Following the shooting of Columbine, in 1999, several questions arose regarding the shooters, the motive, and what really happened. One man has been trying to figure that out ever since, William Zabel. Working as a teacher in Littleton, Colorado, Zabel knew some of the students that went to Columbine. The day the event happened his mother recorded all the live footage on her VCR making a record of the event that would later be edited to fit a narrative. It was clear that the story the officials were telling was different from what students were telling him.
Years later, Zabel created a website, www.phantomchaser.com. He spoke on several Podcast describing the events as he knew them and the conspiracy that was being covered up. The official report, measuring over 10,000 pages, backed up many of his claims through eye witness testimony and evidence collected at the scene, but never explained. There was discussion of a book being written but when I tried to hunt it down there was nothing to find.
Zabel was put on my radar by a fellow Twitter conspiracy theorist and I quickly dove into the few podcasts that I could find. Some episodes took some digging since many of the older shows are not on Spotify or other mainstream podcast apps. While some of Zabel’s theories are considered controversial he has a knack for backing up his theories with facts that are otherwise ignored.
There is a joke that “the internet is forever” but that is not the case. I tried to find Zabel’s plugs, the website and book that was mentioned in every podcast, but the internet is not forever. Phantom Chaser is no longer a website and I was told by a prompt the name is for sale. The book could not be found on any website, Amazon or Thriftbooks.com. I was starting to think that Zabel and his work had been wiped clean which tells me he was onto something.
It wasn’t until I found a YouTube channel with a creator of the same name that I finally started to have some leads. At first, I wasn’t sure this was the same man, until I spotted some videos of Columbine that were referenced in those podcast episodes so many years ago. I found an Email address on a Substack account connected to the YouTube channel and sent a message. The next day he wrote back and he was the same William Zabel that had talked about Columbine all those years ago and he was still willing to do so.
A few days later I sat on my deck in front of my house and placed the phone call. The voice on the other end was the same as the one in the podcasts. While we were supposed to talk about Columbine I decided to focus on Zabel instead. Where had he been? What happened to the website? Where was his book? The answers came soon enough.
From 2016 to 2020, Zabel was living in Germany where he worked with his girlfriend at Siemens as a fluid control technician. The reality is that being a conspiracy theorist isn’t loaded with money and many people who follow a path to the truth find themselves in financial ruin instead. Personally, I work two jobs while running a website, podcast, substack, and YouTube channel. People are not pounding on my door to throw money at me. Zabel, the man who was interviewed several times about Columbine a decade ago, was in the same boat. He saw a chance at a stable job and took it. 2020 changed things when the German government deported all foreign citizens back to their homelands. Life had to be started over again in Colorado from scratch, during a pandemic. As for the website, Zabel tried to access his site one day only to find that it didn’t exist anymore. He contacted the severer and received few answers and no explanation as to what happened. As for the book, it was never finished.
The story was far from what I had been picturing having been through some questionable experiences while doing research on a book about Duncan Lemp. Drones flying over my house at 11:30 at night. Cars parked down the street and disappearing when I spot them while grabbing the mail. The car that was pointed towards my house with an antenna mounted to the roof, my internet connection is through radio waves… I have seen some things and Zabel had been though it too. He told me about cars following him in Littleton. Then there were the stories he shared on the podcast episodes. While people like to think that conspiracy theorists are kooks and weirdos I have to point out that they seem to die under strange circumstances while researching things the public believes are not true. Take for example Gary Webb, a reporter for the San Jose Mercury news. A simple case of money confiscated by the police led him into a story of the CIA running drugs into the United States feeding the crack cocaine epidemic. He lost his job, became bankrupt, and was found dead to two gunshot wounds to the back of the head. Then there is the case of Bill Cooper, a radio host and writer. When a car sat in front of his house playing loud music, he went into his truck to tell them to turn it off. When he realized the people inside were federal agents he turned around and fled into his house. The agents chased him onto his property and shot him to death. Bill couldn’t run that fast having only one leg.
Much of the information that Zabel collected over the years regarding Columbine is now available online. A forum thread called Echoes of Columbine carries PDF copies you can download for free. What I am interested in the most are the interviews, the personal statements made about what happened. The weird videos of parents disregarding the fact that people died that day. While Zabel has a wealth of knowledge his eyes are starting to look elsewhere. “I really want to do a book on 9/11 next,” he told me after I asked him if he was ever going to drop the Columbine case or move onto other things. We shared many of the same facts and had similar conclusions as to what happened that day.
After the sudden surge of school shootings, I shared my theory that the transgender shooters are a new generation of MK ultra operatives. He was having the same thought. “It’s a program that never ended,” he said. After two hours of picking his brain and running things past him that I had heard on other podcasts it was time to go. When Hemingway would write he would try to stop when he didn’t want to, that way he was eager to start again the next day. I felt the same way about this conversation. I still have questions about Columbine and the more I learn more mysteries reveal themselves. I decided to save 9/11 for another time, it would give me a legitimate excuse to call the man again and hear what he has to say. There is a list of people I regret never meeting or talking to over the years. Some celebrities and others like the late Michael Ruppert that I grew to respect over the years. Zabel became one of those people, like his podcasts episodes there is so much packed into a two hour period and you have only touched the surface. I hope to hear more from this man and when I asked him “are you back?” he said “I am”.
You can find William Zabel at:
https://www.youtube.com/@williamzabel2080
https://twitter.com/bedlam66?s=20
Other links: