Transcript of Alan Berg

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Hi, friends. I'm so excited to share this new season 2 episode of Truer Crime with you. If you want an ad-free listening experience, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus. Com or on Apple Podcasts. Hi, friends. I have been absolutely loving reading your reviews. They truly mean a lot to me, and I read every single one. I really do. Your feedback is just super helpful because it really allows me to see what stories are resonating with you and what you want to hear more of. And honestly, just knowing what you're loving, knowing what's connecting with you, that really does help shape the show. So thank you for taking the time to do that. But here's the thing. I think we all know what it feels like to be binging a Netflix show that we love. We get super into it, and then we realize, oh, it's done. It's gone. There's no more seasons. And Really, the same is true for podcasts. But here's the thing. I know that you have a direct impact on whether shows like Truer Crime stick around. The biggest way to do that, other than listening, is to leave more ratings and reviews.

It's like upvoting the show. It genuinely helps us reach more listeners and ensures that we can just keep creating these stories for you. Honestly, I have this big goal, which is I'd love to hit 2,000 reviews before the end of the season. Right now, we're about 700 reviews away, which feels like a lot, but with your help, I know that we can make this happen. If you're listening on Apple, you can leave a rating and review. If you're on Spotify, a star rating works just as well. It only takes a few seconds, but it genuinely makes a world of difference. So thank you so much for your support. Seriously, it means everything. Now, let's get into the show. Please be aware that today's episode contains references to gun violence. Please take care while listening. On June 18th, 1984, a man was murdered in front of his Denver, Colorado home. There's a photo I saw once of the crime scene. It's taken in the moments just after police arrived, and looking at it, it's hard not to feel unsettled. The victim Adam is on his back, his legs bent, arms strewn around his head, a trail of blood running down the pavement.

Next to him, there's a black VW convertible. Its door still swung open. The man in the photograph is Alan Berg, a prolific and controversial talk radio personality. Before long, news of his death aird on the same airways that Alan himself had once dominated. Related.

10: 39, K-O-8 time, and I'm still trying to piece information together. Off the air, I'm finding out that channel 7 has issued a report that said the best investigative efforts of the DPD has indicated that someone passing in a vehicle, fired upon Alan Berg when he was exiting his vehicle in front of his home. Ten or more shell casings. A number that would indicate an automatic weapon was found at the And Allenberg has, in fact, passed on. He is no longer with us.

I'd happened to cross Allen's story on a recommendation. And so the first time I sat down ready to really dive in, I knew very little about the case, very little about Allen. I understood basically what I just told you, that he was a well-known radio host, that he'd been targeted and murdered. So I started did how I always do. I compiled a list of articles and videos to help me research the case. I clicked the first link on my list. It was a Denver Post piece, a front page story from June 2009, commemorating the 25th anniversary of Allen's passing. It opened, simply enough. The violent murder of Denver Talk radio icon, Allen Burke, reverberates amid fresh reminders because the commemoration comes just days after a gun men opened fire at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. I stopped reading. The hair on my arm stood up straight as a flood of memories coursed through my mind.

Police say just before 1: 00 PM, a man walked into the Holocaust Museum in Washington and immediately began firing with a long rifle. Authorities in Washington, DC say at least two people have been shot at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

We had no prior information. There was no prior threats of this nature about this incident. So it appears to be a lone gunman who entered the museum and opened fire. This shooting at the Holocaust Museum in 2009, the one the Denver Post was calling a fresh reminder of Allen's murder, I remember it well because I had been there. So what exactly did the brutal murder of a radio personality have to do with a crime from my own life 25 years later? That was something I needed to find out. This is the story of Allen Berg. I'm Slicia Stanton, and you're listening to Truer Crime. In 2009, I was 14 years old. It was the golden age of flip phones, Facebook, and handheld digital cameras. Back then, I spent my downtime making music videos at sleepovers and tapping out text on my pink Motorola Razor's T9 keypad. At that time, there was almost nothing further from my mind than talk radio. My interest in radio was pretty much limited to whether or not my bus driver was going to play the Hot 100 station after school. Talk radio, I would have said, was for old people.

What was fun of mine, though, was Washington, DC. It was my last summer before high school, and I was gearing up for a class trip to the nation's capital. The trip marked a transition of sorts. We were kids, but soon to be full-blown teens. It was definitive proof that despite the slow passing days of childhood, we must be growing up. And while that trip was filled with memorable moments, it was our visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum that stands out more than a decade later. When our group arrived that day in June, we shuffled through the lobby's security checkpoint. I remember a guard who cleared us to enter, smiling and wishing us well before turning back to usher in the next group of visitors. We headed upstairs to the exhibits, slowly winding our way through haunting displays and experiences that taught us about the horrors of Hitler's genocide. After exploring for a while, a friend and I decided to head back downstairs. But as we got to the hallway that led to the museum's main floor, a security guard blocked our way. Stop here, she told us. She didn't give her reasoning, but the hallway walls were made of glass, and from them, our view of the lobby was clear.

My 14-year-old brain struggled to reconcile the chaotic scene unfolding downstairs, and I watched as streams of screaming visitors scramble past one another, each in their own desperate attempt to escape the building. After a few minutes, the security guards radio crackled the words, Man down, man down, coming through the static. Downstairs, a man had walked through the front doors in the museum and armed with a slide action rifle, he started shooting. And while I'd learn a lot in the hours, days, and weeks to come about the anti-Semitic attack carried out that day, it would take 15 years for the lessons of this horrifying event to come full circle for me with a story of another tragedy, the murder of a once prolific talk radio personality named Alan Berg.

He's a prince. He's primitive. He's provocative. He's Alan Berg, and he's next on News Talk 85.

Picture the audacity of Howard Stern fused with the polarizing nature of Rush Inba. Allenberg was the original provocateur, the embodiment of a shock jock years before the term even existed. Always ready to take on callers with his signature wit and ever confrontational style. I'm pretty upset about what the government is doing as far as bringing in all the refugees, like people.

Like, if they're showing a work ethic that's better than most Americans, God bless them. Well, no. Maybe I'll make a shake up and do something and work and earn something and not want a free ride. Sweetheart, you find one? You're on KLA.

Let's be real. In the era of Elon Musk, Bill Maher, and Candace Owens, one where rage bait rules and our news cycles are increasingly polarized. Media personalities like Alan Berg might seem like they're a dime a dozen, just par for the course. But Alan wasn't doing all of this in 2024. He was making waves in the 1970s and '80s. But of course, it hadn't started there. No. The roots of Alan Berg, O. G. Shockjock dated back to childhood. Growing up in the late '30s and early '40s, Allen's view of the world was largely shaped by the primarily Black and Jewish Chicago neighborhood where he grew up. But despite the diversity of that upbringing, Allen told Rolling Stone that his father was, A notorious big it against anything that wasn't Jewish. But Alan saw the other side of his father, too, a man both overzealous and ashamed of his Jewish identity, the guy who dutifully attended temple while hiding his own Jewish identity from the Christian clients at his dentistry practice. The hypocrisy enraged Alan. It all informed the person he was becoming, a man deeply influenced by principles of truth and justice and So maybe it's not all that surprising that at 22, he became one of the youngest people to ever pass the Illinois bar exam.

But this time in Alan's life wasn't just about school. Along the way, he'd fallen in love with a woman named Judith Halpern. Judith was captivated by Alan's remarkable sense of humor, charmed by the instant connection he formed with her family. Before long, the two got married and began their life together in Chicago. According to Rolling Stone, while Alan had started working as a low paid law clerk, his habit of paying kickbacks to bail bondsmen resulted in a slew of cases getting sent his way. And as he grew his career as a criminal defense lawyer, his income skyrocketed. He went from making $100 a month to $50,000 a year. It was a financial boon. But as Alan Berg biographer Steven Singular told our team, from an ethical standpoint, Alan was conflicted. He often found himself defending folks who were said to have Mafia ties, and that dissonance between his success in the courtroom and the ethical precarity of defending guilty clients, it nodded him. The stress of work began to manifest physically as he grappled with epileptic seizures that turned out to be the result of a brain tumor, one which ultimately required a risky and life-saving surgery to remove.

In the midst of these struggles, he developed a drinking problem and started cheating on Judith. Pictures of Alan are this almost perfect visual representation of all that internal chaos. He's tall and slender with a somewhat disheveled look. His beard, bushy and granging, connects up to his hair, which sits almost helmet-like on his head. Bangs grown intentionally long to cover his surgical scars. Distinctive glasses frame of face lined with tension. I don't care what Alan Berg looked like, but he did, and his looks were often the butt of his own jokes. As Judith told us, he seemed to develop a deep sense of self-hate. Allen's life, once marked by ambition and success, began to spiral out of control. And soon, his marriage unraveled, too. For Alan, this was rock bottom. It was unbearable to me that I was prone to corruption, Alan told Rolling Stone. All of a sudden, I was doing all the things I'd always been ridiculously critical of, and the drinking was a great way to not face the ugliness I saw in myself. You think maybe it reminds you a little bit of your father whom you never saw any guts in in your whole life.

You suddenly say, I'm not the opposite of him. I'm weak, too. It was something Alan concluded that needed to be worked through. And so he did. He moved to Colorado, got sober, and began a new career working at a clothing store. It was here that Alan met Lawrence Gross, a local talk radio host. Lawrence was quickly taken by Alan's opinionated and boisterous personality, and the two hit it off right away. One day, Lawrence invited Alan to be a guest on his show, to come and just talk. He wanted Alan to be Alan, to share some opinions and discuss hot topics with callers. According to Alan Berg biographer, Steven Singular, talk radio was just gaining traction back then, especially in Denver. The shows that did exist were safe and polite, nothing too edgy. But that all changed when Alan Berg came on the scene. From the get-go, he wasn't afraid to dive into the tough stuff. Religion, politics, sex, you name it. His natural talent for pushing boundaries quickly put him in the spotlight, outshining Lawrence Gross. It wasn't long before the station realized they needed him there full-time. And without any formal training, Alan began yet another new career, this time in radio.

He bounced around at a few smaller stations before landing at one of the most prominent radio outlets in the country, K-O-A. But the more I learned about Alan's work at the station, the more I wanted to hear from him. So I started digging through audio files, listening to archive segments of his show. Suddenly, I started to understand that Alan Berg was different, that when it came to talk radio, Allen just had it.

You're listening to Two Way Talk at its very best with Alan Berg on KOA News Talk 85.

Call 861 Talk. But even with a plethora of audio to dig through, I had a sneaky sense that there was still more to uncover. An understanding of Alan's impact on radio that could only come from the folks who'd lived it. Luckily for me, the team here at Tenderfoot TV had the opportunity to do exactly that. The chance to interview several folks who'd known Alan best. Here's his former producer, Susan Ryman.

The Beauty of Talk radio is trying to figure out what people want to hear us talk about. It's really the hardest thing to figure out how to keep that audience engaged and tuned. That's what made Alan Berg so special because he got He understood what made people tune in and stay tuned in.

Alan's show on K-O-A took off immediately. It was a style that stood out most to listeners. With the show Built Round Callers, Alan knew exactly what it took to keep the phone lines ringing.

He liked to get people riled up. He liked to get them angry because he would get to another side of these listeners, the true side of all of us, where eventually in anger, you're going to tell the truth. He would grill them. But a lot of the talk show hosts are able to demand that their listeners either be smart enough or educated enough to challenge him. If you're not going to be one of those two, don't bother calling him.

Try your luck at talking with him now. Dial 8 6182 5- Call in and Try your luck was right because Alan was ready to go toe to toe on even the most sensitive negative issues.

But the magic formula to Alan's show wasn't just his interest in touching the kinds of topics others wouldn't. As Peter Boyle, Alan's friend and one-time radio rival, told us, it was also his demeanor, his brashness, his detrarian nature, his willingness to defend that kept listeners tuning in day after day.

He was visceral, and people reacted to him in their stomach.

They didn't react to him up a wheelhouse.

He would got check you.

And that worked. Hold it, pal. Hold it there one second. Don't tell me about snooping to my level. Who do you think you are? I don't like you. You don't have to like me. I could care less. What makes you think you're such a judgment maker. You're going to tell me you're stupid to my level. You're a creep, buddy. Remember that. You're on K-O-A. Good afternoon. I've attacked Carter. I've attacked every president ever lived because they're all one and the same. They're a bunch of greedy power maniac who could care less about the well-being of anybody. No, that's garbage. No, it's not garbage, pal. Wait a minute. You go down in the ghetto. Okay, I'm a white, middle-class wasp. You go down in the ghetto. Are you the wasps wants to blame everybody else in the world. I'm not blaming him. Let me finish. I'm not blaming anybody for anything. You got every advantage going for you because you are a wasp. You're on my show, and as long as you're on my show, you'll follow my rules. You don't make up the... Hold it, Jack. You don't make up the rules on my show.

You want to end it right here? Sure. I'll hang up on you if you- Hey, Jeff, go ahead. Both of you hang up, cowards. Go bail out right now.

From sex work and civil rights to Trivia and gogo boots, Alan hit every topic, whether it was serious or silly with his signature no holds barred approach.

What he would say was, I addict people to myself. It was a very true thing on the radio. People would say, I can't stand that guy. I'll never listen again while he tuned in the next day and the next day and the next. Because not only did they I not know what he was going to do next. I don't think he often knew what he was going to do or say next. It was incredibly spontaneous.

With Alan, there was no gray. You loved him or you hated him, and you were listening either way. It reminded me of a Denver poll I read about my research. Who was the most liked and most disliked media personality in town? Alan, the survey found, was both.

As he told me, I just want to make people I want to make people feel. I want to make people think. I want to provoke. I want to get a reaction. He would say, Denver is a sleepy town. There's not a lot going on here. There's nobody like me to poke people and get them to think about politics, race, sex, gender, women's liberation, gay liberation, whatever, everything. He could talk about anything spontaneously in an interesting way.

The fact of the matter was simple. Alan didn't stand out because he was charming or persuasive, he stood out because he made people think. But folks who knew him well understood something deeper, too. That who Alan was on air was a persona, a character he leaned into. To, but not necessarily a fair picture of the full person he was.

As much as you wanted to listen to him on the air, it truly was shtick. It was just shtick. Alan was the kindest guy I have ever He had the pleasure to know. It really broke his heart in a lot of ways that people disliked him. Like the time that he went to the Nuggets Stadium and he was supposed to be there for halftime and the crowd booed him. It was heartbreaking. He was nothing like what people perceived him to be as this angry man walking in with an attitude. Alan just loved talk radio. He loved getting people fired up. But no, he was the He was the nicest guy in the whole world, truly. But he got what he wanted. He wanted to get people riled up. He wanted to get a reaction, and he did. But unfortunately, it wasn't always good.

Producer Ananth White shared with the Lost Highways podcast that for Alan, going all in on air was his method of addressing the issues he truly cared about, a means of openly confronting bigoted viewpoints. But there were no limits to the of individuals Alan was willing to engage on air. Many times, he found himself locked in debate with outright white supremacist.

I think the Jews are still firmly in control of the Soviet Union. I think they're responsible for the murder of 50 million white Christians. You think so? Yes, I do. I think you're sick. I think you're pathetic. I think your ability to reason and use any logic is a tragedy. Why don't you put a Nazi on your program and then you have somebody- You are a Nazi by your very own admission. Thanks so much. It's been good. That's right. You heard it.

Okay, 8: 00, As Alan continued engaging with these callers, arguing with them on his show, folks at the station started to grow wary. Alan's producer, Susan, was one of them. She broached the idea of scaling back a bit with Alan.

He was appalled. I wouldn't even say that out loud. He said, Are you serious? So I'm supposed to shut up because of this man? Were you going to let fear stop me from doing these interviews? I said, You're just humiliating humiliating him, Alan. It's horrible. This guy is crazy. He's crazy. He said, Well, that's what the audience needs to hear, is they need to hear what you're hearing over and over and over again to make them realize that these insane sex exist out there, and they need to be exposed, and they need to be stopped.

I read about one incident in the Rolling Stone where after a shouting match with an anti-Semitic collar, a man stormed He came into Allen Studio, wielding a gun and threatened to shoot it. Luckily, the gunman fled. He was apprehended and charged soon after. And yet still, Allen was undeterred.

He refused to be stopped. None of these guys in this building we're sitting right now are going to stop talking about what they want to talk about on the air because they're afraid someone's going to gun them down. That's not what we do on talk radio.

As Allen told 60 Minutes reporter Morley Safer, he knew the risks.

Isn't there something a little dangerous about this broadcasting? There is a danger. I agree with you. I guess the danger that we exhibit in all rights of free expression, be it columnists who write newspapers. Yeah, indeed. But you say yourself, you often go on there. You don't know quite what you're going to say. Hopefully, my legal training will prevent me from saying the one thing that will kill me. I've come awfully close.

Now 50 years old, Alan Alan was thriving, really making a name for himself with a career in full boom. But on June 18, 1984, it all came to a screeching halt. That evening, Alan and his ex-wife, Judith, had gone to dinner together. The two had managed to remain connected even after their divorce. After the meal, the pair made a quick stop at the store before deciding to split off for a bit. Judith planned to visit with a close mutual friend, and she had a drive ahead of her. Alan Alan, they discussed, would meet up after he made a couple of phone calls at home. When Judith finally made it to that friend's house, she was greeted with a hug before all attention somberly shifted to the room's TV. The words streaming out of the speakers were nearly impossible to comprehend. Alan Berg had been murdered in his driveway. Twelve rounds shot from a single rifle had pierced their way through Alan, and the garage door behind him. The pain was visceral, leveling the folks who'd known him best. His colleagues at K-Away struggled to share the news with listeners on air.

And Allenberg has, in fact, passed on. He is no longer with us. And it's a shock. To describe how I feel right now, I've got a high pitch, winging sound in my ears. My head is throbbing, and I can't believe it. Alan Berg was a purveyor of words. Alan Berg was a purveyor of ideas. You can't kill words and you can't kill ideas. Funny thing, Alan always used to say, They're out there, but you can't worry about them. You never know where the nuts are going to come from is what he used to say. So you live from day to day. Everybody is at the scene right now, and as soon as we can get an update on what has occurred, we'll pass it along to you. It's 10: 42 on a very, very, very blue evening.

The Rolling Stone reported on the grief felt by the community. Strangers scattered roses in the driveway of Alan's apartment, placing flowers in the bullet holes, dotting their way across his garage door. Many listeners were taken aback by just how much they could miss someone they never actually knew. Denver's Memorial Service Asperberg was massive and well-attended. But amidst the grief was a growing fear, a sneaking suspicion that the very qualities that made Alan so treasured were the same ones that had led to his murder. One long-time listener told Rolling Stone, Even subconsciously, people will resist saying what's on their minds because someone who's out there listening and polishing a gun won't like what they say. If you're a public person and some unpopular beliefs, your life is in jeopardy. But Alan knew that risk when he was alive. More important than his fear was his endless devotion to truth and good radio.

I would have followed him anywhere. I would I had so much pleasure of producing his show and just watching his mind work. And most of the time, I just shake my head and think, Why didn't I think of that? That's crazy. That's crazy smart radio. But Yeah, he haunts me. He's with me every day. I don't think there's a day it goes by. I don't think of Alanberg. It's just he's always there. We were robbed, all of us.

In the wake of Alan Alan's death, the Denver Police Department sprung into action. According to Rolling Stone, 47 officers were assigned to the case full-time as the department began one of the largest murder investigations in the city's history. Kaa offered their support, too, a reward of $10,000 to anyone with information about Alan's murder. It wasn't long before police were presented with a promising lead about a frequent collar on Alan's show, a man named David Lane, the same white supremacist whose clip I played earlier.

Why don't you put a Nazi on your program and then you have somebody- You are a Nazi by your very own advices. Thanks so much.

David had been a long-time listener and was known for his heated on air exchanges with Alan. Steven Singular told our team that investigators tried to find him, but they didn't know where he was. And while it could have been a solid lead, David wasn't the only person with a vendetta against Alan.

Somebody interviewed the police officer who was in charge of it, the detective in charge of it. He was in his office, and they said, Do you have any suspects? And he pointed to the Denver phonebook and said, Well, there are probably 2 million suspects. This guy, at one time or another, aggravated everybody. And so they cast a wide net looking for suspects, and they essentially came up with absolutely nothing.

The case was passed to the FBI, and soon they got a lead that blew open the entire investigation. According to the Los Angeles Times, a man named Thomas Martino had come to the FBI with a confession that he was a part of an organization that committed hundreds of crimes across the West, crimes that included the murder of Alan Berg. The group called themselves The Order. As Steven told us, the name was borrowed from a 1978 novel. Openly racist and anti-Semitic, the fictional story follows a secret neo-nazi group, The Order, which seeks to start a revolution and cleanse the US of anyone they deem an enemy. And while the book was a disturbing favorite among white supremacists, a man named Bob Matthews wanted to take it to the next level to transform fiction into reality. So at the end of 1983, less than a year before Allen's murder, Bob began recruiting individuals for his own version of the order. And together, they committed hundreds of crimes across the Western United States, things like theft and counterfeiting. But perhaps most core to the order's mission was their goal to cleanse the world of anyone that threatened their white supremacist agenda and ideals.

The revolution required the elimination of their enemies, so they drafted a hit list.

They start committing robberies, they start counterfeiting money, and they start plotting who should we assassinate first to really show this severity of what we're going to do. David Lane is in the group. He says, I know this guy in Denver. He's a loudmouth. He's on the radio. He's always trying to stir things up. He's always going against people like us who have our beliefs and our ideas. Why don't we go to Denver and make this our first target?

For weeks leading up to the murder, the order spied on Alan. They learned where he lived and stalked his daily routines. And then they made a plan to kill him. With all this new intel on the order and their numerous crimes, the FBI's investigation into Alan's murder intensified. It didn't take long for them to close in on the group, eventually searching the house of suspected order member, Gary Yarbrough. Inside, investigators discovered a trove of weapons and supplies, including Eric nation uniforms, a dozen guns, multiple police scanners, four loaded crossbows, 100 sticks of dynamite, and over 6000 rounds of ammunition. Upstairs, they also found what appeared to be an altar a place where black crape paper and candles surrounded a three-foot tall portrait of Adolf Hitler. Later, one of the guns found was identified as the same Mach 10 machine gun used to kill Allen. Soon, the FBI discovered order founder Bob Matthews hiding out in a house in Washington State. He refused to surrender. According to Rolling Stone, officers surrounded the house for more than 30 hours as Bob shot at them from the inside. After a long standoff, the building caught on fire and Bob died in the blaze.

In a few short months, 24 members of the order were arrested and indicted for a multitude of crimes, including, of course, the assassination of Allenberg. According to the Chicago Tribune, only 10 of the indicted order members would go to trial. The other 14 either pled guilty or agreed to testify in exchange for lesser sentences. Through a unique legal strategy, the US government was able to try the group all in one go for 67 separate crimes, crimes that included everything from racketeering and conspiracy to robbery and murder. The trial lasted three and a half months and ended with convictions of all 10 defendants, their sentences ranging from 40 to 100 years in prison. A few years later, four members of the order were tried separately for violating Alan's civil rights. According to the LA Times, almost 100 witnesses testified over two weeks. Two of the four were found guilty. David Lane, who'd driven the car the night of the murder, and Bruce pierce, who'd pulled the trigger. And while the other two, Richard Scutari and Jean Craig, were acquitted, both were already incarcerated on other charges. With its members facing decades in prison, the order seemed to crumble, but the hateful spirit of the group was harder to stop.

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Garri Yarbo issued what felt like a warning during his 1986 sentencing hearing, declaring that the order's mission would be carried out by 200,000 faithful members and 100,000 supporters. There will be many more, he stated ominously. The blood will flow and it grieves me. And More than two decades after Yardbrow's haunting premonition, I would find myself sitting amongst a group of eighth graders in the aftermath of our own tragic event. Now safe but still reeling from what had occurred that day at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. Our group ate dinner at a restaurant while a TV in the corner played the news. It was then that I learned the details of what we'd experienced, that the shooter who entered the museum that day FBI, was 88-year-old James von Brun, a white supremacist and Holocaust denier. The FBI says James von Brun walked into the museum today and started shooting before being shot by a security guard.

An anti-Semite with a lifelong grievance against the government.

He is 88 years old, a white male from Maryland. He is the founder of a racist anti-Semitic website.

In writing fondly about Nazis, von Braun claims Hitler, as American boobs are beginning to learn, was not all wrong.

I'd also learn that Steven Tyrone-Jones, a police officer who'd been shot during von Braun's rampage, had passed away. As his photo appeared on the screen, recognition set in. This was the same officer who greeted our group just hours earlier. Steven had worked at the museum for six years. He was married with children. He was deeply loved. Even if none that was true, just like Alan, he didn't deserve what happened to him. After that thing happens, what do you say? How do you talk to a 14-year-old about it? When you're eager to get older but still just a kid, how do you reconcile something like this? And what I remember is that in the aftermath, we talked about the shooting like it was some random Greek event. An anomaly that you reconcile with hollow explanations that sometimes bad people just do bad things. And when the reports came out that von Braun had been a Holocaust denier that he held deeply rooted racist and anti-Semitic beliefs, it all fit the narrative even more perfectly. A sane person would never think that way. Von Braun was an outlier who didn't fit, a tragic departure from the norm.

And yet, Alan's story proves that it's not. One of the last producers to work with Allen, Ananth White, told The Denver Post, something horrible like what happened at the Hall Cost Museum, proves that these folks don't always go away. In fact, many see Alan's death as a foreshadowing to events like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the devastatingly violent consequences of an increasingly radical cohort who are willing to take the lives of innocent people in the name of advancing a hateful and conspiratorial cause. So I wonder if this violence should surprise us. Does it really come out of nowhere? Or does our obsession with the idea of good and evil keep us from seeing a much muddier truth? None of the men connected to Alan's murder would disavow their white supremacist beliefs once in prison. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate website called Free the Order valorized the Killers with biographies of the group's founders and articles written by imprisoned order members. They even had a guest book for folks on the outside to leave their own comments, and perhaps Most horrifyingly, visitors could contribute to the Adopt a Brother campaign, which allowed them to send monthly money to a jailed order member.

Rest well, Bruce, one poster shared online after order member Bruce pierce died in prison. You're name is now etched alongside the other warriors and heroes of our movement forever. I've reflected a lot on Alan's story, who he was and what he meant to people. Alan was divisive, but he also brought something impactful to American listeners. An interest in thinking deeply and critically, a willingness to engage, a steadfast determination to challenge others. He could be loud out, rude, arrogant, distinctly uncharming, and still, his contributions are meaningful. And I think when hearing today's episode, it can be easy to sink into despondency, to feel hopeless in the face of the long shadow of anti-Semitism and white supremacy, deeply upset that whether it's 10, 25, or 50 years later, this hateful and violent thinking is still stealing lives. And all of that is true. But also, I wonder what can be taken away now, 40 years later, that's positive. And perhaps it's an understanding that when enough of us are willing to be loud, willing to fight back, willing to be seen as brash or harsh, willing to toss politeness for authenticity, maybe it all has the power to create a more thoughtful, more effective, more critical society society.

And it's that work, I think, that lays the foundation for action, the groundwork for real change. Because a gun alone can't kill a movement. I want to stay together just a little longer to discuss a few action items related to today's story. First, First, I want to highlight the Stephen Tyrone John Summer Youth Leadership Program, which was created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in honor of Stephen. According to their website, the program provides 50 outstanding high school students from the Washington, DC, area with an intensive educational internship at the museum each summer. More than 850 students from 120 Washington, DC, area schools have participated since the program was established in 2010. You can learn more at www. Sshm. Org. I also want to tell you about Youth On Record, an organization that provides a variety of community programming to young creatives aged 11 to 24 in the Denver, Colorado, area. I thought a lot about how important it is that we take the time to nurture the future Allen Birgs of the world. And Youth On Record is an organization doing exactly that. Their programs are designed to help young people become more free, more rooted in their personal power, and better able to thrive in spite of systems and circumstances that disempower and marginalize them.

They do this through a variety of programs that give students hands-on learning through the world of podcasting, radio, music, and Sonic Arts. You can learn more and donate to support their work at youthonrecord. Org. As always, you can keep up with Truer Crime on Instagram and X at Truer Crime Pod. You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at Silesia Stanton, or through my weekly newsletter, Sincerely Silesia, at searleyselicia. Substack. Com. For a full source list and links to today's action items, make sure to visit our website at truercrimepodcast. Com. Truer Crime is created, hosted, and written by me, Silesia Stanton, and is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. Additional writing and research by Olivia Hussingfeld. Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. Additional production by Olivia Husingfield and Jamie Albright. Editing by Liam Luxon, with additional editing support by Sydney Evans and Jaja Muhammad. Our supervising producer is Tracey Kaplan. Artwork by Station 16. Original music by Jay Ragsdale. Mix, by Daten Cole. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and the Nord Group. For more podcasts like Truer Crime, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app, or visit us at tenderfoot.

Tv. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to this season 2 episode of Truer Crime. If you want an ad-free version of this show and other great shows from Tenderfoot TV, you can subscribe to tenderfoot plus at tenderfootplus. Com or on Apple Podcasts.