10 FEBRUARY 9-15, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | more extreme direction, even encouraging potential domestic terrorism actions that the feds could prosecute. All of that and more is the subject of the riveting, ten-episode fi rst season of Alphabet Boys, a new podcast produced by Western Sounds and iHeartPodcasts and reported and narrated by Aaronson. The series, which debuted February 7, is a must-listen for any- one concerned about social justice and law enforcement...especially in Denver. Aaronson, who worked as a staff writer at Miami New Times and New Times Broward- Palm Beach, sister papers of West- word, from 2003 to 2006, begins the podcast by placing the listener in the hectic environment of the Mile High City after George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020. “Of all the racial justice demon- strations around the country in the summer of 2020, Denver, Colorado, saw some of the biggest, most in- tense protests,” Aaronson narrates. “The Denver-area police response to the demonstrations was brutal.” Those protests started in earnest on May 28. Demonstrators took to the streets around the Capitol, and the Denver Police Department, which was a verbal target of protest- ers, responded with a heavy-handed use of tear gas, pepper spray, foam bullets and other less-lethal muni- tions. In the days that followed, the protests grew in intensity. The ad- ministration of Mayor Michael Han- cock temporarily enacted a curfew, but the demonstrations continued. Some protesters engaged in van- dalism, while others hurled objects at police. Some Denver offi cers, as well as reinforcements called in from neighboring municipalities, met these provocations with more force. Hundreds of people were arrested. And then Windecker showed up on the scene, driving a silver hearse. “This dude was like a bad moth- erfucker,” Zebbodios “Zebb” Hall, recalls in the podcast. Hall, originally from North Carolina, had moved to Colorado in 2012 and worked in IT while becoming involved in racial and social jus- tice advocacy, fi ghting homeless sweeps and evictions. He joined the Denver branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in 2018. According to Hall and a handful of other activists interviewed for the podcast, Wind- ecker presented himself as a veteran of the Peshmerga, the military of Iraqi Kurdistan, which had become well known in recent years for battling ISIS. Windecker also spoke about having been in the French Foreign Le- gion. He wore military fatigues and Kurdish fl ag patches, and sported Punisher necklaces and patches. Windecker did actually travel to the Middle East to fi ght with Kurdish militants in 2014 or 2015, according to FBI fi les. But fellow foreign fi ghters that Aaronson interviewed said that he signifi cantly embellished his battle chops. And Aaronson is the type of journalist who can spot a militant-group poser: For years, he’s covered Americans who attempt to join terrorist groups and are entrapped by the FBI. He also reported and narrated American ISIS, an Audible documentary about an American man who joined ISIS and died overseas while fi ghting for the extremist group. Windecker, a man in his late forties who’d worked in metro Denver as a security guard, a cook and a tattoo artist, became a regular at local protests that summer. According to Hall, he kept “a shit-ton of guns” in his hearse. Hall was intrigued. In August 2020, Hall invited Windecker to his apartment, where they began talking about how to make the protest movement more effective. In a recording obtained by Aaronson, Windecker asked Hall if he’d like some training, anything from hand-to-hand combat to “blowing up fucking buildings and guerrilla warfare tactics and sabotage.” Hall, who spoke a big game at protests but denies any plans to harm individuals, didn’t commit to anything specifi c, he says, but told Windecker that he wanted to go “all the way uptown.” Hall didn’t realize that Windecker was recording the conversation. Windecker had already begun calling Denver-area police with tips, saying that he believed that “people who participate in violent civil unrest are terrorists.” The police — who work with the FBI on what’s called the Joint Terrorism Task Force — connected Windecker with that agency. “This recording ended up being Mickey’s audition tape for the FBI,” Aaronson says of the conversation in Hall’s apartment. Windecker was soon meeting with local FBI Denver agents in unmarked vehicles. The local FBI bureau began paying him thousands of dollars to go after Hall and other activists, securing evidence so that they could be charged federally. “Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad,” Wind- ecker said to two local FBI agents after he received a hidden camera from them and got out of their car in August 2020. The Denver FBI declined to discuss Win- decker or the revelations of the podcast. Although Windecker was trying to work with law enforcement, he hadn’t always been on the right side of the law. He had a lengthy rap sheet, including convictions for felony menacing and misdemeanor sexual assault dating back to when he was twenty and had sex with a fourteen-year-old girl whose age he claimed he didn’t know. While spending time in jail and prison, he developed a knack for snitching, which ap- pears to have gotten past convictions sealed or expunged and might have helped him avoid prosecution in certain circumstances, the podcast suggests. As Windecker continued to focus on Hall, he began snitching on other activists, including Bryce Shelby. He connected with Shelby, who was born and raised in Aurora, after seeing him at protests in his hometown carrying an AR-15 type of rifl e. “For me, I straight-up carried it because I was like, ‘They’re killing black folks like this,’” Shelby tells Westword. “People are trying to do this politically correct shit in a system that is not politically correct.” The series highlights the violin vigil for Elijah McClain outside the Aurora Municipal Center in late June 2020, in memory of the 23-year-old Black man who’d died following a violent arrest by Aurora police offi cers in August 2019. The Aurora cops used tear gas on participants at the vigil, which angered many protesters, including Hall. Tapping into that anger, Windecker acted like a drill sergeant at certain protests that seemed more like coordinated attacks against Denver police stations in late August 2020, the podcast notes. “I feel that he escalated violence or cre- ated violence. There were a lot of kids out there for those protests,” Hall tells Westword, referring to some of the younger protesters as kids while acknowledging that they were likely in their early twenties. Between protests, Windecker talked with the activists he was targeting at local chain restaurants. At one point, he met Hall and Shelby at a Famous Dave’s. During that meet- ing, he suggested blowing up a courthouse or shooting the Colorado attorney general. Hall, who says now that he was afraid of Windecker at the time, talked about using Denver’s sewer system as part of a plot, which Windecker shut down. But Shelby got on board with the idea of assassinating the attorney general and noted that he’d gotten his address at a protest. Dur- ing the meeting, Shelby kept confusing the attorney general with the Denver district attorney, but Windecker egged him on. “I’m feeding into that, like, this is a real mercenary,” recalls Shelby, a Denver-area rapper who goes by the stage name Acostic and works as a FedEx supervisor. Not long after that meeting, Windecker and Shelby met at a TGI Fridays with a “friend” of Windecker’s, who was actu- ally an undercover FBI agent. Shelby again displayed that he didn’t know much about Attorney General Phil Weiser, whom he kept referring to as “the district attorney.” But he agreed to take a ride by Weiser’s house with the undercover FBI agent, and outside the home he talked about how he could kill the AG if he got the chance. Then Shelby started to get cold feet and asked the FBI agent how much it would cost to hire a hit man to take out Weiser. The FBI agent responded that it would cost $500 to $600. That told Shelby there was something off about the guy. “You’re a motherfucking mercenary. If you’re catching a body, I’m pretty sure you’re charging more than $500,” Shelby says now. Shelby ghosted Windecker and never spoke to him again. In November 2020, guns at his Aurora home were seized by law enforcement offi cers, who cited Colorado’s red-fl ag law, which allows such actions when a person is an extreme risk to himself or oth- ers. But Shelby wasn’t arrested or charged in connection with his threats against Weiser after the AG asked A Snitch in Time continued from page 9 continued on page 12 ALPHABET BOYS Michael “Mickey” Windecker came into Denver driving a silver hearse; he’s now the focus of Alphabet Boys, a new podcast. SAM PIERSON ALPHABET BOYS
