Just south of downtown Missoula a little slice of hipness once existed, but earlier this week, while scheduling a therapeutic float, I realized the “Hip Strip” appears to be dying. I counted, in one block, two failed weed stores sitting empty and a “for rent” sign in the window of the former Legacy Lounge. Ouch.
A few days after taking this picture I was on the other side of the street and a homeless man was in the empty storefront of Legacy Lounge taking a nap in his wheelchair.
The scene last Friday night was much more chaotic, but I only saw the tail-end of the action. Why was the woman being arrested, I wondered? A few days later I had my answer.
From the link (emphasis mine):
On June 23, 2023, Missoula Police Department officers responded downtown for a report of an assault just after midnight. An officer arrived and spoke with a male who was covered in mace and complaining of extreme pain. The male stated he was having trouble breathing. The officer spoke with the male while he was being assessed by medical professionals that responded.
The male stated he was sitting on the sidewalk next to a duo of males that were playing guitar when an unknown female came up to him and sprayed him with a gel mace unprovoked. He stated he was having difficulty remembering what had occurred due to not being able to see or breathe.
…
A short time later, a female that matched the physical description of the witnesses was located by other officers. An officer approached the female who was later identified as 35-year-old Madelein Owen. Owen stated she didn’t attack either of the musicians. Owen made further statements, voicing her frustration for the guitar players and her hatred for homeless individuals.
Wow, that’s some serious animosity being expressed toward potentially homeless street performers. At least this woman’s violence wasn’t lethal, unlike what happened this same weekend up north, in Kalispell. From the link (emphasis mine):
Two men are in the Flathead County Jail on charges of deliberate homicide after a weekend assault on a homeless man.
Kalispell Police officers responded to reports of an assault at Appleway Drive and Meridian Road around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday.
When they arrived, they found a man with significant injuries. The victim was taken to Logan Health where he died a short time later.
The victim has been identified as 60-year-old Scott Bryan who the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office reports he had no listed addresses in Kalispell.
Originally, when the 19 year old and 18 year old were charged with this crime, both young men were pictured in local reports, but for some reason I can only find an image of this suspect:
Is there a connection between these two trends? I would argue, yes, both trends are consequences of a shitty economy driving a sick culture to the edge, or over the edge, depending on where you’re standing.
Is there a solution? If there is, it’s not going to be delivered by the same people who helped get us into this mess, assuming we’re even talking about people in the first place. But that’s a topic for another post.
If you appreciate my local reporting, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to support my work, while making a donation at my about page is another.
I admit, the question seems absurd. How could sexual deviants be helping Mountain Line get a new home for public buses? After listening to two former bus drivers for Mountain Line talk about their experience last week at the weekly Let’s Improve Reserve Street Facebook group, the importance of counting warm bodies for federal funding is coming into focus for me. Let me explain.
First, I’d like to express my appreciation to the two drivers who came forward to describe what it’s like providing FREE bus rides in Missoula. The shift to “zero-fare” happened 7 years ago, and it was a critical step to getting that sweet federal loot. Here’s the framing from the Mountain Line website (emphasis mine):
Since this shift happened at the tail-end of my time working at the homeless shelter, I saw how this played out, especially as it related to the Homeless Outreach Program I coordinated. When the bus cost a little money, the bus passes my program purchased were great tools to incentivize better choices among the shelter-resistant population I was working with. When bus rides became free, that tool disappeared, as did the informal filter I provided by NOT simply handing out bus passes to anyone for any reason.
I didn’t realize the goal at the time was acquiring more funding at any cost, and if customer/driver experiences suffered from blowing up the numbers, oh well.
After zero-fare was established, the Mountain Line agenda became more clear, as did the indifference from its leadership. I’ve written a handful of articles about this transformation over the years. Here are a few:
The expansion of Mountain Line is being directed by Corey Aldridge, a handsomely paid “CEO” (he changed his title) who is now positioning his publicly-enabled “company” to build a new “home” for buses. Why? Because this humble outpost is no longer adequate:
Leaders of Missoula’s Mountain Line transit system are celebrating today after news that the agency has been awarded one of the largest upgrades ever since buses first started to roll over 45 years ago.
Word came from U.S. Senator Jon Tester’s office Wednesday that Mountain Line is getting more than $39 million to pay for the construction of a new Maintenance and Operation Base for the Missoula Urban Transportation District.
The money comes from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Isn’t this great? A Senator up for a VERY tough reelection is bringing home some bus-bacon for Mr. Bus CEO. Let’s celebrate! And let’s ALSO remember that when making a new bus-home-omelet, sometimes you have to break a few 12 year old eggs by exposing them to masturbating perverts. It’s just part of the cost of doing business, right Corey?
Who cares if your bus drivers are working 6 days a week amidst unsafe conditions with a 50% turnover rate year to year while drug addicts get fucked up and ride the bus all day? If someone is losing their shit on the bus, just pull over and wait for a supervisor, or that “resource officer” supposedly dedicated to bus issues, at a cost of $50,000 dollars, but is never seen by Mountain Line employees. Doesn’t this sound like a great job?
Other highlights from the public conversation include unsafe pickups being encouraged until someone died and the policy got changed, unsafe people who were previously revoked from using the bus service being allowed back on, and other incidents of violence and sexually inappropriate behavior which gets suppressed and doesn’t make the news.
Is growth at any cost actually good for our community? We don’t get to have that conversation if we don’t know the extent of what is happening in our community, and with CEO Corey Aldridge in the figurative driver’s seat, it sounds like those sitting in ACTUAL driver/passenger seats are suffering the consequences.
It’s a good thing people like CEO Corey Aldridge are insulated from reality with our public dollars, because reality is getting more fucked up out there by the day.
If you appreciate the reality I am reporting on six days a week, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to support my work, and the donation button at my about page is another.
I just wanted an oil change and the winter tires off, but several dealership visits later, the wheel (not just tire) literally came off while I was driving over the Reserve Street bridge on Friday. If I had taken this piece of shit vehicle on the highway earlier in the day, like I had originally planned, the wheel coming off could have killed me.
Instead of dying in a fiery crash, I ended up in a curious conversation with a Chinese woman who spoke zero English because I wanted to let the business know my defunct automobile would be dealt with eventually, but it might take me a few days. And the business? BZ Spa.
The clumsy conversation consisted of the woman scrolling through her phone to find the number for the manager while I pondered silently to myself how unrelentingly weird my life has become. Of course I stumbled onto this “spa” just days after it was reported that a 3rd suspect was arrested in a “trafficking scheme” surrounding a massage parlor on the other side of town, which I wrote about earlier this month in a post titled On Selling Sex In Zoom Town.
From the first link (emphasis mine):
More accusations emerged in an alleged sex trafficking scheme as local officials work to untangle what apparently is a larger, international trafficking web with ties to Missoula.
Last week, a felony attempted sex trafficking charge was filed against a third suspect, identified in court documents as Hui Wang, 55. In May, Yanbin Bao, 52, and Richard R. Bushey, 64, were each charged with a slate of felony human trafficking charges after Missoula sheriff deputies raided their massage parlor business near Blue Mountain Road.
Nearly a month later, Bao and Bushey have not entered pleas to the charges — their arraignment dates have been postponed several times because of court delays. Both are out of custody, having posted bond.
Well, that’s a lot of interesting information for me to consider. And here’s some MORE information to consider from information that’s publicly available through state database searches, like the Secretary of State website:
From this information I went to the Montana Cadastral website and plugged in the mailing address to see what popped up. This is what popped up:
The more I thought about the geographic positioning of BZ Spa (Reserve Street bridge area) in relation to Soul Massage (Buckhouse bridge area), the more I saw possible similarities, like how both massage parlors were in close proximity to homeless camps; Soul Massage was right near the original location of the Transitional Safe Outdoor Space (TSOS), while BZ Spa is right near the former (and illegal) Reserve Street encampment no-go zone. Interesting.
Let’s go back to the Missoulian article to see how this third suspect got herself nabbed by authorities (emphasis mine):
On May 30, the day after Bushey and Bao were arrested, the affidavit in Wang’s case alleges the property owner was cleaning up the building when he was approached by a woman driving a maroon Mazda with a New York license plate.
She asked the owner about taking over the lease on the parlor business for more money, according to charging documents. The driver was identified by authorities as Wang. A detective learned Wang had a “felony full extradition warrant for ‘impersonation of a licensed professional’ and ‘advertisement online offering sexual services along with illegal massages and conducting outcalls to different locations,’” the affidavit stated. Wang was arrested on the warrant.
Authorities contacted the owner of the land at 5000 Highway 93 South.
“(The property manager) indicated that he has rented the property to many tenants of Asian origin and they often cycle through tenants every few years,” the affidavit in Wang’s case stated.
I wonder, will the focus of this emerging criminal conspiracy with international ties stay conveniently glued to the foreign names and nationalities of the accused? Because it sounds to me like the property owner maybe should have had a clue as to what was transpiring at “Soul Massage”.
Zooming out from these unfolding local cases, an aggregate site I check regularly reports an increasing number of Russian and Chinese nationals are being caught at the souther border. From the link (emphasis mine):
Pfluger highlighted the growing migration crisis resulting from the administration’s policy decisions, leading to significant increases in encounters at the Southwest border. Of particular concern were the encounters involving individuals from what he referenced as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia.
He pointed out that several sheriff’s offices had reported apprehending multiple high-value targets from China, who were subsequently taken into custody by the FBI and cited data from the CBP showing increase in fiscal year 2023 encounters with nationals from various continents by border patrol along the Southwest border.
“In the first seven months of fiscal year 2023, over 9,711 PRC nationals were encountered by U.S. border patrol along our Southwest border exponentially more than the previous three years,” Pfluger said, warning that the “chaos of the Southwest border could be taken advantage of by anti-U.S. regimes.”
The lawmaker went on to emphasize that the expanding influence of China and other foreign adversaries in Latin America posed clear implications for U.S. homeland security. The chairman further stressed the urgent need to address the security challenges associated with nation-state actors in the region.
Another article (yes, Fox News) reports arrests of Chinese nationals at the southern border have risen, in some places, close to 800%. This article was published in February of this year.
From the link (emphasis mine):
A senior Customs and Border Protection (CBP) source said that apprehensions of nationals from China are up 800% compared to the same period last fiscal year when including January — the numbers for which have not yet been released.
According to CBP statistics, there have been 1,862 Border Patrol encounters with Chinese nationals between October, when the fiscal year began, and the end of December. That’s compared to 229 in the same period in FY 2022, which would be a more than 700% increase.
In summary, a near cataclysmic failure of my wheel may have just exposed another node in a vast, international criminal conspiracy involving Chinese nationals and the lucrative sex market servicing sad, lonely men hoping to soften the quiet misery of their lives with erotic massages.
Or, for me, just another Friday in Zoom Town!
If you appreciate my local journalism, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to support my work, and the donation button at my about page is another.
On Friday I completed my bi-county public comment campaign with an appearance at the Mineral County Commissioner meeting in Superior, Montana. Not only did I show up on time, I even had the opportunity to speak directly with Sheriff Funke afterward, and it was a good conversation!
The main takeaway I got from this conversation is that the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office is still the sole jurisdiction responsible for any investigation into death of Joey Thompson, despite the body being found in Mineral County. I was able to communicate some of the information I can’t write about, and I got assurances my frustration about the non-response from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office would be communicated directly to our Sheriff, Jeremiah Petersen.
A note to reporters who may or may not work at the Missoulian: going DIRECTLY to the geographic places you are trying to get information from can sometimes produce positive results!
Another part of the conversation with Sheriff Funke I feel comfortable relating to Zoom Chron readers is how I articulated my suspicion of outsiders coming in to do things for their own reasons, which often times has to do with money. I will make a few exceptions, of course, for those rare moments when national media tries to expose the predations of outside agitators, but their goal is ultimately the same as the P.I. exposed in the article below, and that’s to squeeze money from tragic circumstances.
Does an article like this, from Hunter S. Thompson’s old rag, mean that Mineral County will get additional resources to do proper investigations when the need arises? Very doubtful. That kind of work has to come from those who LIVE in the communities impacted by political decisions at local and state levels.
I hope my attempts to convey my perspective, even to people I’ve been quite critical of, is understood as the actions of someone who is genuinely worried about what’s happening to his community and country, and ultimately what that means for the younger generation coming of age amidst this insanity.
Below are the links to the week’s posts, and above, in podcast form, is the first chapter of In Retrospect: A History of Mineral County, by Margie E. Hahn. If you appreciate my LOCAL journalism, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to support me, and making a donation at my about page is another.
Before I get to the email sent to A LOT of local officials in Missoula AND Mineral Counties, I’d like to add another person to the WON’T CALL ME BACK list, and that person is the Executive Director of Hope Rescue Mission, Jim Hicks.
When I called Hope Rescue Mission this week, the woman who answered seemed genuinely concerned about the death of Joey Thompson. I explained my concern, as an independent journalist, that a vigorous investigation didn’t seem to be occurring, so I was calling to see if any investigator had contacted Hope Rescue Mission. No, said the woman, then she took my name and number to pass along to Jim Hicks. I never heard anything back.
I will probably NOT be hearing back from the Communications Director for the Montana Department of Justice based on this automatic (and out-of-date) reply:
I’m hopeful Kyler Nerison is out in this beautiful state enjoying the scenic wilds and recharging those batteries for the herculean effort at narrative control his position necessitates because, when he gets back to the office, he will see my email. I hope reading my email makes him VERY worried about his ability to control narratives so people, like money-plump tourists, can have that false sense of security as they visit our beautiful state.
Here it is:
Good morning,
What would you do if a young woman at a memorial for an 18 year old kid told you she was raped, she reported it, and nothing happened? What would you do if the young man she was talking about is rumored to be connected to the death of that same 18 year old kid? We are told that if we see something, we should say something. Going further, if I KNOW something, I should report it to the proper authorities. Right?
When I think about the NON response I’ve gotten from BOTH the Missoula County and Mineral County Sheriff Offices in regards to the Joey Thompson case, I think about my own kids and what it must feel like to be a parent stuck in the hell of speculation as weeks turn into months and years of no answers where an investigation is supposed to be. Maybe there is one, and maybe there’s a good reason for the non-response. In that case I hope people like County Commissioners can get involved, like ask questions, and then THEY can be clued in, since they pay the bills.
To answer the question WHAT WOULD YOU DO, well, I’ve seen what grief-stricken parents have been FORCED to do, like Angela Mastrovito. What you have to do, if you can afford it, is PAY the private sector to do what the public sector either CANNOT, or WILL NOT, do, then you crawl up the ladder of public accountability in the hopes accountability, somewhere, exists, instead of just things like self-interested political ambition and incompetency.
I am now trying to contact state officials, as you can see from who I’ve sent this email to, but I don’t have a lot of faith that will do anything other than put a larger target on MY OWN BACK for trying to get answers about other cases, like trying to figure out what REALLY happened to Sean Stevenson inside the Poverello Center, and why Johnny Lee Perry was REALLY out in the woods on the day he was shot in the back by MCSO Deputies.
Enough of you on this email have received MORE information than what I’m choosing to share here, stuff I haven’t even written about publicly at my website, and I say that in case anything happens to me. If you think I’m being dramatic, ask my former spouse about the letter we received at the house I used to live at before I started paying the REAL price for bringing accountability to the surface in this town.
Thank you for doing what you can to lessen the burden of all the unpaid jobs I’m currently doing to satisfy what I feel called to do. I’m going to keep searching for real answers in these cases because I would want someone doing the same thing for me if something tragic happened to one of my kids.
See y’all at a public mic soon, where I will continue following the rules of decorum to the best of my abilities.
On Wednesday, at the Committee of the Whole, I did just that because the disconnects, I suspect, are numerous, and there’s a NEW one I’m currently exploring that I wanted to mention to Council members, since it may be time-sensitive, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
I say “the clock is ticking” in the title of this post because that’s the reality in ANY investigation. As time elapses, evidence can be compromised, or destroyed, and memories fade. Just ask the family of Jermain Charlo, a family who got NO CLOSURE after bloody clothes were found on the property where her ex-boyfriend lived. Why? Because too much time went by for the blood sample to be usable. I’m sure that wasn’t intentional, right Guy?
Another person who seems to understand what time can do to evidence is NOT on this email, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know about a conversation this person had with someone regarding the body of Rebekah Barsotti. Was that body kept refrigerated at the Crime Lab in Missoula? The person said no, the body was NOT refrigerated. Who is this person? I’m going to keep that one close to the vest, for now.
Talking about missing persons got me thinking about the LifeGuard Group, so I went to Facebook to see what the Hochhalter family is doing with their family business non-profit, but it appears I’ve finally been blocked. Darn! I guess all the amazingly educational material offered by this “non-profit” will be denied to me. Unless I find other methods to observe it. Like Youtube.
If public sector communication directors are too busy to change their automatic email reply, and if investigators are too busy to investigate, and if documenting all the impressive NOT HAPPENING going on by making public comment after public comment produces nothing of substance, what is an independent journalist to do?
Right now it would be a luxury to entertain next steps in getting basic things to happen in the case of a dead 18 year old kid–or any of the other cases I’m looking into–and that’s because my vehicular problems are not relenting, so once I get that figured out, I’ll wrap up this latest phase of my public comment campaign and plan accordingly.
Now, here’s a big THANK YOU to the recent support I’ve received with some generous donations and a very nice email that helps my morale more than I can say. The ways to join those appreciative Zoom-Chron’ers include Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF), making a donation at my about page, or you can email me at willskink at yahoo dot com for details on where to send non-digital support.
If I return in one piece from Mineral County, Sunday’s post will feature the first chapter of In Retrospect: A History of Mineral County, by Margie E. Hahn (and read by me). Then, on Monday, I’m hoping to have something more substantial about what might be changing with pre-trial supervision.
