1403: The Pests part 3

Speaker: The episode that you're about to hear is part three, and if you haven't listened to the first two, I'd suggest you start there. And also, if you don't like, you know, lots of language and really dark topics, this one's not for you. So you've been warned. Alright, let's play the episode. For the past five years, Patrick Tomlinson and his wife Nikki have been living a complete nightmare. The Milwaukee police have swatted their house more than 40 times. But eventually, the swatting wasn't funny enough for these pests. We've, we've come to find out that it's not just the swattings. There have been at least half a dozen, uh, bomb threats that were called in by our stalkers that we know about. Weeeeeee! December 10th of last year, there was a, uh, uh, Patti LaBelle was performing at the Riverside Theater here in Milwaukee. Patti LaBelle's security staff rushed her off the stage because someone called in a bomb threat using Patrick's name. It made national news because she got two songs in and then she was rushed off the stage because of a bomb threat. Two thousand people were evacuated, like six blocks of downtown Milwaukee were shut down. We came to find out later that night, because we'd already been swatted twice that day, Well, police came out a third time at midnight. I developed PTSD after this particular day because it was just like, it was insane. It was one thing after another. It was so insane. They shut off our, like, sometimes they'll call for a gas leak too. So, I mean, they shut off our gas in the middle of winter. So I'm like trying to get the gas. The police are there, like, earlier than later, this detective shows up, and like, I mean, it was And this, so this detective shows up at like midnight that night, after we'd already had cops out to the house twice that day, wakes us up again, and I'm like, guys, you have to stop coming out here, you're, this is insane, this is ridiculous. And he's like, it's, it's not, it's not that this time. You may have heard about the Riverside getting evacuated. Well, they used your name in that call. The feud between Patrick and the pest is not showing any signs of slowing down. Today, we're going to try to answer the question, Who are these guys and what do they want? I'm Javier Leyva and this is Pretend. Stories about real people pretending to be someone else. They've gone after Patrick, Nikki, even Patti LaBelle was tangled up in this mess. And then they made a bomb threat last April against a hotel that was hosting a convention that I was speaking at. They did that to disrupt That was Detroit. That was Detroit, yeah. They did that to disrupt the convention. The bomb sniffing dogs had to come out for that one. Um, just, just a few weeks ago on the Brewers home opener, they called in a bomb threat, uh, a few hours after the game was over because we go to the home opener every year. So they called just a lot of things that they know about us too, that we can't, I mean, we go to, we go to the Brewers opening day every year. It's like my favorite holiday. How does this end? How does this end? But us dead or then in prison, it doesn't end any other way. They think that they are untouchable because it's gone on so long. They've just been more and more invigorated, you know, to do more, the more they get away with. So like the, and at every step of the way. Whenever we've reached out for help through, through law enforcement, through the justice system, they have been rewarded. Like, I know why you're going public. Like I get it because like, even your Twitter says, well, silence didn't work. So now we're going public and I get it, you know, but I also kind of see this as like, Oh no, here we go again. You know, it's like. Are we rewarding them? No, they, they want us to suffer in silence. And the only, the only way they want to isolate us, they, they want to, they want to take us out off the playing field. And the only way to, to solve this is to, is to engage with the public, educate the public and bring more pressure. And we have to, because our situation is on the extreme side of things, but people, there are, they're doing this to lots of other people who have no recourse, no, I mean, Like platform. Yeah. No platform. I mean, they, and they go after like black people, trans people, whatever. And they'll go after young people who are just like, you know, like a black artist who's out on Twitter trying to like share their work and they'll just mass report them into oblivion and they'll never be able to do what they want to do on the internet with their work. Well, two weeks ago, um, two and a half weeks ago, we got swatted seven times in 36 hours and two of those police responses were violent. One was assault rifles. I was home alone and we have this extensive security system We've spent thousands of dollars on because of this and I couldn't see them on the cameras So I'm calling him like I can't see them Are they here because all I can see is this flashlight and they had banged on the door I'm upstairs. I'm in here. Hello. Can you yes, can you just come downstairs so we can see you're okay, and that's it And he's like, yeah, they're here. They have guns. Just really, everything is fine. Okay. We need to see you before we can leave. I'm trying to talk to them through the camera and I'm like, I'm coming down. It's fine. And I have to come down. No, no. Why are you here? We were called here for a shooting. Okay. This is the fourth time today. I understand. Okay, no. We still have to come here and do our job. Okay, but look, I couldn't see you on the cameras, and somebody, and like, so I'm seeing flashlights and shit, and I don't know if you have guns and stuff. These people are trying to fucking kill us. You said Milwaukee Police. And then, like, the next morning, a different sergeant tried to kick in our door because we refused to come down and come out. Has anybody actually kicked through your door? No, but they've, no, but they have illegally searched our house, like, a number of times. No, you're not coming in. You are absolutely not coming in. My wife is fine. You already saw her. You already talked to her. No you don't. You do not have problem. You do not. You do not have problem. You saw me. You saw me. I'm right here and I'm fine. I am fine. I am fine. She is not coming out. You do not have a, you are not, she is not coming out, you do not have a warrant, you do not have probable cause. You don't, you don't have probable cause because you know the call is fucking fake. This sergeant who the following day, the following morning, attempted to break our door down, he'd been at the house like three weeks earlier. He knew the situation, he'd already talked to Nikki. He knew we were being swatted and he just he came up again. It's like open the door Okay, I'm gonna kick it down. Yeah, I have you know, I have to search the place I'm like, no, you don't have probable cause you don't have a warrant. You know, this situation is bogus You're not entering our fucking house. So is this one harasser? Are there hundreds of harassers? There's really no way of knowing, but Patrick says that he's narrowed it down to a handful of people, including the man that they believe runs the forum. The idea was to bring a lawsuit to identify who they are, and then we can sue them civilly because of defamation and Or, or even turn them over to their local law enforcement so that they could face charges because we were literally told by law enforcement. It's like, well, without names, we can't do anything. So we went out to try and do their fucking jobs for them and get names of these people. And that's what they did in 2021. Patrick and his wife, Nikki, filed a lawsuit in order to subpoena the business and the production records of the online forum. If they have those records, they can unmask the identities of the users who are hiding behind an anonymous account. They ran into a wall and that wall is titled the Communications Decency Act, Section 230. Section 230 is a law that protects internet platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube from liability from content published by its users. I mean, can you imagine if you could sue Facebook every time you got your feelings hurt? But, you know, it's more than that because people do use these platforms to intimidate and harass other users offline. Careers could be ruined just like that after a Twitter mob attacks your reputation. But if anyone could sue these social media platforms for any reason, these companies would constantly be in court and they wouldn't survive. We wouldn't have social media. But because of section two 30 out in California and because of a pair of incredibly incompetent and stupid judges, um, they found that, uh, that, that quasi was running a website just like Facebook or Twitter. So they're not responsible for the content. Even though he's a willing participant. Active participant. And even though he runs the website through Cloudflare and bases it here in the US. Specifically because doxing isn't illegal here. It is illegal in the EU. Doxing is illegal in Russia. Yeah, like they had, they had server, they had their hosts, they were hosted in Russia for a while until we reported them for doxing and then the Russian host booted them. So then they had to come back here and they, like, and he's, we have screen grabs of him saying, no, I put this website here and, and it's being hosted here so you guys can keep doxing Patrick and everyone around him. There are exceptions to Section 230. The website owners could be held liable in certain situations. For example, if the website owner actively participates or encourages the harassment, they could be held responsible. Additionally, if, like, the website owner fails to take appropriate action after being notified about the harassing content, they could also face some potential liability. But according to Patrick, the website's owner is not just running the forum. Patrick claims he's one of the main harassers. You know, there does seem to be some sort of effort to moderate the harassment. Just recently, one of its most prominent users was booted off the forum. from making explicit threats towards Patrick. These guys eat their own. There's also a ridiculous disclaimer on the site. I'll read it to you. This forum is dedicated exclusively to parody comedy and satirical content. None of the statements, opinions, or depictions shared on this platform should be considered or treated as factual information under any circumstances. All the content is intended for entertainment purposes only and should be regarded as fictional, exaggerated, and purely the result of personal opinions and creative expression. If any of the discussion on this platform triggers distressing emotions or thoughts, please leave immediately and consider seeking assistance. They even link to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. Long story short, because of Section 230, Patrick Tomlinson lost the case. So, essentially the judge decided that because of Section 230, their non amenity is more important than our physical safety and well being and livelihood and everything else. The court also ruled that Patrick Tomlinson has to pay the website owner's legal fees. Can you believe that? To the tune of like 40, 000. So now We have a 40, 000 bill. But you haven't, you have not been able to identify it. The person who owns that site. No, no, we've, we have the identities of one and possibly two of these people. One we know for sure. His name is uses his real name on everything. He wants to be like, he thinks this is his, he runs a, he ran a podcast about us. Yeah. Just, he ran a, literally ran a podcast dedicated to stalking us actually the same day that, that, that, that huge pile of mulch was, was dropped in our backyard trying to block our car in. He flew to Milwaukee and came to our house. He took spy shots of me from across the street while hiding behind a truck. Um, then he walked down our sidewalk and filmed the front of our, filmed the front of our house. He went, when he went home, he took the, the footage of him in front of our house, put it on YouTube, and said it to the song, Somebody's Watching Me. I mean, he's out there. Well, And it got, it was even stranger because once, once he knew where I was, once he knew I was home, he went up to the street to that, to the bar that we had talked about, the one that had the fire, because he knows that we go there all the time and he sat there for half an hour, live streaming himself, sitting and talking to a pair of crochet voodoo dolls, representing my ex wife and her late husband. He wants to think he's like the ring leader and that he's really important, but I think he wants to be famous for any reason at all. Like in the, the judge pro tem and that in our lawsuit case had come right out and said during, during hearings that yes, you are, you're like defamation is happening on this site. Yes. You're there being stalked. Yes. They're being harassed. Like we had all the evidence, you know, proving our case, but it was just, it was just because of misreading the technicality of section two. Did they not only get away with everything without any sort of consequences, but the, but then the justice justice system stuck us with a 40, 000 bill. So now we're paying, we have a subscription fee for being stalked by these people. Because now we had to amortize the debt under chapter one 28 in Wisconsin, and we'll have to pay a monthly Stipend to them to be sucked where these payments going to, if you don't even know the identity, they go to him, but they go through his lawyer. My name is Eric Hilderman. I started the Milwaukee science fiction and fantasy league. So around, let's see, January of 2022, that's when I became aware of the Patrick Tomlinson situation. There was a, article that came out, had this headline, Milwaukee science fiction writer loses in court, uh, or something to that effect. And I was like, wait, Milwaukee science fiction writer, what are they talking about? When Eric Hildeman realized that Tomlinson was being attacked by internet trolls on this Opie and Anthony forum, he decided to jump in and defend Patrick. Most of the people are there just for laughs. And, you know, getting laughs at other people's expense, you know, that's how the free speech cookie crumbles. That's fine. Okay. But it's where it goes beyond laughs that, you know, it kind of stops being funny. The trolls started coming after me because heaven forbid Patrick had another friend. They, they absolutely can't stand that. So they, uh, Targeted my website, started posting a whole bunch of like, you know, nonsense crap on there, but they also found my parents funerary websites and, uh, immediately posted a whole bunch of, uh, lewd, you know, uh, graffiti like posts on there and yeah, I see you're shaking your head like that. You just got to think like how evil you have to be to do something. I mean, You know, this is something that I'm in, I'm an atheist and I regard that sacred and these guys don't get it. But why, why do you want to get in this, in this mess to begin with? Like, why, why get involved? They didn't even know about you. If I'm going to build up science fiction in Milwaukee, the situation is right now that Patrick Tomlinson is one of the most prominent guys out there. But do you think that he eggs them on? Do you think that maybe he's partly responsible? He is a self described rabble rouser. This is very true. And he says a lot of things that are acerbic, uh, and, and acidic even. I feel like he's a caricature of everything that, uh, alt right hates about liberals. Yeah. Okay. That's, that's one way of looking at it. Um, but. For people to say that, you know, he eggs them on, or, you know, he always rises to the bait, therefore he makes us do it. That's pretty much exactly the same logic that a rapist used about, Oh, she was dressed scantily, so she was asking for it. No. No. You're still a rapist. You're still 100 percent to blame. That's how I feel. I, I, I think that no matter how public and, and abrasive Patrick could be about all this, there's nothing that he could say that makes him deserve the harassment and the barrage of, of threats that, that has come. Yeah, but I mean, barrage or not, if it was just words, okay, then it would be a war of words going back and forth on, you know, a social media site. And that's just the way the free speech cookie crumbles. But it goes much beyond that, of course, because people have swatted him. People have, uh, impersonated him online and posted stuff to other people's websites in his name, in order to defame him, you know, they have, uh, gone after his friends. You know, as soon as I appeared on the scene, they went after me. They've gone after his family members. You were kind of defending not only. Patrick as a sci fi writer, but really like the sci fi community and your area. Part of me thinks that you didn't know what you were getting yourself into, right? A little bit. Um, there was a time when I actually did a, uh, an email debate with one of them. Patrick warned me not to do it. Uh, he was. Very adamant about it, and I felt I knew what I was doing and plunged into it anyway. Eric Hildeman was not only defending Patrick Tomlinson, he was defending the whole sci fi community in Milwaukee as a whole. But why the sci fi community? The Pests believe that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association is a haven for pedophilia. I'll let John de LaRose explain. Patrick s Tomlinson is one of the biggest law cows on the internet. He is a SO member, A SJW, science fiction writer who's been making failed books for a number of years, and he loves to go harass conservatives on the internet. And then, claim that he's been harassed when he gets some retaliation for it. Delarose is a YouTuber and science fiction writer. I sell more books than Patrick S. Tomlinson. Confirmed. Uh, because people like it. I don't put any SJW nonsense in there. I don't put any LGBTQIA whatsoever. into my books. I just put good quality stories that are fun. I try to keep everything as PG as I can. Delarose has some advice for Tomlinson. Patrick Tomlinson has a habit of tweeting the same thing over and over and over again. He loves to reply to people on Twitter and that's exactly why they come at him. If you don't know how to deal with trolls on the internet, uh, the best way to do so is not to just keep replying to the trolls with something like this. Oh my God. They think that they can get away with just, uh, taking down free speech. They think they can get away with harassing conservatives, right wingers, and Christians out of the spaces of the public square. So the argument is because you're defending the science fiction community against pedophilia that you must be a pedophilia sympathizer, right? Like that's the logic? That's their, that's their strange and twisted logic, yes. There's zero evidence to support that whatsoever. But if I say something positive about, say, for example, Samuel R. Delaney, Oh, well then at the very least, I'm a pedo defender and so forth. Samuel Delaney is a prominent science fiction author, but to the past, he's much more than that. They consider him a dangerous pedophilia sympathizer. Was Delaney a pedophile? He, he said some statements in favor of an organization called NAMBLA. NAMBLA is the North American Man Boy Love Association. This organization is exactly what it sounds like. Grown men who actively campaign to have sexual relations with minors. And, uh, he did that back in the 90s. He himself never belonged to the organization. He said some things in support of its newsletter, which he said was very intelligent and intellectual for the time, and since then he has never backtracked from that. And the reason he never backtracked from that is because he, uh, was actually, uh, molested himself as a young boy, but because he's gay, he didn't find the experience traumatic. And so now he refuses to characterize it as abuse and refuses to, you know, rescind his statement about an ambulance. Now I find that fucked up, pardon my French, but that is the reality of it. Well, that is the one living example that they really have of pedophilia in science fiction. There's only a few other examples. Marion Zimmer Bradley was considered, uh, one of the. Capstones of fantasy writing. And she has, uh, her, her armor has dimmed since she and her husband, uh, famous, uh, coin collector named Walter Breen, they, uh, Really were abusive to their daughter, Moira Grayland, and she wrote it all in a tell all book, and for the record, I side with Moira, okay, what, what she went through is, you know, unforgivable, and, uh, the only other example that they're able to say, uh, cite is somebody named, uh, uh, uh, Kramer, Ed Kramer, and, uh, he was one of the founders of DragonCon, and, uh, he was, uh, Uh, uh, known to be a pedophile, but, but I mean, okay. So you have some rotten apples in the community, right? You know, uh, basically condemn a community of hundreds of thousands. For these four examples, it's kind of like you could say in Catholicism, there's, there's some bad actors, there's comedy, there's some bad actors in Hollywood. There's some bad actors. That doesn't mean that the whole industry is, uh, uh, child predator industry, right? I don't know if any of the pests really are motivated by this pedophilia claim. Maybe they are, maybe they're not. It seems to me that this issue is just used to justify the harassment. But listen, it doesn't matter because as vile and racist as the Opie and Anthony forms are, it's their constitutional right to talk garbage. But free speech can only get you so far. Their freedom of speech doesn't give them the right to send the cops to someone's front door. That's harassment and a waste of our tax dollars. But like Patrick said, swatting isn't illegal in the U. S. But why has it become such a big problem? Well, let's follow the money. Vice magazine recently published an incredible article singling out a messaging app called Telegram. In this app, there's a user known as TorSwats. For just 75, this user will call in a school bomb or a mass shooting threat. And for 50 tour SWAT can send the cops to your target's house and have the cops handcuff them and search their homes. Think of it as swatting as a service. There's this criminal out there that goes by tour SWATs who for 50 or 75 bucks a pop will swap people for you. So it turns out that he was the one who for at least the last 10 months has been swatting us constantly. But it's because our stalkers are paying him to, to the tune of. A couple thousand dollars, at least at this point. And he's also probably the one that's been making the bomb threats. Although we don't have confirmation of that yet. And on top of that, it turns out that Torswat's. Was under the impression that we, me in particular was paying him to SWAT us ourselves. So they were impersonating. So they impersonated me. They set up a telegram account under my name. They opened a crypto wallet through Gemini in my name and had been paying him in crypto coins to SWAT us while pretending to be me. 75. And he thinks that it's like insultingly cheap. Yeah, for 75, 50. I mean, come on. That's ridiculous. They paid Norm Macdonald a hook, a cameo to, um, tell him to tell everyone to continue harassing us, which he, which he did. Yeah, he did. No way. Do you have that? It's somewhere. Hey, this is Norm Macdonald here. And this is a message for all of Patrick's friends. Uh, I want you to stop picking on your friend, Pat. After all And I quote, His only crime was that he didn't find Norm Macdonald funny. Wait a minute here. I'm Norm Macdonald. And I am funny. Please continue insulting that fat loser. But, I mean, I don't think he knew he didn't know what was going on. Of course he doesn't know the extent of it. Going back to the swatting, it doesn't seem to be easing up. And now my elderly parents have been swatted twice. They live two hours from here. In the middle of like central Wisconsin, in the middle of nowhere. So like the cops there didn't know anything about it. And so they, you know, they got pulled out of their house. At 2 a. m. at 2. 30 a. m. with guns pointed at them and they're, you ordered to have their hands in the air. And like, my parents are in their 70s. In that seven swattings in 36 hours, they were swatted within that, and I'm not counting that one as part of the seven. And there was a bomb threat in there too. Yeah, there was a bomb threat in there too. In that 36 hours. Yeah, 36 hours. This is every day for us. This is just what our lives have looked like for every day for five years. We don't get any, we don't get breaks. We don't get time off for good behavior. We can't, and we can no longer even relax in our own home because it's been violated so many times. Well, and I saw those pictures of, of you at those events in D. C. and Detroit. I mean, that's creepy. You were in the same room with these guys. Yeah. They've come to your house. Yep. Yeah. So how does this end? Here's Eric Heidelman again. Do you think if Patrick and Nikki just stopped engaging with them, this would go away? I think if they had done that more towards the beginning, that would be, you know, it would be realistic that the trolls would, you know, get bored and move on. It's not a technique that I necessarily approve of. It's better, you know, that they just, you know, stop the abuse in the first place because If you try to get rid of them by ignoring them, then what they do is they find another victim. They don't stop, they just find somebody else. Who the hell has that kind of time? Wouldn't you love to have that kind of time? Yeah. You just sit around and torment people. It's got the time back that we spend fighting these motherfuckers. Don't mean we spend have 10 books written by, we spend like every day we have to set up some sort of defense or that's like a third job. Yeah, it is. It is. It's like a it's, and it's exhausting. And I mean like this month. And I mean, even this, even this is like time that you should have been doing something else, you know, like, why do you need to talk about this? You know, it's like, it must be very annoying that this is part of your life. Yeah. No, you asked earlier how it ends. It ends with someone finally taking this seriously enough to go out and find them and arrest them. Hey guys. So this was supposed to be the last episode, part three in the pest series, but I have been in communication with some of the pests. and the forum's administrator. As you already know, the pests got a hold of the episodes and they listened to it, they posted it on their forum, and they had a lot to say. So in part four, which is available right now on Patreon and Apple Podcast, you will get to hear their side of the story. But what's even more interesting is that on August 24th, Just a couple of days from now, Patrick Tomlinson is scheduled to appear in court for a contempt of court hearing. Now, why is he in contempt of court? Well, because he hasn't made a single payment towards the legal fees of John Doe No. 1, the forum administrator. As you probably recall, Patrick Tomlinson sued 60 anonymous posters from the online forum, including the forum administrator, and he lost. And as a result, a judge ordered him to pay the losing side's legal fees. Now that number is about 50, 000. And Patrick, like I said, has not paid a cent. I interviewed Patrick and Nikki to find out what their legal strategy is, and you will be surprised to find out what they had to say. Part 4 is kind of a bloodbath. You have to listen to it. It is pretty interesting. Again, it's available right now on Pretend Plus on Apple Podcasts or Patreon. The links to that is in the show notes. If not, don't worry. The episode will be available for free next week for all of you to listen to. for listening. Also, I have big news for my Pretend Plus subscribers. If you subscribe to Pretend Plus on Apple Podcasts, you also get all nine episodes of the fourth season of Criminal Conduct before anyone else gets to listen to it. All nine episodes ad free. This is a case that John Taylor and I have been talking about for three years now, and it's finally out. For those of you who want to listen to it for free, Criminal Conduct season four will premiere next week. On August 18th, just subscribe to Criminal Conduct. It's a great show. For those of you who have not listened to Criminal Conduct, Criminal Conduct is a lot like Serial, where we cover one case per season. There's four seasons now, so if this is news to you, you should, uh, you should catch up because it is such a great show. It is much harder. To work on criminal conduct than it is to work on pretend because it is in depth investigative reporting. If you're into true crime, I think you're going to love it. All right. Well, that's it for this week. Stay tuned for part four of the past coming at you next week on this feed. Take care.