, but maybe that should change. For example, did you know that the U.S. Federal Witness Protection Program used to routinely send quote-unquote dead mobsters, a.k.a. ones who are now working with the feds to Omaha in the 70s and 80s. And because Omaha was not that big, the relocated mobsters would keep running into one another and eventually started pulling out mob schemes on the locals. Naturally, they would get busted by the local police, and the feds would then swoop in to build them out because, officially speaking, they were supposed to be dead. So the feds in Omaha used to helping criminals. That slice of history actually inspired the movie

My Blue Heaven. It was written by Nora Ephron while she helped her husband, Nicholas Pilegi, do research for his book, Wise Guy, which would be adapted into the film Goodfellas, one of the best movies of all time. And that's not the half-fit. Back in 1945, a Japanese balloon bomb made its way to Omaha, during World War II all the way to Omaha, and detonated over a city street.

Thankfully, no one injured or killed. Perhaps it was carmically ordained, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, built nearby at the Martin bomber plant at the Offutt Air Force Base pilot Paul Tiblets, actually came to the plant, selected the bomber himself, naming it Anola Gay after his mom.

And then one more, a lighter one. The Omaha Zoo, I've been there a couple times, once hosted a lock picking orangutan. After repeated escapes throughout the 1960, zookeepers finally discovered that Fu Manchu had been hiding a piece of wire in his mouth and then pulling out to Jimmy the Lock whenever he wanted to go on a stroll.

After the story went public, Fu was made an honorary member of the American Association of Locksmiths. Fu passed away in 1992, survived by 20 kids and 15 grandkids and great-grandkids. What an orangutan. Time suck.

Top five takeaways. The Franklin conspiracy, satanic panic, or a real cover-up, has been sucked. A big old episode. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for help

making time suck. Thanks again to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins. Ten years in, still getting it all done as a team. Thanks also to Logan Keith helping to publish this episode, designing merch for the store

at badmagicproductions.com, including anniversary merch. Thank you to Sophie Evans for her research. search awesome work again almost 10 years in thanks at the all seen eyes moderating the cult the curious private Facebook page it's been around for i don't know well it's been around in various forms for i think about nine years uh the mod squad making sure discord keeps running smooth everybody over in the time sucks subreddit and bad magic subreddit and i'll let's head on over to this

week's time sucker updates our first update this week from those sent in to bow jangles at timesuckpodcast dot com comes in honor of this being too 10 years from a meat sack listing since the very beginning and a person I've worked with on TimeSuck for the longest amount of time. Sophie Evans. One of our researchers. I love that we are still working together and I wanted to share the very first email she sent in to that address over nine years ago with a subject line of consider this a virtual

pilgrimage. Dear Dan, almighty suckmaster, suck Lord Supreme, et al. What's up, dog? My name's Sophie from New Orleans. And I'm an 18 year old sucker. I started listening to TimeSuck after hearing about it on your Pandora channel. You were my favorite comedian as a teenager, excuse me,

and you're now my favorite podcast host as a slightly older teenager. Though I used to skip things like TimeSucker updates and so on, I don't now because I like your voice and your delivery, sometimes I'll even listen to episodes twice to get all the suck out. Is that super lame? Okay, I'm super lame. I wanted to say, even though it's late, that I really admired your episode on the transgender debate.

Not because it opened my eyes, I'm actually the president of my high school's gay trade alliance, but because creatives, whether that be writers of sitcoms or directors of movies or podcast hosts, have to take risks in their art form. Usually this takes the form of a stupid musical episode in TV shows. But I think with you it really paid off. I like how personal you made it with the story of your uncle, and I can't imagine that to have been completely comfortable for you.

Well, you did it. It was awesome. I go to the sucks for fascinating information about history, but sometimes personal history is just as important. With that said, if you ever need help on the Bojangles research team, I would love to help out. I'm going to be a freshman at Princeton this fall and just did a thesis on science fiction criticism,

so I will say I'm pretty good at research. You have been great at research. I'm also an aspiring comedian, hoping to major in creative writing so I can pursue comedy. I'd love to get any advice you have about comedy slash being a comedian. I feel like we have a lot in common as intelligent people who love learning new things, but also making people laugh. Anyway, I hope this isn't totally creepy and weird and lame.

Or if it is that you understand the necessity of being creepy and weird and lame sometimes, hail Nimrod Sophie. Oh, Sophie, Sophie is growing up a lot since then. She says dog less. But her spirit is still the same. No one has helped me more with episodes than she has. And I have not trusted anybody more with research than her. Her first topic was Teddy Roosevelt than Amelia Earhart.

What she said in that email reminded me of something too. That I have stayed the same in more ways than I've realized over the years. You know, I get a lot of messages and ratings bishing about me being woke in recent years. I've gotten so many more that I started to think, well, maybe there's write, maybe about, you know, to write about how much I've changed. And I definitely have changed. I've evolved, but, but not when it comes to love and support for marginalized communities. Sophie did not end up going into stand-up, but it's been very cool to watch her career grow after she graduated Princeton. She does have a literary agent now, actually the same agency I work with

for podcasting, which is pretty fucking cool. She's working on her first novel. I am so very proud of her. She feels like my third kid in many ways, even though I know she's not a kid. She's very cool adult who has become a friend and it's just awesome to have just watched her grow as a person. And so thank you, Sophie, so much for being a part of this ride and becoming a truly, yeah, you and your, gosh, your partner, Noah, just a friend of Lindsay Nights, like actual friends.

Next up, another message from another long-time meet sack who reminded me of something I predicted a long time ago that was supposed to have happened now. Haley wrote him with the subject line of Dan, Time Sensitive. Hello, Master Mushmouth. master mother sucker. Long time listener here, I have a major concern. This is urgent. You see, I started out with time sucked and found out about a couple others you do. So I decided

to listen to all of them. Once I was caught back up, I talked myself into starting over and listening to all 500 plus time sucks. Wow. During the announcements of episode 112, I came to a terrible realization. You said, quote, new time suck challenge coin doubles as a token of admission when Bojangles fires up the spaceship, mothership, that will transport all coin-carrying members of the cult of the Curies into the next plane of existence. A fourth plane where Lucifina and Nimrod and probably David Ike await. Current ATA for liftoff, September 19th, 2026. Master Sucker, I was not able to get a challenge coin when it was available. But I humbly ask, as a follower of Nimrod, Ambojangles, sorry, Cocker Spaniels, could you the profit plead

my case for admission without the coin? But seriously, thank you so much for all the hard work that you do. And Lindsay and the team put in time suck, scared of death, nightmare fuel. my husband and I love and appreciate your work. First name only please for some anonymity. Can you say that word? I can't say anonymity, Haley. And good news. The spaceship pickup date to take us to the fourth plane

has been pushed back indefinitely. Yeah, yeah, I didn't even share this. I should have. I'm glad you reminded me. Apparently the spaceship broke down somewhere just outside of Saturn and the closest mechanic shop is four million light years away.

So it might take a while for it to get his transmission fixed. Seriously, thank you for all the listens. And reminding me of another moment from the past. And then finally a message from a summer camper from Sweet Sack Ryan D. sent in with the subject line of Pine Puk Slime Guy. Hello, Dan Lindsay, and all the other beautiful people of Bad Magic. I'm back home from this year's Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp, and I wanted to share a little bit of what it meant to me.

I was the guy that returned the Piney Pukes slime jar at the meet-and-greet. And while in retrospect, it's probably insane to hold on to something so niche for so long, cue trash can preacher voice, I wanted to elaborate more on why I wanted to return it to you. I've collected various bad magic items over the years, and each one represents something special to me. As time has passed, I can look at them and think back to a fun trip that I took, friends that I made along the way,

and periods of my life and you guys kept me entertained and smiling when I needed that the most. In recent episodes and at summer camp, I've heard you and Lindsay mention how the kids are growing up and doing their own thing, which is awesome, and while that must make you proud and excited for their future, it's always nice to think back on the past and cherish the memories that got us to where we are. If in some small way,

I could make you smile and remember something fun that happened however many years ago, then I feel somewhat accomplished because you guys have done that for me and all the other meat sacks and the STD fans a thousand times over. So thank you again for you guys

being who are. Thank you to everybody at camp who made it another unforgettable year, and I do not apologize for the length or girth of this email. Love you guys and cue the Piney Pukukes song. Sincerely Ryan D. Hey, look you here now!

Ryan, the gift he gave me, it was so special. Yeah, for everybody else, it was this little plastic container of homemade slime that my daughter Monroe made with her friend Quincy in her bedroom around eight years ago. They'd make all these slime little things and plastic containers, label them as being worth a dollar apiece, and I'd bring them on the road for stand-up shows

and then sell them in the lobby after I got off stage. And they always sold out. And Mero was so excited that people bought her stuff, was happy for the extra money. I'm not sure how much she split with Quincy. I showed her the slime at camp And she got a little emotional You know, we've been reflecting on her childhood

A lot recently She gets ready to go for college A lot of emotions She is so ready but also nervous, you know And sad to leave this chapter of life behind We're ready to watch her start With the next chapter But also sad this chapter is coming to a close

So that little blast from the past It brought back so many good memories Yeah, she's actually with Quincy hanging out Right as I record this So I think that's really cool Yeah, you nailed it I'm honored to have been able to help build special memories with you over the years. Honored to have shared a lot of memories with so many of you.

Hail Nimrod. I'm suckers. I needed that. We all did. Well, thank you for listening to yet another bad magic productions podcast. Be sure in rate and reviewed time suck if you haven't already. Or fucking don't. You know what? You don't want to do it?

I'm not going to fucking push you if you want to be like that. Fine. Please don't fuck any kids this week. and a satanic ritual as part of international trafficking group or even otherwise just don't do that ever

it's disturbing and if you feel like you have to do that maybe instead pour like a gallon at least of gasoline on yourself and then touch some of that gas with a burnt you know with a match

with a lit match and then once the gas has all burned up how about you just fucking go ahead and finish killing yourself uh seriously just please die

and everybody else keep on sucking and magic productions and now let's end on something nice about Omaha Omaha is one of the first cities I would regularly tour over 20 years ago met a lot of good people there like local comic Austin Anderson local comedy club manager

Colleen actually acted in an independent movie called Trunked I think it's on Amazon I don't know shot near Omaha a long time ago great crew from the Omaha area and for years one of my favorite albums was August and everything after by the County Crows still love that album. And one of my favorite songs on that album is a song called Omaha.

I think about it every time I think about Omaha. It holds up. So let's sell a little pallet cleanser, close with a little taste of a sweet song. Jock past the color come up through the summer rain. Start turning the girl into the ground. Roll a new love over. In the middle of the day, there's a young man rolling around in the earth and And Mr. Rick, you're gonna walk on water, you know you're only gonna walk all over me.

Omaha, somewhere in the Middle America, get right to the heart of matters, it's the heart that matters more. Think you better turn your ticket to hit your money back out the door. Money back out of the door.