Nick wrote:Investigator Gary Caradori interviews Paul Bonacci about the murder of a boy in northern California.
As I wrote The Franklin Scandal, it was important for me to dispel Internet myths from the story’s actual realities. One of the Internet myths I dispelled regarded gonzo writer Hunter Thompson's involvement with "Franklin." Paul Bonacci told legislative committee investigator Gary Caradori about a snuff film he had witnessed in northern California, and he later said that one of the film's participants introduced himself as “Hunter Thompson.” To this day, Paul has no idea what the late Hunter Thompson looked like, and common sense would dictate that someone involved in the murder of a child would introduce himself with a pseudonym. The Internet apocrypha that Hunter Thompson participated in a snuff film was given cyber traction when Rusty Nelson said that snuff films were one of Thompson’s pastimes. I had difficulties believing many of Rusty Nelson’s statements, and I showed him five pictures, one of which was Hunter Thompson's, and he couldn’t identify him, leading me to believe that Nelson had never met Thompson.
However, throughout my investigation of The Franklin Scandal, the murder or selling of children has come up from seven different sources. If just one of those sources is being truthful, then Franklin truly encompasses the darkest facet of child trafficking. In the above excerpt from Caradori’s interview of Paul Bonacci, Paul discusses the making of the snuff film with great detail and profuse emotion, and I’ll let the viewer decide whether or not he’s being truthful.
Paul said the snuff film was made in 1985 and it included a boy named Jeremy who had been kidnapped in Idaho. There was a boy named Jeremy who was abducted from Idaho in 1985, but Paul said the boy was in early adolescence and the Jeremy abducted from Idaho in 1985 would have been four years old at the time. There was a boy named Jeremy abducted in Oregon who loosely fits Paul’s description, but he was abducted in 1986.
