NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — An exclusive NewsChannel 5 investigation has now discovered the man who has helped to fuel some of the wild conspiracy theories inside the troubled Millersville Police Department.
That man, our investigation discovered, is a self-proclaimed pedophile hunter from Tucson who believes America is controlled by what he calls "a satanic cult masquerading as Jews."
And, like some of the Millersville cops, Craig "Sawman" Sawyer has a history of seeing conspiracies where there are none.
"Some of the information we're dealing with right now, it has to do with kids that are actively being smuggled, being chained to walls, that are being raped," said Shawn Taylor, the conspiracy theorist who was later hired as the assistant police chief in Millersville, a community of about 6,000 just north of Nashville.
After years of voicing some bizarre conspiracy theories, Taylor decided back in May to gather a group of like-minded MAGA activists to run a child sex-predator sting.
That group was led by Craig Sawyer.
"My name is Saw. I'm a Navy SEAL. Defending the innocent is my trade," Sawyer said in the 2013 introduction to an episode of Animal Planet's "Rhino Wars."
After his military service, Sawyer found a new career playing the hero on television's Rhino Wars and in a handful of sniper-related TV shows.
His next move: making a film about going after the pedophile rings he imagined his team of veterans would find on the southern border.
"I know that for this kind of work — especially dealing with cartels — I'd need a team of guys I could depend upon for high-threat security," Sawyer said in the "Contraland" movie.
"So I put together what I call the VIPR team: Veterans Interdicting Pedophile Rings."
Sawyer would also create a nonprofit group, Veterans for Child Rescue, although there's no evidence the group ever rescued any children — and the film doesn't show them actually interdicting any pedophile rings at the border.
Then in 2018 while filming "Contraland," Sawyer led local TV crews in Tucson to an encampment that he and his documentary team thought might have been their big break.
"What we found was a tree that looks like a rape tree back over here," the former NAVY Seal said. Showing a piece of wood nailed to a tree, Sawyer declared. "This may have been a place where a child was made to hold onto this."
Sawyer — who also portrays himself as a trained federal investigator — breathlessly reported his group's stunning conclusion.
"They're telling me this looks like a child rape camp," he said, letting out a big sigh. "That's what they're telling me."
In fact, Tucson Police reported there was no evidence it was anything but a homeless camp.
Still, as the local newspaper reported, the lack of evidence did not stamp out the flames of a sex-trafficking conspiracy theory that had caught fire.
These days, Sawyer continues to push his conspiracy theories on far-right podcasts, including unproven claims about planeloads of children being flown into the U.S. by sex traffickers — which is what he says brought him to Middle Tennessee back in May.
"And one of those locations is near Nashville, Tennessee, that they are flying the children into," Sawyer claimed. "So there's a lot of child trafficking around Nashville."
In fact, Nashville police say they have never had any reason to believe that such flights actually exist.
Of course, like with most conspiracy theories, Craig Sawyer with his hotshot Navy SEAL and law enforcement credentials has never actually produced any evidence. There are no photos or videos of planes, nor of children in cages.
But he does have a video camera where he makes the most outlandish of claims, soliciting donations in the name of combating child sex trafficking.
"In the almost four years that I worked with Veterans for Child Rescue, I'm not aware that they ever actually combated child trafficking — now, therein lies my actual concern," said former Sawyer associate Kim Kelley.
Kelley said, that as a child trafficking survivor herself, she came to the group hoping to make a difference.
What she found instead was what she calls "performance activism," tagging along with law enforcement as they conduct child predator stings — which was the plan in Millersville.
"Catching pedophiles on the internet, that's a worthy cause but that's not the same thing as child sex trafficking," Kelley said.
"Those are two separate things. You can try to coordinate that, but it's not necessarily so."
Online, Sawyer spouts all sorts of bizarre conspiracy theories about a secretive organization, or cabal, engaged in the "torture, rape, organ harvesting and ritual murder" of children, decrying the "Satanic pedos" who "run America."
He also believes Taylor Swift may have "sold her soul" and "the children are her target."
"This whole picture that he's painted of this whole leftist cabal and all of these things, I see them as sort of trigger words or the narrative that he's painting because his followers like to believe that story," Kelley said.
In fact, we discovered that Sawyer announced the creation of Veterans for Child Rescue in 2017 on Alex Jones' show on InfoWars.
"A lot of these pedophiles are very connected. They’re very wealthy, and they own a lot of the media. And things just get swept under the rug," Sawyer told Jones.
He later announced that Jones — the notorious conspiracy theorist who had mocked the murder of innocent children at Sandy Hook — had written a $100,000 check for the cause.
More recently, the former Navy SEAL has given credit for supporting his organization to the Rev. Sean Moon, head of the gun-loving Rod of Iron Ministries, now based in East Tennessee.
Sean Moon believes his father was a new Messiah and that his father chose him as his successor. Sean Moon's crown is a crown of bullets — and he views himself as ruling over a kingdom that will come to rule the Earth.
NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Kelley about the relationship with Moon, "So Craig viewed it as it's a source of money?"
"Right, they literally were saying we would take money from the devil if we could use it to protect children," Kelley answered.
"Again, my problem is they are not actually protecting children with that money. But knowingly associating with a known cult, a very notorious cult, like you can't play stupid that hard to pretend like you don't know."
And Sawyer continues to court the MAGA crowd.
Then, when I began to investigate his friend Shawn Taylor, the Sawman decided to train his sights on me, texting his team, "It seems like a pretty radical, overly-aggressive & desperate effort to stop Shawn from disrupting the cabal in TN."
Sawyer then returned to InfoWars, labeling me a "Pedophile Protector."
There, and on other far-right platforms, he leveled all sorts of bizarre accusations: "It doesn't make any sense on the surface unless there's a criminal network or a pedophilia aspect that Williams is desperate to protect."
"They go on this whole rant with, it's a false premise," Kim Kelley said.
I wanted to know, "Do you think he really believes that?"
"Oof!" she exclaimed. "It's hard for me to understand the mind of a conspiracy theorist because I think a lot of times they get more attention for perpetuating those beliefs and they know what revs people up or gives their followers clickbait to be excited about."
And that's why Kim Kelley argues that people who are driven by conspiracy theories, rather than facts, are distracting from the real problems of human trafficking.
"I look at that as exploiting the problem or profiting off of the problem, which I think makes you part of the problem."
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Do you have information that would help me with my investigation? Send me your tips: phil.williams@newschannel5.com
Here is how this investigation has unfolded:
May 20, 2024: Meet Millersville's conspiracy cop. He imagines sinister plots involving some of the country's most prominent political figures. Taylor recently landed in Millersville as assistant police chief, promising to root out the corruption he sees there. You can continue reading at this hyperlink.
May 22, 2024: The controversy over Millersville's conspiracy cop has now become the latest scandal rocking the tiny town just north of Nashville. Now, two city commissioners want a special meeting to figure out how Shawn Taylor landed his job.
You can continue reading Part Two at this link.
May 24, 2024: An attorney for Millersville conspiracy cop Shawn Taylor has told Millersville's city commission, whom he also represents, that they should not question the assistant police chief's bizarre theories or psychological fitness.
You can read more of this installment at this link.
May 28, 2024: New podcast video, uncovered by NewsChannel 5 Investigates, reveals how Shawn Taylor spread false and dangerous conspiracy theories about last year's Covenant School shooting that left three students and three staff members dead. You can click here to review that story.
May 28, 2024: Anna Caudill agreed to watch the video of Shawn Taylor knowing there might be only so much she could handle. Among the three children and three adults killed that day was her friend, Katherine Koonce. You can read more of Anna's story by tapping on this link.
June 3, 2024: First, he went after Millersville’s former mayor. Now, the town’s assistant police chief says his two critics on the city commission could be next. Shawn Taylor made those comments as he turned to a group of far-right podcasters to defend himself. Tap this link to read from those Taylor's accused.
June 4, 2024: Millersville officials are standing with their assistant police chief and his bizarre conspiracy theories regarding Nashville's Covenant School shooting. Read how this meeting played out at this link.
June 5, 2024: Bryant Kroll wears a lot of hats. He's the attorney representing the embattled City of Millersville. He also represents Mayor Tommy Long, who faces accusations of misconduct in an ouster suit. Plus, he's the attorney for Bryan Morris and Shawn Taylor. To understand the role he plays, you can read that here.
June 6, 2024: In Shawn Taylor's world — in the immortal words of Taylor Swift — "I'm the problem, it's me." I explain how we got here in this piece, which you can click on here.
June 18, 2024: Millersville's conspiracy cop now has his very own conspiracy-minded attorney. Now, our NewsChannel 5 investigation has discovered that Todd Callender's own theories are sometimes even more far-fetched than Taylor’s twisted view of the world. Click here to read more about Shawn Taylor’s attorney.
July 15, 2024: What happens when you give people with bizarre conspiracy theories a gun and a badge? Secret recordings from inside the troubled Millersville Police Department provide a sobering answer to that question.
Read more on this investigation by tapping here.
July 22, 2024: In an explosive new development that could bring new trouble for the already-troubled Millersville Police Department, a key player in a child-predator sting says the lead detective on that operation lied under oath.
You can read more about that by clicking here.
July 23, 2024: District Attorney General Robert Nash has asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to look into the Millersville Police Department's handling of a child predator sting, including possible perjury by the lead detective. You can read more about that by tapping here.
July 29, 2024: The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has expanded its probe of the embattled Millersville Police Department, now looking into allegations that officials may have used sensitive law enforcement data to investigate their political enemies. Read more about that by clicking here.
August 5, 2024: With the Millersville Police Department now the focus of a TBI investigation, NewsChannel 5 Investigates has uncovered new questions about the stories that conspiracy cop Shawn Taylor tells about himself.
You can catch up on the investigation by tapping here.
August 12, 2024: In a perplexing pair of podcast interviews, the Millersville chief of police says the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has begun limiting his department's access to certain sensitive law enforcement data. Read more about this latest development here.
August 26, 2024: He has helped to fuel some of the wild conspiracy theories inside the troubled Millersville Police Department. He is a self-proclaimed pedophile hunter who believes America is controlled by what he calls "a satanic cult masquerading as Jews." Read more about Craig Sawyer by clicking here.
August 27, 2024: Craig Sawyer’s response to my investigation illustrates how conspiracy theorists frequently use wild accusations and blustery language to avoid giving real answers about their bizarre beliefs. Tap here to watch as we dissect his 90-minute diatribe.
September 4, 2024: Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Millersville Police Department and Shawn Taylor’s home, executing a pair of search warrants as the criminal investigation into the troubled agency enters a dramatic new phase. Read more about this new twist in the Millersville investigation.
September 10, 2024: “No, a TBI agent didn't pee in Shawn Taylor's tub, agency says in response to Taylor's latest claim.” The headline says it all. Click here.
September 19, 2024: QAnon-aligned voices of the far right are threatening retaliation against a judge, a district attorney and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents for their roles in the recent Millersville raids. Details posted here.
October 7, 2024: A well-known Arizona election denier says his group — working through Millersville's conspiracy-minded assistant police chief — gained access to a highly confidential federal database that tracks Americans’ banking transactions and other financial data. Read the exclusive story here.
October 22, 2024: Two key GOP lawmakers – the chairman and a member of the state House committee that oversees the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation – recently warned the agency that it could face “unnecessary political fallout” if it does not end its criminal probe into the troubled Millersville Police Department. You can read the letter here.
October 24, 2024: A letter from two GOP lawmakers, which appeared to threaten the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for its probe of the Millersville Police Department, was the "wrong way to go," House Speaker Cameron Sexton said. But there is more to the speaker's reaction.
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