PIZZAGATE AND OTHER NEW RICHARDS
On December 4, 2016, a 28-year-old man named Edgar Maddison Welch (he usually goes by his middle instead of first name) began a five-and-a-half-hour drive north from his home in Salisbury, North Carolina to Washington, D.C. Welch was on a mission uncanny in its similarity to Richard McCaslin’s raid.
Welch and Richard had a common interest in creating independent film (in a WriteAPrisoner.com profile, Edgar says his nickname is “Hollywood”), which Welch pursued while going to school in Salisbury (or as he calls it, “Smallsbury”—the population is around 8,500 more than Richard’s hometown, Zanesville), at Cape Fear Community College. IMDB lists him as a production assistant to two low-budget films, one acting credit as “Raver/Victim” in the critically panned vampire thriller The Bleeding (2009), and the writer of a nine-minute short film called Mute (2011). Mute depicts a college student who struggles to be understood but finds a friend (or perhaps a romance) by the end of the film. Welch, looking very much like Kurt Cobain, appears as an extra.
Welch had been enraged and driven to action by Internet reports of a secret pedophile ring operating out of a pizza parlor named Comet Ping Pong by high-profile Democrats including Hillary Clinton, her advisor and Chief of Staff John Podesta, and others in their campaign. The conspiracy theory started on Reddit and spread like wildfire on the Internet and was branded as “Pizzagate.”
Welch was well-armed for his raid—he had a handgun and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, and he had a loaded 12-gauge shotgun for backup in his car. Like Richard’s note to Chely Wright, one of Welch’s last acts was to text a Bible verse to his girlfriend. He also has Isaiah 40:30–31 (which says that faith in the Lord will give the weary strength) tattooed on his back.
One difference between Welch and Richard is that while Richard had no one to leave behind, Welch has family. He’s the father of two young girls from his ex-wife and has a girlfriend and other family—unlike Richard, both of his parents were still alive.
Richard and Welch both did not plan a mass shooting bloodbath but were convinced they were doing heroic acts and would be freeing imprisoned child slaves. But like Richard, Welch would find nothing.
UNLIKE THE BOHEMIAN GROVE story, which took a slow ride for decades and decades to reach conspiracy lore, the Pizzagate theory spread to millions of people in a few quick weeks online.
After Clinton campaign staff e-mails were posted on WikiLeaks, the Pizzagate theory was strung together from e-mails by Podesta. Theorists noted that he seemed to be sending an awful lot of e-mails about his love for food, especially pizza, including e-mails where he set up fundraising events at Comet Ping Pong.
But was Podesta referring to pizza pizza or pizza, a code word for something much more depraved?
A “pizza pedo code” of unknown origin circulated online that supposedly listed words that were “early Internet and Deep Web” code words for child pornography. Cheese meant “child” while cheese pizza, the list stated, was “child porn.” Sauce equaled “orgy,” and Domino’s was a substitute for BDSM. Other foods like hot dog and pasta were code for “boy” and ice cream meant “male prostitute.”
That means an e-mail, like this exchange about a free ice cream event in Podesta’s e-mails, had a secret meaning:
“I consider ice cream, its purchase, and its consumption a rather serious business. We can’t just toss it out willy-nilly in casual references especially with the word ‘free’ involved.”
According to the code theory, that would mean Podesta was speaking about a free male prostitute. But the code doesn’t make sense in an e-mail where Podesta’s friend Herb talks about a gift he received in the mail:
“I immediately realized something was different by the shape of the box, and I contemplated who would be sending me something in the square-shaped box. Lo and behold, instead of pasta and wonderful sauces, it was a lovely assortment of cheeses, Yummy. I am awaiting the return of my children and grandchildren from their holiday travels so we can demolish them.”
According to the supposed code, this person is saying he received an assortment of children instead of a little boy and a wonderful orgy and that the children would be demolished by him, his children, and grandchildren. Were conspiracists suggesting that Podesta’s associate was so depraved he was planning an inter-generational pedophile gangbang orgy with his family?
After the premise was established—that Podesta was helping run a child sex trafficking ring, an Internet army of conspiracists began scrutinizing everything they could about Comet Ping Pong and the businesses surrounding it, Podesta’s life, and his colleagues. They found alarming symbolism everywhere.
Comet Ping Pong had a secret basement room, the conspiracy says, where the child sex slaves were imprisoned, inspired by a photo of what looks like an empty walk-in cooler. The theory was soon being sounded off in YouTube videos, conspiracy radio shows, and on Reddit and other forums. InfoWars picked up the story and began talking about it, giving the theory an even bigger platform, and others help spread the word, like Mike Cernovich and Jack Posobiec (the “Far Right’s Twin Trolls,” as the Daily Beast called them). Cernovich wrote an article on his blog titled “Reveal Clinton’s Inner Circle as Sex Cult with Connections to Human Trafficking,” and Posobiec tweeted the theory and stopped in Comet Ping Pong to shoot videos for Periscope, including filming a child’s birthday party in a back room.
The conspiracy grew legs. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn (briefly Trump’s National Security Advisor) tweeted that Hillary’s e-mails included “sex crimes with children,” and his son, Michael Flynn Jr., was ousted from Trump’s transition team after he retweeted the conspiracy, writing “Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it’ll remain a story.”
ONE OF THE REASONS Comet Ping Pong, owned by restaurateur and art gallery proprietor James Alefantis, was ripe for conspiracy is because it is, as Slate.com calls it, “D.C.’s Weirdo Pizza Place,” adding that “Comet is a platform for art from the margins.” It’s a family-friendly establishment by day, but at night the ping pong tables get moved for punk shows, art openings, and LGBT events.
A photo circulated by conspiracy theorists showed one of the restaurant’s employees dressed for his drag act for a Halloween show—covered in fake blood, writhing on the floor. For conspiracy theorists, it was a shocking proof of a scandal. They had no idea how an individual might be a pizza cook during the day and a drag performer at night unless there was a satanic pedophile agenda behind it. Comet Ping Pong has been described as a “dive,” but that’s not accurate; it’s something freakier and harder to understand to those who aren’t in an urban culture—it’s hip.
Comet Ping Pong serves Duck Rabbit Milk Stout and Snake Dog IPA and says on its menu that many ingredients are “farmed and harvested in a sustainable manner.” You can get a wood-roasted spaghetti squash for an appetizer, and for a pizza entrée maybe try the Ca-Lamb-ity Jane.
And then there’s the art.
Internet researchers found that Comet Ping Pong had once had a display of paintings by Kim Noble, an artist with dissociative identity disorder. Noble does a variety of different painting styles from her different personalities. Some of her art includes haunting portraits of children, including one that depicts the outline of what might look like a child chained to a wall.
Pizzagaters also zeroed in on John’s brother Tony Podesta’s art collection, which conspiracists found in a magazine spread. Tony Podesta’s collection features a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, an odd piece that depicts a backward bent body with no head titled The Arc of Hysteria (1993). Pizzagaters say the piece is inspired by a Polaroid found in the apartment of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who bent one of his dead, headless victims in the same pose. However, a sketch similar to the sculpture by Bourgeois can be found from 1989, before Dahmer was caught.
Tony Podesta also owns paintings by Biljana Djurdjevic, a Serbian artist known for eerie paintings, sometimes featuring children that look dead or unconscious.
Being alarmed by creepy art is also the primary impetus of the Denver International Airport conspiracy, which has plagued the airport since it opened in 1995. Conspiracy theorists say that a series of secret hidden tunnels lead to bunkers where the rich and powerful will head to when the end times are upon us, and they’ve hidden the story in plain sight within the airport’s art.
Murals by artist Leo Tanguma titled In Peace and Harmony with Nature and Children of the World Dream of Peace in the baggage claim area of the airport feature scenes of what looks like a dystopian future. In one, an oppressive soldier wearing a gas mask and waving a sword stands near the wreckage of a building, while a woman with a dead baby weeps nearby. The second mural features a group of people in ethnic clothing from around the world carrying bundles of swords gathered by a toppled statue of the same soldier from the first mural. The murals, Denver Airport Conspiracists say, represent an apocalyptic vision of a war followed by a globalist New World Order.
Another frightening piece of Denver International art is a sculpture of a 32-foot-tall blue horse with blazing red eyes named Blue Mustang (but nicknamed “Blucifer”) that stands kicking its hooves in the air outside the airport and is said to represent a horseman of the apocalypse. The sculptor, Luis Jiménez, was killed by the sculpture when the blue horse’s head fell on him in his studio and severed an artery in his leg in 2006. The statue was installed at Denver International in 2008.
The runways are also supposedly laid out in the shape of a swastika, and a dedication marker inside has Freemason symbols on it, among other conspiracy clues.
To help talk about all this rumor, Denver International made the strange decision to install a helpful voice: an animatronic talking gargoyle that interacts with passengers and answers questions, including ones about alleged conspiracies.
WELCH’S RAID
PIZZAGATE SOON SPREAD NOT only to include Comet Ping Pong but pretty much everything it touched. Nearby businesses were included in the widening web. Besta Pizza, just around the corner, was said to have a symbol similar to one supposedly representing pedophilia, as was nearby restaurant Terrasol. The Beyond Borders offices, Little Red Fox market, and the Politics and Prose bookstore were soon all also connected, with theorists speculating there might even be underground tunnels running between the businesses to help smuggle child sex slaves.
“And they’re all about a four-minute drive from John Podesta’s home, kinda coincidental huh?” a YouTube video exploring the theory questioned. The businesses all reported getting threatening phone calls, e-mails, and social media messages from Pizzagaters.
Like Richard, Welch’s downward spiral into conspiracy started with a bout of depression after a harsh turn in life. Just a couple months before his Pizzagate raid, Edgar had accidentally hit a 13-year-old boy who was walking with friends on the side of a road. The boy suffered head, torso, and leg injuries and had to be airlifted to a hospital. Welch’s parents, Harry and Terri Welch, told the press that the aftermath of the accident left the ordinarily energetic and outgoing Welch “melancholy and quiet” and “traumatized.”
Welch began a deep binge on Pizzagate conspiracy media for three days, leading to his voyage to Comet Ping Pong. Welch, like other conspiracy “citizen journalists,” said his inspiration was to “self-investigate.” He perhaps felt that if he could save child slaves, he might make good with the universe for his injuring the boy in his accident.
Welch was interested in Alex Jones and InfoWars, saying he found Jones “eccentric” and adding that “he touches on some subjects that are viable but goes off the deep end on some things.” The significant influences for his raid, though, were InfoWars-produced videos titled “Pizzagate is Real” and “Pizzagate: The Bigger Picture.” Unlike Richard, he tried to recruit two of his friends in his mission by sending them links to the videos, but they didn’t take him seriously.
Welch entered the pizzeria with his guns, and after drawing on an employee carrying frozen dough, panicked customers and employees quickly cleared out of the building. Alone and with a growing police presence outside, Welch searched for the hidden basement room, where enslaved children were shackled awaiting a terrible fate.
But as Welch stormed through Comet Ping Pong (he was inside the restaurant for 45 minutes), his assault rifle clutched tight, he must have felt a growing sense of disappointment. Thinking he had found a secret room, he fired at a locked door several times, only to reveal a dusty closet space that held computer servers.
There was no secret basement room filled with enslaved children, and, in fact, no basement at all. The weird art on the wall turned out to be just weird art. The cheese pizza was just cheese pizza.
Welch’s raid ended up like Richard’s on the road outside of Bohemian Grove. He walked out with his hands up, gave up his weapon, got down belly-first on Connecticut Avenue and was arrested by Washington, D.C. Metro Police.
The most significant difference between Welch’s and Richard’s stories is that Welch’s “investigation” changed his mind. He admitted his erroneous thinking and apologized.
“Truly sorry for endangering the safety of any and all bystanders who were present that day. Unfortunately, I cannot change what I did, but I think I owe it to the families and community to apologize for my mistakes,” Welch said in a statement. “I regret how I handled the situation.”
Richard, on the other hand, only intensified his feelings about the Bohemian Grove. When I interviewed him while driving through the desert terrain of Nevada, I asked if he could go back and do the Bohemian Grove over, would he change anything? I was trying to see if he had any regrets. Richard stared in silence at the bright yellow stripes passing on the highway for a minute, then answered.
“I would do it differently. I think I’d probably rent a bulldozer or a large truck and push the owl idol over,” Richard said on his alternate plan. “I wanted to burn it because I thought it was wood. If I could have destroyed it some other way, that would have been a better symbolic gesture. It would have been more feasible to push it over into that little pond that’s in front of it.”
Conspiracy theorists, of course, immediately assigned the whole Welch raid as part of the Pizzagate conspiracy. Welch was labeled as a form of crisis actor, a plant from the Deep State, his brief experience in indie film production cited as a smoking gun.
WELCH WAS ORDERED TO pay restitution to the restaurant for damages and sentenced to four years in federal prison.
An interesting twist was that this was one of the few times Alex Jones issued a retraction. At first, he offered a rambling, half-assed apology a few months after the event in February, but erased it. In March 2017 Jones read a six-minute prepared statement in which he said he was sorry for spreading the Pizzagate conspiracy and that he did not believe that the restaurant and its owner, James Alefantis, were part of a child trafficking ring. Of course, Alefantis’ attorneys leaning on Jones hard for a retraction probably helped in his decision.
Welch’s story is one that resonates strongly with Richard’s, but he’s not the only one. Lots of similar stories have popped up since Richard’s arrest in 2002. They’re a blip in our crazy news cycle for a minute before they’re largely forgotten.
ALEX JONES POPS UP like a bad penny in stories of unhinged people. In addition to the Sandy Hookers mentioned, his words have influenced people to act violently and break the law.
While working on my book Apocalypse Any Day Now, in which I talked to doomsday preppers, a woman (who wanted to remain anonymous and was called “Tara” in the book) that was a former prepper spoke to me about the downward spiral of her husband. Her husband told her that they, along with their son, needed to prepare for an invasion by the Deep State that was going to round people up and take them to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) camps, which, the conspiracy goes, are sites set up not as emergency shelters, but as concentration camps that enemies of the New World Order will be herded into.
To sharpen their survival skills, Tara’s husband made them camp outside in their tents in Wisconsin in winter. He began using their sparse finances to stockpile weapons and supplies. He refused to let their son, who had autism, go to the doctors as he believed they were part of the conspiracy. And often in the background was the scratchy, twanging baritone of Alex Jones on the radio.
“I can pick that man’s voice out from across a house, and it’s like nails on a chalkboard for me. He spews ignorance and fearmongering, and my husband soaked it up like a sponge, absorbing every word and vomiting it back out whenever he saw an opening in a conversation,” Tara told me about listening to InfoWars. After her husband held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her, Tara took their son, slipped away from her husband while he was asleep, and went to police.
In 2010 45-year-old Byron Williams, inspired by listening to Alex Jones and Glenn Beck, planned an attack at places in San Francisco that have a piece of yarn attached to George Soros. Williams planned to raid Tides Foundation, which works to further progressive policy and the San Francisco offices of the ACLU, both of which have received funding from Soros, who was up to “all kinds of nefarious activities,” according to Williams. He was pulled over in Oakland after police spotted him speeding and weaving in traffic on Interstate 580. Williams engaged in a shootout with the California Highway Patrol for 12 minutes on the side of the highway. Two officers were slightly injured. Williams’ ballistic vest saved him from gunshots, and he surrendered. Williams was sentenced to 401 years in prison.
In 2016, two Georgia men, Michael Mancil, 30, and James Dryden Jr., 22, were discovered to be putting together a plan to travel over 3,400 miles to Alaska to raid the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) facility in Gakona, Alaska. They had stockpiled AR-15s, four Glock handguns, a rifle, and two thousand rounds of ammo as well as communication radios for their mission.
HAARP was developed and built by the U.S. Air Force in the 1990s to study the ionosphere. The facility spreads across 40 acres and features a fenced-in array of 180 antennas. Just the sight of the rows of odd-looking antennas spread as far as the eye can see probably inspired conspiracy imagination.
Conspiracists say that the facility is a government-controlled weather manipulation facility capable of causing hurricanes and other extreme weather, earthquakes (Hugo Chavez blamed the Haitian earthquakes of 2010 on a HAARP-like program), or a mass mind-control center.
In 2015, the Air Force turned HAARP over to the University of Alaska, which continues to use the facility to study atmospheric and satellite communications research, but the transfer hasn’t deterred the theories.
Mancil and Dryden not only believed the weather manipulating machine theory, but somehow concluded that HAARP was “storing souls” in its facility. Things unraveled when the two men were busted for producing methamphetamines, and authorities discovered the plot.
In many cases, Jones tried to deny his violent followers as being a “false flag” or downplaying his influence on them, though the one thing they have in common is that they were InfoWars fans.
With more and more people referencing Jones as at least part of the inspiration for their violent actions, how would Jones escape blame? Starting in 2017, that was an issue he would have to deal with repeatedly.