Talk:Franklin child sex ring

Caradori finding flight itineraries with victims

In late 1989, Gary Caradori allegedly stumbled onto an investigative goldmine proving the existence of an interstate pedophile network. He was at the headquarters of YNR Aviation in Sioux City IA, one of the private flight companies used by Lawrence E. King, looking at their records. Caradori came across itineraries of King's flights that had the names of victims who had formerly come up in his investigation. He had his assistant make copies, but the owner of YNR suddenly burst in and demanded they leave without the copies. After getting the NCUA to subpoena the records, Caradori was served with a subpoena by the FBI, and turned over his investigative work; while doing so, he noticed the Omaha FBI had some of those flight itineraries. When Caradori finally got ahold of the flight itineraries, the children's names were removed.

The clear implication is that the Omaha FBI helped cover up smoking gun evidence of Larry King's pedophile ring. But Franklin skeptics could easily view this as a convenient excuse for the lack of hard evidence. Caradori's story needs to be corroborated.

Here is some info on Gerald Weiner, the owner of YNR Aviation. He currently lives in Sioux City SD (not Iowa), goes by the online username "ynr", and owns other businesses like Penn Mark Financial. And here is his Amazon account, by the name of "ynr", which has signed one of the reviews "Gerald Weiner". Along with Kimberly Greene, which the Amazon reviews say is his daughter, Weiner is on the board of Sioux City IA's Tolerance Week. According to people search records, Gerald Weiner indeed lives in Sioux City IA and his phone numbers are (712) 239-7216 and (712) 239-9261. Political campaign data from Sioux City IA shows that he is a frequent Republican donor. He (Gerald L. Weiner) and his wife Kathleen A. O'Brien (later Katherine A. Weiner) co-run a tax-exempt foundation in Sioux City IA. In 2016, he registered the PennCorp trademark.

Neither of the above phone numbers worked, but business info for Penn Mark Financial reveals another possible number: (605) 232-3288.

Also of note: here is some business information about YNR Aviation, which was incorporated on March 29, 1982.

Paul Bonacci and the other victims

Gary Caradori initially found and interviewed three victims: Alisha Owen, Troy Boner, and Danny King. All of them corroborated each other on the abusers, places, and events pertaining to the Franklin sex ring, and theories that involve them imparting a "hoax" to each other don't stand up to scrutiny - the grand jury suggested it had been done through a phone call that never happened. Later, Caradori found a fourth victim, Paul Bonacci, who corroborated the original three, and even claimed to have been a witness to some of their abuses (such as Robert Wadman having sex with Alisha Owen) and a frequent sex partner of them. However, none of the three ever mentioned Bonacci, which could call into question the veracity of his story. This aspect needs further investigation.

Obviously, Owen, Boner, and King wouldn't reveal all the details of their involvement in Larry King's sex ring in just one interview. So it's not necessarily a huge issue that Bonacci never came up, and they did acknowledge being involved with him after he came forward. Nick Bryant, who spoke with both Bonacci and Owen, found it clear that Owen did know Bonacci, and Danny King also confirmed to Bryant that Bonacci was a fixture at the Omaha sex parties.

Driving Craig Spence's car to DC

Nick Bryant collected a fascinating account from an NYPD officer who was at the Barbizon Hotel where Craig J. Spence was arrested in 1989 for possession of crack cocaine and carrying an unlicensed firearm. The officer claimed that the day after Spence's arrest, he was asked to drive Spence's car down to the Watergate Hotel in Washington DC. There, he parked Spence's car next to one of an identical model, was ushered in by "suits" (from the CIA, FBI, or Secret Service), shook hands with a seated Lawrence E. King, and drove the replica car back to New York. I'm currently in the process of gathering info from the NYPD to corroborate this account.

What I ultimately got back from the NYPD was a 3-page arrest report. It has very little useful information, and doesn't even mention the officer of interest who drove Spence's car down to Washington DC. The only officer who it mentions is Lori Pollock.

Alisha Owen perjury evidence

Alisha Owen, one of the main victims of Franklin, accused Robert Wadman of raping her and fathering her child. One of the key reasons for her perjury conviction was three blood tests showing that Wadman was not her daughter's father. However, suspicion remains that the paternity tests were falsified. For some reason, Wadman was allowed to talk about the test results without the state introducing them into the evidence, which prevented the jury from scrutinizing them. A judge later ruled, on appeal, that the state had erred in not introducing the blood tests into the evidence, but said that it didn't matter because Owen's lawyer hadn't objected during trial. Why the state didn't introduce what would have been incontrovertible evidence to juror scrutiny is still a mystery, and it hints that the tests indeed might have been faked. However, there would need to be a much more detailed investigation of whether this is the case.

Other details used to argue that Owen had never seen Wadman naked also deserve scrutiny:

• What did the photos of Wadman's arm scar look like? (Should be obtainable from the court records) Were they particularly noticeable or not? What did the jurors think of them?
• How often and strenuously did Wadman use his arm that was said to be severely injured?

And intimate details that Owen did provide about Wadman should be checked out:

• Did she accurately describe his family situation? Did he have troubles at home with one of his sons? Does he have a daughter named Christine?
• Was there a bunion on his foot, as she claimed?
• Is her description of his wallet accurate?

Douglas County Election Commissioner and the grand jury

One curious detail jumped out at me while reading Nick Bryant's book: one of the three officials in charge of jury selection for the Franklin state grand jury was the Douglas County Election Commissioner. The Omaha World-Herald, whose executives were involved with and/or covered up Franklin, owned the largest US voting system vendor from 1987 until 2011, which raised the prospect of a link between Franklin and election fraud. The unexplained role of Douglas County's election commissioner in selecting the grand jurors, who would ultimately aid in the coverup of Franklin, is interesting and expands on that suspicion. It should be investigated why the Douglas County Election Commissioner was appointed to that panel, alongside presiding Judge Buckley and a lawyer Buckley selected.

Pamela Vuchetich contact info

Here is some contact info for Pamela Vuchetich, the lawyer for Alisha Owen who later abandoned her after an apparent affair with FBI agent Michael Mott. Her address is 1301 S 5th Ave. in Beatrice NE, and her phone number is (402) 223-4700. Another source says that her address is 109 N 5th St. in Beatrice NE and her phone number is (402) 228-4568.

Kathleen Sorenson and Kirstin Hallberg's credibility

The very first accusations of Larry King's sex ring came from Eulice Washington and Shawneta Moore. Kathleen Sorenson, Eulice's new foster mother after her removal from the Webb household, was the first to hear Eulice's allegations about King. Kirstin Hallberg, a counselor at a girls psychiatric hospital, was the one who got Shawneta to disclose her involvement in a child prostitution ring, and later met with Shawneta's school counselor to discuss Larry King. Provided that both Sorenson and Hallberg were truthful, these accusations about King are very difficult to dismiss as a hoax, and don't fit easily with the grand jury decision.

However, there have been intimations by people like Vindalf that the two women led the girls into saying what they wanted to hear. They did have a close prior relationship: Hallberg, before meeting Shawneta, was a friend of Sorenson's and knew about Eulice's allegations involving King. So it's possible that Hallberg could have guided Shawneta's testimony based on Eulice's story about King and child prostitution. The fact that Shawneta's counselor was the first one to hear King helps refute that, but Hallberg's interrogation should still be scrutinized. More troubling is the allegation by McMartin mother Jackie McGauley that both Sorenson and Hallberg stayed at her LA home to attend her Affirming Children's Truth conference on ritual abuse in 1984 or early 1985, before Eulice or Shawneta came forward. If so, that would have given both women a preconceived bias in how they handled Eulice and Shawneta. It's worth noting that none of what Eulice said involved satanism, and Shawneta didn't allege it either until later. But the possibility that Sorenson and Hallberg were slanted in their views of child abuse should be investigated.

Here is a compilation of Jackie McGauley's posts on Rigorous Intuition:

• 2009/10/09: "To save money, Kirsten Hallberg and Kathleen Sorenson camped at my place in early 1985 because my group (Affirming Children's Truths) was co sponsoring (along with ChildHelp and the Sunny von Bulow organization) a small conference. I did not know who they were at the time and had never heard of the Franklin case."
• 2009/10/14: "Gary Cardori, however, became increasingly agitated about the memo, because the media frenzy it incited created an unfavorable ripple effect for his investigation - he found it more and more difficult to coax victims and others who had information to come forward. (Bryant)[/quote]
  
  Right. Kathleen Sorenson and Kirsten Hallberg told me exactly that in 1985. They felt DeCamp's involvement would destroy the case."
• 2009/10/14: "Yes, Kathleen Sorenson and Kirsten Hallberg were at my place in 1985 or maybe even 1984. McMartin broke in 1983. I had not heard about their case. They told me about the book JDC was writing and were very upset by it. Kirsten told me JDC " might just as well have painted a target on the kids' foreheads."
  I also had another (A.C.T.) conference in 1985 that brought together speakers from 10 different cases from around the country."
• 2009/10/15: "What seems odd?
  That I knew a lot of people involved in high profile child abuse cases before I met gunderson?
  My case (mcmartin) was huge and was high profile in the media for over 7 years. I put myself out there and a lot of people contacted me thinking somehow I could help.
  The Nebraska ladies heard of our conference and flew to L.A. to attend. They happened to stay with me at my Apartment. The details of their case was "just" another case to me. I didn't even understand their entire story. gunderson met people through me and took names from my phone book. he never met Kathleen or Kirsten."

McGauley's posts indicate that Sorensen and Hallberg were at a ritual abuse conference in 1984 or early 1985, making reference to the Franklin case and the book John DeCamp was writing on it. Of course, at that time there was no Franklin case yet, which either indicates that McGauley's account is false or raises serious questions about what the women were up to if true.

Vindalf believes that the story is true, and indicates that Sorensen and Hallberg were up to something underhanded. He thinks that DeCamp conspired as far back as 1984 to falsify child abuse allegations against prominent Omaha citizens, and used his political influence over Foster Care Review Board (FCRB) director Carol Stitt to influence Sorensen and Hallberg into becoming part of the scheme. Under that theory, DeCamp was using his claim of writing a book as a cover for fabricating child abuse allegations, and the two Nebraska women were actually meeting with ritual abuse adherents to learn how to interrogate children in a leading fashion.

There are, however, numerous problems with such a theory. Ultimately it is far more likely that McGauley's account is false, perhaps even deliberately so. If Sorensen and Hallberg were doing something illicit on behalf of DeCamp, it would make little sense for them to bring up his name unprompted, especially if DeCamp was using Stitt as a go-between. And the idea that Sorensen got roped into this scheme before the allegations against Larry King even started, then ended up getting a foster child formerly in the custody of a relative of the politically-connected King, who would be independently linked to child pornography due to the investigation of Rusty Nelson, seems like so contrived of a coincidence to strain belief. Given that an October 1985 news article (Los Angeles Times, "Parent Group Plans Forum on Molestation", 1985/10/24) calls Families Affirming Children's Truth (which is in the area where McMartin happened) a "recently formed" organization, it is also worth questioning whether the organization that McGauley references even existed at the time she claims the Nebraska women met her. The "conference in 1985 that brought together speakers from 10 different cases from around the country" which McGauley makes reference to likely is the one referenced on McGauley's sibling's page that Dr. Roland Summit and Jan Hollingsworth attended, but that conference is described as being in 1985 even though (TODO: find source that John Brisson dug up) the conference actually appears to have been on May 4, 1987. Finally, there is a more fundamental problem. Kathleen Sorensen died in 1989, meaning that any meeting with McGauley that included both her and Hallberg had to have occurred before that. Yet the DeCamp memo, which McGauley says they made reference to in a critical fashion, was released in 1990, months after Sorensen had died. So the timeline of McGauley's claims does not fit either. It appears very likely that McGauley is not telling the truth about her meeting.

Michael Casey's CIA connections?

The grand jury ruled that Franklin was a "carefully crafted hoax", and laid much of the responsibility for the hoax on Michael Casey. Casey was an ex-convict who bounced between Omaha and Los Angeles, presenting himself as a freelance writer with underground connections. In 1975, he tricked the Los Angeles Times into funding his fruitless search for Patty Hearst, which later turned out to be a hoax. A year earlier, he had worked as the Boys Town "director of special projects", but was fired for stealing the confidential case histories of 31 boys, purportedly to sell them to a Hollywood producer. Later, in 1988, Casey ended up in the Saint Joseph mental hospital in Omaha, where Alisha Owen was also checked into. They formed some sort of a friendship with each other, and Owen admitted to running cocaine for Casey. But she maintained that their relationship was limited and she told him nothing about Franklin. The grand jury, however, would determine that Owen got the entire idea for the hoax from Casey. They also determined that Gary Caradori was duped, or potentially even pulled into an illicit Hollywood deal, by Casey.

Of course, the claim that Owen was imparted the hoax by Casey is untrue. Some of the state's supposed smoking-gun evidence, like a letter to her from Casey discussing their plans, appears to have been fabricated and planted (it was dated March 15, 1990 but collected from her cell on March 8, 1990). But was Casey just an uninvolved scapegoat, or did he intentionally insert himself into the Franklin scandal to discredit it?

Rarely highlighted in coverage of the Franklin case is that Casey appeared to be a quite well-connected individual. For instance, he was able to bring a Hollywood producer to Omaha to propose a film deal to Gary Caradori, apparently as an entrapment scheme. Casey trafficked cocaine (and enlisted Owen to help him) during the 1980s, the same period as the Iran-Contra drug smuggling in Los Angeles documented by Gary Webb. In 1976, he came into possession of a secret notebook from Gerald Ford's top intelligence advisor Leo Cherne (as part of the so-called "green book affair"), and it also turns out that he consulted for the International Rescue Committee, a CIA front, in 1975 (Washington Post, "Intelligence Adviser and 'The Green Book Affair'", 1976/09/16). This evidence from Casey's life appears to fit the profile of an intelligence operative. So it's possible that on behalf of the CIA, Michael Casey worked to taint the disclosure of the Franklin scandal by interjecting himself as a phony investigator, ensnaring victims (like Alisha Owen) and actual investigators (like Gary Caradori).

More on Casey's role in Boys Town comes from The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder on page 533, where she writes that: "Michael Casey, new director of special projects brought in after the Sun story, described the atmosphere as a "minimum-security prison," based on his experience working in prisons and mental hospitals, in "Midlands News" of the Omaha World-Herald, March 10, 1974. According to Casey's account, he was forced to resign six months later and stated that reforms were window dressing. Father Hupp says Casey left because his job was done--but Casey was an outspoken ex-convict, which may have made him "too hot."" It's interesting that Casey, the potential intelligence operative, had experience working in prisons and mental hospitals, both of which are known sources of MKUltra test subjects. Casey's earlier claim to fame was sending Los Angeles Times reporters on a fruitless search for Patty Hearst, likely a victim of mind control herself, and he helped discredit Franklin, another case intimately linked to government mind control. So Casey has a history of derailing investigations of MKUltra-related cases. If he was an intelligence operative, he may have had some involvement in MKUltra. That could also imply a more sinister motive for Casey stealing the case histories of Boys Town residents: not to sell them to Hollywood, but to provide US intelligence with psychological details of potential test subjects.

More on Casey's apparent Patty Hearst hoax:

• Los Angeles Times, "From L.A. to Hong Kong—and Beyond", 1975/07/07 (pages 1, 3, 16, 17, 18)

More on the "green book affair":

• New York Times, "U.S. Investigating Loss of Notebook With Security Data", 1976/09/16: "Mr. Casey, 32 years old, said in an interview that he had served time at Soledad penitentiary in California for passing forged checks and had been in prison for juvenile violations. He said that he received the notebook from a man he would not identify aboard an Air Vietnam flight between Saigon and Hong Kong on April 23, 1975. Mr. Casey has a record of helping Vietnamese refugees that has been confirmed by State Department and news officials. Because of this, he was retained by the International Rescue Committee in its Los Angeles office on August 18, 1975, according to Robert deVecchi, an official of the committee."
• Southern Africa Vol. 9, No. 9, "UPDATE", 1976/10: "The "green book" lost in Europe last year by Leo Cherne, Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, may contain material related to U.S. recruitment of mercenaries for Angola, according to AFRICA NEWS. The loss was revealed in mid-September in the Washington Post. Michael Casey, a mysterious figure who turned up with the classified notebook, and who has ties with mercenary recruitment circles in California, claims he was robbed in Washington of a tape recording in which Cherne threatened him with death if he "spilled the beans.""

This Rigorous Intuition post summarizes the aforementioned theory: http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=650585#p650585 It is worthwhile to note that way back in 1978, Mae Brussell already had a hunch about the CIA ties of both Casey and Boys Town (Mae Brussell episode #346/347 on 1978/08/18 @ 49:33).

Interestingly, the Nebraska Leadership Conference had a similar hunch about Casey, writing on p.88 of The Mystery of the Carefully Crafted Hoax: "Mike Casey is presently in a California prison serving a sentence for drunk driving. Ironically, he has a brother in California who is reported to be in the FBI. Was Casey a plant?"

1990s investigation by John DeCamp

Following the death of Gary Caradori and the court cases that served to cover up Franklin, the investigation fell into the hands of John DeCamp and some unsavory characters surrounding him: Ted Gunderson, Lyndon LaRouche supporters, and the Patriot/militia right. It was during this period that Paul Bonacci became the primary focus (ignoring other victims like Eulice Washington and Alisha Owen), and many of the most sensational disclosures surrounding Franklin came out: connections to the Johnny Gosch abduction, Bonacci's involvement in "Monarch", links to NAMBLA, and a vast interstate network of child predators and ritual abusers. That doesn't necessarily mean that these aspects of the Franklin story are false, but they need to be placed under much greater scrutiny.

Nick Bryant, a reputable journalist without any of the aforementioned baggage, largely circumvented this array of suspicious characters by doing his own investigation from where Caradori left off. He got ahold of Caradori's investigative files, and tracked down numerous witnesses himself to interview them. Bryant's interview subjects included Eulice Washington, Paul Bonacci, Danny King, and Alisha Owen, all of whom reconfirmed their original stories of abuse. Bonacci named Michael Aquino, continued to refer to his involvement in Monarch, and maintained his story about the Gosch abduction (which he also spoke about in the 2014 film Who Took Johnny), validating some of the most questioned portions of the story told by DeCamp.

However, there's still a problem. Bonacci was obviously in a vulnerable mental state during the 1990s, and as such, he was susceptible to these agenda-driven Franklin investigators feeding him false information. He even admitted this much to Nick Bryant, who writes that Bonacci has "confessed to making untrue statements as he’s struggled through the acute throes of his MPD". While Bonacci almost certainly believes that what he's saying is true, it's quite possible that it might not be. So without a complete knowledge of all the interactions that these 1990 investigators had with Bonacci, and without some independent corroboration of the more outlandish claims he's made, it's difficult to take Bonacci's words at face value. To resolve whether this issue, the following things need to be checked out:

• Private investigator Roy Stephens joined DeCamp to check out Bonacci's story following his coming forward in the Gosch case. Stephens, according to DeCamp, spent hundreds of hours debriefing Bonacci and doing fieldwork to investigate his allegations, and came away believing that Bonacci was telling the truth. There are a couple snippets from Stephens's interviews with Bonacci printed in DeCamp's book concerning the Gosch abduction, 1983 Jordan MN ritual abuse case, 1983-85 Bakersfield CA ritual abuse case, and the role of "Emilio" in selling kids at child auctions. However, a full accounting of Stephens's investigation is unavailable, and so is his background and credibility. Obtaining the records of his investigation would help substantially corroborate Bonacci's accounts of a nationwide child prostitution network, and provide key insights into other cases that connect this entire criminal network together. Stephens has a public Facebook page which allows comments to be posted on it, and his email address may be found in this 2006 correspondence as rws402 AT msn.com. His mobile phone number might be 402-779-1141. Ted Gunderson also claims in his complaint to Nebraska attorney general Don Stenberg that John DeCamp sent a transcript of Roy Stephens's 1991/01/19 interview with Bonacci to the Nebraska Department of Justice on "5/7/91" (1991/05/07 or May 7, 1991). He claims that copies of the transcript were also furnished to the Nebraska Department of Social Services, Douglas County Attorney, Omaha Police Department, Nebraska Foster Care Review Board, Nebraska Legislature Health and Welfare Committee, Nebraska Legislature Judiciary Committee, Douglas County Sheriff's Office, US Attorney for State of Nebraska, and Judge Patrick Mullen of the Douglas County District Court.
• DeCamp says that Bonacci's diary, which recorded events from his alleged involvement in the child prostitution network, had its ink scientifically tested and was determined to have been written over a period of time in the past, not in one sitting. The diary or its scientific tests should be looked at.
• Gunderson has claimed that one of John DeCamp's investigators told him that Paul Bonacci drew a floor plan of an interior room of the White House that wasn't accessible to the public. If this drawing can be located, and confirmed to be accurate, this would help demonstrate that Bonacci was inside the White House on midnight tours as he claimed to have been.