-(CRICKETS CHIRPING) -(WATER SLOSHING)
(CAR ENGINE REVS)
SUSAN KASSON-KURILICH: I'm sitting in...
Kissimmee, Florida...
flipping through Facebook on my phone
and I see the message...
"John's dead."
What do you mean, "John's dead"?
What does that mean?
I'm up, you know, walking around the house,
going, "What does this mean, John's dead?"
W... What?
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
SUSAN: Could this be a joke?
Could-- Could this be, you know...
like, "John's dead, to me,"
you know, like they'd had a fight,
something happened, they'd split up.
(MOUSE CLICKING)
SUSAN: I called Judy and I'm like,
"Well, can you pull off the side of the road?"
-(SCOFFS) -♪ (TENSE MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
That's when she told me what was going on.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JUDY HLAVAC: I was actually doing Amazon
and Uber at the time, delivering, uh, packages.
I got to my first stop
and I went to the door and dropped off the package,
and I got back in my car, and the phone rang.
So she's like, "You need to go on Facebook."
I'm like, "Why?"
"Lily said that John's dead." (SCOFFS)
What the hell happened?
Because we really didn't know.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC INTENSIFIES, CONCLUDES) ♪
(CELL PHONE VIBRATING)
LISA FREEMAN: I got a call from Lily...
and mind you, I don't talk to Lily.
(CELL PHONE CONTINUES VIBRATING)
So, I was like, uh, something's wrong.
-(CELL PHONE CLICKS) -♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
LISA: So I picked up.
"They're shooting, they're shooting.
Everybody is dead.
They're shooting, they're shooting.
John is dead, he's been shot. There's blood everywhere!"
She's like, "Can you come here?"
And I'm like, "I can't abandon my children
and go up on a mountain to find you
until I know what the hell's going on."
-(MOUSE CLICKING) -(KEYBOARD CLACKING)
LISA: Then I started seeing Facebook stuff.
Somebody showed up right after we finished eating
and they shot John...
(SOBS) ...and John's dead at the gate!
Henza's in the other room dying and I really need help!
-(MOUSE CLICKING) -(KEYBOARD CLACKING)
We were attacked. I've been shot three times.
I'm not doing so good.
-(KEYBOARD CLACKING) -(MOUSE CLICKING)
(NOTIFICATIONS CHIMING)
ERIKA HARRIS: Then immediately, my unction was,
"Where is Lily gonna be safe?"
-(KEYBOARD CLACKING) -(NOTIFICATIONS CHIMING)
LARKEN ROSE: You're watching something on the screen
and like, I-- I can't do anything,
I can just watch and be confused and hope for the best.
(NOTIFICATIONS CHIMING)
(MOUSE CLICKING)
JEFF BERWICK: One message came up,
said, "Did you see what happened?"
And then all of a sudden it was ding, ding, ding, ding.
(CELL PHONE CHIMING)
JEFF: And then I got a message from Lily herself,
"Can you help get rid of John's body?"
She thought if the police came and found his body...
(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING)
JEFF: ...they would investigate her and they'd deport her back
to the US and she'd be in jail for 25 years.
This wasn't exactly what I had thought
my day was going to be like today.
-♪ (TENSE MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪ -(CAR ENGINE REVS)
Do you know how many people it was... killed?
TODD SCHRAMKE: The day of the attack,
I had a meeting with Thaddeus Russell.
-(KEYBOARD CLACKING) -♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Thaddeus Russell is here, he's the author
of A Renegade History of the United States.
TODD: An author, podcaster
and scholar of America's counterculture.
As his students used to call him,
here's "Bad Thad" Russell.
TODD: Thaddeus founded Unregistered Academy...
We teach the things that the regular universities won't.
TODD: ...an online alternative for traditional higher education.
Thaddeus was scheduled to speak
at the upcoming Anarchapulco conference.
But his real interest in attending
was to interview John and Lily.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
THADDEUS RUSSEL:
(OVER PHONE)
Yeah, so it's tearing me up, Kim.
♪ (GLOOMY MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
THADDEUS:
(CAR INDICATORS CLICKING)
(AIRPLANE TAKING OFF)
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: Dear passengers, welcome to
Acapulco International Airport,
and for your information, local time is 8:08.
TODD: Kim and I got on the first flight we could,
and a few days later, accompanied by Thaddeus...
♪ (GLOOMY MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
TODD: ...we were back in Acapulco.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
TODD: We always knew that Acapulco was a dangerous place.
But the anarchist community seemed to have created
a warm bubble, floating above the fray of a cartel-run city.
And with the fourth annual Anarchapulco conference
only nine days away...
there couldn't be a worse time for that bubble to burst.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
JEFF: People are like, this might be very bad
for Anarchapulco.
I was kind of naive about it. I said, "Oh, well,
it's one guy who got shot,
and we're not even sure what happened."
-♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(MOUSE CLICKING)
JEFF: But there's two keywords involved,
"Anarchist gets killed in Mexico."
NEWS REPORTER 1: It's a tragic situation in Acapulco...
NEWS REPORTER 2: An anarchist has been shot to death...
NEWS REPORTER 3: He called himself John Galton.
NEWS REPORTER 4: He and his friend were shot, Jason Henza...
TODD: The news of an American anarchist
being gunned down in the streets of Acapulco
made international headlines.
You gotta have common sense about it,
but I'd say it's safer than the US.
JEFF: People were just attacking us like crazy.
"We knew it, you have an anarchist conference,
I mean, people are gonna get killed.
This is what happens when you get involved with Jeff Berwick." (LAUGHS)
Essentially making it out like I'm some cult leader
who lures hippies down to Mexico to their death,
and laughs about it.
LARKEN: The way they reported it,
it sounds like somebody made an attack on Anarchapulco.
It wasn't in that place, it literally had no connection.
(MOUSE CLICKING)
JEFF: I actually was thinking
it might be the end of Anarchapulco.
TODD: With the gunmen still at large
and the media searching for her, Lily was in hiding.
But we were able to arrange an interview with her for Thad's podcast.
THADDEUS: This is the first interview
she will have given to the media.
(HAND BRAKE CREAKING)
-KIM: We've arrived, guys. -Let's go.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Yeah, it definitely wasn't our favorite building
but it is fairly safe.
THADDEUS: All right, so let's start from the top then.
All right?
So I'm in Mexico, in an undisclosed location
with a woman who goes by the name of Lily Forester,
sometimes Lily Devine.
What I want to ask you first is,
what has it been like past two weeks?
♪ (TENSE MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
LILY FORESTER: The longest nightmare I've ever lived in.
(SNIFFLES)
Nights are the hardest 'cause I... I never realized
I used to wake up and just reach over every night,
and make sure he was still next to me
the whole time we were together,
and now when I reach over there, it's just pillows.
I literally lost everything I cared about,
John was the only person I trusted with everything.
(SNIFFLES)
It is definitely the most insane thing
I've ever experienced, and it's something
I would never wish on anybody.
Nobody deserves to go through that.
♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
THADDEUS: The three of you were in your house, right?
It was you, John and-- and Jason Henza.
LILY: Yeah.
-(CAR ENGINE REVS) -(DOG BARKING IN DISTANCE)
LILY: Rebel dog started barking.
Rebel started barking like there was a threat.
And I saw a couple of angry-faced
young Mexican boys just pelting rocks at the house.
(FAN SPINNING)
LILY: John went tip-toeing
around the truck down the driveway...
-and I heard, "Bang, bang, bang." -(GUNSHOTS FIRE)
I hear more bangs and I see Henza getting hit,
and then I see Henza just drop like a bag of potatoes.
(VICTIM GRUNTS)
LILY: And I saw a young Mexican.
He had a-- what--
it looked like a-- the pistol that cops carry around,
and he ,like, definitely noticed me,
possibly even recognized me.
And then I just took off running and screaming.
And I heard footsteps behind me, and I thought
that was them coming after me.
And I, like, I was so scared, I didn't even slam
the outside door of the house.
(SOBBING)
LILY: And I was sitting there crying like, "Oh my God,
I'm about to be slaughtered."
-I also heard a slam... -(DOOR SLAMMING)
LILY: ...and that slam was Jason running for his life.
(DOORKNOB CREAKING)
LILY: And I opened the door, and I let him in.
And I was like, "What about John?"
And he was like, "John is dead."
And I-- I just couldn't think of anything, but I just screamed
for a solid couple of minutes straight.
Screamed, "My baby" over and over again.
(SNIFFLES, SOBS)
And, uh...
And I just sat there scared for my life
as my friend was probably bleeding out in front of me,
I thought Jason was gonna die.
And I was like, "I'm about to be stuck up on this house--
in this house with a bunch of killers.
My friends are dead and I don't know what to do."
Uh, if somebody's listening, please, I just--
Somebody showed up right after we finished eating
and they shot John and Henza, and I was in the house...
(SOBS) ...and John's dead at the gate!
(BREATHES HEAVILY)
Henza's in the other room dying, and I really need help.
Somebody please come!
(GASPS)
The only person that responded in any way
other than, "What's going on?"
was our friend, Michael Alexander.
And he ran up the hill, risked his life,
and he ran through the crime scene, the war zone...
to come and get us out of the house
and down the driveway, and then I saw John...
(SOBS) ...and I just lost it. (SNIFFLES)
And they're like, "Come on, let's go,"
and I was like, "I have to move him,
I can't just leave him."
He was laying in the most terrible position.
I picked him up and I moved him,
and I'll never forget things like the fact
that his ankle was crushed...
or the sound that his head had made
as it lightly thud on the ground,
as I laid him down, and I just laid there
with him and cried.
♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(LILY SNIFFLING)
And then I fled for my life,
and I've been basically fleeing ever since.
♪ (GLOOMY MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ (MUSIC TURNS OMINOUS) ♪
JASON HENZA: I was shot bad.
(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
JASON: My wrist, my chest and my, uh, knee.
And, uh, it was bleeding really bad to the point
where it was really dark.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
JASON: Lily drove me to the hospital.
That staff was scared.
They were telling me it was a cartel hit
and they didn't want any part of it.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
JASON: They put me in a wheelchair
and they were pushing me out the door.
I tried to convince them, I handed them, uh, 6,000 pesos,
of-- bloody pesos out of my pocket and said, "You gotta take me."
(MOUSE CLICKING)
JASON: The direction changed, they put me up onto the table
and started working on me.
And next thing you know, there's like 200 cops
around the building,
military men and federales and all that shit
just standing around the building.
Now, I'm scared outta my mind.
Like, I really thought they were gonna come back
to kill me,
because everyone's saying it's a cartel.
So like, I'm just thinking, "Okay, I'm dead."
For about five hours,
they couldn't get my chest to stop bleeding.
(MOUSE CLICKING)
JASON: The surgeon came in to advise and they just said
put a compression bandage on him and hope it stops bleeding.
Once they knew that they had stitched me up everywhere else,
I just said, okay... (BREATHES DEEPLY)
...and I got up and walked out of the hospital.
Jumped in a taxi, went straight to Lily.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
JASON: We went over to her friend's house.
We just went in a room and just went to sleep.
TODD: The stream of news around the murder wasn't letting up.
(MOUSE CLICKING)
TODD: Local police claimed
they found a drug lab in the house
with equipment for processing narcotics.
LISA: In my opinion, John and Lily were selling cocaine.
And in the face of the cartel, this is a controlled area,
you don't sell, you don't sell. There's no competition here.
This is a monopoly, and you listen, or you die.
-Oh, yeah. Uh, yeah. -Yeah.
KIM:
-Oh, it doesn't-- Oh, yeah... -Yeah.
...of course, it doesn't sit well.
I mean, like who wants to be told that they can
and can't do things. My least favorite word
in like, the English language is "allowed."
-Yeah. -Um... (CLEARS THROAT)
But we operate, you know,
within the confines of the environment we're in.
THADDEUS: Everyone says,
the only way that gringos get killed
by the cartel is by selling cocaine,
and that's what Lily and John were doing. Is that true?
-Yeah. It's-- it's not true. -Okay.
Where those claims came from was a guy named Paul Propert.
That guy was the guy that was selling the cocaine.
THADDEUS: In the hotel, where the conference
is being held,
you, John, and this guy Paul, had a room from which
you basically operated an open-drug market
where any drug pretty much was available for sale.
-We did not have a room-- -THADDEUS: So, that was not your room?
You and John were not selling cocaine in that room
-in Anarchapulco last year? -Nope.
THADDEUS: Okay, and Paul, you're saying, was.
Yeah, it was "Paul's Fiesta Supplies,"
is the name of what he had called his store.
We knew those lines
and we were never interested in crossing them.
Coke, heroin and meth, those three specifically--
-THADDEUS: Right, the powders. -You do not want to be
-dealing with those. -THADDEUS: No powders?
No powders.
LILY: Paul knew that, because after the conference,
-Paul had people after him. -THADDEUS: Right.
And it was, you know, pretty obvious,
and we were just like, we know we don't want that heat.
TODD: Paul had been persistently feuding
with John and Lily.
And with tensions coming to a head after the murder,
-(MOUSE CLICKING) -TODD: ...Lily chose to escalate.
LILY: Oh, of course, I blame Paul.
He had been threatening exactly that thing for months.
(MESSENGER CHIMES)
LILY: Right after we kicked him out,
it was literally like thousands of messages.
TODD: The antagonism was not equal toward you and John.
No, it was always more towards John.
(MOUSE CLICKING)
LILY: He kept threatening having people coming
to the house and killing John specifically,
which is what happened.
I thought he paid some poor-ass people
to come kill him.
It's a hell of a coincidence if he didn't cause it.
(RADIO STATIC)
VOICE AS PAUL PROPERT:
-(KEYBOARD KEYS CLACKING) -VOICE AS PAUL: Yes, I got drunk a lot
and was a drama-queen
keyboard warrior and talked a lot of shit.
(READS PROMPT)
(KEYBOARD CLACKING)
TODD: We still needed to hear Paul's perspective,
so we reached out to see if he'd be willing
to sit down for an interview.
(KEYBOARD CLACKING)
(MESSAGE NOTIFICATION CHIMES)
VOICE AS PAUL:
I almost died hiding John and Lily's
secret cocaine business.
(READS PROMPT)
LILY: It wasn't until after
I blamed it on him on Facebook
that he started coming after me.
-(KEYBOARD CLACKING) -VOICE AS PAUL:
(READS PROMPT)
Did you think about calling the police?
No. 'Cause I knew if the police came,
then I was getting deported.
JUAN GALT: Lily and Henza were hangin' out
at the Anarchastle
and were in the middle of this flame war with Paul.
(MOUSE CLICKING)
JUAN: We didn't really know what happened,
we just know that John got killed.
People were saying that Paul did it,
or that Paul got somebody else to do it.
But we knew that Paul was potentially dangerous.
Paul had gotten this kid to drive a car down
and bring a bunch of, like, melee weapons.
Like bats with nails on them.
And so the kid came and was staying at our house
and had parked the car in front of our house.
At which point we were like, what the fuck?
Our concern was, we have 25 people
living in the house.
Lily and Henza are in the middle of a war with a guy
that's been accused of murdering John,
and Paul's buddy is outside with a bunch of his weapons.
Way too much going on.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(KEYS JINGLE)
We were very carefully asked to find a different place
to lay low because it was drawing
too much attention, and this house was
kind of a center of community when we first found out.
But we had no money, we had nowhere to go.
Yeah. (SIGHS)
LILY: My head was spinning.
Okay, now what? (LAUGHS)
Now what do we do?
JUAN: They took it as we're not sheltering
dissidents, or something like that, right?
Like, we're not sheltering them in time of need, type of thing.
I guess that's true, I don't know.
All right, this video is intended for Anarchapulco,
Anarchaforko communities.
I miss you, my heart aches with you.
There's an emergency among us.
How will we respond?
With shelter, with safe houses, with passage over borders,
if necessary.
ERIKA: I feel a sisterly affection for Lily.
I told her, I said, "Honey, there's this--
You have a safe house here in Belize."
And there were-- there were more than a couple people who told me...
that maybe I shouldn't do that, or maybe I shouldn't,
you know, get involved like that.
I was like, "Why? Why would you--
why would you think that-- say that?"
And they were like, "Well...
she's a danger."
Like, that-- If there's an investigation--
Almost-- almost, like, well, basically, like, don't stick your neck out
because you might get cut. Like that kind of thing.
I was like, what?
We need each other to get this done.
I mean, we need each other just to move one inch forward.
(SIGHS)
What is community? You know,
if you can't rally around someone when they're down,
then what is the fricking point?
DANNY: This is a... kind of a special edition.
We're gonna touch on some issues with safety
and such for Anarchapulco.
There's been a lot in the news lately,
basically all over the world.
And um, Jeff, as-- as far as Anarchapulco goes...
uh, are there any special measures for safety,
or is there even any need for that?
Hey Danny. Good to talk to you. Yeah, it's been a tough week
in Acapulco. As a lot of people know, someone in our community,
-you could say, an anarchist was murdered... -(SPEECH OVERLAPPING)
It does appear that they were doing something
related to drugs and the cartel in Mexico...
...had a drug lab. But you ask about,
-if we increase security... -(SPEECH CONTINUES OVERLAPPING)
...it's really, truly not necessary.
Uh... the-- the safety of Acapulco has not changed-- changed anything...
This is about as safe of an area as you can get...
...and, you know that part of Acapulco,
there is sometimes some shooting...
...and there's cartels, and there's gangsters with guns everywhere--
...it's about as secure of an area as anywhere
in the world that I've ever been.
Yeah. Uh... I actually agree with a lot of...
JUAN: As the '19 conference was coming in,
you know, we were planning to go...
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
...and then the murder happened.
And it was like, oh, my God, are we gonna go now?
-♪ (FOREBODING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(NOTIFICATION CHIMES)
JEFF: Got one message, "I'm gonna cancel, I'm scared."
(CHIMES CONTINUE)
JEFF: And then just message after message.
"I'm gonna cancel, I'm scared."
Then Judge Napolitano says, "I'm not coming."
We had sponsors saying they wanted out.
I didn't think anyone was coming.
And I was just sitting there like,
"What the fuck's going on?"
TODD: Do you think there was any danger?
Fear is a normal, natural part of life, I think.
But too many people let it guide most of their actions.
♪ (FOREBODING MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
-♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(WAVES FLOWING)
LILY: The world is not as good of a place without him...
and he would know exactly what to do in this situation...
and I'm still at a loss. (CHUCKLES SOFTLY)
(CAR HORNS BEEPING)
LILY: I see all the places we used to go.
I see the Fork. I me--
I just can see him walking around there
doing all of that last year.
The Fork is dead.
-It's not happening. -(MOUSE CLICKING)
LILY: Anarchaforko died with him this year.
Looking out at views like this makes me want to stay forever,
and it makes me want to leave right now.
TODD: Lily and Henza came out of hiding
to meet with John's family at a hotel.
I had talked about coming here many times over the years,
but unfortunately, just with my life,
I couldn't make it down here. We had talked about coming,
my stepmother and I had talked about coming last summer,
and it just didn't happen. And so we, again...
TODD: They came to Acapulco as soon as they could.
It was the first time they had seen Lily
in over four years.
It's really hard for me to know
that I didn't get to come here with him. (SOBS)
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
I wanted to-- to see...
He was happy here.
♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JUDY: The first time he called and told me
he was going to Mexico, I cried the whole night.
I mean, I was-- I was scared.
You know, I-- I knew it was dangerous there.
I knew that things could happen. (CHUCKLES SOFTLY)
He... He was just so stubborn.
JUDY: He was trying to carve out a life for himself,
and trying to find his own path.
(MOUSE CLICKING)
JUDY: I saw their life through Facebook.
(MOUSE CLICKING)
JUDY: It was good for me to see that
because he was living the life he had always talked about.
He was living the life that... that he wanted.
It has been good though, to come here
and meet his friends,
and the people who cared about him.
In a way, it's given me a little peace.
LILY: He made an entire community...
So many good people that he has met
and-- and the way they talk about him,
and the way he's influenced their lives.
It just-- it warms my heart to know that he was still
the same Shane that I always knew,
that he didn't change.
-LILY: He never compromised himself. -Yeah.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
TODD: Kim and I only knew John Galton by the alias
he had taken up when he went on the run.
John and Lily, those aren't our real names,
like you understand that, right?
TODD: Now, his mother shared with us his given name,
Shane Cress.
Call me Shane.
JUDY: His grandfather loved the movie and he's like,
"I really like that name, you guys should use that name."
LILY: If there's one thing he taught me it was
how to stand up for myself. And if there's one thing
that my family really hated about him,
it was that he taught me to stand up for myself.
'Cause that'd mean I stood up to them.
-(CHUCKLES SOFTLY) -Yeah.
(SOBS, BREATHES DEEPLY)
So, that's why I stay strong. To try to be more like Shane.
(SNIFFLES)
(SOBS) It's not been easy, but it needs to be shared,
'cause everybody's just thinking of him as some cartel thug.
(SNIFFLES) And he just wasn't.
(SIGHS)
We made a mistake of trusting the wrong people,
but that won't happen again. (CHUCKLES SOFTLY)
I'd rather have no friends at all than have friends
that are gonna pull shit like what Paul Propert did.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
SUSAN: The whole purpose of traveling to Acapulco
was we want to get him home.
We'll get him cremated in Mexico,
and we will take his remains home with us.
-(KEYBOARD CLACKING) -(MOUSE CLICKING)
JUDY: We went to the police station.
They said, "Oh, we have somebody that can help you."
They brought this guy in to the police station.
And then they told us the price.
They wanted 25,000 dollars, American.
And I said, you know, no, no, I've--
I said, "This is too much, I can't afford that."
SUSAN: They wanted to put him in a mass grave.
This is my daughter's only child. No.
JUDY: I spent the next two days at the hotel
calling all the funeral homes.
And I found a place in, uh, Mexico City.
The price he gave me was very reasonable, um...
it was, like, right around 6,000 dollars.
♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
SUSAN: The whole thing is just screwed up
from beginning to end.
-And then there was the morgue. -(MOUSE CLICKING)
-♪ (CURIOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ -(MOUSE CLICKING)
JUDY: When you even got close to the building,
you could just smell it.
NEWS REPORTER 5: The epidemic of murders in Acapulco
is putting unbearable strain on the city's resources.
There simply aren't enough freezers here,
so bodies rot in bags on the floor.
JUDY: I couldn't identify his body.
Um, I thought I could, but when I got there,
I just-- I couldn't do it.
I waited outside and she went in and did all that.
They had pictures that they had her look at,
because by the time we got there,
he was not in any condition to be viewed.
LILY: I asked for one of his dreadlocks
'cause I'm-- I'm sentimental and I wanted
one of his dreadlocks just to hold onto.
They were like, oh, that's not possible,
he's a biohazard...
which is pretty fucking awful. (SIGHS)
SUSAN: The thing that he went to Mexico to get away from
was the part that we had trouble with,
the bureaucracy of it all.
-(BIRDS CHIRPING) -♪ (CURIOUS MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (FOREBODING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
LISA: This whole thing, it was something from a movie.
There were many times I'd wake up and be like...
did... did this really happen?
Our house was always an open door...
but because it was such a unbelievably...
tragic experience, you got to see a whole different side
of other people. Everybody went into this like...
fight or flight neuroses.
We, pretty much like closed our door
and we didn't leave our house.
NATHAN FREEMAN: It's been a really tough year.
It put a lot-- It put a lot of stress on our family.
LISA: At this point,
we've been booted out of Anarchapulco
because there is clearly dysfunction
in the people running it. And so I said,
"Why don't we have a conference that's built on healing people?"
Making... making people better and-- and fixed.
This is the seating area that gets used
for the most adult conversations.
This is where Anarchawakening, the-- the whole festival
and name of our conference was created.
You know, what-- what better time than now,
here at the beginning of 2019 than to give yourself
the gift that keeps giving, and that's to invest
in your healing, and it's now. So...
LISA: Anarchawakening became the name.
And, because we already had people in town for Anarchapulco,
Anarchawakening would happen the same time.
Our community, our world is crying, often.
It's time for us to... to face some of that stuff.
It's time. Jump in, come to the festival
and, you know, see where it takes you.
(CRICKETS CHIRPING)
♪ (FOREBODING MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
TODD: Lily and Henza were still on their own,
searching for a place to live.
JASON: I-- I saw everyone just kind of push us away.
We didn't know what else to do.
We felt like the police were chasing us,
we felt like maybe we could die at any moment.
-(BIRDS CHIRPING) -♪ (TENSE MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
LILY: We got a hotel for like 30 dollars.
And there was just like a matter of Henza healing
from his gunshot wounds, and then me just...
trying to not fucking kill myself.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
LILY: My life, in large part, the way it ended up,
if I'm being totally honest, is because of the choices
I made to resist the government.
The only reason that, you know, we were in Acapulco
and in Mexico to begin with was resisting the state.
The state has oppressed me from-- since birth
and I've had to deal with it, and it's like...
(SIGHS)
It's nerve-wracking.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
TODD: I think this is a good point in the story
for you to just say who you really were,
or who was hiding inside you this entire time.
What, like my real name? (CHUCKLES)
I don't say it very often...
(CHUCKLES) ...which is sad
'cause I like it. (SOBS)
My real name is Miranda Webb. (SOBS, SNIFFLES)
It's a lot to process
not living as yourself for a long time.
RANDY WEBB: Uh, my name's Randy Webb.
I'm Miranda's father.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
I don't know what to say.
♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RANDY:
LILY: My entire life, since conception
has been affected
by the war on drugs.
My parents met
because my dad was buying weed off of my mom
for years before they got together.
RANDY: Red, she was very highly intelligent,
graduated from high school with a 4.0 average.
But she was a party girl.
She was an alcoholic, she-- she drank every day.
My mom told my dad that she was pregnant
when they were getting arrested for possession of cannabis.
♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
TODD: What are some of your earliest memories?
LILY: Camping with my dad.
And shady people around my mom.
RANDY: ...or she's out partying every night.
I... I couldn't deal with that.
Miranda was two years old when I left her.
The way her mom was...
I always had to question, is she really mine or not?
(LAUGHS) That's sad to say.
♪ (SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
RANDY: You gotta understand, Red had five children,
all five of 'em from different fathers.
KAT GLAZE: I'm the oldest. I was born in '87.
Miranda came along in '93.
After her and Randy split up, that's when things went
kind of back how they were prior to her
and Randy being together,
we kind of just lived day to day.
It was very common to not have food on the table.
I would have to go steal groceries
out of people's trunks
when they were taking carloads into the house.
It was explained to me as, this is just what you did
to survive.
RANDY: I'm paying a hundred dollars a week
child support and picking my kid up on a Friday night
and they're all starving to death,
'cause Red's priorities wasn't right.
This is when she was getting involved with heroin.
I didn't realize it at the time.
♪ (PLAYFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KAT: One day, all of us kids are sitting in the living room
watching cartoons, 'cause it's Saturday morning.
♪ (PLAYFUL MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
KAT: And all of a sudden, the door flies open
and the cops came flooding in and held us all at gunpoint...
(INDISTINCT CHATTER OVER RADIO)
KAT: ...and brought my brother out of the bedroom with a gun
to his head because he got scared and ran.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER OVER RADIO)
LILY: She was, like, selling heroin at our house.
I remember a cop explaining to me that they had my mommy
in jail and that I couldn't see her
because she was in trouble for doing a bad thing,
and that I had to wait for somebody to come get me.
And I was like...
huh?
♪ (MUSIC TURNS EERIE) ♪
TODD: Do you think that shaped her adult perception
-of authority? -Oh, absolutely.
And I don't blame her one bit.
-(WIND BLOWING) -♪ (FOREBODING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KAT: I remember waking up, it was about 8:15
and I had left my cell phone downstairs.
-(CELL PHONE BUZZING) -KAT: And I remember
just hearing it buzzing on the table,
and it was Miranda.
LILY: My mom had a psychotic break
after taking some bad drugs, and she started hallucinating.
She was seeing some real dark shit,
from my understanding, being chased by demons,
things like that.
And she ran into Route 18 in Medina, Ohio.
Um... got to the middle
and tried to get my little brothers
to come with her. (CHUCKLES) And my little brothers
were like, my stepdad's holding onto them like,
"No, you're not going fucking anywhere," like...
She tried to come back,
and she came running back and she got hit by one car...
and then hit by another car...
looked up at, like, my stepdad and got hit by a semi.
She was, you know, dead on the spot.
-That was it. -(SIRENS WAILING)
LILY: Everybody kept comparing me
to my mom after she died,
because I looked so much like her
and I was a lot like her, emotionally speaking.
She had a struggling, failing body for most of my life
and she used drugs for it.
I started to have the same pain issues that she had,
and it was like, "Ah..."
My mom made a lot of... not-so-great decisions
in her life, and I was scared that I was becoming my mom.
(SIGHS)
Going to Mexico,
I thought, like, I could just leave all that behind me.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(DOGS BARKING IN DISTANCE)
(BARKING CONTINUES)
JASON: The drug war here,
or the local trade, I can't call it the war.
The local trade has been established by violence...
and a lot of blood.
John knew that better than anybody.
To cross the line
of the established drug trade here,
you-- you wouldn't have done it.
(DOGS BARKING)
JASON: I stood right up here, about halfway up the driveway,
and Lily was at the top of the driveway.
I feel really lucky.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(SIGHS)
I'm sitting here in a spot where John had passed away...
and-- or... or Shane.
(DOGS CONTINUE BARKING)
It's... it's not fair this happened.
And John just fell victim to a drug war.
(DOGS BARKING)
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Oh, gotta go.
(FOOTFALL)
(DOGS CONTINUE BARKING)
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER IN SPANISH)
JASON: (IN ENGLISH) No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. No, no.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC STOPS SUDDENLY) ♪
I-- I just wanted to say goodbye to John.
And suddenly these two unmarked vehicles show up.
They're white trucks and they're some grubby-looking
motherfuckers in this. I'm like, it's time to go.
Someone screams at me and tells me to turn around.
And I notice he's pointing a gun right at me
and his finger was not on the barrel,
it was on the trigger.
I had convinced myself that was cartel coming
to kill me because they were just coming up
to check out what happened up there.
Then someone pops out of the car and I see a clipboard.
And then I notice it's a woman.
I'm like cartel women, clipboard, no.
I realize they were fucking cops.
They want to know what I'm doing there
and who am I associated with and this and that.
And then they said, "Leave or you'll get arrested."
And I'm like, fuck it.
So, I get in my car and drive away.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
LILY: Everywhere I went those days, I was just like...
looking around, seeing who was around me at all times.
Like, who's here, who's here, who's here, who's here?
Like, any group of cops, even fucking one cop
in those days, it was just like... (INHALES)
...it would've really sucked to have witnessed a murder,
then got deported and then put in jail.
JASON: It was very difficult for Lily to exist
around Acapulco
because all the cops knew who she was.
They knew who John and-- and Lily were.
They knew the hair.
She was just so easy to see.
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
LILY: One day I got chased down by police.
(SIRENS WAILING)
LILY: They recognized me and they started chasing
after me with a vehicle.
I ran in the opposite direction
and they chased after me that way too and tackled me.
(THUDDING)
LILY: I was surrounded by, like, five or six vehicles,
forty, fifty people.
And their first question is...
"Where is Paul?"
♪ (OMINOUS MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
And I'm like, "That's not my job.
That's your job. Why are you harassing me?"
And they're like, "Well, he's your brother, right?"
And I'm like, "No, he's not.
He's just some crazy guy that fucking moved into my house
because of my now-dead boyfriend."
They asked me like, who I thought did it.
And I told them, it doesn't matter to me.
He's dead, I don't care. I don't care who k-- did it.
And they're like, "Well, we wanna put the guys in prison."
Like, I don't.
(SIGHS)
I was just trying to not get deported.
And then eventually, they fucking let me go.
♪ (FOREBODING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I always had no idea where I was going
when I rode up here. It was always...
-KIM: In the back of the truck. -...in the back of the truck.
I couldn't believe how quickly John would drive us up.
These roads are so confusing.
KIM: Yeah, it's like a forgotten neighborhood up here.
-DRIVER: -KIM: This is the street.
TODD: Yeah, the gate's open.
TODD: The police investigation into John's murder
wasn't making much headway.
And rumors continued to spread through the community.
(DOG BARKING)
TODD: But amidst the confusion, one narrative was presented
to me that seemed the most coherent.
Nathan had a, I guess you could call it,
an all-encompassing theory around the murder
which did actually involve Paul.
Uh, if you don't mind, I want to read you the messages
that Nathan sent me.
(READS PROMPT)
(LAUGHS) No, we didn't.
TODD: He goes on to say, "Paul went around the conference
acting as a combination, marketer-mule."
Then he says, "Paul's old girlfriend,
who he had threatened with violence,
wanted to get rid of him, so she told the cartel guy
she knew that he was dealing and they sent someone to hurt
or kill him."
This person reached out to Nathan about it,
and Nathan said I'll talk to Paul.
LILY: Yeah, Paul told us about that.
He said that Nathan Freeman saved his life.
He goes on then, later that year,
Paul has a falling out with John and Lily,
they become bitter enemies
and Paul was really pissed about this.
Then the following year...
(READS PROMPT)
He reached out to his contact in the cartel and says,
"I was just the mule and the fall guy.
The person that was really selling the drugs was John.
Please leave me alone.
I just wanted people to have a good time."
"They monitored John for a couple weeks.
They saw him dealing with...
(READS PROMPT)
They didn't touch Lily.
She's the messenger trying to convey this idea
of "don't step on their territory."
Leaving you to tell that story.
The only piece here missing is this idea
that John was getting involved with the competitor's product.
We were together so much, but that's--
But there were times where, like,
we would be fighting and he would just take off
on the motorcycle and I would be left
in the house, you know?
I have no idea.
I do know that he had friends that he had connections
to with weed that had some real deep connections
in that city, familial connections.
And I talked to one of them, he was like,
"I've been asking around,
I'm not hearing anything from my sources
about competition.
I'm hearing something about a crazy gringo guy...
named Paul."
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(NOTIFICATIONS CHIMING)
-LILY: Yeah, it's-- it's not true. -THADDEUS: Okay.
LILY: Where those claims came from
was a guy named Paul Propert,
and that guy was the guy that was selling the cocaine...
TODD: Thad's podcast interview with Lily had dropped.
LILY: ...but their intel was Paul,
and was Paul was lying to save his own life.
TODD: Lily's accusations of Paul's involvement
with the murder now went beyond just Facebook posts.
LILY: ...in depth, like we've told many of these stories
to our friends and it's another thing
to share 'em with the world.
It set Paul off.
VOICE AS PAUL:
(READS PROMPT)
These people are not free, they are not human.
I cannot and will not let this go.
(READS PROMPT)
It's amazing how destructive human beings can be
if they decide to not cooperate and play nice.
Like, they can do heavy, heavy damage
to people's peace of mind.
♪ (TENSE MUSC PLAYING) ♪
JUAN: And that's where the edges of my anarchism
started to crack,
because how do you deal with that?
As anarchists, what do you do? You call the cops.
That's weak, you know?
How... How much of an anarchist can you be
if you're gonna call the cops. You're using the state,
are you getting the state involved?
(MOUSE CLICKING)
(VOICE AS PAUL READS PROMPTS)
JEFF: A lot of people were asking me to do something
about it, like I'm the mayor of Acapulco or something,
right? But, like, I'm not.
I wasn't like, "Call the cops, and take them to court."
Just like, handle your own business and see what happens.
And I think that's the way it should be.
PRESENTER: This is Free Talk Live.
We are at Anarachapulco 2019 for day one.
The opening ceremony is just about to kick off
with Jeff Berwick taking the stage.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
♪ ("BITCOIN 'ALL THE WAY UP' BY THE DOLLAR VIGILANTE AND JEFF BERWICK PLAYING) ♪
♪ Straight to the moon Bitcoin all the way ♪
♪ Dollar vigilante All up in your hearsay ♪
♪ Dropping crypto knowledge Making the ladies go cray-cray ♪
JUAN: There was some legitimate fear
that Paul might do something, like fucking set off a bomb
or something at the conference.
But I decided to go, because I figured, like,
this might be the end of it,
and I like to see a crash in real time. (CHUCKLES)
(CROWD CHEERING)
JEFF: Thank you all for being here.
(CROWD APPLAUDS)
JEFF: Five years now.
Had no idea.
You never know where things are gonna go
or what's gonna happen.
There was a death here about a couple weeks ago.
Many of you are probably aware of it,
his name was John Galton. Not his real name, obviously.
I was gonna say a moment of silence. We already had it,
there we have it.
When times get tough...
we'll see who's really serious about their principles.
And all of you who are here today...
are a testament to that.
I heard so many things.
"Don't go to Acapulco, it's so dangerous,
someone just got killed." Sucks.
We're gonna change the world, and as we're doing it,
they are going to come after us like you've never seen,
this is nothing. That-- that's nothing.
People are going to die.
If we're going to get rid of governments
and central banks, they're not gonna go away easy.
There's gonna be propaganda, there's gonna be triple suicides
to the back of the head, three gunshots.
That's what they do. We have to be strong.
Can you guys be strong? Are we strong?
(CROWD CHEERS AND APPLAUDS)
JEFF: Thank you all for coming. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
TODD: It was only the first day of the conference,
but already it was clear that John's murder
had knocked the Anarchapulco community off balance.
Exposing the difficulties and risks of putting ideology
into practice.
♪ (FOREBODING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
TODD: And then, lurking at the edges, was Paul.
He was very much in an alternate reality.
(MOUSE CLICKING)
LISA: He was the anti-hero.
JASON: When he hits a wall, he fights
and he threatens people.
JUAN: It's-- it's like somebody that's walking around
with a bomb, you know, it's like,
yeah, the bomb's not going off
right now, but there's a bomb there.
Because he was an ex-military guy, because he had PTSD,
because he was trained,
the possibility that he would do something crazy
was actually credible.
-PAUL: Whoa! -♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
♪ Ooh ♪
♪ Knock on wood Don't get stuck ♪
♪ It's just another way To say good luck ♪
♪ Lay yourself Into the ground this time ♪
♪ All I've done Is roll the rice ♪
♪ I thought I'd found the door To paradise ♪
♪ But it was just ♪
♪ Another pair of handcuffs ♪
♪ (SONG CONCLUDES) ♪