Speaker 1: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards in our Spooky Week
Speaker 1: Halloween podcast edition. Uh. This week, in addition to talking
Speaker 1: about a very spooky episode, we are based and Paul F.
Speaker 1: Tompkins pilled. Paul, thanks for taking my pill. You do
Speaker 1: offer a lot of pills. It sucks because there's like
Speaker 1: there's two hands, there's there's two pills, and then I
Speaker 1: come in with my pill and I'm like, can I
Speaker 1: stick my hand in there and hopefully somebody will pick it? Yeah? Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul,
Speaker 1: how are you doing well? You know? I after our
Speaker 1: part one, I really had to take uh an industrial shower,
Speaker 1: um and just really think about we're humans a mistake? Um.
Speaker 1: And so I've gotten I've just done a lot of thinking,
Speaker 1: a lot of soul searching, and I think I've come
Speaker 1: around to feel that people are are, you know, basically
Speaker 1: good and I'm ready with that attitude to go into
Speaker 1: part two. Wow. That is brave, Yeah, heroic even Oh boys,
Speaker 1: do you well? He killed Santa? He did murder Santa
Speaker 1: Claus got out of my mind. He did. He did
Speaker 1: kill the living embodiment of childhood wonderment. He killed Santa
Speaker 1: because he was jealous that the kids he was molested with,
Speaker 1: like Santa, they liked an idea of a person and
Speaker 1: he couldn't take it. That is like I think if
Speaker 1: you were to explain that somehow to Hitler, like pre
Speaker 1: losing his mind, Hitler hit would be like, well that's
Speaker 1: a bit much like that's that's a bit far. Can there.
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about that. Oh boy, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: I'll try painting again. Yeah, back to painting. So by
Speaker 1: the time Pinochet had solidified his grip on power in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen seventies, Colonia Dignidad was almost a state
Speaker 1: within a state. They had built a power plant, a
Speaker 1: television station, and two air strips to transport the timber, wheat, corn,
Speaker 1: and brotworst the community produced. Since fucking was more or
Speaker 1: less for boating the workforce, Paul Shaffer needed to accomplish all.
Speaker 1: This was built up through a novel method, abducting children
Speaker 1: who went to his hospital. So like He's like, okay, kids,
Speaker 1: kids have to come here. Yeah, they have to they
Speaker 1: need to go to the hospital. Their kids. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of the king, so I guess, uh, I
Speaker 1: can make these kids do whatever I want. I can
Speaker 1: make it disappear. Um, let's try it and see how
Speaker 1: it goes. Let's try and see how it goes. I
Speaker 1: need someone to build my airstrip, he seems are you
Speaker 1: willing to say, you know what, this is nuts? But
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But if that is,
Speaker 1: you've hit upon, Paul, one of the common through lines
Speaker 1: that all of our most dangerous bastards have. You can
Speaker 1: draw this to guys like Donald Trump. Guys like hit
Speaker 1: there A big part of their whole emo is just
Speaker 1: like what if I can get away with this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let me give it a shot. Yeah, let me give
Speaker 1: it a shot. You know I probably can't. Yeah, probably can't.
Speaker 1: And if I if I can't, then I'll say like, hey,
Speaker 1: I tried it. Yeah, but if I do, if I
Speaker 1: do get away with this, I meaning the thing is,
Speaker 1: it's living your life that way is incredible advice for
Speaker 1: like a career like it. It is like if you
Speaker 1: if you're creative or something like, oh, you think you
Speaker 1: might want to write and give it a shot? Do it?
Speaker 1: You know, Um, you want to do stand up? Go
Speaker 1: out there and do some stand up, you know, um,
Speaker 1: you know you think you're good enough to be in
Speaker 1: professional sports, well fucking try you know, see if you can,
Speaker 1: like um in like in personal lives like oh okay,
Speaker 1: well you think you're into that person, go up and
Speaker 1: ask him out, you know. Um Like, it's not bad
Speaker 1: life advice, it's just these kind of people take it
Speaker 1: to the extent of Like, I bet I could build
Speaker 1: my own power plan to have a totally self sufficient
Speaker 1: torture commune in the middle of Chile that I keep
Speaker 1: manned by abducting children at the hospital operate. There's no
Speaker 1: tryouts for cults, you know what I mean. You can't
Speaker 1: go audition to be a cult leader. That's a thing.
Speaker 1: There's no internship programs exactly. And I feel like I
Speaker 1: feel like, once you get the cult formed, then the
Speaker 1: sky's the limit. Really yeah yeah, once you get it going,
Speaker 1: it builds inertia. You know, these people, if these people
Speaker 1: are gonna listen to me this far, there's let's see
Speaker 1: what this baby could do. Yeah, let's let's let's get
Speaker 1: this thing on the fucking highway, you know. Absolutely so.
Speaker 1: The Colonial Hospital was absolutely essential to thousands of people
Speaker 1: in the working area, and since it received government funding,
Speaker 1: the state had no interest in providing people with a
Speaker 1: second option. As a result, when young boys were admitted
Speaker 1: for health problems and caught Shafer's eye, they were simply
Speaker 1: taken from their families. If said families who were very
Speaker 1: generally impoverished villagers complained safe would be like, well, you
Speaker 1: got other kids, right, do you want them to have
Speaker 1: medical care? And again, one of the things that's fun
Speaker 1: like this is fucked up for a thousand reasons. This
Speaker 1: is an oarriborous fund up. Inness. I learned about this
Speaker 1: particular aspect of the cult from a harrowing interview in
Speaker 1: that Netflix documentary series about the Colonia, and the boy
Speaker 1: relating this story says, I would have died from the
Speaker 1: health issue that brought me to the hospital. They saved
Speaker 1: my life and then abduct me so I could be
Speaker 1: molested for years. Like damn, it's fucking something else, Paul, Wow,
Speaker 1: it reminds me of something I once heard, um uh
Speaker 1: someone saying in an interview, UM, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: remember how they got to this in the conver station,
Speaker 1: but this person was saying, yeah, it would have been
Speaker 1: I think it would have been okay if I had
Speaker 1: never been born. Like, considering how my life has gone
Speaker 1: and the pain that's been in it. Like if I've
Speaker 1: never been born at all, that might have been better,
Speaker 1: and I that never left my mind, Like that way
Speaker 1: is extremely profound. And to save a child's life for that, Like,
Speaker 1: how does that not I don't know how those things
Speaker 1: happening to you. Like it's bad enough to just be molested,
Speaker 1: but to have been brought from the brink of death
Speaker 1: in order to be molested, the cycle, the psychological damage
Speaker 1: that that does. I don't know how you're not thinking
Speaker 1: of that every moment of the day for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life. Yeah, Like just getting up in the
Speaker 1: morning with that in your background requires a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of just like because we all know everybody says like
Speaker 1: the universe is unfair, but usually you're saying that from
Speaker 1: like your home with air conditioning and heating and like
Speaker 1: like fully fat and stuff like that's um somebody who
Speaker 1: knows intimately, Yeah, it's real unfair, Like it is a
Speaker 1: fucked up roll of some bad dice. Um, So good
Speaker 1: for that person for being I mean, whatever else happened
Speaker 1: in their life, they were like they had processed it
Speaker 1: enough to sit down to net with Netflix and like
Speaker 1: explain what happened to them. So I got nothing but
Speaker 1: respect for anybody who survives that. Um incomprehensible good lord. UM.
Speaker 1: So any locals who might feel inclined to complain about
Speaker 1: the situation at this point are not just running up
Speaker 1: against the fact that this is their only hospital in
Speaker 1: the area and whatnot. These people have money, um, but
Speaker 1: the fact that Paul Schaefer now has the direct support
Speaker 1: of the unquestioned dictator of the entire country. He doesn't
Speaker 1: just have people on the right wing who like him.
Speaker 1: Now the guy running the country is his personal like possession.
Speaker 1: Augusto Pinochet is his homeboy. For his part, the general
Speaker 1: allowed the colonial to import and export without paying taxes.
Speaker 1: Some of these benefits Schaefer extended to local farmers, so
Speaker 1: Pinochet's like, hey, you don't got to worry about taxes, import, export,
Speaker 1: whatever you want. You got your own airstrips. You don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about customs duties. And one of the
Speaker 1: ways Schaefer builds local support is he goes to these
Speaker 1: farmers in the area, kind of like the big local
Speaker 1: like the Chileans in the area who have influence, and
Speaker 1: he's like, hey, you're gonna be able to sell your
Speaker 1: ship for without customs duties. I'll achieuse my airport for free.
Speaker 1: But if anything happens, you got my back, you know,
Speaker 1: He's I'm not saying anything is going to happen, and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say what types of things are
Speaker 1: going to happen, but if anything happens, I mean it's
Speaker 1: really this really does, like you know, it really plays
Speaker 1: on how grateful are these people to have free, free healthcare,
Speaker 1: free healthcare where it's like you may hear that I'm
Speaker 1: a child Bill Lester, Like, yeah, you may hear that
Speaker 1: I have been operating a child molestation engine at an
Speaker 1: unfathomable scale, but but yeah you're not. When your daughter
Speaker 1: broker leg that ship was free, um yeah, it's it's wild.
Speaker 1: And these these local farmers who he's he gets you
Speaker 1: know in bedwidth kind of not literally. Um, some of
Speaker 1: these like these guys will defend him when like foreign
Speaker 1: journalists will come in to try to investigate what the
Speaker 1: fox going on here, and they've got his back, like
Speaker 1: it's a very hostile place to be looking into the colonial.
Speaker 1: So Schaefer becomes the total like almost god to his followers.
Speaker 1: They called him our eternal uncle, which make a creepy
Speaker 1: uncle joke here, but we shan't um I mean, is
Speaker 1: this where they started re turnal uncle? I might have
Speaker 1: some notes. They also called him the Supreme Lead, which
Speaker 1: is a little more traditional um. Daily prayer meetings served
Speaker 1: as a way for Shaeffer to institute strict groupthink and
Speaker 1: destroy any bonds besides the bond between him and his flock.
Speaker 1: He repeatedly forced his followers to repeat a definition of
Speaker 1: the word family that he said he'd found in the Bible.
Speaker 1: He would ask who are my mother and father, and
Speaker 1: his congregation would respond those that do the work of God. Okay,
Speaker 1: So at this point there is still some sort of
Speaker 1: um uh Christianity aspect to this. Yeah, there always is.
Speaker 1: There always is. They're having services and you know, doing
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But really it's all about him.
Speaker 1: It's all about him. It's Christianity has filtered through this pedophile.
Speaker 1: He's the instrument of God for them, but essentially he
Speaker 1: is their God. Yeah, it's like somebody distilled the Catholic
Speaker 1: Church into a into a hard liquor. So the process
Speaker 1: of having his followers confess their sins was formalized in
Speaker 1: a practice he called sealless sourgs, I'm not I don't
Speaker 1: speak German, which apparently means care of the soul. Confessions
Speaker 1: were supposed to happen as close to the moment of
Speaker 1: the sin as possible, but Shaffer would also require his
Speaker 1: followers to meet with him and each other in small
Speaker 1: groups repeatedly throughout the day in order to give confession.
Speaker 1: Public confessions and mass were held at lunch and dinner.
Speaker 1: Members of the community would be expected to write the
Speaker 1: names of sinners themselves and people they'd seen sin on
Speaker 1: a blackboard near the entrance to the cafeteria. When everyone
Speaker 1: sat down, Schaeffer would read the names listed on the board.
Speaker 1: While everyone ate, every sinner was required to stand up
Speaker 1: and confess their sins. You were not allowed to deny sinning.
Speaker 1: So if somebody else just writes your name and you
Speaker 1: don't know what the funk they're talking about, you have
Speaker 1: to come up with something like you have to like
Speaker 1: you have to. Yeah. That reminds me of confession when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and like what had I done? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And so you know, going in, but you had to
Speaker 1: go every week, and so sometimes you just make stuff up, um,
Speaker 1: like mild things like I took the lord's name in vain,
Speaker 1: or I disrespected my father or whatever, because you can't
Speaker 1: just it just seemed without being told, you knew. I
Speaker 1: can't just go in there and say I'm great. You
Speaker 1: know that I kept it a hundred this week. You
Speaker 1: had to. You had to come up with something you
Speaker 1: can't walk into confessionally like you know what, I NA
Speaker 1: I'm nailing it right now, bro. Great. No, it's just
Speaker 1: so it's also so weird because it is like, I mean,
Speaker 1: as a kid, I remember being terrified of like minor
Speaker 1: sins that was going to go to hell. Course, yeah,
Speaker 1: like some some stupid bullshit like um. But as an adult,
Speaker 1: it's like, dude's god, he's got other ship going, Like
Speaker 1: there's a lot happening right now. Like it's like walking
Speaker 1: in on a guy as he's like watching a genocide
Speaker 1: occur and being like, you know what, man, I was
Speaker 1: lusting a little of it earlier today. Yeah, let me
Speaker 1: make a note of that. Oh sorry, one second, they're
Speaker 1: shooting the children again. I'm in seventh grade and I
Speaker 1: saw a bra strap and I got excited. Is that?
Speaker 1: Did you have time for that? Right now? Yeah? You
Speaker 1: know what I was? I was paying attention to some
Speaker 1: stuff in Bosnia. But let me just drop all that
Speaker 1: right now, focus on this and I'll tell you what
Speaker 1: I'm going to do, the same thing for both. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what an easy gig. Rwanda Genet's side and cheated on
Speaker 1: a math test. Same, it requires the same thing from me.
Speaker 1: Consider them taken care of. I made a note of it.
Speaker 1: It's very funny. So what's not funny is all of this.
Speaker 1: So yeah, every but he's got to like come up
Speaker 1: with something to confess. And on Sundays, everybody's got to
Speaker 1: go next to a Schaeffer's house to confess yet again
Speaker 1: and pray for forgiveness. And they're spending all of their
Speaker 1: time that's not working confessing basically. Now again, they're supposed
Speaker 1: to make a confession in the moment when they sin,
Speaker 1: and Shaffer is not always going to be available for everybody.
Speaker 1: There's hundreds of people on the compound. He's a busy man,
Speaker 1: got a lot of crimes against humanity to commit. So
Speaker 1: if a sin occurs outside of one of those regular meetings,
Speaker 1: followers were expected to confess to the nearest fellow resident,
Speaker 1: who was expected to inform Schaefer of the sin. Immediately.
Speaker 1: This led to a thriving economy in betrayal because people
Speaker 1: who came to Schaffer to inform him of the unreported
Speaker 1: sins of other residents were rewarded by having their own
Speaker 1: sins forgiven without punishment. So if you tell a Shaffer
Speaker 1: about something bad someone else did that they didn't tell
Speaker 1: him about, you get a free forgiveness. You don't have
Speaker 1: to because there's punishments, right, you don't have to take
Speaker 1: the punishment. God, I know it's pretty bad. This is
Speaker 1: like one of those things where it really really to
Speaker 1: depends on nobody talking to each other. Yes, well, if
Speaker 1: two people talk, that's the devil exactly. Punishments for sins
Speaker 1: ran the gamut from restrictions on food, extra hard labor,
Speaker 1: or simply being berated in front of the group to
Speaker 1: being electrocuted with cattle prods and forced to take tranquilizers.
Speaker 1: Some laborers, including children, were force fed tranquilizers and then
Speaker 1: made to work industrial jobs with heavy machinery, like operating
Speaker 1: wood saws at the mill, which is I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know much about saws that are the size
Speaker 1: of cars, but you shouldn't be on pills when you operate.
Speaker 1: A lot of people say that, um, and so people
Speaker 1: get injured and dismembered all the time. Now we talk
Speaker 1: about this a lot, and I hope I think my
Speaker 1: regular listeners probably don't labor under this misapprehension, But a
Speaker 1: lot of people do have the idea that like folks
Speaker 1: who wind up stuck in this situation or have some
Speaker 1: sort of like they're they're dumb or they're week, there's
Speaker 1: something some flaw in them that allowed them to become
Speaker 1: dominated in this way. And first of all, I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of victim blaming, But second I think it
Speaker 1: misses number one. These aren't dumb people. They have their
Speaker 1: own power plant, like that if they built and operate themselves.
Speaker 1: They have their own airstrips and like manage air travel
Speaker 1: and like yeah, like they know what they're there's These
Speaker 1: are very intelligent, motivated people who are completely dominated by
Speaker 1: this guy. And in order to explain how that can happen,
Speaker 1: I want to read a quote from Bruce Falconer in
Speaker 1: The American Scholar. He eats a really good job of
Speaker 1: laying this out. In Santiago in early two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: I spoke with Dr Neils Biderman, a Chilean psychiatrist who,
Speaker 1: in association with the German embassy, had been making monthly
Speaker 1: trips to Colonia Dignidad to study the psychology of its inhabitants.
Speaker 1: This is after Shaffer is gone. He offered observations from
Speaker 1: his work. Everything was done to further the religion. He explained,
Speaker 1: like in any sect, the colonos, that's the members of
Speaker 1: the colony. The colony had a spiritual leader in Pulse Schaeffer,
Speaker 1: to whom they formed a very strong attachment. There was
Speaker 1: a complex network of emotional connections in the colonia. It
Speaker 1: was not a concentration camp system in which prisoners tend
Speaker 1: to think of themselves as individuals. It was a community,
Speaker 1: and the children suffered most of all. The pilgrims may
Speaker 1: have come to Chile for their religion, but once they
Speaker 1: were there they became prey to a brutal and relentless
Speaker 1: cult of personality. The older colonos punished the younger ones
Speaker 1: under orders from Schaefer. Piederman continued, they were also the
Speaker 1: ones who were supposed to educate them. This involved keeping
Speaker 1: them away from their families, keeping them active all day,
Speaker 1: and principally keeping them obedient and disciplined. They did whatever
Speaker 1: they needed to do, including psychopharmacology and electric shock. Over time,
Speaker 1: physical coercion became less necessary as the social system became
Speaker 1: rooted in the psyche of the individual. So a lot
Speaker 1: of this torture is frontloaded. It's like an attack dose
Speaker 1: of a drug in order to like, you don't have
Speaker 1: to after a certain point, everyone is so inundated by
Speaker 1: this system that there's not resistance, There aren't kinks in it.
Speaker 1: For most people, it works like again, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the thing is that I'm I'm as guilty as
Speaker 1: anyone of of victim blaming people in cults because I
Speaker 1: think your mind, of course, you go right away to
Speaker 1: what if it were me, and well that wouldn't happen
Speaker 1: to me, and blah blah bla blah, I wouldn't do this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it's like the the the way these work is
Speaker 1: because these people are these hideous geniuses who have figured
Speaker 1: this out. Sometimes it's simpler than other times. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: like they just know that it's if I just reinforce
Speaker 1: this thing over and over again that will wear people
Speaker 1: down and gets into their brains. But sometimes a guy
Speaker 1: like this comes along where it's like the the the
Speaker 1: way he has he has foreseen and forestalled every opposition
Speaker 1: to to uh to the programming is terrifying. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And he's very um, he's he's just good at it.
Speaker 1: And and that's the thing. It's these people don't think
Speaker 1: of it when they're asked to do something when they're
Speaker 1: working these hours, when they're when they're they're being separated
Speaker 1: from like their kids. They're not thinking of it as
Speaker 1: a as a punishment. They're not thinking of it as
Speaker 1: this is what Shaffer is doing to me. They're thinking
Speaker 1: about this is what I am doing for the community.
Speaker 1: And people will by and large do pretty much anything
Speaker 1: for their community, um, if they have one. If they don't, um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. See the United States of America. So
Speaker 1: Schaffer came to consider sexual intercourse a tool of the devil.
Speaker 1: As we have already discussed, the problem with this is
Speaker 1: that people fuck. I don't know if you're aware of this, Paul,
Speaker 1: but they share? Do they share? Do? I'm not ashamed
Speaker 1: to admit it myself. Wow. Wow, that's podcast history here.
Speaker 1: Tmzs front page isolate that use it as a drop. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so matter what restrictions you try to put on it.
Speaker 1: People are not going to not fall in love, even
Speaker 1: if you completely separate men from women. Uh, they're they're
Speaker 1: gonna find a way, like life finds a way, you know,
Speaker 1: as as as a mathematician once said, Obviously, Paul Shaffer
Speaker 1: tried to stop this. He punished men and women who
Speaker 1: are caught together viciously. Entire an entire family would be
Speaker 1: shunned if their daughter had like a kiss with a boy,
Speaker 1: like your whole family is in is in trouble if
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff happens. Um But still people found
Speaker 1: ways to do it, and there was also a situation.
Speaker 1: There were also situations in which Paul had to allow it.
Speaker 1: This increasingly becomes a thing the longer the colonia gets.
Speaker 1: He can't stop everybody from doing this because he needs
Speaker 1: a lot of these people. There are men and women
Speaker 1: in the colonia who, though loyal to him, are too
Speaker 1: valuable to control totally. There's doctors and nurses. Everything rides
Speaker 1: on these people, these skilled professionals, and they do have
Speaker 1: like if you are an m d. You can leave
Speaker 1: and find something else to do, you know, like you
Speaker 1: don't you don't have to do this ship. Um, you
Speaker 1: have a lot more leverage than other people. UM. And
Speaker 1: so in order to stop there for being kind of
Speaker 1: a power struggle with these folks, Schaefer would allow some
Speaker 1: of these people to marry if they asked. Now, some
Speaker 1: of them, like the guy we talked about Hop who's
Speaker 1: like the head doctor, he gets pretty much to live
Speaker 1: a normal life broadly, Like he's at the top of
Speaker 1: this colt too. He's not molesting kids, I don't think,
Speaker 1: but he he's kind of co leading things. He has
Speaker 1: a lot of autonomy. Um. Other people generally had less.
Speaker 1: But of these people who are kind of more privileged,
Speaker 1: they could go to Shaffer. You couldn't say I'm in
Speaker 1: love with this person and I want to marry them,
Speaker 1: but you could say I I think God wants me
Speaker 1: to marry right, um, and they would go to Shaffer.
Speaker 1: They would say this, and it would Shaffer's job. Then,
Speaker 1: if this was some of that, he was decided to
Speaker 1: let Mary to pick the person that they were going
Speaker 1: to marry. UM. Now, maybe some times people he picked
Speaker 1: people that they wanted to marry as a general rule,
Speaker 1: though he used this as a situation to exert more control.
Speaker 1: Bruce Falconer describes it as a kind of sexual roulette
Speaker 1: where you were just sort of hoping that he would
Speaker 1: pick someone you actually wanted to be with. Um. But
Speaker 1: the way Schaefer usually did it again, unless someone was
Speaker 1: high important enough that he couldn't funk with him, he
Speaker 1: would pick a woman that you couldn't possibly have a
Speaker 1: child with, right like. That was a big part of it,
Speaker 1: because he doesn't want people having families. He doesn't want
Speaker 1: people having kids. How he's determined that, well, it's easy
Speaker 1: if if the woman's been through menopause, you're not. Because
Speaker 1: so if some twenty year old who's got like a
Speaker 1: valuable skills, like I want to get married, he's like,
Speaker 1: here married this sixty five year old woman, Like that's
Speaker 1: your wife now, right like, so it's this um. The
Speaker 1: strategy was effective. Only sixty or so children were born
Speaker 1: during the entire span Schaefer ran Colonia Dignidad, which was
Speaker 1: more than thirty years and again a couple hundreds of
Speaker 1: three hundreds something people here between nineteen and nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: no children were born there at all. So this is
Speaker 1: an extremely successful control regime. He has a lot of
Speaker 1: control here, what I mean, like, what if he had
Speaker 1: thought about making a car that ran on water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you do have to think about, like, what could this
Speaker 1: man have done? How many diseases could have been eradicated? Yeah, yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: the the amount of human ingenuity we would be doing
Speaker 1: Star trek ship. Now if every one of these guys
Speaker 1: and there's we we talk our our business is talking
Speaker 1: about these guys, every one of these guys with this
Speaker 1: level of dedication, had instead been like, yeah, fusion seems
Speaker 1: like a good idea, even even just like the head
Speaker 1: of the department, you know, yeah, not even like that
Speaker 1: as a scientist, just to organize it, yes, and to
Speaker 1: motivate people exactly. Yeah. If Don Trump had dedicated every
Speaker 1: aspect of his charisma to feeding the poor, we would
Speaker 1: have a lot less starving poor people in the world
Speaker 1: because he's good at motivating a certain subjective people. Um.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking that if he had when when COVID
Speaker 1: hit us, and if he had said, you know, we're
Speaker 1: gonna John Wayne this and we're gonna do it better
Speaker 1: than anybody. This thing faster, like but no, it's not real.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be over soon. Yep, No, it's but no,
Speaker 1: chug your bleach. Yeah, you know who else wants you
Speaker 1: to drink bleach. Paul, know who the products and services
Speaker 1: are not? Are we not sponsored by Clorox anymore so?
Speaker 1: They we're not. We're not sponsored by Claros anymore over. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Paul, have I told you about my my
Speaker 1: my signature cocktail. Paul, I said, you're drinking out of
Speaker 1: a very fancy goblet here, and I wanted to I
Speaker 1: would love to hear about shore. It's called high ball.
Speaker 1: Now here's what you do, Paul. You get a pint
Speaker 1: glass and you fill that eight percent of the way
Speaker 1: up with pure sparkling four oh nine, and then just
Speaker 1: a drop of bleach. You want to keep a bottle
Speaker 1: of vermouth nearby, open it up, don't pour it in,
Speaker 1: just have it nearby, kind of like a good martini,
Speaker 1: and then you chug that whole thing as fast as
Speaker 1: you can. That's high ball. And let me tell you,
Speaker 1: at the end of a long day, it's just what
Speaker 1: it's just what you need. If I don't, if I
Speaker 1: don't have four oh nine, is fantastic and acceptable substitute. Well, Paul,
Speaker 1: that's that's You don't know this, but that's actually very
Speaker 1: offensive to my to my culture. I'm very sorry. You
Speaker 1: apologize now if you want to. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know what to drink names all right,
Speaker 1: well you can tell one of us is a professional improviser.
Speaker 1: Oh man, um, let's go to Savad. We're back and Paul,
Speaker 1: you mentioned a specific cleaning product that often comes, you know,
Speaker 1: the giant jugs that like those kind of like the
Speaker 1: like if you if you if you go to like
Speaker 1: a Mexican market, you get like the big cleaning supplies
Speaker 1: in the huge that are like purple and stuff. I
Speaker 1: think Fantastico is one. When I was in Baja a
Speaker 1: few years ago, I was living with our friend David Bell,
Speaker 1: who who is rights for Cody Johnson's Outfit and does
Speaker 1: his own podcasts then a guest on the show. I
Speaker 1: found something called mes colito, which is a horrible It's
Speaker 1: like mescal flavoring in sugar and liquor, and it's this
Speaker 1: color of yellow that looks radioactive and it's sold in
Speaker 1: the same bottles they sell cleaning supplies in. But I'm
Speaker 1: a jug of it, and for like a month, it
Speaker 1: would just gradually decrease as he would drink it. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure it took years off of his life. I
Speaker 1: apologized to his mother for it. Um, but wow, I
Speaker 1: miss it, Paul. Ready to get back into this, Yeah, Robert,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Let's do it. Let's now. In the
Speaker 1: rare occasions where a woman did get pregnant at the Colonia,
Speaker 1: Schaeffer would order her isolated from the community, kept in
Speaker 1: solitude until she gave birth. The child was taken from
Speaker 1: her immediately and put with nurses who would care for
Speaker 1: and raise the child, while the woman went immediately back
Speaker 1: to work. As you might expect, people born and forced
Speaker 1: to live in such circumstances did not always turn out
Speaker 1: to be the apex of mental health. Turns out, it's
Speaker 1: bad to separate children from the people who love them
Speaker 1: and force them to live in a barracks. Who could
Speaker 1: have known. Um. It also turns out that it's unfortunately
Speaker 1: pretty easy to make people who have already been manipulated
Speaker 1: to accept the torture and repeated assault of their loved ones.
Speaker 1: It's easy to make those people tortured strangers for profit.
Speaker 1: And that brings us back to Augusto Pinochet. Germany and
Speaker 1: Chile actually had a long military history together prior to
Speaker 1: the Cold War in eighteen seventy ones is Germans beat
Speaker 1: the French in a little scuffle called the Franco Prussian War.
Speaker 1: Prior to this, if you were a new country. And again,
Speaker 1: colonialism is like fading away in a lot of Latin
Speaker 1: America during the eighteen hundreds, right, all these different countries
Speaker 1: are getting their independence and stuff, and they're all like
Speaker 1: figuring out, like thrust into the modern world independent, like, well,
Speaker 1: we need an army now, Who's going to train them?
Speaker 1: At the start of the eighteen hundreds, it's the French, right,
Speaker 1: The French are historically like this gets ignored a lot
Speaker 1: because of how World War Two goes, but like for
Speaker 1: most of modern history, the French are like the army guys,
Speaker 1: like the best soldiers in the world. A lot of
Speaker 1: people consider them. That ship changes in eighteen seventy one
Speaker 1: and all of these Latin American nations that had lusted
Speaker 1: after getting like French people to train their armies start
Speaker 1: hiring Germans um and that's where the kind of relationship
Speaker 1: with um between Chile and Germany starts. So a lot
Speaker 1: of German military advisors Prussian officers are the ones who
Speaker 1: formed the Chilean Armed forces in the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: and it actually if you want to know, like how
Speaker 1: did a fascist take power in Chile? Well, all of
Speaker 1: the guys who built the Chilean military, which is responsible
Speaker 1: for the coup, we're guys who later were Nazis, and
Speaker 1: sometimes some of them were Nazis when they were doing it.
Speaker 1: So like, yeah, it did it make sense? Um? During
Speaker 1: the Second World War, a new lieutenant general who had
Speaker 1: been trained by German officers named Augusto Pinoche sympathized with
Speaker 1: the Nazis and expressed his enchantment with Irwin Rommel, easily
Speaker 1: the fifth or sixth most overrated general officer in that war. Well,
Speaker 1: now you don't need to be snarky, Robert, I bring
Speaker 1: the Ramel shade. That's what I'm here for anyway. Um,
Speaker 1: we've already discussed the privileges Pinochet gave the colony, but
Speaker 1: those privileges did come with a response of ability. As
Speaker 1: I introduced in the last episode, Colonia Dignidot's expertise in
Speaker 1: torture made them a perfect auxiliary to the d I
Speaker 1: n A or dina UM, Pinochet's secret police force. We
Speaker 1: don't know how many people they tortured, um, but thousands,
Speaker 1: maybe like a lot. They tortured the shipload of people
Speaker 1: and one of the people they by the way, this
Speaker 1: is actually again some of these people are a lot
Speaker 1: of these people are former Nazis. A lot of people
Speaker 1: organized and we don't know what all of them did
Speaker 1: during the war. Um, but there's an ugly and a
Speaker 1: pretty global history of former Nazis, specifically being the people
Speaker 1: who helped train secret police for dictators to torture, and
Speaker 1: the U S supports a number of these guys. In fact,
Speaker 1: Syria's infamous said Naya prison and it's incredibly Syria has
Speaker 1: one of the most like horrific torture programs of any
Speaker 1: nation today. Um. It was all organized by a former
Speaker 1: member of the s S who like put together their
Speaker 1: torture program, and the United States funded it from two
Speaker 1: thousand were like two thousand nine or ten, because we
Speaker 1: would take people we captured in Iraq and we would
Speaker 1: send them over to Syria because we didn't couldn't torture
Speaker 1: them the way that the Syrians could torture them. You're
Speaker 1: talking about the United States of America of America. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right, I know. Um, it turns out.
Speaker 1: I mean, we were also funding Pinochet while he was
Speaker 1: using Nazis to torture people. So we we do this
Speaker 1: a lot. Well, I hope we don't do it anymore. No,
Speaker 1: this is this. I think it's safe to say that
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies was the last time the United States
Speaker 1: did anything questionable in Latin America. It has been nothing
Speaker 1: but smooth saying exactly, well, we got that out of
Speaker 1: our system. Yeah. Look, it's like, you know, you gotta,
Speaker 1: you gotta, you gotta. I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what else. It's like. One of the people tortured at
Speaker 1: the Colonia Dignidad was a guy named Louis Peebles. He
Speaker 1: was which is tragic story but very funny name. Um,
Speaker 1: he survived, so we can laugh at the fact that
Speaker 1: his name is Louis Peebles. Um. Peebles again, amazing. Was
Speaker 1: the former commander of a left wing militia. Um, you
Speaker 1: have to really be a frightening man. If you're a
Speaker 1: militia leader named Peoples and people take you seriously like you,
Speaker 1: that's an extra like boy named Sue level of Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't laugh at the name. It is funny that I
Speaker 1: never thought twice about the name Van Peebles. But people's
Speaker 1: by itself. Yeah it's absurd, Yeah, Louis Peebles, Louis Pee.
Speaker 1: So Peoples runs a left wing militia. It turns out
Speaker 1: running a left wing militia pretty hard in a country
Speaker 1: that's been taken over by the fascists. He lasts a while.
Speaker 1: Seventy three is when Pinochet is out of power. Most
Speaker 1: of the resistance is stomped out in a week or so.
Speaker 1: Peoples isn't captured by the government until nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: February nineteen seventy five. So whoever he is, he's pretty
Speaker 1: canny son of a bit. But you know, nobody's that
Speaker 1: canny um. He was initially jailed in a military base,
Speaker 1: but then early one Sunday morning, soldiers bound him, blindfolded him,
Speaker 1: and drove him several hours away to Colonia Dignidad. Next
Speaker 1: from the American scholar quote. He was taken to an
Speaker 1: underground cellar that smelled of linoleum and wood polish, stripped
Speaker 1: to his underwear, and fastened down with leather straps to
Speaker 1: an iron bed frame. His blindfold was replaced with a
Speaker 1: leather cap that came down over his eyes. It had
Speaker 1: a chin strap that held his jaw firmly in place,
Speaker 1: and ear flaps equipped with metal wires. More wires were
Speaker 1: taped to his ankles, thighs, chest, throat, anus, and genitals,
Speaker 1: all hooked into a voltage machine. The first session lasted
Speaker 1: six hours. As Peebles was being shocked, they stabbed him
Speaker 1: with needles that caused his skin to itch. Then they
Speaker 1: put out cigarettes on his body and applied a sticky
Speaker 1: substance to his eyes and mouth. Sometimes if he screamed,
Speaker 1: they shoved it down his throat. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: at least they polished the floor. Yeah, they did polish
Speaker 1: the floor. They're Germans, they're clean people. Um. Some times
Speaker 1: to do a problematic degree. Um. So the guy who's
Speaker 1: doing all this, he hears a German Man talking. And
Speaker 1: when all of this becomes public later and Shafers in
Speaker 1: the news, he realizes the man torturing him was Paul Schaefer. Um.
Speaker 1: He was teaching them how to do their job. People's
Speaker 1: later said. He was saying, you have to do it slowly,
Speaker 1: you have to push here. Once or twice he punched
Speaker 1: me very hard below the belt. He realized that they
Speaker 1: weren't doing anything to me down there, so he said
Speaker 1: you should also do it here, and he started beating me.
Speaker 1: And I think this is him training the kids, the
Speaker 1: young people. I think they're not children at this point.
Speaker 1: But when they grow up, the ones who don't pull
Speaker 1: away from him cause emolested them, the ones who are
Speaker 1: like bonded to him, because that happens too, they become
Speaker 1: like his torture people. Oh god, damn, it's pretty bad, Paul.
Speaker 1: This guy wait, wait, he doesn't know when to quit. Well,
Speaker 1: no one has stopped him yet. He has not not
Speaker 1: encountered a tremendous number of consequences to his actions so far. U,
Speaker 1: everything's coming up shafer um at this point. Um. I'm
Speaker 1: very interested now because we've talked about cult people before
Speaker 1: and there's always there's always the moment where they go
Speaker 1: they do a thing that they like, it builds and
Speaker 1: builds and builds, and there's a thing like what if
Speaker 1: I tried this, and then that's when it all falls apart.
Speaker 1: Cannot even imagine what it's going to be for this guy,
Speaker 1: given what he's already done. I'm interested to see if
Speaker 1: you'll consider it, like, because it's it would it's easy.
Speaker 1: I know what it is it that is coming like
Speaker 1: you're right, you and you want you know, you're cult guys. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm interested if you'll think it's kind of like a deceleration.
Speaker 1: And by the way, because at the midpoint of the
Speaker 1: story is he murdered Santa Claus Like it's hard. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot of pressing the gas from there. I
Speaker 1: tell you what, If it is a deceleration, that's fine
Speaker 1: by me. I wouldn't say notion to like pulling back
Speaker 1: on that throttle a little bit, right. Um, So people's
Speaker 1: survived his experience, and again one of the Pinochet kills
Speaker 1: a lot of people, but not he's not a he's
Speaker 1: not a mass murdering fascist on the scale. If he's
Speaker 1: more like um, um, he's more like Francisco Franco. He's
Speaker 1: not like a Hitler kind of guy. Like his whole
Speaker 1: thing is, I'm not going to kill them all. If
Speaker 1: I torture them until they're too scared to do anything,
Speaker 1: that's fine. Like Pinochet's body count in the grand scale
Speaker 1: of dictators is not tremendously. I he tortures a shipload
Speaker 1: more people than he kills, and he doesn't have people's killed. Um.
Speaker 1: In fact, the guys eventually released and he quite wisely
Speaker 1: flees to Europe, which I think works out fine for Pinochet. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: people's piece together what had happened to him. Over the
Speaker 1: next several years, his new stories began to trickle out
Speaker 1: about Colonia Dignidad's relationship with Pinochet. He realizes, oh, this
Speaker 1: guy who and again their stories filtering back to Europe.
Speaker 1: Again we've talked to there's a couple of people who
Speaker 1: escape and they go to the media. Though so for
Speaker 1: sin the beginning, there have been occasional stories in the
Speaker 1: media about allegations that this this German compound in Chile
Speaker 1: as host to a pedophile and that. And once pinochets
Speaker 1: e power, they start to be stories that come out
Speaker 1: that like they might be torturing some people. Um, so
Speaker 1: this is it's there. There's a constant kind of background
Speaker 1: conversation in Germany and in Europe about what might be
Speaker 1: happening here. And when Peoples gets to Europe, he goes
Speaker 1: to Amnesty International and in nineteen seventy seven they put
Speaker 1: his testimony with a testimony of several other people who
Speaker 1: had been tortured there and survived into a sixty page
Speaker 1: report with the subtitle a German community in Chile a
Speaker 1: torture camp for the Dina. Schaefer's lawyers filed libel charges
Speaker 1: against Amnesty International in a German court. This started a
Speaker 1: legal battle that would last almost twenty years and delay
Speaker 1: the publication of the report until nineteen seven, So twenty years.
Speaker 1: They're able to stop this and from getting out in
Speaker 1: mass because he's got money. They've got money of the lawyers,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's the scientology. It there's every so
Speaker 1: much of all of these different kind of cults that
Speaker 1: are usually aren't involved with each other. Usually like if
Speaker 1: you've got the hardcore, got them a less children and
Speaker 1: murder people called, they don't really have the resources for
Speaker 1: good lawyers and stuff. You know. Scientology never goes that
Speaker 1: far with the brutal torture stuff because they the reason
Speaker 1: that they have the money is that they keep it on,
Speaker 1: you know, on the edge of that. Schaefer does every
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. He does all of the quasi
Speaker 1: respectable making money, interacting with the real world, you know,
Speaker 1: having a legal team, and also the and we're balls
Speaker 1: out like unspeakable evil kind of stuff. Like it's really
Speaker 1: a pretty remarkable story. Um. So like other escapes of
Speaker 1: the colonial people settled in Europe, Brussels to be specific.
Speaker 1: And because again this goes on for twenty years. So
Speaker 1: he he does like live a life which is good.
Speaker 1: Um and he continues, he spends years. Anytime anyone's willing
Speaker 1: to talk about Paul Schaefer, he will tell his story. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the torture continued. In fact, as Pinochet his regime went on. Uh,
Speaker 1: Pinochet came to rely on Shafer more and more. In
Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, the Dina
Speaker 1: started taking dissidence to the colonial for execution. The bodies
Speaker 1: were eventually buried in mass grace. We don't know how many.
Speaker 1: All of them were dug up and burned at some
Speaker 1: point after this. We know they were mass graves because
Speaker 1: number one, you can tell that like there was a grave.
Speaker 1: There's little bits and pieces, you know, of clothing and stuff.
Speaker 1: The cars of missing persons were found buried on the
Speaker 1: property and whatnot, so we know what was going on.
Speaker 1: But the remains themselves were all destroyed. Again their their Germans,
Speaker 1: they're very thorough. Um. Yeah. And former d I n
Speaker 1: A DINA agents have admitted to taking people there to
Speaker 1: be disappeared. We we also do have testimony from people
Speaker 1: who were like dropping off dissidents to be murdered, who
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, that's what we did there. Um again,
Speaker 1: no idea how many people were killed, but a lot,
Speaker 1: a mass grave number. You know. I'm these former DINA agents,
Speaker 1: I mean, where are they that they're in a position
Speaker 1: to say like, oh, yeah, we disappeared all those people
Speaker 1: after This is one of those things when you have
Speaker 1: a dictatorship like this that ends, and it doesn't end
Speaker 1: in a massive civil war. When it ends in a
Speaker 1: massive civil war, Yeah, those guys when they get tend
Speaker 1: to get murdered if they get caught, right, Like, that's
Speaker 1: what you do if it's a civil war. To the
Speaker 1: old secret police, you fucking kill a lot of them.
Speaker 1: This doesn't in that way. Pinochet's regime ends, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a negotiated thing and Pinochet gets to
Speaker 1: be like a Congressman for life kind of thing like
Speaker 1: it's and things get a lot better in Chile. I
Speaker 1: no one would disagree with that, but um, they don't.
Speaker 1: They have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It's like in
Speaker 1: South Africa, right, this system of apartheimes, but they don't like,
Speaker 1: they don't like murder all of the people who did
Speaker 1: the apartheid um. They have to integrate them into society.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of these guys they say, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna There are some people who do get punished,
Speaker 1: there are people who go to prison for the stuff
Speaker 1: they did in the regime, but a lot of these
Speaker 1: people are basically like, we need to know what happened,
Speaker 1: but like, we're not going to to kill you over it,
Speaker 1: and so, and I think there are people who feel bad. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to spend a lot of time like
Speaker 1: trying to morally whatever these guys. But basically, in exchange
Speaker 1: for information, we will yeah we won't execute you, Yeah
Speaker 1: we won't, or we won't like whatever, put you in
Speaker 1: prison necessary, right because we were trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what happened who disappeared. There's a lot of people who
Speaker 1: have questions. I don't know if my family members alive
Speaker 1: or dead. You know, you're trying to not I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to come down one way or the other on
Speaker 1: it because it's not my country and not my decision
Speaker 1: what should happen afterwards? Um, but yeah, that's what it's not.
Speaker 1: The Pinochet's dictatorship doesn't end because the people like murder him,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. So. Schaefer's nickname with the Dina was
Speaker 1: the Professor, and the eyewitness accounts of people being sent
Speaker 1: to the Colonial for execution all point to Schaefer being
Speaker 1: the man who received victims and lead them to their execution.
Speaker 1: He is a hands on dude, Like he's not delic
Speaker 1: eating this ship like Hitler's a delegator. Schaefer is. If
Speaker 1: we're gonna be executing people, I'm gonna be there like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be picking them up. I'm gonna be taking
Speaker 1: them to the site like. Um. One former member of
Speaker 1: the Colony told Bruce Falconer that he had been ordered
Speaker 1: by Schaefer directly to drive a bus load of thirty
Speaker 1: five political prisoners into the hills of the Colony and
Speaker 1: leave them by the side of a dirt road. As
Speaker 1: this person drove away, he heard machine gun fire. Nobodies
Speaker 1: were ever found, and there's a bunch of stories like that.
Speaker 1: That's generally how they go. By nineteen eighty, the Colonial
Speaker 1: had expanded from its initial acres to more than fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand acres. A sizeable chunk of this was stolen from
Speaker 1: locals and the Catholic Church. Again, this comes up like
Speaker 1: you've heard of liberation theology. There's this chunk of the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church in South America during this period that's fighting
Speaker 1: back against all of these like fascist dictators in militias
Speaker 1: and stuff. So they don't have a lot of resistance
Speaker 1: from the Pinochet regime when they just like show up
Speaker 1: one day, Schaefer has his people like surround this group
Speaker 1: of nuns who owned farmland and is like, what are
Speaker 1: you gonna do? And so they leave and he gets it. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is probably like the mid nineteen eighties is
Speaker 1: kind of win. His control is at its peak. But
Speaker 1: while his personal control of his cult is at its peak,
Speaker 1: he's now lost control of the international narrative. And as
Speaker 1: this Washington Post report from nineteen eighty makes clear, his
Speaker 1: Nazi passed had started to catch up to him on
Speaker 1: the international stage. Quote. There have also been charges over
Speaker 1: the years that the colony is a way station in
Speaker 1: the South American Nazi underground where war criminals wanted by German,
Speaker 1: Israeli or other authorities are allowed to hide. A Chilean
Speaker 1: who visited the colony several years ago said that he
Speaker 1: was told by Ursula, a nurse in the colony's ultra
Speaker 1: modern hospital, that the doctors there were experts in performing
Speaker 1: plastic surgery. Last December, Nazi hunters Simon of Eisenthal said
Speaker 1: that he had evidence that Joseph Mingola, the third Reich's
Speaker 1: infamous Angel of Death, had lived in the colony for
Speaker 1: a time. Last year. The FBI had similar information, and
Speaker 1: the colony they have a spokesman. The colony denies that
Speaker 1: Mingler any other Nazis lived in the colony. We know
Speaker 1: Nazis lived there, some of them, like I was in
Speaker 1: the idea was in the very pack or whatever. We
Speaker 1: we don't have as much as I wants, it would
Speaker 1: be good to have on like what extent they were
Speaker 1: actually part of the underground Nazi railroad, but it kind
Speaker 1: of seems like they were a key aspect of helping
Speaker 1: like hardcore war criminal Nazis move around and change their
Speaker 1: appearance and stay in the underground and avoid prosecution. But
Speaker 1: also like everything suggests that that is a thing that
Speaker 1: he would do, that he would yea, he would this
Speaker 1: is the guy. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if Mingolow
Speaker 1: was there, um. Um, nobody does obviously, but um, I
Speaker 1: think he helped a lot of hardcore Nazi war criminals side. Um.
Speaker 1: That seems completely on brand for the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: why not at that point and honestly on the low
Speaker 1: end of his crime exactly. Yeah, maybe did that to
Speaker 1: feel more respectable to him. Yeah, yeah, just just smuggling
Speaker 1: some genocide committers. They already did the genocide. You should
Speaker 1: see the ship I'm getting up to. Um. It is
Speaker 1: unclear whether or not yet any other famous Nazis hung
Speaker 1: out there, but there were definitely Nazis. Schaffer and a
Speaker 1: lot of the oldermen were Nazi veterans. They were huge
Speaker 1: fans of Pinochet, who was himself a fascist. That nineteen
Speaker 1: article from the Washington Post is maybe the first place
Speaker 1: to describe the Colonial as a state within a state,
Speaker 1: which it was, and they note that the private airstrips
Speaker 1: and private communication system would make it simple for someone
Speaker 1: to fly into the Colonial from outside of the country
Speaker 1: without going through customs or being registered in any way.
Speaker 1: So they're in the ideal situation to help Nazis stay underground.
Speaker 1: The reporter on that article noted that he attempted to
Speaker 1: visit the colonia, but was threatened with arrest by local police,
Speaker 1: who swarmed him before he could get close and destroyed
Speaker 1: his film role just to be sure. They claimed to
Speaker 1: be acting on orders from the capital. Quote. The Chilean
Speaker 1: government takes the attitude that the colony is located on
Speaker 1: private property, which, unless there is a problem, should not
Speaker 1: be entered by the police. Neither the police captain who
Speaker 1: almost arrested me in December, nor the government officials in
Speaker 1: Santiago could explain how the police would know if there
Speaker 1: were a problem without regularly entering the vast commune. Chilian
Speaker 1: peasants from the surrounding area, who hold the colony in
Speaker 1: high regard, are given three medical care at its hospital,
Speaker 1: but only during certain pre established hours. One Chili and
Speaker 1: who spent three nights there, said he had uncovered microphones
Speaker 1: hidden in his room, which his hosts then explained were
Speaker 1: there to anticipate his needs. He also said that he
Speaker 1: was followed wherever he went and was not allowed to
Speaker 1: have spontaneous contact with members of the sect. I love
Speaker 1: the idea explaining a bug by saying, oh wait, we
Speaker 1: just want to know if you want stuff, which wouldn't
Speaker 1: be better hosts. Yeah, it's going to be better rather
Speaker 1: than you having to ask, like can I make a
Speaker 1: sandwich in here? You know, we just make a sandwich,
Speaker 1: just like a sandwich. Right now, I'm gonna go ask
Speaker 1: for one. We just want this to be the best
Speaker 1: damn hospital you've ever been to. It is funny that
Speaker 1: you would even like, yeah, try to justify it, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that is. And you also see in that quote everything
Speaker 1: he's spent years doing coming on, Like he's got all
Speaker 1: of this local support, not just from the government but
Speaker 1: from the people. Like there is no getting in there,
Speaker 1: there's no he has. Maybe this might be the most
Speaker 1: total control I've ever heard of a cult leader establishing,
Speaker 1: Like to be honest, this is yeah, it's it's something else.
Speaker 1: He's got the ship locked up, Yeah he does. And
Speaker 1: you know who else has their ship locked up? Paul?
Speaker 1: Please tell me the products and services that support this
Speaker 1: podcast perfect ideological black holes inescapable, that's behind the Bastard's guarantee. Ah,
Speaker 1: we're back, Paul. So we just talked about how there's
Speaker 1: some weird ship going on with Nazis maybe getting smuggled
Speaker 1: through here. To add to that, there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff we just don't know enough about. As I would like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of unexplained financial irregularities behind the Colonial
Speaker 1: and shape dudes s really I would have though. That's
Speaker 1: the one thing that Paul Shapers insisted was I will
Speaker 1: be scrupulous about the books. That nineteen eighty Washington Post
Speaker 1: article noted that the Colonial maintained what it called a
Speaker 1: mother house in Siegberg, Germany, where it would take care
Speaker 1: of single mothers and would raise funds. Uh So they
Speaker 1: continue to operate operate an orphanage in Germany, which they
Speaker 1: use the establishment of this orphanage means there's a charity
Speaker 1: in Germany, which means anonymous people only described as partners
Speaker 1: can donate money to that orphanage, and all that money
Speaker 1: goes to the Commune in Chile. And those partners are
Speaker 1: maybe former members of the Nazi Party who were trying
Speaker 1: to help smuggle people or get funds to them. A
Speaker 1: lot of this might have been a money laundering operation
Speaker 1: where we need to get money to this fucking S S.
Speaker 1: Gen Role who's been hiding out in Argentina. We donate
Speaker 1: to the Colonia. They take a cut off the top
Speaker 1: and they pass the money onto this guy because they're
Speaker 1: able to travel without like customs documents, Like all sorts
Speaker 1: of shady ship is going on here. The thing the
Speaker 1: thing to me when it gets to this point, especially
Speaker 1: when there's when there's uh, you know, some kind of
Speaker 1: when there's Christianity involved, is that what what level is
Speaker 1: the Christianity uh entering Paul Shaffer's brain at this point?
Speaker 1: Like is he does he still consider himself a religious person?
Speaker 1: Like I say my prayers every night? Um? Or is
Speaker 1: it just like at this point it's just like I
Speaker 1: am fully I'm fully embracing my own Godhood and the
Speaker 1: sham Like it's always to me the balancing like we
Speaker 1: talked about before, the balancing of how much do I
Speaker 1: believe in myself to be this thing and how much
Speaker 1: of it is just a con? And I know it's
Speaker 1: a con. But then when when when you still are
Speaker 1: considering yourself a Christian or you're you're having some sort
Speaker 1: of Christian aspect to your scam, Like how much do
Speaker 1: you believe like in our Lord Jesus Christ on high
Speaker 1: is smiling down upon me and the things that I'm
Speaker 1: doing it is, Um, I don't know. I really have
Speaker 1: no idea, because like, you're pretty far from the teachings
Speaker 1: of the Bible when you are smuggling Nazis through Latin
Speaker 1: America in while raping hundreds of children and torturing people
Speaker 1: for Pinochet and laundering money and like not very Christian.
Speaker 1: I would say, that's the only peak I would like
Speaker 1: into their brains is to yeah, what are they thinking
Speaker 1: at that moment? Or like, is there a point where
Speaker 1: it's just abandoned and they're just like, I got a
Speaker 1: good thing going here, I'm gonna keep it up. Uh,
Speaker 1: It's it's a it's a useful means of control. Still,
Speaker 1: you know, to say that that there's a there's a
Speaker 1: power even greater than me that's guiding everything, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I'm the like I I don't I have
Speaker 1: trouble imagining that Schaefer believes in anything but power and
Speaker 1: indulging his his his his wants. I do have trouble
Speaker 1: believing that. Um, I don't know. Though obviously there's a
Speaker 1: lot of belief in this organization and a lot of skills,
Speaker 1: I think there's also just a lot of very cynical Nazis,
Speaker 1: um using it for their own ship, right, which to me,
Speaker 1: and it's the worst kind of Nazi, cynical Nazi at
Speaker 1: least be a believer, you know. Um yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Um, it is hard to like, uh, it's
Speaker 1: hard to really wrap your head around what is going
Speaker 1: on in Paul's head if it's anything but just cold.
Speaker 1: And it might because he's he's got to be a calculator, right,
Speaker 1: Like I could see it just being sort of like
Speaker 1: a dial tone in there, just like I get what
Speaker 1: I want. These are the things that I'm doing in
Speaker 1: order to get the things that i want. Yet it's
Speaker 1: not like these guys ever really lay it out at
Speaker 1: the end where they're like, you know it all bullshit,
Speaker 1: I ad made it. Yeah, yeah, No, they don't ever
Speaker 1: do that. Um, But yeah, I don't know. There were
Speaker 1: constant rumors of foreign backers for the colonial rumors that
Speaker 1: old Nazi war criminals had funneled money to it. It's
Speaker 1: hospital again super good at plastic surgery, which is a
Speaker 1: little odd for a rural Chilean medical facility that deals
Speaker 1: primarily with obstetrics. Um. They of course ran several successful
Speaker 1: businesses torture people for the Chilean state. So a lot
Speaker 1: of the money may have come from that. It's hard
Speaker 1: to say. One diplomatic observer cited by The Washington Post
Speaker 1: noted that quote, no one knows who was behind the
Speaker 1: central organization, which he claimed was located in Siegberg, Germany. Um,
Speaker 1: this guy claimed that they'd put millions of dollars into
Speaker 1: the colony rather than the funding the colony funding its
Speaker 1: own endeavors, which I I just don't know what's going
Speaker 1: on here, The observer went on to stay, the religious
Speaker 1: and social aims of this group are very uncertain. It
Speaker 1: is all very strange, and that is kind of the
Speaker 1: untold story. Here's like how much of this, how much
Speaker 1: of this? How much of Paul was If you keep
Speaker 1: this operation going for these underground Nazis, you can do
Speaker 1: whatever you want. Like how much was he um an
Speaker 1: instrument of other people who helped him get established and
Speaker 1: helped him do all this. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know how much of that is underpinning this. I don't
Speaker 1: know if they come in later and are like, this
Speaker 1: guy's got a good thing going, let's pump some money
Speaker 1: into it, and like we can we can take advantage,
Speaker 1: or if it's from sixty one, from the very start,
Speaker 1: there's this shadow week of all of Nazis being like,
Speaker 1: we need to build this thing. I really just don't know.
Speaker 1: Could just be an innocent dude, could be an innocent
Speaker 1: pedophile just working for the Nazis, Just an innocent Nazi pedophile,
Speaker 1: just a regular nut upon the forces greater than him, exactly.
Speaker 1: We've all felt that way at some point. Yeah, yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Journalists in nineteen eighty noted how suspicious it was that
Speaker 1: the Colonia, ostensibly a religious mission, had no church. And
Speaker 1: I actually think they're wrong, But that didn't even occur
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, there's not a single church there. Where
Speaker 1: do these services happening. They're all in like the cafeteria.
Speaker 1: And I actually think it's very funny that this religious
Speaker 1: mission has no church. But I think the thing that
Speaker 1: I think the reason these journalists think that it's weird
Speaker 1: and suspicious is because they don't actually understand what these
Speaker 1: people believe. There was no physical church because Schaefer was
Speaker 1: the church. Wherever he is is the church, and he
Speaker 1: could not abide the thought of worship that was not
Speaker 1: centered around and directed by him. I think he hated
Speaker 1: the idea that there would be a church because then
Speaker 1: people could go there when he was not there and
Speaker 1: worship like I am the worship, I am the vector
Speaker 1: of this faith. Um. Yeah, that's my suspicion. All the
Speaker 1: while this is going on, the abuse continued. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, girl Matilda's sure Gillis wrote to her mother
Speaker 1: back in Germany, no one is getting in here and
Speaker 1: nobody is getting out, um, which is certainly how she
Speaker 1: felt at the time, but is not quite true now.
Speaker 1: Werner Schmitko was one of the kids we talked about
Speaker 1: in episode one. He sailed to Colonia Dignidad in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two as a two year old, and a few
Speaker 1: years later he began being molested by Paul Schaefer. Schmidka
Speaker 1: tried to escape the colonia five times over the years,
Speaker 1: and even though he was never caught in doing this,
Speaker 1: he was always he was never like he was alway
Speaker 1: he got out successfully every time, he was always forced
Speaker 1: to return. Um. And this is what's interesting to me.
Speaker 1: He's like he would get out, he would be free
Speaker 1: and clear, and then he would have to go back because,
Speaker 1: as he explained, I had nobody to go to as
Speaker 1: a child, you need your parents to go to to
Speaker 1: cry to and say I can't take it anymore. But
Speaker 1: the only answer was to run away, so he kept
Speaker 1: winding up back at the colt after escaping and getting
Speaker 1: punished and stuff. In nineteen eight, um it was it
Speaker 1: was ninety eight. So in Werner is escaping a bunch
Speaker 1: of times. A number of kids get out, a lot
Speaker 1: of them get brought back, some of them flee to Europe.
Speaker 1: But it's nineteen eighty eight before an escape happens that
Speaker 1: generates enough news in the right media climate for the
Speaker 1: international community Germany in particular, to start taking the allegations
Speaker 1: of abuse at the colonial seriously. And it happens when
Speaker 1: two young George and Lottie pack Moore, managed to escape
Speaker 1: to Canada and then get to Bonne where they testify
Speaker 1: before the Reichstag that German citizens were being sexually assaulted
Speaker 1: and forced to stay against their will. Lottie implicated a
Speaker 1: number of high ranking officials in the colonia, including doctor Hopp,
Speaker 1: saying that he'd been allowed to marry and own a
Speaker 1: car in return for enabling a regime of mass child rape.
Speaker 1: Dr Hopp had been the colonials, foreign emissary. He was
Speaker 1: the guy who would go overseas whenever there were questions
Speaker 1: about the colonial He's the guy who's talking to the
Speaker 1: press a lot of the time. Um he had connections
Speaker 1: with German diplomats. He brought people back sometimes when they
Speaker 1: would flee to foreign countries. When Lottie had first escaped
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty, he had convinced foreign officials to send
Speaker 1: her back because she was a child, and she claims
Speaker 1: that when she protested, he threatened her another peep out
Speaker 1: of you, and you'll get an injection to keep you quiet.
Speaker 1: So this is like this, this guy gets to have
Speaker 1: a wife in a car, and a family and a
Speaker 1: job because he's doing this. Since Paul Schaeffer was still
Speaker 1: a wanted man in Germany, he sent Dr Hopp to
Speaker 1: represent cult in parliament. According to Reuters, hop testified that
Speaker 1: quote the group was one big family which in a
Speaker 1: quarter of a century had not a single divorce or suicide,
Speaker 1: and whose members were free to leave at any time,
Speaker 1: and we're not subjected to forced labor. Quote. Despite this,
Speaker 1: there have always been people, are groups who have slandered
Speaker 1: our society or individual members in an incredibly scandalous way
Speaker 1: by feeding misinformation to the press. So this is what
Speaker 1: he says in his testimony. In nineteen nine, the people
Speaker 1: of Chile forced Augusto Pinochet out of office via a plebiscite.
Speaker 1: He stepped down to a term as senator for life.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about all this more at some point,
Speaker 1: I promise. After he leaves office, a Truth and Reconciliation
Speaker 1: Commission is formed to investigate human rights abuses during the regime.
Speaker 1: Attention was paid quite naturally to Colonia Dignidad, and an
Speaker 1: investigation into missing persons there, including Boris wise Feiler, who
Speaker 1: we opened the episode with, started back up. It would
Speaker 1: be a gross misuse of the words slow to say
Speaker 1: that justice was slow in this case. For more than
Speaker 1: half a decade, the coloe and he has stayed closed
Speaker 1: to the world, duing large part to the fact that
Speaker 1: the police were still very sympathetic to the old regime
Speaker 1: and thus to Schaffer. In nine six, Schaefer launched a
Speaker 1: new so Shaefer still in control, doing his thing after
Speaker 1: Pinochet leaves, and they're being investigated their kind of stonewalling,
Speaker 1: forcing police out fighting it in court um and he
Speaker 1: kind of continues business as usual, and in nineteen he
Speaker 1: launches a new educational initiative called the Intensive Boarding School.
Speaker 1: This was an immersive teaching program for local Chilean kids
Speaker 1: to study and live in the Colonia until they reached eighteen.
Speaker 1: Now this is bad, Yeah, it's not great. Like everything
Speaker 1: else Shaefer did, the Intensive Boarding School was away for
Speaker 1: him to molest a lot more children. Local parents saw
Speaker 1: it as an opportunity for their children to get a
Speaker 1: Western quality education and work experience for free, so they
Speaker 1: sent their kids to the colonia, and Paul Shafer molests
Speaker 1: and a lot of these kids. This situation goes on
Speaker 1: until the winter of nineteen six, when a twelve year
Speaker 1: old named Christo Ball smuggles a note out to his mother.
Speaker 1: The note read take me out of here. He raped
Speaker 1: me so yeah yeah, um, and this is the bridge
Speaker 1: too far for whatever reason, this is the thing that
Speaker 1: is the step too far. So she rescues him um,
Speaker 1: which was a dicey proposition, very dangerous thing to do.
Speaker 1: There's armed guards at all times, but she gets her
Speaker 1: kid out of here and once they're free, she takes
Speaker 1: him to a nearby clinic, where a doctor verifies that
Speaker 1: the boy had been raped this is the first time
Speaker 1: there is medical evidence of sexual abuse of one of
Speaker 1: the kids who was claiming that it's done by Paul Shaper.
Speaker 1: She did not believe local police would help her, obviously,
Speaker 1: so she flees to the capital of Santiago, and she
Speaker 1: finds the chief of Chile's National Detective Force, Louis Henriquez.
Speaker 1: We don't often have cop heroes on a show, but
Speaker 1: I will give Enriquez a lot of credit here. He
Speaker 1: is um a good guy. He does the right thing here,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those things where not a lot
Speaker 1: of most of the police in Chile are were fundamentally
Speaker 1: sympathetic to Pinochet. That's why they're willing to protect this
Speaker 1: massive child rape operation. But Louis Henriquez had been one
Speaker 1: of Salvador Allende's bodyguards. He had been there in the
Speaker 1: presidential palace when Ende committed suicide, so he was not
Speaker 1: a Pinochete loyalist um, and he gets he hears about
Speaker 1: what's going on, and he sticks to this case like glue.
Speaker 1: In mid August of nineteen six he succeeds in getting
Speaker 1: a judge to issue a warrant for Schaefer's arrest. Henriquez
Speaker 1: takes a team to capture the Nazi pedophile cult leader,
Speaker 1: but Schaefer's got a good intel apparatus, He's got cops
Speaker 1: inside who are loyal to him, and he gets warned
Speaker 1: before the raid hits. Bruce Falconer writes quote. A meeting
Speaker 1: was called on August nine to discuss what should be done.
Speaker 1: Schaefer seemed badly shaken as the Colonis discussed how to proceed,
Speaker 1: he kept his head down and never spoke a word.
Speaker 1: Shortly thereafter, he disappeared into the Colonia's network of subterranean
Speaker 1: bunkers and tunnels. It is widely believed that he was
Speaker 1: there underground when on November thirtieth, nineteen ninety six, Henriquez
Speaker 1: muscled his way into Schaefer's utopia for the first time.
Speaker 1: Enriquez had hoped to capture Schaeffer by surprise. He went
Speaker 1: in with thirty armed policemen in a caravan, but as
Speaker 1: his team made its way up the long dirt road,
Speaker 1: it was spotted by the colonia's lookouts, who gave warning.
Speaker 1: The caravan busted through a sequence of gates and only
Speaker 1: slowed as it approached the village itself. Henriquez had given
Speaker 1: orders to his men should they come under fire, not
Speaker 1: to retreat, but to move deeper into the village for cover.
Speaker 1: To his surprise, though resistance was minimal, the colonials were
Speaker 1: like zombies, or maybe like robots. Henriquez would later recall
Speaker 1: there were machines on off, on, off, on off. They
Speaker 1: didn't change moods like normal people. Though Schaefer's followers were
Speaker 1: generally subdued, at times they became aggressive and in a
Speaker 1: feuse cases they physically assaulted the police. Henriquez assumed these
Speaker 1: outburst signal that they were getting close to Schaefer, but
Speaker 1: in the in Henriquez and his police went home empty handed.
Speaker 1: Gotta be Yeah, what a thing to see breaking into
Speaker 1: this cult for the first time, seeing the way the
Speaker 1: people react to the outside world coming in. It's really chilling.
Speaker 1: Like the description of helly behaved and uh so, the
Speaker 1: obvious question is where where was he? Like? How did
Speaker 1: they was it? Was it that he wasn't there, that
Speaker 1: they couldn't they couldn't get to where he was, or
Speaker 1: we don't entirely know. The leading theory and Henriquez this
Speaker 1: theory is that he was there, he was very close by,
Speaker 1: but they had they had spent years building a system
Speaker 1: of underground bunkers, and he's underground, of course, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, this guy's got underground bunkers, underground bunkers and tunnels.
Speaker 1: God damn yeah. I mean, he's not an unprepared man
Speaker 1: to draw another boy Scouts comparison Paul uh So. To
Speaker 1: his immense credit, Henriquez sticks with the case for years.
Speaker 1: He executes more than thirty raids on the Colonia. They
Speaker 1: don't capture Schaffer. None of these capture Schaeffer, but they
Speaker 1: all get things. They all find evidence of what's been
Speaker 1: going on, evidence of the tortures, of the executions, of
Speaker 1: the child molestation um. Henriquez believes that Schaefer probably stayed
Speaker 1: underground for some time, maybe even years. We don't know
Speaker 1: when he fled Chile, but at some point in the
Speaker 1: late nineties he did finally leave the country. I guess
Speaker 1: I think Enriquez, I suspect a few of these raids happen,
Speaker 1: and he gets closer and closer, and eventually Schaefer's like,
Speaker 1: they're gonna get me. Eventually I have to leave, and
Speaker 1: he gets smuggled out. Life in the colonial changed little
Speaker 1: at first. One of his senior officers became the new
Speaker 1: leader um, and they try to keep up a lot
Speaker 1: of the old rules. But gradually things start to shift
Speaker 1: and change. Right, the molestation certainly seems to have ended
Speaker 1: when Schaefer left and things thaw a bit of Actually,
Speaker 1: the colonial adopts a democratic council of leaders. Now this
Speaker 1: doesn't work very well. It's dissolved very pretty quickly under
Speaker 1: intense debate. But gradually the close society cracks open and
Speaker 1: like normalcy starts to creep in. In time, some cult
Speaker 1: members started to break free of their mental programming. The
Speaker 1: Schaefer's hiding for years, and individuals who had been in
Speaker 1: the cult and who had been defending him start to
Speaker 1: cooperate with the investigation. Just like the I don't like
Speaker 1: the term brainwash, whatever is going on. Some of these
Speaker 1: people realize, like, you know what this was, This was bad,
Speaker 1: you know, UM. Some of them are probably people who
Speaker 1: defended him because they've been five or six when they
Speaker 1: came to the colony, or even born into the colony,
Speaker 1: and it it's not easy to overcome all that kind
Speaker 1: of programming. UM. So they start to give more and
Speaker 1: more information to Henriquez, who just keeps, like really doggedly,
Speaker 1: keeps going after this place, keeps trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what's happening, and gradually these people open up to him.
Speaker 1: They show Henriquez where the files from Pinochet's torture operations
Speaker 1: were kept. They hand over information that led to the
Speaker 1: larg just private arms cash in a Chilean history, thousands
Speaker 1: of grenades, dozens and dozens of rifles surface to air
Speaker 1: missile launchers like he's got a quite an arsenal um.
Speaker 1: And they also showed Henriquez the sight of the mass
Speaker 1: graves um, which again are empty, but there's stuff there
Speaker 1: that ties back to people who have gone missing. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the tips that Henriquez gets over the years
Speaker 1: leads to investigators moving Shafer's bed and finding a trapdoor
Speaker 1: hidden underneath it. In the secret chamber, they found what
Speaker 1: police described as an arsenal of fantasy weapons. The cult
Speaker 1: leaders private like weapons. Cash Um. He had three pencils
Speaker 1: rigged to fire twenty two caliber rounds, two pencils that
Speaker 1: could shoot darts. I think these may have been pins,
Speaker 1: and it may be a translation error because I don't
Speaker 1: know how a pencil could fire a bullet without the wood.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a mechanical pencil. It had to have been
Speaker 1: if it's a pencil um, a camera that could fire darts,
Speaker 1: and several walking canes with guns built into them. Because
Speaker 1: Schafer was a very old man at this point, they
Speaker 1: found a walker that he had an electrocuting machine built
Speaker 1: into that could deliver shock. Weaponized walker. That's that's I know,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool, right, can give it up for I'll
Speaker 1: give it up for that, and only that, for that,
Speaker 1: and only that. But the weaponized walker. All right, Look,
Speaker 1: we're fair here every now. It's incredible. Life in the
Speaker 1: Colonial did not become what many of us are likely
Speaker 1: to consider normal, but it did stop being a child
Speaker 1: rape cult, slash torture site. Which is all I've ever
Speaker 1: asked of anyone. Don't don't rape kids and torture people.
Speaker 1: Do one thing, Yeah, if you do one thing for me,
Speaker 1: don't be a pedophile, nazi torture rap And that's all
Speaker 1: I'll ask. That's all I'll ask. Yeah. So, meanwhile, Schaefer
Speaker 1: continued to be in the wind with a handful of
Speaker 1: his bodyguards. He was eventually tracked down, not by the law,
Speaker 1: by a Chilean t V journalist Corolla Fuintez, who spent
Speaker 1: more than a year tracking down leads. She eventually found
Speaker 1: him in Buenos Aires, in an expensive gated community. On
Speaker 1: March two, five, twenty four member swat team busted down
Speaker 1: the gate and entered his house. Fuintes followed them in
Speaker 1: order to make the arrest quote. I saw this old guy,
Speaker 1: very lost in space, lying on the bed. He was
Speaker 1: absolutely not dangerous. I remembered what the bars had told me.
Speaker 1: He didn't match the image of this bad evil guy.
Speaker 1: Shaffer did not resist arrest. As he was being hauled
Speaker 1: away in handcuffs. Shaefer only groaned and mumbled a question
Speaker 1: over and over, why why do you need a list?
Speaker 1: By the way, we must acknowledge that Corolla Fuentes is
Speaker 1: an awesome name. It's incredible and apparently an awesome journalist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I oh, I was gonna say, is Dwight Schultz
Speaker 1: still alive? Because maybe he could play the the older
Speaker 1: um uh Paul Schaefer m yeah yeah yeaph and and yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe a Walton Goggins could play him as a man. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Goggins is what this story needs to really really pop Netflix.
Speaker 1: It's already there was there was a movie recently made
Speaker 1: about the colonial But it's like a fiction movie really,
Speaker 1: yeah it's and it stars like big names. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: historical thriller, uh, starring Emma Watson, Daniel Brule, and Michael Nyquist. Wow.
Speaker 1: M yeah yeah big names directed by Florian Gallenberger. Um. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how you get for that. Yeah, Emma Watson, there's
Speaker 1: an Emma Watson movie about this. If if you I
Speaker 1: thought that's what this film needed. Um, I think a Goggins.
Speaker 1: Nothing against Emma Watson, but this cries for a Goggins.
Speaker 1: It screams to the heaven Goggin so um. Schaefer gets
Speaker 1: extradited into Chile in May of two thousand six. He
Speaker 1: is convicted of child molestation and sentenced to twenty years
Speaker 1: in prison. He receives further sentences after this, for possession
Speaker 1: of illegal weapons and for torture. He gets more time
Speaker 1: than he could possibly live for a number of different
Speaker 1: bad things. At one of his first interrogations, he is
Speaker 1: approached by Louis Peebles, one of the dissidents that he
Speaker 1: had personally tortured. Schaefer seemed to recognize the man again.
Speaker 1: He's very old at this point and he asks peebles like, oh,
Speaker 1: were you a lawyer who worked for us at some point?
Speaker 1: And people's response, no, I was once a guest in
Speaker 1: your home. You were very unkind. I never did anything
Speaker 1: to you or the colonial So why were you so
Speaker 1: cruel to me? And at this point Schaefer stops talking
Speaker 1: and pretends he can no longer understand Spanish. He can't
Speaker 1: actually even like for all that, can't even confront this
Speaker 1: guy and admittedly did to him. Um. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten, at age eighty eight, Paul Schaeffer died in
Speaker 1: a prison hospital from heart failure. Dr Happ, one of
Speaker 1: his chief lieutenants, lives in Germany today. They refused to
Speaker 1: extradite him to Chile to stand trial for his crimes.
Speaker 1: The German government has a policy of not extraditing citizens
Speaker 1: for most reasons pretty much. Um, so he's that this
Speaker 1: guy big part of it. Still doing fine, I mean, Germany.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is a good reason to Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like this would be a
Speaker 1: good reason if you're going to do it for any
Speaker 1: reason at all, this is the one I feel like.
Speaker 1: Nazi uh oh wait no, no, no, wait no. Chilean
Speaker 1: court in two thirteen, yet Chilean court um approved an
Speaker 1: extradition request, but as of two eighteen, yeah, that's Germany want.
Speaker 1: The Guardian article from two eighteen is Germany won't jail
Speaker 1: doctor from Nazi pedophile sect convicted in Chile. That's now
Speaker 1: there's a headline for you. There's a headline right there. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're Germany, if you're Germany, you might not want
Speaker 1: there to be headlines that involved the phrase Germany won't
Speaker 1: jail doctor from Nazi pedophile sext. This is this is
Speaker 1: classic are we the baddies? The situation where it's like,
Speaker 1: oh wait where Germany? Look where we are? And that's
Speaker 1: probably how to get on this one. Huh does this
Speaker 1: look bad? Yeah? This might This might look bad. Um.
Speaker 1: Several of Shaffer's lieutenants have been convicted though, and wrought
Speaker 1: in a special war criminal prison in Chile. To this day,
Speaker 1: Colonia Dignidad still stands. It now goes by a different name, Paul,
Speaker 1: it calls it calls itself via Bavaria Um and it
Speaker 1: has rebranded. Yeah, you're gonna want a new name after that.
Speaker 1: Like that is like a restaurant in a theme park. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like how the town of Auschwitch changed
Speaker 1: his name to Happy Town. The branding of this isn't
Speaker 1: gonna go good. Um, so they're now a tourist destination
Speaker 1: um for foreigners. They advertised that it's basically like, it's
Speaker 1: a it's an old German village from the century, frozen
Speaker 1: in time in the middle of Latin America. Come here
Speaker 1: and stay and enjoy the later hosen in the broadworst
Speaker 1: and the German dances. Don't worry there's no church. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no church none at all. Don't ask what there
Speaker 1: used to be here. Wow, that's that's a hard no,
Speaker 1: thanks for me. Yeah, I don't think I will be
Speaker 1: going there. I'm very excited to see Chile one day,
Speaker 1: but I don't think I'll be visiting Colonia Villa bavaria Um.
Speaker 1: In fairness, a lot of the people who running now
Speaker 1: were like victims of Shavers, right, They were kids he molested,
Speaker 1: and they're like, this is the only life I know.
Speaker 1: This is my home. Like I'm not going to say
Speaker 1: they shouldn't like, oh hey whatever, Like yeah, I'm certainly
Speaker 1: not the person to say, like what you should be
Speaker 1: doing is one of the kids who survives this swinging by. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I will not be taking a visit there though. Um.
Speaker 1: They have returned some of the land that was stolen
Speaker 1: from people, Um, including from the Catholic Church. They gave
Speaker 1: like gave back a bunch of the land that was
Speaker 1: taken under Shafer. Um and a bit of thank god,
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church got some of their land. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that was I know, you were really worried about those nuns.
Speaker 1: That's all I could think about Catholic Church. That way.
Speaker 1: We know at least some of the land is still
Speaker 1: being used to abuse children. This story a different way,
Speaker 1: and you were afraid there wasn't gonna be happy. Yet,
Speaker 1: don't worry, don't worry. The Catholics are still on the ground. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The German state has offered a small stipend to victims
Speaker 1: of Paul Shaffer. It's like a few thousand bucks basically. Um.
Speaker 1: Although they are emphatic about this them giving the stipend
Speaker 1: does not mean they take any responsibility for his crimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no one's asking that. But you could have taken responsibility
Speaker 1: for like trying to get him extradited. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that makes it seem a little more like you're
Speaker 1: claiming responsibility. Yeah, that makes it seem like maybe there
Speaker 1: were some people in the German government who were involved
Speaker 1: in funneling money through this in order to protect Nazis,
Speaker 1: and maybe you don't want anyone looking man going timely
Speaker 1: into it. Um. I don't know, Paul, how you doing.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is the worst one I've
Speaker 1: done with you yet. Yeah, it's pretty bad. This is
Speaker 1: the worst one you've inflicted upon me. I really forget this. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really like that is just every every aspect of
Speaker 1: the story is just true, horrific evil, and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to fathom that this person is the same species as you.
Speaker 1: You know that that this is there are people like
Speaker 1: that that have walked this earth and and and currently
Speaker 1: walk this earth and maybe we'll find out um uh
Speaker 1: and even more hideous a person exists in our in
Speaker 1: our in our midst You know that somebody's walking around
Speaker 1: right now that's that's committing crimes like this. It's it's
Speaker 1: just impossible to wrap your mind around the the enormity
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, it really is. But I will say, Paul,
Speaker 1: I have you on speed dial. If I do find
Speaker 1: a story that Santa Claus, we'll tell you what that
Speaker 1: might go right to voicemail. I'm gonna get a signal
Speaker 1: put up in the middle of Los Angeles. It's just
Speaker 1: a silhouette of Santa Claus with a pistol to his head.
Speaker 1: I'll know what it means. Oh good, Robert did more research. Oh,
Speaker 1: Paul got any pluggable to plug? I mean not right now. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm I've got some more live shows coming up in
Speaker 1: the future, but nothing that's uh that's available yet. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, follow me um on on Twitter at um
Speaker 1: p F Tompkins and my live shows are at Paul
Speaker 1: thompkins dot com slash live and I update that when
Speaker 1: I got a new thing. So um yeah, I'll be
Speaker 1: I'll be announcing things as they are announceable. Yeah, check
Speaker 1: out Paul's stuff. Um and uh, I don't know, just
Speaker 1: check out for a while, chill out. Everybody needs a
Speaker 1: little bit of a little bit of time to distress
Speaker 1: from this one. So we'll find a cat or a
Speaker 1: dog somewhere absolutely, Okay, who