Patrick Lohman, a journalist from New York State, had been on a lookout for one particular man for weeks.

He had the feeling this guy may have vital information about a shady group he was looking into.

He didn't have much to go on. He'd seen a photo of him on a Facebook page.

And all I saw was a kind of a strange filtered photograph and the name on the Facebook was

trigger hippie. And that's all I knew about this person. Despite his best efforts, Patrick had no

luck making contact. But he couldn't shake the feeling that

this trigger hippie might be the key to all of it. Then, one day, Patrick was leaving the office.

To go to lunch, and I walked across the street, and I see the guy standing there in the street.

And I knew I had to talk to him, but I didn't have anything to say except, excuse me, sir, are you trigger hippie?

And he said, yeah, I am.

Patrick had found his man.

And he told such a remarkable story about being in that group for 20 years.

This fateful run-in marked just a single piece of a much larger puzzle,

one that would ultimately take not only Patrick, but a fellow local reporter, to fully piece together.

But we don't start here.

I'm Ava McClendigan.

As ever, we start with the tip-off. Back in 2018, Patrick Lohman worked at Syracuse.com and its paper, the post-standard,

an outlet that covers Syracuse and the surrounding area central New York State.

At that time, Patrick was working mostly on crime stories, but that didn't stop him picking

up leads wherever he could get them. And as a known journalist, he'd often find people he'd bump into

pitching him ideas. And, you know, you kind of learn at some point not to believe it right away.

So you kind of learn to talk yourself out of things,

...