On June 13th, 1996, the leader of a Long Island UFO group was charged with conspiracy to poison local conservative leaders with the most absurdly deranged of methods. His motive? Retribution for the political cover-up of UFO activity in the area. Brad Abrahams joins us to tell this bizarre and melancholy tale of the alien obsessed John J. Ford. We unravel if John really was criminally insane, or if he was entrapped for getting too close to a real life, albeit more terrestrial cover-up. Jake reads some powerful UFO poetry, Travis daydreams about arcane murder methods, and Julian cowers in fear from his secretly sadistic co-hosts. It’s time to squeeze out some phosphorescent toothpaste and enjoy an episode of the Long Island X-Files.
Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like Manclan, Trickle Down, Perverts and The Spectral Voyager: www.patreon.com/QAA
Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by NAP (doomchakratapes.bandcamp.com) & Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com)
qaapodcast.com
QAA was formerly known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Welcome to the QAA Podcast Premium Episode 241, Radium Toothpaste.
As always, we're your hosts, Jake Brakitansky, Brad Abrahams, Julian Field, and Travis View.
Say what you want about Crazy John Ford.
Say that he's adult and daffy.
Say that he's gone off the deep end, of course.
Say that his brains are like taffy.
Say he's a mental case.
Say he's a dope.
Say that he's outside a reasonable scope.
Say that he's goony, all loony-toony, not deserving your concern, unworthy of your note.
He's a frothing, raving nutcase, surely better behind bars.
I really think it's rather that his mind was on the stars.
Excerpt of a poem by Alfred Lemberg Truly a wordsmith.
So I'm going to start the episode by opening up a question to my co-host, which is, what is the most ridiculous murder method you can think of?
Murder method?
You know, as far as horrible murders, I always think about the ancient Persian method of scaphism, in which they would trap someone on a boat out on a body of water and then cover their limbs in milk and honey, and then bugs would slowly devour them over several days.
How do you know this?
How come Travis, who always like goes last whenever there's like a round table question, is just not really quick to speak in general.
He just jumped on that shit within a millisecond with a very well described manner of murdering.
I am actually now just shaking.
Well, I guess I'll go next.
I think probably, hmm.
I would set up a really kind of fun prank on someone where I convince them somehow to get inside a beanbag chair.
No!
And I would tell them that there's a whole world in there.
You could ride roller coasters made of yarn.
You could even become the beanbag king.
I don't want to be in the beanbag anymore.
I want to get out of the beanbag.
Mine would be heroically escaping a beanbag and then using it to kill my captor.
I think I would send seed oil to someone for free for the rest of their life.
Whoa, that is so dark and devious.
You're weakening them from within.
That's like, that's Sun Tzu, I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, I think Brad, maybe what you might do is subtly suggest to a family member that you've been using a neti pot and it's been really helpful.
Oh, no, this is actually dark because I'm actually, this isn't a joke, but indirectly responsible for someone dying from using a neti pot.
Did I tell you this?
We know.
Yeah, that's why I'm using it against you.
I'm using this very personal memory against you.
I guess Jake wants to put you back on trial, which is very weird.
It's like you wrote this wonderful episode and he's ready to accuse you of crimes.
Thank you, Jake.
That's what happens before 1pm.
This is what you get.
Evil, Jake.
Well, historically, there was the CIA's exploding cigar and mangoes plot against Fidel Castro.
Another idea from the CIA was to explode the toilet seat of Muammar Gaddafi when he took a dump.
Do you guys remember that?
That is ridiculous, but also it's kind of more dignified than what they ended up doing.
I was like, you know, if I had to choose that or what actually happened to him, you know, I just, you know, go out on the john.
Yeah.
Lesser known is the 1930s plot against Iron Mike Malloy, a homeless Irishman in New York.
His acquaintances wanted him to die so they could collect his life insurance.
Their assassination method?
Buying him unlimited drinks at the bar, hoping he'd slowly drink himself to death.
When that didn't work, they filled his mouth with coal gas when he was unconscious, and that got him.
How do you fill someone's mouth with coal gas?
This is insane.
I think it was like a tube and they just blew it in.
Oh my god.
Yeah.
A ridiculous murder plot, real or imagined, is at the heart of this episode.
Other ingredients include a local quirked up UFO group and a conspiracy theory breaking through into the waking world.
It's a story with an explanation that seems cut and dry at first, but the closer you look, the blurrier the facts become.
To use a played out phrase, it's like a real life X-Files episode, but for real this time.
It's also an ode to Long Island's distinguished history of derangement.
It's the home of the Amityville Horror House and the supposed clandestine Montauk Project.
There's the off-limits Plum Island, which houses a secretive animal disease center.
And this strip of land lays claim to a suspiciously high number of serial killers, including Joel Rifkin, with 17 kills, Richard Cottingham, at least 18 kills, and most famously, the Angel of Death, Richard Angelo, who was a nurse who poisoned a suspected 30-plus patients.
Then, there was all 1200 pounds of Walter Hudson, one of the heaviest humans to live, who, after death, had to be removed from the second story of his house via crane.
And of course, the most archetypal of island stories was the sleazy tale of Joey Buttafuoco and Amy Fisher, the Long Island Lolita.
All this to say, for a story to stand out in Long Island, it has to be a certain grotesque type of weird,
and this tale meets and surpasses that distinction.
"This is possibly one of the greatest events in the history of man." - John Ford
Our story starts out with a real-life mystery, and this mystery starts with an explosion in the sky.
It's the evening of November 24th of 1992 in Yappank, Suffolk County, Long Island.
A motorist driving east on Sunrise Highway sees an object, tubular in shape, with lights on each end, fall out of the sky and crash into South Haven Park.
He said the impact caused a flash of light so bright that it turned night into day.
Other residents recall helicopters circling the area and unmarked vehicles and personnel blocking highway exits to the park.
These same residents report the electricity going out within a couple mile radius of the event.
Local firefighters made their way over, but they were turned away by authorities that seemed to be federal.
Instead, firefighters from the nearby Brookhaven National Lab were brought in.
The park was closed to all visitors for the next few days.
Here's a few of those eyewitness reports from a Fox News broadcast at the time.
I know that I saw a night turn into daylight, so whatever it was, it was very large and very strong and nothing I'd ever experienced before.
The police officer was describing to his desk sergeant that there was a trail of trees and telephone poles.
He said that were all seven, eight to ten feet high.
He said there was a path going into the woods.
That's why he thought perhaps something had crashed into the woods.
All of a sudden the road was blocked off.
I've never seen the fire department really block the road that heavily.
And especially it was a strange time at night.
And the other part that was curious was that there were no sirens going.
Oh my god.
Janet's gotta look.
Janet looks like she's in the Addams Family.
How? She's like this gaunt, kind of pale woman with dark hair and she's just wrapped in like this lush looking fur.
That is awesome. I'm so glad that there are still people that dress like Lee Adams' family.
I don't know if it had legs, but it had arms because it reached out for me.
It had lips because it kissed me.
Is that Joey Buttafuoco from, um, Cheaters?
It does look like it.
Doesn't it look like the Cheaters guy?
Yeah, it does.
On the Long Island subreddit, I found a thread of residents talking about that night, claiming to have connections to it.
Here are some quotes.
Yes, we responded there for a quote-unquote aircraft landing, but was on standby in the park roadway for nine hours as federal agencies flooded the area and took over the site.
All I remember is military vehicles and helicopters out of nowhere.
They were shutting down roads, etc.
I know they also closed down South Haven Park for weeks after the event.
I remember my friends would walk the park after looking for a crash site, but we never found anything.
I was working that night at Brookhaven National Lab.
I remember fire trucks leaving out the gate to go to the site.
Here's a satellite photo of what looks like an impact site in the park, if one of you wants to describe it.
Yeah, it's like a teardrop of just, like, debris and carnage that has cut through a pretty lush forest.
It's pretty impressive.
It looks like a fucking fireball, like, hit the ground.
Yeah, or like a meteor crash.
Like, yeah, it looks like the meteor carrying the bug from the first Men in Black.
Crashed and careened through a forest and then sort of ended in this huge, huge sort of explosion.
So this is when things take a turn for the weirder.
Because officially, nothing happened that night.
TV news networks that initially reported on it quickly pivoted to denial.
Those same firefighters and police mentioned above also denied being there.
The nearby Brookhaven National Lab said nothing happened that night either.
And the park closure?
County officials said it was closed for duck hunting.
Hmm.
Yeah.
That's what you should say, Julian, whenever the podcast is late by an episode of Gone Duck Hunting.
Closed for duck hunting.
You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA Podcast.
For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QAA.
Travis, why is that such a good deal?
Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA Podcast for just $5 per month.
For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries.
That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Perverts with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.
It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.
Travis, for once, I agree with you.
And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA.
