Ep 7: Down the Rabbit Hole

conversations, deny any involvement in the guidestone's bombing. And as of the recording of this

“podcast, there have been no arrests in the guidestone's investigation. In places where these men”

have clarifications to their comments, or additional input, we'll be noting that in the episode. Additionally, this episode contains strong language and may not be suitable for all audiences. [Music] Over the course of this story, we've made a lot of phone calls. You've heard plenty of them.

But sometimes, you get phone calls back.

Oh, good, this phone gives me more options. Can just go back after running from new investigations. I knew him of your opinion is to suck the fuck up.

“If you would like to print something, we can start the interview, we're talking to a”

local and domestic terrorist. I will continue talking to that. We can, out of it, and we can, you understand? You don't get it. It's a shock, so fuck up. There's so much to tell you in this final episode of Who Blue of the Guidestones. Like how we came to have this voicemail in my inbox. At this point in the investigation, and the podcast for that matter,

we need to be extremely clear about who we are and who we're not. We're not prosecutors. We are not law enforcement. We're journalists. Our goal in this episode is to understand

“what happened or didn't happen in this investigation. And to do that, we need to take you to”

Marbletown, New York. You heard that right, Marbletown. On the eastern edge of the Catskill Mountains, we're here because of something that happened in July of 2014. At the time, local media reported an arrest. Police had responded to calls about explosions. They'd found a man they believed to be making devices.

It wasn't the first time law enforcement had encountered this man.

He had a previous charge related to making terroristic threats, though was ultimately found not guilty. He'd been in and out of jail numerous times. We've been told by explosives experts and former law enforcement that a crime like the one that happened at the guidestones wouldn't come out of nowhere. Domestic bombings are rare. In the population of someone willing and able to carry out a bombing is even more rare.

If there was anyone who popped up on our radar, with any kind of charges related to explosives, experts told us that person would be of high interest and if that person happened to be in Elberton on July 6, 2022, that would be worth digging into. On June 8 of 2022, a little less than a month before the guidestones are destroyed. This same man, the one arrested for explosive charges in Marble Town, is arrested outside of a convenience store.

This time in Elberton, Georgia. He's charged with public drunkenness and obstructing and hindering law enforcement. This person has taken to the Elbert County jail and released on June 11, 2022. He's later found guilty on one count of willful destruction. 25 days later, the guidestones explode.

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution, this is, who blew up the guidestones?

From the beginning of this investigation, we knew there had to be some kind of trail,

“leading from the crime to the person who committed it.”

We had exhausted just about every lead. Without a case file, or more concrete evidence to go on from the GBI, there wasn't much left to run down. But then, we came across a name. That name is Eric. We're not going to use his full name. After learning about Eric, we started pulling information, running searches, background details,

and that's when things took a turn. This person was someone who was known to law enforcement. We found the explosives charge from Marbletown, New York. Although Eric was arrested, he was not prosecuted on these charges. Eric wasn't from Elbertin at all.

The first initial evidence we could find of him being in Elbertin, or Georgia, is in 2022.

We found them in the years before and after the bombing. Eric had a lot of run-ins with the law, and was found guilty of criminal possession of a weapon, attempted aggravated harassment of a police officer, improper witness contact, the list goes on. And when we looked online, it was even more concerning. There were a lot of posts around numerology, terrorism, decoding secret messages,

and photos of Eric wearing clothing with pentagrams, swastikas, and the word ISIS. His job listed on his professional profile was the apocalypse. We were trying to find out more. Why did Eric come to Elbertin?

“He was there a month before the explosion. Did he know anyone?”

Did he still live in town? On Eric's June 2022 arrest record in Elbertin. There was an address. When we looked into that address, it didn't really look like it was a residence at all. More like an empty lot with a few structures on it. The lot was covered in old cars.

Eric's name wasn't on any property records. It was possible he was renting the land. But we were able to find a new name. This person owned the land.

We're just going to use his first name, Kenneth.

Kenneth is a resident of Elbertin. He's an active poster in the Elbertin community boards and groups on Facebook. He posts about everything, from politics, to firearms,

“gripes about the community, and business opportunities.”

Sometimes he lists puppies for sale. We were able to find out other things. From property records, we learned that Kenneth is from the same county as Eric in upstate New York. They're from towns just 15 minutes apart. According to his professional profile, Kenneth has had a career in construction, with contract work from the US government overseas in the Middle East.

From what we can see online, he has certifications in improvised explosive devices, non-lethal weapons, and emergency management. Kenneth refers to Elbertin using a lot of derogatory language. He calls it "helbertin." He has beef with the county commission, seemingly over a business he'd tried to open, and then there are posts about the guidestones.

In the months and weeks before the guidestones destruction, Kenneth calls them satanic. We find comments that refer to the guidestones and child sacrifice, though that may be an attempt to joke. But then, we found another line of posts. Kenneth follows Candace Taylor, Avidly. He comments on Candace Taylor's social media a lot. Posts ranging from

Candace Taylor for Potis, and bring grace, beauty, and intelligence to the governance chair. He also offers to be her bodyguard. He says versions of I love you Candace Taylor multiple times.

Finally, we found that Kenneth fixes trades and buys a lot of used vehicles.

This all seems to happen from his lot, the same lot that Eric lives on. It's hard to make a complete picture out of anything that's just online, but one post from December of 2022 stood out.

Get the POS BMW to Keeler and Albany."

“I believe in this case, POS means peace of shit.”

It's the first time we could find that Kenneth explicitly mentions a BMW in his possession,

but there was no evidence it was silver. Up to this point, law enforcement hadn't said if the guidestones bomber acted alone. And from our reporting, we didn't know either. But looking at the profiles of these two men, Eric and Kenneth, and assessing everything we had learned about this case, these two men ticked the boxes that experts had told us to look out for.

They were both in Alberton in the early days of July 2022. We know at least one of them had knowledge of how to make a bomb.

“We know one of the two men was a Candace Taylor supporter.”

We know at least one of them had connections to old BMWs.

We know the two men know each other from the same place in upstate New York. We know one of these two men had posts calling the guidestones satanic. While another had posts suggesting he was associated with terrorism. And I do want to note again here, both Eric and Kenneth deny any involvement in the guidestones bombing. At this stage, with everything we gathered from public sources.

This looked like a lot of smoke. The question was, did anyone else feel this way?

Did the GBI see the smoke too?

The GBI was a part of the GBI. My new ad-cado.

“The podcast, so you never miss an episode of Politically Georgia.”

When we tried to talk to the GBI before, we consistently hit a dead end. We were still operating from a statement over email that said the investigation was active and ongoing. But beyond that, we had no idea what the GBI did or didn't do. Again, it's been almost four years. We couldn't find anyone who had spoken to the GBI more than once.

There were no public statements, no case updates. The case was considered open, and no one could see the file. And the people of Albertan, as far as they knew, the GBI was still chasing leads. But now, the question we had for the GBI was, had Eric or Kenneth ever come across their radar.

No surprise, when we tried to reach out, again, they didn't answer. So we called the Albert County Sheriff. And that's when he told us. He'd been trying unsuccessfully to talk about the Guidestone's investigation with the GBI. He also shared that he wanted to speak to both of these men.

We called the Albert County District Attorney, who had been around the Guidestone's case back in 2022. We'd spoken to him a few times, but so far, he hadn't been able to share much on the record. This is Tyler McBrion from the Elean General Constitution. I'm trying to reach DA. This time felt a little different. It was a quick call, but he gave us the name of the case agent involved in the investigation. A name we hadn't heard before.

He also gave us her number. We called it up. My name is Tyler McBrion. I'm a reporter with the Elean General Constitution. We've been through a lot with the GBI, but nothing quite like this phone call. When the agent answered, she sounded too busy for us. She had other meetings to get to.

She was not aware of either of these men.

“In the days after our call with the special agent, and it's important to note, she's no longer the”

special agent in charge of the case. We got a call from the GBI. After seven months, they wanted to arrange a meeting. Our reporting had uncovered two individuals, and a lot of circumstantial evidence that could potentially

point to them having some involvement with the guidestones. But when we heard the GBI had never

heard these names, we knew we had to speak with them to figure out why. The difficulty was how to get in touch with them. Eric has been more or less off the grid since 2021. Outside of jail records and court documents, finding any other info on him, let alone a phone number to reach him at was hard to come by. This was also extremely delicate. Our calls may be the first time anyone has asked either of these men about the case. And after learning more about their histories,

we were genuinely concerned about what might happen when we contacted them.

We'd found a number for Kenneth on an incident report from the Albertan Police.

And when we called it, Kenneth answered. I am a journalist. Yes, working for the AJC. We explained we were working on a story about the guidestones, and that we had questions about a man who was living on his property. A person who had been arrested for making explosives. And we wanted to ask you about a person by the name of Eric. Okay. We've got a tip about a story. And just wanted to know, you know,

when he lived on your property and whether you knew him and what years, maybe that would have been.

Two things jumped out. One, Kenneth seemed to more than okay talking to us.

And two, Kenneth seemed to know Eric pretty well. If this is having anything to do with somebody blowing one of those stones up,

“I can assure you it was not Eric. Okay. Why do you say that?”

Because he not only does not have access to any explosives, but if that were the case, he would have blown himself along with the guidestone. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I mean, we saw a new story that he maybe had some sort of rest related to explosives. Now, it's interesting how something like that would have gone on Eric. Why frankly has some mental problems? Kenneth seemed to blow right past the fact that Eric had charges related to explosives.

To me, he sounded unfazed that we were asking if this guy living on his property could have bombed the guidestones. But Kenneth suggested that Eric had some mental problems. And we want to take a minute to be very clear to anyone listening. We are not mental health professionals, and are not in any position to assess someone's mental capacity. We know from court records, back in 2003, when Eric was brought to trial for attempted aggravated assault of a police officer.

His mental health was brought into question as to whether or not he was fit to stand trial. But Eric refused a psychiatric evaluation, and the case was eventually thrown out. Later, from records in a 2013 case, one psychiatrist made a diagnosis of delusional disorder, grandiose type. I'm curious though. How why he said that he wouldn't have access to explosives? Or, you know, Eric, Eric, there's no way that he would have access to the kind of explosives

needed to blow up one of the guidestones. I am going to the next time I see Eric, which is going to be either the saps of noon or tomorrow. Is it okay if he calls you back at

“this time? That would be great. Yeah, thank you very much. And you know, you need to”

put on your tin foil hat. Noted. Thank you for the tips. It sounds like you know I'm pretty well. Can I ask how you know, Eric? It was all a tragic error on my part. Lily, speak with him. I would encourage you to, you know, try to go along with some of his fantasies

The way Kenneth talked about Eric caught me off guard. I wondered if Kenneth had some level of

“control over who Eric speaks with and when. It was almost like he was gatekeeping him.”

It just gives him if he, you know, if he mentioned the guidestones ever, I don't know if it figured into some of his wackos. Yeah. Exactly. He'll be able to give you the skinny on that whole thing now. Here, I can give you a little, uh, a little intel from my side of things. There were several moments throughout the call that stuck with us. For example, anytime we would bring up concerning things about Eric, Kenneth would brush past it.

And anytime we would drill down on a specific detail, he seemed to pivot the conversation to something else like Albert County and its government. So when the one stone was exploded by someone who I'm guessing was a very far right religious fanatic instead of trying to stabilize what was

“left with some kind of scaffolding or or some kind of support so that it still would have been”

a tourist attraction. The accounts who are running Albert County decided to demolish the whole thing. Yeah, we heard about that. It strikes me as, you know, if it put the scaffolding up like he said it could have been even more of a tourist attraction, you know, but even more, they could, they could have smashed

up the pieces of the of the one that was exploded and sold them to souvenirs. The problem is

is that the people in Albert County are a bunch of ignorant and red knuckleheads. I mean there are more people than the person who did it, who, who, who did it. But nobody's talking and nobody cares. Gosh, I wish I could have remembered her name. There's a woman who's involved in Georgia politics. Is it Kenneth Taylor, perhaps? Yes, yes, she's the, I don't know, her name starts with a K. She's, uh, middle aged, white woman, been, yeah, Candace. Candace Taylor? Okay,

well, she's the one who said that the guide stones were evil and, you know, needed to go away. So somebody took her word literally and decided to carry the guide stones.

“Are you familiar with her campaign and her views on things?”

Yeah, I mean, uh, there are a lot of things about her. I like that there are some things about her, but I find a little extreme, but, you know, right is what it is, you got to take this a little bit. Yeah. We knew Kenneth had commented numerous times on Candace Taylor's social media, as recently as a handful of weeks before our conversation. But now, it sounded like Kenneth was suggesting he only had a vague knowledge of her, which was weird for someone who posted things like

Love You Candace Taylor. Well, if you think of anything else, you know, and thanks again for offering it, connect us with Eric. If you, if you think of anything else, um, you have my number, uh, feel free to text or call for sure. I'm, um, I try to be honest, this much possible Tyler, I gotta say goodbye, but I will make sure that Eric gets back in touch with you one way or the other. This call with Kenneth was a lot. His behavior was troubling and that made us lean in.

Kenneth also told us he was going to help by arranging a call with Eric. So we waited. We weren't sure if we'd hear back from either of them at all. A few days later, we got a text. Eric was ready to talk. Kenneth gave us a number to call. He also said that Eric was on the warpath. We weren't sure with this meant, but we did need to try and ask Eric directly about some of

the things we'd found. The start of the conversation was strange. When we called the number of

for Eric, it was Kenneth, who first answered. Hello, is this Eric? Hi, is this Eric? Oh, oh, shoot man. No, no, no,

this is in my number. Oh, I don't know. Oh, the, the number I sent you? Yeah, sorry. Oh, sorry, is this Ken? Yeah, you know, um, go ahead and, no, go ahead and uh, I'm going to hang up. Do you call again and see if Eric picks up? Okay, yeah, I'll try that. All right, thanks. Okay, thanks. In the moment, we couldn't really understand what was going on. This call was being facilitated by Kenneth

what Eric should say to me. Kenneth answering the call first did not alleviate any of these concerns.

Then our phone started ringing. Oh, wait, I'm getting a call. Hello, this is Tyler. Yes, um, you just called Eric. Yes, hi, is this Eric? Yes. Hey, Eric, um,

“this is Tyler McBrion from the Atlanta Journal Constitution. I think maybe Ken gave you a”

heads up that I was calling. I just wanted to hopefully ask you a couple questions. You're nothing from him. Oh, okay. Um, well, I'm happy to just tell you. I'm, I'm a reporter

with the HAC as I mentioned. I'm doing a story on the Georgia Guidestone. Yes, um, yes, I'm suspected

into Georgia Guidestone. Yes. Oh, what do you mean by that? Yeah, can you explain that? You just, you just explained it. Oh, okay. Yeah, sorry about that. You're already state. Can you um, just explain what happened with that explosive device arrest? They don't have the evidence to convey me. Who, who does? Who does? What do you, what's your goal? What's your intent? My intent is just to report on this story. And you know, we're calling a lot of people who may know

something about the guidestones or may not. And so, uh, well, all of the information I'm going to give

you is what's already been known about the guidestones and the misinformation on them. We had learned that they were blown up by some sort of homemade bomb. And so I'm not sure if you saw there was surveillance footage of it. Uh, if, if you had any. Okay, so now you got access to my clinical record of a bomb making. So yeah, do you, I mean, do you mind talking about the explosives? Like, you know, if, if you knew something about explosives, I'm just curious if you've

“seen the video of the guidestone's explosion. And I'm, you know, God, what are you trying to get at?”

I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this story. Yeah, yeah, you don't even remember what was two seconds ago. What is your goal? Like I said, it's just to get to the bottom of who blew up the guidestones. Oh, cares. A lot of people in Albertan care and, and a lot of people outside Albertan. Oh, the one selling death through tombstones. So you're working for the granite company? No, I'm a journalist. I have no connection to the granite company. Journalists generally have

a goal of truth. That's exactly my goal to get to the, the truth of what happened to the guidestones. So anything you can tell me to help me get to the truth would be really, greatly appreciated. Call me back on the recorded time that they blew up and how much I missed 4/11 glory and power be to God. I want to stop here because if you don't know your Bible verses, Eric seems to refer to a certain chapter in verse a few times. He repeatedly refers to a passage from the book of

revelations, which speaks about the apocalypse. Revelations 4/11. We know that Eric's into the apocalypse and numerology, but we can't fully explain why he keeps bringing up revelations 4/11 specifically. Over the course of the next few days, we keep talking to Eric over the phone and over text. I just wanted to ask a thing about a car. I'm curious if you ever had a silver BMW

“or you knew of anyone with a silver BMW around the time the guidestones were exploded?”

I see him drive by. But no one that you knew or did you have a silver BMW around 2022 or ride in one or drive one? What differences make? What was that funny? Stupid fucking question now. The other thing I wanted to ask about is some people said that the explosion was caused by Tannerite or exploding target mixture. Did you have any knowledge of that? I'm curious if that was the kind of explosive that you had used in the past.

You sure didn't come on the grandstands?

Do you think Tannerite is something that could have blown up something as big as the guidestones?

“Dynamite is directional. Have you ever purchased Tannerite?”

You want to interrogate a terrorist organization or have you expect the answers? Well, I'd like to figure out who blew up the guidestones. Another thing we saw is that we have high resolution footage of the incident and we're just wondering if you are aware that this high resolution footage exists of someone walking up to the guidestones and placing down container before they explode. If you've seen this footage or if you were aware that it was out there.

And if I did, what am I supposed to do with whether I consider this information?

Well, if you had seen it, it's pretty clear that it wasn't an act of God. It was um,

homemade explosives at someone had placed at the foot of the guidestones. Okay, so, okay, now we're at the point of Godly and can't act through man. Did you think that's what happened? I'm not thinking.

“So are you saying that you do know what happened with the guidestones or you don't?”

Because you had said that it's not a matter. I know everything. I know everything that happened to the guidestones. By now, we'd spoken to Eric for hours. The conversation took twists and turns. It was hard to follow. Sometimes, Eric would steer us back to the first commandment on the guidestones.

The one about keeping the population under 500 million.

Man doesn't get to decide what a population, why you carve it in the grant. Yeah, so whoever blew it up, maybe disagree with it. Is that what you're saying? Man doesn't get to decide what a population. What do you think should happen to the person who blew them up? Oh, can I call you back on that one? I really hate thinking.

“I'm curious what you do around Albertan. Have you been there long?”

I kill people. Fairly, you can't be serious. What part of this conversation didn't you miss? Eric had refused to answer direct questions about the explosion. You're trying to get down the rabbit hole, and rabbit hole is telling you to stay out.

Is there a reason that you're not just saying no that it wasn't you? You know, I think most people, if I started asking the questions, would just say it wasn't me. You're not permitted the information. You're in the rabbit hole, dude. He called himself a terrorist, and now he was saying he came to Albertan to kill people.

We'd spoken to experts who explained that law enforcement do risk assessments to understand a person's threat to the community based on actions online posts. The question that lingered was, did law enforcement think he was a risk to the community? Did anyone run a risk assessment on Eric? The threats from Eric were ongoing, but when he mentioned explosives in the guidestones and the Bible,

I wanted to keep talking to him, and some of our conversations, he seemed more relaxed, and then he said this. Hello. Yeah, I want to go back to what you said about the shock. Oh, the lightning from God, that the terrorists put the explosive there so that God can hit it.

At 4/11, glory him, pound me to God. I actually looked it up, and it was 403, it was not 4/11. Oh God, damn, I fucking missed. What do you mean you missed? The idea was to peg it to God.

No, I'm not sitting there.

So what are you saying when you said you missed? What do you want to do? It's just a mic. If we felt unsure before, nothing from these calls with Eric made us less suspicious. If anything, it was even more alarming. Some of the threats Eric made were pretty serious, and he also seemed to implicate Kenneth.

Okay, how did you know to connect Ken with me? Your address is listed, and then Ken mentioned to talk to you. Ken didn't contact you.

No, no, no, no, I reached out to him first, but he mentioned that he could put us in touch with you.

“And, and that's why I called when he gave me this number.”

Oh, sure he did. All right, wow. Why do you say that? He didn't sound so convincing. See, information is correct. No, no, it's just no surprise to me that this address don't come up in connection with the guidestone.

That's what surprised me.

Did Ken have anything to do with blowing up the guidestones?

The question, if you were a cop, I wouldn't necessarily request a lawyer. Were you guys together back in July 6th, 2022? No comment.

“We had more conversations with Kenneth and Eric in the weeks that followed our initial calls.”

Those calls happened after Eric and Kenneth received messages about further clarifications on our reporting. Their versions of events changed numerous times. In those final conversations, we had more clarifying questions to ask them. Eric made several threats directed at me, Elbert County, and the country.

Those came in the form of vague statements about not being able to keep me safe. If we were to publish a story about him, Kenneth, and the guidestones. So, you're concerned that safety, I don't see the betterment of your publicizing anything that's going on. Eric said that he'd been in Elbert County since 2020. He had different answers when we asked him where he was on July 6th, 2022.

One final time we asked about his whereabouts that day. So what happened on July 6th, 2022? Let me see, I won't woke up by eight, went to the bathroom, and laid down and went to sleep in the day. He said that he and Kenneth weren't "there". If you can give us any information about where you both were, July 6th, 2022,

to help us understand if you were not there, that would be really helpful. Like I said, me and or him weren't there.

“Can you say right now unequivocally that you had nothing to do with the explosion at the guidestones?”

I think I'd stayed at that, but me and or can nothing to do with it. Okay. Is there anything else you can tell me about the guidestones bombing that could help me figure out what really happened? Trying to sourcing a GBI.

That's part of the cover up. What would they tell you to choose, but they're going to tell you not to publicize it? So it sounds like you know the truth, so what is the truth? What are they trying to cover up? Like I like, like I said, it's conspiracy.

When we last spoke to Kenneth, he also denied that either he or Eric had anything to do with the guidestones bombing. The more that I can give you the less hopefully the lesser you guys will extrapolate

If I were you guys, I would be chasing after the county commissioners and ask them why they decided to

“destroy this manganer. I'm angry that someone did it in the first place because of the whole”

search attraction thing, but I'm really insist that the county decided to destroy what remained. The question Kenneth again about his knowledge of Candace Taylor. And his answer from the last call changed completely. He says he was drawn to her campaign and profile because she's a proud Christian, but finds many of her views to extreme. Despite that, Kenneth continues to post comments on her

page in support.

I became aware of her because of her Christian values. So I do follow her on Facebook as a matter of

fact that I just got some messages from her Facebook profile about her bus tour. But it was in this last conversation that Kenneth changed his story in a big way. In earlier conversations, Kenneth said he had a rock solid alibi.

“I think I'm pretty sure that I was in New York, but I know that I was out of town and or have”

a rock solid alibi no pun intended. Yeah, is there any way you were able to? We asked if he could provide any evidence to show us he was not in Albertan on that day.

Kenneth sent us photos and receipts, but those were dated June of 2022,

not July, not on the day of the attack. I can confirm that Eric was at the location where he had his camping compound at the time, and I can confirm that I was at home with my wife. Kenneth said he was not violent, several times. He said he would only use violence if he or his family were threatened.

My most reason is I don't believe in violent assault problems. Okay, I'm not a peacemaker, I have firearms, I was trained by the United States government to kill people, but I don't like violence. We asked him about the threats Eric had been making. Future attacks, keeping me safe, killing people.

He said we shouldn't worry about Eric's violent threats. That Eric was just trying to protect him. Making a reasonable conclusion here that the reason why Eric is pushing back at y'all because he's concerned about how this could have an effect on me because I said the same thing to him. Kenneth and Eric both say no one from the GBI ever spoke to them.

If you'll forgive me putting into your journalistic discretion, the awesome thing about the mysterious guidestones is that their ending could also be mysterious. The final conversations we had with Eric and Kenneth occurred after the release of the six episode of this series. While producing the final episode, we received two voicemails, both were from Kenneth's number,

roughly ten minutes apart. Eric had told us previously that Kenneth had left the state of Georgia before the release of the six episode, which was originally slated as our finale. Kenneth says that he left Georgia on a trip to swap cars with a family member, in upstate New York, near the Canadian border.

Kenneth returned to Elbratin and was with Eric when these voicemails were made. In later conversations with the GBI, they confirmed that they were talking with local law enforcement, and that these two names are an active lead they are looking into.

“So how do we make sense of what happened to the guidestones?”

Well, here's the best picture we have. In the early hours of July 6th, 2022, an explosion happens at the guidestones. Local law enforcement arrives on scene. The GBI is called in.

and order the rest of the guidestones to be knocked down and carted away.

“Local government officials do as ordered.”

In the days following, the GBI checks the granite quarries for missing dynamite and finds none is missing. Talk to people around town. Send evidence to the lab. Check for some cell phone tower pings. They don't call Candace Taylor. They don't bring in anyone for questioning. They put out snippets of footage to local media. The case sits.

Weeks turn into months. Months turn into years. The case backlog at the GBI grows,

and it's possible this case isn't a priority. No deaths, no injuries. Some stones blown up in a cow pasture.

“It's possible there just isn't any evidence available to convict anyone for this crime.”

The case is open, but back in Elberton, there have been no public updates. Local officials ask for information. Not many answers are given. Aside from the same old. Years pass. People grow despondent, restless, suspicious, angry. There are numerous posts online, speculating all sorts of theories. People make accusations, point fingers. The secrets, the lack of information, create,

rabbit holes, leading in all different directions. Conspiracies are a way to hide things. A few years after the guys twins went up. RC Christian published Common Sense Renewed. The book we found at the Elbert County Public Library. In it, Christian wrote about how Stonehenge and other vestiges of ancient thought aroused our curiosity. But, he continued. They have one fatal flaw. They carry no message

for human guidance. Basically, they didn't have clear instructions as to what they meant.

RC Christian wanted the guidestones to give mankind an important message. To convey certain ideas across time to others. Just like Stonehenge and thought he could fix that fatal flaw, by carving the ideas right into the rock. In all of his meticulous designs, Mr. Christian forgot to account for one thing. Human nature and our love of legends, myths, and yes, conspiracy theories.

And I can't help but feel that I made the same mistake. After months of following the mysteries of the guidestones into granite quarries, graveyards, and fringe corners of the internet,

“I can honestly say that I've taken you as far down the rabbit hole as I can go.”

But I also can't help but feel that in many ways, it doesn't matter. Because people tend to prefer their own truths, or guard this of reality. There's this inevitability and inertia when it comes to conspiracy theories. How irresistible they are. Even when there's a very plausible explanation, right in front of you. Even now, there are people who still believe lightning blew up the guidestones.

Despite the clearest video evidence suggesting otherwise. Against RC Christians best efforts, the guidestones continue to mean whatever people want them to mean. Conspiracy theories are a way to hide things. I'd heard Eric and Kenneth continue to insert them into our conversations, even and especially when I was trying to get to some kernel of truth. They talk about how it was a setup from the town of Elberton, that the Masonic temple

conspired to plant evidence, that the stones are actually hidden somewhere else. I started to think that even if we saw this crime beyond a shadow of a doubt, if we found a smoking gun, finger prints at the scene, a person to whom we could link the BMW, the Tannerite, all of it, that it wouldn't matter. In the end, the stones didn't stand the test of time. But the conspiracy theories about the guidestones live on, evolving, multiplying, forever.

[Music]

“Who blew up the guidestones, is produced by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and Goat Rodeo.”

The show was written and reported by me, Tilema Bryan, with Megan Adalski, Ian N. Wright,

and Charles Minchew. Samantha Stamler is head of audio. Megan Adalski is our series lead,

“and Ian N. Wright is our senior producer. The show was produced by Kira Bodengoligorski,”

Kira Shilin, and Charles Minchew. With production support from Shane Backler,

Samir Jafari, Allison Shine, Corley Barrow, and Mariana Castro, original theme music by Polyglam,

“additional composition from Ian N. Wright, and Blue Dot Sessions.”

Phil Rebibero created the show's artwork.

Special thanks to the AJC's Thomas Lake, Chris Joyner, Hugo Rojo, Leslie Gator, Sarah Barnhart, Brad Shrade, Sharif Durams, Leora Chapman Jr., and Andrew Morse. And to John Weiss, Caitlyn Riley, Grace Kavanaugh, Ruben Tractman, and Sepp Stevens. Additional series support from Isabel Kirby McGowan, J Venables, Hazel Hoffman, and Kirsten Campa. Recording assistance from Leslie Euler Thompson, and Dubois Studios, from the AJC marketing team,

Amy Greene, Ned Reed, Betsy Centoio, Gerard Hardy, Caleb Davidson, and Jenny Sharpe. Additional marketing support from Mayda Gary. And keep an eye out for more from the AJC coming soon. Thank you for listening.