Stay ConnectedJoin PI Ed Opperman with expert guests and authors as they discuss true crime stories in the news, conspiracy theories, issues of social injustice and NWO resistance.
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When Steve Smith set out to hitchhike from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario to Canada’s west coast back in 1968, he was just an eighteen-year-old hippie with an appetite for adventure. But a short way into his journey, a reckless decision to steal a car landed him in police custody. Afraid of getting caught with the two tabs of acid in his pocket, Steve popped them into his mouth. It was one of the worst decisions of his life.
Mistaking his drug trip for a mental breakdown, the authorities placed him in Ontario’s notorious Oak Ridge mental health facility. While there, not only did he find himself shoulder-to-shoulder with people like notorious child killer Peter Woodcock and mass murderers Matt Lamb and Victor Hoffman, he also fell into the hands of someone worse: Dr. Elliot T. Barker.
Over the next eight months, Barker subjected Steve and the other patients to a battery of unorthodox experiments involving LSD, scopolamine, methamphetamines, and other drugs. Steven also experienced numerous other forms of abuse and torture.
Following his release, Steve continued to suffer the aftereffects of his Oak Ridge experience. For several years, he found himself in and out of prison—and back to Oak Ridge—before he was finally able to establish himself as a successful entrepreneur.
Once he began investigating what happened to him during his youth, not even Steve was prepared for what he would discover about Barker, Oak Ridge, and one of the darkest periods in Canada’s treatment of mental health patients. The question remains: Was Oak Ridge and Dr. Barker trying to cure psychopaths or trying to create and direct them?
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Dr Mic Hunter - Honor Betrayed: Sexual Abuse in America's Military
Jul 31, 2023
In Honor Betrayed, Dr. Mic Hunter probes beyond the headlines to reveal the reality of sexual abuse in the military. The culture of the military's training is to turn recruits into those who follow orders without question. Honor Betrayed describes in detail the gross realities of the hostile, uber-masculine, dehumanizing environment our young men and women confront. Most vulnerable to sexual abuse are minorities-particularly women and homosexuals. Included are first-person accounts from American servicewomen and men who were sexually abused by their comrades, including one woman whose case was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court. Hunter also explores the tacit acceptance of these incidents in the military to the recent prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.
Book : Honor Betrayed: Sexual Abuse in America's Military
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John Tinker - Free SpeechIn 1965, five students from Des Moines wore black arm bands to school to protest America's involvement in the Vietnam War. Those strips of cloth became the subject of a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Because of those Iowa students, the right of all American students to express their political opinions was strengthened.In the 1960s, the United States began sending troops to Southeast Asia. The nation of Vietnam had been divided into two parts, with North Vietnam friendly to Communist China on its northern border while South Vietnam looked to the United States for support. The United States feared that if communists from North Vietnam took control of South Vietnam, communism would soon overrun all of Southeast Asia.Some Americans opposed sending American soldiers to Vietnam. In their opinion, the war cost too many American lives and too much money. In 1965, a group of Des Moines high school and junior high students met at the home of Christopher Eckhardt to make plans to protest the United States' participation in the Vietnam War. The students agreed to wear black armbands the following week to protest the deaths of American soldiers in the war.Word of the planned protest spread. School principals were afraid that student protests would disrupt classrooms and school activities. They passed a ruling prohibiting armbands. They said that any students wearing them would be sent home and not allowed back to classes until the armbands were gone.On December 16, five students wore armbands to school despite the principals' rule. Three of students, Christopher Eckhardt, Christine Singer and Bruce Clark, were from Roosevelt High School. John Tinker attended North High School and his sister, Mary Beth, went to Harding Junior High.Christopher Eckhardt recalled that several students threatened him, "I wore the black armband over a camel-colored jacket. The captain of the football team attempted to rip it off. I turned myself in to the principal's office where the vice principal asked if 'I wanted a busted nose.' He said seniors wouldn't like the armband." A school counselor told Christopher that colleges would not accept him if he was a war protestor and might need to find a new high school if he did not remove the arm band.When the five students refused to remove the armbands, they were expelled from school. They returned after Christmas break without the armbands but wearing all black clothes.The Des Moines School Board met to review the principals' rule. They supported the ruling because they decided that principals needed the authority to keep order in the schools. The Vietnam War was becoming a very emotional issue across the country, and school officials were afraid that there could be disturbances at school if protest symbols showed up in class.The case did not end there, however. In March 1966, John Tinker, Mary Beth Tinker, Chris Eckhardt and their parents filed a formal complaint in U.S. District Court arguing that the students' rights had been violated. The District Court dismissed the case, as did a Federal Appeals Court. The case finally reached all the way to the United States Supreme Court on Nov. 12, 1968.The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right of all American citizens to freedom of speech. But does that freedom apply to high school and middle school students in Des Moines, Iowa? The Supreme Court said it does! The Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District that students and teachers continue to have the right of free speech and expression when they are at school. They do not "shed their constitutional rights at the school house gate," Judge Abe Fortas wrote in the Court's ruling.Does this mean that school officials do not have the right to maintain order in the schools or to prevent things that disrupt classes? No, the Court said. Schools can still restrict students' actions or expressions when there is enough reason to believe those actions would disrupt the school or invade the rights of other students. However, just because an opinion is unpopular or makes other students or teachers uncomfortable, school officials cannot prevent students from sharing their views. In the Tinker case, the Court ruled, school officials had not proved that the students' armbands would significantly disrupt classroom or school activities.The Tinker case is a very important decision protecting student rights. Because five Des Moines students were brave enough to stand up for an unpopular position, all American students enjoy greater freedom to express their opinions.
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Art Bell was a radio legend. His call in shows were, are still are, the stuff of fantasy and nightmare. Bell himself was a expert showman, who could create something out of nothing; a simple call detailing an otherwise mundane situation, event or experience could be turned into a must listen, appointment radio.
Such was the tale of Mel's Hole. A listener called in talking about a hole he had found on his land; this hole, claimed the caller, was bottomless. Despite attempting to discover the depth of the aperture, it was never established. From minor things like domestic garbage and rubble, cars and vans, even industrial waste seemed to be swallowed up by this seemingly endless void. The caller didn't want to give his precise location, as he didn't want tourists trampling all over what was effectively his land and livelihood.
However, as the story grew so did the bizarre circumstance. The Military eventually turned up, took possession of the area and left the owner with no access; bizarre things started happening in and around the area. Call built on call, and with each embellishment the listenership grew, agog for the next detail which may just solve the mystery.
Except... none of this had definitive proof. No pictures, video or other supportive evidence was ever produced, at least nothing substantive. Eventually, the caller 'sold' the land and disappeared, and the mystery was left to grow in the bright combination of imagination and silence.
The truth is, no one knows what Mel's Hole actually was; was it a endless pit or was it just a clever gimmick with a suitably ambiguous name designed to boost ratings whilst not actually existing?
Whichever it was, Art Bell took the simple narrative and turned it, over a suitably events driven period of time, into an urban legend which made him and his show internationally famous. It is possibly the second most searched for clip on the Bell Archive and other search engines, triggering theories, imagination and wild, wild solutions.
It was a radio marketers dream.
This is the story of Mel's Hole.
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Ryan Singleton, a 24-year-old aspiring writer and filmmaker left his home in Atlanta, Georgia for what was supposed to be a weekend trip to Los Angeles in early July 2013 and hoped to jump start his acting career.
On July 6, 2013, Ryan Singleton rented a car and drove to Las Vegas. On his return trip to Los Angeles, the vehicle broke down in the Mojave Desert on July 9th and two California Highway Patrol officers spotted him walking on the road, picked him up and dropped him off at a rest stop or convenience store near Baker, California
Singleton called a friend to pick him up, but that friend was a three-hour drive away. Singleton made a purchase and walked outside the store and vanished. When his friend arrived, Singleton was nowhere to be found. A missing persons report was filed.
On September 21, 2013, Ryan's body was found by two joggers/hikers with his heart, lungs, kidney, liver and eyes missing about two miles from the convenience store where he was last seen in an area that had been extensively searched by detectives and investigators.
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