A few days ago I was fired up to write something speculative about the nature of the relationship between a certain hitman and “Sarge”, his good “friend”.
I even had a geographical itinerary planned, traveling from Steven Bannon’s meth house in Miami, to a meth house in Colorado featured in the documentary Dark Money, and landing, finally, in the speculative space of meth and homoerotic power-sharing.
Well, after watching a video about God stepping in to solve crimes, I decided to scrap that post and take a different approach.
Part of my shift on this happened yesterday, when it became clear certain channels of communication were compromised by nefarious actors. While my inclination was to continue an approach of provocation, which I accomplished in my direct communication to the third-party eavesdropper, the person I was with offered a different path: seek out God.
As a father who no longer lives at the house where his kids live, I seek out every chance I can to be a presence during this difficult transition, and one way I’ve been doing that is watching this year’s equivalent to a summer blockbuster, the Netflix show Stranger Things.
In one scene, the character Jonathan explicitly states his concern regarding his absent father and how that absence could impact his ability to form a healthy relationship with his girlfriend. I took plenty of mental notes about the various messages in this show–especially how it seems to be setting up kids to fear their own histories of trauma–so I could relate to my own kids a simple counter-message: this is NOT entertainment.
If Stranger Things is not entertainment, then what is it? Is it revelation of the method? Is it predictive programming? Or is it something else?
From my own evolving lens, I see malevolent forces inverting divine power and offering counterfeit replacements in its place. The way this manifests in my own life is that a beautiful experience with my little girl on roller-skates earlier in the day is transformed, after dinner, into a brutal act of violence on the screen when “Eleven”, the protagonist, assaults her bully with a near-fatal blow to the forehead with the wheel-end of her skate.
Another character in the series, Max, is a teen struggling with significant trauma after seeing her brother killed by a demonic entity from the “upside down”. In season four, she sees the first victim of Vecna, a cheerleader killed in the trailer of the Dungeons and Dragons club leader, Eddie. Having insider information about a murder that even the cops aren’t capable of fathoming is something with strong parallels for me.
Other parallels include seeing on the screen a representation of how false narratives can get imposed on us, something this demonic Vecna character is very good at, like telling the nerdy Harry he’s a murderer for contributing to the death of someone in a car accident.
Hmmm, I wondered, what kind of false narratives and inaccurate impressions are being created by the characters in the Rebekah Barsotti case? Does David Barsotti really have local authorities in his pocket? Does the hitman, Nathan Jacobsen, have a weird man-crush on him? Is the caretaker, Bevin Adams, an active accomplice in criminal activity? And is it accurate to refer to one of the PIs as a Mississippi Douche Donkey?
While I’m trying to provide a little levity here, that last paragraph is the shit I’m trying to NOT write about today. That’s because the video above, if you take the time to watch it, will provide you something MUCH MORE REAL, and that’s tangible examples of how this humble servant of God uses prayer to not just solve crimes, but, in one example, credibly changed the life path of a troubled kid who absolutely could have been tomorrow’s mass-casualty shooter.
So listen to THAT conversation on this Father’s day if you want to see how divine love can work to benefit ALL of God’s imperfect children navigating this broken world.
Those of you who are new to Missoula might not understand the intervention-level need we are facing with the green spaces in our fair town. From the abomination happening at Caras Park, to the million dollar meth-park makeover being outed as insane by a member of the impact fee advisory committee, it’s clear this municipal department is out of control.
While this pretty new grass is safely protected by chainlink as it “roots in”, the real fun is a few miles to the west, where proximity to the Poverello Center, Youth Homes and seedy motels ensures roots of a different nature have been established, roots the tax/crack smokers will readily ignore so that a million bucks can be thrown at this scenic spot for drug deals and alcohol abuse.
The lie behind this civic insanity is that landscaping can address societal decay. The reality is, it fuels it. And when one of your own people on the totally fun sounding impact fee advisory committee starts weening himself off the Kool-Aid and questioning these kinds of plans, well, that’s not good for Donna “Not-A-Financial Terrorist” Gaukler.
From the first link (emphasis mine):
A proposal to use development impact fees to improve a small, underutilized downtown park in Missoula sparked a broader discussion about the city’s plans in the area, investing in low-income neighborhoods and homelessness.
A high-level Missoula parks and recreation staff member and other city officials defended a decision to plan for nearly $950,000 in improvements to the Downtown Lions Park, an area that’s also a part of a key bike and pedestrian connection.
The debate ensued because a member of the city’s impact fee advisory committee, Hank Trotter, criticized the plan. He said the park is often used by homeless citizens and there aren’t many new housing units planned nearby in the near future. That means there aren’t many families and children that would use the park if it’s improved, especially considering there are other parks nearby, he claimed.
It’s pretty cool that a debate of any kind occurred at all, so thank you Hank Trotter! But I’m sure this project will go through regardless of criticism, especially if there’s a pedestrian bridge involved.
Quick question: is this a NEW pedestrian bridge represented in the above graphic, or the bridge to no where just up stream? Though I try to keep up with the bridges and all their problems in this town, I sometimes miss a thing or two.
To show how seriously uncaring this cabal’s minions are toward criticism, $150,000 dollars was directed on a 5 to 1 vote to design this bullshit.
On June 7, after a lengthy discussion, the committee voted 5-1 to approve $150,000 in impact fee funding for preliminary design costs to plan improvements to the park. The park is located just to the northeast of the California Street Pedestrian Bridge.
“Downtown Lions Park is located along Ron’s River Trail, a popular multi-use trail in downtown Missoula,” explained Ryan Applegate, the parks department’s business services superintendent, in a memo. “While the park is located along a heavily trafficked trail, the park itself is underdeveloped, dark, and has little infrastructure to support healthy activities.”
The emphasis is mine, and it’s the point in the article where I started laughing hysterically. The kind of laughter to stave off the weeping.
Yes, those of you who are new to the splendor of Big Sky country probably don’t know the story of Clay Salcido, the man pictured below who was violently stomped to death by two drunk teenagers on the California Street bridge.
Forrest “Clay” Salcido
Here’s the magic being proposed amidst the acrid cloud of pungent crack smoke: prepare the ground at Lions Park as a beachhead of green development in anticipation of the Sleepy Inn being developed and the Water Company building turning into, I would assume, more god-awful condos.
Do all that and the hope is the problems of addiction and mental health will be disappeared from this slice of redeveloped Missoula.
Maybe that’s how it will all play out. Of course, like all the schemes in this town–and the country, for that matter–it depends on the economy NOT blowing up. This week did the opposite of alleviating concerns we are on the economic precipice (as intended) of that happening.
It seems the credibility of law enforcement is suddenly a thing in Mineral County. Specifically, three Mineral County Sheriff Deputies, including one reject punted from Missoula County, have apparently triggered some unknown degree of doubt on past criminal cases. From the link:
A letter from a Missoula law firm alleges misconduct in the Mineral County Attorney’s Office, saying the office withheld relevant evidence in multiple prosecutions, a claim backed up by at least one judge’s ruling.
The letter, sent by the Reep, Bell and Jasper P.C. law office on Monday, alleges prosecutors in the Mineral County Attorney’s Office mishandled cases by omitting required disclosures during the criminal justice process, prompting defendants to enter guilty pleas when all relevant evidence hadn’t been considered.
“This error by the Mineral County Attorney’s Office impeded its citizens’ rights to make a fully informed decision about whether to proceed to trial,” the letter says. It points to the involvement of three Mineral County Sheriff’s deputies, Shawn Visintin, David Kunzelman and Patrick Nobles, asking that all Mineral County cases involving the deputies be reevaluated.
To the outsider, this article is very confusing. Even from my somewhat insider position, I get the sense some seriously compromised stuff has gone down. Maybe putting a few of these names into a broader context of recent cases, like the Rebekah Barsotti case, could be helpful.
Let’s begin with this guy:
Lance Jasper
Lance Jasper is an attorney in Missoula who strangely showed up at the Mineral County Commissioner hearing last November, the one where Rebekah Barsotti’s mother, Angela Mastrovito, began dismantling the false impression a real search was taking place for her daughter, and not a cover-up.
I finally spoke with Mr. Jasper a few months ago because I really wanted to know what he was up to. After a few unreturned calls, a promise to write about his stonewalling did the trick. Lance Jasper explained to me he was just showing up to encourage Sheriff Toth to ask for outside assistance. Jasper claimed he did this because he knew Toth’s Office wasn’t up to the task.
Moving on, the Missoulian article provides a little more context about WHY some cases might be compromised.
Jasper’s letter came after a court order last week ruling that the Mineral County Attorney’s Office didn’t make a timely disclosure in a criminal case, which prompted a Missoula judge to dismiss the case altogether.
“Timely disclosures are required for due process, and they ensure fair trials,” Missoula County District Judge Leslie Halligan wrote in the order filed on June 8.
The Mineral County Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the matter.
The order says theprosecutors erred in a criminal case by not noting Deputy David Kunzelman’s termination from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office in 2013.
The bouncing of a Sheriff Deputy like David Kunzelman from one jurisdiction to another, then not disclosing that fact, is what seems to be raising credibility issues. The movement of personnel from jurisdiction to jurisdiction is very similar to what happens to cases, making accountability more difficult. Is that the point?
David Kunzelman
It wasn’t so much this guy failed his exam, it’s the fact the Mineral County Attorney’s Office didn’t disclose that little fact (emphasis mine)
Gibson was accused of obstructing Kunzelman by resisting arrest and assaulting the deputy in August 2021. Sometime in late April or early May of this year, the state was notified Kunzelman was terminated as a reserve deputy by the Missoula sheriff’s office in 2013.
He was terminated after his supervisor was notified Kunzelman had reportedly cheated on his entrance exam to become a reserve deputy back in 2006.
The Mineral County Attorney’s Office didn’t disclose information about Kunzelman’s termination to Gibson or his attorney. The defense team learned about it on June 1 through a third party, and emailed the state asking for a disclosure in court, the order stated.
Mineral Deputy County Attorney Debra Jackson responded bysaying she didn’t know about any criminal charges against Kunzelman, but didn’t address the question posed to her about his employment record. She also didn’t acquire the deputy’s personnel record as requested, according to the order.
I put Mineral Deputy County Attorney Debra Jackson in bold because she BOLDLY asked one of the other three Deputies under scrutiny here, Patrick Nobles, all about the indiscretions that led to HIS termination.
And in what context did Debra Jackson ask Patrick Nobles those questions? In the David Barsotti domestic abuse case, of course, in which Patrick Nobles was the arresting officer.
Patrick Nobles
If the amount of cases impacted by this legal shit show are accurate, Lance Jasper’s law office should be VERY busy.
Jasper estimates at least 10 defendants have been affected by conduct similar to what Gibson experienced, but said that number might grow.
The letter doesn’t detail what behavior by Visintin and Nobles is prompting the request for disclosures, but it does accuse Nobles of indiscretion and dishonesty “for which he was fired.”
I think there is going to be more to come on this one, and some of the potential consequences could be significant, so stay tuned and thanks for reading!
While it might be in bad taste to express my excitement that Missoula’s collective leadership is worryingly anticipating WHITE SUPREMACISTS this Saturday, especially after the media terrorized the minds of the Pacific Northwest with a completely legit bust of the PATRIOT FRONT strain in Coeur d’Alene, my excitement will hopefully make a little more sense by the end of this article, so hang with me.
On-the-ground reporting, at least for me, has also entailed on-the-ground ranting because my direct, sometimes random conversations in Missoula allow me more leeway to discuss elements of this insanity than I can sometimes write about. Sometimes my inability to write about something is due to safety issues, and sometimes it’s because the timing isn’t right. Well, I think the timing is finally right to tell all you Zoom Chron readers about a REAL example of what the Missoulian is currently reporting on.
In the picture below there are two people. The man on the left, I am told, is Steven Barry. The man on the right is David Barsotti. While David Barsotti is now a familiar name in western Montana, due to his wife being dead and everyone but the Mineral County Sheriff’s Office thinking the circumstances are damn suspicious, not many people are aware of who Steven Barry is. Let’s change that!
A good piece of content regarding Steven Barry is this piece from the Southern Poverty Law Center, titled Steven Barry Becomes Important Figure in Paramilitary Underground. There is a lot of intriguing information in this piece, like this excerpt:
Eleven days after the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing, Sergeant First Class Steven M. Barry, a.k.a. “J.F.A. Davidson,” appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
Questioned by reporter Steve Kroft, the Special Forces soldier — his face obscured and voice altered electronically to hide his identity — identified himself as the editor of an underground newsletter called The Resister. Introducing Barry’s “political warfare journal,” Kroft told his listeners that it used “the same inflammatory rhetoric espoused by the radical militia movement and portrays the U.S. government as the enemy.”
“The command says you don’t exist,” Kroft told Barry.
I suggest reading the whole article, it’s pretty wild. And the fact this man’s narrative arc is potentially intermingling with David Barsotti’s is fascinating. Here’s a little more context from the article:
Here is the untold story of Steven Barry, drawn from this author’s role in an Army investigation and from numerous other sources. It shows that confidential Army information has been published in The Resister, a periodical once read by Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; that Barry received a career-ending reprimand as a result of his activities and, at one point, was a target of both federal and military criminal investigations; and that The Resister boasted of Special Forces members illegally defying orders in Haiti by helping to arm anti-democratic forces. It describes how U.S. military officials sidelined Congress and allowed Barry to remain in the military despite clear evidence of his extremism.
And it explains how The Resister, which today has a circulation of almost 2,500, was helped immeasurably by its intimate relationship with Soldier of Fortune, a magazine aimed at mercenaries and military men that enjoys a circulation of 100,000.
I am now VERY curious, with all this cultural angst brewing in the Northwest again, if the same local media landscape that studiously ignored the David Barsotti-hires-a-hitman-to-kill-his-mother-in-law angle might be interested in the David Barsotti-hangs-out-with-a-right-wing-extremist angle.
I know the Missoulian is interested because it’s only Wednesday and another story is being thrown up about our caring liberal community and how we JUST WON’T STAND for no Neo-Nazis. Like no way, no how! From the link (emphasis mine):
Racism has no place in Montana, according to Missoula mayor John Engen, commissioner Josh Slotnick and local rabbi Laurie Franklin. All three released statements condemning plans for a white supremacist neo-Nazi rally that’s apparently planned for Saturday in Missoula
“The City of Missoula will once again go on record in denouncing bigotry, hate and violence as a fresh crop of protesters and propagandists attempt to drive more wedges in our cracked republic,” Mayor Engen said. “We continue to monitor groups traveling the country and will respond appropriately to all credible threats.”
Engen is asking residents to be wary and report incidents that cause alarm.
Ok, let’s test this out. I am reporting an incident of NON INVESTIGATION by local authorities that is causing some serious alarm amongst the people paying attention, including me. And it’s not like there isn’t any credible reason, or REASONS, to be investigating, like the hitman who diligently documented his part in a criminal conspiracy to torch the trailer and/or Virginia home of Angela Mastrovito and her husband.
Exhibit A: recorded conversations between the hitman, Nathan Jacobsen, and David Barsotti.
So far, the hitman’s antics haven’t spurred any investigative scrutiny of David Barsotti. Could an association with a known extremist change that?
I’m not sure the answer to that, but if our elected leaders words are any indication, they are more worried about what they imagine COULD happen than what is actually happening in our community. To highlight this perspective, here’s Commissioner Slotnick using his noggin’ to conjure potential scenarios to be worried about:
Commissioner Slotnick said he recently heard about neo-Nazis planning to come here.
“This could just be an unfounded rumor,” he said. “Regardless, imagining such a thing brings a whole array of passionate negative emotions to a boiling point. We can take heart in knowing these dangerous misguided ideas have no place in Missoula County, that’s clear and easy.”
When it comes to a man like Steven Barry, there is no need to imagine anything. He lives in Montana, he has pals like David Barsotti, and he likes to fuel acts of domestic terrorism, like the Oklahoma City bombing.
Now, it might seem kind of risky to be writing about an extremist who hangs out with an eye-patch-wearing “merc”, but thankfully I have organizations like the Montana Human Rights Network to protect me. Yes, that is a joke.
But seriously, I find the lack of an investigation into the circumstances that led to Rebekah Barsotti’s “river accident” to be so inexplicably disturbing, my own imagination starts getting active, especially when I remember what Johnny Lee Perry told me about the KKK in Montana (aka “the trashmen”) doing things the badges with guns can’t.
I wish Johnny could have told me more, but he was shot dead last August by a Missoula County Sheriff Deputy in an incident that was totally NOT a state-sanctioned execution.
Getting back to our local extremist and the Southern Poverty Law Center piece, I think it’s important to note how seemingly isolated incidents can so embarrass intuitional authority that they find themselves FORCED to investigate. That is what happened when a black couple was murdered in 1995. From the SPLC link:
In the wake of the December 1995 murder of a black couple outside Ft. Bragg by three active-duty white supremacist paratroopers, the House National Security Committee decided to hold a hearing into extremist activity in the military.
That decision followed the embarrassing disclosure that Army officials had known for at least 10 months that one of the murderers was an active white supremacist who’d been caught wearing Nazi symbols and fighting with a black soldier. It also came after then-Army Secretary Togo West ordered an investigation into white supremacist activities at all Army bases.
Since we’re doing some imagining here, let’s imagine a local Sheriff with a VERY close relationship with a man suspected of contributing to his wife’s death. And let’s imagine other members of authority, like Ryan Funke, who might have been too preoccupied with wanting to be Sheriff that his ability to do basic investigative work was put on the back-burner.
I hope you can see now why I’m so excited: Missoula’s elected leaders have an AMAZING opportunity to address some REAL extremist shit going on, possibly so extreme that it’s compromised the entire Mineral County Sherrif’s Office (MCSO).
Or, if that’s too real, just find some LARPing Fed Bois and play pretend with them because that might be safer. Thanks for reading!
I take in a lot of local information from a variety of sources, and sometimes a little blip of a story in local media gets a boost from secondary data. That’s what happened after I noticed this little story about what’s moving in to the old Taco John’s. From the link:
According to the Missoulian, a new tenant has moved in where Taco John’s once stood. That would be Dr. Khanna’s Returning Youth Initiative, a nonprofit organization that helps young adults re-integrate into society after being released from incarceration.
According to their website, Dr. Khanna’s provides food, housing, personal skills training, education, and more to the young adults that pass through there. The organization has locations in 10 different states across the country – and in fact, this would be their second location in Montana. The other can be found on North Second Street in Hamilton.
Now, if this sounds too good to be true, I suspect it probably is. But I didn’t think much more about this story until I noticed this flyer posted at a pawn shop downtown:
This curious, small-print promotional flyer in the window of a pawnshop definitely piqued my interest, so I gave the contact person, listed under “Public Relations” for Montana, a call and this is what I found out about this dude:
Dr. Surajit Khanna
This “non-profit” (which is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York) makes all sorts of claims about providing great opportunities and services, but the person I spoke with on the phone acknowledged some important things that make me question what’s going on here.
First, the Returning Youth Initiative is currently collaborating with a grand total of ZERO other agencies in Montana, despite being present in Hamilton for over a year. Isn’t that a little strange?
Second, the organization is 100% self-funded. How is that?
What it seems this “non-profit” IS doing, according to the PR contact in Hamilton, is they are creating local businesses, and for helping create local businesses, this New York based organization retains “partial ownership”. Also, the notion of “youth” is a little misleading, since those eligible for this “help” must be 18-30 years old.
Here’s a few more of the characters associated with this organization worth checking out because they seem totally legit.
It’s entertaining to click around these websites. For my quick exploration of this one, I went to the programs section of Khanna Returning Youth, then clicked Celestia Holdings, Inc., then clicked “Partnerships” and, after clicking some entity called Mars Trading, I find the director is…Clem Yeboah!
I wish organizations with initiatives that sound like they actually give a shit about “youth” were on the up and up, but I’m at the point of automatically believing the inverse of any altruistic claim.
