a fixtures designed to simplify all confused who really wants a better wills, and is it just as a chosen for you. fractured images presented to this, but can you see through their illusion going underground can the on august 10th, 2014 a police officer in ferguson, missouri outside st. louis shot and killed an 18 year old young man by the name of michael brown. that shooting which has been repeated far too often in the american society set off a series of protests that have become known as the ferguson writes, ferguson laid bare the national problem of police violence against young blackman. and in many ways, it was the precursor to the black live matter movement, which began formerly, when police in saint paul,

minnesota killed another black man, george floyd, several years later. but ferguson is important in part because it's so complicated . ferguson wasn't just the death of one black 18 year old event, created a movement and from movements from leaders. it was another young man, darren seals, who emerged from ferguson as a leader. indeed he did until he was murdered. i'm john curiosity. welcome to the whistle blowers the . 2 2 2 2 2 2 a. 2 darren seals was born in 1987 in ferguson, missouri, and grew up just a few blocks from where michael brown was killed in 2014. he had known the brown family all of his life and when a police officer shot and killed michael seals became a defacto spokesman, not just for the family, but for many of the protesters,

tired of police violence against their community and against a political and cultural structure that takes african americans for granted and offers them no hope of improving their lots in life. the ferguson riots thrust darren seals into the spotlight with his commentary, appearing on news networks around the world, covering the violence. he quickly became one of the most important and notable activists for regional justice and against gun violence and police brutality in the country. he co founded an anti police violence organization called hans up united and became involved in politics describing himself on social media as a business man, revolutionary activist, unapologetically black, african in america, fighter and leader. he also became a vocal critic of the black lives matter movement because it took millions of dollars and donations from 1000000000 air george soros. and it hijacked the movement in ferguson. as you might suspect,

seals quickly came to the attention of the f. b, i which has had its own long and bloody history with black activists in america. yes, b, i surveilled him, investigated him and collected intelligence on him. but to what end? on the night of september 6th, 2016. darren seals was found dead in a burning car in a suburb north of st. louis. he had been shot and placed in the car before it was set on fire. that murder has never been solved. we were very happy to be joined by filmmaker journalist author and podcast, or reading over chelsea and by former missouri state senator maria chappelle and that all they're the creators of a new pod cast series called after the uprising, the murder of darren seals rain. maria, thank you so much for being with us. i know this is going to be a fascinating conversation. thank you. thanks john. nice to see again. good to see

you re, let's start with you. you and i have known each other for a long time, and i know that you have a nose for a story, whether it's about the c i a and the so called war on terror, or the saudi government's involvement in the 911 attacks. we've had many conversations about these issues. this one though, the murder of darren seals fascinates me. so let's start at the beginning of cop kills mike brown. the uprising begins in ferguson after a few days of chaos activist leaders and merge. and one of them is darren seals take it from there. all right, so then seals. uh makes a lot of enemies. um, you know, he was, uh, this may be counterintuitive to a lot of people. uh, but he was an outspoken critic of black lives matter. because in ferguson, they considered their movement to be something different. and something that uh, at least he felt was being co opted by the kind of the broader national movement that we know as black lives matter. so he had enemies who were active this year and

enemies who were members of the gangs that he had once dealt throughout for uh, you know, he had, he had a lot of it. he had enemies, obviously, among the police. and perhaps the months the federal cops that he had in protesting to reform. and so it cuts in 2016 and he's shot dead in a burning jeep. and the question becomes, which of these many enemies is the one who, who chose to do him in? and that's where we maria and i began to and a half years ago as we started looking at trying to run down. if we could figure out who had in fact murder, maria, you found yourself thrust into the very center of this historic event that was ferguson. you were representing the 14th district in the missouri state senate, which includes ferguson and you became an important voice against police violence. tell us about those days in ferguson at the very start of the uprising. and tell us

a little bit about the emergence of darren seals as the voice of ferguson's african american community. from the beginning there was no script. there were people who are coming together because they felt the injury of a young black man laying on the streets for 4 hours. and so all of us no matter what our backgrounds were. we were all standing there stunned and disbelief. and so the protest didn't start actually until a few days after, but everyone was standing around gathering together people from multiple gangs, people from the underground music world. we were just all gathering together and you could see the pain and people's faces at that time. it had been the 1st time i held a ro, man crying in fact. and so daring was among those people who were gathering amongst the many groups of people. and um, you know, we, we were trying to get answers. and at the same time, at the very beginning,

we also had a lot of police presence and it was threatening. and i remember the 1st day that tear gassing which was on the 1st and it was the monday after it was the 11th. and this type of violence our community has never experienced. and so that's really when the protest started. and when you start hearing individual words, in fact, the 1st day of tear gassing as you will hear, reflected in the pod cast. do you hear about getting shot while i was there that night and it was right off of west uh, west wing states, i believe. and there it references, a person by the name of spook. i didn't know the person's name. i just heard that a woman was shot in the eye and that's all we knew. so darren, as you will hear in this pod cast,

starts wanting to get the stories out of what is happening on the streets and how to find resolve. when it comes to police brutality re, as maria just noted, darren seals emerged relatively quickly as a leader in ferguson. he was a serious person. he was quoted on cnn. he was quoted in the washington post. he was giving interviews to the international media. but because he was a serious person, he came to the attention of the f, b i. and we know now thanks to the freedom of information act that the f b i was trailing him in fact the f b. i described him as quote, a revolutionary who has a spouse somewhat militant rhetoric and has access to weapons and quote, f b. i has a well documented history of harassing activists and especially black activists. how much of a problem was this for darren seals and what was it that the f b i thought it could learn about him?

well, this remains an open question. by the end of our 10th episode, we do have a pretty concrete idea as to what the purpose of that operation was. but it's open in march of 2016 and he's murdered in september of 2016. so just taking that as a back it's pretty studying. when you realize this is kara, is matic famous black active is murdered. and during the file, 6 months of his life, the federal government is surveilling him and yeah, and it's natural to ask, what were they up to? what do they, they hope to to get to and it wasn't just them, but they let a fusion team that included the st. louis county and city police and mike, german from the running center consulted on looking at this heavily redacted document. as a former f b i agent and an i'm sure you're well aware of him. he's got an illustrious reputation and you know, he was looking at uh the specifics of

a police polo over and felt that there was an obvious fishing expedition going on to try to find a gun in his vehicle because darren was you know, had been convicted of a felony and therefore couldn't have it. so it seems like they were trying to turn the screws on him in one form or another. they were not being terribly subtle. when you know that they seem to be almost the opposite. they seem to be sending a signal that darren's the people around there and with know that he was either cooperating or that they wanted him to be cooperating. and we think that serve to endangered animals, maria, when darren was killed. and we'll get more into that in a, in a minute, an f b i agent allegedly said, quote, a conspiracy theory is already forming that seals was killed by the police because of his black lives matter affiliations and quote, that is ridiculous, of course, seals was an opponent of black lives matter, but the statement seems odd to me,

it seems like a deflection. i'd like to get your thoughts on that as well as on the statement that i mentioned a moment ago that the f b, i believe seals was, quote, a revolutionary with access to weapons. in all seriousness, everybody in america has access to weapons. so what do you think we should make of all that? well, if you listen to the pub cash, you'll find that a lot of people were trying to deflect. and or some people who were unsure of which entity was responsible for darren staff. so in some sense, you know, it, we believe i personally believe that i, there were some who were in the law enforcement who wanted daring to, to quite down. in fact, the loudest voices, they always wanted us to quiet down. and darren was one of the. busy boys who was for rushes and his speech and he was militant in his speech and the status quell,

whether it be the political establishment or law enforcement, want it to shut that down. so there is irony in, in all of this, but i would also say there's deflection from all sides. when you listen to this, and there are some stories that, that we don't discuss that we can discuss later on. that is not reflected in the pod cast in terms of this deflection, but i think this is more confused and there were some who were just really wanting to know from which corner of the earth i did this threat come from and, and that's what our 2 year journey was all about is figuring it out and getting through the weeds and, and all of the smoke as the young people say. thank you maria, and re we're going to take a short break. and when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with filmmaker journalist, author,

and podcast to reading over chelsea and former state senator maria ship. hell and the dog about the murder of darren seals. the 2 we have a lot more coming up the. 2 position the deep sort of the west of the west on was there. is the septic not to be gardening books to be the only did it gave most good. and just the 41 percent of us adults have enough savings to cover a $1000.00 emergency. if we have record numbers of americans who are on the verge of having their cars repossessed more than a 137000000 americans are facing financial hardship because of medical that in america we do have

a welfare system in place to help people who are struggling financially, but it's a conditional system you have to prove to the government that you truly need help. the simplest way, like to explain the basic income, is that is like social security. for the rest of us, a basic income would be a monthly payments that would go to everyone. just a $1000.00 a month, no strings attached to you. so hey about our life. then maybe i don't know, i just won't go crazy or reason that i am a fan of guaranteed income because it is this idea that everybody is deserve. and then just by virtue of your being here, the old wanted to come here since i was 121. my grandfather told me that his mom came from russia that we were, i was part russian. i didn't plan on staying this long. i was gonna look around,

i was gonna see if it was for me, but then i came and then i was like, i don't remember when i go home. i've never been happier in life than i am here in most of the i've only lived here a few months, but i wanted to tell you what fascinates me about russia and share the stories of other foreigners who lived here like jay who worked as a chef and now raises goats and makes cheese in the countryside series, like chad who has been granted political asylum because he's being persecuted by the f. b. i. us, embassies. and for countries that come after me it's, it's wild like an american family that recently moved to russia with 6 children. i've never felt safe or land tire life then living here the go to back to the whistle blowers. i'm john kerry who were speaking with renowned filmmaker journalist, author, and podcast to reign of

a shell ski and with former missouri state senator maria chappelle and the dog about the murder of activist darren seals. welcome back to both of you. thank you. re i want to talk about the pod cast you've just completed the pod cast called after the uprising, the murder of darren seals. just as darren seals was hitting his stride, finding his voice, he was found dead. and it wasn't just that he was found dead. he was murdered, he was shocked, and then placed in a car and then the car was set on fire. tell us about the investigation into his murder. what did the public learn? as well as interesting? we now know what the police did or didn't do. and we know the extent of their investigation because we only about 6 weeks ago, we had an episode 10 final episode of the season cut ready to go. and we were somewhat satisfied that we've gotten 2 answers and then we still don't know exactly

how, but the entire police reported it there and seals. the investigative report fell under a lapse or producer, john duffy, a co creator of the show, had made a request for things unrelated to is to seals. and somehow we don't know if there was a friendly party in the force or what somebody accidentally says, sense in the report. so we know, you know, we know what was looked at here. and what, what i find striking is the public and especially the active is community that is their own investigation into this because they felt they were forced to, uh, nope, nobody ever heard a peep from the police or the prosecutors about what it was that they found it doesn't seem that the st. louis county police or prosecutors felt they owe some duty to the public or to the act of this community to let them know what, what they had seen. and, and it's pretty exciting because, you know, i don't have very believe we, we do believe we solve this and all set up

a subs are out. and anyone who takes this journey by the time they get to the end, you know, there's a lot of true crime out there. there's not a lot that solves it. and this, if you take this journey, i think you will feel, you know, who did what and what happened to dances. maria, i'm interested here in the police angle. many residents of ferguson believe that it was either the police or the f. b. i who killed their and seals was there a police anywhere in the ferguson community that there was going to be an actual, legitimate investigation? did anybody really trust the process? absolutely not on nobody trusted the price. i don't think that there was one active as that we interviewed that believe that the police were going to do their due diligence and investigating, as you will hear in the pod cast. there's a lot of speculation based on what they see at the scene when,

but when darren's body is found and, you know, we go on to look at evidence and, and hear audio from other people about what they see at the time. and you could tell that they just, in fact, multiple in multiple cases in this pod cast, people don't have a belief that, that please care about black investigations when there's someone who was murdered, generally speaking. and so that's concerning, that is an institutional problem that needs to be dealt with ongoing li, no matter where you live on that perception needs to be dealt with head on. because it people who didn't even know each other or from different places in missouri or in kansas or the places that you know where we interviewed people. none of them had a belief that that the police were going to do their due diligence. and if i may,

to, because i'm a little in terms of my answer, i probably shouldn't mention that, you know, part of the, what was driving this, this sense by active is, and people in dance life. the police weren't doing anything. was that when they got to the scene, the next day they found, you know, the door to his jeep was lying there in the parking lot. apparently, bullet casings were still the sort of sitting there having not been collected. there was this sort of perception that the whole thing representative, big, middle finger that was clearly to be read by the community. know what you know, you, you protested us. we're now looking into, you know, your parents is stuff at all which may or may not have proven to be the case by the end of this series and re, one of the things that's fascinating to me is the fact that darren seals, murder, looked very much like the earlier unsolved murder of another, fergus inactive as the andre joshua, who was also found shot to death in

a burning car. police say that they were unable to link the 2 killings, but the daily beast found 4 more cases of similar debts in st. louis county over the previous 2 years. that sounds like it could be either official murders. it could be a serial killer. or it could be somebody working to silence black voices. what do you make of all that? i think there were 2 primary threads that we looked at there and we did come to an answer. but one of those threads is that there was someone who has now been called a serial killer. or there are very rare thing, a black serial killer named perez reed, who's m o was artisan. and it was also, you know, seemingly shooting through our window and, and had he had, he had murder people, allegedly in the same location, for instance, as the andre joshua was killed. and we spoke with his brother and his brother. i

bought a pair as was a serious contender, as a candidate for at least 2 adult, the andre, if not, if not darren because uh, apparently, uh, the andre had taken uh, taking him in his dice game, taking him for some money that day. and when he had seen a similar thing happen to her, as he says, a pair of locks them hand in a, you know, in a room and hit him with an iron, i believe was the quote. so we followed the trail of the serial killer to try to figure out if we could pin down whether he might be responsible for not only darren and the andre, his desk, but this series of bodies down in car buyers. but it's not to leave that they seem to connect to a particular part, sell back gang in saint louis, and the n m. o used by them as well. and as we look deeper that, that proved to be a pretty much as you know, john. i, we've been intimidated or attempted to be intimidated by the ca on our past journalism by the police. but i don't think i've ever been more scared than when i

sat with maria and looked at who we believe to be a card sale back game member in the eyes and told him that we had evidence that he may have committed murder. there wasn't moment to go through us. wow. wow. maria. the darren seals case officially is still open, although i'm sure the police are doing literally nothing about it right now. what is the future hold here? are darren seals, family members just supposed to move on with their lives? are ferguson's residents just supposed to forget about him? you expect any real justice to finally come out of this case? well, i honestly, i, i think the 200 page police report shows that they did a due diligence and the account ability is actually in the prosecuting attorneys office at this point. as the pod cast will show all long this entire process in the 2 plus years we've been doing this, we've been keeping the family up to date because we felt as though we needed to

give them some resolve, but not just darren's family. also the other families that were part of this and as we were talking about, so some of the family, one family in kansas city, another family in ferguson. we want it to be part of their healing. but in terms of darren, the, the own is frankly is on the prosecuting attorney's office. and when that case was delivered to present it to the prosecutor and attorney's office, it was under advisement. so by the police did such a great job. this is the irony of it all, and it took our team, our investigative team, our producers, re and myself, to get the prosecuting attorney's office to even look at the case. and so i don't

want to give the details out, but when you listen to the pod cast, you're going to hear some amazing things. and what usually people will want to say about police. they're saying about the prosecutor's office. amazing. i have to step to say, 1st of all, this is a public service. you've hit a home run on this. we should all download this podcast. thank you. rain over chelsea, journalist, author, and podcast are and thank you maria chappelle in the del former states, and that are for being with us today to talk about this very important issue. the great dr. martin luther king junior, one said quote, i refused to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and wore that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. unplugged every rights thinking person would agree with that, but that daybreak hasn't arrived for the people of friends in missouri. it hasn't

arrived for the family of guarantee. in the meantime, it's up to the rest of us to keep up for fight. thanks for joining us for another episode of the whistle blowers. i'm john kerry onto please follow me on sub stack at john kerry office. we'll see you next time the. 2 2 the, the, the, the, the analysis, what they've done, that then you can put them into a facade indeed. and they put the 2 in my car here to do it,

assuming that the the and again i am in the title is the title. i'm seen. send the most of the yet it could be the most, not the this is set but a center for sponsor for as long as cutting the stores a committee of the combined the percentage soon i need to return you to finish up with. it's just me. it would be due to the same yeah. criteria to that you seem to have lips still, most of the things do you need to look into. yeah. you just put it in to normally put keep the private and we'll we'll do the name and the doctor's office or any of

us, most of the sopranos mean say doing this stuff. the one you upside with like at least the 1st list. but some of us to do me to the business. good machine. yeah. you put the that was a push on the part of the plane was we used to born in the religious you believe the patrol, the key to the video to be less most as to look at the media to the customer for the adults told them you know somebody comes to go the guy and then because he doesn't display the version of the pre shown unless what zip code crosses your less than the rest of the positions with this much less of police agreement without leaving your speech. therapist, you just east virginia. if you really go into the school with the political, little and so forth, us national move the images on some ground squared amount on that's why little do you much roy, watch the dealer words the which isn't going to is it with me as well when i go and

still able to still you still live with i'm seeing is still bothering you, but let me hear when you push the issue of the unbox remodeled move up is to move 0 easy lives, mysterious. and when you go to the deal is make up the cell. i don't yeah. post the fun. yes, it was so, but i use the yeah, i'm just thinking and then use vice that i mean 58 and i maybe cause it please go ahead and i'll just communicate that. maybe we can go up national minds. but if they're still together of the, of social bush mojitos to eulu video insights. but i don't think he will just discuss those funds. will really tell the kids, if you want to send these these pretty particularly see i'm saying is up with them . you've got thrown images through one and then the other will be missing via guns thing. and some list of worst of movies is always in my hands. not old on the side of me, senior slot that i put down for the

breaking news. and yeah, most of the stuff side of the ministry reports and as re flight to jazz stripe on the countries that arise the port 15th of our data. following yes, today to feed drug and a top mountain head of the, the at least the case of that and people are killed. an idea strikes on gaza with babies and a pregnant women along the representative. todd stoked us out in the law, move israel's use of devastating watson again to bring in i have seen countless children with their bodies of riddles, instructional injuries. they have shrapnel all over their body in their head and neck, and that's or x and the optimal.