One of my claims regarding the religious scam is my having had enough talent as a guitar player to have enough potential to end up playing in a nationally recognized rock band. In fact, this claim is the entire basis for my other claims of being exposed to this scam. If I cannot establish credibility in this respect, then the test for credibility fails elsewhere as well. I assure you that not only did I have the talent, I can produce witnesses that will agree, and some of these are more than qualified to be able to accurately make such an assessment. Nothing was certain or guaranteed as regards this talent, only that I did in fact have enough potential.

The roots of how I came to be exposed to the religious scam are also revealed on this page. Although it wasn't really their fault, it all started with Russ Payne (drummer) and Paul C. (lead guitar). In fact, the blame lied more with me than with them.

I won't even try to spell Paul's last name, its one of those Czech or Polish names that starts with Cz, but I can tell you that his father is Stephen C. on Germain Street in Maplewood, and is the last C listing in the St. Paul phone book. The last I heard of Paul, he was playing around the Twin Cities in a band named "Tight Squeeze". I found CZYZEWSKI, PAUL while searching for him at classmates.com, but it isn't him, its someone who graduated in 1982, while Paul graduated in 1976 or 1977. The spelling of the name looks correct however. The pronunciation is sheh-zes'-key.

Russ Payne married Kim Wood, daughter of Warden Frank Wood, the Warden of Oak Park Heights and Stillwater Prisons, two of the largest Minnesota State Prisons. Russ can surely be located that way.

I'll get back to Russ and Paul in a moment.  One other musician witness would be John Eller from St. Paul, founder of the band "Paradox", but he knows far less than the other two. About all he can testify to is my talent as a guitar player back in the early 1980s. When John Eller formed Paradox in 1979 or 1980, he wanted me to play in it, but I had moved away from West 7th Street in St. Paul to Rice Street (across town), and no one down West 7th knew where to find me at the time.

Had it not been for this, I would have gotten into Paradox. I was slightly better than Eller was as a guitar player, and I was way beyond the level of the guy he got when he couldn't find me. Paradox ended up being the biggest rock band in the Twin Cities (Mpls. / St. Paul) for five straight years, playing top billing to sold out establishments wherever they played, and after cutting a record they almost went national. This was almost a crime in and of itself, because I saw Paradox play, and their song list was about as close to the one I would pick for my band as it could possibly be. Eller's musical tastes were almost identical to my own. (I'll have to rewind that reality after I die, and relive it, but have it come out right the next time...)

They can verify how the trouble with the musicians started. In fact, the trouble started as a result of my stealing Paul's guitar amplifier. If they deny this, they are lying. They aren't the ones who started it or involved me in it. They had nothing to do with it. All they did was create a situation that accidentally led to my being exposed to the religious scam. (And I was at least as much to blame.) Don't give them a hard time.

In early 1979, I got a job at Doppler Gear Co., a machine shop in Minneapolis, through an employment agency under a $1600 employment contract and fee. (Decent jobs were hard to find...) About I worked there for about three months I learned that the setup was a scam. I was being used for a chump, and I would be fired shortly after I had paid off the $1600 fee.

This was truly irritating to learn, but I found a loophole in the contract that would let me out without having to pay the fee. If I were fired, it would break their half of the employment contract and release me from having to pay the rest of the fee.

I was working as a broaching machine operator, and I intentionally operated the machine in such a manner that the machine would be certain to break valuable broaching bars (valued from $800 to $2000 each). It only took one broken broaching bar, and I got myself fired. (The value of the broken bar was $1600, interestingly enough...)

Since it had immensely irritated me that they would have attempted to make a sucker out of me like that, I decided to screw them good, and the best way to do this was to sit on my butt pulling in unemployment from the State for as long as possible, since each week would cost them money they would have to pay to the State. I spent a grand total of 10 months on unemployment.

However, I did not sit around idle during this time. I practiced playing the guitar for an average of 10 hours a day the entire time. About a third or more of that practice time was spent playing in total darkness, without any light whatsoever except maybe the LEDs from the amplifiers.

This is one of the secrets to getting really good and talented as a guitar player: play as much as possible in total darkness. The other secret of the two best secrets is to play as loud as possible. That way, if you screw up, everyone down the block will hear it, and it will be embarrassing, and so it is better not to screw up. I played *very loud. You could hear it two blocks down the street. There used to be a cheering section down Rice Street (near Ron's Bar, the Dutch Bar (now Born's Bar). People from that general area likely remember much. They used to gather 30 or 40 at a time on the roof of the next building with a keg of beer, and I could hear applause out there most nights.

After 10 months, I was in really excellent condition.

Warden Wood, strangely enough,  was one of the few people to ever see me play live onstage in a band. I only played once on stage, live in a band, in my entire existence. I got on stage at some bar down East 7th Street with Russ, Paul, and Doug Colborne, (their bass player)'s band one night to play two songs. As it turned out, Warden Wood happened to stop by to drop Kim off, and he stayed to watch the band for a while.

This lamer guitar player they had to back Paul up knew that I was really good, and he feared (rightly enough) that I would make him look small in comparison. So, he takes his guitar and tunes it and his amplifier to be entirely free of any distortion, a regular Merle Haggard sound - Elvis Presley would have been proud of the way that guitar sounded.

Distortionless guitar is only good for country western music: you need distortion for the vast majority of rock music. He figured it would screw me up good, especially when both songs scheduled to be played were very heavy on the distortion. So he hands me the guitar and says "here you go", while he's thinking "here you go, chump". We were set to play "Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC and then "Rock and Roll" by Led Zeppelin.

So, we got the cue and started playing the AC/DC tune, and right away I noticed something was wrong, but at that point there wasn't much I could do about it without making myself look like a talentless fool and stopping to adjust the amp properly, so I went on through with it.

Strangely enough, I played the whole song, note for note, the lead guitar part, and not only did it come out flawless, it actually didn't sound bad, even with a total lack of distortion. The lamer was truly pissed off, but he did get me somewhat in that there was no way I was going to try the lead to "Rock and Roll" with that Merle-Haggard-sounding piece of junk. I let Paul take that. Actually, it was strange, because even with an established band that has had a lot of private practice, there are sometimes timing errors and misunderstood cues, but me, Russ, Doug, and Paul knocked both of those songs off with absolutely perfect timing.

Even Warden Wood, not a big fan of rock music, looked like he was enjoying himself. This was the first time that I had ever stepped up onto a stage in my entire existence, and I did not make a single error, although I did not play the lead to the Zeppelin tune as was planned. Basically, we rocked the house, and everyone in the audience was glad to have heard it.

I was more than good enough to be in a band during 1979-1980. I was better than 95 percent of the guitar players around the Twin Cities. Me and Russ used to go bar hopping and see what was out there for bands, and it was pretty obvious. (Russ was my best friend at the time: I still consider Russ, Paul, and Doug good friends.)

I could say that part of my problem was not having the financial resources, but that wasn't really true. I wanted more and better equipment, but I had the required minimum. My problem was that although I could play songs like this

in total and complete darkness, both rhythm and lead guitar, and go for two days (20 hours) before I made a single error, no, it wasn't good enough: I had to be perfect. So I kept putting getting into a band off until I was perfect, a condition that looking back now was certain never to arise. A lot of guitar players can play these songs, but ask them to try it in total and complete darkness... you have to be one with the guitar, and most guitar players who aren't professional aren't. Many guitar players can be found that play in bands in bars that can play a song adequately enough in the light, but can not pull it off in total darkness.

If an effort were to be made, at least two or three hundred witnesses around the Twin Cities could be produced that could testify that I was no amateur at playing the guitar.

At any rate, I was fined $150, and had to suffer a three month suspension. This came at a really bad time, and I had no money to pay off the fine. The temporary employment agencies weren't sending many people out, and there was a work shortage.

Part of my equipment was going to have to be sold to raise the funds, so I sold my Gibson amplifier for $150 and paid off the fine. Then, more bad luck manifested itself. The very next day, my Ampeg guitar amplifier fried beyond any inexpensive repair.

The Gibson 2x12 150 watt I sold had a distortionless sound so clean that it was unfit for use as a guitar amplifier, even with a distortion box attached to it. I had that, a Traynor 4x10 bottom (speaker), and a tiny Ampeg 1x10 (inch speaker). I had been using the Ampeg for the guitar amp, and running my stereo's left channel through the Gibson 150 watt, and the right channel through a Bogen 200 watt stadium amplifier into the 4x10 Traynor bottom (appallingly loud and clean for a stereo). The Bogen was also distortionless and unfit as a guitar amp. If I went out somewhere, I took the Ampeg and drove the Traynor bottom with it.

So basically, when the Ampeg fried, it left me without a usable guitar amplifier, and no way to get one anytime soon. This is the worst thing that can happen to an electric guitar player.

So, about three or four nights later, I went to help Russ and Paul take some of their and equipment over to Goofy's Upper Level in downtown Minneapolis where they were scheduled to play the next night. It was Thursday night, (close enough to Friday night) and there was a band playing, so we hung around after we dropped off the equipment and had a few drinks and listened to the band. Soon enough we were pretty drunk.

Then Russ and Paul disappeared. About an hour and a half later, after about five more drinks, some street lamers pickpocketed my last seven dollars out of my jean jacket pocket. Really slick how they did it, but there is no need to describe it here.

This left me totally broke. I did not even have change in my pocket to take a bus home: not a single dime. The last thing I remembered was considering stealing someone else's money off the bar. Then I woke up.

I woke up in a stall in the bathroom, and it was three in the morning. I went out, and there was no one present in the bar, I was there by myself. I went behind the 'free' bar and started making progress restoring myself the former state I had possessed earlier.

After about five or six drinks, the entire matter started really being irritating, my being stranded and probably having to walk 20 miles to get home, my having been pickpocketed and being broke, and the bad luck lately in general. So I figured to myself I'm not getting out of this pain in the butt with nothing, and here was sitting this brand new guitar amplifier up on the stage.

I figured that maybe it was good karma coming around for all the bad I had suffered recently, or at worst, bad karma would come back to bit me in the butt later when I might be better able to afford it, and the opportunity was only a temporary karma adjustment. Given the booze, I wasn't exactly thinking straight. I made the decision that bad karma would come back to get me later, and I needed an amplifier now, and that the poor guitar player would be paid by the bar's insurance company and get another amp, and I would deal with the bad karma at a later date.

So, I grabbed up the brand new Pignose 30/60 guitar amplifier and out the door I went with it. The 'good karma' theory gained a little weight when the first pay phone booth I came to had a quarter lying in the coin return. I used it to call my father and arrange to take a taxi home, making arrangements to pay him later. So, I went to the taxi stand and took the cab, offering the amp as collateral, got home, paid the driver, and went to sleep.

When I took the amp, I knew it wasn't Paul's amp because Paul had a Marshall stack. Unbeknownst to me, Paul had just purchased a brand new Pignose 30/60 amplifier.

So I decided to sell the amp and get a different one. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me, Russ and Paul became aware that I had been the one, and things got strange from there. The band "Shooting Star" came out with a song called "Last Chance". Things got progressively stranger from there.

Basically, I stole his amp, and I got what I deserved as a result. I was in the wrong, and Paul was in the right. I gave Paul his amp back about two months after I took it. Paul actually didn't make out too bad: he got a replacement amp the next day, he got the insurance money, and he got his amp back.

It should have ended there, with me having been taught a good lesson, but it didn't. This was not Russ or Paul's fault, and they should not be blamed. As far as they were concerned, the matter had been settled. However, the local soap opera got noticed by somebody higher up in the national music scene, and then things really started getting strange.

It wasn't only that I had talent as a guitar player, but also that I had stolen Paul's amplifier, demonstrating a lack of principles, that made me look like I had the potential to participate in the scam, that I would sell out ("sell my soul") when the time came.

My playing songs like "Runnin' With the Devil" by Van Halen and "Hell's Bells" by AC/DC probably had something to do with it. Actually, I had told friends that I would never play those songs in a band in a bar, because the world was screwed up enough as it was. I told both Bob Evanoff (Russ knows who he is) and Scott Schoonover this during this period in time, but I guess there was no surveillance going on those particular days I had said that for anyone to hear it.

(Scott Schoonover's father works / worked at the St. Paul Police Department Garage as a mechanic. His old address was 16 Douglas Street in St. Paul: it might still be. Scott ended up with a bad case of silver poisoning (he was receiving SSI disability for it, the last I saw of him in 1994) because he stayed around me too much, and he ended up being irradiated because of his physical proximity to me when I was being irradiated. Scott is another who knows the level of talent I possessed at the time. Scott should be entitled to a settlement for silver poisoning. He used to be perfectly normal, and now he has to take anti-psychotic medication because of it. If you talk to Scott, be sure that it is him you're really talking to: he has a "SAS" tattoo, owns an O'Haugen flying V guitar with LEDs implanted into the fretboard and neck, and he does an impressive job when it comes to playing it.)

Actually, it was easier to rewind those two tapes to the beginning, and play the entire tape, and those two songs happened to be the first song on their respective album sides. Although I wouldn't have played them in a band, you had to play them so you could brag about it to your guitar playing friends ("you wish you could play this, huh chump"). It was a status thing.

I suspect that the leak to the upper levels of the music industry may have been caused by Russ and Paul's band manager, Toby Bowe. I recall that there was a musician in the 1950s that had one song that made it to the charts, and his name was Toby Bowe. To this day I wonder if Toby Bowe was actually Toby Bowe, Jr.. I suppose it could have came from anywhere. I suspect that it would be a difficult undertaking to go back through the past and find out where the connection was, and who the guilty parties were. You would have to figure out who all came lurking around, and then which of them constituted the connection to the foreign scam, not an easy undertaking. Perhaps by working forwards from that point, and backwards at the same time (drag AC/DC and their band manager off somewhere and treat them to the sodium pentathol) might accomplish something, but I doubt it.

Even if they were found, at the first sign of your having made progress in an investigation, they would disappear real quick like over the border, never to be seen again. The only thing useful that an investigation would likely produce would be that this matter, especially the foreign part of it, did in fact happen. I can only tell you where it began. A lot of the rest would rely upon my no longer existing ability to see. If you listened to the songs in the letter to Burlington Northern and the Silver Poisoning pages, then you know that something did go on, and that musicians from foreign countries did have some part in it.

How it got from point A (the amplifier) to point B (The Who) is anyone's guess, as far as the specifics go. You might end up with the facts, or just as likely with a fabrication. During the entire period there was electromagnetic irradiation, and I was painted in as bad a light as possible. I do recall this much: some of those who were handing out the surveillance had something to do with the irradiation, and this still seems to be true to this day.

The main point and usefulness that can be drawn from all of this is that these types of scams do go on. The silver poisoning detection method can be used to find and prevent such occurrences in the future. Religious scams are not the only type of scam that goes on, either. Someone is likely to start up some scam that causes even more damage than this one has, or has the potential to cause.

The other value that can be drawn from all of this is that surely the Russians would lie about having conducted such practices, but the facts (especially considering Dec 23rd, 1988) say that the Russians did. There has to be a serious problem and / or deficiency in U.S intelligence for this to have gone on right under their noses without their knowledge.

Judi Otterness used to work as Security guard and later as head of Security at the Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul: she probably still does. She can further verify the information related to the railroad invention, and Judi should be able to verify a few other things regarding the past. Judi got married sometime around 1986, but everyone down at the Landmark Center knows who she is and what her last name is now.

If you want the most accurate version of the past, then make sure she reads all of this disk or this site first.

I met Judi and hit up on her in 1980. It never even got to the kissing stage. One night about a week later, I threw a party with 5 kegs of beer down at the Mississippi river, and about 200 people showed up. This one lamer, Alan Keifer, shows up. My best friend for years was Pat Connors, and Alan is his cousin, so I tolerated Alan and halfway got along with him. We were friendly, but we were never the closest of friends.

At the party, I find him hitting up on Judi. I should have punked him out for that, but I felt sorry for him because he had never gone out with a female (and was like 20 years old at the time), so I decided to let it slide. I hadn't become all that attached to Judi at that time, so I didn't really feel much of a need to deal with it. He ended up going out with her for the next three years, and he used her up and then threw her away. During that time, I got to know Judi, and realized I had made an error in letting her go, and got pretty attached to her. I warned her repeatedly about Alan, but that just drove the foolish wench closer to him. I ended up giving up for the most part. If I had only put down about three more beers before I found Alan with Judi, the whole past would have turned out differently.

But after this, in later weeks and years I did end up getting very attached to Judi. I might have made progress with getting her away from Keifer and together with me, but I made a serious error in 1982: I told her about the vision I had, and that I had been given a spiritual usefulness as an inventor. Now some people would be impressed with this. Unfortunately, Judi wasn't one of these people. She took the same viewpoint taken by The Who, associating spiritual belief with impaired mental facilities.

This did not sit well with me, because I was really attached to her. I really liked her personality, approach, and empathy, and I suppose seeing how Keifer was using her and my not being able to stop it made it worse. Maybe I should have called Alan out, but I figured that at best, I would lose, and at worst, I would win and just drive her that much closer to the toad. I gave Judi my guitar, after I had the vision. (Tell her I want my guitar back...  I miss my guitar. I still miss Judi, maybe tell her to come down here, and bring the guitar.)

At any rate, from that point on, any time I invented anything, I was sure to go down to the Landmark center and give Judi a copy. In 1984, the same day that I gave the invention to Burlington Northern, I also gave Judi a copy. When I got the letter back from Burlington Northern, that admitted that I was the inventor and that they were going to look into it, I took a copy of that down to her. There were others that worked down there that remember this as well. Some were unknown to me, and some were my friends: Rob Marhoun, for example. About 8 or 10 people on the security staff knew about this strange little soap opera, and many of them read that letter.

Basically, there are at least 10 people associated with the Landmark Center that can tell of my claiming to have had my goal since 1982, but Judi can give the most detailed account, and probably tell other interesting recollections of the time. For all I know, her being a sentimental female and all, she might still possess the copy of the letters to and from Burlington Northern.

To make a long story short, I screwed up a scholarship he had arranged for me in 1976 (age 16) at St. John's Prep School in Collegeville, MN (I attended about 8 months before getting myself kicked out). I always felt bad about this incident, and wondered whether I had screwed up someone else's scholarship chances because of my misdeeds. The scholarship was funded by the Slawik Foundation. The Slawiks are upper class residents of the Twin Cities who own a number of shopping malls and other enterprises. Their son was killed in a boating accident on the Mississippi river, and they established the Skipper Slawik Safety Patrol (safety boat patrols on the river) in his remembrance. The school scholarship was another of their foundations.

After I received the letter from Burlington Northern, I took it to Dr. Indihar (who used to be my probation officer when I was a juvenile delinquent), and asked him to forward it to the Slawiks, in the hope that they might see that even my short time at St. John's Prep School had allowed me to accomplish something useful and valuable, and asked that if the scholarships had been revoked on account of my actions, that they be reinstated. They may still possess or at least remember this letter.

As far as Dec 23rd, 1988 is concerned, there are people from one end of Colorado Springs to the other that will never forget that. Many in Denver also know, and the Colorado government probably remembers me from 1989.

I can give many other references, but I won't lay all my cards on this table, because someone might use the information to attempt to thwart an investigation.