The Eyes Lie: Reloaded
A FOIL request, some redacted police documents and more questions than answers
In September 2024, we published a ‘Story Mix’ — a blend of music, noise, and storytelling that traced the arc of an assault on Dan Rather, a deadly attack in New York City and the R.E.M. song, What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?
Before continuing, do give it a listen or read the long form here. It’s one of my favourite Bullshit Hunting pieces by far.
At the time we were working on it, a request for public documents was sent to the NYPD:
And then?
I forgot about it.
As often happens.
Other cases came and went; other rabbit holes were burrowed into. In fact, the NYPD did respond, a year later, in May 2025, but more pressing matters in a murder trial pulled me away from it.
So, the documents sat in my inbox.
It wasn’t until I was building bookshelves over this past weekend, and while transferring books to my office, my eye caught a cover…
The weird, paranoid, delusional comic from Daniel Clowes (1989) with eerie elements of the attack on Dan Rather in 1986. I ordered a copy in 2024 so I could scour the comic for clues.
My brain clicked, realizing I still had documents waiting for me in my inbox from the NYPD. Plopping down at my laptop, I cracked the first of two PDFs open, and with that, the flame for this story was lit once more.
The Second Man Was Real
It’s right there on page 1, ‘Perp #2 stood by watching. Both fled in unknown direction.’
Remember, in our first instalment, we established that Rather identified ‘a guy’ meaning singular, and that the guy was William Tager. However, there was no mention of a second man, even though Rather had indicated in his first report that there were two men.
A second witness, from a different vantage point, also sees two men:
We were right to question Dan Rather’s recollection that it was William Tager who had assaulted him in 1986.
We were right to question how and when (or where) William Tager confessed to Dr. Park Dietz that he was the guy who assaulted Dan Rather. And certainly, we have more questions still about how Dr. Dietz was given permission to run around with this information in the middle of an impending prosecution.
There were, however, some very interesting leads that I had never encountered before. For example, there was a mysterious ad placed in the Village Voice that allegedly triggered a swarm of press and a stakeout from the NYPD:
The police traced the advertisement to a library, and then ultimately to someone who says… they didn’t place that ad at all. We’re still hunting for this advertisement; if you have a copy of the October 21, 1986, Village Voice, please do hit us up.
Now, it was well known that Dan Rather received a lot of hate mail, no shocker for a media personality, but what was news to us was that some of that mail held hazardous materials:
Not sure who mails empty tubes of mace to a news anchor, but it’s certainly not the craziest shit that’s been put through the USPS.
Then we get into some truly conspiratorial stuff:
Well, now who exactly was this person? And who exactly would they have been working for?
Yet another frayed thread that could be paranoia, a real domestic militiaman…or a Jerky Boys wannabe just fucking around with the cops. Either way, there’s no record of a follow-up… this ‘trainer’ is another mystery piled on top of shitty facts in this case that is just as plausible as any other.
Then, on April 15, 1987, 6 months after Rather’s terrifying ordeal, the NYPD closed the case:
That’s it. Not even a year into their investigation, albeit for assault, the police closed it up.
It’s not until 1994 (7 years later) that William Tager steps out of his car and opens fire in Manhattan and kills Theron Montgomery. Not until 1997 (11 years later) did Rather allegedly make his visual identification of Tager from the attack.
But there’s no evidence to support Rather’s identification; not even Tager identifies a second man, nor does Dr. Park Dietz ever assert the second man being there. Notably, there’s no second man in the Daniel Clowes comic either, just a lone, disturbed individual.
So we can be pretty confident that Dan Rather’s 1997 identification was flawed at best by leaving out the second man — at worst, the identification was completely false.
So what we’re left with is: (1) an alleged kidnapper-trainer for a shadowy group of unknown individuals that called him into action around the time of Rather’s attack; (2) an unknown advertisement placed in the Village Voice on October 21, 1986 that triggered the press to attend and the police to stake out the location; and (3) two men in black who collectively bashed Rather around on October 4, 1986, as reported by Rather himself and another eyewitness up the street.
Soldiers of fortune.
Anonymous advertisements.
Men in black.
Will we ever be able to put this story down?
NYPD Documents #1 (Document Cloud)
NYPD Documents #2 (Document Cloud)