Ep 5: Jesus, Guns and Babies

You're just an alone.

Hey, and this is Candice Taylor.

“It's cop colors up on the house, and there's police like in my yard.”

Okay. Can you step out of time, Tom? Tom, Tom, because we got a text that Tom called for me. It's July 12th, 2022. Six days after the guide stones were blown up,

the police are outside of Candice Taylor's home in South Georgia. Okay, well, I need you to step up. No, man, I'm not safe and outside. I don't feel safe. They have the rifles drawn, aimed at the front of her house. The local 911 dispatcher had gotten a call.

Saying a violent crime had been committed. And the call came from Candice Taylor's address. I need you to come to the front door. I can't, I can't, I don't feel safe. I'm sorry.

We got a taste to talk from a Candice. And while the somebody in that house has been shot for a time. You're kidding me. But that is a lie. There's been no gunshot in my life. There's no way I'm coming outside against one of that in my house.

Okay, I understand that. Somebody did this to make the government for governor. And they're hard to kill me. They have rifles under their house. The scene is chaotic and confusing.

“Candice Taylor is refusing to open the front door.”

And officers are looking into the windows of her home with weapons drawn. She's terrified. But the dispatcher is employing her to open the door. She thinks someone has been killed inside Candice Taylor's home. I just want to make sure my family.

No way, I'm there not trying to kill your family. They're there because of the call that I got. I'm so sorry that y'all are going through this. But this is my family. It's the area that my family is.

We always, I just got a shower.

I don't have any clothes. I'm just got a shower. I'm trying to find clothes. I'm shaking all over. Yes, my mom.

I'm sure you're very upset. You're insane. This is crazy. Candice Taylor is trying to explain that no one has been shot. And there is no emergency.

She tells them this is a prank called Swating. It's an internet phenomenon where someone calls in a fake violent crime to cause police to raid a person's home.

“For the victim of the prank, it's dangerous.”

Because I'd rather go get a warrant to come inside to the end. Because I'm not going to out the glasses when I get made to them to kill me. Candice Taylor will not cooperate. She recognizes one of the officers outside of her house and even knows his name. Trying to reason with her through the locked front door.

But she will not walk outside. And so the dispatcher tells Candice Taylor if she won't come out. They need to come in. They're not there. I'll be a police.

I got a time-paint. I got a time-paint. I got a time-paint. I got a time-paint. Would you be safe to take me to God?

Or are you coming out the front door? I'm not here looking at the internet. That's the door. Right? I'm going to phone now.

I'm going to one. I got you a minute right here. There's rock holes. All of them are high-all. All around the house.

You speak to the dispatcher. That's fine, too. It is. My kids are now awake. I got this.

I'll let you swing your bed. The internet. The internet is in the trauma that you caused my house. I'm not open the door. I'm not open the door.

I don't want to be shot. Go ahead and do it. Go ahead and do it. How do I know that? How do I know that?

I'm not being shot. I'm not being shot. I know how they stay safe. I'm going to be shot. It's safe.

Then why do you have to go to my door? Did you actually make sure everything is okay? You promised me that I was here.

Finally, the police enter the home.

When they're inside, Candace Taylor lets loose what she thinks this is really all about. I'm scared. I'm feeling ashamed there. But what I'm saying, I'm thinking,

who wants to die of someone? I'm going to die of somebody. She tells the officer, the people who made this swadding call believe she blew up the guidestones.

Oh, man. I want everything from DDI. This is ridiculous. My whole house was so sweet and the lives are everywhere.

And I'm looking at the cameras and the footage with rocks all around my house. Are you kidding me? When news got out that the guidestones were destroyed,

people online were going,

Some were openly celebrating, praising Jesus, calling their destruction and act of God.

“Others were sharing their outrage and fear.”

Theories were being posted everywhere. For anyone who wasn't a Candace Taylor supporter, the timing of her campaign video, which had dropped just weeks before, wasn't a coincidence.

People started pointing fingers in her direction. First were comments, then they sent hate mail, then pranked call to the police.

They went to the first half.

The Michael she's doing is. I think what they do to us. I think they're all like, we're going to show you that. And people that wanted us to win me.

They lost. From the Atlanta Journal Constitution, this is, who blew up the guidestones? Episode 5.

Jesus, guns, and babies. (gentle music) Candace Taylor hasn't given any interviews about the Georgia guidestones since the day after the explosion.

“She almost completely stopped talking about them.”

But that hasn't stopped people from talking about her. Candace Taylor's name is still synonymous with the guidestones bombing. We wanted to know what she knew.

But after everything that had happened at her home, we really didn't think she would take our call. Until she did. People inundated me with stuff.

I was like, "Oh, my gosh. I'm out of the poster child for the Georgia guidestones. Just stop. They're Satanic. They're demonic.

I'm glad they're down. I mean, why are you doing this?" We are on the phone with Candace Taylor.

And she's finally talking about

what happened with the guidestones. I don't remember ever going anything about them until I was around for office. At the first time I was hurt and if I did, I don't remember it.

Candace Taylor said she really didn't think much about the guidestones until around 2020

“when she learned about a strange monument in Elburton.”

What I remember is hearing at one of our events, somewhere at some point, what I was running for you is Senate. Somebody that was a Christian say

that they had those guidestones about. What is that? I remember good little. I looked at them and I felt about 100 million people

and had all these stipulations about that. That's kind of weird. She says she didn't know anything about how the stones were created or who put them up.

But she could just feel that they were evil. I was just traveling. I went to all 159 counties and I did it when I ran for governor and I went to Elburton County

and I was like, you know what? This is where this guy was born. So I just wrote by I had one of my volunteers. And we just wrote by the road where they were. And when we wrote by,

I'm telling you from the head to my head about my feet. I felt, not the Holy Spirit. I felt a wicked presence.

And I felt, you know, you know, you know, in the graveyard or something just something weird.

And so the girl, we wish you that. You must stop us at head. No, I didn't get out of that car. And then I was like,

I played the blood of Jesus over us. And I'm for peaking things that we try to touch and save in Jesus' night. That was it. She drove away from the guide stones

with a strong sense that these stones were wrong. Essentially they were part of something demonic. But it was during her campaign, when she was running for governor in 2022 that the guide stones came back into her life.

Candace Taylor's campaign platform was pretty simple. Ten executive orders that she would carry out on day one if elected George's governor. She denounced them on the campaign trail, one by one. To be honest,

the guide stones weren't her top priority. But as she was trying to think of a 10th order, she remembered the stones. And it wasn't like I've actually thought, "Oh, I'm going to do this.

I'm going to make the guide stones never get in."

It was like, "Right on a man." "Well, you know what? I don't want the guide stones to get down to you." "There's the pain that I don't like. Then it came down."

And so what we did, let's do a video about it. She proposed an order that would cut Albert County off from state funds until the guide stones were removed. And she decided to film a video promoting this order

at the site of the guide stones. I told us what they wanted to do. So I might even say

"I was there doing my filming.

“There were these people dressed in black”

with, like, eyeliner and, obviously, legoffic. And they came up with this mangy, blonde-tiller dog. Skin abounds on a makeshift leash. And got out of the vehicle. I started walking up there.

And I looked at the people that were filming with me. And we looked at us. And I said, "What are you going to do with that dog?" And they got back in the car and left. And I'm telling you, there's no doubt

in my mind that almost sacrificed that animal. As she spent more time around the stones, they gave her a seriously bad vibe. So it was with conviction that she released her campaign video

out into the world. Candace Taylor had sparked controversy before, especially for her Jesus guns and babies slogan, which was painted on the side of her campaign bus. But nothing compared to the response she got

after she released the video about the guide stones.

“"I had to start and get a lot of attacks”

from the Montana church. You know, painful sight." They don't think about the Montana church as being a real entertainer. You just say, "Yeah, they're stable worshippers,

but they're weirdos." And they're not really, there's not that many of them. There's a lot of people that pride this dark magic and they do those things.

I'm not scared of that because always spirit is inside of me.

And Jesus defeated it all. But definitely, you know, it was just weird. You know, I guess we kind of dramatized it because we made it online. In late May of 2022,

a little over a month before the explosion. Candace Taylor lost the Republican nomination for Georgia Governor. And she started to move on to the next thing. But she never could shake her association

with the guide stones. Governor Rice was over in the May. I was getting half of David's proven

“that I have more votes than what they should be having.”

There's a lot of the dagger to vector. Back to the fourth of July. The day that they came down, I was at work that morning. Considered by some conservative Christians

to be satanic was badly damaged by the explosion. She says she didn't find out about the guide stone's explosion until the next morning. And she was like, "You're not the believe this." And she told me, "I'm not so deprived."

I mean, I was like, "What?" And I really, it was a blessing coming. It was a lot. About the hand of God is so merciful to get rid of these things that, "No, I didn't win the governor's statement.

He took care of it." I mean, that was my Christian perspective. And what I thought, you know, the little, you know, the Lord took care of it himself, you know?

Candace Taylor said she believed they were destroyed by an act of God. Lightning had struck the guide stones down. And the county had graciously taken care of the rest. It wasn't until the GBI posted grainy footage of a person walking up to the guide stones,

and placing a bomb at their base. Candace Taylor realized, "Maybe God had a little help." And then it's like, "At that not on Twitter, the GBI's list of videos and it looks weird as somebody running up to, "Well, I thought,

how can somebody put that much explosive up there on foot inside that fence?" And that's when the real trouble started for Candace Taylor. It was pretty bad. We're talking about hundreds of Miss Coles,

but I'd like to get in the morning, where the same people over in our neighbor exist and it's freaking out. And just like, just nuts, I feel like it was like a shrine to them.

So for people to be that passionate about a bunch of rocks, there's something sinister about it. For them to take time to mail me, to Tannit Books." The calls and hate mail went on for days.

And Candace Taylor says she was handling it just fine. But then, on July 12, the local police were on her lawn, with guns pointed at her house. "Very traumatizing for my family.

There were guns pointing at my kids. Windows, this went on for, you know, 40,000 minutes. It was fairly, very scary about a trauma." She told us that her swatting incident, which was six days after the bombing,

was the first contact she had

with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, since the guy's tone's exploded. When the GBI did contact her, it wasn't to investigate the guy's tones. It was to investigate the fake 911 call.

until I was squatted.

“And then I told my agent that the guy's stones,”

I had been on the national news for the guy's stones,

because I was talking about my second order all that,

and then I was going to head there through it, and had, you know, national news put me out there." According to Candice Taylor, she had to explain to the GBI, why the swatting incident was probably connected

to the guy's stones. "And I told them all the connection with the guy's stones, and everything that happened. So obviously, they were looking at people that were surrounded in my guess,

and obsessed or whatever that they might have wanted to kill me." The GBI worked with Candice Taylor in the dispatcher, but that was the last she heard from the GBI. "I think that everybody's who said that the GBI is net narrative,

because we stressful and force met. Well, I didn't stress it, because I was somebody who lived right there. They said it was a lot. And it is, it doesn't make sense.

So I hope when you do your research, you research if it was actually grown up or not."

“"I think I was prophetic and what I spoke.”

It was prophetic." I said, "I needed to come down. The Lord warned him to come down. How was Spirit warned him down?" They were, "You know, there's no place for him in Georgia."

And said, "I needed to come down." And whether a lot in the bottom down or whether somebody had something sinister, they did bring him down. But if they were done, if it was done, he'd leave somebody

to be able to countable." In all the chaos after the guidestone's explosion, Candace Taylor's name was Everywhere. Dozens of people, an Albertan Facebook groups, shared they believed she did it.

But the first time she ever interacted with the GBI, was six days after the bombing. And even then, the GBI showed up for a different reason.

And then never contacted her again.

Hearing that from Candace Taylor, really makes us wonder,

“just what has the GBI done in this investigation?”

If they haven't even talked to Candace Taylor, who have they been talking to? [music] They're in the Urlaub. We're here for you.

With Candace, the back of the house is a place where the barbed wire is built, which is where the capital is built, and why the whole house is built in a large area. Our cars are in the absolute way.

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The GBI is the one who is going to be the best. The GBI is the one who is going to be the best. The GBI is the one who is going to be the best. Maybe they could tell us why they hadn't contacted Candice Taylor or if they had contacted anyone.

Because at this point, we hadn't found a single person who had more than a passing interaction with the GBI. We knew there was one GBI agent who gave an interview with a local paper right after the bombing. So we assumed that he was the agent in charge of the case.

But they never answered or returned our messages.

And we were told that if we wanted to facilitate any kind of interview with this agent or the GBI in general, we needed to go through their communications office.

We're reporters.

“They're not obligated to share any information with us about an open case,”

which according to the GBI, this one still is. But they're not prohibited from sharing information with us either. The guy's son's case is nearly four years old. If nothing else, we were hoping they'd confirm our findings. Or help us understand how active their investigation actually was.

Did they have any persons of interest?

Finally, after trying everything else.

We stopped by the GBI field office in Athens, Georgia. We drove up to a building with a high fence, cameras, and a call box. You really can't see inside at all. Yes, hey, we were here from the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

We were wondering if we could come in and see if we could talk with Justi Maddox. It's not as often. All right, would you all, we're working on a case on the Georgian guidelines. And we were wondering if we could... It's not like a post office.

“They're supposed to make an appointment.”

But we were in the area. We were in the area. We were working on.

And we were told we couldn't come in shortly after.

We got a call from the GBI. We just had a visitor from the HAC to come up here. And we can tell you the same thing. We told you that they need to come. In the end, all we got from the GBI was a written statement.

Telling us what we already knew. That the guides don't have been destroyed by an explosive device. Early in the morning of July 6, 2022. That no one was injured. That for safety reasons, the structure was demolished.

They linked to the same old grainy video. And stated that the investigation is active and ongoing.

“The statement said they continued to receive tips.”

But nothing more than that. It was pretty clear. When it came to the guidestone's investigation, either the GBI didn't want to talk with us or didn't have anything to share. Or both.

We were on our own. So not a metaphorical doing the face. A literal doing the face. Well, yeah. I think.

Now that we were on our own, we needed to start looking more closely at what we did have. The raw, high-res security footage, we'd gotten from emergency services, held so many clues.

We had a grainy shadowy figure, carrying a heavy container to the guidestones before running off into the dark. From the footage, we could determine maybe the person's height. Maybe the color of their clothes, or the container. But not a lot to go on there.

We also had something else. But getaway car. In one shot, there's a clear angle of what looks like a silver sedan, driving across the frame at a high speed. You can hear the engine going full throttle.

It's so fast that even in the new high-quality footage, there's a lot of motion blur. You see the car for just a split second, then it's gone.

This car was never publicly identified.

Still. We thought it was the best clue we had, so we got to work. I've heard it. I've heard a lot of it, and I need to stay quiet,

because clearly my imagination is already gone. Wild, so I'm just going to be here, is it? I'm going to be quiet. Hit me. So, I'm going to do a very long walk to get you guys to get where I call up to where I'm at.

This is Ian. A producer on our team. He's called for an emergency meeting. He's clearly been busy. So, as you guys know,

we were going through and trying to identify what car could have been the car that committed the attack. You guys go down to Georgia. You're a security camera footage, and you get higher resolution versions of the car driving away.

then we can start to work backwards from

“to anybody know somebody driving this model,”

registration, and things like that. Ian isolated the best frames of the car we could see. To the naked eye, it just looked like a non-descript silver car. Nothing special.

Then he started comparing making models of silver sedans against the frames. Trying to see if there were any clear matches. We start trying to identify the car. We collectively get honing that it's likely a BMW of some sort. It wasn't conclusive.

But then he had another idea. He measured all the components of the car. The wheelbase height. The front hood length. The headlight width.

He started to cross-reference that with different car designs

to see what could match in terms of the making model.

That narrow things down. Then he downloaded 3D models of a few car body types that seemed close and overlayed them onto our footage freeze frames. And then one model type matched perfectly. I go super down this rabbit hole

into thinking that it's a 328i. I found a 3D model of that car.

“It was really close to what that car was.”

Then I started to lose my nerve. And so I make a call. There's a BMW subreddit. Just for the chassis body that we think the car was identified with. Just like crazy BMW nerds.

For this one type of car. The 3D model Ian had was for a BMW sedan. A 300 series made after 2018. But he wanted to be sure.

So I take the extracted frames

and I throw it up in that subreddit. Just saying, hey, you know, a small investigative team. We're just trying to figure out what car this is. We think it's a 328i between these years

and instantly the BMW nerds start to like correct us. Not an F30 at all. E90 BMW. Light on the fender is a dead giveaway.

E46 would have a distinct waistline. Nice ride, Nard. Don't tell 'em any. This is free LCI E90. Years 0608.

100% E90 sedan.

“Looking at the index looks just like my old car low.”

I miss it to this day. The subreddit said Ian was close. But ultimately wrong. The hive mind had come to a different consensus. One that seemed to check out.

And they are convinced that it is an E90 chassis, not an F30 chassis. Which means it's a 300 series, but it's not the 300 series that we thought it was. It's a 300 series that was from the years of 2006 to 2008.

So the BMW Superfans came through. It turns out Ian had the make right, but the model wrong. The getaway car was a different type of change.

It was a different type of chassis or body. A much older one. This car, in the surveillance video, and forgive the super automotive nerd details, was about 17 to 20 years old.

It was a BMW E90, 3 series sedan, pre-LCI, in silver, with a moon ref option. We were able to confirm the tips from the subreddit by cross-referencing BMW design drawings.

There were features in the surveillance footage car that if present were only available on those older models. I don't think that we should blow all of our time on this thing, but if this turns out to be a small way in which we like stumbled into something, it could be crazy.

So what do we need to do next Ian? Well, so I'll walk a little bit to this is where it starts to get tricky, which is getting a vint to match to a person is where we either be.

So what does this mean? Investigations are about shrinking the known universe. When we started, we were looking for anyone in the world with a motive against the guide stones. Now we were looking for someone who drove a silver sedan.

There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of silver sedans on the road. Maybe millions. Silver BMWs. Hundreds of thousands.

17-year-old silver BMWs with an E90 chassis and a moon roof option that were in the state of Georgia in 2022. Now we're talking hundreds. We don't have the whole picture, and we don't know for sure that the vehicle was from Georgia.

But if we were looking for a way to take the total possible suspects down from anyone in the country to something solvable, with this car discovery, we just shrunk the known universe to something much more manageable.

In the early hours of July 6, 2022.

Up to this point,

“we've been conducting the investigation quietly.”

Scared that if we were poking around too loudly, we might spook whoever blew up the guide stones. Rewinding our chance to solve this crime. But now, we had momentum building. I felt like we were getting closer.

Maybe. It was time to bring our investigation out into the open. I came back from Licheson. And then there was this, I don't want to fuck the war.

Is that R.C. Christian?

That's next week on Who blew up the guide stones.

It's produced by the Atlanta Journal Constitution. And goat rodeo. Got a tip? Just want to leave us a message? Call our hotline at 912302 boom.

That's 912302 2666. The show was written and reported by me, Tyler McBrion, with Megan Nadalski, Ian N. Wright, and Charles Menshu.

Samantha Stamler is head of audio. Megan Nadalski is our series lead, and Ian N. Wright is our senior producer. The show was produced by Kira Bodengoligorski, Kerashilin and Charles Menshu,

with production support from Shane Backler, Samir Jafari, Allison Shine, Corly Barrow, and Mariana Castro, original theme music by Polyglam,

additional composition from Ian N. Wright and blue dot sessions. Phil Robibero created the show's artwork. Special thanks to the AJC's Thomas Lake, Chris Joyner, and Charles Menshu. Be sure to listen and download the rest of the series,

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