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Hitman Paul breaks into Jock’s house to finish the job. Then Jock’s son arrives and promises vengeance. A motley crew of 20-year olds arrives to back up the Yablonskis.

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TRANSCRIPT

[voice over]: Campside Media.

Nicolo Majnoni: It was December 30th, 1969, the end of a long year for Jock Yablonski and his family. He was in bed, exhausted, lying beside Margaret, his loving wife of 27 years. A woman who’d stayed home, stayed loyal, stayed focused on his career and set aside her own ambitions. And Margaret had ambitions, big, sprawling, artistic ones. Broadway, screenplays, novels. She wrote everything down. Recorded some of her musings on tape in the Yablonski den. In these recordings, you can hear her wrestle with who she wants to be and who she’s become.

Margaret Yablonski: The Memoirs of a Nobody. At 17, I dream big dreams, as youth will, of setting the world ablaze.

Nicolo Majnoni: She’d made peace with the life she’d chosen, taking it in stride in her signature good humor.

Margaret Yablonski: This dream of becoming a woman of letters was realized in a wee way, for I’m a fairly competent scrabble player.

Nicolo Majnoni: But every now and then, those dreams would come back up.

Margaret Yablonski: But at odd moments, usually when I was cleaning the commode or swatting flies, a shrill inner voice would ask, what was the real purpose of my existence?

Nicolo Majnoni: For decades now, her purpose had been Jock and their children. But things were changing. Jock had agreed to move soon to a larger city, that he’d make time and space for her career, finally. The next year would be a big one. Her hopes may be turning to dreams as she drifted off to sleep next to Jock. Margaret was blissfully unaware that if she had looked outside of her window just then, she would have seen three men with pistols. Three men standing in her driveway with an order to murder her husband. The killers had been to the house before, but this time they had a deadline. They’d been told the murders must be done by New Year’s Day or else. As the killer stepped onto the porch, Buddy Martin, the youngest and newest member of the crew, turned to the two others.

Paul Gilly: Martin said he wasn’t coming back if he didn’t take care of it.

Nicolo Majnoni: It was now or never. From Crooked Media and Campside Media, this is Shadow Kingdom; Coal Survivor, Episode 5: New Year’s Eve. I’m your host, Nicolo Majnoni. The three intruders put on dark gloves to avoid fingerprints and crept up to the Yablonski porch where they discovered the door was locked. But Buddy Martin was ready for that.

Paul Gilly: He got a screwdriver out of the trunk and Martin took a frame off the screen door. The inside door was unlocked.

Nicolo Majnoni: They slipped off their shoes and crossed the threshold. They were in. Above them slept Jock, slept Margaret, slept their daughter Charlotte. It was a quarter to midnight. The Yablonskis had installed floodlights outside to scare off intruders, but they’d installed them at the wrong angle. So instead of lighting up the yard, the light streamed into the house, through the windows, lighting the killer’s path. The men crept into the den, past the Christmas tree, pass a card from a friend encouraging Jock to keep up the fight. Never say die, it read, underlined three times. Paul waited downstairs as Claude Vealey and Buddy Martin started up the circular carpeted staircase, Jock’s heavy snoring drowning out any sound of their footsteps. But Claude Vealey stopped abruptly. He could now see the bedrooms. Jock’s adult daughter was in one of them, and Claude had only signed up to kill Jock, not a family.

Paul Gilly: So Martin come back out and whispering real loud. He said, uh, Vealey backed out said that’s son of a bitch turned chicken.

Nicolo Majnoni: Again, Paul thought, another failed attempt.

Paul Gilly: I said, what you do you want me to do, hold your hand?

It could have ended there, with the Yablonskis dreaming of their new year. But this time, Paul and Claude had come with a true killer, Buddy Martin. Buddy had killed before. He wasn’t about to back out. He had just one question.

Paul Gilly: If I do it myself, will I get all the money? And I said, I said yes.

Nicolo Majnoni: Claude immediately clamored up, I’ll do it, I will do it. He wanted the money. Now all three tiptoed back up the stairs, pausing at the top. Daughter Charlotte’s bedroom to the right, Jock’s to the left. The clock ticked past midnight. It was time. Buddy whispered he’d go to Charlotte’s room. He motioned to the other two to go on to Jock’s. Margaret was tucked under floral sheets next to Jock. Charlotte had curlers in her hair, sleeping next to the book her brother Chip had given her for Christmas. They counted down at the same time. Three. Two. One. shots rang out from Charlotte’s bedroom as Buddy pointed his gun a few inches from her curlers. She was killed instantly. But there was a deafening silence from the other side of the wall, where Claude Vealey was now scrambling out of Jock and Margaret’s bedroom, back into the hall where Paul waited.

Paul Gilly: Vealey was out there hollering and going on. It jammed, it jammed. It wouldn’t shoot, it wouldn’t fire.

Nicolo Majnoni: Claude had tried to flip the safety off, but had accidentally unlocked the magazine.

Paul Gilly: So he was ejecting shells out of it.  And they was hitting the floor, bouncing all over the floor there, outside the rooms. Sixteen or seventeen shells.

Nicolo Majnoni: Margaret burst up in bed, eyes wide, and started to scream. Jock scrambled to get out of bed.

Paul Gilly: He, he was fixing to hightail it. He was trying, trying to leave the room.

Nicolo Majnoni: Jock was trying to get his own gun perched on his windowsill before the killers could get to their ammo which was now skittering across the floor and into all this chaos stepped cold blooded Buddy Martin

Paul Gilly: Martin, come back here and, uh, empty the gun, reloaded it, went, went in the Yablonski room and, um, fired at Mr. Yablonski.

Nicolo Majnoni: He turned and fired at Mrs. Yablonski, Margaret. He handed the pistol to Claude, and this time Claude fired off two more rounds. The two collapsed, all was quiet now. Buddy Martin stepped further into the room and took a money clip from Jock’s dresser. Maybe they could make this look like a random burglary. The killers fled back down the stairs. Jock’s puppy waited at the bottom, oblivious, tail wagging. Buddy aimed his pistol between the dog’s eyes, but Paul grabbed his arm. Not the dog, he said. They made their way past the Christmas tree, back out the front door, got into the car, and sped away. Or tried to.

Paul Gilly: It’s a bad winter that winter, got a lot of snow, roads are slick.

Nicolo Majnoni: Paul clung to the steering wheel and tried to keep his mind on the road.

Paul Gilly: I just was, I just wanted to get out of Pennsylvania and concentrated on driving and keeping my mind off of what happened.

Nicolo Majnoni: What happened was Jock’s worst fear, exactly what he had predicted, but worse, two times worse. Paul asked Claude to put the pistol away, but he clung to it. Buddy passed a whiskey bottle back and forth between them. Paul Gilly turned onto a road that ran next to a river and pulled over at the foot of a bridge. Buddy stepped out into the falling snow and threw the rifle over the edge. He heard a splash a second later. Claude threw the pistol. Splash. Then the wire cutters. And unused shells splash. As the men drove away through the falling snow, the evidence floated down the Monongahela River.

Paul Gilly: Then when they got back to Cleveland, I took them to a bar they hung out at. And, uh, they waited at bar while I went to the house.

Nicolo Majnoni: Paul went home to his wife, the person who’d gotten him into all of this. He woke her up. She followed him into the bathroom. Paul stared blankly at the wall. It was done, he told her. Everyone in the house was dead. Jock, his wife, their daughter. Why all three? She asked. Paul had no answers. All he could think of now was his father-in-law’s promise.

Paul Gilly: He said that, I had nothing to worry about, if anything went wrong, the union would take care of everything and if they need a lawyer, they’d take care that.

Nicolo Majnoni: Paul took the blood money from his safe shortly after dawn. He went to see Buddy and Claude who were waiting at the bar and gave them what was left of the money. Then, the killer’s parted ways. Paul took his wife and friends out for New Year’s Eve dinner that night. Everyone noticed he was particularly quiet. Paul was fixated on what would come next, after the Yablonski’s bodies were inevitably discovered. Who would be coming for him and when? 400 miles away in Washington, D.C., Chip Yablonski was getting dressed for a New Year’s Eve party. Nearby was a check from his dad.

Chip Yablonski: I was in Clarksville picking up my son and our St. Bernard on our way back here to D.C. And he handed me a check for $10,000 and said, hopefully this will get you to April, but we’ve got to pour coal on the fire between now and then.

Nicolo Majnoni: A father’s thank you to a son who gave up everything to run his campaign. Chip kept meaning to call his parents and check in, but he put it off that night. It was New Year’s Eve after all, so he and his wife went out.

Chip Yablonski: A New Year’s Eve party that a friend of hers from high school was having. We went, we drank more than we should.

Nicolo Majnoni: He meant to call the next day too. But—

Chip Yablonski: We were hungover. We didn’t call them on New Year’s Day.

Nicolo Majnoni: The holiday season was over, and Chip got busy, back at work, gearing up for a big legal fight. January 2nd passed, January 3rd, January 4th. And then, on January 5th—

Chip Yablonski: There was a telephone call.

Nicolo Majnoni: Chip can’t remember who was on the other line, but he remembers what they said.

Chip Yablonski: To say that the bodies of my dad, mother, and sister had been found. And I just know that it was just. It was a nightmare, and God bless Joe Rauh, we would have come apart at the seams if he hadn’t been there.

Nicolo Majnoni: The man Chip always turned to in moments of crisis was his father, but Jock wasn’t there anymore. So in his darkest hour, Chip reached for the closest thing to a father he had left, Joe Rauh. Joe was the most famous civil rights lawyer in DC, a superstar. He’d helped pass the Civil Rights Act. He was a friend of Martin Luther King Jr. And he’d been Jock Yablonski’s right-hand man since the day he announced he was running. Over the days, weeks, months, years of what was to come, Joe Rauh would be by Chip’s side. Chip tracked down Joe, who was at lunch with a friend.

Joe Rauh: Chip called me and said, my father’s mother and sister have been murdered. And I said, where are you? And I started to run for his office was about three blocks away. I never even had to thought of telling Ben I was leaving.

Chip Yablonski: He was on my doorstep. It was like, we’re going to Pennsylvania right now. We’re gonna go to your house. You’re gonna get packed. I’m gonna see if I can have my office find out what planes are flying to Pittsburgh. We’ll take care of this. It was just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

Nicolo Majnoni: Chip and Joe flew together to Pennsylvania. Chip in shock, Joe instinctively trying to protect him from what he knew was coming. Intense grief, yes, but also grief he knew Jock’s son would have to process in public. The moment his family’s bodies were found, Chip’s private tragedy was national news.

[news clip]: Good evening. A well-known official of the United Mine Workers, Joseph Yablonski, and his wife and daughter were found shot to death today. / Federal and state authorities search for clues in the— / Police found no weapon but telephone lines were found cut.

Nicolo Majnoni: Meanwhile, Chip sat on the plane in shock. So many things competing for his attention. Grief, anger, fear. Should he be afraid too? Just the night before the murders, he’d slept in the bed Charlotte was killed in. He worried about his young son, Jeffrey. Chip brought him on the plain. This was no place for a five-year-old, but Chip didn’t want him out of his sight. And one thought kept grabbing him again and again.

Chip Yablonski: There was no doubt in my mind. None. That the mine workers were behind it. That Tony Boyle set this in motion.

Nicolo Majnoni: And as the plane started its descent into Pennsylvania, Chip felt himself getting angry. One reporter called him vengeful.

Chip Yablonski: From the moment their bodies were found, my brother and I swore to ourselves that we would never rest until the people that did this were convicted.

Nicolo Majnoni: By the time Chip’s plane landed, he seemed like a different man. Not a grieving son, but an avenging son. A man his friends would come to call the General. As Chip stepped off the plane, a reporter approached him. You can hear the General on tape for the first time.

[news clip]: Did your father believe his life was in danger or did you believe that it was?

Chip Yablonski: From the very date the campaign started, everyone just sort of turned their back and the federal government didn’t give us a goddamn bit of help anywhere along the line.

Nicolo Majnoni: Joe Rauh muscled their way through the swarm of reporters diverting attention from Chip’s young family. They were driven to Chip’s brother’s house where they had celebrated Christmas a couple of weeks earlier. The siblings embraced, but there was little time for tears.

Chip Yablonski: At my brother’s house. Instead of us grieving, it was like Grand Central Station. It was like we got to get these different balls in the air. We got to the state police. Where are they setting up their headquarters? Joe Rauh’s on the phone about the FBI. I’m yelling and screaming at the FBI guy from Pittsburgh. And, you know, we haven’t even picked out his burial place yet. It was a week of insanity.

Nicolo Majnoni: Law enforcement immediately began working overtime.

[news clip]: The FBI tonight is engaged in its most intensive murder investigation since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. / The first major clues were revealed at a morning briefing / There’s a report that a car with white out-of-state license plates was seen in the vicinity of the Yablonski home. Two types of slugs, indicating two assassins.

Nicolo Majnoni: But in the middle of all that chaos, there was one person who was silent for days. Tony Boyle, the man everyone thought might have something to do with this. Everyone wanted to know where the hell was Tony? What was his response to all this? So finally, three full days after the bodies were discovered, Tony stepped out of his D.C. home where he’d been bunkering down. He took interviews from within the Union headquarters.

Tony Boyle: It was a shock to me when I learned of it and I’m still emotionally upset about it because I knew Jock Yablonski for approximately 30 years and I’ve been distressed over this thing perhaps as much so as the immediate family.

Nicolo Majnoni: The immediate family’s blood boiled to hear Tony say that. Even more so when he started to insinuate, without evidence, that Jock had financial troubles. Maybe that’s why he got killed. Or maybe it was a union serial killer who’d be coming for Tony next.

[news clip]: Has there been any thought given to providing protection for Tony Boyle? / Yes, there has. I think this is something that ought to be done.

Nicolo Majnoni: The union offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. And frankly, Tony was incensed. He told reporters that people weren’t giving the union credit for how helpful they were being. Eventually, Tony hired a New York PR firm and held a press conference. He stepped before the bank of cameras and strangely raised his right hand as if he was on trial.

Tony Boyle: I hereby solemnly swear to Almighty God that I will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Nicolo Majnoni: The whole press conference lasted hours, and it was one of the most confusing spectacles anyone had ever seen. Tony appeared dumbfounded when reporters pressed him on really basic details of how he ran the union. He was like a sheltered king hearing criticism for the first time.

Tony Boyle: Just a minute, I want to answer your question. You ask, this press conference has now gone on 300% longer than a presidential press conference.

Nicolo Majnoni: But even as he battled the press, in some ways it didn’t matter. Tony still had all the power, having quote unquote “won” the election against Jock. He was still officially the president of the union and he would soon be inaugurated for a new five year term. Four days after the bodies were found on January 9th, a thousand people showed up for the Yablonski funerals at the local Catholic church. And across the coalfields, thousands more miners walked out in honor of Jock Yablonski. The priest who married Jock and Margaret years earlier presided over the funeral. A funeral he noted that felt like a terrible punctuation mark at the end of a terrible decade.

[clip of priest]: A decade in which our country was shocked and battered by the ugly war, by much domestic turbulence, and by an almost unbelievable succession of assassinations.

Nicolo Majnoni: Jock Yablonski, the final political assassination in a decade filled with them.

[clip of priest]: And here in this corner of the United States, in a quiet mining community, all the horror of the sixties was brought home to us by a deed of infamy that’s disturbing and evil beyond words to describe.

Nicolo Majnoni: The priest paused and gestured toward the front of the chapel at the three oak caskets.

[clip of priest]: As we contemplate these three caskets, we ask why and who?

Nicolo Majnoni: The priest said Jock’s good deeds required him to make enemies. And he said, Jock would have wanted his work to go on. The mourners filed out of the church. It was a brutally cold January day, just one degree above zero. The roads paved with ice and snow. 63 cars escorted the caskets to the cemetery, where three freshly dug graves awaited at the top of a steep hill.

Chip Yablonski: And the hearses could not get up those icy roads going into the cemetery, so they had to stop. And then the caskets had to be unloaded and hand-carried, walked up the hill by the pallbearers. My brother and I carried my sister’s casket. My cousins carried my mother. And the miners carried my dad’s.

Nicolo Majnoni: Chip stood at the top of that icy hill, silently mourning as his father, his mother, his little sister were lowered into the ground.

Chip Yablonski: God, I wish you had lived. You’re too damn young to have died.

Nicolo Majnoni: One by one, people started to leave the grave site, most returning home, except for a few dozen miners who made their way to a classroom in a nearby Catholic school. Bulking miners squeezed into students’ desks. Others stood along the wall. These were all Jock’s supporters. Joe Rauh stood at the front of the room. Nobody spoke as the miners settled in. Everyone’s still raw from the funeral. Then, Joe stepped forward. He was afraid he’d cry if he looked into the miners’ faces. So he stared at their shoes as he spoke. Tony may not have pulled the trigger, but he must have set Jock’s murder in motion somehow. The only way to prove this would be if Tony’s lieutenants ratted him out. But, Joe said, no one would turn on Tony as long as he was in power. So they would need to unseat Tony. In other words, continue Jock’s fight for a new election and this time, win.

Joe Rauh: As long as Boyle is a president, it is impossible to get at the truth. It can’t be done except by winning the election.

Nicolo Majnoni: And also, if they did win, they could fulfill Jock’s dream of bringing democracy to the union. Joe paused. He told the men he’d understand if they didn’t want to keep fighting Jock’s fight. The consequences of that fight still fresh on that icy hill. And then Joe raised his voice, using lines he’d utter repeatedly in the days to come.

Joe Rauh: The fight to clean up the mine workers was just beginning when he was assassinated. This fight was just beginning.

Nicolo Majnoni: And he put his weight behind that. If you fellas do wanna fight on, I’ll fight on with you. There was no small offer. One of the legal icons of the 1960s telling them, I’ll carry this fight with you into the new decade if you want to. Joe stopped, his eyes still fixed on the floor. And when he lifted them, he saw that every single hand in the room was raised. Holding back tears, Joe said, the rebellion goes on. Paul Gilly’s men had killed the revolutionary, but not the revolution. [AD BREAK] Almost as soon as the funeral was over, Joe and Chip kick-started Jock’s Rebellion anew. They started pressuring the feds to get the election overturned so they could hold a new vote. But a new election meant new fundraising, new PR, new rallies. In other words, they needed an army of volunteers. They needed a call to arms. And on February 5th, just a month after the bodies were found, Chip was given the biggest possible stage to make that call. The U.S. Senate convened an investigation into Jock’s campaign and murder and invited Jock’s son to testify. To tell his family’s whole story. It was a prime time slot. It’d be covered in newspapers, TV, radio for days. And so on a cold February morning, Chip walked into the Senate chambers to flashes of blinding light.

Chip Yablonski: I remember there was just a ton of TV cameras. I mean, it was like, it’s almost like the Hoffa hearings.

Nicolo Majnoni: Chip sat down, pulled out his prepared statement, and began to read, trying to steady his voice and get them to understand the full horror of the situation. He told the senators, my dad abhorred guns, wouldn’t even allow them in the house when I was a kid. But the last time I went to his house, there were guns lining the walls. That’s how afraid he was of the union. And now he said, I know exactly how Jock felt.

Chip Yablonski: And now, in the wake of his death and the murder of my mother and sister, I, who never have a gun in my home, go to sleep each night, and load a pistol, put it under my pillow, and my wife tosses and turns.

Nicolo Majnoni: And he said, I know I’m not the only one. Thousands of people supported my father in his fight against Tony, the man who is still president.

Chip Yablonski: And I know the thousands of people that supported my father. Are living under that same reign of terror they feel as I feel that unless the government of the United States gets to the root of the corruption and tyranny of the United Mine Workers Union they won’t sleep well.

Nicolo Majnoni: Do something, he implored. Investigate the election. Prosecute Tony Boyle. Chip looked straight into the camera, appealing to the committee, but also calling anyone willing to help.

Chip Yablonski: I make that appeal to this committee. I hope you heed it. I hope that that my father didn’t die in vain.

Nicolo Majnoni: Chip’s plea for help made its way across the country.

Chip Yablonski: I make that appeal—

Nicolo Majnoni: His testimony was everywhere.

Chip Yablonski: I hope you heed it.

Nicolo Majnoni: Replayed over and over across the news.

Chip Yablonski: I hope my father didn’t die in vain.

Nicolo Majnoni: And as his call to arms went out, a very curious thing happened. Over the weeks and months that followed the murders, a very unlikely group of people began to respond to Chip’s call. And some of these people had no prior connection to miners or mining. It was like the most random possible Ocean’s Eleven team, a ragtag group of committed to Jock Yablonski’s revolution. These are the people I spent my Thanksgiving dinners with as a teenager. The reason I got pulled into this story at all. I spent my youth listening to their tales of revolution and the unlikely way they all became a crew. Chip’s crew. These are the guys who would call him the general. The first to officially join the rebellion was a young lawyer named Clarice Feldman. Polish, like the Yablonskis, and used to a good fight. She’s Jewish, grew up with classmates hurling anti-Semitic slurs at her, expecting this girl to back down.

Clarice Feldman: So I’d say, all right, I’ll meet you on the playground. I’d get the shit beat on me, but I would make a fight every time, so then they stopped and it wasn’t worth it. I wouldn’t put up with it.

Nicolo Majnoni: She partnered with Chip in the legal department and started recruiting. Clarice went to speak at a college and picked up another acolyte.

Clarice Feldman: Well, here’s how we got an Ed James.

Nicolo Majnoni: Ed James, previously, a seminary student.

Ed James: I went to a Catholic seminary study to be a priest for a couple years, two and a half years.

Nicolo Majnoni: That didn’t last. Too much silence, not enough women, not his thing.

Ed James: You know, I don’t know what I was doing there.

Nicolo Majnoni: Ed left the seminary, eventually enrolled in a PhD program. And just a few months after Chip made his plea, he volunteered at an anti-war conference where Clarice spoke. Ed got assigned to drive her to a meeting.

Clarice Feldman: And he lost his way, so we never made it. But as we were driving around, I was talking to Ed and I really thought he was terrific.

Nicolo Majnoni: Smart, scrappy, perfect for Chip’s crew. So she turned their meandering drive into a recruiting session.

Clarice Feldman: And I said, Ed, you’re really a smart guy. We need you down in the coal fields. You’d be a great organizer.

Nicolo Majnoni: Ed told her he was getting a doctorate in 1960s post-colonial international political systems. Clarice blinked. And she said, that’s nice, but—

Ed James: You know, why are we fighting halfway around the world for democracy when we can’t have it in a major American trade union here at home?

Nicolo Majnoni: That’s almost-a-priest Ed in 1974, and this sounded like a righteous fight. He said, I’m in. Ed had helped on Bobby Kennedy’s campaign, so Chip assigned him to work on campaign strategy. They sent Ed to West Virginia, where he rendezvoused with a man named Don Stillman. Ed pulled into Don’s driveway. All he knew about Don was that he was basically the rebel’s media guy and a distinguished journalism professor.

Ed James: He was sitting in a chair playing Tommy the Pinball Wizard by The Who, watching a football game with his big male cat on his lap.

Nicolo Majnoni: Don the professor was 25. And he admits, not looking all that distinguished.

Don Stillman: I think he wondered what the hell he’d gotten into.

Ed James: It was just something out of another world.

Nicolo Majnoni: They hit it off and started working together at a rented office nearby. Turns out Professor Don got pulled into the movement after the Farmington mine explosion. He was teaching at a nearby college and took his class to the press conference. So Don was there when Tony literally praised the coal companies.

Don Stillman: And to see the company just dismiss their failures. That got me interested in mine health and safety and union democracy.

Nicolo Majnoni: He was shocked. Don went into journalist mode and started investigating. Why would a union executive defend a coal company? Don’s research project turned into an obsession. And so, by the time Chip’s plea hit the airwaves, Don was primed. He raised his hand to help, a hand that may have been holding a whiskey bottle. And then Professor Don recruited the most surprising member of Chip’s crew.

Bob Hauptman: I was 17 in high school.

Nicolo Majnoni: Bob Hauptman. Bob’s senior class took a trip from Philly to West Virginia, where Professor Dawn spoke to them about the miners’ plight. Bob was transfixed. So, after the talk, Bob the Kid, jet black hair, big glasses, tapped Professor Don.

Bob Hauptman: Gosh, this is pretty interesting. Would you guys like an intern or something? And Don, always looking for free labor, said, well, that’s interesting.

Nicolo Majnoni: Bob’s parents, surprisingly, were on board. But when Don told Chip’s crew about Bob the Kid, they were less on board.

Bob Hauptman: We can’t have a kid down here. Who’s gonna take care of him? Who’s going to make sure he gets his shots or whatever? And as it turned out, I did more taking care of them than they did of me. So. [laughs]

Nicolo Majnoni: Don convinced them it was hard to turn down the free labor. This was a decision that would pay off, big time. He was brilliant at math and technology, two skills almost no one else in the crew had. They put Bob the whiz kid in charge of voter data and logistics. Before he could even legally order a beer, this kid would steer some of their biggest decisions. Chip’s unlikely crew had assembled. Hard-hitting Clarice, almost a priest Ed, Professor Don, Bob the Kid, and plenty of others. They began writing speeches and press releases, devising campaign strategies, getting the groundwork laid for, they hoped, a new campaign. And all of this while Chip and Joe Rauh fought in court to get that new campaign. To keep Jock’s fight alive and find the truth about his murder, Chip’s crew would have to find a way to take down Tony Boyle. That’s next time on Shadow Kingdom. Shadow Kingdom is a production of Crooked Media and Campside Media. It’s hosted and reported by me, Nicolo Majnoni. The show is written by Joe Hawthorne, Karen Duffin and me. Joe Hawthorne is our managing producer. Karen Duffin is our story editor. The associate producers are Rachel Yang and Julie Denesha. Sound Design, mix and mastering by Erica Wong. Our theme song and original score are composed by me and Mark McAdam. Cello performed by Linnea Weiss. With additional sound design support from Mark McAdam. Studio engineering by Rachel Yang and XXX. Fact Checking by Amanda Feinman. Our executive producers are me, Nicolo Majnoni. Along with Sarah Geismer, Katie Long, Mary Nauf and Alison Falzetta from Crooked Media. Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, Matt Shaer and Vanessa Grigoriadis are the Executive producers at Campside Media.