WHAT IF…?
In 2019, I saw the phantom of Richard McCaslin frequently. A group of dozens of Anti-vaxxers showed up at the 2019 San Diego ComicCon, protesting in the style of Anonymous, wearing matching costumes of the character V from V for Vendetta. They held signs that read “Vaccines are Made from Aborted Fetal Cells” and “Vaccines Can Cause Injury and Death.” I wondered what Richard would have thought of these comic-book-style conspiracists. He might have joined them, but then again might have dismissed them as a George Soros-backed group of infiltrators.
The viral “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” event may have started as a joke, but at its heart, it shared Richard’s belief that the government is hiding something that needs to be exposed. About three thousand people showed up to the area for the September 20, 2019 “Alienstock” events, but only approximately one hundred made their way to protest outside the gates with goofy signs and alien costumes. A couple of people were detained for alcohol and public urination charges, and one for trying to sneak past the gates.
I think Richard probably would have driven out there to meet these people and try to rally them to his cause. Maybe he would have inspired a viral “Raid Bohemian Grove” page.
On August 10, 2019, wealthy financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his jail cell after committing suicide. Within minutes of his death being reported, I watched in disbelief as my social media feeds flooded with conspiracy theories (I was surprised to see quite a few of my friends sharing them). They ranged from the plausible—Epstein had paid off guards to look the other way while he killed himself—to the outlandish, like Epstein’s body being replaced by a dead homeless man while he escaped on a private jet to the Middle East to get plastic reconstructive surgery on his face.
These ideas weren’t being parroted from Alex Jones or Donald Trump (though both would join in before the day was over) but were being put forth from people’s own natural conspiracy instincts.
Richard certainly would have had something to say about the death of Epstein, and I think he would have found a certain level of vindication. Here was the corrupt force Richard had waged war against: a rich and powerful pedophile with ties to the royal family, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and other influential people. He entertained at his tropical island—Little Saint James in the Virgin Islands, nicknamed by locals as “Pedophile Island.”
The Alex Jones Show opened the day of Epstein’s death with Jones saying that the news was “causing a Matrix-level awakening, the man-behind-the-curtain awakening, we’re going to break down why it’s captivating, why it’s flipping the paradigm so massively.”
Jones flatly dismissed theories Epstein had made a getaway.
“Dead men tell no tales, ladies and gentlemen,” Jones croaked. “This is also a message to everyone else to keep their mouths shut and to absolutely understand that the Clintons and the evil spider globalist system that hides behind them is ready to kill anybody and everybody they need to.”
A guest host on the show that day, Tom Pappert, talked about drone video footage that had been captured on Epstein’s island in 2014.
“You’ve seen these disturbing images of the island itself. You got what appears to be Moloch the Owl, a popular scene from Bohemian Grove, and you can check out the old InfoWars documentary where Alex Jones got that on tape… we know it’s got this bizarre temple,” Pappert reported, referring to something strange found in the drone footage—a small temple-like building (though it could also be an observatory or a gaudy beach house) on top of the highest point of the island. It has a dome flanked by two large gold owl statues10.
Here was the sinister place Richard had visualized in the Bohemian Grove, an island of pedophilia and owl worship.
All of these stories led me to think Richard was perhaps ahead of his time. When I first started corresponding with him it was easy to dismiss his ideas as coming from a lone eccentric. But when the President of the United States is retweeting a post that suggests Epstein was murdered as part of the Clinton Body Count, and hosting conspiracy theorists in a social media summit, I have to think that Richard is a zeitgeist. He is someone who attempted to soar into the American dream like Superman, but instead belly-flopped into the rabbit hole of an American nightmare.
THERE’S A CLASSIC MARVEL comic book series titled What If…?that first premiered in 1977. The series imagined an alternate-reality Marvel Universe. Richard had probably read them. Typical storylines imagined What if Spider-Man had joined the Fantastic Four? or What if Doctor Doom had become a hero?
Richard’s brain was stuck in a pretty constant What If…?mode, and I can’t help but think that way myself about him. What if the chain of events in Richard’s life had been just slightly different? Would he still be alive?
When I interviewed the attorney from his case, Jeff Mitchell, he said he also thought it was a string of small moments that altered Richard’s path that led him to the Bohemian Grove, Soledad, and, I would add, eventually led to his suicide.
“Had he not inherited the amount of money he did, he wouldn’t have the money to do any of this,” Mitchell said. “And then he said in his interviews that if he had a relationship, had kids, wasn’t alone, he wouldn’t have done this. And if he wouldn’t have stumbled on that Alex Jones tape he never would have gone down this path, so along the road, there’s these certain points, if any of those things had not happened, he wouldn’t have done it.”
Who is to blame for Richard’s downward spiral into madness? Alex Jones? David Icke? His parents? Or is it a failure of the American dream in general?
Whatever the cause, conspiracy theory killed Richard. It entered his life at a point when he was weak with emotional devastation. His belief in material put forward by Alex Jones caused his raid of the Bohemian Grove. Six years of prison and three years of parole followed. When he was “free,” he was viewed by society not as someone who was misguidedly trying to save the lives of children, but merely as a five-time felony arsonist who had engaged police officers in an armed standoff. He couldn’t find employment. His conspiracy paranoia made it challenging to establish relationships, and so he isolated himself out in the desert.
I considered Richard to be a friend. My goal was to be objective, and I think I have been in examining his life. But he was someone I met and corresponded with for eight years and journeyed through part of my life with. Although I almost never agreed with his assessment, I miss hearing his interpretation of world events.
CONSPIRACY BELIEF IS NOT always wrong, and when I interviewed Dr. Daniel White, he said that there are times when these beliefs can even be healthy. It’s an act of self-preservation.
“Healthy skepticism is important—questioning how and why things are the way they are is the only way that we progress, or any new discoveries are made. However, I would say that the skepticism needs to be partnered with the tools needed to discover the ‘truth’ and a strong dose of self-doubt and self-reflection—a willingness to step back and go ‘hang on, have I got this completely wrong?’” Dr. White explained. “I would say that is also the line dividing truth seekers from conspiracy theorists—both are questioning and willing to challenge the status quo to find out what is going on, but one has both the tools needed to find the truth and the willingness to accept that they might be wrong.”
It’s impossible to stop people like Richard, Maddison Welch (the Pizzagate raider), the QAnon fanatics, and other people who have made dangerous plans to wrong conspiracy rights. Better education and not giving legitimacy to theories with no factual basis like Flat Earth and QAnon in classrooms might help prevent future cases, as well as better mental health care systems and support networks. But I’m confident in saying we will see the Richard McCaslin story repeat over and over with people pushed over the edge by conspiracy ideas.
I believe the First Amendment must be protected, but if you engage in libel or slander by telling people they are crisis actors and that their murdered children never existed, you should be sued, and that private companies have the right to decide to drop you from their platforms for violating their terms of agreement.
I BECAME OBSESSED WITH working on this book. It was a story about Richard McCaslin, a comic book artist, former Marine, stuntman, traveler, protestor, and conspiracy theorist, but there was also the story of the dark American underbelly that somehow affects us all.
There were periods where I hardly left the house for days on end, as I kept the coffee rolling, sitting at my desk in my pajamas, poring over old letters and e-mails from Richard, reading conspiracy manifestos and articles on case studies, and scouring the depths of the Internet for missing bits of info. It was draining and took a mental toll on me. I was becoming as bugged out as anyone you read about in these pages.
I guess if we’re asking what ifs, by the way, and to give the benefit of the doubt to Richard one last time, we should also offer this possibility… what if… Richard was right about all of it? The Bohemian Grove, the Masons, the false flags, the Reptilians, the brainwashing programs? What if I’m wrong and it was all true?
You know what? I think it’s finally time for me to climb out of the rabbit hole and get out of here.
10 New July 2019 drone footage showed that the gold dome and owls on the “temple” were gone and that the building appeared to be filled with ladders and buckets of paint.