WHERE THE HECK IS PAHRUMP?
The woman next to me on the plane spent most of her trip playing poker on her phone, gearing up for a vacation to Las Vegas. Walking through the Las Vegas airport, tired from a day of flying from Milwaukee to Dallas, then barely making my connecting flight to Nevada, I walked through the terminal, my senses overloaded by row after row of slot machines projecting noise and flashing lights.
As I approached the baggage area, I heard a voice say, “Hey, Milwaukee!” I turned to see Richard, leaning against the airport wall. He was no longer living in Las Vegas, though. The T-shirt he was wearing teased his new home, with block letters inside an outline of the state of Nevada that read, “Where the Heck is Pahrump?”
IN 2012 RICHARD’S FRIEND LON suggested that, instead of blowing through money on rent for his small Las Vegas apartment, he invest some of his remaining inheritance on buying property. After searching, Richard found a home out in the desert community of Pahrump, about 63 miles northwest of Las Vegas, close to the California border (“walking distance,” Richard says) and 30–40 miles to Death Valley. One selling point was the low price—a high unemployment rate, foreclosure rate, and general slow economy has led to housing prices as cheap as the gravel that decorates most Pahrump yards. The landscape is dotted with abandoned trailer homes, and Richard found a ranch house with two bedrooms, two baths, a living room, kitchen, and den for $53,000. The other big selling point was the large Quonset hut on the property that looked like a mini corrugated metal airplane hangar.
“I would like this place to be the ‘Superfriends Hall of Justice’ (or at least the blue-collar/redneck version of it) of the West Coast RLSH,” Richard wrote me in August 2012, as he was in escrow. “I feel bad for Motor-Mouth, when the reporters [from Stan Lee’s Superhero Academy] were at his house (a dumpy duplex in Oakland), and they asked him if he had a ‘lair.’ Maybe this will make us more legitimate in the eyes of the media.”
Richard was envisioning what is probably the largest-ever RLSH headquarters by square foot, a meeting place for his team, the Pacific Protectorate. After his Bohemian Club protest, Motor-Mouth had made Phantom Patriot a member of the team. In general, Richard had made some connections to the RLSH community. He joined them a couple years in 2012 and 2014 at the big HOPE meetup event in San Diego, where RLSH gather to spend time together doing a handout of supplies to San Diego’s homeless population. His reception there had been wary, but accepting by those who knew his history.
“He’s a nice guy,” an RLSH named Geist reported. “He kept his conspiracy theories to himself and stayed on task.” I was glad Richard had made a social connection with the group.
Richard described his new home in an e-mail to me:
“Yeah, it’s kind of a hump out to Pahrump and I’m not sure if any (prospective) members of a ‘Las Vegas Protectorate’ will want to drive clear out there for meetings and training sessions, but I haven’t found anything in Vegas (like this) that I can afford. Actually, if things get any worse in this country (and they probably will) I don’t want to be living in ANY major metropolitan area. Pahrump is kind of famous for its ‘anti-government weirdoes.’ I should fit right in… HA!”
Indeed, Pahrump, an unincorporated town of 36,441 people, is a strange little desert community.
Local newspaper Pahrump Valley Times, whom I followed on Facebook, once reported about vandalism to the “Welcome to Pahrump” sign. Someone had added a banner beneath it that read “Well come [sic] to Dark Side Hee Haw.” An odd but apt local motto, as it seemed Pahrump was a desert town full of quirky celebrities, odd stories, and desert recluses.
The town was home to radio talk show legend Art Bell, original host of the definitive voice of weirdness, Coast to Coast AM. Bell broadcasted from his home studio in Pahrump, built in a cave. He founded the Pahrump radio station KNYE 95.1FM, and after leaving Coast to Coast AM hosted a show called Midnight in the Desert, starting in July 2015. Later that same year he signed off from the program, saying that unknown persons he believed wanted him silenced had intruded and fired gunshots on his property. Bell died in 2018.
Toward the end of his life, Michael Jackson bought a home in Pahrump in 2008, where he homeschooled his children, recorded in a home studio, and tried to hide out from the media.
There’s also the story of Ron Wayne, one of the original three partners (along with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak) of Apple. He designed the company’s first logo and wrote the manual for the Apple I computer. Uncertain about the future of the company, he cashed in his 10 percent share of the company for $800. That share would be worth about $22 billion today. Wayne lives in a modest home in Pahrump, supplementing his monthly government check by selling rare stamps, coins, and gold.
Dennis Hof, who lived in nearby Crystal, Nevada, was owner of seven brothels, including the Moonlite Bunny Ranch (featured in HBO’s Cathouse series) and authored his autobiography The Art of the Pimp. A Libertarian, Hof became a Trump Republican in 2016 and ran for Nevada Assembly. He was dubbed the “Trump of Pahrump” by his friend, none other than Roger Stone. Hof died in 2018 at his Love Ranch South brothel after his 72nd birthday party, his body being discovered by friend and porn legend Ron Jeremy. Despite being dead, he won election to his Nevada Assembly seat posthumously.
Hof was at one point briefly engaged to another Pahrumpian, Heidi Fleiss, the famous “Hollywood Madame” who used to make “10,000 dollars on a slow night” providing prostitutes to Hollywood’s rich and famous. She’s had a tamer life in Pahrump, where she owns an ultralight flight park and tends to her 25 pet parrots.
“I saw her at Wal-Mart one time. She looks like ten miles of bad road,” Richard would later tell me, as we drove through Pahrump toward his house. We passed by a lot of red dirt and gravel, tumbleweeds, fireworks stores, and fast-food joints. We stopped at the Pahrump Nugget Hotel & Gambling Hall on the main drag to eat at their 24-hour greasy spoon diner, then headed toward Richard’s home. I asked him what his neighbors were like as we turned onto the dusty road to his house.
“A father and son live there, both widowers,” Richard said, pointing one direction. “And over there, you know The Misfits?”
“Like the punk band?” I asked, curious to where this was going.
“Yeah. He used to be their chiropractor,” Richard said, nodding to the house next to his.
I had more questions about these neighbors and was also coming up with the theory that perhaps all 36,441 residents of Pahrump each had a strange life story, but Richard was already out of his truck and leading me to his superhero headquarters, which he had named “The Outpost,” for a tour.
TRYING TO WRAP UP this book, I had told Richard that I wanted to get some final interview material, but that while I was visiting in Pahrump, I’d be glad to participate in whatever he wanted me to, in addition to interview sessions. What it turned out he wanted was for me to co-star in a new Phantom Patriot video with him, as he was trying to switch from producing comics to making YouTube videos. Comics, he felt, weren’t working out.
Richard had tried to get his story out there while he was on parole. He sent copies of his Prison Penned Comics to Marvel and DC (both of whom don’t accept unsolicited submissions) and later would claim that each publisher stole elements of his life story in some way. He cited Marvel’s 2010 Ultimate Avengers: Crime and Punishment, written by Mark Millar, who also penned the Real-Life Superhero-inspired Kick-Ass, as one example. Part of the storyline has the skull-faced Ghost Rider tracking down a gang that engaged in a satanic ritual to gain wealth and power. I think Richard’s conclusion that he inspired the story is a stretch.
The Court of Owls storyline introduced in Batman the following year did give me pause for a moment. Written by Scott Snyder, the Court of Owls became popular new villains in the Batman universe as a secret society that controls Gotham City and beyond. They disguise their identities with owl masks, and their headquarters has a giant statue of an owl as its centerpiece. If the story idea hadn’t come from former Batman portrayer Richard directly, it seems the Bohemian Grove might have inspired it.
When I went to visit, Richard had already produced three Phantom Patriot videos. He had hired a company, Las Vegas Motion Pictures, to shoot and edit. He found them the old-fashioned way—flipping through the Las Vegas Yellow Pages.
His first video, Phantom Patriot: An Inside Look, showed off The Outpost and he hoped it would help recruit more members of the Pacific Protectorate to join him. Inside his fort, as I soon got to see firsthand, was a museum dedicated to himself—a row of blank-faced mannequins wearing replicas of various costumed personas he had invented, including the Lynx, Thoughtcrime, and Phantom Patriot (he later changed them to variations of Phantom Patriot costumes), and one wearing a Marines uniform. The mannequins all stood with a slight bend in their knee, one hand slightly raised, and eerily looked as though they might all come to life and take a step forward to try to shake hands with you.
A glass display case in a corner of The Outpost had copies of the comic publications Richard had created, as well as a copy of my book Heroes in the Night (which featured a couple of paragraphs on him), a DVD of the Dark Secrets: Inside Bohemian Grove doc, and a plastic owl (the kind put on roofs to scare away crows) labeled “Moloch.” The walls were covered with protest signs he had made, like REJECT REPTOID RELIGION and BEWARE OF FALSE FLAG ATTACKS, along with photos from protests and RLSH meetups.
He had a weight bench and punching bag, and a body-shaped target with a rubber Reptilian mask for crossbow training. And in the middle of the room was a round table where he hoped Real-Life Superheroes could assemble for meetings.
The next year he produced a video titled Phantom Patriot Report 2013, which showed clips of the Phantom Patriot doing a patrol in Las Vegas with Motor-Mouth, a visit to The Outpost from a new RLSH named Def Con, and protests on his new Phantom-Cycle, a four-wheeled bicycle to which he attached protest signs and a bullhorn to the handlebars, so he could cover more ground in his weekly protests out on the Vegas Strip.
All of this was fun, but there was a disturbing segment in Phantom Patriot Report 2013 that showed that Richard was still obsessed with Chely Wright and his thought process on her had become completely delusional.
LIKE ME
AS IT TURNED OUT,Wright was having her own American dream-turned-nightmare. Back when Richard had met her in 2001, something substantial was weighing on Wright—she was in the closet about being gay. She knew that the heavily Christian country music industry would not be welcoming of her lifestyle, and she was terrified about coming out. The fear and pressure had tormented her so much that at one point she was close to ending her own life, as she describes in her 2010 autobiography Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer.
“I went upstairs to my bedroom, got on a stepladder, and reached up high into my closet. I easily located the loaded 9mm handgun,” Wright says in her book. She stuck the gun in her mouth, but after a few tense moments, she burst into tears, put down the weapon and collapsed into bed.
Richard had told me he had tried to go “cold turkey” on his obsession with Wright, but after reading Trance-formation of America by Cathy O’Brien, he believed he had discovered a conspiracy on why Wright had not fallen in love with him: government mind control. The disinterest in him after their auction date, her tired appearance that night, her lesbianism, and many other aspects of her life were all were signs of Project Monarch, just as Cathy O’Brien had explained. O’Brien’s book has numerous passages that cite the country music industry as part of the conspiracy.
O’Brien claims she was used as a mind-controlled sex slave by Kris Kristofferson and that country singers like Loretta Lynn and Barbara Mandrell were fellow slaves.
Richard had now gone off the deep end about Wright. His video, which would make almost no sense to the casual or even a deeply entrenched conspiracist, dissects alleged hidden symbolism in Wright’s album cover for Never Loved You Enough. His analysis is on the following page.
How long had he stared at this album cover to see the secrets floating in it?
Before I left Pahrump, Richard asked me if I had read Like Me yet, as he had suggested. I had, I told him. He handed me a stack of photocopies of handwritten notes he had taken on the autobiography. There were eight pages of notes, mostly page numbers and sentence fragments.
“Page 13–15, 3rd-grade crush on Miss Smilie,” notes one line. “Page 102–104, dated Vince Gill,” reads another and “page 139, 1994 lesbian sex on tour bus rumor.”
I wasn’t sure what conclusions Richard was trying to reach, but it was clear he had gone through Wright’s autobiography with a fine-toothed comb, noting any reference to dating, travel, and other random quotes. Toward the conclusion of his “My Memories of Chely Wright” document, he wrote:
“For years, I had been telling myself that my feelings for Chely were just a celebrity crush that got way out of hand. However, crushes don’t last for over 12 years. For months, I’ve had this irresistible urge to go public with my connection to Chely and expose Project Monarch to the public. I have to help her, no matter what the cost. That’s what you do when you love someone!”
After e-mailing Wright’s management company requesting to talk to Wright for this book, I got a short but understandable response: “Chely is not interested in speaking about Richard McCaslin or anyone associated with him.”
THERE WERE MANY TIMES where I had hoped Richard was on the right path to finding… something. In 2011 I had hoped he might find a happy life retiring in the Bahamas. In 2012, I thought his protest in front of the Bohemian Club in San Francisco had brought him closure. When he built a small network of 9/11 Truthers on the Las Vegas Strip and befriended Motor-Mouth and his Pacific Protectorate team, I had hoped he was making a support network. After the Bohemian Club protest, Richard had drawn a comic zine titled RLSH Team-Up that starred Phantom Patriot, Motor-Mouth, and Mutinous Angel in a fictional story where they raided the Bohemian Club and beat up a group of robe-clad Reptilians who were preparing to sacrifice a young boy. Richard drove to the Bay Area a couple of times to join the Pacific Protectorate on patrol and had even spent a Thanksgiving dinner with Motor-Mouth’s family.
Richard as Phantom Patriot with members of the Pacific Protectorate on a charity mission, 2013.
But except for Lon, Richard had a hard time maintaining friendships. He quickly soured on Motor-Mouth and his crew, especially when he invited them to a team-up as a celebration of the completion of The Outpost, but everyone he asked flaked out, one by one. He sent me photos of the recently finished headquarters the day of the planned meetup, with this message:
“Here’s the finished product… pretty cool? Unfortunately, you may notice that nobody is at the table. NOBODY HAS SHOWN UP!” Richard wrote, fuming and running through the excuses the RLSH he had invited had given. “I’m still running the charity handout and patrol tonight by myself.”
Months later, frustrated by the flakiness of his team, he quit the Pacific Protectorate.
There were times, too, he lost his temper with me. After his San Francisco protest, he had been angry that I hadn’t reported it on my Heroes in the Night blog and chastised me in an angry e-mail.
“TOTAL BULLSHIT!! …I expect the mainstream media to ignore me, but I thought you were better than that! Do you want my mission to fail, because (so far) it looks like it!” Richard wrote. “I’m not some newbie begging for attention. I ‘paid my dues’ before half these guys were even born!” He concluded, “Do the RIGHT THING, do the SMART THING and FIX THIS!”
His sudden burst of anger toward me caught me off-guard and made me nervous.
I placated him by writing a short article on my blog, and our correspondence returned to normal. I knew our next falling-out might be a final one, so I wanted a chance to interview him at least one more time.
PHANTOM PATRIOT RETRO CINEMA
RICHARD’S LATEST ENDEAVOR was a series he called Phantom Patriot Retro Cinema. His first idea for the format, which he did in episode one, was to act as a horror host, like Elvira or Svengoolie, or something similar to Mystery Science Theater 3000. Richard would introduce an old film with bumper segments, throwing in some jokes and a pinch of conspiracy theory.
He created a sidekick for the show named G’nik, a rubber alien mask with an Elvis wig on it mounted in a plexiglass box. G’nik (read it backward) was “an Elvis enthusiast from the planet Memphis-3,” that the Phantom Patriot had saved from a UFO crash in the Nevada desert.
I couldn’t help but think that G’nik was also sort of a companion like in the movie Cast Away, where Tom Hanks, stranded on an island, paints a face on a volleyball and names it Wilson, talking to it to keep from going insane. I imagined Richard ranting to G’nik in the abandoned Outpost, while his blank rubber face stared back at him.
The first episode rolled out. Richard’s acting is a little stiff, but he showed creativity in show design and writing, particularly in working with their environment.
“Greetings Earthlings, take me to your casino, ha ha ha,” G’nik says, introducing himself. Richard tells G’nik he’s about to show him an episode of the old 1950s British series The Adventures of William Tell.
“Is this program based on the medieval Earthling that shot <censor beep> with a crossbow?” G’nik asks Richard.
“Apples. He shot an apple off his son’s head with a crossbow,” a flustered Richard responds in the comedy bit.
After the first episode, Richard changed his mind about the nature of the show and wanted to film his fictional adventures instead of showing old films.
He told me he wanted me to join him as a superhero for a second episode of Phantom Patriot Retro Cinema, in which I would reprise a persona I developed for my book Heroes in the Night. Spoilers: for the epilogue of that book I created my own Real-Life Superhero persona, Argyle Gargoyle, which I soon changed to Argo, and joined Real-Life Superheroes on patrol in Milwaukee. I told him I would be glad to participate but pointed out that I didn’t have acting experience.
Behind the scenes: Phantom Patriot punches Illuminus.
Soon after making travel plans to Pahrump, Richard sent me photocopies of a handwritten script for an episode called “Assault on Area 51.” The story was that Argo (whom Richard changed in the text to Argoyle) and Phantom Patriot would team up to defeat his enemy Illuminus in a showdown in conspiracy hotspot Area 51. It was a dense script, and I wondered how we could film all the scenes in three days.
AFTER A TOUR OF The Outpost, we hung out at Richard’s house, where he had set up a guest bedroom for me to stay in for my visit.
I was curious as to what his house might be like. I thought it might be something like the doomsday preppers I had studied for my book Apocalypse Any Day Now, packed with food, water, medical and survival supplies. But what I found was a house that was surprisingly sparse and empty-feeling. There was furniture, but no art on the walls. Richard didn’t drink coffee but generously had gotten me some instant coffee for my stay. While looking for a coffee mug, I noticed his cupboards were almost bare—a few cans of food, a couple of plates and bowls. His fridge had orange juice and eggs, and little else. One small room of the house had nothing but shelves containing his comic book collection and a vacuum cleaner. We sat on his couch and watched the news, and then I went to bed—Richard wanted us up early as we were to start filming in The Outpost at 9 a.m.
I couldn’t sleep and stared at the bedroom ceiling. What was I doing here? Why was I writing this book?The silent night in Pahrump was broken by a coyote howling off in the desert, then another and another. I laid for a long time listening to coyotes and wondering what was going to happen next in the story of Richard McCaslin.
IN THE MORNING, we shot some scenes in The Outpost, with Las Vegas Motion Pictures director of photography Greg Benoit. Then we all headed out to Area 51, which, along with Roswell, New Mexico is one of the most famous pieces of UFO conspiracy lore. Area 51 is part of an Air Force base where it is said the government is supposedly storing one or more UFOs, reverse engineering alien technology, and maybe even has preserved dead alien bodies or captives in an intergalactic jail cell. Many of the stories of the secret base come from Bob Lazar, who in 1989 made media appearances claiming he had been hired to work at Area 51, where he studied alien crafts (and their fuel, element 151) and learned about extraterrestrial life from the Zeta Reticuli system and their interactions with humans throughout history. Since then, Lazar has been labeled as either a brave whistleblower or a pathological liar. His story received renewed interest when a 2018 Netflix documentary titled Bob Lazar: Area 51 and Flying Saucers was released.
In 2019, Area 51 received a lot of attention when a Facebook event page called “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop Us All,” was created. It became viral and millions of people said they were “going” or “interested.”
“Let’s see them aliens,” the page’s event description suggested. The page was intended as a joke and led to the creation of hundreds of funny memes and videos. As the interest rose, there were concerns that in the mass of people responding to the event, some might be taking the idea of the raid seriously, so the Air Force and other officials issued warnings to potential trespassers.
The plot of Richard’s “Assault on Area 51” story was that the Phantom Patriot, Argoyle, and G’nik were supposed to enter the secret base stealthily (I was glad to find out we would be using a stand-in site instead of actually attempting to do this, as trespassers are quickly arrested) to confront Phantom Patriot’s eyeball-headed nemesis Illuminus.
The plan in driving out there was to shoot scenes on the nearby Extraterrestrial Highway, marked by a sign with UFOs on it, a wink at the area’s notoriety and the skywatchers who gather around Rachel, a one-horse town on the highway of about 50 people. Rachel’s big destination is the Little A’Le’Inn, a diner, gift shop and bar, serving UFO hunters since 1989. The Little A’Le’Inn was featured in an episode of The X-Files and the alien comedy Paul. Conspiracy legend Milton William Cooper once gave a presentation there. As we left The Outpost, I discovered Richard’s plan was pure guerrilla filmmaking. He was willing to drive all the way out to Rachel, to shoot a scene where the heroes rendezvous after their big battle with Illuminus at the inn, but hadn’t thought or cared to call ahead and see if it might be OK for a cameraman, a couple of colorfully clad people, and a rubber alien head in a plexiglass box to shoot scenes outside the establishment.
It wasn’t, as it turned out.
“No hon, you can’t film here without permission from the owners,” a waitress with a beehive hairdo told us, leaning out the front door. The owners weren’t around, she added; we’d have to e-mail them. Richard apparently wasn’t expecting this response, because after the waitress ducked back inside, he swore and stomped around angrily outside the Little A’Le’Inn. I sheepishly entered the establishment to check it out and buy souvenirs and to give Richard a moment to cool off. The scene was later recreated at Las Vegas Motion Pictures using a green screen and a photo of the exterior of the building.
After the rejection at the Little A’Le’Inn, we did a couple more shots, mostly vehicles driving along desert roads and entering a gate on an abandoned lot to simulate driving into Area 51. Then we headed back to Pahrump and drove down a dirt road off the highway to spend the rest of the long day in a big dirt pit owned by Nevada’s Bureau of Land Management. It looked like the spot was mainly used for dumping trash and shooting empty beer bottles. Richard had painstakingly cleaned up the garbage (“I had to haul an entire mattress out of here,” he told us) for his set.
This was where the climactic scene of the episode would take place—the heroes confronting Illuminus, played by an actor named Matt hired via Las Vegas Motion Pictures. We would spend the entire next day there. There were a lot of action fight scenes that were supposed to be shot, including my chance to shine as Argoyle pulled out a slingshot and said “Hey, Illuminus! Face front, true believer!” and then shot him in the crotch with a bouncy ball.
The grueling shoot got worse for me as Richard asked me to pull off a stunt in his ATV.
This is an example of Richard’s strange relationship with money. Three years in the Marines and six years in prison had not left him with extravagant tastes. He had an organized budget and schedule—he exercised every morning, had a lean, inexpensive diet, and no vices other than his weekly trip to the comic book store on Wednesdays. He rarely ate out and only occasionally treated himself to seeing a superhero movie in the theater. He had tried to find work in Pahrump, anything—he applied at McDonald’s, Home Depot, and everywhere else in town, but didn’t get any callbacks and was trying to budget his remaining inheritance carefully.
But then again, he would go out and spend thousands of dollars on an ATV because he thought it would look cool in his video. He saw it as an investment—he hoped his Phantom Patriot Retro Cinema show would somehow make him money, either by rental or purchase sales online and on DVD or by selling the show to a network.
As the Phantom Patriot and G’nik confronted Illuminus, I was supposed to drive Richard’s ATV down a dirt hill to surprise and distract Illuminus. The problem was, I told Richard, I had never driven an ATV before, and looking down the steep hill, didn’t feel prepared to do the stunt. He shook his head, irritated. I’d be just fine, he told me. I did a couple of practice runs, taking it slow. It was jarring and bumpy, but I made it.
The cameras starting rolling. I drove down the hill and slid the ATV next to Illuminus, dust flying in the air.
“Cut!” Richard yelled. “No, you got to do it faster. Way faster!”
Now I was getting irritated. We had been filming all day with no breaks in the desert, and the whole experience was wearing me down. I was tired, hungry, and dazed from the sun. I circled back up out of the pit and prepared to do the stunt run again. I cruised down the hill faster, bouncing and flying through the air in the ATV.
“Cut!” Richard yelled. “Faster!”
I sped angrily back up the hill, circled, and hit the gas. This time I hit a mound of dirt the wrong way. The ATV jumped sideways and crashed into the side of the hill. My body flew through the front of the ATV (I wasn’t wearing the ATV’s seatbelt as it didn’t fit me) and smashed into the reddish-brown dirt. I saw stars flash in my eyes, then blacked out for a second.
When I came to, I was lying on my back in the dirt. I felt like my mask was choking me, so I peeled it off, blinded by the bright sun. The wheels of the ATV were still spinning next to me. I felt an intense pain in my leg, and for a second, I thought it had been severed in the crash. I propped myself onto my elbows and saw Richard, Greg, and Matt rushing toward me. Richard turned the ATV off, and they helped me to my feet. I gave myself a dusty pat-down to make sure everything was still there and in one piece. My leg was shooting with pain, and it was hard to walk or even stand. I stumbled over to Richard’s van and drank a bottle of water. They shot a couple scenes without me before I eased back in, limping back into the action.
Hours later, as the hot Nevada sun began to set, Richard was losing his temper, snapping at cast and crew. There were still several scenes that hadn’t been shot, and he blamed it on Greg and Matt being late (Greg had picked up Matt, and they had gotten lost trying to find the pit) and on Greg doing too many takes. He was particularly getting upset with a stunt that wasn’t working where a lit smoke bomb was supposed to time correctly with the ATV’s hood flying open. The timing to get it right was ridiculously improbable, and it just wasn’t working out.
“Damn it!” Richard yelled, kicking up a cloud of dust and dirt.
Finally, as the sun sank, Greg called it a day on filming and gave Richard a talk, telling him most of the shots had been accomplished, and the couple that remained could be done with a Tea Krulos stunt double wearing my Argoyle costume. Richard, still obviously frustrated and angry, reluctantly agreed. We returned to his home in silence. Richard made us La Choy and instant rice for dinner. I took some ibuprofen and went to sleep.
IN THE MORNING, RICHARD had calmed down quite a bit. I walked into his kitchen to find him making eggs and bacon. He was staring out the window, smiling, and turned to me.
“Look, rabbits!” he said cheerfully and pointed outside. I walked over and saw several baby jackrabbits chasing each other around his desert yard.
We drove to Las Vegas so I could catch my flight home. I used the car ride to ask him some interview questions. As the miles went by, we talked and laughed about several different topics—stories from his time in prison, Real-Life Superheroes, and life in Las Vegas.
AFTER MY ADVENTURES FILMING with Richard in Pahrump, he created one last Phantom Patriot video, which was posted to time with the presidential election in November 2016. This one was designed to be more “art therapy” aimed at the election cycle, which featured two people much despised by Richard—Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Unlike other conspiracy theorists, Richard had not warmed up to Trump. In the Prison Penned Comics he created in 2005, he had an illustration showing influential members of the Bohemian Club. Trump was among them (although in reality, it appears, surprisingly, that he isn’t a member). His dislike of Hillary can be found all the way back in an early Phantom Patriot booklet he handed out in 2001 before his arrest, which included a poem he wrote titled “Queen Hillary,” with the opening lines “Bitch from hell/liar through and through/Hillary plans to trash/ the red, white, and blue.”
In this video, Trump is joined by ex-presidents Carter, both Bush presidents, Bill Clinton, and Obama as well as Pope Francis in old enemy Illuminus’ headquarters in a cave. They are all depicted as Reptilians until they drink blood and transform into their presidential forms, created in the video by actors wearing cartoonish rubber masks from a Halloween store. Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin soon show up, too, and there are cameos from actors as Bernie Sanders, who is portrayed as a buffoonish Bolshevik, and Richard’s old inspiration, Alex Jones.
Richard packs a ton of conspiracy deep cuts into this episode. The Reptilians read from The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean, purported to be an ancient text from Atlantis translated by Dr. Maurice Doreal in 1939, but more likely a pulp-era hoax made from plagiarizing the works of H.P. Lovecraft and other writers. Richard’s script also references the homophobic conspiracy that Michelle Obama is secretly transgender and the one that says Hillary Clinton has already died and been replaced with Teresa Barnwell, a woman who has carved out a career as a Hillary impersonator due to her uncanny resemblance to the politician.
Perhaps the harshest “art therapy” in the video is saved for the Alex Jones scenes, where an actor portraying Jones is depicted as a creepy jester jack-in-the-box. He’s announced as entertainment for the assembled Reptilian world leaders, as he bounces up from the box, his shirt reading “Disinfo Wars.”
“You globalist scum make me sick! Donald Trump is the real deal! I am the resistance!” Jones croaks, as the assembled Reptilians applaud. Jones’ phone rings and his clown gloved hands grab his phone.
“Yes, Mr. Turner, I’ll pass that on to Sheen, Rogan, and Ventura! You can count on us, Mr. Turner!” the jester Jones says obediently, referring to three of Jones’ high-profile conspiracy-oriented friends—Charlie Sheen, Governor Jesse Ventura, and Joe Rogan, host of The Joe Rogan Experience, apparently implying they are all on the payroll of media mogul and CNN founder Ted Turner. Later in the broadcast, Phantom Patriot gets the satisfaction of knocking the Jones clown out, hitting him with his shield.
Phantom Patriot appears halfway through the video, bursting through a brick wall with G’nik and an armed militia of citizens—a farmer, a nun, a soldier, and a police officer—who place the former presidents and other leaders under arrest.
“This is an illegal coup, and I order you to drop your weapons,” Obama protests as the Deep State members are rounded up.
“In order for this to be an illegal coup, your group would have to be the legitimate government, which you have never been,” Richard sneers.
“Preach on it, PP!” G’nik chimes in.
“None of you were fairly elected by the people. All of you were secretly chosen from Illuminati bloodline families. You have never represented us. You’re the tools of the globalists and Zionists, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, and the Vatican!” Richard tells the prisoners.
“Amen, brother,” G’nik agrees.
Then they get what they deserve, in Richard’s opinion—the miserable line-up is corralled into Guantanamo Bay to share a cell, all wearing orange prison jumpsuits. Their overpowering Reptilian thirst growing, Trump and George H.W. Bush end up fighting over who gets to eat a rubber prop rat.
THE STARDUST AND FANTOMAH SHOW
IN 2017, RICHARD MADE one more attempt at creating a show, which he was hoping would act as a pilot he could sell to Comedy Central or Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. If that failed, he would try to sell DVDs online and in comic book stores. He was hoping to create a cult hit, he told me. His idea was to create something similar to Space Ghost Coast to Coast, which had taken an old animated Hanna-Barbera superhero and made him the cartoon host of a talk show. Richard found two public-domain Golden Age comic book heroes, Stardust the Super Wizard (one of the stars of Fantastic Comics, 1939–1941) and Fantomah “Mystery Woman of the Jungle” (featured in Jungle Comics 1940–1944), and made them a married couple and talk show hosts, broadcasting from a spaceship.
I didn’t think it was a bad idea, considering we live in an era where it seems like every superhero property ever created is being optioned for movies and TV shows. I didn’t have faith that Richard was going to find success as a viral hit, though, as he had no social media presence and “cult hits” can be hard to manufacture.
Richard mailed me a DVD when it was completed, and as the show rolled, I was pleasantly surprised. It was awkward and hokey but entertaining. The production values were good. What impressed me the most was that there was no mention of conspiracy at all, just clean, Golden Age comic book fun, and I thought he might find an audience of comic fans. The fake black and white newsreels were a nice touch, and the actors were having a gleeful time with their roles. Perhaps Richard was moving in a new, healthier creative direction, I thought.
The show features the superhero couple scooping fellow Golden Age heroes Deuce the Daredevil and Black Terror out of World War II and beaming them aboard their ship. Richard played Deuce the Daredevil as well as the video’s villains, The Claw, and The Voice. As always, Richard wrote the script and made all the costumes and props. Las Vegas Motion Pictures hired the actors that played the other characters and handled production.
But as it turns out, Richard could only make it 17-and-a-half minutes into the narrative before conspiracy reared its ugly head.
A flashback shows comic book action as Deuce the Daredevil and Black Terror battle The Claw to retrieve an A-bomb he’s stolen. Back in the studio with their hosts, the talk turns to a discussion of the Manhattan Project.
“Truman’s excuse about the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki being preferable to a full-scale invasion never seemed genuine to me,” Black Terror shrugs.
“To be perfectly honest your president and his Masonic advisers had ulterior motives unleashing such devastation…” Stardust begins to say as Fantomah shoots him a dirty look and elbows him.
“Husband, what did I say about temporal anomalies?” she scolds him in a whisper. “If we reveal to them the extent of the Illuminati’s influence on this reality, it will be more than their mortal minds can handle!”
I sighed and shook my head. It was apparent that Richard couldn’t escape the conspiracy, even for a short time.
AFTER OUR DRIVE BACK to Las Vegas that weekend following the long video shoot in Pahrump, Richard pulled up to McCarran International. I was exhausted from travel and two days of shooting all day with few breaks, my leg was throbbing with pain, and after the strange weekend, I was glad to be heading home to Milwaukee. I limped out of Richard’s van and turned to say goodbye to him through the passenger window. We shook hands, and he told me he’d let me know when the video was done and posted on YouTube.
That was the last time I was to see Richard McCaslin.