Episode 247: The Death of Negative 48 feat Donie O'Sullivan & Karma
The end of an era for a destructive numerology-based QAnon cult led by Michael Protzman AKA Negative 48 — a group that got infamous for their belief that JFK Jr and even JFK were on the cusp of returning from the dead. We spoke to CNN correspondent Donie O'Sullivan about his documentary exploring their effect on the families of those involved and the death of their leader. We also spoke with researcher Karma about her long-standing work on the group.
Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like Manclan, Trickle Down and The Spectral Voyager: www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous
Donie O'Sullivan: https://twitter.com/donie / https://www.cnn.com/profiles/donie-osullivan
Karma: https://twitter.com/2022_Karma
Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.
http://qanonanonymous.com
Welcome, listener, to Chapter 247 of the QAA podcast, The Death of Negative 48 episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Julian Field and Travis View.
Two years ago, we covered perhaps the most bizarre offshoots of QAnon.
This is the Dallas-based Negative 48 cult.
The group's leader, Michael Protzman, who himself went by the name Negative 48, built up a following of people who believe that JFK Jr.
and JFK were alive and will return to public life soon.
They also claim that numerology can reveal the secrets of the world and a lot of other things that really are just too out there for even most QAnon followers.
When Michael Prossman and his group weren't traveling around the country to attend Trump rallies, they stayed at Dallas-area hotels and, in one famous instance, waited at Dealey Plaza, the site of JFK's assassination, to await the return of him and JFK Jr.
Prossman even convinced many of his followers to abandon their former lives, leaving friends and family members confused and heartbroken.
Michael Prossman's story ended last June when he died after crashing a motorcycle, but the cult he built lives on.
To talk about Michael Prossman and the impact of negative 48, we are joined by Dhonie O'Sullivan from CNN.
And after we speak to Dhonie, we're going to talk to the Australian researcher known as Karma, who has been closely following the group and how it fractured after Prossman's death.
Dhonie O'Sullivan has been reporting on negative 48 for a long time and produced a documentary on the group called Waiting for JFK.
That will air on The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper on CNN on September 24th.
Dhoni, thanks again for coming on the show.
Thank you so much for having me, guys.
It's been a long time.
I was just thinking the other day, it's been almost three years since all of us were hanging out in the desert together at QCon in Arizona a few weeks before the 2020 election.
I remember that.
I remember.
I think I had a margarita, but that was a good time.
Yeah.
I think you might've had more than one, but yeah.
That was before the QAnon shaman went global.
Watkins was there.
Simpler times in some ways, I guess.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Remember the simpler times of watching, you know, In the Matrix and Shady Groove and JT Wilde at QCon in Arizona Resort?
Yeah, that was back when the Q shaman was just a kind of novelty that almost was bothersome
to the headliners, where he would show up and kind of attract people taking photos in
the back while somebody was trying to make a speech or kind of run the show.
And I remember sitting out with him at a table just outside QCon and watching him kind of
lecture about his beliefs to this semi-confused QAnon-supporting older Christian woman and
to this younger woman who was kind of showing him some signs of affection, this quite good-looking
young woman, and he was more than oblivious to her advances.
And it feels like a different era because, I don't know, like he's changed, you know, the kind of vision of who he is has changed certainly for the public and there's no Q influencer now that just sees him, I think, as like a kind of prop to take photos with at events.
Although, no, I don't know if that's it.
I don't know if they love it, but they've had to integrate him and even like Alex Jones has him on the show and stuff.
I don't know.
Stuff keeps changing.
Yeah, and you know, it was really QCon, that event, because that came right after, you know, that weekend, just a few days before it.
I think Trump had been asked that at NBC Town Hall about QAnon, and I think he kind of praised their supporters, Q followers.
I think QCon, for me, You know, about three weeks out from the 2020 election, it was really kind of solidified for me of like, wait, there is a group here that is very seriously not going to accept if Trump loses the election.
And, you know, people were already alluding to at that gathering, you know, the potential need for violence.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There were a lot of like, dark undertones that certainly manifested on January 6th.
Fantastic reporting on this documentary, by the way.
I watched the whole thing.
And you really, I mean, you have the kinds of interviews and talks with people who are involved with it and affected by this Negative 48 cult that you're just not going to see anywhere else.
Like I mentioned before, the Negative 48 cult is distinctive because they profess beliefs in lots of absurd things, like the claim that JFK Jr.
and JFK are alive.
That's like doubly absurd.
But you spoke to multiple people who sincerely believe that JFK Jr.
and JFK are alive, right?
Yes.
And, you know, it kind of depends on who you ask and on what day you ask us.
But the general gist of this is that, yes, JFK Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999, and JFK, President JFK, of course, was assassinated now almost 60 years ago, the anniversary coming up in November.
These people believe that either of them or both of them are alive and that they are kind of working with Trump Yeah, which includes Elvis, Trump.
the cabal and of course they're all descendants on the bloodline of Jesus Christ.
Yeah, which includes Elvis, Trump. There were quite a few surprising members of that bloodline in their mind.
Yes.
And look, I mean, as you said yourself, you know, this is a offshoot of QAnon beliefs.
You know, many Q followers are frankly embarrassed by, you know, these sorts of beliefs.
But you know what?
Really?
Kind of drew me to this story was, you know, I think we kind of all remember almost two years ago now in November, December of 2021, where, you know, hundreds of people showed up in Dallas, kind of out of nowhere, waiting for JFK or JFK Jr.
to show up.
And I had been kind of tracking, you know, that group, that story for quite some time.
Michael Protzman, who led this group.
And it's because it was so ridiculous, almost, you know, that these beliefs are so ridiculous.
I kind of feel like they percolated true to normal people, you know, to the people who don't listen to the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
No offense, listeners.
But but to people who who aren't, you know, in any way kind of following closely the world of conspiracy theories, normal people had heard about Yeah, there's this group that believe JFK's alive.
So I kind of wanted to kind of jump into that and look at, well, yes, this is so absurd and crazy, but there are real humans involved here.
There are real victims and not just people who follow it.
There's the people who have been left behind at home, you know, when their loved ones are going off to Dallas and chasing this.
Yeah, that's what I really appreciate about your documentary.
I mean, it really, it focuses a lot on the human element.
And also you dive deep into, I mean, the man himself.
And what's really interesting about Michael Prossman is that the way he talks, it doesn't seem very charismatic to an outsider, to someone who's not following.
He's very rambly and he talks in all these nonsense numbers, which he says are gematria, this Jewish numerology.
In fact, his name, Negative 48, he apparently gave himself from this sort of belief in numerology, as explained in this clip from the documentary.
Negative 48.
Do I refer to you as negative 48, too?
That's fine.
That's fine.
And what does that mean?
48's evil.
E-V-I-L.
E is 5, V is 22, I is 9, L is 12.
48.
Negative evil.
Negative 48.
You know, you say he's not charismatic, and that may be true in this clip, but what about the part where he calls Dhoni a prostitute to his face?
That was oozing charisma!
You know, you're right.
I mean, you play that clip there, and gematria, for people who are not familiar, I was not familiar before this, you know, it's basically A equals 1, Z equals 26, and these people, you know, who follow this are kind of driven crazy by looking into numbers of every word and trying to find meanings and connections and codes in it.
But you know, one thing that was quite striking to me about Michael Protzman's followers was that a lot of people spoke about how suiting his voice was.
And he did use Telegram.
And, you know, Telegram is very big on their live audio stream feature.
And we interviewed some people in this documentary, followers of his, who spoke about how suiting his voice sounded and that they would actually fall asleep Listening to him.
You know, I think there was one woman who joked that, you know, her husband was getting fed up of it because she would bring her phone to bed at night and listen to Michael as she would be going to sleep.
So, you know, there was something almost, you know, I don't want to call it hypnotic, but there was something very soothing in the repetition of these numbers and codes and in the way he delivered it that really seemed to suck people in.
Yeah, there's almost like a kind of beat poetry to it, you know, where he's just, he just kind of keeps going.
And I honestly think that part of his charm is this constant presence.
It's almost like certain people that maybe were not the right age for like gamer voice chat or Discord, like found a weird Discord-like community on Telegram with a guy who was almost always there rambling.
And when he wasn't, other people were there rambling at each other.
And I don't know, there's a certain kind of, like, it never stops.
Whatever, you know, hour of the night or day, you can always, like, hear somebody just kind of going on.
And, uh, yeah, I don't know.
They just kind of tune into this.
But, you know, even when you spoke to them, it's not clear that they fully grasp what he's saying.
Like, they seem to even have deferring takes on it themselves.
He switches things up a lot.
It's almost more, like you said, about, like, the cadence and the kind of, I mean, what they perceive as a kind of soothing presence.
Yeah.
And I mean, just to take a step back from this, you know, Michael Protzman would stream live for hours on end on Telegram.
And I think at one point maybe he had maybe 70 or 80 thousand followers on Telegram.
You know, there could often be a few hundred people, sometimes a few thousand people listening at a time.
And, you know, he essentially would just start really babbling with this kind of bullshit and would just start throwing words out there like Trump.
Well, you know, 187 resolute 187 war, la la la, and try to make all these connections.
So we had been, you know, trying to speak to Michael for some time because, you know, he did build up this big following tens of thousands of followers on Telegram.
And I mean, to have followers online is one thing.
But, you know, we saw literally hundreds of people show up in Dallas back in twenty twenty one and then a kind of core group who followed Protsman around all the time.
So we eventually wanted to try and talk to him.
They scheduled another meetup event last year in Dallas.
So we went along to that with my camera crew.
You know, they were, I think, trying to avoid us, trying to avoid most reporters there.
So eventually I approached Michael outside the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dallas, which is very close to Daily Plaza, where JFK was assassinated.
And actually, This hotel, Protzman and his followers, they called it the Ark, as if, like Noah's Ark.
Again, all kind of weird biblical references.
And you're right, Michael was not happy to see me.
You know, I first just tried to get to understand, I guess, a little bit about what he was all about and why this obsession with That JFK or JFK Jr is alive.
But, you know, as soon as I started pushing back a bit and, you know, challenging him, that's kind of where it turned, I guess, a little bit ugly.
And yeah, he eventually was, you know, jamming my microphone stick in a car door.
Yeah, yeah.
He's very strange.
I want to play another clip of one of your interviews with some of the followers who are a little bit more accommodating, a little bit more willing to speak to you about what they find so appealing about him.
And this is what they said.
I can't explain it.
It's just soothing.
It's listening to him for hours, you know, and fall asleep to it.
It was calming.
And it's not a voice just telling stories.
You know it's true.
Very eerie stuff.
I mean, yeah, it's like they had this feeling that this nonsense rambling with this man was some sort of secret signal that was delivering some sort of high-grade truth.
But like you said, it's just to outsiders, to me, it sounds like he's just saying words and numbers over and over again.
And I can't, it's indecipherable, practically.
It is.
And you know, I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of time reporting this story out, I guess more than a year now.
And you know, we really got to know a lot of Michael's followers.
We really got to know a lot of the families of Michael's followers.
And you know, I think I certainly, and I hope people who take the time to watch this documentary, get a much better understanding of, you know, why.
Why are people so taken by this BS, right?
And, you know, I came away with a few things.
One is that, like, you know, You'll see these people and I think most people will have seen the news reports about this gathering and JFK.
And, you know, I think people will say, well, they're just all nuts.
They're all crazy people, which is, I guess, not an unreasonable thing to think on first glance.
But, you know, as we reported this out, you know, a lot of these people are functioning members of society, have kids, ran businesses, you know, have loved ones and kind of one day opt in.
You know, kind of joined this traveling circus.
You know, a lot of people went to Dallas.
JFK didn't show up and they went home and they kind of gave up on Michael Protzman.
But some people stayed and some people ended up leaving their families and staying with him for for months on end.
And I think the two things that I came away from with this is that, you know, people are just so desperately seeking some kind of community.
Some kind of connection.
And, you know, also a lot of his followers had gone through some kind of trauma, you know, whether it was in their distant past or whether it was in their more recent past.
You know, a lot of it I can't report because learned a lot of things off the record.
But, you know, some people were through divorces and other kind of traumatic events.
And you can kind of really see in those moments of desperation and maybe when your life has been turned upside down that you start searching for answers, start searching for easier answers, I guess, to try and find out, well, why is the world so fair or why have I found myself in this position?
And and, you know, it's a slippery slope and And going all the way to believe in this stuff, of course, is a very extreme end of it.
But you can see how people get there.
You know, if they're on Telegram, they're pulled into this thing and they start listening to this and then they start making connections with other believers.
I mean, I will say from observing this group, they were having a great time.
You know, they were having a really fun time.
There was times where I was like, damn, I'm kind of jealous of They're staying in hotels in Dallas.
They're eating out every night.
They're having these events.
They're having parties.
There's a real connection there.
You know, in addition to the followers of Michael Prossman, you also spoke to family members of people who got sucked into this cult.
You interview one woman named Erica Vigras, whose brother got sucked into the cult.
So how did he fall into this group and how did it affect his family?
Yeah.
And I mean, that's really was the point of this documentary for us was to say, you know, we spend a lot of time in reporting, you know, down through the years, we spend a lot of time and focusing on the people who push conspiracy theories and profit from them and also from the people who follow them.
But, you know, as we're seeing in this country, More and more, you know, there are people, there's loved ones who are coming to kitchen tables every night, repeating more bizarre and bizarre shit.
And loved ones, families are trying to figure out what to do.
So we spoke to quite a few families who had loved ones who had kind of joined this circus.
And one of them was Erica, her brother Jason.
You know, they had actually been kind of long lost siblings.
Erica was adopted, I think, at At Burt, but they tracked each other down in their late 30s.
Erica lives in Pittsburgh.
Jason actually moved there to be closer to her.
They had this really extremely strong bond.
Jason had set up a construction business.
Stuff was going good.
And she said things just all started to get a bit crazy for her brother around 2020.
And I think to me, it sounded like it was a combination of You know, the kind of COVID lockdown stuff, the election lies, which kind of pulled him in.
But also, and I think most importantly, Erica mentioned that one of her daughters, who would have been Jason's niece, you know, mentioned something about child trafficking or mentioned something one day about, you know, I'm afraid that I'll get snatched up off the street.
And she thinks that, you know, that might have sent him down a kind of rabbit hole of looking up about child trafficking and everything else, of course, which is a real issue.
But as we all know, you can quickly kind of get sucked into a world of disinformation there.
Another case that you discuss in your documentary, which was very shocking to me, was the case of another negative 48 follower named Klaus Richter.
And he was a passenger in a fatal car accident that was caused by a different negative 48 follower.
And Klaus was taken to a hospital in Mobile, Alabama.
And for some mysterious reason, someone claiming to be Klaus's daughter started making medical decisions on his behalf, even though he does not have a daughter.
So, I mean, like, how did Klaus Richter's actual family discover that all this was going on?
Yeah.
And I mean, this is the story of Klaus Richter.
I don't believe it's been reported anywhere before.
And it's stunning.
Klaus is a U.S.
is a veteran, you know, was it was a single man, but was looking after his elderly mom in Sarasota, Florida.
Ended up, you know, went to Texas for a Trump rally, ended up kind of getting in with this group, Protzman and his followers.
Long story short, he didn't come back for many, many months, you know, I think five or six months.
But he was in touch with his sister.
The family were naturally enough getting concerned as to say, why, you know, why isn't Klaus getting back, coming home?
And then one day, his sister Carmen got a call, and it was Michael Bratzman on the other
end of the line.
And he said that Klaus had been in a car accident.
And in fact, the car accident had happened, I think, at that point about two days ago.
And by the time Klaus's brothers and sisters got there and his mom, in Alabama, it took
them another day to get there.
You know, they had found out that, I mean, just imagine kind of coming upon that scene, right?
Your brother has joined what some people would describe as a cult.
You know, they described meeting Protzman's fellow followers who were kind of mulling around the hospital, who were kind of talking all this QAnon nonsense.
And then they found out they actually had difficulty getting access to their own brother, their own son, because one of Protzman's other followers had allegedly, and according to medical documents we'd seen, misrepresented herself and pretended to be Klaus's daughter and began making medical decisions on his behalf.
I mean, obviously just tragic enough to have a loved one be in that situation, you know, be in critical condition in hospital.
But then to get to the hospital and be dealing with this sort of thing and not being able to see him, you know, just the amount of, you know, the amount of suffering that the Richter family has had to go through because of this is wild.
And look, obviously the family weren't informed by Protzman and the followers for something like 48 hours.
Why not?
I don't know.
The guy who was driving the vehicle, in fact, they were traveling between Trump rallies because this is what Protzman's group was doing.
They would, you know, go to a lot of Trump rallies.
The guy who was driving the vehicle told police that he had fallen asleep at the wheel.
I know the Richter family are still looking for answers.
They frankly, you know, I think they were We're expecting or hoping that somebody would be charged because of this or investigated.
But the district attorney there in Alabama said that a grand jury ruled that no charges would be brought.
Yeah, it's hard to ignore the fact that, like, a lot of the time with these Telegram-based Gematria cults, because Protzman is not the only man who managed to start one of these.
We recently covered a smaller one run by this Canadian guy called Mr. Dez that has a bunch of, like, mini, like, splinter groups and stuff, and they tend to stay up all night, you know, kind of doing this stuff, and then you have a guy, you know, falling asleep at the wheel.
I mean, obviously, this is kind of, uh, you know, I'm not, like, Claiming there's any tangible connection there, but it, you know, it's hard, it's hard to say that the, like, the lifestyle wasn't, you know, involved in his death when they were, you know, literally driving between two Trump rallies, you know, marathoning these rallies and, um, you know, doing this nonstop Gematria, like, voice chat stuff.
And one thing that, you know, is a bit chilling, really, because we spoke to a woman named Diane Benscotter, who's an expert in cults.
She was actually a member of the Moonies.
And we had her, you know, look at a lot of the footage and listen to some of Protzman's, you know, telegram chats and things like that.
And she was describing, you know, that really what this group was certainly to her resembled a cult.
And one thing she said, you know, is a big part of a cult is to separate Cult members from their loved ones and to, you know, try to create that divide.
And Klaus's sister, Carmen, told us that, you know, when she would be on the phone to Klaus that Klaus would always have to try and get away from the group to try and kind of speak And anyway, frankly with her.
And she said that oftentimes, you know, he would get away, he'd walk, you know, they could be somewhere where I think she recounted one story where they were near a beach and he kind of walked to the other side of the beach.
But, you know, very soon the followers, the other followers would, you know, come to him and surround him and say, what are you doing, et cetera, et cetera.
So, you know, there there was that that kind of control there, I think, as well.
Like you mentioned, the one interview you weren't really able to get for this documentary was Prostman himself.
You confronted him, but since he doesn't like you or reporters generally, he couldn't make that happen.
But I will have to say that he also was not a fan of me.
He actually read one of my tweets on one of his Telegram chats, and this is what he said.
It's Travis View who's got a blue checkmark on Twitter.
The QAnon community is very upset because they believe the Rothschild family literally hunt children on an Australian estate.
In the Rothschild's defense, kids can be more spry and harder to catch than you'd assume.
And of course it has 286 likes, which, I mean, who the hell are these freaks?
People that hate QAnon.
It's ridiculous.
That is a little risque there, Travis.
I think you usually perform better than 286 likes.
I can see why on this one.
You know what?
It wasn't even one of my best ones.
And he also botched the delivery.
He was first of all an Austrian estate, and he didn't hit the punchline very well.
So this is all his fault.
So, but you did one interview I thought was really extraordinary that you were able to get, Doni, is you were able to speak to Michael Protzman's mother, and it's really fascinating because she came across as very anguished that her son somehow became a cult leader.
My heart breaks for the people that have been with him.
I want them to know that he's a victim just like they were, because three years ago he didn't have a group.
He didn't have a following.
He didn't start out to have a cult.
He's complicit in now what is happening.
I mean, so, I mean, what'd you learn about how Protzman fell into this or became essentially a cult leader by talking to his mother?
Yeah, well, firstly, you know, Michael Protzman's mom, who you heard there, Colleen Protzman, is really one of the most incredible people I've ever met.
You know, we went into this documentary wanting to focus on families and the people who've been left behind, you know, because of conspiracy theories.
But we did want to find out more about, you know, who this cult leader was, who Michael Protzman was, you know, very much from what we could see and from obviously speaking to the Richter family and speaking to Erika Veigras and everybody else, you know, they view Michael Protzman as evil, right?
As somebody who has taken their loved ones away from them and is manipulating them and is controlling them and is feeding them all this BS.
The Protzman family, we were initially not able to get in touch with, but, you know, we did want to know.
And also, to be fair to Michael Protzman, we wanted to know what the hell happened to this guy.
So we traveled to Washington State, to Seattle, where his family is, and we could see through public records and everything else that he had had a wife, they were getting divorced, he had kids and had young grandkids, and he actually ran his own business up until about 10 years ago or so, a demolition business.
So we got to, we got to Seattle and we, you know, reached out to a lot of family members.
Of course, they were very reluctant to speak.
But I said, look, I said, right now we are making this documentary and everybody else we've spoken to says, you know, Michael is, you know, is this evil guy.
Nobody's speaking out for Michael.
Nobody's telling Michael's story.
We wanted to know who Michael Protzman was.
So eventually his mom agreed to speak to us, Colleen.
And, you know, she just told this tragic story really of really how Michael Protzman was a victim, just like his followers.
But Michael was just a lot further down the rabbit hole, I think.
And she talked about, you know, kind of about 10 years ago or more, financial crisis. She
said there was, you know, issues with the family, etc. that Michael began researching online,
investing in silver and gold. And that brought him to the world of Alex Jones and everything
else. And, you know, she said over time, it became all that he could talk about. And it
became that Sandy Hook didn't And, you know, eventually to the point that it was all he could talk about, and eventually to the point that, you know, it was kind of alienating other family members and pushing them away.
And, you know, she said Michael traveled around the country a bit, going to Trump rallies, and then eventually showed up in Dallas and kind of manifested into this leader figure.
You know, she tells just this really remarkable story and I think humanizes negative 48 Michael Protzman in a way that, you know, I don't think any of us would have appreciated had we not heard from her.
While you were getting ready to air this documentary, Michael Protzman died after suffering injuries from a motorcycle crash.
And what exactly happened there?
Yeah, so Michael, actually, as it turns out, the Protsmans, when Michael was growing up, kind of had a family business, I think, something to do with motocross vehicles and things like that.
And yeah, but this documentary was initially due to air in June, I think, June of this year.
And about a week or two before it was there, we learned that Michael had been writing He had a motocross vehicle on a dirt track in Minnesota.
He was some, at least some of his followers were there with him.
And he had gotten into an accident and had been airlifted to hospital and was not in good shape.
At that point, you know, we were already in touch with Colleen Protzman and we had interviewed her once already.
And about a week later, Michael died.
And, you know, it was also just, it was from a human level, obviously devastating for Michael's mom.
You know, who's really this really lovely woman, you know, who who speaks so well about really how her son suffered and how her son kind of went down this rabbit hole.
And she was always very clear as well that she wasn't trying to let Michael off the hook.
You know, she says in documentary that, you know, he was complicit.
However, he got there, he became complicit in some way in leading these other people on.
But, you know, it also just it had all these echoes to of Klaus's accident, right?
Klaus Richter's accidents where, you know, here's yet another family who were getting a call.
This time the call came from, you know, one of Michael's followers and dealing with that and navigating all of that stuff.
So yeah, he passed away.
And, you know, out of respect to Colleen and everybody else, we decided to pause the release of the documentary.
And in the meantime, we've, you know, gone back to actually interview Colleen again.
But also we've been kind of keeping an eye on Potsdam's followers.
And as you might not be totally surprised to learn, some of them aren't convinced that he's dead.
Yeah, that's the other bizarre thing is that, you know, even though this was a cult, I mean, you often say someone would describe it as a cult.
I'm describing it as a cult.
I'm some.
But you say that even though he formed this group, his death hasn't ended it.
They are still very much active and promoting these kinds of absurd beliefs, right?
Yeah.
And about a week after the accident, you know, where his followers didn't know whether he was dead or alive, all they kind of knew was that he was in hospital, we went to a Trump rally where some of them had showed up.
And, you know, some followers, there's definitely been a split among his followers where some of them have said, look, He's dead.
He's been in an accident.
You know, we have to move on.
They still believe in the stuff about JFK, etc.
But then some of the other followers, and one of whom we spoke to at this Trump rally, you know, wasn't convinced that he had died.
And because, you know, when you get into the logic of this, I mean, some of his followers
not only believe that JFK Jr. is alive and is descendant of Jesus Christ, etc., but some
of them kind of believed and sometimes Michael would play into the idea that maybe he was
JFK Jr., maybe that he was JFK Jr. in disguise.
So then some of the followers say, well, you know, JFK Jr.
faked his death once.
He's just doing this again now to protect himself.
Which is, you know, back to the Protzman family, that has brought on its own set of issues
because, you know, there are people out there now who are trying to question that Michael
is actually dead despite, you know, there being a death certificate and everything else.
And not to derail this, one thing that we did also learn from Colleen Protzman was that before all of this, Michael Protzman was not a Republican.
He voted for Obama twice.
He was a Rachel Maddow fan.
All that to say, it's just, you see, you know, what we have here is somebody who, over the course of a decade and also having his own trauma, you know, certain things going on in his life, just got sucked down this rabbit hole.
And she's very clear about it.
I mean, Colleen's very clear.
She said she blames the people who profit from pushing this stuff.
She said she blames the likes of Alex Jones for helping convince her son that, you know, Sandy Hook didn't really happen.
I think what I'd like people to take away from this is, you know, obviously there's the likes of us who are very invested and follow the world of QAnon and everything else very closely over the years.
And, you know, there's a lot we can take away from this.
But I think really, you know, what we want to show is and I think Erika Vigras, whose brother Jason kind of fell into all this.
She said, you know, when you do have a loved one coming to the kitchen table every night and they're starting to repeat this stuff, to take it pretty seriously, because, you know, she said, if they are verbalizing it to you and other family members, it's very possible, very likely that they might be far more invested in this world.
Of telegram and listening, you know, to live streams for hours and hours on end, then you can imagine.
And so, you know, and then I think one, it's to take it seriously.
But then the other question becomes, I mean, what can you do?
And that that is really, I think, all the families that we've spoken to struggle with is, you know, you can't tell somebody Really, that what they're talking about, what they're so invested in is such nonsense because you risk totally pushing them away and alienating them.
So, you know, there's a really fine line to try and tread there.
Donny, thanks again for joining us.
Again, great reporting.
We sometimes criticize how the mainstream media handles topics around conspiracism and extremism, but this is really deeply reported and sensitive stuff that really, really picks apart what it is, what these beliefs are, and what their real-world impact is.
So, thank you for making it.
So, that full documentary is Waiting for JFK, and where can people watch it?
It's going to air on CNN at 8 p.m.
Eastern and 11 p.m.
Eastern on Sunday, September 24th.
And then it is going to show up sometime, I think in the weeks after that, on Max, formerly known as HBO Max.
And I'm sure there'll be clips on the CNN YouTube and things like that as well.
So.
All right.
Thanks, Tony.
Thanks, guys.
To talk more about negative 48 and Michael Protzman, I am now joined by a researcher based in Australia known as Karma, and she knows more about negative 48 than anybody.
So, Karma, thanks for coming on the show again.
Thanks for having me, Travis.
So I really wanted to bring you on because you follow this very, very closely.
And as a consequence, you have provided assistance to just about every journalist and researcher who has covered this.
In fact, you kind of became an element in the conspiracy theories that Michael Prossman himself started to tell on his like telegram and stuff, right?
Yeah, somehow.
And I don't even know where it sort of came from.
I think my account was Pointed out to him and he tried to spin a narrative that I was JFK.
You were JFK.
Wow.
I mean, I don't quite... Setting aside the living status of JFK, why would the living JFK use your account to criticize negative 48 so much?
This narrative is a little confusing to me, I have to say.
So, you know, he looks at it as Trump, you know, he gets criticized all the time.
And so it's kind of the same sort of thing with Trump that, you know, journalists and they all criticize him, but really they're just pointing out and waking up people with what he's doing.
Oh, is it kind of like an all attention is a good attention kind of philosophy?
Yep.
And he's gone with that from day one, like whenever, you know, he got any type of media attention.
You know, he even said that Trump was the one that was running the media and Trump was, you know, putting the focus on him so people would, you know, learn all about him and their beliefs, basically.
Okay.
Very, very strange.
And because they believe that you were possibly JFK and somehow connected to what Negative 48 was doing, you were able to sort of put Negative 48 followers on this wild goose chase around Dallas, right?
Yeah.
Well, you know, firstly, I tried to sort of say that I'm not who He said it was.
I posted a photo with a date which then he spun again and said that he spun the numbers around on the day and he changed it to this is the date that we need to be in Dallas and we all have to go back because you know Karma has told us all that we need to be back in Dallas.
So they all went back to Dallas so I decided to start changing my locations why they were in Dallas to see what would happen and they started turning up Wherever my location was.
And they would, I think at one point I put myself at the storm drain and they all stood around the storm drain.
There was probably about 15, 20 of them taking pictures and they were, you know, posting comments on the pictures saying, come out, come out, Karma, wherever you are.
Like, it didn't matter where I put myself, they would turn up.
That's pretty creepy, I have to say.
I mean, I've been trolled a lot because of this work, but I can't say I've never felt like people were so obsessed with my account.
They, you know, they just turned up wherever I thought I was.
Well, it kind of became this thing as well that I could just sitting there listening to the chats, I could pretty much pinpoint, you know, whereabouts they were.
And then I would put my location to certain areas and then they'd be like, Oh my God, How?
How?
How did they know?
Like, you know, it's not possible.
And like, there was a time Negative spoke about peacocks.
He was talking about where in a location where there's all these peacocks.
And honestly, all I did was look up peacocks and I pinpointed their exact location and he was just like, How?
You know, it's not possible.
It has to be JFK, you know.
Very, very strange.
Now, even before Michael Prossman died, the Negative 48 group was pretty prone to infighting and splintering.
And the most significant split, at least according to the tweets I've been following from you from Negative 48, was this group called the Scooby-Doo Crew.
So, I mean, how did this split happen?
How did they get their name?
So Shelly was originally kicked out over money.
She was doing all the fundraising and at some point along the way, her husband, because the money was going into her and her husband's account, her husband decided, well, hey, I'm going to have to probably pay taxes on this money.
I'm going to take some of this money out.
And Negative basically told her, get that money back or get out.
Basically.
So she was kicked out.
Tenor, who was part of the group as well, felt sorry for Shelly and kind of went with Shelly as well.
There was another guy, Jay Rosemey, he was kicked out very early on for doing drugs and Other sorts of things while he was in Dallas and they all just became this group and along the way they decided that they were going to paint an RV so it looked like the Scooby-Doo van and they named themselves the Scooby-Doo Crew and they basically just followed the negative 48 crew wherever they went.
That's very strange.
It was a splinter group that also basically just went wherever Michael Prossman was going, which in many cases was just Trump rallies, right?
Yeah, and it did get very ugly because the Scooby-Doo crew believed that they need to look into everybody.
So it became this thing of, we need to decode, you know, using Gemetra, about everybody that's still in the negative 48 group.
And they just started making up, they were basically doxing people in the negative 48
through while they were doing it as well.
And they made up all these conspiracies about all these people in the 48 group.
And it got really ugly, like to the point where, you know, there were restraining orders
and all sorts of other legal stuff going on.
Unfortunately, nothing really came of it.
The judge kind of let that one go, which I don't believe they should have
because it's still continuing now to this day.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's, I mean, it really is baffling.
One of the reasons why, I mean, you're so valuable to a lot of the journalists and researchers is that, you know, just the intricacies of this group is just basically impossible to decipher to a lot of outsiders.
It seems like, you know, what's important to them, what they're fighting about is, I don't know, often very confusing.
Yeah, look, I think when you've got such a large group like that, and especially, you You know, mainly women.
I think there's a lot of jealousy that goes on and they were all definitely fighting, you know, to be number one with negative.
I think that was where a lot of it stemmed from with the infighting, you know, because a lot of the women got kicked out very early on.
It was somebody else, you know, being negative number one and it just seemed like the women were all trying to, you know, get his attention and be his number one.
Yeah, you mentioned one of the main figures in that splinter group, Shelley.
And I mean, in some of your reporting, you describe Shelley's really bizarre and abusive behavior towards her followers.
There's these telegram clips of these, I don't know, these strange struggle sessions where people are just berating a follower for not behaving in the right way.
I mean, what are those about?
I kind of think of Shelly as like, I mean, although she's a splinter group, she's definitely fallen in line with like a cult leader, in a way, herself.
But she doesn't have such a large following, and she does.
She berates her followers if they don't fall into line.
If she tells them, hey, everybody needs to go and code this, and they don't do it, she starts abusing them.
She kicks them out.
Um, and there's actually another group that's, it's kind of weird.
There's so many different little groups now that have come off this.
There's an actual, another group that are all basically made up of people that have been kicked out of negative 48 and Shelley's group.
And they try to wake other people up to the abuse of Shelley.
Yeah, you mentioned she got angry because people weren't doing decodes.
I mean, is decoding a kind of like work in these groups?
It's a homework assignment?
Yeah, pretty much.
It has become their whole lot.
And the whole thing with the decoding, it's just their thing is, you know, take what resonates with you and leave what doesn't.
So they really pick and choose what they really want to, you know, Post and what they what they believe but some of these have gotten really nasty in Shelly's group.
Not long ago there was a woman who had told her story to that group that her son had died in a car accident and then the admins decided that they were going to code all that and say that you know her son died because he was satanic because that's what the coding told them.
Like it gets really ugly with some of the stuff that they do.
Yeah, you were also talking about an instance in which Shelley accused a man of sex trafficking by sending him these harassing text messages and posting on social media, and these accusations were based on nothing but these numerology decodes, right?
Well, more information has been shed on that.
In the last few weeks.
So, and this is where it gets even, I don't know, it's pretty out there because we never expected it.
But so it turns out that Shelly had an affair with that man a long, long time ago.
She obviously blames him for the affair because her husband found out about it.
And I mean, he forgave her apparently and stayed with her all these years.
But yeah, that apparently is the reason why she's attacking him and going after him.
I see and uh apparently it got so bad it led to some legal action against her?
Yeah she went to jail so she was charged I think it's I think it's four felonies so she was charged she went to jail for I think she was in there for Three or four days before she was bailed out and now she's waiting for a court case about it.
So we're all just sort of sitting and waiting to see where that one actually goes.
But she does have a gag order.
She's not allowed to mention his name whatsoever on social media platforms.
Do you have any hope she'll stick to that?
She's slipped up a few times.
I think with Shelly, look, I think Shelly has many different personalities.
You often see them come out, you know, she's got one day it's this personality and she can, like, she will hold a chat for nine hours straight and within those nine hours you will see two or three different personalities of Shelly.
Go through that chat.
And it just really depends.
I've noticed they've coded.
They're very sneaky with what they do.
So they don't code his name, but they code different words that come out to what, you know, his name would be.
So they're very sneaky with how they do it.
So she hasn't let it go yet.
Very strange.
You know, one of the most, I guess, I guess famous members of Negan FortiGate is a woman named Mickey Larson Olsen.
And she also goes by the name Q-Patriot.
And she got some attention online because of her really, this really ostentatious getup that she wears.
It's like, it's like this sort of gender swapped Captain America costume.
It's just, you know, red, white and blue from head to toe.
And including, I think it's a Red wig.
She also drove around in a convertible called the Q-Mobile and was totally covered in QAnon stickers to the point that it looked kind of dangerous to drive because it might obscure her vision.
I actually spoke to Mickey Larson Olsen briefly when I went to a Trump rally in Arizona.
But as you've been following, she's had a rough go of it recently.
So what has she been doing?
Um so well um before I go into that part uh she did leave negative 48 by the way.
Okay well good for her.
She um removed herself from the channel after he died um due to again inviting Disagreements.
But yes, so recently she smashed her car while doing deliveries.
She said it had nothing to do with the stickers, but somehow I don't know about that because she'd even started putting stickers on the actual paint of the car.
Yeah.
I mean, when I saw it, I personally would not feel comfortable driving that because it really narrows how much of the road you're able to see.
So I wouldn't be surprised if the stickers contributed to that unfortunate accident.
She's now got a GoFundMe up trying to raise money.
And she doesn't just want any car, she wants a brand new car.
So I think she's asked for $50,000, I think.
Oh, geez.
So far, I've only seen about, I think the last time I looked, it was at about $450.
So, um, I don't think she's going to get it.
That's too bad.
Yeah.
So, I mean, this story took a really big surprise turn when Michael Prossman died.
And we, we talked to Dhoni a little bit earlier about that, but what did you see about the, first of all, how did, how did Prossman's followers learn about this?
And what, how would you assess their initial reaction?
Well, it's really weird because I knew he had been, obviously because I pace, you know.
The attention I paid to it.
He had been in Minnesota for quite a few months, him and Callie, who is basically his second in charge, and they'd just been hanging out around there and listening to their chats.
I had heard him mention that he had gone motorbike riding probably three weeks prior to this, so I knew where he was, that there were a couple of tracks around there that he could ride on because I sort of And then one morning I woke up and I happened to jump on and I saw this message quickly hit Negative's channel that said, you know, I hate to inform everybody but Negative 48 has been in an accident.
And then as quick as it was put up there, it disappeared.
It was deleted.
And I managed to grab it before it disappeared.
And I was like, okay, something's going on.
Something's going on here.
And I kind of just, you know, kept watching the channels to see what was going on.
And eventually there was something posted saying that he had been in an accident and it sort of just unfolded from there.
We sort of got a few days where we got nothing.
And then all of a sudden Kelly eventually came on.
She said that, you know, he was in a coma.
He hadn't woken up but you know she was quite hopeful that you know everything was going to be okay.
She said that he had a brain injury, some internal injuries and then pretty much the rest of the chat just turned into coding and you know people crying and whatever and she said she'd keep us all updated but we didn't really hear much um and so I kind of went through other channels to try to find out the information and um yeah kind of found out um how About seven days later that he died.
That's, I mean, that's pretty shocking.
I mean, one thing that we kind of learned from studying the history of, you know, cults and apocalyptic movements is that when a, um, when like a something disconfirming happens, when there's an event that seems to reject the prophecy of the group, and it seems like, you know, they're everything they believe has come crumbling down.
It causes the followers to double down and sometimes even adopt even crazier, more esoteric kind of beliefs and practices.
Is that what we've seen with, you know, the remaining negative 48 followers?
Um, so after he died I think, I mean, a lot of them took some time to process that's for sure.
You could say they were really struggling to come to terms with it.
I also saw many people still believe that, you know, his role is over in this part of the movie because he needs to come back.
As JFK Jr.
So you see a lot of that going on.
Then on the other splinter side with Shelly.
Shelly was going to a totally another extreme and was coding and digging and she was calling harassing the sheriff's office.
She was getting you know the 911 call and everything else and digging that way and basically saying that his followers killed him.
Like his closest followers killed him on purpose.
That makes no sense whatsoever, but that's where that group is at.
I think the rest of them, you know, I didn't think anyone could take his place, which I still don't think anyone can take his place because, you know, he had that whole thing of, you know, Trump speaks to me in code and, you know, that's how I, you know, know what's going on.
Didn't think that anyone else could step up and take that.
But to me, a lot of his followers are just really lost.
They're all looking, you know, and trying to grab on to other influences, I guess.
You can see, you know, you've got some sort of heading down this way and then you've got some just posting anything and everything because they're just lost without his guidance at the end of the day.
I mean, that's certainly a dangerous and volatile situation because it creates a kind of power vacuum.
I mean, if like lots of people are just grasping for direction and leadership, it allows anyone with, you know, a high degree of like, you know, confidence and sense of authority to step in Michael Protzman's place and just say and just tell people what's going on and essentially become the new cult leader.
I mean, is anyone, I mean, you talk about Shelley.
But are there like more people who are like, sort of trying to fill in that vacuum that Michael Prossman left when he died?
Well, I've seen a couple of these members that have sort of taken more of a stand in organizing, more along the way of, you know, organizing, okay, we're going to go to this Trump rally, this is what we're going to do, you know, Sort of those sorts of things.
No one's really trying to step up and take his role though, but again there is some infighting going on and another split in the main group.
So again, because Kelly who was his second, no one really ever liked her.
I think it was again, it was the jealousy thing.
No one really liked her.
The only people, like, Negative basically kept them under control when it came to Kelly.
He basically was always telling them, you'll respect her if you don't, you're out.
And now that he's gone, you know, all these other followers that didn't actually like her or were jealous of her are now, you know, sort of splitting the group and they've made their own group away from her.
By the way, have you seen the CNN documentary yet?
No, I haven't.
Oh, okay.
You helped with it, right?
You helped provide some background information, right?
Yes.
One thing I really liked about the documentary is that it really emphasized the human toll of this group.
And specifically, I'm thinking about the way in which, you know, these followers just sort of like they give over their lives.
They, you know, they listen to these telegram chats for hours and hours and hours, falling asleep to them.
And also the ways in which family members who are so distraught over their, you know, the people that they care about, sort of, you know, giving themselves over to this weird cult leader.
I mean, how have you seen that sort of like, play out in the research that you've been doing?
I mean, I speak to a lot of family members, and this has actually like, I mean, it's devastated their families.
It's torn them apart.
And even at the moment, because a lot of these people that were able to go back home, that had homes to go back to, have gone back home.
And even having them home, the family members are not coping at all.
Because, you know, they still have all these beliefs and they're pushing them on the family members and, you know, there's a lot of arguing going on with them and they're lost.
They themselves don't know what to do with these people.
You know, but the devastation and toll it's taken on so many of these family members over this whole period.
And, you know, I listened to some of the chats recently and, you know, you listen to some of Negative 48's followers and they don't care.
They do not care because in their eyes, when this all happens, the families are going to be, you know, you were right.
I'm sorry.
I didn't believe you.
And they just don't care what they've done to their own families.
I mean, it's still bizarre.
I mean, this is a common case with cults is that no matter how much they lose, no matter how much pain being part of this group deals them, they just continue because they think something glorious is going to happen.
I mean, what exactly is the endgame for the remaining followers of Negative 48?
Do they really think, you know, do they still just have hope that one day JFK is going to say, haha, I was not assassinated after all, and now I'm going to run again and serve my second term?
Pretty much.
I mean, one of Negative's last things, you know, that he said before he died was, you know, that when Trump got arrested, That when they fingerprinted him it would prove that it was JFK and it would come out into the public.
And I myself still get a lot of his followers.
They're in my comments every day.
Many of them still believe I'm JFK.
I know I heard a chat only a couple of days ago where they said that one of his followers actually said that I had spoken to their family member, which I had, and she said in the chat that I was using a voice modulator when I spoke to her family member.
And, you know, it's just, you know, it doesn't matter what I say or what I post, they just spin it anyway.
But according to them, like, I think it was yesterday or the day before, one of them wished me happy birthday.
And I was like, why are you wishing me happy birthday?
And because Negative told them that, I think it was 9-11, is really Jesus' birthday.
And so they were wishing me happy birthday because I'm JFK, a.k.a.
the second coming of Jesus Christ.
That is pretty insane.
I remember seeing the same kind of thing when some QAnon followers were doing the same thing to Vincent Fusca, where there was actually a fake Vincent Fusca account, and they were wishing him a happy birthday on JFK Jr.' 's birthday because they sincerely believed that he was JFK Jr.
It's very, very... I don't know.
I mean, these people, they're just in this weird alternate reality.
I don't know how else to explain it.
No, neither do I. I mean, I listen to these chats, and these chats still go on to, you know, eight, even without negative.
I mean, they're definitely lost, though, because, you know, they just refer to him constantly within the chats.
You know, he said this, and he said that, and he said this.
I still feel as though they may all head back to Dallas.
Sometime in, you know, November.
Whether it's just because, you know, that's because Negative would have wanted them to be there.
I look at it and I think to myself, you know, a lot of these people just like the gathering.
They like to get together.
They like to, you know, be with people that have the same beliefs and it's more about that than it is anything else.
But yeah, I don't know.
Like every day I wake up on Twitter and I have them in my comments every day and you know I still talk to them because I know who you know that we're talking about the inner circle here.
I've got the inner circle people commenting and talking to me and I still talk to them.
I'll reply back to them.
But yeah, it is really weird.
You know, I think that'll do us.
Follow Karma at at 2022 underscore Karma.
We'll put her Twitter in the show notes.
And if you want to, you know, follow this kinds of stuff, she's the person to follow because she goes really, really deep into it.
So Karma, thank you again for coming here and talking about what you've been researching.
Thanks for having me on, Travis.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAA Podcast.
You can go to patreon.com slash QAnonAnonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode every week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes and our miniseries like Trickle Down, Man Clan, and The Spectral Voyager.
For everything else, we have a website, QAnonAnonymous.com.
Listener, until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy.
It's a fact.
And now, today's Auto-Q.
If you follow The Boss, Negative 48, and you listen to his teachings, you would often hear him talk about Clark Kent.
Now, I've heard him talk about Clark Kent all the time, and he just planted that seed of Clark Kent.
And I kept saying, well, what does Clark Kent have to do with this?
I mean, Clark Kent is a cartoon series.
It was Superman.
What does it have to do with this?
And I'll tell you what it has to do with it.
I'll tell you what it has to do with it, because it's very interesting.
Now Clark Kent was this disguise of Superman, you know, but the interesting thing about the Clark Kent disguise is it's so far from Superman's true identity.
He's truly a powerful being, you know, from another world and he's come to Earth to destroy the forces of evil and that's Superman.
But he hid himself in society working for a newspaper reporter firm as a reporter.
So no one would ever suspect that underneath the goofy reporter costume that he was actually Superman.
The man who rids the world of evil.
Isn't it interesting?
Now let me go through a couple of these pictures here.
Understanding that um perhaps what we're witnessing.
I mean it's just a question.
And you see the stages of the revelation.
You know you're going through Clark Kent.
And gradually, as he reveals himself, eventually, is this going to happen one day in the future?
We know that John F. Kennedy Jr.
is set to reveal himself.
Is that going to happen?
I know he's saying that.
People say, what?
We asked, was he John F. Kennedy Jr.?
And he said, uh, no.
Uh, exactly.
He's going to say no.
Uh, you know, come on, you shouldn't even ask him that.
You're nuts.
So I said, wow, that was interesting.
I went to the JFKlibrary.org and I stumbled across something very interesting about the name Clark Kent.
Now the code names of the Kennedy White House, President Kennedy's code name was Lancer and Boss 55, John F. Kennedy Jr.
