The Eyes Lie - Written

For your eyes only

Bullshit Hunting’s first Story Mix, a unique narrative experience designed to be heard. While we’ve included a transcript below, we want you to listen. The Eyes Lie was crafted with original music and sound design to enhance the story.

1.

It's October 4th, 1986—approximately 10:45 PM in Manhattan, New York. The streets are alive but quieting as evening descends into night, people wandering home from dinners and meetings. Among them is Dan Rather, the CBS anchor and former Vietnam war correspondent. He's just left a colleague's apartment. 

At first, Rather notices nothing unusual about the two men who have fallen in step behind him. After all, it's Manhattan, and the streets are never empty. But whether he knew it or not, Dan Rather was about to experience something that tens of thousands of New Yorkers had already faced that year—a violent and unprovoked assault.

But this assault would be different. Unique, even.

As Rather made his way up Park Avenue, the men began barking a repeated question at him. Startled, Rather quickened his pace, but they were relentless. By the time he reached the corner of 88th and Park, the first blow had landed squarely on his jaw, dropping him to the cold cement. Desperately, 54-year-old Rather scrambled to his feet and ran for the sanctuary of 1075 Park Avenue, hoping the building's door staff could help.

But the men were close behind, still shouting that same question, as they continued their assault. They weren't after his wallet or his watch; they weren't trying to rob him. No, they wanted something else—something that Rather simply didn't have.

"You have got the wrong guy," he insisted. 

The men eventually fled when the door staff did intervene, leaving Rather shaken but alive. Yet the demands they shouted that night—the question they kept asking—would haunt Rather for years. A question that seemed nonsensical but somehow lodged itself in the public consciousness. It would be pressed into vinyl after inspiring a rock lyricist, giving birth to two grungy angst-riddled songs, and even becoming a bizarre subplot in a graphic novel. 

Like a spark igniting dry tinder, this one moment set off a chain reaction, each event feeding off the next, growing and twisting into something far larger than it began. What we see, what we perceive, can give life to ideas and narratives that take on a reality of their own—blurring the line between fact and fiction, perception and truth. 

Maybe there's one nearby or maybe I can just ask you to imagine—it's not a difficult thought. You're standing in front of a beige wall, what do you see? 

The surface might appear smooth at first, but with a closer look, you might catch slight imperfections: these tiny bumps or crooked brush strokes. If you tilt your head, the light in the room might change, shifting from a warmer, golden hue in sunlight to a cooler, greyish tone, say, near the lamp in the corner.

Your eyes might start to pick up on a play of shadows. As you continue to focus, your mind wanders, and patterns begin to form—abstract shapes or faces emerging from this seemingly bland backdrop.

Your brain is an incredible place to be. 

It will find patterns, even when the eye deceives you. It's not coincidental; it's a survival mechanism, a product of evolution where the mind evolved to detect order. It's an ability our ancestors relied on to memorize cues like animal sounds or footprints to understand migrational patterns or plant life. It's how we came to understand one another, being able to detect tones and pitches in each other's voices to identify emotions. This invisible process is doing a lot of the work to form our perceptions. 

You may think of the eye like a camera, but the brain doesn't passively record; it interprets, it fills in gaps, and it draws conclusions based on experience and expectation.

In moments of uncertainty, when the visual input is unclear or ambiguous, the brain takes the lead. It seeks order in the chaos, connecting dots that may not even exist. A shadow on the wall might become a lurking figure; a flicker of light is a familiar face, all because your brain is wired to find meaning, to impose structure on the formless.

Sometimes, the brains eagerness to identify creates misinterpretations. We are dancing, consistently and persistently, between perception and reality, where what you think you see is shaped more by the mind than the raw information.

Your brain wants you to form conclusions to help you navigate the world. It's intended to keep you safe. While ironically leaving you incredibly vulnerable. You can see things that aren't real and miss things that are. And we can all be led astray when the eyes lie.

The men eventually fled when the door staff did intervene, leaving Rather shaken but alive. Yet the demands they shouted that night—the question they kept asking—would haunt Rather for years. A question that seemed nonsensical but somehow lodged itself in the public consciousness. It would be pressed into vinyl after inspiring a rock lyricist, giving birth to two grungy angst-riddled songs, and even becoming a bizarre subplot in a graphic novel.

In this case, the assault became more than just a random act of violence—it became a symbol, a mystery, something to be dissected and analyzed. The question those men shouted that night became a kind of Rorschach test, with everyone seeing something different. Some saw it as a sign of a larger conspiracy, others as a bizarre coincidence.

Two days after the attack, on October 6th, 1986, Dan Rather returned to the airwaves, delivering his usual newscast with the same buttery-smooth, slightly sombre tone he was known for. At the end of the broadcast, he briefly mentioned the assault as if it were just another story—something that could've happened to anybody.

CBS News signs off, and the screen fades to black. Decades later, we yank a Google Earth satellite map and spin it roughly six hundred and forty-eight miles southwest of CBS news headquarters in New York. And we find ourselves Charlotte, North Carolina, where in October of 1986, another man was busy running his newly formed textile business. Over a decade later, the life of this man, seemingly no one, and the life of Dan Rather will be woven together. 

I don't know if the man watched Dan Rather that night or ever, frankly. 

I don't actually know whether he was even in North Carolina in October of 1986.

But, from what we know it was in that month and that year in Charlotte that things seemed to be looking up for this new entrepreneur. 

Well, that's what we can see.

But as we know, the eyes lie.

And when they do? 

People die.

2.

1988—it's been two years since the bizarre assault on Dan Rather, and something equally strange is unfolding on a quiet industrial street in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Inside Catherine Elliott's office, the usual sounds of machinery and distant traffic are interrupted by the unmistakable crunch of metal on metal. Startled, she and her boss, Dennis Carrigan, race to the front of their shop, wedged between residential homes and cinderblock shipping bays.

As they approach the door, the noise grows louder—another sickening crunch, the screech of rubber, shattering glass. Whatever's happening, it's not over yet.

When they step outside, they're met with a scene one would never forget.

A grizzly bear-sized man is behind the wheel of a Jeep, furiously ramming Catherine Elliott's Volkswagen. He's pushing it up the street like a battering ram, anger seething from every rev of the engine.

That man was their neighbour, William Tager.

Tager, around 40 at the time, had snapped. His rage? Apparently sparked by Catherine's VW being parked too close to his business's entrance. The scene was chaotic—Tager screaming, threatening, calling her a liberal, and far worse.

William Tager wasn't just angry—he was unhinged. Raised nearby in Gastonia, part of a quiet family of textile business owners, Tager was not known for this kind of behaviour. Not in public, at least. But here he was, a man possessed, using his Jeep as a weapon.

Catherine and Dennis called the police as Tager finally ceased his assault and drove off. Days later, he was charged by Charlotte-Mecklenburg police. And that should be the end of it, but of course, it's not. 

Just a few days later, Tager walked back into Catherine's shop. You can imagine the tension in the room—a 6'2" man over 200 lbs looming in the doorway after well and truly snapping. When a violent man returns, the question becomes, what does he want this time? Is he back to finish what he started?

But this time, Tager wasn't there to destroy. He was there to apologize.

The remorseful man before them barely resembled the enraged driver of that Jeep. He claimed he'd been drinking, was battling personal demons, and promised to pay for all the damage—which he did, in full. He mentioned the Lord was helping him through his struggles.

At first, Catherine and Dennis may have felt some relief. After all, outbursts like this, at that time, while terrifying, weren't all that uncommon. Tager was a Vietnam veteran, wrestling with the shadows of war, trying to find his way. Everyone agreed: this wasn't like him.

Willian was born into a family that birthed achievers and upstanding community members in the Carolinas. The family had moved there when William was 16, leaving a private school in New York to live in the South with his business-minded parents.

Like so many other wounded humans Catherine Elliott had likely encountered, Tager seemed genuinely sorry over an isolated episode. Good hearts and minds, ravaged by war in the years since the disastrous Vietnam incursion were struggling to find support across the United States in the late 80s.

Everyone agreed it was out of character for William.

But then, things got strange.

He started showing up more often. At first, Catherine and Dennis were leery but didn't feel the need to call the police again. Maybe he was just one of those guys—a bit odd but harmless.

The frequency of his visits took a dark turn. Dennis later told newspapers it felt like Tager was trying to court Catherine. She started seeing him everywhere—at her work, around town, even at the local airport where she and her boyfriend kept a small experimental airplane. Otherwise known as a thrill-seeking adventure of do-it-yourself kits that arrive in a crate, instructions included.

Once assembled from a variety of materials with an engine strapped to it, you can register that hunk-of-something with the FAA and fly it. Tager, it turns out, had the confidence for such an adventure and built one, conveniently storing it near Christine Elliott and her boyfriend's plane. You can see a trend. In some reports, Christine did refer to him as a stalker.

Had the original incident created paranoia about a man who was otherwise fine? Or did Catherine sense real danger?

On March 9, 1992, this story would turn. 

Around 5 pm that evening, Tager's obsession with his homemade aircraft would lead to a horrible mistake. His small plane came into the Statesville, North Carolina airport too low and too slow. Investigators would later find a bone-dry fuel filter.

The plane clipped an embankment and slammed into the ground, crumpling on impact. Tager's girlfriend, Cindy, managed to escape the wreckage, but he was not so lucky. It took emergency crews nearly an hour to cut him free.

His injuries were severe—both legs, his wrist, and every bone in his face were broken. He endured seven hours of surgery, and though he survived, Tager never truly recovered. Friends and associates, most of them bonded by a shared love of Harley Davidson motorcycles, said he walked with a limp. Both of his legs were held together by pins, leaving one leg shorter than the other.

By all accounts, he just wasn't the same.

Tager's life was a constellation of tragic events—disconnected dots and data points that when connected, formed a darker picture. Like threads in a tapestry, what was once disconnected was slowly coming together to complete an image. 

But no one saw it coming. Not until it was far too late.

We've now seen it countless times since.

And we know—

The eyes lie. 

3.

Two years after William Tager's plane comes to a terrifying halt against the ground in North Carolina, we find ourselves back in New York City. 

It's August 31, 1994, at Rockefeller Center. Typically bustling with the usual crowd of tourists, it was unusually chaotic that day. The iconic site, known for its 19 historic buildings and as the home of NBC Studios, had become the center of a different kind of attention.

A man burst from the open door of a Ford Taurus, gripping a semi-automatic rifle. A security camera captured him as he moved with purpose—William Tager, from Charlotte, North Carolina, taking his stance like someone who had practiced this moment in his mind a thousand times. Since his attack on Catherine Elliott Volkswagen two years earlier, Tager had changed. With a damaged mind and body, Tager had snapped. Again. This time, however, was far worse. 

Tager's target wasn't some distant enemy or an imagined threat from a Communist land. It was 33-year-old Theron Montgomery, a stagehand for NBC's Today Show, frantically trying to flag down nearby NYPD officers. Moments earlier, Montgomery had denied Tager entry into the building, noticing he was armed. But he'd returned, and from his high-powered Norinco MAK-90 rifle, he sent a single shot into Theron Montgomery's back. 

The street fell into a stunned silence as Montgomery collapsed. Depending on the account, what happened next varies. Police reports state that Tager approached Montgomery's body before fleeing to his car—that he stood over him where he'd fallen on the concrete. In later parole interviews, Tager denied this, claiming he went straight for his vehicle. A small detail but a strange contradiction, one that reminds us how easily the mind and eye can be confused in chaos. 

The shot, precise and singular, was Tager's only. Though he was loaded with a 30-shot banana clip, he didn't fire again. I don't know about gratitude, necessarily, when a life is lost. But it could have been much worse—on a crowded New York sidewalk, with a trained shooter at the ready, surrounded by potential cover and more weapons in his car. NYPD officers swiftly closed in, apprehending Tager.

No more shots. No further injuries or fatalities. A sort of fragile miracle given the circumstances. Theron Montgomery, however, wouldn't survive the day. The damage from the high-velocity round was too severe.

The weapon Tager used, the Norinco MAK-90, was a Chinese knockoff of the infamous AK-47. Though technically not classified as an assault weapon by die-hard enthusiasts—who reserve that label for fully automatic firearms—this semi-automatic rifle was no less deadly.

In 1994, assault weapons were already topical, their regulation a matter of intense debate. The Stockton School Massacre of 1989, in which Patrick Purdy used a semi-automatic rifle to kill five students and wound 32 others, had already spurred calls for reform. On September 1, 1994, the day after Tager's shooting, C-SPAN aired a debate on the assault weapons provisions of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Oblivious to the violence in New York, the debate featured the usual talking points, with gun control advocates clashing with those defending the right to bear arms.

Among the voices was Richard Feldman, then the executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council, who argued that the ban on certain firearms amounted to "industrial racism"—a bizarre and offensive comparison of a gun's black, matte finish to the real and ongoing struggles against racial injustice.

The absurdity of Feldman's argument eats at us, even as we reluctantly acknowledge some grain of truth in this statement. The identification of weapons, particularly in high-stress situations, is notoriously unreliable. Witnesses often confuse makes, models, and even types of guns, turning silver revolvers into black semi-automatics and vice versa. This fundamental flaw in human perception has far-reaching consequences, especially in a justice system that relies heavily on accurate identification.

Ballistics analysis, too, is fraught with error. The method of matching bullets and casings to specific firearms was once a staple of forensic science. It's now increasingly being questioned. In Cook County, Illinois, a judge recently barred bullet-matching testimony from being used in criminal trials, a landmark ruling that highlights the shaky foundations of this so-called science.

As we close the tab on the 30-year-old C-SPAN debate, it's hard to shake the feeling that all the arguments—on both sides—missed a point. The real issue wasn't just about guns or gun control; it was about the systemic failures that led to moments like the one at Rockefeller Center. The decades-old calls for better mental health support, improved gun regulations, and the removal of junk science from our courts have largely gone unanswered.

Thirty years ago, our eyes deceived us, and today, people still die because of those same flaws in human judgment.

And that's why; sometimes, we need to listen more carefully if we want to understand how someone like William Tager ends up on a crowded New York street, armed and dangerous, his actions seemingly tied to a vicious assault on Dan Rather, eight years in the past. 

4.

September 5, 1994. It's been five days since the murder of Theron Montgomery, days since William Tager aimed his MAK-90.

As the dust settles over Rockefeller Center, a new rock song crashes onto the airwaves, slicing through the tension of the time. It's loud, it's raw, and it gnashes at the teeth of countless teens who are eager to scream along. But no one knew back then how this song tied into something far darker, something that had already slipped into history just a few days before.

What song was it?

And be honest, have you been ready to scream it at us yet?

"What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" by R.E.M

Sadly, we don't have the fat royalty money to play it for you, nor the rights. So, do yourself a favour and give it a spin. It's the reason we're here today, after all.

It's a beauty of a track, the kind that still rattles through our 90s-built, cynical boney asses, making our feet move even when our brains can't quite recall the right lyrics. But who cares?

It fucking slaps.

The song's hook—"What's the frequency, Kenneth?"—echoes the bizarre phrase that two mysterious men shouted at Dan Rather on October 4, 1986, before they pummeled him in the streets of New York.

Kenneth! What's the frequency?

Punch.

Kenneth! What's the frequency?

Kick.

That's it. That's the strange demand they hurled at Rather as they assaulted him. Kenneth, what's the frequency?

Rather, in his dazed confusion, kept insisting they had the wrong guy. He wasn't Kenneth, and he sure as hell didn't know what frequency they were talking about.

But their eyes had lied to them.

Were they paranoid lunatics tangled in a conspiracy only they could comprehend? Oddly enough, this wasn't the only connection between grunge and conspiracy that threaded through this song's history.

A few weeks before Tager's fateful trip to New York City, on the other side of the country, R.E.M was shooting the video for "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" The song was destined to be the opening track on their upcoming Monster album, and it sure did not disappoint.

Filmed in Hollywood, California, the video features guitarist Peter Buck casually strumming a Fender guitar. Those opening chords, with their distorted, reverberating sound, are etched in the memories of millions of alternative fans.

But Buck wasn't playing just any Fender guitar.

No, this was Kurt Cobain's signature Fender Jag-Stang, albeit upside down since Cobain was a lefty and Buck a righty. This was the very guitar Kurt Cobain's wife, Courtney Love, had gifted him.

Courtney passed the guitar to Buck after Kurt died by suicide on April 8th of that year, another grunge-infused tragedy that sent shockwaves across the globe. Cobain's death, like everything else in his life, became wrapped in its own dark conspiracy theories—ones that still echo in podcasts and YouTube channels, even thirty years later.

It's funny how people will see conspiracy if they look hard enough.

"Are we looking too hard?" we wondered as we delved deeper into this murky, twisted tale.

In 1994, even Dan Rather himself leaned into the weirdness. During an R.E.M rehearsal for the Late Show with David Letterman, Rather joined the band for a vocal cameo. It was a brave move—awkward, offbeat, out of tune—yet somehow brave.

Michael Stipe and Mike Mills chuckled at Rather's attempt, their wry smiles hinting at the absurdity of the whole "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" affair.

Decades later, in a 2023 interview on The Big Interview, Rather sat down with Stipe and Mills, finally confronting the strange legacy of that phrase.

Rather asked about the song's meaning and inspiration, hoping to put some of the lingering questions to rest.

Stipe's response? Insightful

"I was writing a song about a generational gap, a character who is desperately trying to understand a younger generation's perspective and failing miserably at it. The phrase 'What's the frequency, Kenneth?' or represents inscrutability. It's the big question. No one knew what it meant. It represented trying and trying and trying and not arriving at any answer..."

Stipe's words resonated a bittersweet truth. Even now, three decades later.

For years, people thought the song was about Dan Rather, completely missing the point. The real point? Maybe we're not meant to find all the answers. Maybesome parts of our past are better left unscrutinized.

But even as we watched that interview, we thought of Theron Montgomery's wife. While the song's meaning and Rather's experience were unravelling on TV, she struggled to piece together a life shattered by tragedy.

In 1994, New York City was grieving the loss of a community member, a family member, a husband, and a friend.

Doctors and police tried to peer into William Tager's mind, hoping to connect the dots between "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" and the events of that terrible day. We find ourselves with similar questions, wondering—was Michael Stipe right? Were we trying too hard and not arriving at any answers?

Were we spending too much time in this murky, unknowable world?

5.

"They were bugging him, tapping his phones, and sending rays through his TV set. He couldn't take it anymore."

That was the statement NYPD Chief of Detectives John Hill gave to the press on September 2, 1994—just two days after William Tager killed Theron Montgomery.

Back then, Chief Hill and others were scrambling to piece together this tragic and perplexing attack. Now, in January 1997, it seems like answers are on the horizon.

But we know better, don't we? Looks can be deceiving.

At some point, Tager starts retelling these paranoid tales of an evil network capable of reading and interfering with the thoughts and lives of regular citizens. Part of his post-arrest journey is to be assessed by psychiatrists—to determine his state of mind at the time of the killing, his medical and military history, and whether he's fit to stand trial for the murder of Theron Montgomery.

We haven't uncovered all of Tager's records, but we can imagine the constant scribbling of a pen—the sound we associate with a patient being interviewed. It's a familiar trope in true crime, isn't it?

John Hinckley, Jr.

Jeffrey Dahmer.

The Menendez Brothers.

Big names, cases we still recognize today, glorified in Netflix series and podcasts too numerous to count. But they all share one thing in common: Dr. Park Dietz.

What we do know, without relying on imagination, is that Dr. Dietz's resume is over 30-pages long—based on court testimony from that year. It's probably grown since then. He's a forensic psychiatrist, an expert witness, an investigative jack of all trades. And he's in high demand.

As part of his pre-trial interview process, Dr. Dietz learns from Tager that he claims to be the one who assaulted Dan Rather in 1986.

This is where the thread begins to unwind.

The thing is, this part isn't unique. A seemingly mentally ill individual taking responsibility for a crime they weren't previously connected to—it's not that rare. And it's not even rare for someone to allege that their TV was beaming signals into their brain.

A group of people who consider themselves "targeted individuals" often talk about these signals, frequencies, and other mental interferences silently sent to them. They call these unseen disturbances "electronic harassment."

While we've all seen countless cases of cyberstalking and real electronic harassment, these claims can also mask a potentially dangerous, underlying psychiatric condition.

Tragically, this isn't the only time that this has resulted in violence toward a news organization. In Canada, Brian Smith, a sportscaster from Ottawa, Ontario, was shot and killed on August 1, 1995—just a year after Theron Montgomery. A former psychiatric patient was at the local TV station that day because he, too, believed they were beaming signals into his head. Brian Smith was simply the first employee he saw.

William Tager said the same about Theron Montgomery. He wasn't targeted; he was just the first person Tager saw.

These strange parallels keep running through Tager's story—a tale marked by mental illness, potential PTSD, and brain injury. However, there are more parallels seemingly plucked from the pages of a paranoid piece from the 1990s alternative publishing.

Daniel Clowes, a legendary illustrator, was working on his self-published comic series Eightball in 1993. He had already released a few issues before Tager's fateful trip to Rockefeller Center.

In Eightball #4, part of the "Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron" series, there's a subplot featuring a deranged man named Billings. This man, like Tager, had paranoid delusions—focused around a mysterious figure, Mr. Jones. Yet another 1993 smash hit song, this one by the Counting Crows.

Billings also had a healthy paranoia of the news media.

But here's the kicker: In three panels of this comic, there appears to be yet another eerie reference to the past and a harbinger of things to come.

Three panels where one character confronts another with a familiar question. "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?"

Did William Tager read this comic, adopt the story as his own, and then repeat it to the police?

What we don't know is how Dr. Dietz eventually verifies Tager's claims and gets them to Dan Rather for confirmation.But it does happen. Not through the District Attorney's office or the NYPD, but through the Daily News, where they bring Tager's information and a picture to Rather.

And what does Dan Rather say? "That's the guy. That's the man—singular—who attacked me."

This is definitely not how professional photographic lineups should be done, by the way, and we've got a lot of prior cases to back that up.

The then-new science of DNA testing led to countless exonerations in the 1990s and beyond, revealing that once-vehement eyewitness identifications—even up close—can be very scientifically and factually incorrect.

People feel pressured to make an identification.

Dan Rather was being ridiculed; it was affecting his life. We found countless news articles poking fun, encouraging armchair detectives to launch their own investigations or other victim-blaming activities that just did not seem fair.

Pressure is something we examine in fraud investigations too, forming one side of what's known as the 'Compromise' or 'Fraud Triangle'—the other two being rationalization and opportunity.

Eyewitnesses feel pressure for a wide variety of reasons, and that's not the only reason eyewitness identification can be problematic. Racial, gender, and cultural biases add further factors alongside environmental and biological ones.

The Wisconsin-based Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences shows statistics on false confession cases—where defendants confess because they feel pressure after an eyewitness identification. It's a strange, paradoxical loop of logic that ends up with the wrong person in jail, the victim unserved, and the perpetrator walking free.

So, can we trust an eyewitness identification in January of 1997? Over two and a half years after Tager's face and name had been splashed across papers all over the United States, and Rather didn't say anything? Over 11 years after he was assaulted?

Rather was an award-winning journalist; surely, he had a keen eye. Dr. Dietz had examined countless, cunning predators in the past. Surely he knew how to peer through what was real and what was fantasy in the minds of men like William Tager.

Dr. Dietz and Dan Rather compared notes, and allegedly, Tager knew details of the attack only Rather and the attacker would know.

It's still sitting in this odd place though. Knowing what we know about eyewitness accounts, our inability to spot and analyze firearms, and a bunch of other factors—can we really trust our eyes?

And who the hell is Kenneth? Tager never seemed to disclose that part, at least not in the public record.

Just when we thought we were reaching the end, it seemed we had one more piece to go.

So, let's rewind the tape. With a pencil. Not too far. A couple of twists.

Perfect.

Earlier in the day, on October 4, 1986, Dan Rather wasn't at his colleague's home in a swanky Manhattan apartment. He was likely at Columbia University in Manhattan.

Watching TV.

6.

October 4, 1986. 

He's known as 'The Most Interesting Man in the World.' Not a bad title, right? But in this case, it's more than just a catchy label. This man deserves it.

Meet Kenneth Schaffer—Ken, to his friends—a true polymath whose genius has left an indelible mark on both the arts and sciences.

Imagine starting your career as Jimi Hendrix's promoter. It's not a bad beginning. But Schaffer didn't stop there. He went on to invent the Schaffer-Vega Diversity System, a wireless microphone system that changed the game for music. It wasn't just wireless; the way it compressed and transmitted sound had a unique feel, something bands like AC/DC, The Rolling Stones, and KISS couldn't get enough of.

Ken was a geeky god of acoustic transmission. But as it turns out, his talents didn't stop there.

So, picture this: Schaffer, in his Manhattan apartment, fiddling with a satellite dish. Ok, he's trying to pick up The Playboy Channel. Go ahead, laugh if you must. But if you grew up in the 80s or 90s, you probably had a relative who pirated a few satellite signals. The air was free, after all. No judgment.

But what Schaffer stumbled upon that night wasn't Playboy. No, what he found was far more interesting. The signal he intercepted came from space, but it wasn't American—it was Soviet.

Schaffer's discovery led to an incredible breakthrough. In 1983, he wrote a paper titled "A Television Window," detailing his journey as an old-school signal hacker. He reverse-engineered Soviet TV signals until he could decode both the video and audio streams. The audio was tricky—hidden within a single vertical strip of the video feed—but Ken cracked it.

This wasn't just about watching Soviet TV. Schaffer had opened a window into a culture obscured by the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. It was a monumental achievement.

And where was Schaffer's apartment? On the north side of Rockefeller Center. The very place where, years later, William Tager would take the life of Theron Montgomery.

One piece of the puzzle. 

So, Kenneth did have the frequencies, and people wanted them. People knew where he lived and where he hung out, too. And these weren't just signals; they had intelligence value. They were worth something—academically, commercially, even conspiratorially. Schaffer's satellite installations cost $50,000 each—over $130,000 today.

This made Kenneth Schaffer a target. But Ken wasn't interested in the politics or the money. He saw the good in his invention—a way for peaceful communication between two cultures that always seemed perched on the brink of annihilation.

When Schaffer moved his operation to Columbia University, he befriended Professor Jonathan Sanders and another man—Dan Rather. 

Rather was using the Soviet TV feed to prepare for a critical meeting between President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachov, scheduled for October 11th and 12th in Iceland. Only a week after Dan Rather was attacked on Park Avenue.

The relationship between the US and the Soviet Union was strained that year. The FBI had arrested a Russian attache involved in espionage. Moscow retaliated by imprisoning a US journalist in a KGB prison for nearly two weeks.

Dan Rather. Kenneth Schaffer. Columbia University. Soviet satellite signals. Cold War.

What the fuck?

We thought we were getting somewhere. But then, another article. This one from November 7, 1994—just a few months after Theron Montgomery's murder. New York Magazine ran a feature on Kenneth Schaffer, offering a possible explanation for what might have finally, maybe happened to Dan Rather.

Schaffer had a theory—intelligence operatives were interested in his decoding system. But they made a mistake. They followed the wrong man—Rather, instead of Schaffer—home from the Harriman Institute.

Quoting from the article, with a fantastic 90s headshot of Schaffer:

"Poor Jonathan [Sanders] never got any sleep," Schaffer recalls. "When he wasn't with Dan [Rather], he was with me." Rather was preparing to leave with Sanders for Iceland to cover the Reagan-Gorbachov summit; Schaffer, meanwhile, was at Columbia tinkering with one of his inventions—a satellite Earth station that could bring down Soviet television signals.

Schaffer theorized that the intelligence operatives had confused Rather with him, the actual target. "When it comes to coincidences, this is too bizarre," he said.

So, was it all just a case of mistaken identity? A simple mix-up in a world where the stakes were anything but simple?

Schaffer didn't talk to the media much about this theory. They weren't that interested, he claimed.

But here's the thing—Schaffer and Rather were the two men who spent the most time with the Columbia professor responsible for the Soviet TV installation. And Schaffer tried to tell everyone what he thought had happened.

How are you doing?

Connecting any dots?

7.

This whole story feels like we're standing in front of a beige wall—blobs of shapes and shadows requiring us to squint our eyes just right, letting them get out of focus, just a little, and then, the picture appears.

If we follow the weaving theories here, it goes something like this:

Kenneth Schaffer, the man with the frequencies and Soviet TV, spends a bunch of time with Dan Rather. William Tager, having relatives in the city and originally coming from New York, bumps into Dan on the street—as one account suggests—or he simply lurks, as Catherine Elliott says is his wont to do. He follows the wrong guy due to the busy New York streets and his state of delusion, which means he waits for Rather and not Schaffer and then assaults Rather.

Between Tager's belief that the television networks were beaming intrusive signals into his brain, his Vietnam experience, and the incredible amounts of paranoia—just ingrained in American culture at the time—Tager wanted those frequencies. For what purpose? That we don't know.

It seems like the eyes have lied in this story all along. Tager's did. Most people around him didn't see someone who was sick, in need of treatment, and most certainly not someone who should possess a firearm of any kind. They just saw him, William Tager, one of those guys.

After all of this, we start to imagine that we don't trust the eyes of anyone in this story.

Including ours, because if we have to squint and let our eyes get out of focus in order to make something of nothing, something must be really wrong. Even when a couple of pieces are left in a puzzle—and it looks near-finished—we might not even be building the right picture. So, we closed our eyes and put on some ABBA.

And we start to think.

We had our own questions, that's for certain.

Where the hell was William Tager last seen on October 4, 1986?

In Charlotte, North Carolina? Or Columbia University, or Manhattan? Where Dan Rather and Ken Schaffer were watching Soviet television? Tager's own trial attorney has serious doubts regarding his involvement in Rather's assault, and his relatives in New York City at the time couldn't confirm him being there, or at least they didn't see him.

Tager's story doesn't add up, and it looks plagiarized.

In 1993, before Tager's assault on NBC Studios, Daniel Clowes released his strange series, and it could have easily given Tager the narrative to fit around the attack on Rather. It could also have been a bid to convince people he was not fit to stand trial.

Clowe's illustrations of Billing—the wild, delusional man who says you can't trust the news—are just eerily similar. 

How did Dr. Dietz get clearance to take information about Tager to Dan Rather?

While we're all too familiar with misconduct, breaches of policy, and the permissive environment that exists for celebrity or rockstar experts like Dr. Dietz, it still bothered us. Wasn't this private information about Tager that was technically gathered by the prosecutor's office? Wouldn't it be privy only to them and Tager's defense team? Well, we're not prosecutors, who knows.

How and why Dr. Dietz, the Daily News, and Dan Rather converge, over 10 years after Rather's assault and over two years after the shooting of Theron Montgomery, we just cannot piece together.

How and why did the eyewitness identification happen the way it did? How was the photo lineup done by the Daily News? Could Tager have created the lie, and Dan Rather incorrectly confirmed it?

If the Daily News simply brought the story, Dr. Dietz's interview materials from Tager, and a picture, this creates all of the perfect conditions for a misidentification by an eyewitness. Rather was under a tremendous amount of professional pressure and was a victim of an assault, something we think people often forget when they're telling this story and mercilessly teasing.

Dan Rather's story is inconsistent. Where did the second man go? To lose a second man, someone who beat you, seems like a lot, not because of Rather's account alone, but numerous accounts at the time—given to the press by the doormen who assisted Rather. They said there were two men.

One can't help but wonder if Rather fit his later accounts to match the account that Tager gave to Dr. Dietz, a retelling that doesn't include a second man at all. Nor do Clowe's illustrated works. And neither did Tager's explanation.

What if it was Russian intelligence operatives like Ken Schaffer said? So many questions are left unanswered, and we couldn't help but feel that that usual conspiratorial cloak of mystery actually might not exist.

Hard to believe, but this all seems like a bunch of pieces stuck together the wrong way.

Like a bunch of off-brand Lego bricks were forced together to construct a story that, while it may work at first glance, is janky, lacking cohesion. It doesn't look right—there's daylight peeking through where things really should be more snugly fit. This all didn't feel right either.

We were running out of senses that we couldn't trust anymore, so we quickly tapped out a message to a private investigator in New York City. They're one of the best—in our opinion—in the entire country and are conveniently located.

Our message only contained two simple questions—and no—one of them was not; what's the fucking frequency, Kenneth, we assure you.

We think we have to go and take a harder look with our headphones on.

And our eyes open.

This time, hopefully, with two sets instead of one.

Because maybe there's more. 

We'll see.