Speaking of hearing voices, I just heard the voice of former Antioch councilman Ralph Hernandez on the radio in my car. He was featured on the nationally syndicated Osgood File this morning on KCBS.
Well, well. Ralph goes national. Folks may remember that he resigned from City Council a number of years ago (corrected at 10:41 a.m.) but he has remained a vocal community activist or agitator, depending on your point of view.
It seems Hernandez, a private investigator, was hired by Jaycee Lee Dugard’s kidnapper Phillip Garrido to verify affidavits from people who used a machine Garrido had invented, as Dave Ross on the Osgood File described it, “that allowed him, without speaking, to make other people hear voices inside their heads.” (Click here to see the Contra Costa Times stories.)
You can see the affidavits yourself at http://voicesrevealed.blogspot.com/
I’ve heard from other folks in Antioch that Hernandez described his work for Garrido as “verifying the existence of angels.”
Hernandez said in the Ross interview that he sat inside the Garrido house, met the wife and was introduced to a young woman between the age of 15 to 20. It’s unclear if this was Dugard or one of her two children fathered by Garrido.
But when Ross asked private eye Hernandez if he saw or felt anything strange in the house, well, here’s a short segment of the transcript:
(Ross:) Anything strange about the house itself? I mean, if anybody would walk into that house, would they have any inkling what might have gone on there?
(Hernandez:) Well, no. I didn’t have any reservations about the house. I didn’t say to myself, like: ‘Hey, there’s something strange there.’ I didn’t get that.”
(Ross) No, just an ordinary fellow who had invented a machine that let him insert voices telepathically into other people’s heads …
What does Ralph say about his time in the national spotlight? So far, he hasn’t returned my call although he had clearly been talking to the media and probably law enforcement.
Hernandez told me in an email that he will make me wait to talk to him about Garrido for as long as he has been waiting for me to write a story he suggested that compares the levels of pension benefits of retirees from various public agencies. Back when Ralph suggested the story, my editor said the idea had merit but thought it was too ambitious for our limited resources at the time.
So, I wait by the phone, another one of those devices that lets you hear voices inside your head.
