The author finally begins his story about rampant criminality centered in Nebraska.
The Franklin case, which has dominated political life in Nebraska for three years, has chilling implications for the whole United States.
The unfinished business of the Franklin investigation is a matter not only of justice for children in one state, but of the lives of untold numbers of children everywhere.
Evidence developed from Franklin and King's activities leads into drug-trafficking, money-laundering, pornography, child prostitution, and the kidnaping and sale of children in different parts of the United States, and abroad.
Gary Caradori
The shocking treatment of Alisha Owen and Paul Bonacci by the courts in Nebraska is one give-away, of what a high stake has been wagered on suppressing the Franklin scandal.
Members of the state Senate and investigators who sought to discover the truth of the matter, found that out earlier on, in a personal, violent manner.
CHAPTER 1
"NEBRASKA IS DEATH-LACED"
"If even half of what I have heard is true, this is the biggest thing to ever hit Nebraska," Gary Caradori told his wife, Sandie, late one night in August 1989.
Although he was exhausted, the new chief investigator for the Nebraska Legislature's Franklin committee did not sleep that night.
There was more cause for sleeplessness in the weeks that followed. On September 14, 1989 someone broke into the Caradoris' home.
By January 1990, Caradori was writing to Nebraska Secretary of State Alan Beerman, "We-my employees and myself-have been followed and questionable situations have arisen during this investigation. Threatening situations have resulted numerous times. Why? Am I too close to something they do not want to become public?"
On April 13, 1990, a repairman from the Executone company reported to Caradori that his phone was tapped, a finding confirmed to him by sources inside the phone company.
The investigator continued to work, with a growing sense of the importance of his task. On May 29, 1990 Caradori wrote to Franklin committee chairman Loran Schmit.
Loran Schmidt
"To be frank," he told the senator, "it is my opinion that we are the only ones who are seriously working to get this case 'out in the open,' so to speak. I honestly feel that should we terminate this investigation that no further work will be done on it."
On June 23, 1990, Caradori took a few hours off to attend a barbecue at the Omaha home of Mary Lyons-Barrett.
Most of those present were members of the Concerned Parents, a group of citizens who were outraged about the lack of a serious investigation of child abuse by state or federal authorities, and the campaign in Nebraska's major newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald, to discredit young victim-witnesses.
Arriving in a 1980 white Corvette, Caradori told Concerned Parents president Trish Lanphier he had taken the car out of storage for the day's drive, because his other vehicles had been tampered with, and he was "sure that no one had ever seen that car."
He was planning to sell his boat for the same reason, but what he most feared, he told Lanphier, was that someone would tamper with the private plane he often flew.
"It would be so easy to tamper with a plane." In early July 1990, Caradori phoned Senator Schmit. "We've got them!" he exclaimed about some new evidence he had just developed.
“There's no way they can get out of it now!" He and his son Andrew (“A.J. “) would be flying to Chicago for the All-Star Game the weekend of July 7-8, he told Schmit.
Caradori was going to do a little investigating on the side and would review the new evidence with the senator, upon his return the following Wednesday.