From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a journey to the fringe. Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe. It should be noted, not a significant source of dietary fiber. We are your nutritionally insignificant podcast hosts, Taylor and Chelsea, and today I think we are finally getting to a much anticipated episode that we've alluded to for some time with another asshole of the paranormal community, I think is a safe way to describe him. I would say so, yeah.
Which I don't know, is that a spoiler for what's to come? I don't know. Don't give away too much. I think I might have given away the ending, unfortunately. We find out pretty quickly, don't worry. Okay, finally. Another asshole. Who was the last one we did, Nori? I think it was Nori, yeah. This one we've been looking forward to, and I'm just repeating everything that Taylor just said, it's David. David Pallatus. I think that's how you say it.
You hear people say it all over a bunch of different ways. That's how I'm choosing to say it today. Pallatus must talk about one of the most popular paranormal topics out there. Mysterious Disappearances, which started out in national parks in the United States. He really branched out long term. He did. I mean, he got to keep the book sales going. I enjoy the topic as well. I won't lie. I've enjoyed listening to it. There's just something about it that's, it's the unexplained in it.
Elsie, sorry, just before we get too far into it, I think our last asshole was technically the Queen of Canada. Was it? I think it was. I don't study our timeline, so it's one of those, at least, at the very least. Those are the last two, I think. Don't hold us to it though. So even Pallatus, if you haven't heard of him, he's a fairly regular guest on various podcasts, Coast to Coast AM. And if we were going to be nice to him, I think we could probably have gotten him on, too.
But I don't see us being that nice to him. No. That's why we don't interview people. We're nice people. I don't want to scare anyone off. Let us know if you want to be on the podcast. Maybe we might be nice to you. I don't know. We might be nice. We might. Just look at the show. So he does roof on talks. He has movies now, many books, and is the topic of many podcasts as well. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the content as well.
There's just something about mysterious disappearances, and that's me, you know, talking for myself and then reading off a script, because I did also just say that. And most importantly, the non-mysterious disappearances are usually just really sad. I mean, you could listen to it in that alternative way, but I choose not to. It's too sad. All of them are sad. Yeah. Do you like the topic? I do, yes.
And I, you know what, David Politis, if you've never heard him, like, I think he's worth a listen because he does have a good talk. Like he is interesting. He does play up the drama. Yeah. I like listening to him. I enjoy, thank you for that, because we're about to tear this shit apart and change everything. But yeah, I enjoy it too. Every time I can, I kind of listen to him. I know a lot of podcasts say they're their most popular podcasts when they do a David Politis episode.
People like listening to the mysterious disappearances. Yeah. And when I was still listening to George Norrie on Coast to Coast, I think those were one of the few ones I still listened to is when David Politis came on. I will say as a spoiler alert. I think George Norrie is one of the best interviewers for him because he can just walk all over him because he doesn't question shit. And also prompt. Oh, no, you know what? Sorry, George Knapp did interview him.
It was more so with relation to Bigfoot stuff though. Yeah, he hasn't really, but I think it was only the ones that George Knapp and it was just with Bigfoot, I think, which was the main stuff that I touch a little bit on the Bigfoot. And looking at this stuff because I'm on a David Politis Reddit sub and just a lot of different paranormal Reddit communities. I love Reddit. I really love most of the people that we cover when they have their own subreddit.
It is filled with people who hate this person. Yes. And I appreciate that. Don't go to our subreddit, please. Oh, you're all you want. It's restricted only I can post. I did see a lot of negative rumblings about David Politis wherever I was seeing it, but I never really paid attention to it. I was just kind of like, I think I sent one to you and was like, apparently people hate David Politis because I never looked into it more than that.
And even when I was hearing him speak to, like I said, I enjoy listening to him like every fourth or fifth story he talked about, you're like, yeah, but that has a simple answer that you're not talking about. I mean, of course. Like he always talked about like how people going missing in the middle of winter would mysteriously be discovered not wearing clothes. And I'm like, you know, that's like, I forget there's a specific term for it. Yeah, we're going to get to it.
And I will tell you specifically what the word is when we get to it. Yeah, I kept seeing all these negative things. I didn't actually really look at them because when I like something, I choose to turn a blind eye to it. Like Serpo is real, right? Oh, yeah, for sure. That guy wrote all about it. And it was definitely not somebody that we've covered in the podcast. I love Serpo. So that's definitely real. We definitely didn't do a podcast about it telling us otherwise.
So I was like, I'm finally going to do David Plates. And it only took me a little bit of searching to release forth the floodgates of how big of an asshole this guy is. So without further ado, shall we get into this? Oh yeah, this is going to be a two part episode, by the way. Let's do it. David, no middle name that I know of, Pallatus. Long middle name. He's a former police officer. If you've heard him talk, he loves to say this. It boosts his credibility, right? He's a good researcher.
He was an investigator. Yeah, that's in fact his entire credentials on how he's a good researcher is he was a clock. So he's a former police officer, perhaps, who is now an investigator and self published author, including the topics of Bigfoot and proving the reality of the creature as well as the missing 411, which is a series of books and films that document people who have gone missing under mysterious spooky circumstances. He doesn't say spooky, but I think that needed to be in there.
Topics may or may not be related. He's never put forth the theory I believe on missing 411. If I'm up to date on what he's talking about, I would say he probably hasn't. I think he's speculated without stating he's speculating because I've seen him do presentation where he talks about how a lot of these experiences are near granite. Like if you look at him now, granite. He definitely eludes. Yeah, but he refuses to outright say anything.
However, I would go out on a limb and say he probably thinks it's Bigfoot just based on all his Bigfoot interest, which we're going to talk about a little bit here. We start out with Politis receiving his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of San Francisco.
His professional background includes 20 years in law enforcement starting in 1977, transferring in 1980 to the San Jose Police Department working in the patrol division on the SWAT team, patrol and streetcimes unit and a variety of assignments in the detective division. While working as a court liaison officer in December 1996, Politis was charged with a misdemeanor count of falsely soliciting for a charity and fired from his job.
His biography also states vaguely that he held a senior executive position in the technology sector. I am going to circle back to that last thing that I said. Don't worry. That is super vague. It never comes up again what that was. So that's from his biography. That's kind of all we get from him. And you may be asking, did you just say he was fired from his job as a law enforcement officer? I did say that. I did say it.
Kelsey, I just want to add, like, do you remember that guy who that does harp that we covered for the harp episode? Yeah. Who had a... It's not this guy, is it? No. The guy who had the degree from Sri Lanka. Right? Yep. Yeah. An honorary degree from Sri Lanka. Yeah. He was comfortable putting that in his bio where all Politis can do is say, tech industry. That's it. Yeah, I don't... I could just say he had a degree from university and it would allude to the same information.
Yeah. He obviously didn't put that he was fired from his police officer job in there. That was something that I found out through all of this. But the vagueness of the technology sector, I'm really not sure about. It could be that he has an only van. It could be. So I was able to draw up an article from Mercury News published December 21st, 1996. The title of this is San Jose Officer accused of false solicitation autographs. A forced veteran allegedly used city stationery to ask for memorabilia.
By Sandra Gonzalez, Mercury News staff writer December 21st, 1996. Publication San Jose, Mercury News, page 1b, word count 496. How about to read 496 words? Brace yourselves. I think we've done it before Chelsea. It's just when you see the number. That's too many. When a veteran San Jose police officer began soliciting celebrity autographs on city stationery, he wound up with more than just a friendly letter from singer Lionel Richie to hang on his wall.
He also got an arrest warrant last week charging him with a misdemeanor count of falsely soliciting for charity, a crime for which he could face a year in jail. Officer David Paul, there it is, Paul. EPP David Paul Pelitus, 40, aroused suspicion after he was seen using city stationery on the department's computer printers. Pelitus also sent and received large quantities of unofficial mail at the department police report say.
None of those activities fell within his duties as a court liaison officer, prompting an internal investigation that began last September. Quote, he's an autograph hound, end quote, said assistant district attorney Karen Sennunu, who filed the complaint last week in municipal court. Quote, it was a stupid thing to do to spend your time enhancing your personal collection when taxpayers are paying for you to work, end quote.
Suspicions were heightened when the police department received a phone call from a Los Angeles publicist asking to speak with Pelitus about the quote police hall of fame, end quote, and a letter from the Lionel Richie fan club, which enclosed an autograph compact disc by the singer. As it turned out, the ladies had solicited autographs from such people as Newswoman Diane Sawyer, astronaut Mae Jemison, model Carol Alt, exercise guru Jack LaLanne.
Jack LaLanne, do you remember he's an ex-servant of the Simpsons? Jack LaLanne, what one? It's the, oh, it's the episode where Bart and Lisa kidnap the old folks people and go on that cruise and the ship gets destroyed. I'm going to have to watch that later. It's not ringing a bell right now. Yeah, he's, he was that super buff, like 70 year old. From the late nineties, early 2000s. Oh yeah. Pelitus has a very odd, like these are celebrities that he wants autographs from. And then Ivana Trump.
Ivanka. No, this one says Ivana. Oh, maybe it is Ivana. I don't know who Ivana is. I don't know. Maybe it's Ivanka. Maybe this is Missile. Allegedly by falsely claiming he was working on a city project. I mean, you're autographs. Yeah, I'm sorry, can we just swing back just slightly his middle name is Paul, which it really just makes it sound like you're mispronouncing his last name when you say his full name.
It's more common than you would think of people like naming like a regular name and then their last name has it in there. Press me. It's very common and it's weird. I get weirded out by it. What, like, why would you do that to your kid? Yeah, these parents just wanted to make everybody sound like they're mispronouncing his name when they say his whole name Paul, polite. Yeah, no, no, it's a pet people's mind.
Okay. So in a letter to Trump, for example, polite is wrote quote, you are a great role model for young women. Dot, dot, dot. I've been given the task by I don't think I say the dots, but I'm going to say it now. The dramatic effect. Because that's how you do dramatic effect. I've been given the task by my city to develop a display for a lobby of successful business woman dot, dot, dot. We are respectfully requesting an autograph photo for our display dot, dot, dot.
Your success on a professional as well as personal level make you a superior business woman and mother. End quote. Just listen to like notice how he put that together though. This is all fraud fraudulently, by the way, my dad several of the celebrities have returned autograph photographs of themselves. Lettuce's attorney Daniel Jensen claims it was an unfortunate misunderstanding. Quote, he feels badly and is embarrassed. End quote.
Jensen said that the officer was gathering the autographs to serve as teaching aids for a class that he had taught and that Pallatus had envisioned hanging the picture in the department's lobby. Quote, they were to be inspirational examples of people who've done very well. End quote. Jensen said authorities, however, say there is no authorized Hall of Fame being developed for any lobby.
He could find nothing Pallatus was associated with in an official capacity that would give him the authority to seek autographs on the department's behalf. Pallatus is one of several instructors who taught a city sponsored organizational development class he had not taught the course since March. Police spokesman officer Lewis Hisada said Pallatus is on vacation. Hisada could not say what sort of job action the department might take against Pallatus.
Jensen, however, said possible repercussions range from disciplinary action to termination from the department where Pallatus has worked since 1980. Pallatus surrendered to authorities last week and was released. He is expected to be a reign next month in municipal court. Wow, that was over 400 words I was heard. So I'm just missing people's was just kind of a natural segue for his career to take for he was forced out of his actual career is what I'm getting from this. It's looking like it.
Yeah. So I'm not going to lie, not looking good for his credibility here. Why he was fired that is. However, if we could rewind a bit to before he was fired back to his career as a police officer in San Jose, we could take a look at a few other things from the David Pallatus career vault, which probably don't help in the credibility department even more. Bigfoot department or missing 411 department. No departments are helped.
And I I also had to speculate at this point to Chelsea that he this couldn't have been his first step to getting autographs, right? He was probably just sending letters out on his own and not getting results. So he had to step up his game a bit, right? I would speculate as much. Yeah, yeah, I would speculate that he was probably personally reaching out and I mean, I don't want to say out of an act of desperation.
I would probably go out on a limb to say, I mean, this is an ego thing, I think, to be like, I'm going to use my power to get what I want. And flattery. Yeah. Yeah. He's going to be well to be able. He knows how to talk to people. Yeah. On to the next thing that we have with his career in the early 1980s, Pallatus spends a lot of time and many of the taxpayers dollars in adult bookstores. I'm going to continue that sentence and trapping gay men for solicitation.
Okay, we're not talking about bookstores that just don't have a young adult section, right? Right. Okay. So starting to an article in the Bay Area reporter on April 28, 1983. Is that the natural progression that you're supposed to go to after you've aged out of young adult books as to the adult books? Yeah. Okay. I assume that's how it works. I never thought of it. Because children, young adults, adults, I assume. Yeah. That's a natural progression, I would say.
Yeah. Well, David Treadwell, an active activist in San Jose, reports some happy news, sort of. That officer, Pallatus of the San Jose Police Department Street Crimes Unit has left the force to join the FBI. According to Treadwell, officer Pallatus was often referred to as the, quote, king of the bookstore detail and, quote, due to the number of arrests he made, quote, Pallatus more than any other officer in that detail took a particular delight in his work.
He often spent much of his time in the movie arcade section of the adult bookstore and, quote, says Treadmax. Well, re quote. Much of the time he would spend pumping quarters into the movie machines, our tax money, when he saw what he assumed to be a gay male he would try to make eye contact with. He knew all of the body language that gay men use when they are cruising, Treadwell reports. You can just assume I'm saying end quote, re quote for these, because he's talking.
His actions did not stop there. After engaging the gay men in conversation, he would often ask if that person had a place to go. Pallatus would indicate that he could not go to his place. Many of these conversations were lengthy, lasted for several minutes. Arrests were made after the men would agree to go to Pallatus' car. With the announcement that Pallatus would be joining the FBI surmises Treadwell, the motivation is becoming clearer.
Pallatus, who testified in court that he has made over a hundred bookstores arrests in a seven month period, had a conviction rate of almost 100% says Treadwell. At this time it was reported that he was leaving the street crimes unit to join the FBI, as it just said. For whatever reason, this did not happen and he remained with the San Jose police force, eventually being promoted to the city's elite SWAT team. Merge, Mobile Emergency Response Gear and Equipment.
However, by 1987 he and his unit were accused of police brutality against blacks. So there's a lot of articles on this, so assault suspects says San Jose police beat him. January 9th, 1987. Blacks say they are victimized January 9th, 1987. San Jose police beat suspect witnesses say February 9th, 1987. However, the DA's office didn't believe there was enough evidence for a conviction against Pallatus and whoever else was involved in this. Here's another headline, no charges and alleged brutality.
Police say internal probe continues in Merge unit, May 15th, 1987. Let me just pull one of these and read a little bit of it. I do find it kind of hilarious that it's not actually like the misuse of power as a police officer that ends up getting him, it's him asking for autographs. Autographs, like something so stupid. Okay, this is just loaning. Let's just choose one at random to read. This one, San Jose police beat suspect witnesses say.
By Brad Kava, Mercury News staff writer, February 9th, 1987. For the third time in the past two months, the elite Merge unit of the San Jose police department has been accused of brutality against criminal suspects. Last month, three men said they were beaten by members of the Merge mobile emergency response group and equipment team in the San Jose apartments in two separate arrests on December 27.
The allegations, which are under investigation by the department, were supported by friends and relatives of the suspects who witnessed the events. In a new case, two women and a 12 year old girl who were not friends or relatives of a suspect have testified in court that they watched a group of Merge officers beat a suspected drug dealer with Billy. Oh, the bats. After he raised his arms and surrendered during a December arrest.
The two women testified January 29th and 30th at a preliminary hearing for Gary Syres and his co-defendant Daniel Johnson before Santa Clara County municipal judge John S. Pasco. Syres and Johnson were arrested at 10.30pm December 12th in charge with possession of cocaine for sale. Police claim they had almost a pound of the drug in two suitcases in an apartment at 28 North Jackson Avenue, San Jose. The officer said they struck Syres with clubs but in self defense after he swung at an officer.
The witness said the suspect claims the beating was unprovoked. In his arrest report and in court testimony, officer David Polatus said officers hit Syres in the legs with billies after he took a combative stance and swung at officer Neil Wilson. The women said they watched uniformed police officers and plainclothes parole agents chase Syres down North Jackson Avenue.
They said the police began hitting Syres from the moment they caught up with him and continued after he was lying helpless on the ground. The apartment complex manager, Rosa Linda Merlequin, questioned by defense attorney Chris Carroll put her hands up over her head to illustrate her point. He put his arms up and he kind of gave up, said Merlequin 33. He stalked and put his arms up. They told him to go on the ground and started kicking him and beating him with the sticks.
Carroll asked her to show again how she thought Syres raised his hands. She lifted her hands above her head and a gesture of surrender. Are you certain that's what he did? He asked. I was right in front of it. She answered. Did he ever swing at the officers? No, she said. How long was he beaten? Carroll asked about three or four minutes Merlequin said. Was he struck in the face with a baton? A couple of times, I would say.
Merlequin said she saw four or five officers surround Syres and began kicking and hitting him. She had seen one of the officers in the group, Polatus, testifying in court. The suspected drug dealer arrested Thursday was okay. I think these are out of order, but you get the idea. That's just one of the articles. I should put like a trigger warning or something on that. I will on the notes, but the article says that the DA's office says the internal investigations were continuing.
I believe personally this is probably the incident which led from him being demoted as a street caught to the court liaison prior to being charged for false solicitation, which ended his police career in San Jose. A solicitation being the request for autographs. That's how I think the timeline goes. Okay. Yeah. And you know what? That's probably the last straw in everything in my mind is that like there's already all this on his record and then he's going out of his way to try to get.
I mean, you're looking at the timeline of 1987. Violence in that is happening. I know we had 2020, 2021 and we had the whole Black Lives Matter. Police brutality like that was looked at very differently in 1987. It was just if that's the way it happened, it's funny, not funny. Obviously, he gets fired for solicitation for autographs, not in police brutality. I mean, yeah, I mean, I don't know what to say about that. It's just, I also don't think that police have changed all that much.
No, I don't think they've changed it all either. But yeah, that's what actually gets him fired is an autograph, not police brutality. Anyhow, this is the background of the person who is doing this research saying, you know, I'm so credible. I know how to do this research. I am a retired police officer. He was fired. So this is where the rumblings kind of started out with him when I was looking into his personal life. We're just going to keep on going. That's his personal background.
That's what you don't know, but really do need to know about David Pilatus when he throws around how credible of a person he is. Yeah, he should at least include one more sentence in that description of I am a cop. Oh, I know what's going on. This is before all the misinformable one business and everything.
So then he's like, I'm guessing now that I'm fired, I'm going to go be an author now, but I'm going to have to self publish because I'm a real class a asshole and I'm just going to put whatever I want in my books. Yeah, he self publishes. All in all, David Pilatus uses his past career titles to try and boost his trust with his audience and his credibility as a researcher and listening to him, you're like, oh, this guy was a cop. He knows what he's talking about.
Cops have the trust, should have the trust of the public. So he really used that to boost what he's after. But it seems he did the exact same thing with that title in the past of leveraging it to manipulate people to get what he wants. Now this is where we're going to start with his Bigfoot research. Pilatus has two self published books relating to one of our most beloved cryptids. And he also founded the group, the North America Bigfoot Search. Bigfoot is like a big love of David Pilatus.
Was that any of the requests for autograph he sent out by chance? He puts? Yeah. He has a mailing address. Yeah, fair. He's finding some left in the woods. Your entrepreneurship has led us to need your signature at City Hall. Pilatus has said North America Bigfoot Search was instrumental in the genesis of a paper published in 2013. That's his little Bigfoot research group, which claimed that Bigfoot was real. That's right. They had a sequence genome of Bigfoot. You remember this?
Yes, they got that scientist on board. I do remember that. Yeah. And that it really just went away. Yeah. Quote, the world needs to understand that North America Bigfoot Search was an organizer of the study. We orchestrated the search that led to picking Melba S. Ketchum to conduct a study of Bigfoot DNA. That's who you're thinking of, right? Yes. And she was on Coast to Coast when this was all going on. She needs her own episode, by the way.
The resulting paper documented the analysis of 111 samples of hypothesized Bigfoot DNA and was written by 11 different authors. On November 24, 2012, DNA diagnostics of veterinary laboratory headed by Ketchum issued a press release. A team of scientists can verify that their five-year-long DNA study, currently under peer review, confirms the existence of a novel hominin hybrid species, commonly called Bigfoot or Sasquatch, living in North America.
Researchers' extensive DNA sequencing suggests that the legendary Sasquatch is a human relative that arose approximately 15,000 years ago as a hybrid cross of modern homo sapiens with an unknown primate species. This announcement enthralled the press, but annoyed many cryptozoologists and science observers because it came with no published paper and no data, only a long and shady history of partnerships, projects, and promises. Ketchum promised the paper would soon follow after the announcement.
When it finally did appear nearly three months after her announcement, it was less than impressive. It made no sense evolutionary, evolutionarily, and sparked new controversies about her personal responsibility, the ethics of publishing, and what was going on behind the scenes with the project. The paper was analyzed by Shannon Hill of Doubtful News for the Committee of Skeptical Inquiry.
Hill's report concluded that the paper was of poor quality, stating that, quote, the few experienced geneticists who viewed the paper reported a dismal opinion of it, noting it made little sense. The scientists magazine also analyzed the paper, reporting that the analysis in data failed to support the claims of existence of a human primate hybrid, but rather, analysis either come back as 100% human or fail in the ways that suggest technical artifacts.
The website for the DeNovo Journal of Science was set up on February 4th, and there is no indication that Ketchum's work, the only study it has published, was peer reviewed. Yeah, that's bad. Yeah, real bad. It's real bad. So this paper and Melba Ketchum are literally their own asshole topic to do as a...she could have her own, but this could be a subset of David Pilatus for Down the Road. So just remember this moment when we tackle it because I predicted that we will do it.
If not, I have faith that this will be lost to time and no one will ever remember. There's a chance. Yes. There's a chance. Not that I'm keeping count, but we're currently at minus two for credibility for Pilatus, not journey to the French to be clear. And you know what? The policing counts as minus two, so we're minus three. And that is, let's just say, David Pilatus up until and including his Bigfoot research. So that's going to end off what I have to talk about today.
And next episode, we are going to talk about the missing 411 phenomenon itself. Do you have anything to say? I'm just really excited for the twist where it turns out he's actually really good at research when it comes specifically to missing people. Yep. You know what? It's going to be a short episode. It's a five minute episode. I just believe you're predicting it. I might as well just end the whole series now and just say he actually turns out to be a really good guy. Go read his books.
Excellent researcher. And there really is something mysterious going on. He really redeems himself. He does redeem himself. Missing 411, we don't know. We just don't know. And we can end off the whole series right now. Well until you guys get this very short episode next week where we just fully endorse David Pilatus. I have been Taylor, here with Chelsea. We are Journey to the French. Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week. Bye. Thank you for listening to Journey to the Fringe.
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