Part Two: Peter Nygard: The Epstein of Fashion

all yourself? Why not? Because maybe Sophie, if I stare into the little of their own madness, then they'll then they'll turn around. Maybe that's the healthy thing to do. We're going to have to have a meeting. We have so many meetings. Um, isn't this the intervention? I thought that was the yeare more heavily armed people than either of you have tried. Um, although since we are recording in my house right now, you might be closer to my my living room rifle than I am at the movie.

All I've got is my nine um boy. Margaret kill Joy Behind the Bastards Podcast Margaret host Cool People who did cool stuff and live like the world is dying, author of We Won't Be Here tomorrow. See that's how you fucking and so you do an introduction? Alright, can do it when I want to? Margaret? Yeah, now, Margaret, is it not true that you are currently crashing in my house? Uh? I plead that? No? Yeah I am Yeah. How's that? How's that going? Did did we or did

we not? Go to a renaissance fair last weekend where we and then afterwards watch the Ed Harris George Romero movie Night Riders. It was amazing both both parts of this absolutely amazing. Is it all so true that we got to hang on it? It was super fun? I know it. I finally got to meet my co workers at the Cool Zone Media by driving out to the West Coast and watching Robert by a very large sword and being kind of jealous. That's essentially the standard practice here. Yeah.

I wanted you to buy a large sword so that I have a sword fight in my backyard, but I know I almost did. But then instead I bought a really nice, like handmade woolen cowl. You did? It is a nice cow? Yeah, it is a nice cow. Your cow will keep you warmer than my sword. Yea. Though if we're attacked by saracens, then who's got the advantage. Yeah, that's true, that's right, that's right. UM, possibly still you,

depending on what kind of year it happens. So, Margaret, I am, among other things, having to rejigger the script slightly because I had said it in my head the whole time as Nigrid K. Even though I have been too many play is that our keys? And I know it's supposed to be pronounced key, I still called it k in my head. And I don't know why. I don't know why my brain did that to me, but it feels like an affront. How is it spelled c A y huh? So like the Florida keys are spelled No,

no they're not. They're spelled k E y s. If I'm not mistaken. None of it makes sense, and I am livid. I'm just angry, Margaret. That is the real bastard of this episode. The dictionary. This one's pretty bad, actually, tumatic war machine geared towards destroying the Mirriam Webster dictionary or whoever makes things be pronounced ways. I don't actually know who that is. So Nigard key was the society was not society destroy society? Um, I guess this is

now an accelerationist podcast. Niagard Key was not the only thing Peter and igerd named after himself. His fashion company, his jet, his bottled water that he served at his compound, and a specific copyrighted shade of electric blue. We're all named after him, um, and it's the shade of blue that he wears on himself all the time. I bet his car is that color. Oh, I bet a lot of them are. Yeah. Now, before the stories broke that we talked about last episode and that we're about to

talk in this episode. This all helped to solidify his legend as one of the most infamously wealthy playboys of the fashion industry. Peter tended to wear Niggard blue v nex with a V that went down further than I think ought to be entirely legal. I found a really good shot of it where like there's a woman next to him who is wearing a V neck or like a V front top that like shows the most of her breasts and her belly button, and it's only slightly

deeper than his shirt. Like he is, he is almost showing as much chest dis serve cuts it above his belly because he yeah, he's yeah, Yeah, he's a little bit shy. I thought he wouldn't have done that twenty years ago. Um. And I think the blue of that old dress that she's wearing, she's wearing his old clothes. I just can't do it anymore. Um, it's interesting. I also think that blue shirt he's wearing is the shade of blue he named after himself, which just looks like

light blue, not that exciting a shade of blue. Um, I don't have any is. It's perfectly pleasant shade of blue. But it's not blue. It's blue, right, it's blue. Didn't invent like a new cut like it's blue, bros. It's just blue. Alternatively, if he had to dress up for a party or a social event, he tended to wear layers of elaborate costume grade clothing that made him look like a cross between an elderly fabio and an extra from Pirates of the Caribbean. And boy, this next shot

is quite an outfit. He's got like a really and this ascot is an electric blue, looks like it's silk. He's got a tuxedo shirt and then what looks like it's not quite a tuxedo jacket because it's a little more casual than that. But it looks like it's almost like a volure or maybe a velvet gray on the inside. It's a vampire extra. He looks like he's playing Vampire

the Masquerade tonight. Like he looks like he's doing vampire LARPing, except for he has an incredibly deep tan, and no one who has ever played Vampire the Masquerade had a tan. That's true, because they would die if they're exposed, they would die exactly. That's just not very good. Kfabe. Um, do you call it kfabe and larpin because you should. I don't know what kfab is, but I also I actually, um, I'm a poser about larpin and that I write about

it sometimes, but I'm really a tabletop girl. Well I mean, yeah, that that I get. Um, But you do have a nice set of Renaissance bear clothes, that's true. I kind

of just wear them anyway. Okayfabe, Margaret, this is important for you to know, Okay, for fabe is a wrestling term, and it's the practice of like maintaining the illusion that like whatever it is, whatever ridiculous ship you're doing on in your wrestling storyline, is completely real, Like if you hate a guy that you actually hate each other than the character is like a bad guy, that he's a real bad guy. Yeah, Like that's cafe. Um. Wrestling is

fascinating from a cultural standpoint. Um. And also he does kind of look like a wrestler because of how much skin he shows and precisely where he shows it, from what I can discern from a truly unfortunate amount of time it has been looking at photos of this man. He tended to go shirtless much more often in his fifties and sixties in the early aughts, which were the height of his party days. One photo shows him wearing

a vest and nothing else. Skin is red as a stop sign, hair down past his shoulders, and Robert de Niro standing next to him, looking absolutely Robert. Robert de Niro does not want to be in this photograph. It is an amazing shot. Oh no, I scolled down. Please tell us about the next Bob. Bob de Niro does

not want to be there. And there's a there's here's a photo of him and around the same time, slightly less red but just as shirtless, with a camo jacket over his naked chest and a parrot, a live parrot on his shoulder because his arm around Sean Connery. That's what I thought, And Sean looks perfectly comfortable. Sean Connery was meant to be there. This is what he was born to. The look on his face is the I'm posing with a fan the way I do this every day and my life is fine. That is his look.

Unlike de Niro, who is like, in the process, are you having someone to get this man away from me? I came down here and there's no walls between the bedrooms. I would like to go home. I need to leave. I've never actually seen walls in a bedroom. Um. Peter bragged constantly about his sexual partners in libertine lifestyle. He joked in one interview that Celebacy was quote the worst

twenty minutes of my life. Workers at the key say his nightly routine was to have them light torches at sunset and play the theme from the Phantom of the Opera before he and his guests engaged in pamper parties. How you doing, Margaret Jesus Christ, I mean like it's one of these things where was like if everything he

did was consensual and sort of nothing. Yes, of course, yeah, I'm just like all right, like I have partied with a much less wealthy version of this guy who didn't commit sex crimes, and like it's kind of exhausting but more or less harmless right where it's like, oh you like theatrics and big groups of people cuddling, yea, and everybody drinks terrible mixed drinks, but nobody has a bad time.

It's just kind of kind of a lot um. Now, of course one of the and this is one of the ways in which you can tell, like, um, that what's going on here was not in fact a cool thing. Basically all of the guests are extremely young women. The only other men that Peter would ever invite were like celebrities that he wanted to impress. Um. Now, obviously we don't know precisely who attended these parties or what they did, but we do know that his frequent guests included Michael

Jackson and George H. W. Bush. Cool, what a what a party? You could have done cocaine in the fucking Bahamas with Michael Jackson and George H. W. Bush and then committed the kind of crimes that make God damn your children, Like, what a what a lifestyle? What a and this is the way it's so mad at all the like pizza Gate type ships. I'm like, no, there's

plenty of this happening for real. Yeah. Um, obviously we don't know what George h. W. Bush got up to, but Georgia h. W. Bush has some allegations against him, as does Michael Jackson. So now that said, I actually am less inclined to think Jackson engaged in anything while hanging out with Peter than George H. W. Bush, because I think Jackson was kind of more private about it, if I understand him kind of correctly. But who knows,

who knows what went down. It is always possible, as was sometimes the case with Epstein, that a lot of these famous guests were not introduced to anything illegal at Niagard's compound. Right, you can bring in a lot of young adult women for parties and a lot of well the drug parts would have been illegal, but not actually be committing any serious crimes that are certainly going to

get you penalized. And if you've got super famous people coming over to your house, like George h. W. Bush, that's probably the smarter thing to do, especially since George is going to have members of law enforcement who have to be tailing him, right um, And that's probably more

likely for Niagard than for Epstein. Um. While the deceased financier made much of his fortune and reputation from providing wealthier and more powerful in with young women and girls, Niagard was more into celebrities as far as we know, just for the clout again, I have no interest in defending anyone here, and it's possible his friends, who include former President Bill Clinton as well, Oh slick Willie, is

that the fucking Niagard key too. Don't go to get me wrong, it's very possible, if not somewhat likely, that they got up to some shady stuff. But also from every story we get, Peter is a wildly jealous man, and all of the allegations of rape and sexual assault focus on him and his use of wealth and his

fabulous compound to lure young people into his bed. And so I do think it's entirely possible that as as far as the actual illegal sex trafficking stuff, that's just Peter because he doesn't really like the idea of sharing. He doesn't want to be like an Epstein figure. He actually made money for himself, right, he wants to be the guy getting the thing. You know. Yep, a lateral move if I've ever heard one from an actor. Yeah, I'm not sure to make like a major moral decision.

I'm not just trying to separate them, but I think there is kind of a difference between what they were up to. Um pamper parties tended to occur on Sundays, and most of the female guests were women who lived elsewhere nearby in the Bahamas, or who were visiting as tourists from somewhere else. A decent number of them were local women and girls. Negred would send his staff out into the cities nearby to invite we women and again girls back for free massages, manicures, horseback rides, and an

open bar. The New York Times talked to six of him his employees who who recruited people at shops, clubs and restaurants to come in party. Quote one time, he was like, I don't know where you find these girls from, but there's pretty girls in the ghetto as well, recalled Freddie bar Mr. Negard's personal assistant in the early two thousands,

you need to find pretty girls in need cool cool. Eventually, his staff compiled an invitation lift list provided to The Times with the names of more than seven women, and former workers said they photographed guests when they arrived, uploading the images for their boss's perusal only those who were young, slim, and with a curvy backside, which Mr Ni called a toilet we're supposed to be allowed inside, according to the ex employees, including Mrs Taylor, So basically a private version

of the origin of Facebook. Yeah. Yeah, he did kind of make his own because he was already rich, just for him to like molesque people with terrible and The actress Jessica Alba, who attended a Nigrid party while filming Into the Blue in two thousand four, later described it as gross. These girls are like fourteen years old in the jacuzzi, taking off their clothes, she said on a press tour. And here's the thing. First off, I don't know much about Jessica Alba. Kudos to her for saying

something at all, because number one, that's pretty unsparing. That is a direct allegation that he is like doing inappropriate things with children. Um on a press Jessica Alba's pretty based. Yeah, I don't know I know very little about her, but she went and said something, and fucking nobody else did, like, very very little, very few people of her at her level of kind of clout and influence said anything about

what Peter was doing. For sure, a lot of them were aware of some of it, right, Yeah, so good good for you, Jessica Albert. You get the behind the bastards seal of doing good stuff. Yeah. I mean, like, at what point is this the first person who's like coming forward and being like, there's fourteen year olds in this hot tub or well, this is obviously there were allegant We just went through that history because that the Winnipeg Freebeacon or whatever it was reported on a number

of allegations. A number of women made allegations, but were some don't know. I think about the kid thing more specifically, but I guess in his mind the same thing. This is the first like national level, large scale public person with any kind of platform to allege that, um, that Peter Niagard is doing inappropriate things with children on his compound. As far as I can tell, it's Jessica Alba's the first person to do that. So again, like, seriously, kudos

to her. Is very few other people did, and fucking Sean Connery probably knew. Right. Maybe DeNiro did too, Although to be entirely fair, it does not look like Bob de Niro wanted to be next to Peter Niager, so he may not have. He may have shown up once and been like it seems like it's gonna be a bad thing bounced. I don't know. I don't know Bob

de Niro. Um. I think her example makes it clear that we can probably assume a number of famous people were at least present for some fucked up ship, even if Niagard wasn't trafficking children specifically to them, right, we could have been aware people if Jessica Jessica Alba. I don't believe Jessica albat is the only celebrity who witnessed

stuff like this, right, she's just the one who said something. Um. Now, some people did allege to The Times that Niagard also tried to stop his employees from inviting black people to the key or whatever it's worth. I don't actually think that's true. There's photos of his parties, and a number of the people there are black. Um allegations Also, like a number of the people who accused him of abuse are black women. And I think people who were black

women who were like children at the time of the abuse. Um, I don't know that I think that one is true. I'm not saying he's not racist. I just it doesn't seem like he discriminated in that particular way right. Niggard, for his part, has claimed for years that one reason his wealthy neighbors hated him because he blames them for cooking all of this up and and and faking all of this, which will get to an amid that they hated him because he's not racist. And I'm gonna quote

from Vanity Fair here. Nigard's supporters say his parties do stand out because they're full of people who wouldn't otherwise be in life and key. He has poor kids and athletes out to his house every day, says his best friend Carlos Mackie, who was the host of a sports program on a local TV. He's a philosopher, a visionary, a genius, but his heart's as big as Shemu the Whale.

Neigart is well known about the Bahamas for his financial support of the country's Olympics running squads, among many other charities. Wendell Jones, the publisher of The Bahama Journal, says the residents of Lifford Key said they don't appreciate his flamboyance, when what they don't like is the fact that he invites so many black people over. Peter Nigard is a force for good. This is from an article back before. All of the things that we're about to talk about

have talked about broke um. But that's the way, Like, obviously those are people who he has influence on, who he's got talking to the press for him, right on his many personal websites, on his MA and on his many personal websites, and these are the kind of things they're saying. He's like, No, he's a philanthropist and a philosophy and a philosopher, and you know he it's just their racist actually, because he's so not racist. And that's

why his neighbors don't like him. Now, the job of Niagard's employees and some of the women that he dated was to find girls that he liked the most at parties, and once things got kind of loud and chaotic and people weren't really paying attention to get that particular targeted person drunk um and either drug them or can instant to just take drugs and as you're kind of dose and be like, hey, you know, you know what we should do is like, if you really want some good cocaine,

we can go up to the Peter's bedroom that's where he keeps the good stuff and we'll do some blow. Yeah um. Niger denies all this uh and says that no underage girls were allowed at the key. He provides Affidavid's from a former employee who called Peter the bahamas

most generous and honest. Expatriot. Nigret's house manager, Rochette Ross, told The New York Times that as social media became more prominent, his staffers would use Facebook posts to promote parties and even send messages directly to women, offering free dinners, massages, pedicures, and boat rides. Sometimes he rated his new guests ABC or D upon entry. Ross says that his primary judgment criteria was again whether or not they had a quote nice toilet. He uses that a lot. You can't avoid

seeing it. Yeah um. There are allegations that he drugged people's drinks. There are allegations by one of his former employees that a woman escaped from the property and was brought back by the local police. Um, the person who

made those allies. This is where it gets messy though, because the person who made those specific allegations, which is a minority of the allegations of sexual harassment and assault, also herself claims to have been a victim of Niagard um and who to have been drugged by her girlfriend.

But this person also so here's where it gets kind of weird because the person who like makes those claims also has been accused by other people who previously accused Peter of sexual harassment of having that she bribed them. And this is what gets us into kind of the

next messy stage of things. Right, So this woman Ross makes a lot of She claims Niagard had her family dog killed um and the New York Times did find evidence that Niagard wired her ten thousand dollars and emailed her I sent you money for a new dog, but we don't really know. Like this is where it gets all because again this is this is this what we're getting to is like there's a lot of messiness here.

And so the fact that I don't want to discount Ross's allegations, but also Ross is alleged by other women to have bribed them to have claimed that Nigrid assaulted them. Um. And again those are like two of the dozens of women who have accused him. So I don't think it says anything about the the legitimacy of the allegations against him, but it does mean that, like we do have to kind of wonder is Ross a little bit right, because this is whether we're yeah, or whether he's trying to

like muddy the waters by getting someone to go do this. Well, I don't know we're getting There's another part of the story that's critical to understand why finding out kind of exactly what was going on a Nigrid key is so messy. Cash payments were the near billionaire's favorite way of dealing with problems. He was heavily involved with the Progressive Party Liberal Party of the Bahamas. We kept happy with constant

Liberal payoffs two officials. When more than ten thousand dollars was required, he would try to do things like half larger quantities stuffed into fresh fish and shipped to whoever he was trying to befriend. Um, that's kind of fun, uh, as I noted earlier, Peter is really scared of aging. So the one thing that caused him to seriously alter his fashion habits was getting older. This is not something

he agreed to do without a fight. And I want to quote now from the New York Post, which normally I wouldn't use here, But the allegations they're quoting here appear in a number of other places that are just annoyingly paywald, and this is kind of an easier place to get them. Quote. Nigard, obsessed with staying young, ended up establishing his stem cell research company in nearby St. Kitts the alleged purpose to use abarded fetuses from his

pregnant girlfriends to provide him with fresh stem cells. Nigi seemed to suggest that something like that could be a foot when he talked about the technology behind his treatments publicly. I may be the only person in the world, he bragged, who has my very own embryos growing in a peatrie dish. One of his girlfriends, suell and Miadros, wrote in her two thousand and fourteen memoir about a trip she took with Niggard Ukraine, where he was having stem cell research done.

He asked, Swillen, do you know what the best stim cells are, She writes, she did embryos, correct, she says Nagurd responded, if you got pregnant and had an abortion, we could use those embryonic cells and have a life supply for all of us, you, your mother, and me. A lot of people are doing it. So again, that's that's that's boy. I never even thought of that one. That's a new one for me. Yeah, be a misogynist, that is. That is certainly not a thing that I

had heard about a person doing before. Um, although I guess I'm not. Again, he's like the sleazier version of more famous guys. He's like Jeffrey Epstein, but without like the veneer of philanthropy. He's he's Peter Teal, but without like the image of of of Wall Street cunning. Um like, he's he's all of these He's he's all of the worst aspects of all of the rich demons who infest our world. It's kind of amazing, actually, Um. Yeah, but you know who's not the ARCon of the darkest parts

of wealth Anderson. That is correct. Anderson doesn't even know what a stem cell is. She does not honestly not really doesn't really know what Ukraine is. Mm hmmm. I don't think dogs recognize geographical boundaries. Yeah, well, actually they kind of do. I did. I did. If you take them on walks around the edge of Ukraine, they know not to leave your Craine. Did she did? Kind of just whisper, you know, fuck Vladimir Putin under her breath.

But well, that could be about a number of things. Yeah, I think we should all mold this over while we let these ads soothe our tired souls. Yeah, Anderson, tell us what you think, all right, and we're back. Oh man, Anderson had a really good joke. She did? She did? I think that might get you canceled in some parts of Twitter. But then then then you can get a Netflix special where you really lean into it and eventually get paid twenty five million dollars to do another Netflix

special about what a brave truth teller you are. Yeah, this is how Sophie and finally retire. Um, I mean, Howson shares. Yeah, it's here. We should probably deal with some very sketchy aspects of the story because two of the women who spoke with The Times and accused nigrative sexual assault have now recanted their claims. Now, obviously, this comes after ten other unidentified women filed a federal lawsuit in against Niagard, which prompted an FBI rate on his

Manhattan office and eventually his arrest. Again, none of this should state too like muddy the waters of the overall allegations against him. It just makes it kind of hard to know the specifics in certain cases. Um. While the Times reporting still holds up, they spoke with more than a US and other women who have not recanted. I would be responsible not to note that the two women who recanted claim we were paid to live by Ross um Ros denied this and took a polygraph test, which

does not particularly mean much to me either way. Yeah, but it's a profoundly messy case, and this is due in large part to a bit of the story that we have not talked about yet, Margaret, the decade long turf war between Peter Niagart and his neighbor, a billionaire, which is ultimately what helped to bring him down. So we're past the bad parts the well, it's all bad, but we're past the parts that are like soul crushing.

And now we're into the part where two rich guys destroy each other, or at least one rich guy destroys another. Either way, it's fun. Um. So the community that Niagard lived in, as we've mentioned a couple of times, it's called Lyfford Key. It was created as a planned community for the uber rich by ep Taylor, the Canadian beer brewing millionaire. Taylor planned Lyfford as a winter community and built his dream out of a three thousand acre plot

formerly owned by Sir Harold Christie. The manners that were constructed for the first wave of owners in the fifties and sixties had names like tra La Lah Safari, tea Time and out of bounds. So I suspect some sex crime stuff might have been happening in Lyfford Key prior to um. In nineteen sixty two, when JFK flew to the Bahamas to talk with British Prime Minister Harold McMillan, they both stayed in Lyfford Key at probably a tral

law or maybe it out of bounds. So did at varying points in this period in Reford the second Aga con the fourth the Prince of Monaco, and Sean Connery, who went on to own a home there. The Hinzes and the Melon family also had homes there. It was a veritable who's who of the bluest bloods in the world and a handful of celebrities for good measure, but celebrities like Sean Connery who were like at least of a certain level. You know, So why the Great Lakes

because I have this other idea. Okay, um, if all of the who's who are and anyway, so please continue. I think we dropped them in the Great Lakes kind of like like George C. Scott at the end of that movie where they're with they're hugging the bombs, but they're not. They're not on there by choice. Intercontinental Billionaire missiles. Yeah, exactly, exactly that way. The president really thinks before he fires them,

hopefully not too hard. Um, yeah, but it's time. So at first, Lifeford Key is like classy and pretty high profile, right, those are not little names, the Melons, the fucking uh Carnegie fans like those are. Those are significant fortunes. But things started to change kind of as the years went on. And I'm gonna quote from Vanity Fair here. Today's roster is sleepy by comparison, aside from Sean Connery, who nearly half a dozen James Bonds ago shot Thunderball in several

of their films. Here there are scores of semi anonymous businessmen or their progeny. Bacon and Nygard's neighbors prefer to keep a low profile. Count and Countess de Ravenel of Ants, the resilient reinsurance magnate Antonio Braga, Jane Lewis, the wife of the English inventor Joe Lewis. It's quiet money, says David McLoughlin, a New York financier, second generation Lyford and

chairman of the Lyfford K Club. Long before the Puddle, Nigard clashed stylistically with much of the Glyfford k establishment. He threw a lot of parties and was always doing construction, and that puddle is kind of the beginning of an issue between him and his neighbor, a guy named Bacon, We're going to talk about in a bit. But Nigard is kind of for these blue bloods who are again

quiet money, Nigard is a nightmare for them. He's got about eight hundred million dollars in personal wealth um and he's got a couple of us presidents who's at least friendly with. So he's too rich and powerful to force out right, you can't kick this guy out of your

fancy rich people community. But he's also he's like gross, right, Like he's not These guys are all doing sketchy ship, but they're not doing sketchy ship in their fake Mayan temples wearing fucking electric blue uh spandex body suits or whatever. They paid extra for walls. Yeah, they have walls in their bedrooms where they're also I'm sure committing crimes. Um. But yeah, so he's hated. He's denied entrance to the Lifford k Club, which is a golf Yeah, right, they

won't they won't let him in the club. Um and uh yeah. Most of his neighbors insists he clashed with them from the start, but Nigrated is adamant that everything was fine with him and his neighbors until he met his next door neighbor Louis Bacon. Now Louis Bacon is a New York City hedge fund billionaire in most one of the most addictive forms of food. Yeah, he did.

He did create bacon um after inventing the pig, which previously a lot of people don't know this, but prior to his invention of the pig, all pigs had actually been ducks. Um, that's the way it worked. Look it up, Google it on Wikipedia, dot in carter um. So obviously Niggard incorrectly gets referred to as a billionaire a lot he's not. I think he tops out like seven fifty

million dollars, which is still quite a fortune. But Bacon is a real billionaire, like he's he's actually got more than a billion dollars, and he's widely seen as one of the most powerful men in the financial industry. Right Like he's I'm sure he's got even more than that now because it's been a good couple of years for the finance industry. Um. The two men have very different personalities. Well, Niagard is showy and ostentatious and like these big, lavish,

gross parties. Bacon is quiet and comparatively introverted. His main interest outside of his job seems to be hunting. Um. And he's one of those hunters who raises a lot of money for conservation, right, Like, he pays to protect a lot of lands and stuff and all that good things so he can go shoot birds on it. Or whatever. So he's about to go. Since he's about to go to war with Niagard, who's an actual monster, it would be easy to portray Bacon as a hero. Obviously, I

don't think he is. He's a man who got wealthy running hedge fund, which is generally not a business I find particularly ethical. But I don't think there's any evidence, um and I. In fact, I think it's probably unlikely that he's any kind of systemic, systematic sexual predator or

abuser of his employees. Um and I think it's particularly unlikely because Peter Niager tried desperately to dig up like dirt st and like the thing he wound up finding is that like one of his ancient ancestors a long time ago was like a klansman, but he had another

ancestor who fought for the Union against the Confederacy. So it's like this whole like yeah, yeah, is he probably had a bunch of rich guys in his family and then in all sorts of ship I don't know, he didn't find any evidence that this guy had done anything like the things that Nigert had done, right, um, So obviously by comparison, he does look quite good. The two had problems over a shared roadway, and like there's this fucking puddle as a result of like this kind of

thing that's in between their properties, and upkeep on. It's a little bit unclear. Um, libertarian assholes are for shared infrastructure right right, exactly, Um, And this is just kind of them bickering over this kind of thing between their two properties until in two thousand five, Nigrit attempts to add parking to his property by laying a fifteen by twenty ft slab on the property line, specifically Bacon side of the property line. Now, now you're fucked up, Peter.

All all of the sex crimes, all of the horrible violence that you've done to at this point. I mean, the allegations are hundreds and hundreds of women like wearing a thousand um, none of that got you in trouble. But you're fucked with a rich guy's property line. I can't even imagine if if I had this kind of money, I would not live in such a way that neighbors would exist, right, What the funk? Man? Like, how are you?

How do you have this much money? And he says it's because it's the most beautiful place in the world. It's like, I'm sure mohammas are very pretty, but there's other islands. May seven fifty million dollars. You can make it work. Um, what is wrong with you? Vanity fair rights quote. Bacon responded by suing Niagard and obtaining a

court injunction to remove it. Two years later, Bacon dealt with his long standing irritation with the noise from Niagard's parties by installing industrial grade speakers at the edge of his land and pointing them at niagard Key at night. We hired a sound consultant in the UK to see if we could somehow muffle the sound from Niagard's by omitting a counter sound, but that proved terribly complicated, so we went and got four huge rock concert speakers to

play something loud. In response, Bacon's architect, Peter Talty, says it was horrible, squawking sounds that would drive you out of your mind. Says Eric Gibson, Niagard's former property manager. In illegal filing, Niagard's lawyer characterized them as military grade speakers that blared dangerous, pain inducing sound waves towards Mr Niagard's home. It was supposed to create white noise on my side, but that didn't work. Bacon says what it

did to his side wasn't really interested in. Honestly, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Um. And also what a whiney baby Peter military grade speakers come on? Man, like fucking a higher I don't know what's a kind of band A guy who looks like him would probably listen to. Besides Jimmy Buffett. Yeah, I hired Jimmy Buffett to come play a counter sound. You can, you can afford it. Um. No, Jimmy Buffett would never work with this man. Um. He's

He's a fundamentally moral actor. That's that's what I choose to believe about James Buffett. Um. As a conservationist, Bacon was also enraged at the fact that Niagaret had started dredging up sand from the sea floor and moving it to physically expand the size of his property. He's making his chunk on the islands bigger by stealing the sea the bottom of the sea. He kept a suction dredge on a float platform, destroying underwater habitat and adding to

his coastline. Every day and the time he lived there, Peter expanded his property from three point to five to six point one acres, destroying eighty four thousand square meters of sea floor in the process. I know, such a weird crime, Peter, just buy a different spot. I know, unbelievable. A local ecologist interviewed in two thousand fifteen by Vanity Fair says the environmental damage was extensive. Niger, to counter this, pointed to a study that he paid the commission that

said it was all fine. Again, these are rich guy crimes, right, So you don't just fuck the sea floor up. You pay a scientist to say it's okay. Um, just to building stock systems like build a yeah, beautiful weird shanty town on. But I don't know whatever. You have a number of options with all of that money. Peter Bacon, who was also influential with the local government, brought their attention to the matter. Inspections and injunctions and all sorts

of unpleasant legal ship followed. They're kind of it's my opinion that they're kind of bribing and counter bribing the local government right now. This was more or less the situation in two thousand nine, when an accidental electrical fire destroyed a lot of Niagrid key, including Peter's Biggest Stupidest pyramid. This was a problem, but one well within Peter's financial means to rectify. But when he sought the permits necessary to replace his home, the local government refused. This is

when The New York Times alleges the war began. Quote Mr Niagard sued over changes his neighborhood made years earlier to their driveway than he sued the government, saying it was colluding with Mr Bacon to force him off the island. The allegations became more bizarre. One street protest in Nassau featured men in white hoods and placards proclaiming Bacon is KKK. New websites funded by Mr n Iagard claimed Mr Bacon

was responsible for several murders. Court records show a video made by Niagrid staff, according to a former contractor, superimposed Mr Bacon's face on the collapsing twin towers, leven him him. Um, that doesn't even make sense. At least, there's like, oh, yeah, he's got a family member who was in the clan. Let's like turn him into a racist or whatever. Like,

what does that even mean? Peter, and then he painted a big tunnel on the cliff, but it wasn't a tunnel, and Bacon drove his car right into it, nearly killed him. Now I do feel confident that Louis Bacon would not have fallen for that trip. Now I think he is the road runner in this situation. Peter's absolutely the wily coyote. Um. Yeah, Bacon goes right through that fake tunnel and then Peter and Iger tries to run into it, but he hits his face on him. Then he gets blood all over

his blue shirt. Um, so I'm quoting in from the New York Times. Mr Nyagard was a formidable opponent. Police officers and local journalists dined at his home. One later admitted in court that Mr Niagard had paid him to smear Mr Bacon. Mr Niagard also had allies in the Progressive Liberal Party, which he wanted to legalize stem cell injections. He bragged he'd given the party five million dollars during the two thousand and twelve election campaign, legally as the

Bahamas has no campaign finance laws. After it won the election, a Niagard YouTube channel posted a video featuring six ministers visiting his estate. He threatened or sued media outlets that investigated him. He slow walked lawsuits, filing countless motions and

requesting the lays, exhausting his foes. So I also should say I don't know that anything legally that happened here was bribery, because you could just give money to political parties in the Bahamas, right, which is probably more what's happening is just they found a place where they could just give as much money to people as they want until things happened. So that's the actual reason why they're all cramming onto this island. That's I think a big

part of it. I think there's a number of things in the Bahamian legal code that take it enticing for guys like Niagard, particularly um So this would have been an insurmountable obstacle for any other person going up Peter Niagart. But again, Bacon has more money, and in fact, Niagard has now picked a nemesis who has nearly doubled his net worth. Peter could pay protesters and by articles and newspapers, he could pay to have websites made. He can bribe

entire political parties. Bacon can afford to do all that too, not to say that he does. That is not an allegation that he in fact did do those things, but he could afford to um It's simply a statement of their relative levels of wealth. What they can did do is form a nonprofit called Save the Base, which targeted

Niagard Key for a number of environmental abuses. He also hired as many lawyers and private investigators as he could find, vaguely near the Bahamas, and I think flew in some other guys from the FBI and Scotland Yard to help. They've found evidence for a defamation lawsuit which was filed in two thousand fifteen. And it is allegedly through this process that some of Niggard's former allies began deserting him, allegedly because the money is a lot better on the

other side. Although this is why, and this is again why, it's hard to know precisely what happened, right, because there's so much fucking money flying around here, right, so many people who were saying, like so, I can't tell you for certain precisely what of the things that Peter is accused of happened. Just that these allegations go back like fifty somethings, so and and there. There's at this point hundreds of people involved. So I don't think that's at

all in question. It's just like when you get down to the specifics of like what was going on in his house parties and how bad was it and how many famous people were involved, Well, there's a lot of fucking allegations flying, and a lot of them have money behind them, and it's really hard to tell exactly what went down. Um, well, but the guy who invented the pig, he also probably paid his employees better, or like treated

his employees better. It probably wasn't like you went on that KKK march, but your white hood wasn't tucked in properly. So that's twenty five dollars less than I'm going to pay you. Like, that's not a way to keep your paid protesters. And no, no, you get the feeling that Bacon knows how to keep his people happy. He's opposed to Niagard, who apparently makes an enemy of everyone he

knows for more than about five minutes. Um. Anyway, I'm gonna quote again from the Times to self described former gang members Livingstone, Toggy Bullard, and whistler Bobo Davilma told the Bacon's investigators that Mr Niagard had hired them for dirty work like torching his ex girlfriend's hair salon and staging anti Bacon rallies. According to court records, the men claimed Mr Niagard had given them a hit list that included Louis Bacon and Mr Smith. Mr Niagard has denied this.

Mr Bullard and Mr Divilma, working with the Bacon investigators, hatched a plan to videotape Mr Niagard. The private Eyes acted like secret agents, using encrypted phones and dropping cash for the two men in a box behind a post office. Eventually, the Bacon's paid the two about one and a half million, mostly for secretly recording five meetings with Mr Niagard. The video has turned up no sign of Mr Eigerd's plotting murder. I can't get into killing, he said in footage obtained

by the Times. But the investigation did find photos of Peter looking at very young women from his car and saying stuff like do you see those toilets and lamenting all of the people that he hadn't yet had sex with. And I think this is apparently what turns the Bacon family onto the possibility that Peter might be having sex with underaged people. Um So, in late two thousand fifteen, they hire a security firm two in the Times as words push American law enforcement to investigate whether or not

he'd done some sex trafficking. Now, the firm that they hire is run by a guy named Jeff Davis who claimed to be a tenure veteran of the CIA, who runned what he'd called the ghost program, which is not a real plan doesn't exist since some movies about it though, Yeah yeah, ghost protocol. Um. Bacon was conned by this guy and spends like six million dollars, which is very funny.

All of this is extremely funny, but again it is part of why it's like kind of hard to know the precise details of what happened, which is like sucks to be clear. Yeah yeah, yeah, this is not this is not gonna Bacon is not like hurting for money because he burned six million on this this con job.

It's all really funny, um, and it's but it's also like, again, it's hard to part of why I emphasized the early stuff, his mistreatment of workers, the outright criminal behavior, they're all of the rape and sexual assault allegations against him from people who were extremely young, gooing back further than even the nineteen eighties. This goes back to the very beginning of his career because once you hit this period where he's fighting with Bacon, tens of millions of dollars and

dis info, we're just flying around. So like nailing down what happened is very very touchy, right, um. And I'm being so careful about what I say here because like this is even though Niagart is kind of probably down for the count, this is a fight between two very very Richmond and you don't want to be uncareful when you talk about totally may have done what right? Yeah, but you know who's always careful when they make allegations about sex crimes. Is gonna be an ad for bacon,

isn't it. I hope it's an ad for bacon. The bacon industry would never do anything like that to us. I mean the guy, oh well, honestly he seems like he's in the clear for that one too. Um. But yeah, anyway, there you go. We're back Anderson. So another cancellable thing. Boy, he sure did and Anderson. He she if you're gonna accuse her of doing something wrong, Oh but it was actually it wasn't an it was that wasn't an actual

thing that she said. I regret starting this bit, yeah, because I I almost fed into the bit by being like, yeah, she made a comment about her appreciation of Rhodesian pattern camouflage. But then I decided not to. And I feel bad that I have led us to the chain of events that has taken us to where we are. Margaret, this was this was your fault. This was all what a disaster. Recognized that this is this is the podcasting equivalent of starting a fight with your neighbor who has one and

a half billion dollars. Because Anderson can actually do no wrong, let's be on that's right, that's right, and Peter Bacon can pay to have done no wrong at the very least and to eat Bacon. So here we are, Yeah, exactly, and anyway, let's get back on the old on the

old train. So well as when we left off, Louis had just gotten conduct of six million dollars by the ghost program CIA guy who was just a con man, and the guy who conned him told Bacon and Niagard had put hits out on his family and like actually got got like hooked Bacon up with bodyguards who drove him and his family to safe houses and must have

been a very exciting afternoon for everybody. Bacon eventually realizes he's been had, and the FBI and Homeland Security both did launch investigations, but they didn't go anywhere into Peter. So Bacon and his brother decided to put together a lawsuit in two thousand seventeen, patterned off of some of the most prominent ME two cases. Right, they're kind of paying attention to what's happening. They know there's there's no there's smoke and fire with Peter Niagard, right, because they

do have it. At this point, stuff is online. They found the old allegations, right, They've got people who are able to see the ship that had happened in Canada, find those old Winnipeg whatever newspaper articles and stuff. So they put together a lawsuit. They get their private investigators to introduce fifteen Bahamian women to American lawyers um to do like sue Peter her out of New York. And

I'm gonna quote from the Times here. One woman now when involved in the suit, told the time she was fourteen when she met Mr Niagard at one of the stores in two thousand fifteen. She is a photo with him that day. She said that she was later invited for a modeling interview at Niagard Key, where he assaulted her. She said that she had never told anyone what happened.

Another woman in the suit said in an interview that she was fourteen when she attended a pamper party in two thousand eleven after her mother asked Mr niagar to sponsor her in a beauty pageant. Is this what my life can be? She recalled, thinking of the models in the room. Her glass of wine never seemed too empty, she said. Later she recalled she swallowed pills that Mr Niagard told her models took. Then she said, he took

her upstairs and you know, um. Drawn by the money and promise of modeling gig, she later returned recruiting other women, she said. Tamika Ferguson found her way at a Niagard key in two thousand four after being kicked out of high school. An orphan from a poor neighborhood, she said a DJ had invited her to a pamper party. She drank too much and ended up in a bathroom barefoot in her bikini. She said, when she emerged, your friends had gone. Mr Niagard steers through upstairs, and I don't

think I need to finish that. Um yeah, uh so. The Times has photographs of this woman in that this woman took of herself in Niagard key. Three people, a former Niagard girlfriend and ex employee and a guest said that they remembered her here. So this is again. These are all been backed up. These are very for all of the stuff that is kind of murky, there's a lot that's extremely clear right in terms of the allegations against Niagard. Now, but back to the things that are complicated.

The investigators and lawyers that are putting together this lawsuit were paid by a nonprofit called Sanctuary. Mr Bacon was a generous donor to Sanctuary. There are claims from people interviewed by The New York Times that Bacon or entities which received funding from him, gave money to a number of women in exchange for going forward against Niagard. Peter

would probably say that they were paid to lie. It's worth noting that Several of these women claim the money was necessary to keep them safe from Niagard, which is certainly not without merit. Right. Again, it's very messy, but I get that point right, Like, Yeah, you're being asked to go up against a very rich man. You don't want no backup there, especially in a place like the Bahamas where it's really easy to buy the law and buy the government. Um. So it's a mess of a case.

I think there's plenty of clear reporting though about what happened and about what Peter did, and I don't have trouble believing uh in his guilt, And apparently neither did the FBI, because they eventually decide they have seen enough and accused him of sex trafficking, sex trafficking involving miners, rape, and racketeering after raiding his offices in one Nagaret was charged by the Toronto Police with multiple cases of sexual

assault enforceable confinement from cases between the mid nineteen eighties and the mid two thousand's. With the dam broken around him, more allegations flooded out, the earliest of which dates back to nineteen sixty eight. There are at least fifty two plaintiffs currently pursuing legal action against him in several cases, include a class action. In two thousand eighteen, Niagard Key was seized by the Supreme Court of the Bahamas. The

property is currently in ruins. Peter Niagard remains in custody in Canada awaiting extradition to the United States. He says that his health is terrible and that he can't get the kind of food that he wants to eat while he's fine bars. Yeah, I again, I don't really care what happens to this guy at this point. Um, as long as he's kept away from doing any harm. His finances seem like they're in disaster. His company is failing. Um. I wonder who's going to buy his property. Yeah, I

think it's already been like confiscated by the government. But yeah, I don't know. I'll tell you this, don't get into a fight with Louis Bacon. Um. And honestly, like credit to Louis, apparently nothing else was going to fucking take this man down. Um, and by god, it needed to happen. I'm just I'm just glad that it did. Um. Louis, good work. Um, although it is pretty funny that you

got caned by the fake CIA guy. Yeah, real here, that's pretty funny guy that that is the most likable version in the story, the guy who got a bunch of money for fucking nothing. Um, I could have made a money for nothing in the Chicks for Free joke, but in an episode like this that wouldn't have. But I thought about it because that's a pretty good song. I feel like there's just always that irony of like all of the like anti sellout songs that are on

the radio from like the seventies or whatever. Is that an anti sellout song? Though? I thought so? Is that kind of just a like it's making fun of It's not like anti sellout, but it's like anti music industry, which is like, I mean, to be fair, if I was engaged at a professional level in the music industry, I would absolutely write songs talking shoot on it. I mean on like, you know, my professional engagement in the

podcasting industry, which I absolutely love. My corporate overlords. Well, it's interesting because well, I don't know, now we're completely off the topic. But I've never sat down and looked at the lyrics. But isn't it like some guys who work at like a furniture store or something, being like we're busting our asses all these day and the all day, and these guys just like half as some songs and they get all that money for nothing and the chicks

for free. I thought that was what the song was, probably, right, I I think, well, but they also, like you know, wrote Sultan's a Swing, which was like way more of a like it's much better to just go be the guy who plays at the bar every I you know what, the world doesn't need to know my opinion about Dire Straits. No,

this is what we're talking about. Welcome to the Dire Straits Cast, a podcast where I Robert Evans, a guy who only knows the song money for Nothing and the Chicks for Free, which is probably not what that song is called by the Dire Straits, and Margaret Kiljoy, who

knows at least one other song same band. Amazing that this podcast is in its seventh year, you know, and people keep no one actually listens, but we found a weird loophole where the advertisers keep up and we just get automatically downloaded to your phone like that one you two album. Well, Margaret, how do you feel about Peter Niker's I feel very negatively about him. Um, I hate being reminded that people like him exist and are everywhere. Uh,

and they helped make NAFTA a reality. I love. It is amazing that this is one of the guys who made NAFTA happen. Yeah, Like, there is a world full of heroes who have dedicated their lives, like the Zapatista movement right, like you know, kicked off in response to naf to nafter signing, right, And there's this like world of unsung heroes who will dedicate their amazing lives to

fighting this. And then there's the guy who's like built a weird thing in the Bahamas so that I can sectually saw people, because the whole thing was just so I could sextually it's sault more people, and it's just like, yeah, I just I just helped destroy Number one helped destroy like the unionized garment industry in two countries, and number two like roped people from around the world and particularly in Mexico into nightmarish working conditions and abuse in order

to make enough money that I could build a fake Mayan city in the Bahamas and commit sex scrids in it. That's that's Peter Niagard and he got taken down because he built a parking lot on a richer guy's land. Yeah, what a real world timeline we're in that What a what a good way for that to all get This is the best system the world has ever seen. Again, Louis Bacon, if you're listening and thinking of suing us, I have nothing but but respect and happiness that you

took him down. He needed to be taken down. I'm just frustrated that one of like five different countries legal systems didn't at first. Um, outstanding good stuff. So I guess if you ever encounter a man with hundreds of millions of dollars who is horribly harming people, hope that he pisces off a richer man or or hear me out. You now know that they carry a lot of cash. Uh huh, you could get the I'm gonna yep anyway, yep, thirty straight bleeped seconds and then we roll out. All right, Margaret,

you want to plug anything here? UM. I have a book called We Won't be Here Tomorrow. I have a podcast like Live, like Thorls Dying. I have another podcast called Cool People Did cool stuff. And I have a dog named Rentraw and I love my dog, great dog, solid dog so much. Learned how to herd baby goats today a natural just immediately knew how to do it. Um. Speaking of things that are known, I have a book too.

It's called After the Revolution. You can google that and a k Press together and find a place to buy it, or type it into any of the various book related websites and stores that you go to. They all sell it. You can buy it, and then it will be yours and then you will own a piece of my soul, black magic or whatever. Yep. It also contains a complete manual on how to um. Oh, no way, that's a spoiler. No, that's a spoiler, and also a federal crime. So we're

going to just bounce for today. Alright, bye everyone. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.