Raising Hell: Chapter One - Once Upon a Time in Omaha
Today the QAA crew is taking a small rest day from their melted algorithms but have no fear dear listener, we won't leave you hanging. Last week Jack and Julian began releasing their new Cursed Media mini series and today, in lieu of a usual main episode, we would like to share the first episode of what they have been cooking up. Raising Hell.
In 1988, federal regulators closed Omaha’s Franklin Community Federal Credit Union after discovering that nearly $40 million had disappeared. The institution’s manager, Lawrence E. “Larry” King Jr., was a charismatic civic leader and political operator who had cultivated relationships far beyond Nebraska. King’s public image, and the astonishing scale of the missing money, made the collapse a major scandal. But as investigators began following the financial trail, an even more disturbing story took shape.
In Chapter One of Raising Hell, “Once Upon a Time in Omaha,” Jack LaRoche and Julian Feeld return to the origins of the Franklin story: not the lurid mythology that later grew around it, but the vulnerable children, troubled households, foster-care placements, and child-welfare institutions from which the first allegations emerged. The episode examines the experiences of young people who passed through a system that was supposed to protect them, including Boys Town and Nebraska’s foster-care network, and who repeatedly encountered adults unwilling or unable to recognize what was happening around them.
At the center of this chapter is Eulice Washington. Her disclosures helped expose documented abuse inside an Omaha household and opened a path toward far more explosive allegations involving Larry King and other influential people. What began as an investigation into the treatment of children would soon collide with the Franklin credit-union case, drawing in social workers, journalists, law-enforcement agencies, politicians, private investigators, and witnesses whose accounts would be alternately ignored, sensationalized, challenged, and transformed.
Content warning: This episode contains discussions of child abuse, sexual exploitation, and institutional neglect.
Theme Music by Thomas Arsenault. Episode Music by Nick Sena and Pontus Berghe. Produced by Corey Klotz.
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Click here to become a subscriber to Cursed Media today to get access to the first three episodes of Raising Hell right now, plus the new Raising Hell episodes weekly, plus every other exclusive Cursed Media series: https://cursedmedia.net
QAA Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Comments (52)
The SLA were mostly white.
Well, that was a horrifying episode. But good job, Team JJ :)
7 of my brother were sent to boys town. In omaha. None were abused but the stories. It was lord of the flies for sure
Reporting from Lincoln NE. The cops here are still swine. Can’t wait to check out the rest of the series! I was raised catholic so I heard of flannigan many times. I’m finding out today, right now, that boys town was bad actually. That makes a lot of sense but I guess I hadn’t really thought about it. It’s just always been there. It’s weird hearing some of the names and wondering if the Sorensen that I know is connected to this story. Im gonna have to relisten but I’m realizing now that one of the names sounded familiar bc it was my great grandmothers maiden name… I think… idk. I gotta call my mom.
Ngl I wondered for years what boys town was referring to in a tree house of horror
So wait, you're saying the party of stopping ritual satanic sexual abuse if children has a history of... ritual satanic sexual abuse of children? 😐
Idk the best place to ask this but next time y’all do a movie review pls consider reviewing megalopolis. My boyfriend is obsessed with it and if I have to suffer through it I feel like everyone should 😭
I know of this story in passing, but never got around to looking into it in more detail. I was actually pretty excited about this on learning what it was about. Not so excited anymore. This is going to take a long time to get through. I burst into tears twice. Good work, I guess.
Might have to sit this series out. Got me crying in the library
I've been interested in the Franklin case but found it difficult to sift through all the noise, so I'm really grateful to have a reliable deep dive.
Nick Bryant used to have his own pod where discussed these topics. Also, Ed Opperman has been talking about it for years.
Is this a rehashing of Nick Bryant’s Franklin Scandal, or is there a lot more building off his book?
yesterday I saw something calling Lanterns the replacement for True Detective & thought nope it’s this
ok this might be the thing that gets me to sign up for cursed media
Larry's voice teacher probably sang with Opera Omaha, a fairly well regarded professional company. You'd never think that Omaha could support something as highbrow as opera.
Necessary to hear this. I grew up a few blocks from where Johnny was taken and I’ve gone down the rabbithole of Boystown before. I appreciate my favorite skeptics tackling this one
I have been listening to Raising Hell through my Cursed Media link. This show is so good, but so heavy and hard to listen to. Jack is such a great storyteller and as always love any podcast with Julian. A hard listen but totally worth the money and time.
God bless the good pigs
Its crazy we used to lynch black people and not people like the webbs. Smh
are all of the eps of this mini series going to be released by the pod or do you have to join cursed media to get the rest?
Listening to this and feeling a deep and righteous rage building up inside of me
The only reason Larry King wouldn't be welcome in the modern republican party is that he had Planned Parenthood on his resume. The paedophilia and financial crimes would only work in his favour.
At first I was like, Franklin Boystown scandal, let’s fucking goooo! But then I was like, let’s fucking run far away from this cursed timeline for the love of God 😭
yeah every time I revisit this story, I’m more of an adult and even more appalled at the the treatment of kids
Boys town did discriminate based on molestability
I take it back...their nothing good about any of this.
Oh this is the good stuff 👏 👌 🙌
Resume: Mayor of boy’s town
I hope Travis recovers from his butt stuff quickly!!!
I think it was Julian projecting there :D
13:15 The is NOT the correct pronunciation for "ubiquitous".
oh god they’re taking me to a second location
I live about a mile from Boystown. It still has all of the things you listed it previously having. Post Office, Police force, multiple hospital facilities. It is separate from the city of Omaha, despite being fully surrounded by Omaha.
I find this fact to be incredibly disturbing 😳
Growing up in Omaha, one of the most popular threats hurled at me by educators and my parents when I was misbehaving was, “do you want me to send you to Boys Town?” or “We are going to send you to Boys Town!” Boys Town was where they sent bad kids that didn’t listen to their Parents or Teachers. When I grew up, the Catholic Church association made the threat a little more credible, later on when I learned about Franklin Credit, I think I should have been even more terrified than I was.
Holy fuck dude 😳
Terrible idea to listen to this before bed
Also a terrible idea to listen first thing in the morning. Why do I hate myself so much?
Really brutal Nebraska mention.
That was very good, excellently researched and presented but uhm, I dont think I can hear any more, its horrifying.
Not just horrifying but unbelievably enraging. Those people are true demons.
Hope you had a just rest day!
Funny that the only boystown i had heard of before this episode was a gay neighborhood in Chicago... and I think I'll prefer to only remember that one after this episode. 🥲
Annoyingly they changed the name from Boystown to Northalsted
Thank you for the content warnings. Although I suspected as much from the description alone, it's nice to have it plainly stated as well. I shall miss this one, team, but keep up the good work!
Calling the SLA black communists is kind of a stretch when the leader Donald DeFreeze was literally the only black person in the group lol
This was such a piled description of the SLA. Julian is just so fried
I was SO stoked to see the announcement of a Satanic Panic series from you guys and I listened to the first three episodes over the long weekend. I was not expecting for the story to be entirely new to me (and somehow even more brutal than other studies of the SP). Bravo Jack and Julian, this media is most cursed.
So life is just a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Cool cool cool
I’m the little dude in a snail shell playing a trumpet
Oma HA!
Hell yeah