Below is an image from the Tarkio boat launch, west of Missoula. It is my understanding, from multiple sources, that the body of Joey Thompson was found by a property owner somewhere between this point and the Forest Grove boat launch.
The picture at the bottom of the post is graffiti on the concrete wall where Joey Thompson was allegedly last seen. There is also a cheesy pentagram and “I love Satan” tag that looks very high school.
Sometimes things can be accomplished in verse when more conventional forms of communication can’t be used. Is this one of those times? Or am I just a poet who likes to rhyme?
a million little Mansons
like meth rats on the scene
the west it is not Jolly
the west is getting mean
don't you wet the whistle
of the missile men who flex
pulling down the pillars
for caverns they call sex
echo is the vibe now
shards of mirror cut
thin reflection isn't twin
fearful lungs will shut
down in river run-through town
where crosses are a joke
where shanty shacks and knife attacks
stem from friends of woke
shit, bro, are you triggered
can you guess what's next
will I jigger ups a rhyme
to bring down harshest hex?
witches they are busy
showing boys the knife
deconstruction everything
now Zooey wants a wife
Joey, on the other hand
waits for crime lab fucks
well dressed on the stand
but going cluck, cluck, cluck
which, I guess, is better
than going quack, quack, quack
at the Poverello Duck Pond
with red on white and black
hmmm, what am I saying here?
ask Detective Guy
ask about the LifeGuards
and who controls the time
when it comes to puppy dogs
sniffing out the blood
and little Russian flower girls
with petals on the run
why am I so angry?
lots of people ask
because I pay attention
speak up, then I act
and you? how about you
sneaking off the hook
is it too uncomfortable
to take a fucking look?
I have said enough
watch out for the rest
the boots I wear are tough
Lord, I did my best
If you haven’t made a donation to support my work, you can do so at my about page, or Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is another way to target my energies toward local action!
I would not call this episode one of my best efforts, but the show must go on, right? And when we’re talking about the ZOOEY ZEPHYR show, well, that show is definitely going on. And on. And on.
Why have I been in such a foul mood recently? I attended a local conservative meeting this week and received a generous $200 dollar donation, and I’ve gotten some other nice feedback on my effort fill the void left by dying local media outlets, like the Missoulian, but other comments are NOT appreciated, like Greg Strandberg’s close analysis of my personal/financial situation, which I chose to respond to.
Strandberg’s comment continues with his wonderment if what I’m doing is changing anything. Here’s the end of his comment and my response:
I appreciate Strandberg reminding me how closely my work is being scrutinized by some people, it’s actually helped me make some decisions about what NOT to do with my “free” time.
I had another conversation this week with a former target of my criticism who I’ve grown to have a new-found appreciation for. This appreciation began forming last November and is continuing as I assess community risk and look for local allies. I even had a nice conversation with the person I’ve speculated might be a financial terrorist about the encampment insanity in full bloom this spring. Strange bedfellows indeed!
Are things changing? Yes, though it’s hard to see, I believe the once-firm grip of narrative control is crumbling, and the rot is rising to the surface for all to see.
An investigative journalist and documentary film maker by the name of Maryam Henein responded to my outreach recently and said she would listen to my interview with Sean Stevenson’s sisters. Heneim made the documentary Vanishing of the Bees, which you can watch on Netflix.
Heneim’s latest effort is an hour-long documentary attempting to break the narrative control of the George Floyd “psyop”. Allie and I discuss the documentary in this week’s podcast episode.
If you value the content at my humble little wordpress blog, please consider supporting Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), or you can make a donation at my about page.
What’s coming up this week? Lots of stuff, I’m sure. Maybe I’ll even be lucky enough to get a call back from the Detective allegedly investigating what happened to Joey Thompson.
A few days after Joseph Thompson went missing, I drove to the area west of Missoula where he was reportedly last seen alive by friends around 4am on April 11th. I wasn’t specifically searching for Joey, but since this area is where Johnny Lee Perry was shot and killed by the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office, I wanted to take a look at the homeless camps in the area while search and rescue were doing their thing. I covered what I saw in this report posted on April 14th.
Since then I’ve learned some stuff about this case that might be helpful for the investigating agency, so I called the Detective yesterday and left a message, but I guess he was too busy to call me back. Maybe today?
When the search for Joey was scaled back over a week ago, here’s what authorities said about their decision (emphasis mine):
The Missoula County Sheriff’s Office Detective Division has investigated events before and after Thompson was reported missing with a news release stating that no evidence of criminal activity contributing to his disappearance has been found.
“Without further evidence to direct our search efforts, Missoula County Sheriff’s Office and Missoula County Search and Rescue has made the decision to reduce resources dedicated to the search of Joseph Thompson,” Smith stated.
No evidence of criminal activity? Ok, I guess one of Joey’s “friends” shaving his head and leaving town isn’t evidence of something suspicious going on. I have a second source backing up this interesting comment I found on Reddit:
This comment is referencing the fact the body of a young man was found on May 3rd in the Clark Fork river, but so far an ID hasn’t been made. Is it Joey Thompson? And who is this “concerned citizen” who found the body?
Another curious thing NOT happening is ANY activity on this case from the LifeGuard Group. I would have thought a group like this–always eager to post on social media about missing persons cases in Montana–would AT LEAST have something on their Facebook page, but I found nothing. Why?
To answer that question, I decided to call the phone number listed for this “anti-trafficking” group, and Tami Hochhalter answered. Did I get a satisfactory explanation for why the LifeGuard Group has been mum on the disappearance of Joey Thompson? Not really. Tami said something about only searching for minors, then amended that to only searching for potential trafficking victims.
When I started asking questions about the social connections, that’s when my side of the conversation got depicted as “aggressive”. Did I find out that Tami Hochhalter knows the sister of Joey Thompson? Yes I did, but I already knew that before I called. What I learned from the call is that this person wasn’t prepared to answer for their organization’s curious inaction.
If the body pulled from the river is identified as Joey Thompson, and the responsible jurisdiction is Mineral County, then we’re going to have some problems beyond the one I know about and can’t write about yet. What do I mean?
Perhaps a reference to the “train station” will help convey what I’m talking about. I heard this reference made second hand about this stretch of river through Mineral County, and I thought it fit well, so I went looking for a clever image and found a quote from a YouTube video that fits even better (sorry if it’s blurry and hard to read):
It’s amazing to me how being curious about the jurisdictional problems of homeless encampments is overlapping and, in some ways, directly informing my investigation into larger problems of corruption into some of our most critical institutions.
Just 8 days before Joey went missing I wrote about 3 other tragic stories that all resulted in these families having to hire private entities to do the work public investigators, and prosecutors, should be doing. To emphasize what can go WRONG when relying on private investigators, the Rolling Stone published, just 3 days ago, this piece on a PI who I, myself, have had to deal with.
I appreciate being able to have some interesting conversations with journalists outside the Missoula bubble. Sometimes these journalists even work for the Rolling Stone, and they understand more resources are needed to tell some incredible stories brewing here in Big Sky country.
To help my storytelling efforts, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), and the donation button at my about page, have been neglected for far too long. How about YOU change that today!
It saddens me what unscrupulous people are doing amidst the institutional decay of our criminal justice system. I don’t think we would have gotten to this point if we had some local media with teeth to take a REAL bite out of what’s really going on.
Instead we have a Missoula newspaper telling me about a Bozeman ultra-runner who uses torturous pain to connect to his primal self. Can I get a big FUCK YOU to Lee Enterprises for making their product shittier and shittier?
If this guy wants to experience “tortuous events” he should sit through a session of County Government where the proclamations are long, the public commenters are cranky, the technology is glitchy, and even the people supposedly knowledgeable about policy, like the weed dude, can barely string together a coherent sentence to save his life.
Maybe all this can be discussed at the May 15th City Club discussion regarding the imminent death of our local news industry. Will the body pulled from the Clark Fork be identified by then? If not, maybe I can ask the Missoulian editor about it at City Club.
I have compiled some video clips of City Council meetings where I have provided public comment in order to highlight my own personal growth so that a hypocrite like Stacie Anderson has less of an opportunity to shut me up.
When I was point-of-ordered in February, it was because I broke rules of decorum that I hadn’t been fully aware of. Using specific names of institutions and individuals is a sure-fire way of getting shut down. For more context, here’s a screenshot from the Missoula rule book:
Well, thems the rules, and below is a video of the consequences for breaking them rules. Then there’s a clip from the presiding officer of my point-of-order praising the BRAVE actions of Zooey Zephyr, who I must apologize to for misspelling her last name in the video. I did NOT mean to imply that Zephry is the proper way to spell her last name.
After that you will see me giving another public comment. I even provide SHOW and TELL! In order to safely accomplish my educational comment, security asked if they could hold on to my ziplock bag of Todd trash. I thought this was more than reasonable.
You see, in Helena, I heard a glove was thrown from the gallery when protests in support of Zooey Zephyr erupted. I hadn’t seen this reported in mainstream media, but James Connor assured me it was, and that throwing a glove was no big deal.
I actually am glad to see James Conner putting out tweets, he’s been through the ringer, health-wise, and is a part of that old blogging community Montana used to have. Now, like the rest of the media landscape, it’s a matter of clinging on however one can.
For me, that means trying to raise awareness about stories I think matter because the layers of injustice involved are so incredible, they undermine any claim of having a safe, prosperous, and inclusive community like our elected leaders claim they want for us.
I’m glad supporters of decorum, like Stacie Anderson, have helped me see the error in my ways. Now here’s the educational video I promised. Thanks for the support!
The 48 year old sex offender who assaulted two Department of Transportation staff last September during a homeless camp clean up is back in the news, though not named by this NBC Montana report. Apparently this violent POS “fell asleep” while the river was coming up, requiring a river rescue.
For a better idea of who we are talking about, here’s some online info about Todd Spence worth considering:
So, this NON-COMPLIANT sex offender, with a recent history of violence, took up valuable first responder time yesterday because, I’m assuming, he was too fucked up on drugs to notice the river coming up around his tent. This is the area where I called 911 for a welfare check because one of the campers couldn’t pull his pants up, also the result of drug use.
Here’s a question I still can’t adequately answer: why is Missoula incapable of holding this violent sex offender accountable for his behavior? Is the liberal, victim-splaining political climate so powerful and pervasive that our Sheriff’s Office and County Attorney’s Office can’t figure out how to properly investigate and charge this piece of shit?
Todd Spence’s violent behavior has gone unchecked for so long that the Montana Department of Transportation (MDOT) has to pay private security to mitigate the risk to their Missoula staff. Let me say that again. A state agency is paying Rogers International PUBLIC money so that this PRIVATE security company can place a guard at the door of their Missoula offices. I confirmed yesterday that this action has been taken primarily because of Todd Spence’s continued harassment of MDOT staff.
Yesterday I attended the Public Safety Committee with a clear plastic bag containing some of the remaining trash from Todd’s East Broadway meth shack that didn’t get removed in my epic meth shack clean up that cost me $1,200 dollars–a price tag YOU can help me cover by supporting Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF)!
I wanted to inspire our local leaders by showing them that they are NOT as helpless as they claim. I also wanted to show Stacie Anderson how much I’ve grown since getting shut down by her on February 6th when this Zooey-Zephyr-supporting Democrat point-of-ordered me for suggesting the Sheriff’s Office euthanized a black man by the name of Sean Stevenson after he was assaulted inside the Poverello Center on January 3rd, 2020.
Later today I’ll have a bonus post with a video featuring my comment from that February City Council meeting juxtaposed with Stacie Anderson’s support for a national movement disrupting the democratic process in Helena. Hypocrite? Damn right she is.
If you appreciate the work I’m doing, today is a day of giving, so please consider supporting the work I’m doing. In addition to my impact fund, you can also make a donation at my about page.
