Alphabet Boys, One Year Later

The ACLU is suing the FBI in Colorado. Zebb Hall has a recording to share. And the buried lead: I found Mickey Windecker.

A year ago, I revealed in “Alphabet Boys” Season 1 — “Trojan Hearse” — how the FBI hired a violent felon to infiltrate and undermine the racial justice movement in the summer of 2020.

The documentary podcast, produced by Western Sound and iHeartPodcasts, garnered significant press attention upon its release: The Daily Beast, Democracy Now!, The Guardian, The Grio, Reason, and many other outlets covered “Alphabet Boys.” I also wrote about what I found in “Alphabet Boys” in these two stories in The Intercept:

• The Snitch in the Silver Hearse

• The Honey Trap

Following the show’s release, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon denounced the FBI’s behavior as “outrageous” and sought answers. Republican Representative Dan Bishop of North Carolina labeled it “wrong” and criticized the FBI's actions. And Republican Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio submitted one of my Intercept stories to the record of the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

Since “Alphabet Boys” came out, I’ve received a lot of questions. Among them:

• What’s been the show’s impact?

• What’s happened to Zebb Hall, the activist Mickey Windecker set up in a gun charge?

• What’s happened to Windecker, the FBI’s informant?

Here’s what I can share so far.

Impact

April Rogers, left, was a police officer who went undercover for the FBI in Colorado Springs. Her activity, revealed in “Alphabet Boys,” is the subject of a lawsuit.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado filed a lawsuit in August that accuses the FBI, the Colorado Springs Police Department, and local police officers of overstepping their authority in infiltrating, surveilling, and requesting search warrants aimed at Colorado Springs activists. The charges relate to the activity of the FBI and the Colorado Springs Police Department that I revealed in Episode 8, “The Springs”:

The lead plaintiff in the ACLU’s case is Jacqueline Armendariz Unzueta, whose home was searched by local police working on behalf of the FBI. The search warrant, written by a Colorado Springs detective assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, was based on activities that are protected under the First Amendment. Jacqueline and I discussed the FBI’s secret investigation in Colorado and the ACLU’s lawsuit in this interview with Democracy Now!:

Zebb Hall

According to FBI records, federal agents believed they were investigating possible domestic terrorists when they hired Mickey Windecker to infiltrate Denver’s racial justice movement. Zebb Hall, a Black activist, was a central focus of the government’s investigation.

When FBI agents and their informant weren’t able to coax Hall into participating in a criminal conspiracy — including a harebrained scheme to assassinate the state’s attorney general that went nowhere — Windecker persuaded Hall to buy him a gun. Since Windecker was a felon, and he had told Hall about his felony record, that constituted a crime — transferring a firearm to a felon. Hall pleaded guilty to the charge prior to the release of “Alphabet Boys,” and he was sentenced to probation.

After the show’s release, Hall petitioned the court to vacate his conviction based on his previous lawyer’s alleged failure to investigate Windecker fully and pursue an entrapment defense. Hall told the court that Windecker, who made public death threats while being paid by the FBI, threatened to harm him if he didn’t buy him the gun.

Windecker’s threats of violence weren’t secret. In one YouTube video, Windecker, while secretly being paid by the FBI, states: “I have a plan to kill everybody in the fucking room if need to be”:

Remarkably, in a filing responding to Hall’s motion, the Justice Department acknowledged that the entire FBI operation in Colorado was based on speech — albeit speech of a “violent nature,” according to the U.S. government. There hasn’t been a ruling yet on Hall’s motion to vacate his judgment.

Rather than summarize what’s happened to Hall since “Alphabet Boys,” I asked him to address you directly. Here’s a recording he made describing how he’s been doing since I told his story in “Alphabet Boys”:

Zebbodios “Zebb” Hall

Mickey Windecker

Windecker, the FBI’s informant, didn’t want to be a part of “Alphabet Boys.” He denied that he worked for the FBI:

While reporting “Alphabet Boys,” people who knew Windecker said he’d left Denver. But I didn’t know where he’d gone. When I spoke to him by phone, he refused to say where he was living. But once the first episodes started rolling out, a listener soon spotted him. I received a message from someone who’d listened to the show as he drove down to Daytona Beach, Florida, for Bike Week. He told me he spotted a silver hearse in Daytona. Later, he sent me this voice message describing how he tried to confront Windecker (warning — there’s a humorous jump scare halfway through this recording):

I later found videos and photos of Windecker in Florida on social media from this time period. As “Alphabet Boys” came out, Windecker was working as carnie by day, acting like a Florida Man by night:

Windecker’s silver hearse also received a few upgrades following its days of service for the FBI in Denver:

It’s unclear if Windecker is still working for the FBI. As a policy, the FBI neither confirms nor denies anyone’s role as an informant or, in FBI-speak, a “confidential human source.”

That’s the update a year later.

I’m still reporting on this and related cases. If you have any information about Windecker or other FBI investigations, contact me.

Support

The stories I tell about federal law enforcement take months, and sometimes years, to report.

You can support my work by becoming a paid subscriber …

… or by donating subscriptions: