March 7, 2023 • 30 mins
Mickey now has two targets: activist Zebb Hall and a verbal bomb-thrower named Bryce Shelby. Mickey takes Zebb and Bryce out to lunch and tells them both that he’s got a guy who can help them do something big. Really big. Will Zebb and Bryce take the bait?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bryce Shelby is a slender black man who is known
around Denver for attending the racial justice protests with an
assault rifle slung over his shoulder, which isn't illegal. Colorado
is an open carry state. Bryce would often wear black
Panther Party T shirts during demonstrations. He's agreed to meet
with me in Denver. It's a February afternoon and it's
(00:24):
bitterly cold. There's a fresh dusting of snow on the ground.
Bryce is sitting down as I'm setting up. He's filling
with his phone and we're talking. It's closes. So is
there any questions I can answer for you? You You said
you you're kind of like hearing names kind of brings
people back, like kind of helps you to depreciate, yea,
what's going on? Just the idea that um it was
(00:50):
I guess it wasn't abou die, you know that was
that said what he said to the to the officers.
It just, you know what I mean, just hearing a
certain name. Not that I'm trying to earn any buy
or nothing like that, but you know, I'm mean, i'd
cross certain In one of our earlier phone conversations, as
I was arranging this interview, I had told Bryce something
that surprised him. Zeb Hall wasn't an FBI informant. Until
(01:16):
that phone conversation. Bryce had been certain zeb was the snitch.
Bryce is interested in crossing off names because he's running
a process of elimination. To this day, he's never figured
out exactly why the FBI went after him. Did you
think that was maybe, you know, part of what happened
to you? Well, he was at one of those situations
(01:38):
with Mickey. But we can get into it. Yeah, we're
about to get into it. I'm Trevor Aaronson from Western
Sound and I Heart Podcasts. This is Alphabet Voice, Episode six,
(02:13):
dumpster Fire. In the business world, aggressive investors will do
what's called a roll up. They'll enter a distressed industry
buy up as many competing companies as they can. Merge
those companies together, that is, roll them up and then
corner the market. Mickey's about to try his own version
(02:35):
of a roll up for the FBI. He's already got
one target, zeb Haul, who's talked in vague terms about
violence and revolution, and if Mickey can roll up zeb
with another big talking revolutionary, then he's got what the
Justice Department could present to the public as a terrorism
conspiracy case, and Mickey's got someone in mind for his
roll up with zeb Bryce Shelby. I can't ut here
(02:58):
what a rifle because y'all killing us anyways when we
come to protest and spraying it down and pepper gassing
it and tear bombing it and everything like that, doing
things to antagonize the crowd, to make the crowd mess
with the Bryce was known as a verbal bomb thrower whatever.
He talks fast, with a rhythmic cadence, and he's passionate
about confronting racial injustice, like really passionate, like rhetoric so
(03:21):
heated that you really begin to wonder, Man, maybe this
guy could get violent when they had any unmarked card.
What the fuck are you gonna do? Hands up, don't shoot,
You're gonna fire on you legally, you're right. That's Bryce is,
(03:53):
as it happens, an aspiring hip hop artist. He goes
by the stage name Acoustic, and thanks to that flowing,
lyrical voice, Bryce is pretty good. Everybody go on what side,
don't shade if you like, but a chop a tree,
not a person in my age race stopped to me.
I need to boxing me of a Catholides. I'm being
a call at the map and the doctor pleats. I
try to copy with enocities. I'm gonna call it trying
(04:15):
to complete. In Denver, there was an open mic series
called Melanated Mike that became a gravitational center for local
racial justice activists. Regular speakers included Bryce zep Haul and
Trey Quinn. He was me, if I never had a felony,
This is Trey describing Bryce. Trey recruited people to speak
(04:35):
out Melanated Mike and entering the demonstrations. If I had
never had a felony, I would have been a licensed
gun owner. I probably would have been a lot more
like him, you know, with my rhetoric and just the
way I acted. You know, I I do these things
a certain way because I know that they can use
it against me, and so I can't just outright say
(04:59):
all my beliefs in the most raw form. And he
would say the things out loud that I would think
out loud like you know, or think like I think
up here, but they come out of my mouth a
different way. He would say, just that. You know, That's
how how he was. So that Bryce was he was
radical me for sure. Bryce could be a live wire,
and sometimes in his speeches he just go way too far.
(05:24):
He often had the right idea, but it would just
come out wrong, very wrong. Once we had a town
hall and me and Bryce spoke. I spoke first, Bryce
spoke second, and Bryce he made a Hitler reference. He
made a Donald Trump Hitler socialism reference, and he used
Hitler as the hinge point for the reference. Now, it
(05:48):
takes so much nuance to understand what he was saying,
because it to the layman, it literally sounded like he
just said Hitler was right. You know what I'm saying,
But he's literally saying Hitler used a rhetoric about socialists
that also applies to this. Right now, this is what
he was trying to say. He could have used any
other person, but he used that. Bryce's Hitler speech happened
(06:08):
in August twenty twenty, around the time that Mickey had
falsely accused Trey of being an informant, and there were
rumors online circulating about Trey, including that he was a fed,
that he was nanti Semite, that he just couldn't be trusted.
On the Reddit thread of the Black Speakers that spoke
that night, it was all about me and everything that
(06:29):
all of the black speakers said. Apparently I said they
were like Trey said this and that and he and
he made a healer reference. I told you he was
an end all this crazy shit, and I knew it
was like y'all weren't even out there, none of these
people were here. And so to me, those felt like
veag accounts for sure, you know what I mean, like
one person with several accounts helping construct the narrative. That's
(06:49):
what it felt like to me. I wish I could
prove that shit. If you remember, Mickey starts spreading rumors
that Trey was working for the FEDS and that whisper
campaign is having an effect, so in confusion among the
leaders and participants of the demonstrations and leading to allegations
online all made by anonymous accounts, that Trey is a problem.
(07:10):
At the time, Trey isn't telling others that he suspects
Mickey's an informant. He doesn't want word getting back to
Mickey because Tray's working under a strategy of keeping your
enemies close. So Bryce has no idea about tray suspicions.
And one night Bryce attends a party hosted by Mickey
and his allies. It's in the apartment with all the
pekk flags, the one where zeb had seen on several
(07:32):
occasions a table full of guns. This probe like where
it all starts, I guess for me. Back to Bryce.
Like other demonstrators in Denver, Bryce is fed up. Nothing's
changing and they're getting their asses kicked by the cops
every night. There was a bunch of people there and
it was just, you know, I'm like I would just
super frustrated with just a whole bunch of different things.
(07:54):
Mickey comes up to Bryce at the party, you know
what I mean. He was like, you know, what's your
how do you feel? I was like, man like, not
literally thinking like that, but just like, man like, they're
not gonna give us no kind of justice, no other
kind of way. Let's hit him where it hurts, for real.
I was basically just saying how I felt like, let's
(08:15):
hit him where it hurts, like they're killing us. Bryce
stops here and he goes on a tangent. It's a
bit of a rant. I'm gonna let you hear it
because this is Bryce's typical rhetoric. The type of thing
he'd say in front of crowds during protests. But this
is also what he's saying to Mickey an FBI informant
when they meet at the party. America, black people, African Americans, Negroes, niggas,
(08:41):
niggas whatever, we have been under persecution and treated a
certain way by Europeans, Eurasians, whatever you want to call
white people of lighter skin for at least three centuries,
four centuries. We've been looking for something from your treaty
(09:02):
and from eighteen thirty five that says you was gonna
give everybody forty acres m. We've been looking for that
for a hundred years, since we've been out of slavery.
Now you have sworn peace officers who are killing black
people for whatever specific reason. So to see it happen
and start getting closer home, like I said Trey via
Mike Brown, everything like that. And the politicians aren't doing anything,
(09:24):
the governor of the mayor, there's no laws being changed,
there's no bills being submitted, the officers aren't being penalized
or what's the word prosecuted. Sorry, you're not really seeing
anything on the systematic side of it, thing of things.
So it's like Okay, they're killing us. Let's show them
(09:48):
how it feels one time, basically, and that's kind of
where you know, that's again, that's where conversations with Mickey,
you know what I mean, kind of pretty much went
more or less. Mickey seems receptive to what Bryce is saying,
and to impress Bryce, he starts talking about his experience
(10:09):
fighting ISIS in Iraq. Mickey brought out a picture of
him standing over like I don't know how many people
with bodies would have, you know, cigar in his mouth,
rifle in his hand. I don't know if that was
exactly that, but I know it was him in the
picture standing over somebodies with a rifle in his head.
He may not have had the cigar. I say the
cigar because he smoked them saying over a bunch of
(10:31):
dead bodies. And then next to the picture was an
ISIS flag. Bryce is impressed. He assumes Mickey is some
kind of mercenary. Mickey tells Bryce that he wants to
talk to him more in private. He invites Bryce to
join him for lunch the next day. So let's go
to lunch after the break. Okay, this is a special
(11:03):
agent Scott Dlstrom with special Agent Byron Mitchell stche It's
a sunny day in Denver. This is the week that
racial justice activists have begun their full on attacks targeting
police buildings with rocks and fireworks, actions that Mickey had
hyped up and encouraged. FBI agent Scott Dhlstrom, Mickey's handler,
(11:23):
is sitting in the passnger seat of a black sedan.
He hands Mickey a recording device. YEA, yeah, okay, peace
loving hair grease. Right, peace love and hair grease, Mickey
tells the FBI agents. He then walks back to a
silver hearse. Mickey already has a song ready for this moment,
(11:53):
as if he put together a playlist for his work
as an FBI informant. The song Mickey's playing is Long
Cool Woman in a Black Dress by the Hollies. It's
about an FBI undercover agent during Prohibition. He's inside a
(12:14):
speakeasy and the cops are about to raid the place.
He's not answering this. Bullets were drive by his house.
He's a beautiful singer and saves her from arrest. As
the song plays, the FBI's hidden camera gets flipped around
and faces the partition separating the hearses driver's cabin from
the area where the coffin would normally be stowed. Leaning
against the partition, you can see a crossbow with arrows.
(12:38):
This isn't a Robin Hood style crossbow either. We're talking
about a military style death dealer, designed like a rifle
that fires arrows instead of bullets, a true zombie apocalypse
kind of crossbow. After driving for about ten minutes, Mickey
parks and gets out of the hearse. It's the summer
(12:59):
of twenty twenty er, the pandemic is in high gear,
and vaccines are several months away. Most people are still
wearing face masks indoors. In the undercover video, you can
see Mickey putting on his mask. It's black. On the
left side it reads Peshmerga with a Kurdish flag. On
the right side it says ninth Brigade with a logo
(13:20):
for the Punisher. I'm pretty sure this wasn't standard issue
for volunteer Peshmerga fighters. Mickey no doubt had it made
at a screen printing place. Anyway, this afternoon, with this
custom made Peshmerga punisher mask, Mickey has his tough guy
costume on and he struts into famous Days a chain
(13:41):
barbecue restaurant. Mickey's asked for a table for three, and
of course, since he's secretly recording this for the FBI,
he's also requested for the restaurant's music to be turned down.
But feen minutes later, the activist Bryce Shelby shows up.
(14:04):
What are you up to? Mickey's arranged this lunch to
bring Bryce and zeb together. Mickey and the FBI are
now targeting both of them, trying to find a way
to set them up on federal criminal charges. At the
beginning of this lunch, Mickey appears to hope he can
envelop them in a kind of conspiracy. It's all vague
at this point, but Mickey's aim is to fold them
(14:25):
into some sort of big, violent plot. At the time,
Bryce doesn't really know zeb Zeb hasn't arrived for lunch yet,
and so Mickey tells Bryce that he's bringing the two
of them together because, in Mickey's words, they're talking about
the same shit. Yeah yeah, all right, yeah, because he
(14:48):
says zeb was like because z was talking about like
the same ship. Yeah, and he was like outside, you
know what, because I didn't want to like bring anybody together,
try to like sure, but he was cool. Ye, That's
why I asked away. I asked to make sure it
was just like coach. The waiter then comes up to
the table, so I uh, I was like, you know what,
(15:14):
maybe bring everybody together to if it works out like that,
you know what I mean? So no harm, no foul,
yeah talk. Bryce tells Mickey that Zeb has been encouraging
him to tone down his rhetoric and speeches, something Bryce
doesn't want to do. Mickey then suggested Bryce that Zeb
might have an ulterior motive, like, well, I guess he's
(15:36):
trying to keep licking everything like under the radar, keep
things under the radar. Mickey says, as if ZEB is
the mastermind of some big plot in the making. And
then about ten minutes later, Zeb arrives. I was wondering
if you were coming, okay, yeah, kind of stopped everything.
(15:57):
How you doing? You're good? Good? Good? Fuck? When I
saw it was Bryce, So like, what the fuck this
nigga right here? ZEB didn't know that Bryce was going
to be at this lunch. I didn't trust this dude.
I didn't think he was just you know, we all
had some mischiefs. Hell, I've got issues, but this dude
just wasn't fucking there. And when I saw him, like,
what the fuck this guy? You know, Bryce would walk
(16:18):
around with a fucking semi automatic gun. As some of
the protests, he walked around with a fucking noose around
his neck, and yeah, people, everybody was upset. But I'm like, yo,
this fucking guy. And at that point, you know, I'm there,
I was like, all right, let's just see what the
fuck's going on now. But Mickey wants to bring these
guys together, and he wastes no time in getting started.
He tells zeb and Bryce that his guy an outlaw biker,
(16:41):
a bad motherfucker. He's coming into town. Okay, so nobody
can hear us. So okay, so I talked to my dude.
He's on board. Um, what he's gonna do. He's coming
in tuesday, So what fairworld meet at nowhere like this
on Tuesday. He'll walk you through what the game plan is.
(17:05):
Mickey says he's going to back away from all this
once he introduces zeb and Bryce to his guy, and
his excuse for doing that is he's got a broken finger.
Mickey claims to have injured his finger in a motorcycle
accident at Sturgis, an annual biker rally in South Dakota.
I'm gonna have to step back for a little bit
because of this fucking situation until this is resolved, because
(17:26):
I am like, no good, what the fucked up finger? Like? Literally,
my ship Manna shows it's not bad. My motherfucker finger race.
So as you see there, the ball is completely shattered. Yeah,
so it's completely shattered. So I have to and they're
gonna have to, Like Jack is zeb cracks a juvenile
joke in case he missed it too much, Jack and Off, man,
(17:48):
I wish, but it ain't the Jack and Off. But
the thing is that they said, Um, apparently what they
told me was that they're gonna have to put cut
through my fingertip put a pin in there. If that
does not work, Mickey explains that he needs to get
the finger treated or he runs the risk of losing
it altogether. Mickey then starts to encourage Zeb and Bryce
(18:10):
to come up with a plan, but he warns they
can't bring anybody else in. It's got to remain super secret.
Don't tell anyone what we're talking about. Yeah, but let
me let me tell you something. I'm gonna roll with
you a second, okay, And I'm gonna put it as
as an outlaw biker point of viewer. When you bring
two me fucking people in, somebody's gonna talk. Motherfucker gets
(18:32):
pulled in n a d uy. They're gonna talk. Motherfucker
gets on a dope charge, They get a tall Mutherfucker
goes to a fucking massage parlor, needs to get massage stub,
and then he gets motherfucking arrested. Muffucker the stitch. The
waiter comes to the table and Mickey, Bryce and Zeb
stop their tough guy talk in order food as if
nothing's going on. Mickey says he's buying. Yeah. Mickey orders
(18:55):
ribs with beans and mashed potatoes. Zeb orders the same
and says they'll take a chicken sandwich all right, any
heals guys, and garlic toast for me. Good stead of
the loffings. You know, I don't like muffins. I hate muffins.
I do not man. I eat that ship the South
so much, I say, eating fish of the ocean. I'll
fucking tired of that ship, you say, Wilburn, I anal
(19:17):
fucking i Ano soccer ball here? Thank you? Eat anything cool? Cool.
Once the waiter leaves, the tough guy talk picks back
up the short instances in time, but letting me learn
what I need to learn, the out build up and
make something good, right, because I want to burn the
whole fucking city. Zeb is talking a lot like he
(19:37):
was earlier when he and Mickey met in his apartment,
A lot of vague ideas, speeches, propaganda, training, but with
a big, splashy conclusion. I want to burn the whole
fucking city down, Zeb says. But Zeb doesn't have any
sort of timeline or much of a plan. It's wild talk, really.
(19:58):
Zeb continues to say violence needed to break our corrupt
and racist system, but he's somehow going to inspire others
to commit violence, not commit any himself. Right. Why can
I build up over time but anger and resenting it
and then just throw up some fucking event. And we'd
look to a rich neighborhood and I couldnt control what
(20:18):
the people do. Why can't I grow anger over time,
Zeb says, and then create a demonstration in a rich
neighborhood if people get violent, well, I can't control people.
That appears to be the extent of Zeb's recipe for
revolution and that's not good enough for Mickey. But which
(20:40):
rich neighborhood do you think him of pick up it
over time? You've got six months night, Yeah, but you
gotta remember my guy doesn't have six months all Indians
to teach me. I don't know, man, I you don't
have to talk to him. But the thing I'm telling
you is this guy's an old bullshit type of cat.
You know what I mean. He's not going to like
sit around and fucking make Hamburgers a ship like that.
I mean, Y're all trying to do shit. He's going
(21:01):
to help you with this, but you understand this guy's
are no fun around type of do you know what
I mean? And it's like, you know, I mean you
look at Bryce's point and Bryce is talking about immediate action,
you know, news splash shit. I mean, what do you
think Bryce? I hear what the Bryce says. He feels
(21:23):
like they're running out of time, the cops are kicking
their asses. Something more needs to be done and soon,
and Mickey encourages a more specific plan blow up a
courthouse maybe, or shoot the attorney general. You know, I'll
put you like this. Let me just be real with
you for a second. At the end of the day,
(21:44):
It's cool whatever your game plan is. I mean, I'm
not gonna sit there and tell you you should do
this and you should do that. I'm not gonna say that, okay,
but you need to have an objective of what you're
gonna do. I mean, you know you, like, if Bryce's
planning on like, okay, I want to blow up a
motherfucking courthouse, I need to know what the game players
(22:05):
I'm going to shoot up a more fucking the Attorney General.
So I could tell him, my dude, this is what's up.
Because if I tell him my dude, like yeah, they're
gonna come out and hang out for nine months and
they want to do some training. Mickey says he needs
to give his contact, the no fuck Around Guy, an
action plan. Otherwise this is all just talk going nowhere.
(22:28):
But the thing is, at the end of the day,
I gotta tell him, my dude a game plan. I
can't tell him like, well, they plan on like eight
or nine months and you tell me, okay, cool, whatever,
I'll talk to you later. Click Zep won't commit to
anything concrete, but Bryce he likes. One of Mickey's big ideas.
That's after the break So Mickey, Zeb and Bryce are
(22:58):
sitting at a table at a famous Dave's Barbecue restaurant
in Denver. Zeb's blueprints for revolution are vague and all
over the place. As usual, we'll wait a few months,
get people angry, and then they'll lash out with violence,
bringing down the whole system or something like that. And
Mickey is getting frustrated with all this gas bagging. He
(23:19):
wants to introduce Zeb and Bryce to this person. He
calls his outlaw biker buddy, a no fuck around guy
to use Mickey's subscription, who can provide whatever help they need, training, guns, explosives,
you name it. So Mickey reveals to Zeb that Bryce
might have a scheme in mind that the no fuck
around guy could get behind. Bryce has the home address
(23:41):
of an important elected official, and well what if that
politician winds up dead shot as he's getting out of
his car or leaving his house. So question is are
you cool with Are you cool with Bryce? Do what
he needs to do if he will do it. Okay,
(24:02):
I got the DA's address, Bryce says, referring to the
district attorney. Well the you mean the attorney general? Better? Yeah,
most thing is it's clear from this conversation that Bryce
doesn't know that the district attorney and the Attorney General
are two different people, two different elected positions. Zeb then
(24:23):
goes on another tangent about how violence against someone like
the attorney general could be the start of something big,
but in typical Zeb fashion, he describes how they'll also
need to do speeches and propaganda, have a demonstration, maybe
a parade, get people so frustrated that they'll get off
their couches and overthrow the ruling class. Mickey just ignores
(24:47):
most of what Zeb is saying and then brings it
back to Bryce's specific plan, but is seemingly an assassination
plot against Colorado's Attorney general. All of the this is
happening over lunch at Famous Days, right. But here's the thing,
So this is what I'm gonna do. Then I'm just
gonna let my boy know that. And I'm just gonna
(25:10):
talk to and say, look, homeboy has a plan. How
he wants to go about it. You want to kind
of approach it on a different level and that way,
and I think a good idea too. Us Just to
cover our asses have we'll have zebadiahs get my weapons,
get my toys, for me. We'll haven't get my toys
(25:32):
for me, and then you focus on your game plan
and don't have my boy focus on helping you do
what you need to do. Okay, I mean you think
about my wife. Do you know anything about rifles? Bryce?
Ass Bryce at this time has a bullet jammed in
his rifle and he can't get it out, a circumstance
that would make killing the Attorney General pretty challenging. Yeah, yeah, okay,
(25:54):
he's get He'll take a look at that ship for you. Okay, yeah,
I talked about it. He's like, yeah, I will show
you how to walk that. Mickey is whipping up Bryce
to commit himself to this assassination plan. So you're thinking
for sure that the eight gen Yeah. Right. Then the
discussion takes a very weird turn. Zeb listening to everything
(26:17):
and wanting to be part of the conversation, begins to
suggest that they should figure out a way to use
Denver's sewer systems to move around the city, as if
they're I don't know, teenage mutant ninja turtles. Yeah, but
where's the sewer as where let's use the sewers? Zeb says,
(26:40):
but where are the sewers Mickey ass they're all under us.
Zebra applies, Who's whose sewers are we talking about? But
the governor, the police chief, the mayor, the mayor, I
don't even know where the fuck he looks. The conversation
continues like this and absurd discussion of sewers, and the
(27:02):
three men finish eating and walk outside of the restaurant
and into the parking lot. Mickey is clearly annoyed, and
once the steerest targets away from Zeb's ludicrous idea to
launch the revolution from Denver sewer system and toward Bryce's
nascent plan to kill an elected official, Mickey says he's
(27:24):
got to let his contact know what's up and soon,
so I'm gonna him. Know who do you want to get?
The Attorney General? Okay, I'll make it call. Appreciate your already, Yeah,
I'm good. Yeah, play play it slow, you know what
I mean? Black power already up? All right? Mickey gets
(27:46):
in his silver hearse and sums up his meeting with
Zeb and Bryce. What a dumpster fire. Mickey's playing Fleetwood
(28:11):
Mac on the car stereo. After a short drive, he
gets out of the hearse and walks over to meet
with the FBI agents who are sitting in their black Sedan.
Mickey taps on the car window. FBI agent Scott Dualstrom
opens the door and Mickey hands them the recording device.
Generals your target. Attorney generals your target. Mickey tells the
(28:35):
agents the FBI now appears to have a serious investigation
in Denver, a plot to assassinate statewide elected official. Hop
out the car. You know what I mean, popping bam.
That's in the next episode. This is Trojan Hearse, Season
(28:58):
one of Alphabet Boys. Alphabet Boys is a production of
Western Sound and iHeart Podcasts. The show is reported, written
and hosted by me Trevor Aaronson. For more information about
the series or to drop us a tip, head to
our website alphabet Boys dot xyz. You can contact me
(29:20):
on Twitter or Instagram at Trevor Aaronson. We believe this
story is important and could result in changes to FBI
oversight and public policy. But to have an impact, people
need to hear the story, so we need your help. First,
tell your friends about the show. Personal recommendations are the
best recommendations. Second, spread the word on social media. At
(29:41):
alphabet Boys dot xyz you'll find FBI undercover recordings and
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Third help us ride the algorithms by leaving a rating
or review on your favorite podcast app that helps other
people find us, and thanks for listening.
Bryce Shelby is a slender black man who is known
around Denver for attending the racial justice protests with an
assault rifle slung over his shoulder, which isn't illegal. Colorado
is an open carry state. Bryce would often wear black
Panther Party T shirts during demonstrations. He's agreed to meet
with me in Denver. It's a February afternoon and it's
(00:24):
bitterly cold. There's a fresh dusting of snow on the ground.
Bryce is sitting down as I'm setting up. He's filling
with his phone and we're talking. It's closes. So is
there any questions I can answer for you? You You said
you you're kind of like hearing names kind of brings
people back, like kind of helps you to depreciate, yea,
what's going on? Just the idea that um it was
(00:50):
I guess it wasn't abou die, you know that was
that said what he said to the to the officers.
It just, you know what I mean, just hearing a
certain name. Not that I'm trying to earn any buy
or nothing like that, but you know, I'm mean, i'd
cross certain In one of our earlier phone conversations, as
I was arranging this interview, I had told Bryce something
that surprised him. Zeb Hall wasn't an FBI informant. Until
(01:16):
that phone conversation. Bryce had been certain zeb was the snitch.
Bryce is interested in crossing off names because he's running
a process of elimination. To this day, he's never figured
out exactly why the FBI went after him. Did you
think that was maybe, you know, part of what happened
to you? Well, he was at one of those situations
(01:38):
with Mickey. But we can get into it. Yeah, we're
about to get into it. I'm Trevor Aaronson from Western
Sound and I Heart Podcasts. This is Alphabet Voice, Episode six,
(02:13):
dumpster Fire. In the business world, aggressive investors will do
what's called a roll up. They'll enter a distressed industry
buy up as many competing companies as they can. Merge
those companies together, that is, roll them up and then
corner the market. Mickey's about to try his own version
(02:35):
of a roll up for the FBI. He's already got
one target, zeb Haul, who's talked in vague terms about
violence and revolution, and if Mickey can roll up zeb
with another big talking revolutionary, then he's got what the
Justice Department could present to the public as a terrorism
conspiracy case, and Mickey's got someone in mind for his
roll up with zeb Bryce Shelby. I can't ut here
(02:58):
what a rifle because y'all killing us anyways when we
come to protest and spraying it down and pepper gassing
it and tear bombing it and everything like that, doing
things to antagonize the crowd, to make the crowd mess
with the Bryce was known as a verbal bomb thrower whatever.
He talks fast, with a rhythmic cadence, and he's passionate
about confronting racial injustice, like really passionate, like rhetoric so
(03:21):
heated that you really begin to wonder, Man, maybe this
guy could get violent when they had any unmarked card.
What the fuck are you gonna do? Hands up, don't shoot,
You're gonna fire on you legally, you're right. That's Bryce is,
(03:53):
as it happens, an aspiring hip hop artist. He goes
by the stage name Acoustic, and thanks to that flowing,
lyrical voice, Bryce is pretty good. Everybody go on what side,
don't shade if you like, but a chop a tree,
not a person in my age race stopped to me.
I need to boxing me of a Catholides. I'm being
a call at the map and the doctor pleats. I
try to copy with enocities. I'm gonna call it trying
(04:15):
to complete. In Denver, there was an open mic series
called Melanated Mike that became a gravitational center for local
racial justice activists. Regular speakers included Bryce zep Haul and
Trey Quinn. He was me, if I never had a felony,
This is Trey describing Bryce. Trey recruited people to speak
(04:35):
out Melanated Mike and entering the demonstrations. If I had
never had a felony, I would have been a licensed
gun owner. I probably would have been a lot more
like him, you know, with my rhetoric and just the
way I acted. You know, I I do these things
a certain way because I know that they can use
it against me, and so I can't just outright say
(04:59):
all my beliefs in the most raw form. And he
would say the things out loud that I would think
out loud like you know, or think like I think
up here, but they come out of my mouth a
different way. He would say, just that. You know, That's
how how he was. So that Bryce was he was
radical me for sure. Bryce could be a live wire,
and sometimes in his speeches he just go way too far.
(05:24):
He often had the right idea, but it would just
come out wrong, very wrong. Once we had a town
hall and me and Bryce spoke. I spoke first, Bryce
spoke second, and Bryce he made a Hitler reference. He
made a Donald Trump Hitler socialism reference, and he used
Hitler as the hinge point for the reference. Now, it
(05:48):
takes so much nuance to understand what he was saying,
because it to the layman, it literally sounded like he
just said Hitler was right. You know what I'm saying,
But he's literally saying Hitler used a rhetoric about socialists
that also applies to this. Right now, this is what
he was trying to say. He could have used any
other person, but he used that. Bryce's Hitler speech happened
(06:08):
in August twenty twenty, around the time that Mickey had
falsely accused Trey of being an informant, and there were
rumors online circulating about Trey, including that he was a fed,
that he was nanti Semite, that he just couldn't be trusted.
On the Reddit thread of the Black Speakers that spoke
that night, it was all about me and everything that
(06:29):
all of the black speakers said. Apparently I said they
were like Trey said this and that and he and
he made a healer reference. I told you he was
an end all this crazy shit, and I knew it
was like y'all weren't even out there, none of these
people were here. And so to me, those felt like
veag accounts for sure, you know what I mean, like
one person with several accounts helping construct the narrative. That's
(06:49):
what it felt like to me. I wish I could
prove that shit. If you remember, Mickey starts spreading rumors
that Trey was working for the FEDS and that whisper
campaign is having an effect, so in confusion among the
leaders and participants of the demonstrations and leading to allegations
online all made by anonymous accounts, that Trey is a problem.
(07:10):
At the time, Trey isn't telling others that he suspects
Mickey's an informant. He doesn't want word getting back to
Mickey because Tray's working under a strategy of keeping your
enemies close. So Bryce has no idea about tray suspicions.
And one night Bryce attends a party hosted by Mickey
and his allies. It's in the apartment with all the
pekk flags, the one where zeb had seen on several
(07:32):
occasions a table full of guns. This probe like where
it all starts, I guess for me. Back to Bryce.
Like other demonstrators in Denver, Bryce is fed up. Nothing's
changing and they're getting their asses kicked by the cops
every night. There was a bunch of people there and
it was just, you know, I'm like I would just
super frustrated with just a whole bunch of different things.
(07:54):
Mickey comes up to Bryce at the party, you know
what I mean. He was like, you know, what's your
how do you feel? I was like, man like, not
literally thinking like that, but just like, man like, they're
not gonna give us no kind of justice, no other
kind of way. Let's hit him where it hurts, for real.
I was basically just saying how I felt like, let's
(08:15):
hit him where it hurts, like they're killing us. Bryce
stops here and he goes on a tangent. It's a
bit of a rant. I'm gonna let you hear it
because this is Bryce's typical rhetoric. The type of thing
he'd say in front of crowds during protests. But this
is also what he's saying to Mickey an FBI informant
when they meet at the party. America, black people, African Americans, Negroes, niggas,
(08:41):
niggas whatever, we have been under persecution and treated a
certain way by Europeans, Eurasians, whatever you want to call
white people of lighter skin for at least three centuries,
four centuries. We've been looking for something from your treaty
(09:02):
and from eighteen thirty five that says you was gonna
give everybody forty acres m. We've been looking for that
for a hundred years, since we've been out of slavery.
Now you have sworn peace officers who are killing black
people for whatever specific reason. So to see it happen
and start getting closer home, like I said Trey via
Mike Brown, everything like that. And the politicians aren't doing anything,
(09:24):
the governor of the mayor, there's no laws being changed,
there's no bills being submitted, the officers aren't being penalized
or what's the word prosecuted. Sorry, you're not really seeing
anything on the systematic side of it, thing of things.
So it's like Okay, they're killing us. Let's show them
(09:48):
how it feels one time, basically, and that's kind of
where you know, that's again, that's where conversations with Mickey,
you know what I mean, kind of pretty much went
more or less. Mickey seems receptive to what Bryce is saying,
and to impress Bryce, he starts talking about his experience
(10:09):
fighting ISIS in Iraq. Mickey brought out a picture of
him standing over like I don't know how many people
with bodies would have, you know, cigar in his mouth,
rifle in his hand. I don't know if that was
exactly that, but I know it was him in the
picture standing over somebodies with a rifle in his head.
He may not have had the cigar. I say the
cigar because he smoked them saying over a bunch of
(10:31):
dead bodies. And then next to the picture was an
ISIS flag. Bryce is impressed. He assumes Mickey is some
kind of mercenary. Mickey tells Bryce that he wants to
talk to him more in private. He invites Bryce to
join him for lunch the next day. So let's go
to lunch after the break. Okay, this is a special
(11:03):
agent Scott Dlstrom with special Agent Byron Mitchell stche It's
a sunny day in Denver. This is the week that
racial justice activists have begun their full on attacks targeting
police buildings with rocks and fireworks, actions that Mickey had
hyped up and encouraged. FBI agent Scott Dhlstrom, Mickey's handler,
(11:23):
is sitting in the passnger seat of a black sedan.
He hands Mickey a recording device. YEA, yeah, okay, peace
loving hair grease. Right, peace love and hair grease, Mickey
tells the FBI agents. He then walks back to a
silver hearse. Mickey already has a song ready for this moment,
(11:53):
as if he put together a playlist for his work
as an FBI informant. The song Mickey's playing is Long
Cool Woman in a Black Dress by the Hollies. It's
about an FBI undercover agent during Prohibition. He's inside a
(12:14):
speakeasy and the cops are about to raid the place.
He's not answering this. Bullets were drive by his house.
He's a beautiful singer and saves her from arrest. As
the song plays, the FBI's hidden camera gets flipped around
and faces the partition separating the hearses driver's cabin from
the area where the coffin would normally be stowed. Leaning
against the partition, you can see a crossbow with arrows.
(12:38):
This isn't a Robin Hood style crossbow either. We're talking
about a military style death dealer, designed like a rifle
that fires arrows instead of bullets, a true zombie apocalypse
kind of crossbow. After driving for about ten minutes, Mickey
parks and gets out of the hearse. It's the summer
(12:59):
of twenty twenty er, the pandemic is in high gear,
and vaccines are several months away. Most people are still
wearing face masks indoors. In the undercover video, you can
see Mickey putting on his mask. It's black. On the
left side it reads Peshmerga with a Kurdish flag. On
the right side it says ninth Brigade with a logo
(13:20):
for the Punisher. I'm pretty sure this wasn't standard issue
for volunteer Peshmerga fighters. Mickey no doubt had it made
at a screen printing place. Anyway, this afternoon, with this
custom made Peshmerga punisher mask, Mickey has his tough guy
costume on and he struts into famous Days a chain
(13:41):
barbecue restaurant. Mickey's asked for a table for three, and
of course, since he's secretly recording this for the FBI,
he's also requested for the restaurant's music to be turned down.
But feen minutes later, the activist Bryce Shelby shows up.
(14:04):
What are you up to? Mickey's arranged this lunch to
bring Bryce and zeb together. Mickey and the FBI are
now targeting both of them, trying to find a way
to set them up on federal criminal charges. At the
beginning of this lunch, Mickey appears to hope he can
envelop them in a kind of conspiracy. It's all vague
at this point, but Mickey's aim is to fold them
(14:25):
into some sort of big, violent plot. At the time,
Bryce doesn't really know zeb Zeb hasn't arrived for lunch yet,
and so Mickey tells Bryce that he's bringing the two
of them together because, in Mickey's words, they're talking about
the same shit. Yeah yeah, all right, yeah, because he
(14:48):
says zeb was like because z was talking about like
the same ship. Yeah, and he was like outside, you
know what, because I didn't want to like bring anybody together,
try to like sure, but he was cool. Ye, That's
why I asked away. I asked to make sure it
was just like coach. The waiter then comes up to
the table, so I uh, I was like, you know what,
(15:14):
maybe bring everybody together to if it works out like that,
you know what I mean? So no harm, no foul,
yeah talk. Bryce tells Mickey that Zeb has been encouraging
him to tone down his rhetoric and speeches, something Bryce
doesn't want to do. Mickey then suggested Bryce that Zeb
might have an ulterior motive, like, well, I guess he's
(15:36):
trying to keep licking everything like under the radar, keep
things under the radar. Mickey says, as if ZEB is
the mastermind of some big plot in the making. And
then about ten minutes later, Zeb arrives. I was wondering
if you were coming, okay, yeah, kind of stopped everything.
(15:57):
How you doing? You're good? Good? Good? Fuck? When I
saw it was Bryce, So like, what the fuck this
nigga right here? ZEB didn't know that Bryce was going
to be at this lunch. I didn't trust this dude.
I didn't think he was just you know, we all
had some mischiefs. Hell, I've got issues, but this dude
just wasn't fucking there. And when I saw him, like,
what the fuck this guy? You know, Bryce would walk
(16:18):
around with a fucking semi automatic gun. As some of
the protests, he walked around with a fucking noose around
his neck, and yeah, people, everybody was upset. But I'm like, yo,
this fucking guy. And at that point, you know, I'm there,
I was like, all right, let's just see what the
fuck's going on now. But Mickey wants to bring these
guys together, and he wastes no time in getting started.
He tells zeb and Bryce that his guy an outlaw biker,
(16:41):
a bad motherfucker. He's coming into town. Okay, so nobody
can hear us. So okay, so I talked to my dude.
He's on board. Um, what he's gonna do. He's coming
in tuesday, So what fairworld meet at nowhere like this
on Tuesday. He'll walk you through what the game plan is.
(17:05):
Mickey says he's going to back away from all this
once he introduces zeb and Bryce to his guy, and
his excuse for doing that is he's got a broken finger.
Mickey claims to have injured his finger in a motorcycle
accident at Sturgis, an annual biker rally in South Dakota.
I'm gonna have to step back for a little bit
because of this fucking situation until this is resolved, because
(17:26):
I am like, no good, what the fucked up finger? Like? Literally,
my ship Manna shows it's not bad. My motherfucker finger race.
So as you see there, the ball is completely shattered. Yeah,
so it's completely shattered. So I have to and they're
gonna have to, Like Jack is zeb cracks a juvenile
joke in case he missed it too much, Jack and Off, man,
(17:48):
I wish, but it ain't the Jack and Off. But
the thing is that they said, Um, apparently what they
told me was that they're gonna have to put cut
through my fingertip put a pin in there. If that
does not work, Mickey explains that he needs to get
the finger treated or he runs the risk of losing
it altogether. Mickey then starts to encourage Zeb and Bryce
(18:10):
to come up with a plan, but he warns they
can't bring anybody else in. It's got to remain super secret.
Don't tell anyone what we're talking about. Yeah, but let
me let me tell you something. I'm gonna roll with
you a second, okay, And I'm gonna put it as
as an outlaw biker point of viewer. When you bring
two me fucking people in, somebody's gonna talk. Motherfucker gets
(18:32):
pulled in n a d uy. They're gonna talk. Motherfucker
gets on a dope charge, They get a tall Mutherfucker
goes to a fucking massage parlor, needs to get massage stub,
and then he gets motherfucking arrested. Muffucker the stitch. The
waiter comes to the table and Mickey, Bryce and Zeb
stop their tough guy talk in order food as if
nothing's going on. Mickey says he's buying. Yeah. Mickey orders
(18:55):
ribs with beans and mashed potatoes. Zeb orders the same
and says they'll take a chicken sandwich all right, any
heals guys, and garlic toast for me. Good stead of
the loffings. You know, I don't like muffins. I hate muffins.
I do not man. I eat that ship the South
so much, I say, eating fish of the ocean. I'll
fucking tired of that ship, you say, Wilburn, I anal
(19:17):
fucking i Ano soccer ball here? Thank you? Eat anything cool? Cool.
Once the waiter leaves, the tough guy talk picks back
up the short instances in time, but letting me learn
what I need to learn, the out build up and
make something good, right, because I want to burn the
whole fucking city. Zeb is talking a lot like he
(19:37):
was earlier when he and Mickey met in his apartment,
A lot of vague ideas, speeches, propaganda, training, but with
a big, splashy conclusion. I want to burn the whole
fucking city down, Zeb says. But Zeb doesn't have any
sort of timeline or much of a plan. It's wild talk, really.
(19:58):
Zeb continues to say violence needed to break our corrupt
and racist system, but he's somehow going to inspire others
to commit violence, not commit any himself. Right. Why can
I build up over time but anger and resenting it
and then just throw up some fucking event. And we'd
look to a rich neighborhood and I couldnt control what
(20:18):
the people do. Why can't I grow anger over time,
Zeb says, and then create a demonstration in a rich
neighborhood if people get violent, well, I can't control people.
That appears to be the extent of Zeb's recipe for
revolution and that's not good enough for Mickey. But which
(20:40):
rich neighborhood do you think him of pick up it
over time? You've got six months night, Yeah, but you
gotta remember my guy doesn't have six months all Indians
to teach me. I don't know, man, I you don't
have to talk to him. But the thing I'm telling
you is this guy's an old bullshit type of cat.
You know what I mean. He's not going to like
sit around and fucking make Hamburgers a ship like that.
I mean, Y're all trying to do shit. He's going
(21:01):
to help you with this, but you understand this guy's
are no fun around type of do you know what
I mean? And it's like, you know, I mean you
look at Bryce's point and Bryce is talking about immediate action,
you know, news splash shit. I mean, what do you
think Bryce? I hear what the Bryce says. He feels
(21:23):
like they're running out of time, the cops are kicking
their asses. Something more needs to be done and soon,
and Mickey encourages a more specific plan blow up a
courthouse maybe, or shoot the attorney general. You know, I'll
put you like this. Let me just be real with
you for a second. At the end of the day,
(21:44):
It's cool whatever your game plan is. I mean, I'm
not gonna sit there and tell you you should do
this and you should do that. I'm not gonna say that, okay,
but you need to have an objective of what you're
gonna do. I mean, you know you, like, if Bryce's
planning on like, okay, I want to blow up a
motherfucking courthouse, I need to know what the game players
(22:05):
I'm going to shoot up a more fucking the Attorney General.
So I could tell him, my dude, this is what's up.
Because if I tell him my dude, like yeah, they're
gonna come out and hang out for nine months and
they want to do some training. Mickey says he needs
to give his contact, the no fuck Around Guy, an
action plan. Otherwise this is all just talk going nowhere.
(22:28):
But the thing is, at the end of the day,
I gotta tell him, my dude a game plan. I
can't tell him like, well, they plan on like eight
or nine months and you tell me, okay, cool, whatever,
I'll talk to you later. Click Zep won't commit to
anything concrete, but Bryce he likes. One of Mickey's big ideas.
That's after the break So Mickey, Zeb and Bryce are
(22:58):
sitting at a table at a famous Dave's Barbecue restaurant
in Denver. Zeb's blueprints for revolution are vague and all
over the place. As usual, we'll wait a few months,
get people angry, and then they'll lash out with violence,
bringing down the whole system or something like that. And
Mickey is getting frustrated with all this gas bagging. He
(23:19):
wants to introduce Zeb and Bryce to this person. He
calls his outlaw biker buddy, a no fuck around guy
to use Mickey's subscription, who can provide whatever help they need, training, guns, explosives,
you name it. So Mickey reveals to Zeb that Bryce
might have a scheme in mind that the no fuck
around guy could get behind. Bryce has the home address
(23:41):
of an important elected official, and well what if that
politician winds up dead shot as he's getting out of
his car or leaving his house. So question is are
you cool with Are you cool with Bryce? Do what
he needs to do if he will do it. Okay,
(24:02):
I got the DA's address, Bryce says, referring to the
district attorney. Well the you mean the attorney general? Better? Yeah,
most thing is it's clear from this conversation that Bryce
doesn't know that the district attorney and the Attorney General
are two different people, two different elected positions. Zeb then
(24:23):
goes on another tangent about how violence against someone like
the attorney general could be the start of something big,
but in typical Zeb fashion, he describes how they'll also
need to do speeches and propaganda, have a demonstration, maybe
a parade, get people so frustrated that they'll get off
their couches and overthrow the ruling class. Mickey just ignores
(24:47):
most of what Zeb is saying and then brings it
back to Bryce's specific plan, but is seemingly an assassination
plot against Colorado's Attorney general. All of the this is
happening over lunch at Famous Days, right. But here's the thing,
So this is what I'm gonna do. Then I'm just
gonna let my boy know that. And I'm just gonna
(25:10):
talk to and say, look, homeboy has a plan. How
he wants to go about it. You want to kind
of approach it on a different level and that way,
and I think a good idea too. Us Just to
cover our asses have we'll have zebadiahs get my weapons,
get my toys, for me. We'll haven't get my toys
(25:32):
for me, and then you focus on your game plan
and don't have my boy focus on helping you do
what you need to do. Okay, I mean you think
about my wife. Do you know anything about rifles? Bryce?
Ass Bryce at this time has a bullet jammed in
his rifle and he can't get it out, a circumstance
that would make killing the Attorney General pretty challenging. Yeah, yeah, okay,
(25:54):
he's get He'll take a look at that ship for you. Okay, yeah,
I talked about it. He's like, yeah, I will show
you how to walk that. Mickey is whipping up Bryce
to commit himself to this assassination plan. So you're thinking
for sure that the eight gen Yeah. Right. Then the
discussion takes a very weird turn. Zeb listening to everything
(26:17):
and wanting to be part of the conversation, begins to
suggest that they should figure out a way to use
Denver's sewer systems to move around the city, as if
they're I don't know, teenage mutant ninja turtles. Yeah, but
where's the sewer as where let's use the sewers? Zeb says,
(26:40):
but where are the sewers Mickey ass they're all under us.
Zebra applies, Who's whose sewers are we talking about? But
the governor, the police chief, the mayor, the mayor, I
don't even know where the fuck he looks. The conversation
continues like this and absurd discussion of sewers, and the
(27:02):
three men finish eating and walk outside of the restaurant
and into the parking lot. Mickey is clearly annoyed, and
once the steerest targets away from Zeb's ludicrous idea to
launch the revolution from Denver sewer system and toward Bryce's
nascent plan to kill an elected official, Mickey says he's
(27:24):
got to let his contact know what's up and soon,
so I'm gonna him. Know who do you want to get?
The Attorney General? Okay, I'll make it call. Appreciate your already, Yeah,
I'm good. Yeah, play play it slow, you know what
I mean? Black power already up? All right? Mickey gets
(27:46):
in his silver hearse and sums up his meeting with
Zeb and Bryce. What a dumpster fire. Mickey's playing Fleetwood
(28:11):
Mac on the car stereo. After a short drive, he
gets out of the hearse and walks over to meet
with the FBI agents who are sitting in their black Sedan.
Mickey taps on the car window. FBI agent Scott Dualstrom
opens the door and Mickey hands them the recording device.
Generals your target. Attorney generals your target. Mickey tells the
(28:35):
agents the FBI now appears to have a serious investigation
in Denver, a plot to assassinate statewide elected official. Hop
out the car. You know what I mean, popping bam.
That's in the next episode. This is Trojan Hearse, Season
(28:58):
one of Alphabet Boys. Alphabet Boys is a production of
Western Sound and iHeart Podcasts. The show is reported, written
and hosted by me Trevor Aaronson. For more information about
the series or to drop us a tip, head to
our website alphabet Boys dot xyz. You can contact me
(29:20):
on Twitter or Instagram at Trevor Aaronson. We believe this
story is important and could result in changes to FBI
oversight and public policy. But to have an impact, people
need to hear the story, so we need your help. First,
tell your friends about the show. Personal recommendations are the
best recommendations. Second, spread the word on social media. At
(29:41):
alphabet Boys dot xyz you'll find FBI undercover recordings and
secret documents. You can share stuff the government never wanted public.
Third help us ride the algorithms by leaving a rating
or review on your favorite podcast app that helps other
people find us, and thanks for listening.
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