From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Noel is not here today. They called me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly, you argue, and you are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. I gotta say, Matt, I am very, very glad to be here in the booth with you. I hate missing an episode, but I look forward to hearing the ones you know that happened in my absence. It's you know, I'm like the audience at that point. Nobody here, including everyone listening, likes it when you're not here. Been I assure you that Sir and Paul was out too, and Mission Control was out. Yes, Nolan, I and Casey were just like floundering over here without you. Super producer Casey pegram Well, I want it. I wanted to check in to see you know how everything went. How's how's your day? How's your week been? The week has been good. I'm researching a new thing that I'm going to be working on and it is even darker than anything we've covered on this show or anywhere else, and my psyche is taken a hit. But other than that, you know, great, Matt. This sounds like the sort of thing that we can't yet talk about on the airwaves. Is that correct? We can't, and honestly I'm not sure if we ever should, but well, we'll see what happens with it. Absolutely, and h let me know, as always, if you want a helping hand or just a dumb hand to hand out, you can have it. It is all yours, buddy, just let me know. So here's something may interest you, as you know, without going too far into the details on this. Paul and I recently returned from a strange potato chip related related excursion true story, And while we were there, we didn't manage to do much non potato chip related stuff, but we were able to check out the Alamo. Yeah, and the the Alamo, the site of the historic battle which later became a rallying cry for Texans all around. Uh, the Alamo. When I posted about it on social media on Instagram or something, people start messaging me and saying, ask about the basement. I had forgotten. That was a reference to Pee weee Herman's Big Adventure, wherein he asked about the basement of the Alamo. But uh, it does pertain to our show. Check this out, because it turns out the Alamo, uh may indeed have a basement. A lot of structures that you wouldn't suspect do have subterranean components. They do have tunnels, And in today's episode, we're exploring this. The love of money may not be the root of all evil, but it certainly gives people the opportunity to do things we would not normally do. So join us today as we explore the strange story of a paranoid millionaire, the death of his ambitious young employee, a mysterious secret system of underground tunnels, and what makes Maryland call something a murder of the depraved heart. Oh so, uh, here are the facts, everybody. There's a man named Daniel Beckwitt B E C K W I T T. Hopefully you've read it in the title. Uh. In many ways, this was an intelligent young man. He was a few times throughout his life on the wrong side of the law. Prior to win all of the things were just seeing today went down. Uh, he went to school, the University of Or of Illinois at Urbana Champagne, and he was while they're arrested and charged with conducting a some sort of hacking operation against his college. It was it was alleged that he installed key laggers or I believe this is the time that that occurred, UM, which is, you know, not so great hacking into your your college's system like that. On the eighteenth of January, there were search warrants that were executed by the police department there in Urbana. UM. The campus p D and the FBI got involved in that occasion and they both went in together and this guy was accused of aggravated computer tampering and it was the single largest hack in the school's history that Daniel Bequitt, you know, supposedly allegedly at that point had had done. And over the course of this hack, I guess you would call it this attack or operation that lasted for months Beckwit. He rescheduled exams, he sent mass emails from university accounts, and he also defaced I guess is a way to say it. A bunch of university websites official stuff that then got trashed a bit and he was arrested. He spent two days in jail, he posted one thousand dollars in bail, and then he was released. And then fast forward six months later, Daniel Beckwood pled guilty in federal court to a charge of computer fraud. This was part of a plea deal the U s attorney under the terms of this plea deal gave gave beck with a couple of passes. First, Beckwitt could avoid federal charges and he would avoid there for jail time in a federal prison. And the idea here was, at least as far as the prosecution the judge, we're thinking that it would have been a shame for such a talented young man to lose his life for youthful indiscretion unquote. And this is a kind of double standard argument that we here applied often. After spending two years at the University of Illinois and where he'd been a five beta Sigma Honor Society member, Beckwitt was expelled from school and he went back to his parents home in Bethesda, Maryland, and he started his new life as a rogue day trader. So let's look at his rise as a crypto tycoon very quickly. He rode the bitcoin bubble, and he had already amassed a pretty hefty nest egg from investing a bitcoin at the right time and then getting out at the right time. And he had taken that money, and he hadn't done you know, the stuff that we all dream about. He didn't buy a blimp or anything, or a hot air balloon. Instead, he invested it and he used He grew the money through the stock trade. He also had a ton and a ton and a ton of free time because, unlike most people in their mid to late twenties, he did not have to have a job, He did not have to pay bills, he did not have to you know, scrape by in the increasingly hostile economic system that most Americans his age struggle within. At this point, it seemed like he was living out the American redemption story, right. Yeah, he's also living in his parents home. Oh yeah, that's right, that's right. Uh, he does even worry about a mortgage here? Well, yeah, And from everything I could read, and I could not find this anywhere at least not stated exactly that he wasn't living with his parents. He I know, he wasn't living with his parents at least I'm fairly certain from everything I've read that he wasn't living with his parents. Um, but it was their home, like officially, it was their home, and it seemed like a redemption story. He'd gone from being a criminal to being a young million air with a world of possibility stretching out before him. However, this was not to be a happily ever after story. You see, folks, in addition to being incredibly talented, people also described Daniel Beckwitt as increasingly paranoid. And it was this paranoia, authorities argue, that ultimately lead to murder. Find out how after this word from our sponsors, here's where it gets crazy. So let's introduce the second character in our story. Here, Askaya Kafra, a twenty one year old son of immigrants. He was a man who believed in the American dream and he he had a plan to fulfill that dream. He had a startup that was called Equity Shark. You can find it on it's He still has a LinkedIn page that you can find equity Shark on. It was described as quote the future of private securities trading in stealth mode. UM sounds interesting to me, and he really believed that he could make a fortune inside the United States with this idea, but he needed to get some money to start it, as you do with a startup. UH. So he found this person, Beckquit, and they cracked a deal together to have Beckuitt put money in essentially seed money into his idea and to create a company. They met online. Yes, they didn't for him right, So Beckwitt said, I will fund your start up, this new startup, because he had a previous one, and in return, I want you to help me with a top secret project, very very much a secret project. This secret project was being constructed below the Bequitt home in Maryland. Daniel beckwittt You see, in addition to being a very intelligent cryptocurrency analysts and a talented hacker, he was also given to um escalating paranoid thoughts, and he was convinced that North Korea the DPRK, was about to nuke the United States sooner rather than later. And although he lived in Bethesda on the east coast of the country, he felt compelled to be prepared for what he thought would be uh an imminent and inevitable nuclear exchange that could lead to you know, a third World war, nuclear winter, all those terrible things you've heard about in previous episodes of stuff they Don't want you to know, available wherever you find your favorite podcast. And again, to slightly in Daniel Beckwood's defense, the way the media was portraying our relationship with North Korea the d b r K with um of the tensions that existed for real, this fear isn't completely unfounded. So well, well, here's the problem. I'm just gonna be completely honest here. The problem is that the way North Korea would deliver a nuclear weapon that could reach the US would most likely be an i CBM intercontinental ballistic missile. There are a couple that they have, and they all kind of stink. The newest one is the Hua Song fourteen, which first got launched in That's that's the newest one, and it's still is probably probably not going to be able to reach the eastern coast. The TYPEO dong to which existed before I have a little bit in common with backway I read up on this stuff as well. The point is that North Korea would have to use an alternative delivery system like a suit case bomb or something of that nature. They don't have submarines that could launch them, and they don't have missiles that could launch them. So it was an obsessive thought. And like anyone who's had an obsessive thought will know that these things are like earworms, but instead of songs, they are certitudes, and they grow and they expand, and they thrive in your mind and they eat your thoughts, alive all your other thoughts. So he felt like this was inevitable. Like the biblical Noah, he felt that he knew a disaster was coming and he must build something, an impenetrable bunker, some sort of arc to preserve himself and maybe his loved ones, maybe his dad. The bunker he was building also, in his opinion, needed to be constructed in absolute secrecy. His neighbors had no idea what was happening underground, and he went to extreme links to keep it that way. We found the description of how he how he transported Kafra to this to this area in Bethesda. It reads like something out of a organized crime story or a noir detective film. Uh. Confra, by the way, is the fourth person that he has hired to do this job. Yeah, so Cafra and his family lived in Silver Spring in Maryland, and Beckwood would rent a car, get a rental car. He would head on over to Silver Spring and pick up Cafra, different rental car each time. Yes, exactly, you gotta switch it up every time. Then drive to Manassas, Virginia, which is about a ninety minute trip. And um again in in the mind of beck With, beck With, this is um guaranteed secrecy. And this has to do with the way cell phone towers, UH pick up your signal depending on where you are, and then if you turn off your phone while you're over here in this one signal area, if someone is still looking for your phone or something, that's the last place you were. There's there are all kinds of there's all kinds of stuff that went into this reasoning. There's a there's a logic, yeah, of driving that far away, because then once they were there out in Manassas, Beckwittwood hand Kafra, who's you know, generally sitting in the backseat A pair of these things called blackout glasses, which is essentially like putting on a blindfold. Yeah, it's a it's a cleaner form of a blindfold and Also, it's tougher to remove than a blindfold unless your hands are tied. So the weird thing is after after he's put this blindfold on the Gay, he would drive them around the del Marva area for another hour, So this is a two hour and thirty minute trip total. He was doing this all because, as you said, Matt, he did not want someone to be able to track his cell phone and record its position or record what sort of in nation was sending and receiving at the time. He also made doubly sure two attempt to protect his privacy by using spoofing systems that would reroute his data from his phone so that whenever it pinned a cell tower, the phone would report that he was in Virginia, even though at this point he was driving that other ninety minutes back to Maryland. Yeah, because Bethesday is not very far from the Silver Spring where he went over to pick up Coffer in the first place. Right, it's about five miles away. This is all just a drive around. Confused cofra, confused the cell phone towers just it's a lot of secrecy, and for some people, some of us listening, this could sound indicative of one man slide into mental instability. But he was proud of these methods and this was not a new thing for him. In twenty sixteen, the previous year, Beckwitt presented a talk at Schmoo Con, which, despite its hilarious name, yes it's spelled the way you think s h m o O con schmoo Khan. It's fun to say to Schmukhan, it's a hack. It's a hacker con. Schmoo. Okay, I'm back, so yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a hacker convention. You're right. He presented this talk called this Message will self destructing ten seconds avoiding bilateral in nucleation, and it was his response to a hacking challenge. The challenge was this, basically, how can you destroy forensic evidence that's on a hard drive in sixty seconds or less and not destroy all the surrounding stuff? Okay, so you can't use a nuclear bomb, not a fire, or like a not an uncontrolled fire. I guess right. His presentation included references to Peppe the Frog, the meme that is so closely associated with the alt right, holidays uh and Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh, Timothy McVeigh and Beckwitt used the image of the destroyed compact car from Oklahoma City to show the dangers of explosions, not the dangers that they posed to human life, let's be very clear about that, but rather that these explosions don't reliably vaporize forensic evidence. So in Backwood's minds, mcveigh's uh horrific acts of terrorism weren't the focus of his presentation. Instead, the fact that the guy was sloppy was the was what he was harping on in the example them that the method just doesn't work as well. And just to be fair to beck with in that presentation, and he had memes all over the place, and it was I think his attempt to be funny. I I think sure. I mean, the world is full of people trying to be funny, right. You know the worst part is almost everybody that you think of as an absolute monster throughout history probably thought they were a pretty funny guy, you know what I mean, A pretty funny dude, a person and whatever. So did we talk about what he was wearing when he presented. We did not. He's wearing like a full on flame retardant suit, like chemical level flame retardant it's like breaking bad when they go to the nice lab. Looks like yes, looks like gold metallic materials. And you can't see his face because he's got a darkened shield essentially over his face plastic shield. Yeah, I mean that's a cool outfit. Yeah, I'm no say he's a cool person. But but he so does he answer the question, yes, somewhat, but not not really. He answers a different question, changes the question. He says that first off, you're keeping it on the wrong kind of media. You need a flash drive instead of a hard drive. Flash A flash drive is smaller, it's easier to transport, and it's much easier to destroy. And so he teaches people how to make a thermite analog called therm mate. This is the same chemical that some nine eleven conspiracy journalists believe was responsible for collapsing the Twin Towers and Backwitt again. Remember he is objectively a very intelligent person. He had invented his own recipe for this. He used five legally available, easy to find chemicals that you can locate at most hardware stores. That ending taught people how to make thermite, and he showed that you can you can do like you said, a controlled burn. Yeah, and and it really is a pretty terrifying substance. Um substances, both thermite and therm mate the version of it that he was making, because you could put it on the hood of a car, um set the stuff on fire or at least started urn on this substance, and then it will it will burn so hot that it goes right through the engine block on a vehicle. It's used in armor piercing for military purposes and as well as cutting through steel like as again we mentioned, you'll hear um cutting through steel beams, right right. Yeah. Uh. It's a mixture of iron oxide F E two oh three or rust and aluminum powder and when you ignite it, the powder reacts with the O three part of the rust, producing this very intense temperature. Oh, there are ways to create it that you can find online that we don't recommend you search for. Well, I've I've searched for him. But you know, in the in the course of preparing for a show, right, and we have that excuse, you probably do not. So be careful. What is life if not to be lived just to be put on lists all over the place, because you probably will be back Witt probably was to be honest, even if there wasn't any particularly nefarious stuff to hide. We have to remember that he he had already committed federal level crimes and just barely got past it. And now he's teaching people how to make these sorts of substances at home and back to the tunnel. He's conducting this massive subterranean operation and complete secrecy, which means no safety requirements. No one else knows about it. Maybe maybe his parents maybe, but we don't know. He sends Kafra like he sent other kids into this tunnel system for days at a time. This kid is sleeping there, he's eating there. Yeah, there's a there's what looks like a little cot set up down there, kind of bed in an old what looks like an LCD screen and an Xbox and WiFi inside the tunnel. But it is just like a c and a fan. But but it's it's not like you're imagining. I promise you, it's not like you're imagining. It's not like a Pinterest tunnel home, right, So he's stuck in there for days. These tunnels extend hundreds of feet below the ground, like it drops twenty ft below the house, and then it stretches out, uh, traversing public roads, other people's property. You can see a map of the rough area, and there were at least three tunnels. There may have been more. But despite all the intricate planning in terms of secrecy, this project was not safe. He did not put really any any level of planning into safety in the infrastructure and into planning for something to go wrong. The home also exhibited signs that could be arguably indicative of Beckwood's mental state. Uh, the exhibited signs of hoarding. There's piles of junk is crap blocking all these hallways, right, so you have to if you ever been into a home with someone who suffers from um the phenomenon known as hoarding, then you know what we're talking about. The home transforms into this warring of tiny tunnels and and some rooms that you just can't enter because they're piled with stuff. Then the smell, Oh, the smell. Yeah, there was a show about that always used to creep me out, you know, the like dead cats are everywhere and they can't like go of anything. Don't throw away my newspaper from three Almost every time it was human extrament, though that was the worst part when you watch the hosts every week just like hacking up all of their stomach contents on screen for our entertainment. And it's just a it's a physiological reaction to it's not a performative thing like crying. You just have to do it. And we're not in any way detigrating people who encounter that mindset or people currently suffer from um the various conditions that would cause hoarding. But we do want you to know there is a better way you can. You can get help. And if you have someone who in your family who is a hoarder, you can help them. If they won't listen to you, you can help them find a professional or therapist who will. And I'm not talking about that Marie Condo Craze, the does this bring me joy kind of thing. God, You're you're talking more like the Long Island Medium. I am not talking about. Oh man, that's not what I'm I guess that's always kind of what I'm talking about. Yeah, us, So maybe hoarding is an episode for a different day. Let us know your strangest hoarding stories. In the meantime, let's go back to these tunnels. Let's go back to what happens on September, and we'll get to that right after a quick word from our sponsor. On September ten, the local fire department receives increasingly concerned calls from neighbors of the Bequett home because you see, a fire has appeared to creep out of the tunnels that no one knew existed and has begun to burn the structure that sat above the underground layer. And yeah, there was smoke coming out all the windows on all three floors of the home, because you know, you've got the basement, first level, in the second level. And when the firefighters and police get there, they find back with Daniels out outside. He's shirtless, he's covered in dirt what looks to be fresh dirt, and he's stumbling out of the house and around the house and he's out of it, which may makes sense. He's suffering from smoke inhalation, but he is alive and he's mumbling things like I think he's in there. I think he's in there. The house also survived. Like Beckwitt, the firefighters were able to control the flames before they made the structure unrecoverable underneath the home firefighters discovered the naked, charred body of a deceased male. This was Kafra, and he had likely died from smoke inhalation, or at the very least it had caused him to lose consciousness in the tunnels where he burned alive. So either death is terrible, either death from inhalation slash asphyxiation or the tremendously gruesome and horrifying death of burning alive. And even when you're unconscious, your body is gonna respond, and you can feel that has a terrible, terribly tragic outcome for both him and his family and friends. He's only twenty one years old and cofre had texted Beckwitt to let him know he smelled smoke a few hours beforehand, and his decision to text was very smart. But Beckwood's response is probably what spelled confers death sentence. So Beckwood's first fear was that the smoke was coming from an electrical fire. To fix that, Beckwitt decided to turn off the power to the lighting inside the tunnels. Yeah, and this is a huge thing to remember here because Confers down there alone in the tunnels that you have to get down what is and he's down there working, smelling this stuff and communicating just via text with the man who's upstairs doing whatever he's doing. Um, this is a huge point here, Confers down there alone then, and he did, and Daniel decides to do what benes it turn off the lights right right, And this stuff was also goes without saying not up to code that Xbox, the screen that you mentioned, Matt, these were all run through extension cords, just a giant daisy chain right going down into the cave. So Confre had to crawl through these tunnels hoping to escape in utter darkness, and he had to crawl through these immense piles of garbage and discarded crap laying around the house, laying around the tunnels. And the thing about those, um, what do't you call him, Matt daisy chains? Yeah, is that each each link in the chain increases the risk of something going wrong and creating a fire. And back with accidentally purposely had designed a death trap. It's quite possible that Confer could have escaped had that, had all that junk not been blocking the way. So what happens next? Coffer's parents take legal action. His father asked the court to ensure that a judge ordered David Beckwittt, that's the father, and his son, Daniel Beckwittt, to fill in those tunnels demolish that home. He went to a neighborhood meeting. He said, it was my son who died in that fire. I'm emotional because of some of the things you all are presenting have been sanitized. I came here because I wanted to let people know how dangerous what was going on is. This thing is far more extensive and complicated than people here believe it to be. Wow. And then in December, Montgomery County, they they took the side of cow for his family, and they followed it. They followed a lawsuit of their own, and they demanded that the home itself be demolished. And again they're all these neighbors and everyone complaining about the home as well. So it's becoming more of a swell than just you know, one family saying we need to get rid of this for this reason. It's everybody saying this is a This is not only an eyesore and a tragedy and a reminder of what happened, but we we just need to get rid of this thing. It's dangerous. Um the Beckway family. However, the people who actually owned the home, they appealed the lawsuit. Um they disregarded the county's order, and they countered with an offer of their own. And they said, well, hey, why don't we fix the burned home. Will remediate the tunnel complex. You guys won't have to worry about that anymore, uh, and it will just look like a regular house. The county reportedly responded by informing the Beckwits that this plan to you know, just fix up the house and everything and fill in the whole quote significantly misses the severity of the situation. And I personally would have to agree. So let's let's get into of actually being on trial. Daniel Beckwitt's on trial and he's being charged with second degree murder, but with a little caveat that I was unaware of before we started researching this. Spin rights judge in Montgomery County presided over the Bequwitt trial late April and found him guilty of committee depraved heart, second degree murder in the death of Kafra. And this crime could put Beckwett in prison for three decades. In reaching the verdict of Jews determined Beckwett had acted with extreme disregard for human life. So what is deprived heart murder? It's it's strange it exists in Maryland but not a lot of other states. So the most serious of homicide charges, if we all remember our law and order, his first degree murder, premeditated act. I wanted them dead. I did it on purpose. The only flaws that you caught me. Manslaughter is the least serious, and that's charged when there's no malice present. I'm an idiot. I don't know how to drive. Someone died. I didn't plan it. I'm not glad that they're dead. Uh, but I'm I'm a terrible driver. That that could be manslaughter. For deprived heart second degree murder, the prosecution rules somewhere in between. The defendant committed a deliberate act that was so dangerous it showed the defendant had total indifference to someone's life. There are three elements that have to be present for something to be depraved heart murder. All three have to be proven to provide a guilty verdict. These are one the death was caused by the defendant somehow, in some way. There was a very high risk that was caused by the defendant's actions to the life of the person who ended up dying. That's too. And then the defendant was aware that his or her actions would be dangerous in some way like that, and yet they acted anyway without regard for the consequences to that person. Three boom, boom boom. The Backwitt homicide ticks all the boxes there. So, so Daniel Beckwit, regardless of his mental state, his malevolence or lack there of, his intention to kill or lack there of, uh, has been found guilty of having a depraved heart. Yeah, I mean, second degree murder. The jury came back and they said you're you're guilty. And it seems fairly certain in conclusion here that back what, whatever his mental state may have been, did not intend Kaffret to die because he had hired again three other acquaintances to work on the tunnels in the past. Yeah, there's uh. I mean, if you look through just the reporting on this thing and some of the court documents, you can find that there was a guy named Douglas Hart who testified that he I think he excavated for around six months before deciding to not do the job anymore. And within that testimony he quoted. He was quoted as saying he left because he was concerned for his ten year old dog, and he had grown tired of the work. And if it's anything, if his situation was anything like um conference situation, he was probably living in those tunnels with his dog uh down there, sleeping and going to the bathroom in a bucket, the way Coffer was. And it just seems like a It seems like a bad situation, even if you are getting paid pretty well, no kidding. But the problem here is that it's while it is a bad situation, While this is a tragedy, it is not unique. There are no reliable estimates on just how many people are building secret bunkers across this country. But we know it is virtually certain that this cannot be the only one we've done. We've done numerous shows on secret bunkers that were treated first as conspiracy theories and then later discovered. This is just the only difference here is that this bunker was discovered before it was completed. You can check out our interview with Garrett Grath wherein he outlines the discovery of a congressional bunker that was hidden beneath a hotel for decades and decades. They're out there, uh and there. You know, even if you don't live in the US there, they're probably some in your neck of the woods. So we will to know what you think of this case. What do you think of bunkers in general? Are there any suspected secret bunkers around you? And what do you think is gonna happen to retrial? Because they're already requesting a retrial or at least another day in court an appeal, right, so we'll see. Yeah, financial might makes right in the U s. Judicial system, and Backwood is well equipped to fight any any finding. You know, the rules are just different in the US judicial system. If you have access to millions of dollars. All right, well, hey tell us what you think. Find us on Instagram, find us on Twitter, on Facebook, all of those different places. We are conspiracy stuff at most conspiracy stuff show at others you are Ben bowling hs w yes on Twitter. I'm also just playing old Ben Boland at Instagram. You can see me get kicked out of and into various countries, regions, and states, the traveling man. You're just rambling around, aren't your rambler? That's awesome. I don't do that. I stay at home with my kids so you can follow me and my Instagram is not available. Okay, if you don't wanna find us on social media and you don't like that stuff, you can give us a call. We are one eight three three S T D W Y T K. Leave a message and be sure to remember that that message should be three minutes long or less. If you really want, you can leave a multipart message. But also let us know if you do or do not wish to be identified. Yes, any specifics like that? Uh, and also make us laugh if you can, because that is our favorite thing after researching something like this episode. Just give us a little lightheartedness. Yeah, awesome, Yeah, shout out to our super moods who live in the digital bunker of Facebook. Don't say hi to them. And the best part of this show your fellow listeners on our Facebook page. Here's where it gets crazy. But wait, you might be saying, whatever happened to your email? Don't you have one of those I hate talking on the phone. I totally get it, and we have your back. You can reach us directly. We are conspiracy at I heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to Know is a production of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Noel is not here today. They called me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control decond. Most importantly, you argue, and you are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. I gotta say, Matt, I am very, very glad to be here in the booth with you. I hate missing an episode, but I look forward to hearing the ones you know that happened in my absence. It's you know, I'm like the audience at that point. Nobody here, including everyone listening, likes it when you're not here. Been I assure you that Sir and Paul was out too, and Mission Control was out. Yes, Nolan, I and Casey were just like floundering over here without you. Super producer Casey pegram Well, I want it. I wanted to check in to see you know how everything went. How's how's your day? How's your week been? The week has been good. I'm researching a new thing that I'm going to be working on and it is even darker than anything we've covered on this show or anywhere else, and my psyche is taken a hit. But other than that, you know, great, Matt. This sounds like the sort of thing that we can't yet talk about on the airwaves. Is that correct? We can't, and honestly I'm not sure if we ever should, but well, we'll see what happens with it. Absolutely, and h let me know, as always, if you want a helping hand or just a dumb hand to hand out, you can have it. It is all yours, buddy, just let me know. So here's something may interest you, as you know, without going too far into the details on this. Paul and I recently returned from a strange potato chip related related excursion true story, And while we were there, we didn't manage to do much non potato chip related stuff, but we were able to check out the Alamo. Yeah, and the the Alamo, the site of the historic battle which later became a rallying cry for Texans all around. Uh, the Alamo. When I posted about it on social media on Instagram or something, people start messaging me and saying, ask about the basement. I had forgotten. That was a reference to Pee weee Herman's Big Adventure, wherein he asked about the basement of the Alamo. But uh, it does pertain to our show. Check this out, because it turns out the Alamo, uh may indeed have a basement. A lot of structures that you wouldn't suspect do have subterranean components. They do have tunnels, And in today's episode, we're exploring this. The love of money may not be the root of all evil, but it certainly gives people the opportunity to do things we would not normally do. So join us today as we explore the strange story of a paranoid millionaire, the death of his ambitious young employee, a mysterious secret system of underground tunnels, and what makes Maryland call something a murder of the depraved heart. Oh so, uh, here are the facts, everybody. There's a man named Daniel Beckwitt B E C K W I T T. Hopefully you've read it in the title. Uh. In many ways, this was an intelligent young man. He was a few times throughout his life on the wrong side of the law. Prior to win all of the things were just seeing today went down. Uh, he went to school, the University of Or of Illinois at Urbana Champagne, and he was while they're arrested and charged with conducting a some sort of hacking operation against his college. It was it was alleged that he installed key laggers or I believe this is the time that that occurred, UM, which is, you know, not so great hacking into your your college's system like that. On the eighteenth of January, there were search warrants that were executed by the police department there in Urbana. UM. The campus p D and the FBI got involved in that occasion and they both went in together and this guy was accused of aggravated computer tampering and it was the single largest hack in the school's history that Daniel Bequitt, you know, supposedly allegedly at that point had had done. And over the course of this hack, I guess you would call it this attack or operation that lasted for months Beckwit. He rescheduled exams, he sent mass emails from university accounts, and he also defaced I guess is a way to say it. A bunch of university websites official stuff that then got trashed a bit and he was arrested. He spent two days in jail, he posted one thousand dollars in bail, and then he was released. And then fast forward six months later, Daniel Beckwood pled guilty in federal court to a charge of computer fraud. This was part of a plea deal the U s attorney under the terms of this plea deal gave gave beck with a couple of passes. First, Beckwitt could avoid federal charges and he would avoid there for jail time in a federal prison. And the idea here was, at least as far as the prosecution the judge, we're thinking that it would have been a shame for such a talented young man to lose his life for youthful indiscretion unquote. And this is a kind of double standard argument that we here applied often. After spending two years at the University of Illinois and where he'd been a five beta Sigma Honor Society member, Beckwitt was expelled from school and he went back to his parents home in Bethesda, Maryland, and he started his new life as a rogue day trader. So let's look at his rise as a crypto tycoon very quickly. He rode the bitcoin bubble, and he had already amassed a pretty hefty nest egg from investing a bitcoin at the right time and then getting out at the right time. And he had taken that money, and he hadn't done you know, the stuff that we all dream about. He didn't buy a blimp or anything, or a hot air balloon. Instead, he invested it and he used He grew the money through the stock trade. He also had a ton and a ton and a ton of free time because, unlike most people in their mid to late twenties, he did not have to have a job, He did not have to pay bills, he did not have to you know, scrape by in the increasingly hostile economic system that most Americans his age struggle within. At this point, it seemed like he was living out the American redemption story, right. Yeah, he's also living in his parents home. Oh yeah, that's right, that's right. Uh, he does even worry about a mortgage here? Well, yeah, And from everything I could read, and I could not find this anywhere at least not stated exactly that he wasn't living with his parents. He I know, he wasn't living with his parents at least I'm fairly certain from everything I've read that he wasn't living with his parents. Um, but it was their home, like officially, it was their home, and it seemed like a redemption story. He'd gone from being a criminal to being a young million air with a world of possibility stretching out before him. However, this was not to be a happily ever after story. You see, folks, in addition to being incredibly talented, people also described Daniel Beckwitt as increasingly paranoid. And it was this paranoia, authorities argue, that ultimately lead to murder. Find out how after this word from our sponsors, here's where it gets crazy. So let's introduce the second character in our story. Here, Askaya Kafra, a twenty one year old son of immigrants. He was a man who believed in the American dream and he he had a plan to fulfill that dream. He had a startup that was called Equity Shark. You can find it on it's He still has a LinkedIn page that you can find equity Shark on. It was described as quote the future of private securities trading in stealth mode. UM sounds interesting to me, and he really believed that he could make a fortune inside the United States with this idea, but he needed to get some money to start it, as you do with a startup. UH. So he found this person, Beckquit, and they cracked a deal together to have Beckuitt put money in essentially seed money into his idea and to create a company. They met online. Yes, they didn't for him right, So Beckwitt said, I will fund your start up, this new startup, because he had a previous one, and in return, I want you to help me with a top secret project, very very much a secret project. This secret project was being constructed below the Bequitt home in Maryland. Daniel beckwittt You see, in addition to being a very intelligent cryptocurrency analysts and a talented hacker, he was also given to um escalating paranoid thoughts, and he was convinced that North Korea the DPRK, was about to nuke the United States sooner rather than later. And although he lived in Bethesda on the east coast of the country, he felt compelled to be prepared for what he thought would be uh an imminent and inevitable nuclear exchange that could lead to you know, a third World war, nuclear winter, all those terrible things you've heard about in previous episodes of stuff they Don't want you to know, available wherever you find your favorite podcast. And again, to slightly in Daniel Beckwood's defense, the way the media was portraying our relationship with North Korea the d b r K with um of the tensions that existed for real, this fear isn't completely unfounded. So well, well, here's the problem. I'm just gonna be completely honest here. The problem is that the way North Korea would deliver a nuclear weapon that could reach the US would most likely be an i CBM intercontinental ballistic missile. There are a couple that they have, and they all kind of stink. The newest one is the Hua Song fourteen, which first got launched in That's that's the newest one, and it's still is probably probably not going to be able to reach the eastern coast. The TYPEO dong to which existed before I have a little bit in common with backway I read up on this stuff as well. The point is that North Korea would have to use an alternative delivery system like a suit case bomb or something of that nature. They don't have submarines that could launch them, and they don't have missiles that could launch them. So it was an obsessive thought. And like anyone who's had an obsessive thought will know that these things are like earworms, but instead of songs, they are certitudes, and they grow and they expand, and they thrive in your mind and they eat your thoughts, alive all your other thoughts. So he felt like this was inevitable. Like the biblical Noah, he felt that he knew a disaster was coming and he must build something, an impenetrable bunker, some sort of arc to preserve himself and maybe his loved ones, maybe his dad. The bunker he was building also, in his opinion, needed to be constructed in absolute secrecy. His neighbors had no idea what was happening underground, and he went to extreme links to keep it that way. We found the description of how he how he transported Kafra to this to this area in Bethesda. It reads like something out of a organized crime story or a noir detective film. Uh. Confra, by the way, is the fourth person that he has hired to do this job. Yeah, so Cafra and his family lived in Silver Spring in Maryland, and Beckwood would rent a car, get a rental car. He would head on over to Silver Spring and pick up Cafra, different rental car each time. Yes, exactly, you gotta switch it up every time. Then drive to Manassas, Virginia, which is about a ninety minute trip. And um again in in the mind of beck With, beck With, this is um guaranteed secrecy. And this has to do with the way cell phone towers, UH pick up your signal depending on where you are, and then if you turn off your phone while you're over here in this one signal area, if someone is still looking for your phone or something, that's the last place you were. There's there are all kinds of there's all kinds of stuff that went into this reasoning. There's a there's a logic, yeah, of driving that far away, because then once they were there out in Manassas, Beckwittwood hand Kafra, who's you know, generally sitting in the backseat A pair of these things called blackout glasses, which is essentially like putting on a blindfold. Yeah, it's a it's a cleaner form of a blindfold and Also, it's tougher to remove than a blindfold unless your hands are tied. So the weird thing is after after he's put this blindfold on the Gay, he would drive them around the del Marva area for another hour, So this is a two hour and thirty minute trip total. He was doing this all because, as you said, Matt, he did not want someone to be able to track his cell phone and record its position or record what sort of in nation was sending and receiving at the time. He also made doubly sure two attempt to protect his privacy by using spoofing systems that would reroute his data from his phone so that whenever it pinned a cell tower, the phone would report that he was in Virginia, even though at this point he was driving that other ninety minutes back to Maryland. Yeah, because Bethesday is not very far from the Silver Spring where he went over to pick up Coffer in the first place. Right, it's about five miles away. This is all just a drive around. Confused cofra, confused the cell phone towers just it's a lot of secrecy, and for some people, some of us listening, this could sound indicative of one man slide into mental instability. But he was proud of these methods and this was not a new thing for him. In twenty sixteen, the previous year, Beckwitt presented a talk at Schmoo Con, which, despite its hilarious name, yes it's spelled the way you think s h m o O con schmoo Khan. It's fun to say to Schmukhan, it's a hack. It's a hacker con. Schmoo. Okay, I'm back, so yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a hacker convention. You're right. He presented this talk called this Message will self destructing ten seconds avoiding bilateral in nucleation, and it was his response to a hacking challenge. The challenge was this, basically, how can you destroy forensic evidence that's on a hard drive in sixty seconds or less and not destroy all the surrounding stuff? Okay, so you can't use a nuclear bomb, not a fire, or like a not an uncontrolled fire. I guess right. His presentation included references to Peppe the Frog, the meme that is so closely associated with the alt right, holidays uh and Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh, Timothy McVeigh and Beckwitt used the image of the destroyed compact car from Oklahoma City to show the dangers of explosions, not the dangers that they posed to human life, let's be very clear about that, but rather that these explosions don't reliably vaporize forensic evidence. So in Backwood's minds, mcveigh's uh horrific acts of terrorism weren't the focus of his presentation. Instead, the fact that the guy was sloppy was the was what he was harping on in the example them that the method just doesn't work as well. And just to be fair to beck with in that presentation, and he had memes all over the place, and it was I think his attempt to be funny. I I think sure. I mean, the world is full of people trying to be funny, right. You know the worst part is almost everybody that you think of as an absolute monster throughout history probably thought they were a pretty funny guy, you know what I mean, A pretty funny dude, a person and whatever. So did we talk about what he was wearing when he presented. We did not. He's wearing like a full on flame retardant suit, like chemical level flame retardant it's like breaking bad when they go to the nice lab. Looks like yes, looks like gold metallic materials. And you can't see his face because he's got a darkened shield essentially over his face plastic shield. Yeah, I mean that's a cool outfit. Yeah, I'm no say he's a cool person. But but he so does he answer the question, yes, somewhat, but not not really. He answers a different question, changes the question. He says that first off, you're keeping it on the wrong kind of media. You need a flash drive instead of a hard drive. Flash A flash drive is smaller, it's easier to transport, and it's much easier to destroy. And so he teaches people how to make a thermite analog called therm mate. This is the same chemical that some nine eleven conspiracy journalists believe was responsible for collapsing the Twin Towers and Backwitt again. Remember he is objectively a very intelligent person. He had invented his own recipe for this. He used five legally available, easy to find chemicals that you can locate at most hardware stores. That ending taught people how to make thermite, and he showed that you can you can do like you said, a controlled burn. Yeah, and and it really is a pretty terrifying substance. Um substances, both thermite and therm mate the version of it that he was making, because you could put it on the hood of a car, um set the stuff on fire or at least started urn on this substance, and then it will it will burn so hot that it goes right through the engine block on a vehicle. It's used in armor piercing for military purposes and as well as cutting through steel like as again we mentioned, you'll hear um cutting through steel beams, right right. Yeah. Uh. It's a mixture of iron oxide F E two oh three or rust and aluminum powder and when you ignite it, the powder reacts with the O three part of the rust, producing this very intense temperature. Oh, there are ways to create it that you can find online that we don't recommend you search for. Well, I've I've searched for him. But you know, in the in the course of preparing for a show, right, and we have that excuse, you probably do not. So be careful. What is life if not to be lived just to be put on lists all over the place, because you probably will be back Witt probably was to be honest, even if there wasn't any particularly nefarious stuff to hide. We have to remember that he he had already committed federal level crimes and just barely got past it. And now he's teaching people how to make these sorts of substances at home and back to the tunnel. He's conducting this massive subterranean operation and complete secrecy, which means no safety requirements. No one else knows about it. Maybe maybe his parents maybe, but we don't know. He sends Kafra like he sent other kids into this tunnel system for days at a time. This kid is sleeping there, he's eating there. Yeah, there's a there's what looks like a little cot set up down there, kind of bed in an old what looks like an LCD screen and an Xbox and WiFi inside the tunnel. But it is just like a c and a fan. But but it's it's not like you're imagining. I promise you, it's not like you're imagining. It's not like a Pinterest tunnel home, right, So he's stuck in there for days. These tunnels extend hundreds of feet below the ground, like it drops twenty ft below the house, and then it stretches out, uh, traversing public roads, other people's property. You can see a map of the rough area, and there were at least three tunnels. There may have been more. But despite all the intricate planning in terms of secrecy, this project was not safe. He did not put really any any level of planning into safety in the infrastructure and into planning for something to go wrong. The home also exhibited signs that could be arguably indicative of Beckwood's mental state. Uh, the exhibited signs of hoarding. There's piles of junk is crap blocking all these hallways, right, so you have to if you ever been into a home with someone who suffers from um the phenomenon known as hoarding, then you know what we're talking about. The home transforms into this warring of tiny tunnels and and some rooms that you just can't enter because they're piled with stuff. Then the smell, Oh, the smell. Yeah, there was a show about that always used to creep me out, you know, the like dead cats are everywhere and they can't like go of anything. Don't throw away my newspaper from three Almost every time it was human extrament, though that was the worst part when you watch the hosts every week just like hacking up all of their stomach contents on screen for our entertainment. And it's just a it's a physiological reaction to it's not a performative thing like crying. You just have to do it. And we're not in any way detigrating people who encounter that mindset or people currently suffer from um the various conditions that would cause hoarding. But we do want you to know there is a better way you can. You can get help. And if you have someone who in your family who is a hoarder, you can help them. If they won't listen to you, you can help them find a professional or therapist who will. And I'm not talking about that Marie Condo Craze, the does this bring me joy kind of thing. God, You're you're talking more like the Long Island Medium. I am not talking about. Oh man, that's not what I'm I guess that's always kind of what I'm talking about. Yeah, us, So maybe hoarding is an episode for a different day. Let us know your strangest hoarding stories. In the meantime, let's go back to these tunnels. Let's go back to what happens on September, and we'll get to that right after a quick word from our sponsor. On September ten, the local fire department receives increasingly concerned calls from neighbors of the Bequett home because you see, a fire has appeared to creep out of the tunnels that no one knew existed and has begun to burn the structure that sat above the underground layer. And yeah, there was smoke coming out all the windows on all three floors of the home, because you know, you've got the basement, first level, in the second level. And when the firefighters and police get there, they find back with Daniels out outside. He's shirtless, he's covered in dirt what looks to be fresh dirt, and he's stumbling out of the house and around the house and he's out of it, which may makes sense. He's suffering from smoke inhalation, but he is alive and he's mumbling things like I think he's in there. I think he's in there. The house also survived. Like Beckwitt, the firefighters were able to control the flames before they made the structure unrecoverable underneath the home firefighters discovered the naked, charred body of a deceased male. This was Kafra, and he had likely died from smoke inhalation, or at the very least it had caused him to lose consciousness in the tunnels where he burned alive. So either death is terrible, either death from inhalation slash asphyxiation or the tremendously gruesome and horrifying death of burning alive. And even when you're unconscious, your body is gonna respond, and you can feel that has a terrible, terribly tragic outcome for both him and his family and friends. He's only twenty one years old and cofre had texted Beckwitt to let him know he smelled smoke a few hours beforehand, and his decision to text was very smart. But Beckwood's response is probably what spelled confers death sentence. So Beckwood's first fear was that the smoke was coming from an electrical fire. To fix that, Beckwitt decided to turn off the power to the lighting inside the tunnels. Yeah, and this is a huge thing to remember here because Confers down there alone in the tunnels that you have to get down what is and he's down there working, smelling this stuff and communicating just via text with the man who's upstairs doing whatever he's doing. Um, this is a huge point here, Confers down there alone then, and he did, and Daniel decides to do what benes it turn off the lights right right, And this stuff was also goes without saying not up to code that Xbox, the screen that you mentioned, Matt, these were all run through extension cords, just a giant daisy chain right going down into the cave. So Confre had to crawl through these tunnels hoping to escape in utter darkness, and he had to crawl through these immense piles of garbage and discarded crap laying around the house, laying around the tunnels. And the thing about those, um, what do't you call him, Matt daisy chains? Yeah, is that each each link in the chain increases the risk of something going wrong and creating a fire. And back with accidentally purposely had designed a death trap. It's quite possible that Confer could have escaped had that, had all that junk not been blocking the way. So what happens next? Coffer's parents take legal action. His father asked the court to ensure that a judge ordered David Beckwittt, that's the father, and his son, Daniel Beckwittt, to fill in those tunnels demolish that home. He went to a neighborhood meeting. He said, it was my son who died in that fire. I'm emotional because of some of the things you all are presenting have been sanitized. I came here because I wanted to let people know how dangerous what was going on is. This thing is far more extensive and complicated than people here believe it to be. Wow. And then in December, Montgomery County, they they took the side of cow for his family, and they followed it. They followed a lawsuit of their own, and they demanded that the home itself be demolished. And again they're all these neighbors and everyone complaining about the home as well. So it's becoming more of a swell than just you know, one family saying we need to get rid of this for this reason. It's everybody saying this is a This is not only an eyesore and a tragedy and a reminder of what happened, but we we just need to get rid of this thing. It's dangerous. Um the Beckway family. However, the people who actually owned the home, they appealed the lawsuit. Um they disregarded the county's order, and they countered with an offer of their own. And they said, well, hey, why don't we fix the burned home. Will remediate the tunnel complex. You guys won't have to worry about that anymore, uh, and it will just look like a regular house. The county reportedly responded by informing the Beckwits that this plan to you know, just fix up the house and everything and fill in the whole quote significantly misses the severity of the situation. And I personally would have to agree. So let's let's get into of actually being on trial. Daniel Beckwitt's on trial and he's being charged with second degree murder, but with a little caveat that I was unaware of before we started researching this. Spin rights judge in Montgomery County presided over the Bequwitt trial late April and found him guilty of committee depraved heart, second degree murder in the death of Kafra. And this crime could put Beckwett in prison for three decades. In reaching the verdict of Jews determined Beckwett had acted with extreme disregard for human life. So what is deprived heart murder? It's it's strange it exists in Maryland but not a lot of other states. So the most serious of homicide charges, if we all remember our law and order, his first degree murder, premeditated act. I wanted them dead. I did it on purpose. The only flaws that you caught me. Manslaughter is the least serious, and that's charged when there's no malice present. I'm an idiot. I don't know how to drive. Someone died. I didn't plan it. I'm not glad that they're dead. Uh, but I'm I'm a terrible driver. That that could be manslaughter. For deprived heart second degree murder, the prosecution rules somewhere in between. The defendant committed a deliberate act that was so dangerous it showed the defendant had total indifference to someone's life. There are three elements that have to be present for something to be depraved heart murder. All three have to be proven to provide a guilty verdict. These are one the death was caused by the defendant somehow, in some way. There was a very high risk that was caused by the defendant's actions to the life of the person who ended up dying. That's too. And then the defendant was aware that his or her actions would be dangerous in some way like that, and yet they acted anyway without regard for the consequences to that person. Three boom, boom boom. The Backwitt homicide ticks all the boxes there. So, so Daniel Beckwit, regardless of his mental state, his malevolence or lack there of, his intention to kill or lack there of, uh, has been found guilty of having a depraved heart. Yeah, I mean, second degree murder. The jury came back and they said you're you're guilty. And it seems fairly certain in conclusion here that back what, whatever his mental state may have been, did not intend Kaffret to die because he had hired again three other acquaintances to work on the tunnels in the past. Yeah, there's uh. I mean, if you look through just the reporting on this thing and some of the court documents, you can find that there was a guy named Douglas Hart who testified that he I think he excavated for around six months before deciding to not do the job anymore. And within that testimony he quoted. He was quoted as saying he left because he was concerned for his ten year old dog, and he had grown tired of the work. And if it's anything, if his situation was anything like um conference situation, he was probably living in those tunnels with his dog uh down there, sleeping and going to the bathroom in a bucket, the way Coffer was. And it just seems like a It seems like a bad situation, even if you are getting paid pretty well, no kidding. But the problem here is that it's while it is a bad situation, While this is a tragedy, it is not unique. There are no reliable estimates on just how many people are building secret bunkers across this country. But we know it is virtually certain that this cannot be the only one we've done. We've done numerous shows on secret bunkers that were treated first as conspiracy theories and then later discovered. This is just the only difference here is that this bunker was discovered before it was completed. You can check out our interview with Garrett Grath wherein he outlines the discovery of a congressional bunker that was hidden beneath a hotel for decades and decades. They're out there, uh and there. You know, even if you don't live in the US there, they're probably some in your neck of the woods. So we will to know what you think of this case. What do you think of bunkers in general? Are there any suspected secret bunkers around you? And what do you think is gonna happen to retrial? Because they're already requesting a retrial or at least another day in court an appeal, right, so we'll see. Yeah, financial might makes right in the U s. Judicial system, and Backwood is well equipped to fight any any finding. You know, the rules are just different in the US judicial system. If you have access to millions of dollars. All right, well, hey tell us what you think. Find us on Instagram, find us on Twitter, on Facebook, all of those different places. We are conspiracy stuff at most conspiracy stuff show at others you are Ben bowling hs w yes on Twitter. I'm also just playing old Ben Boland at Instagram. You can see me get kicked out of and into various countries, regions, and states, the traveling man. You're just rambling around, aren't your rambler? That's awesome. I don't do that. I stay at home with my kids so you can follow me and my Instagram is not available. Okay, if you don't wanna find us on social media and you don't like that stuff, you can give us a call. We are one eight three three S T D W Y T K. Leave a message and be sure to remember that that message should be three minutes long or less. If you really want, you can leave a multipart message. But also let us know if you do or do not wish to be identified. Yes, any specifics like that? Uh, and also make us laugh if you can, because that is our favorite thing after researching something like this episode. Just give us a little lightheartedness. Yeah, awesome, Yeah, shout out to our super moods who live in the digital bunker of Facebook. Don't say hi to them. And the best part of this show your fellow listeners on our Facebook page. Here's where it gets crazy. But wait, you might be saying, whatever happened to your email? Don't you have one of those I hate talking on the phone. I totally get it, and we have your back. You can reach us directly. We are conspiracy at I heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to Know is a production of I heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.