THE REAL X-FILES . . . Part One

An introduction to the brave people, who stumbled into the Twilight Zone over three decades ago, then confronted pure evil.

Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

Déjà vu

August 10, 1991 – Free-lance journalist, Danny Casolaro, was driving out to the northern tip of the Shenandoah Valley that day . . . dreaming about how rich and famous he was going to be . . . but actually about to be tortured to death. Meanwhile, a very serious meeting was being held in the expansive Keeping Room of my Colonial Era stage coach inn in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley.

Attending were two professors from Virginia Tech, a young male FBI agent – representing the X-files couple, scientists and dairy inspectors from the Virginia Department of Agriculture, plus my wife and myself. Unfortunately, we would learn in April 1995 that throughout her time in Virginia, my (by then) former wife had been the eyes, ears and helpmate of Octopus. She had been promised an enormous amount of money to get rid of me . . . one way or another.

A French-Canadian professor at Virginia Tech had been quietly sending tissue samples, bodily fluids and strange organisms found in the bodies of deceased livestock to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. All of livestock deaths had occurred in 1990 and 1991 during the nights when what local farmers described one-eyed demons appeared on their farms. I had been one of thousands of Northern Virginians, who had seen night-time dog fights between various types of UFOs, so it was very easy for locals to believe that extraterrestrials were killing their animals.

The professors presented astonishing lab reports from the CDC. Laboratory-synthesized human pathogens and bio-toxins were killing the animals . . . not extraterrestrial ray guns. Someone was manufacturing and experimenting with organisms that could kill millions of Americans, if placed in drinking water or food.

In particular, a giant mycoplasm was dangerous. The mad scientists injected genes into the parent mycoplasma of several bacteria that cause pandemics, plus the virus that caused cancer in human female reproductive organs. Farmers producing food for the public were required to bring dead animals to the Animal Diagnostic Laboratory in Staunton, VA. Someone at that lab was giving the carcasses to the mad scientists so billions of pathogens and tanker truck loads of biotoxin could be harvested. Some of the lab-grown diseases were targeted at dogs, cats and livestock in order to create billions of dollars of revenue for pharmaceutical companies manufacturing animal vaccines and antibiotics.

By spring of 1992, we would learn that the mycoplasma that was initially called mycoplasma shenandoaninsis, which was incubated in my male goat kids in 1990, was injected in the bulk containers of drinking water going to American military personnel, particularly those participating in Desert Storm. Hundreds of thousands of young men and women were condemned to chronic health problems and shortened life spans from the drinking water that Uncle Sam furnished them.

FBI Special Agents Dana Skully and Scott Mulder in the X-files couldn’t have been more different than the real X-files couple, who were happily married, middle-aged, historians with PhD’s .

The 2018 re-boot of The X-files described creation by mad scientists of a Pandemic virus identical to Covid19! The plot even included description of an alien virus, which attacked the human immune system, being disseminated with a modified SARS virus. How could have the producer and writers of the new X-files know that in fiction would become reality in one year? Personally, I don’t know, but it does not seem to be a coincidence.

October 21, 1987 – Most of the fire truck, patrol cars and emergency vehicles in Shenandoah County showed up at our rental house, when word spread that a young man’s body had been found there.

My introduction to Octopus occurred on October 21, 1987 . . . my first night, living in Virginia. Shortly after sunset, “someone” carried the body of a young man, who had been dead for two weeks with nine bullet holes in him, to the garden area, west of our house. The body was in perfect condition. “Someone” then notified 911 of the body’s location, with a special phone that did not have a phone ID.

A few days before being ritually executed, Tim Conner had called the Virginia State Police Drug Hotline to tell them that several Shenandoah County deputies were selling drugs to high school students on the high school campus! This case was eventually given by “someone” high up in the FBI to the real X-files couple with the assumption that they would not be able to solve it.

Cast

The Real Patriots, who put their lives on the line

Photo of investigative writer, Danny Casolero, whose murder is featured on this popular TV series on Netflix. Casolero’s investigative efforts were really a side show to what was actually going on.

(1) Joseph Daniel Casolaro (June 16, 1947 – August 10, 1991) was an American freelance writer who came to public attention in 1991 when he was found dead at the Sheraton Hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, with his wrists slashed 10–12 times. Several of his fingernails had been pulled out, plus he had large bruises on his torso and legs. The medical examiner ruled the death a suicide.

Danny Casolero snooped around to learn more about activities that had no direct connection to him. However, most of us walked through the entrance door of the Twilight Zone unintentionally. Below are the primary “good guys” in this series.

(2) National Security Agency Covert Counter-Insurgency Officer James Rogers [alias] (July 5, 1949-December 12, 1992). Of Cherokee descent, Rogers moved from McMinn County, TN to Shenandoah County, VA on the same day that I did. He was the same age and height as me. We had the same color hair, eyes and complexion. The only significant differences were that his ears and nose were much bigger than mine.

The Bush Whitehouse squashed any attempts by local, state or regular federal law enforcement agencies to investigate the murder. His was one of hundreds of politically-motivated murders during 1991 and 1992 of law enforcement personnel, US Army Junior Grade officers & sergeants, TV and newspaper reporters plus innocent civlians.

(3) FBI Agent Cosby Morgan (1935-2017) Morgan was born in Elizabeth City, NC. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, he obtained a degree in accounting from American University then joined the FBI. One of his first assignments was the White House, where he both served as a body guard and martial arts teacher for the family and White House staff. During this time he became close friends with U. S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

Unless one was a crook, most people instantly liked Cosby. His casual, friendly manner made you forget that he was a tough-as-they-come FBI agent. He was selected for special operations including the Patty Hearst Case, the Wounded Knee Operation and extensive work in Alaska.

Prior to becoming Agent-In-Charge of the Asheville, North Carolina office in 1976, Cosby served as a covert FBI agent, while working as a longshoreman on the docks! During that time, he also worked his way up to the upper echelon of the Mafia.

My contacts with Cosby began in 1978, when I was Director and Principal Planner of the Downtown Asheville Revitalization Program. The CEO of a major national hotel chain, plus 38 local building owners or developers were awarded Urban Development Action Grants and low Interest loans from the federal government. Mysteriously, they were receiving death threats from members of the New Jersey and Philadelphia Mafia organizations. The Asheville Police had done nothing to investigate these crimes.

Cosby asked me to not be visibly involved in any political activities, nor commit any unethical acts that could discredit my testimony in a courtroom. Since the people in City Hall and an economic development association were concealing their dealings with organized crime, my testimony would be especially effective, if I remained squeaky clean.

This highly respected lawman retired from the FBI in 1986, the year before we moved to Virginia. He started a private investigation firm, which secretly continued to do work for the federal government, while officially being oriented to corporate clients. Cosby was already investigating the massive drug pipeline between South Florida, North Georgia-extreme western North Carolina and Northwestern Virginia, when I moved to Northwestern Virginia.

The interior of the FBI National Headquarters is ringed with little cubicles that were smaller than the master bathroom in my Shenandoah Valley farmhouse. My Virginia involvement with the FBI began when a client and friend, who was a Pulitzer-prize wining investigative reporter for the Washington Post, was murdered. I was asked to come to the FBI headquarters and give a deposition. I was the only person in the world, who knew that he had been filming small US Air Force C-37 cargo jets landing and unloading at the Basye, VA airport. They were hauling cocaine, counterfeit airplane parts and guns stolen from Georgia law enforcement evidence lockers.

(4) John and Sara Danby (Aliases) – The Real X File Couple

Both John and Sara held Ph.D’s in History from prestigious Virginia universities. Their offices were in the basement of the National Museum of American History, plus classified offices in the Library of Congress. The happily married couple lived in a restored Ante-bellum home in Alexandria, VA with two children. They were not pariahs in the FBI as their TV versions were portrayed. However, they became increasingly afraid of being murdered by other law enforcement or national security personnel within the federal government. The TV series tread lightly on this issue.

Their first contact with the federal government came when a Whitehouse staff member, working for President Jimmy Carter, asked them to produce an comprehensive history of the Panama Canal for their boss. This led to semi-social dinners at the Whitehouse. Jimmy’s discussion of the UFO that he and many South Georgians had seen, led to Sara’s interest in extraterrestrials.

When the staff-members of the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran were either imprisoned as hostages or executed, the Danby’s were asked to become convert intelligence analysts with the FBI. During the Reagan Administration, they were promoted to being Covert Senior Agents and were periodically assigned mysterious crime cases in the Southeast and Middle Atlantic states, plus those cases requiring a professional knowledge of American history.

My first contact with the Danby’s occurred at our farm’s grand opening. They accompanied my longtime friends . . . National Geographic Society archaeologists, George and Gene Stuart. Sara confessed a year later that I was at that time “a person of interest” in a criminal investigation. Twice my wife had rendezvoused in Downtown Washington with a lawyer from our former community near Asheville. He was high priest of a Satanic cult that distributed illegal drugs. However, I seemed “wholesome” to the Danbys at the grand opening.

A call to Cosby Morgan by John Danby revealed that I was a “good guy.” My wife did seem to be living a double life. In addition to her flings, she was a member of a female cult, which held rituals on our farm, when I was away. Many members of the cult were employees of the U.S Forestry Service. They did not seem to be violating any federal crimes.

Richard and Susan at Etowah Mounds in Georgia around 1998

(5) National Security Officer Susan Karlson (born 1965 . . . at least that is what she told me!) – When I first met Susan at the Wendy’s Restaurant in Front Royal, VA in June 1991, she was a newly minted covert FBI agent, who looked like a innocent college coed. Her assignment was to fake having an affair with me, so we could transfer intel from honest cops in the Shenandoah Valley to the Downtown Washington offices of the FBI.

You see, I was legally married, but my estranged wife was so blatant in her affairs with her married principal at a public school and with some women teachers, the only response from the few local friends who saw us together was to clap and say, “It’s about time . . . we were wondering about you!” Susan later admitted that she had already decided that she wanted me to be her baby daddy, after we met at Wendy’s. As far as I know, she has never married.

After she was transferred to Atlanta in December 1991, she couldn’t tell me who she worked for, but I do know that her main assignment was tracking down former Russian spies (now working for the Russian Mafia) whose parents or grandparents had been embedded at the Lockheed Plant in NW Metro Atlanta. From then on, in our 15-year, friends-with-benefits + two children relationship, I never knew where she lived, who she worked for or what case she was working on.

I now know that almost everything that she told me about her past, including her name, was a lie . . . or I guess, I should say “national security cover.” She was definitely Swedish, however. She spoke an archaic dialect of Swedish typical of the mountains between Sweden and Norway, plus remote areas of Finland. No one could make that up.

I miss her physical nurturing, company, humor and intelligent conversation, but can’t really complain. She made no demands on me other than I provide her drama-free R & R on holidays, birthdays and vacations. She never expected me to pay a penny of the cost of raising our daughter and son. They may not know that I exist. So, really, Susan and I were much closer to the TV concept of the X-files couple.

Dr. Charlevoix testing the milk of some goats at Virginia Tech. Our dairy goats were much bigger and had their horns removed, while kids.

(6) Dr. Jean Baptiste Charlevoix (Alias) – Internationally-recognized French-Canadian expert on animal diseases and professor at the Virginia Tech College of Veterinary Medicine. He grew up on a commercial goat farm in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec, so was particularly interested in our operation. It was the first federally-licensed goat cheese creamery in the nation.

Dr. Charlevoix almost immediately began teaching small livestock classes for Virginia Tech veterinary students on our farm. He knew that our animals enjoyed the best care possible. So, when several of our male goat kids suddenly displayed strange symptoms in the spring of 1990, he took them seriously and obtains cultures of the bacteria. At the time, though, none of us realized that what appeared to be a minor ruminate pathogen, harmless to humans, was potentially a weapon of mass destruction.

You might think that Dr. Charlevoix would have received accolades from the Commonwealth of Virginia for his brilliant research, which blocked a horrific plague striking the nation. Perhaps a Nobel Prize was in order. NOPE!

Wealthy right-wing alumni of Virginia Tech put heavy pressure on the university’s’ president to fire Charlevoix in December. His phone was tapped by the National Security Agency, so any other university that he contacted was told the lie that he had been fired for having improper physical contacts with female students. The forerunner of ICE ordered him out of the country by January 1st, 1992.

The late Darlene Blommer in Georgetown, MD

(7) Dr. Darlene Blommer [alias] (1950-1994) was a psychologist and employee counselor at the U. S. Department of State. Darlene was a graduate of prestigious Wellesley College near Boston and Columbia University in New York City. It was she who suggested to her employers that they sponsor our grand opening ceremony. However, I had known Darlene long before then.

We first met in 1973, when I went to work for a prominent architecture and planning firm in Columbia, MD . . . immediately after returning from working in Sweden. She was recently married at the time, but we became close platonic friends for life. We always maintained self discipline, but I think that if we had ever been single at the same time, we would have quickly moved in together.

Darlene set me up with Mariam Khachatryan, an Armenian-American graduate of Wellesley, who had just started work at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Mariam and I drifted apart after I was transferred down to the Peachtree City, GA office, but she would play a key role during the late 1970s, in blocking Asheville, NC from receiving federal money for demolishing its entire historic downtown. It never dawned on the self-styled oligarchs in Asheville that I had friends elsewhere or that I had secret “national security” past.

In August 1988, a State Department senior official referred one of his female division heads to Darlene for treatment of depression. Upon meeting her patient for the first time, Darlene quickly learned that Sandra Etheridge [alias] (1956-1991) had been the secret mistress of Vice President George H. Bush, since 1976, when she was a 20 year-old college intern at the CIA and VP Bush was its Director!

Etheridge explained that the night, when the Republican National Convention selected Bush as its candidate for President, men-in-black had entered her townhouse with a key. They sternly informed her that she would never see George Bush again and that if she either spoke to the media about their relationship or didn’t leave the USA permanently by October 1st, her body would be found floating in the Potomac River with many knife wounds on it. She was offered a large trust account, set up secretly by Bush, to live on overseas.

Etheridge had attempted suicide, but she didn’t swallow enough sleeping pills. She was looking for medication and counseling to keep her alive until she could move to Paris to start a life under another name. Darlene referred her to a State Department psychiatrist, but Etheridge returned to Darlene for the counseling.

After Bush won the election against Michael Dukasis, things got quite nasty for Darlene at the Department of State. Shortly after the grand opening of the cheese creamery, she voluntarily resigned, before men-in-black forced her to leave the country. She moved to Wilmington, Delaware and remarried. Her family counseling clinic prospered. The Delaware Division of Family Services began referring an increasing number of clients then picking up the tab.

Darlene, though, was about to enter the Twilight Zone. First, in late 1990, she was referred four teenagers, who had escaped a satanic cult in Western North Carolina. They had requested that they be made wards of the State of Delaware, rather than being returned to Asheville. They knew of me! They told Darlene that I was hated in Asheville because I was enemy of Satan.

Darlene invited me to meet with the teens, so I could confirm the wild stories about occult activities going on in Asheville, which Delaware officials didn’t believe. That afternoon became one of the most bizarre experiences in our lives . . . straight out of scenes in “The Exorcist!” We’ll save that story for another article.

On October 10, 1991, Sandra Etheridge’s charred body was found in her burned-out apartment in the chique Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. The same night, George H. Bush announced his intent to run for a second term.

Paris police initially ruled Sandra’s death a fire caused by smoking in bed, while intoxicated . . . or else suicide. Her death was not even mentioned in the newspapers. Then French tabloids were tipped off that she was the ex-mistress of the President of the United States. Then an investigative reporter noticed in the police photos that Sandra’s arms had been bound around her back and her legs were bound. The killers had mistakenly used a type of non-flammable rope, produced for the U.S. Military. The story of her sad life as a mistress, ended by a grotesque execution, spread across newspapers in Europe. No news outlet in the United States mentioned the murder of Sandra Etheridge.

Darlene received an anonymous telephone call telling her that she and her family would end up like Sandra, if she spoke to the news media. Darlene quickly sent me a fax telling me this and warning me not to mention what I knew about Sandra Etheridge’s past to anyone. We had entered the Twilight Zone.

In retrospect, I realize that Octopus planned to rub out Darlene anyway a sufficient number of months after the election, but make it look like an accident or natural death. She was such a little fish in their plans. They probably would have just tried to discredit her personal character, if she had gone to the news media . . . the type things that have been done to me in Georgia by some rogue cops.

She should have gone public then moved her family to another part of the nation or Canada. Hindsight is nice. I still miss her.

The beloved old farm on Toms Brook in September 1991

NBC News intentionally sent out a large film crew on a Saturday to produce both a 30 minute nationally-televised program and the local 5 minute story seen here, so that my estranged wife could be interviewed. She left the farm as soon as they showed up and did not return until early evening. Apparently, she had used a different name and home location in her extra-marital adventures and didn’t want to be exposed. I should have invited Vivi, my eternal soulmate, to fly in from France to play the role of my beautiful, adoring wife. LOL That would have sold a lot of cheese and she really did love me.