On July 11, 1990, after obtaining pornographic-pedophile photographs that would have irreversibly exposed the Franklin Cover-Up, Gary Caradori, a private investigator that delved into the Franklin Cover-up, was murdered when his Piper aircraft exploded in mid-air, killing him and his eight-year-old son.
From Wayne Madsen Report
June 20-22, 2014 — SPECIAL REPORT. FBI killed Franklin scandal investigatorWMR can exclusively report that it was the Federal Bureau of Investigation that placed a bomb on the private airplane that killed state of Nebraska chief investigator Gary Caradori and his 6-year old son “AJ” on July 11, 1990. Caradori had been hired by the Nebraska unicameral legislature to investigate allegations that a number of Nebraska youth had been sexually abused and transported over state lines in a scandal centered around the Franklin Credit Union, headed by rising GOP African-American star Lawrence King.
A very knowledgeable source involved with what became known as the “Franklin Scandal” told WMR that Caradori flew to Chicago ostensibly to attend the All Star game on July 10 at Wrigley Field. In reality, the trip to the game was a cover for Caradori to meet with a source who handed him photographs that proved that Nebraskan children, some from the famed Boy’s Town orphanage, were being used for the sexual gratification of important political leaders in Washington, including Vice President and President George H W Bush.
Caradori phoned his wife and another investigator shortly before the All-Star game and told them the same thing: “I got what I came after. I got ’em by the balls. I’ve got pictures. I will take them to the game and bring them back to Nebraska.”
When Caradori began to follow the money behind the Franklin scandal, he discovered two things: the Franklin Credit Union was being used by the White House and CIA to launder money for the Iran-contra affair and King and his associates were given a free ride to sexually traffic in and molest children, including many procured from Boy’s Town.
One of those implicated in the Franklin scandal was Housing and Urban Development Secretary Sam Pierce. At the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, King held a $1 million reception for Pierce. However, King’s salary at the time was $14,000 a year and the actual cost of the reception was $300,000. The difference, $700,000, went into a slush fund that was laundered by the Franklin Credit Union for various “activities” sponsored by the CIA and White House.
On July 11, Caradori took off in his private plane from Chicago en route to Nebraska. Witnesses on the ground said they saw a flash in the sky followed by an explosion. Initial news reports stated that Caradori’s aircraft exploded in flight and then crashed. However, subsequent news reports were altered and claimed the aircraft exploded upon impact with the ground. Caradori and his son were killed in the crash. The local Sheriff’s office reported that scattered in the wreckage were child pornographic photographs. The FBI arrived and began systematically removing the photographs, debris, and Caradori’s briefcase. Meanwhile, FBI agents in Lincoln, Nebraska entered Caradori’s office and seized his files. Another FBI agent showed up at the office of a Nebraska state official investigating the Franklin case and demanded he turn over his files. The state official told the FBI agent to “get the hell out.”
The Bush White House immediately began covering up the Franklin scandal and put pressure on the remaining Nebraska state investigators. The FBI used the Kansas City mob to intimidate high-level witnesses and investigators of the Franklin scandal. One of the lead investigators also told WMR, “the FBI killed Caradori . . . they put the bomb on his airplane.”
An attempt to hire former CIA director William Colby to lead a state of Nebraska investigation of the Franklin scandal failed in a legislative committee 4 to 3 vote. Instead, the committee appointed attorney Kirk Naylor as its chief investigator. A major figure involved in investigating Franklin told WMR that Naylor was the most incompetent person the committee could have found to lead the investigation. Colby was a Vietnam War colleague of Nebraska state Senator John De Camp, one of major investigators of the Franklin scandal. Colby reportedly was ready to expose the CIA’s own involvement in the use of child prostitutes for the purposes of political and diplomatic blackmail. Colby died in a suspicious canoeing accident on the Chesapeake Bay on April 27, 1996.
Monsignor Robert Hupp, the Vicar-General of the Archdiocese of Omaha, a former Navy chaplain, and, in 1976, the first-ever clergy member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, had reported in the early 1970s to his bishop that there was sexual abuse at Boy’s Town that even involved a priest murdering a boy. Hupp was later named the head of Boy’s Town, ostensibly to keep him quiet. Hupp was in charge of Boy’s Town until the late 1980s, when the Franklin scandal first hit the front pages. Eventually, even after stepping down as the head of the orphanage, Hupp was forced to leave Boy’s Town altogether. WMR has learned that in 2003 a longtime supporter of Boy’s Town allowed Hupp to move into his cabin in Mausten, Wisconsin after being forced to leave the facilities at Boy’s Town. A reporter for the Omaha World-Herald, a newspaper owned by Nebraska billionaire Warren Buffett and which always had a skeptical view of the Franklin scandal, volunteered to drive Hupp to Wisconsin. Upon arriving at the cabin, the reporter prepared dinner for Hupp. The retired monsignor who broke the Catholic Church’s silence on its role in the Franklin scandal, died in his sleep that same night.
Murdered by Plane Crash
by Joseph Farrell
On July 9, 1990, Gary Caradori had flown with his 8-year old son, Andrew James, or A.J., from Lincoln, Nebraska to Chicago, Illinois to attend that years’ All-Star baseball game. Sources connected to an on-going investigation that Caradori was conducting for the State of Nebraska, however, suggest that Caradori’s trip may also have been a cover to obtain crucial information he had developed for his investigation while in Chicago: highly incriminating picture. On the evening of July 10, 1990, Caradori and his son attended the baseball game, which lasted until approximately midnight of that evening. After the game, they took off in a Caradori’s single engine Piper Saratoga airplane from Chicago’s Midway airport, at almost 2 AM the following morning, July 11, for the flight back to their home in Nebraska.
Approximately one hour later, near the cornfield of farmer Harold Cameron, Caradori’s plane crashed, with the debris stretching over a mile. The plane had come apart in the air. Two years later, the National Transportation Safety Board admitted that the wings of Caradori’s plane had been snapped off due to stress. Cameron himself stated that he had heard the sound of an airplane over his farm, and then an explosion, and had driven around his property looking for the crash. For the moment, the mechanism of the aircraft’s disintegration is unimportant, except for the point that whatever it was, the wings had snapped off (perhaps accounting for the explosion sound Cameron heard). Caradori and his little boy were both killed, and of course, when their effects were returned to his widow, Caradori’s briefcase was not among them, the very briefcase that contained the latest developments of his investigation. To add to the probability of deliberate murder, Caradori had, the night before his and his son’s murder, called his boss, Nebraska State Senator Loran Schmit, to inform him that they now had the subjects of their investigation “by the short hairs.”
So who was Caradori, and who and what was he investigating that would have called for the murder of him and his innocent son, a “murder by disintegration of aircraft?”
Gary Caradori had a distinguished career in law enforcement and investigation, and was hired by the Nebraska state Franklin Committee, chaired by state senator Loran Schmit, to investigate the allegations of a child sex-slavery and drug running ring being run by then prominent Omaha black financier, Larry King, who was at the time facing charges for embezzling $40,000,000 from his own Franlin Federal Credit Union in North Omaha. But during the scandal, allegations emerged of a child sex and drug ring being run in conjunction with the embezzlement. But that wasn’t all. The sex-ring itself was at least nationwide, and stretched all the way from the Los Angeles metropolitan area in California, to Washington, D.C., and even included allegations that the highest echelons of the Reagan-Bush, and then the subsequent Bush administrations were implicated. The modus operandi was clear: prominent politicians with a taste for pedophilia, drugs, and other activities were being blackmailed. There were even allegations that this ring, with some of the “recruited” adolescents from Nebraska, was given private late night “tours” of the White House, taken into areas of the executive mansion that were normally off limits to the public.
Researcher Nick Bryant, who along with Nebraska attorney John DeCamp( who represents some of the victims), speculates that the Franklin scandal may represent an ongoing permanent structure of the shadow or deep state, and that its “methods” constitute not only a normal means of operation for that entity, but part of a much wider and possibly even global network, and that this may account for the almost total non-responsiveness of government. There were even suggestions that some of Franklin’s embezzled money ended up as a cash source for the Iran-Contra operation(See Nick Bryant, The Franklin Scandal, A Story of Powerbrokers, Child Abuse, and Betrayal, pp. 491-493. For the recounting of Caradori’s murder, see pp. 185-188).
There is of course, nothing directly connecting the Franklin scandal and all its allegations of child-sex-slavery rings to the Kennedy assassination three decades earlier, except for the general pattern of corruption, and a tapestry of “threatened interests” that ran through the various corridors of power around the nation, and that literally ran through the corridors of the White House late at night.
Nothing direct whatsoever.
Except, of course, for the fact that the man who began to occupy the executive branch of government in 1981, and then the White House in 1989, could not initially recall where he was on November 22, 1963… and that whole “Operation Zapata” thing … “Zapata Oil?” a ship named Barbara?…huh?
….what Cubans? Bay of what?
Nah….! ….Nothing to see here. Move along.
Caradori’s Airplane ‘Broke Up in Flight’; [Sunrise Edition]
Robert Dorr Gabriella Stern. Omaha World – Herald. Omaha, Neb.: July 12, 1990. pg. 1
(Copyright 1990 Omaha World-Herald Company)
World-Herald staff writer Henry J. Cordes contributed to this report.
The small plane that carried Lincoln private detective Gary Caradori and his 8-year-old son to their deaths in Illinois early Wednesday apparently broke up in flight, two investigators said Wednesday.
“It was a scattered wreckage pattern,” said Bill Bruce, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. “It certainly demonstrates that it did break up in flight. The exact mechanism of the breakup is unknown.”
Sheriff Tim Bivins of Lee County, Ill., who spent 12 hours at the crash site, said he didn’t think an explosion occurred while the plane was in the air. He said he thought the plane “came apart in the air” and exploded on impact. Bivins said plane debris was scattered over an area three-quarters of a mile long.
Baseball Game
Caradori was the private investigator looking into allegations of child sexual abuse for the Legislature’s Franklin Credit Union committee. The committee is investigating matters related to the 1988 failure of Omaha’s Franklin Community Federal Credit Union. Caradori worked for the committee.
Caradori, 41, and his son, Andrew, died on their way back to Lincoln after attending the Tuesday night All-Star Game in Chicago. Caradori was piloting the plane, which left Chicago early Wednesday morning.
There apparently was no unusual weather, such as rain or fog, when the plane came down near Ashton, said forecaster Michael Bell of the National Weather Service office in Rockford, Ill.
Caradori was considered a “very competent pilot,” said a Lincoln man familiar with Caradori’s flying. He asked not to be identified. “He flew out of (Lincoln) on a regular basis.”
‘Mayday’
Bivins said Caradori radioed from his plane that “he was having trouble with some equipment aboard, a compass.”
“Shortly thereafter we have indications that he called in a ‘mayday’ and then his plane went down. It was lost on radar,” Bivins said from Dixon, Ill.
The sheriff said he did not know whether Caradori was communicating with one or two agencies at the time – Midway Airport in Chicago, his point of origin, or regional Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controllers in Aurora, Ill.
State Sen. Loran Schmit of Bellwood, chairman of the Franklin legislative committee, told The Associated Press in Lincoln that he had no doubt there were people who wanted to see Caradori dead.
“They got their wish,” he said. “. . . The question to be answered is whether it was a coincidence.”
Schmit, himself a pilot with 40 years’ flying experience, stopped short of saying he thought Caradori’s plane was sabotaged, but he added in an interview with AP:
“A small plane is the perfect thing to use to get at someone. . . . They tend to burn when they crash, and things get burned, destroyed, scattered. You don’t need a bomb. A fuel line could be tampered with. Any number of possibilities are there.”
In Cornfield
The crash occurred between 2:40 a.m. and 2:57 a.m. four miles south of Ashton, a town of about 500 people in north-central Illinois, about 100 miles west of Chicago, the sheriff’s office said.
The plane came down in a field of 4-foot-high corn, said Jessica James of WSDR radio in Sterling.
The All-Star game at Chicago’s Wrigley Field ended about 11:45 p.m. Tuesday. Caradori and his son flew out of Midway Airport at 2 a.m., said Capt. Gene Lutz, Lee County chief deputy sheriff.
About 2:40 a.m., the FAA regional traffic control center in Aurora lost radio and radar contact with the plane, Lutz said. The Lee County Sheriff’s Office was notified at 2:57 a.m. that a plane apparently was down, he said.
The plane, owned by Caradori, was a single-engine, six-passenger Piper. It appeared to be headed for the airport in neighboring Whiteside County, Ill., when it went down, Lutz said.
The sheriff’s office called for a hospital helicopter from Rockford, figuring that as the quickest way to find the plane, Lutz said. A medical team was on board in case there were survivors, he said.
The helicopter spotted the smoking wreckage at 5:56 a.m., he said.
Careful Flier
Caradori kept his plane in a hangar he rented from the Lincoln Airport Authority, said Wayne Andersen, director of the authority.
Scott Caradori of Ralston told The World-Herald that his brother was a careful flier of more than 15 years who would not take chances, especially with his son on board, and had never had a mishap.
He said he did not rule out sabotage, given the nature of his brother’s work with the Franklin committee. “Our family received numerous threats over that, telling him to back off,” he said.
Gary Caradori had a love of both flying and sports, his brother said. He often flew off to attend major sporting events such as Super Bowls, World Series and boxing matches.
Caradori and his wife, Sandi, have one other child, a son, Sean, who is 16. When Caradori and son Andrew flew to Chicago Monday, Sean stayed home and obtained his own pilot’s license Monday, said Scott Caradori, and “he was looking forward to telling Gary about that.”
‘Lives in Danger’
Schmit said: “Gary Caradori was a good man who did a lot of good in his life. He helped a lot of people. He was a tireless worker and he has been invaluable to this committee’s work.”
Lee County Coroner Richard Schilling said autopsies would be performed today.
An inquest also will be conducted later to determine the cause of the deaths, Schilling said. An inquest – a coroner’s investigation of a death – is required under Illinois law in cases of deaths due to accident, suicide or homicide, he said.
Schmit said Caradori frequently told him he believed the Franklin investigation “could put the lives of some people in danger.”
The committee hired Caradori last August. He videotaped interviews with three young people who said they were victims of sexual abuse. The committee turned over the tapes to State Patrol and FBI investigators.
Caradori has appeared as a witness before a Douglas County grand jury that is looking into allegations of child abuse stemming from the legislative committee’s Franklin investigation.
Pictures
Schmit told AP that Caradori recently had been trying to obtain pictures that some alleged victims said were taken of them during the time they were abused.
Schmit also said Caradori had been told that some people allegedly involved in child sexual abuse “had exposed some of the victims to satanic cultism. . . . He was working on places and times.”
Schmit added: “Gary believed that something was going to come out of this investigation. He believed that the evidence was there to be developed and that things couldn’t stay under cover forever.”
Lincoln attorney John Stevens Berry, counsel to the legislative committee, said he felt both grief and anger at Caradori’s death.
“It is particularly bitter,” he said, “that Gary died at a time when he was being criticized by people who had absolutely no idea of the scope of his labors, of the time and effort he was putting in to see if we need new laws or if our laws need to be administered more properly.”
Berry said it was impossible to determine how much investigative information was lost with Caradori when the plane went down.
“Despite the grief we all share, nevertheless, the work of the committee must continue,” he said from Lincoln. Fears
A 23-year-old man – who last November gave Caradori a videotaped statement saying he had been sexually abused, but later recanted part of his account – said the investigator’s death frightens him.
He said Caradori had warned him that people involved in the Franklin investigation could be in danger. The 23-year-old man, who hasn’t been publicly identified, said he fears someone might try to harm him.
The 23-year-old, who said he had flown with Caradori several times during the investigation, said the investigator was meticulous about checking the plane before taking off.
Pamela Vuchetich of Lincoln, attorney for a 20-year-old man who also made sexual abuse allegations, said Caradori’s death “sure puts some holes in the case. He was a major player in it. He had a lot of knowledge. That’s been lost.”
Trish Lanphier of Omaha, a founder of Concerned Parents, a group formed in the wake of the Franklin-related allegations, said Caradori had told her he was concerned that someone would tamper with his vehicles and plane.
She said Caradori told her two weeks ago that “he was selling all his cars because they had been tampered with. The tires had been flattened. . . . He told me was hiding his plane. He said it would be real easy to tamper with a plane.”
Private Investigator
State Sen. Jerry Warner of Waverly, a member of the Franklin committee, described Caradori as an “intense” and “tenacious” man for whom the investigative job “was more than just a business assignment.”
Before he began his work for the committee, Caradori spent more than a decade as a private investigator based in Lincoln. One of his specialties was finding missing persons.
His travels took him across the country and to Europe. His resume says he traveled 150,000 miles a year. He flew his plane in his work.
He ranked as one of the more well-to-do private investigators in Nebraska, working for some large firms, say those familiar with his work.
Caradori became a Nebraska State Patrol trooper in December 1971. He quit the force in good standing in March 1977. His career as a trooper included some work with criminal investigations.
In 1977 he formed J-C Security and Detective Agency with a fellow former state trooper, Gregory Fraser. Caradori left that firm in 1981, and the next year it went into bankruptcy and was dissolved.
Caradori became the partner of Michael Weatherl in Caradori & Weatherl Investigations, based in Lincoln. Caradori headed the part of the company that provided private, uniformed security officers to businesses.
Caradori sold his 50 percent share to Weatherl early last year and formed his own company, Caracorp Inc.
Ralston Graduate
Caradori attended St. Gerald Catholic School in Ralston before entering Ralston public schools, and he graduated from Ralston High School in 1967.
After high school, Caradori joined the U.S. Coast Guard and spent a year in Vietnam.
Survivors in addition to Caradori’s wife, son and brother Scott are brothers Shane and Tom of Omaha and Dick of Omaha and Rockport, Mo., sister Peggy Matz of Ralston and his mother, Mary, of Ralston.
Recommended Books:
The shut-down of Omaha, Nebraska’s Franklin Community Federal Credit Union, raided by federal agencies in November 1988, sent shock waves all the way to Washington, D.C. $40 million was missing. The credit union’s manager: Republican Party activist Lawrence E. “Larry” King, Jr., behind whose rise to fame and riches stood powerful figures in Nebraska politics and business, and in the nation’s capital.
In the face of opposition from local and state law enforcement, from the FBI, and from the powerful Omaha World-Herald newspaper, a special Franklin committee of the Nebraska Legislature launched its own probe. What looked like a financial swindle, soon exploded into a hideous tale of drugs, Iran-Contra money-laundering, a nationwide child abuse ring, and ritual murder.
Nineteen months later, the legislative committee’s chief investigator died – suddenly, and violently, like more than a dozen other people linked to the Franklin case.
Author John DeCamp knows the Franklin scandal from the inside. In 1990, his “DeCamp memo” first publicly named the alleged high-ranking abusers. Today, he is attorney for two of the abuse victims.
Using documentation never before made public, DeCamp lays bare not only the crimes, but the cover-up – a textbook case of how dangerous the corruption of institutions of government, and the press, can be. In its sweep and in what it portends for the nation, the Franklin cover-up followed the ugly precedent of the Warren Commission.
A chilling exposé of corporate corruption and government cover-ups, this account of a nationwide child-trafficking and pedophilia ring in the United States tells a sordid tale of corruption in high places. The scandal originally surfaced during an investigation into Omaha, Nebraska’s failed Franklin Federal Credit Union that went beyond the Midwest, ultimately to Washington, DC. Implicating businessmen, senators, major media corporations, the CIA, and even the venerable Boys Town organization, this extensively researched report includes firsthand interviews with key witnesses and explores a controversy that has received scant media attention.
