Sunnydale Conspiracy

I'm of two minds about your thought here.

On the one hand, we're talking about a mayor and not POTUS. If the Wilkins family were made up of honest politicians (not that I'm saying they were, I'm just saying "if"), the most someone can hope to gain from removing Mayor Richard Wilkins III from office is an open seat.

However, given the sudden build-up of infrastructure (including a hydroelectric damn and International Airport) in the seven years prior to the town collapsing into a sinkhole (I promise to expound on this at a later date), I'm wondering if the Mayor's office wasn't heavily involved in graft. Given the size of the projects in question, I can only imagine that the bribery could be very lucrative. Then I could see assassination as maybe something worth trying.

I know that some of these projects were built after Wilkins's disappearance, but given the size of them, they had to be in the works while Wilkins still held office.

I was wondering if you have evidence that Mayor Richard Wilkins III was involved in corruption? It would help me a great deal in my research as well.

By the way, apropos of your post, did you see Without a Trace (http://www.cbs.com/primetime/without_a_trace/) the other night? The plot of the episode bore eery similarities to the Wilkins scenario. Instead of a mayor, it was a U.S. Congressman; and instead of a high school graduation, it was a college graduation. They even had "the student protest that got out of hand" that resulted in the nearby science building getting destroyed in a fire started in one of the classrooms? They, of course, concluded that U.S. Congressman had been involved in illegal gambling instead of construction.

Considering that Wilkins has gone missing since this incident, I thought it was striking.

From:

Unfortunately it'll be some time before this episode is aired in Britain.

One thought on infrastructure - is there any information on the town's water supplies, other than the river? I've wondered about pumping from an underground reservoir e.g. a water dome (similar to an oil dome) triggering the collapse, but I can't seem to find much information about the town's utilities.

From:

I can tell you that there was an extensive network of sewers under the town that went back almost a century. The strange thing about it is that according to blueprints I found in the archives at the California Public Utilities Commission (http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/), they seemed to be far more extensive than what a population of approximately 38,500 people would really need, not to mention that some of them seem to be quite large.

While I don't question the extensiveness of the sewer network, I do question the dimensions on the blueprints since they seem to indicate that they'd be as large as the underground aqueducts in Rome in some places. I'm hoping to get some confirmation about this.

Also, there was definitely an electric power plant in town, because it was knocked off line a few weeks before the town collapsed in teh sinkhole.

There was also a hydroelectric dam that was quite large, but I can't seem to find any paperwork on the state or local level indicating when and where it was approved. All I can tell you that the first mention I saw of it was in February 2002 in the local Sunnydale newspaper (there are microfiches available at UCLA, but I haven't been able to find anything online). I haven't been able to find any indication that it even existed before that time, and that's going by the local paper. And as far as I can tell, the federal and state governments aren't aware it ever existed at all!

Hope this helps.

From:

There is nothing unusual about the Sunnydale hydroelectic dam. Every significant river in California has got a dam on it. Some have several. These are used for generating electricity, flood control, and to create reservoirs of water needed for communities and agriculture. It would be much stranger if there wasn't a dam there.

Hydroelectric dams don't just provide power for the local community. (You think Boulder City needs a dam that big?) Power from the Sunnydale dam was helping keep the lights burning in L.A. and San Francisco.

From:

No, I agree with you there. Hydroelectric dams aren't uncommon. What I'm saying is that there is literally no mention of this damn anywhere prior to February 2002.

For example, there are no USGS maps indicating the presence of a dam prior to February 2002. Suddenly, the hydroelectic dam at the edge of the town limits appears from nowehere on a map dated August 2002. According to the documentation, there was a survey to check and make sure the dam was not damaged in the series of earthquakes that rocked the town the preceding May.

However, I've been unable to find any supporting documentation indicating the when, where, why, and how the dam built. There are no historical records in any archive that I've searched and, as I've said, surveys of the region prior to the August 2002 map indicate that there's no dam there at all.

From:

You can't find any reference to the Sunnydale Dam (note the lack of an "n" at the end) prior to 2002 because it wasn't called the "Sunnydale Dam" prior to 2002. From it's initial dedication ceremony, presided over by Richard Wilkins Jr. in 1953, up until 2002 it was known as "Wilkins Levee." (Wilkins himself was said to have insisted that it be called a levee, rather than a dam, because he couldn't bring himself to say the word, because it is a homophone of "damn." One story, probably apocryphal, had Wilkins refer to it in private conversations as the "Wilkins Darn.")

It was renamed, without any fanfare, as part of the city's attempt to distance itself from the Wilkins name after the extent of the corruption rampant in Richard Wilkins III's administration became known.

From:

This does not, however, address the absence of any structure, labeled either dam or levee, at the appropriate place on the Sunnydale River, on USGS 7.5 minute maps (Sunnydale Quadrangle, last edited in 1973) or on the more recent International Scale map of the area (last print edit 1980; currently available from USGS in downloadable form).

The absence of the structure from the 7.5 minute map is particularly critical, as small ground features (a corral less than 500sq ft in extent in the Union Mill Quadrangle comes to mind) are mapped with meticulous precission.

From:

There are about 57,000 sheets to the 7.5 minute maps series. You think that the omission of the Sunnydale Dam is the only error on them?

From:

very-true-thing.livejournal.com

Good point. I'd like to recommend the book How to Lie with Maps (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226534219/qid=1141248226/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/203-3903858-2764724). That's full of the stuff that gets onto (or gets left off) maps by accident, malice, subterfuge or as a joke.

From:

A classic example is the Post Office Tower in London (now renamed the Telecom Tower) which from its construction in 1966 until the late 90s was omitted from all maps of London published in the UK, under the Official Secrets Act. For most of that time it was the tallest building in London, and as you can see it is hardly inconspicuous!

From:

See? You bring up a side point.

One: We need to know when the Sunnydale Hydroelectric Dam was built. We have no indication anywhere even beyond the USGS maps the when, where, and why of it.

Hypothesis A: The Hydroelectric Dam had, in fact, been approved and built between the 1930s (when such a large structure as the one you see in the August 2002 Sunnydale Press could have built) and August 2002. Yet, its very existence was hidden. The question is: Why?

Hypothesis B: The dam in question is actually a much newer construction that was built, somehow, without anyone leaving a trace. Considering how many people would be needed to build it, you would think there'd be a record somewhere, yes? That says to me that a lot of money got spent to keep people very, very quiet about its existence. Its presence was only revealed broader public when the people in power became concerned about whether it was safe in the wake of the May 2002 earthquake.

However, the issue of keeping it a "secret" obvioulsy became moot after February 2002, when references to it suddenly appeared as a result of investigations into the the Enron-California energy crisis that happened during 2001.

From:

In addition, something which happened in another country, under a set of laws which not only do not exist in the US but which would be patently unconstitutional if proposed, is not only irrelevant but smacks of an attempt to distract from the actual matter under discussion.

From:

But the issue here is that there isn't even a mention in the local press prior to February 2002.

The town has existed for more than a century and a large hydroelectric dam such as the one photographed in the August 2002 issue of the Sunnydale Press reporting that the final survey of the dam showed that it had been undamaged in the earthquake of May 2002 could not have been built before the 1930s.

Therefore, some record of the dam at least being built or showing that it actually exist prior to August 2002 should be available somewhere. I merely bring up the USGS map as one piece of evidence showing a lack of evidence for the dam's existence. However, coupled with no indication of its existence in any public or private document prior to February 2002, and coupled with the lack of photographic evidence of its existence prior to August 2002, I fund it's sudden "appearance" to be highly suspect.

As

ffutures says in the comment below yours, there has to be a reason why the existence of the hydroelectric dam was hidden before that time.

From:

There are about 57,000 sheets to the 7.5 minute maps series. You think that the omission of the Sunnydale Dam is the only error on them?

I'm not going to get into an expertise wank over this- obviously there is no way for either of us to verify the other's knowledge of mapping error rates, nor experience in using USGS source materials (although I'm willing to bet that only one of us has ever spent much time reading 1856 GLO survey notes). I will say that, in my experience, the absence of a landscape modification as large as a hydroelectric dam, especially in an area of intense mapping due to seismic activity, would not be of a class of information manipulation decribable as mere "error."

From:

Thank you for answering this for me. I only was able to check in today. This is my point exactly.

From:

Ummm....did you actually look at these maps, or did you just take someone else's word for the lack of the Sunnydale Dam on these maps?

I actually checked out the USGS site, and the all maps for the Sunnydale area were last updated in 1995 (not 1973 as you claim)

The map showing the dam is:

TCA1254 Lake Wilkins 343000N 1195230W 1995

Contrary to popular opinion Sunnydale Dam (or Wilkins Levee) is not on the Sunnydale River. It's on the Santa Zeny river, about 20 miles NW of the city of Sunnydale itself.

From:

Sorry if I confused you by using a map irrelevant to the specific discussion as an example of the normal resolution of USGS 7.5 quadrant maps.

I am, however, surprised to find any USGS 7.5 map has been updated at that late date, as new surveys on that grid ceased decades ago in favor of the International (1:1,000) scale maps.

From:

Richard Wilkins wasn't just a mayor. The Wilkins family was building a political dynasty that was just as far reaching as the Kennedy's. For example, Richard Wilkin's cousin, Roger Tribby, served as the Agriculture Secretary during President Bartlett's first term.

From:

Holy Moly! I just googled the name and...holy mother god! He looks exactly like Wilkins.

Compare:
Roger Tribby (http://www.joshlyman.com/onetimes1.html) (scroll down)

Richard Wilkins III (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wilkins)

From:

buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y107/pizzaweasel317/bones/41_1x10.jpg

I wonder if they're branching out. This guy was a California plastic surgeon before he got caught doing illegal stuff....check out the resemblence, even with the beard.

From:

I wouldn't get too carried away - it's a fairly common sort of face, I found another like it very easily:

From:

Sorry - this turns out to be an apparent fake - see my separate post.

From:

learnedhand-dj.livejournal.com

I've heard of a couple of people who tried to research the political history of Sunnydale, but they were stymied by the almost total lack of concrete information about the unsuccessful politicians of the town. You can find out all you want about the various mayors, going all the way back to the original Richard Wilkins, but there's surprisingly little written anywhere about any political rivals those mayors should have had.

Yes, I said should have had. At first, I thought the Wilkins family stayed in power for so long because they had a political machine that surpassed even the Daleys of Chicago or Boss Tweed in NYC. I mean, to have either family members or cronies run a town for over a century with no legitimate political challenge is amazing. But that's the thing. It's too amazing. Based on all the other strange stuff that has come out about Sunnydale over the years, especially on alt.conspiracy.sunnydale, I've begun to realize that there had to be more than that going on.

When it came to political opponents, I don't think the Wilkins machine discredited them or out-bribed them or did any of the usual political machine things to beat them. I think the Wilkins machine literally didn't allow any legitimate political opponents into the ring. Sure, there was usually someone running against the Wilkins machine candidate, but it was always some obscure person who did no campaigning and disappeared as soon as the race was over. And I mean disappeared in the Sunnydale sense, not in the maintained a low profile sense. There's no way that the Wilkins machine could have avoided facing any strong opponents for so long without being in the position to pick who their opponents were in the first place.

In fact, I think the Wilkins machine had more than just a political stranglehold over the town. I think they controlled everything from behind the scenes. I mean, have you looked at some of the stats posted about the racial makeup of the town? There is no logical explanation for a southern California town with almost no Hispanics. Unless...they were being somehow kept out.

Anyway, to get back to your original question, I don't think any political opposition group could have existed for long enough to get strong enough to actually do anything as big as planning an assassination. The only way I could see anything like that going on would be if there was some other group (Russian mafia, maybe?) trying to wrest control of the non-political stuff from the Wilkins machine.

From:

A little skeptical about the Russian connection - did Sunnydale even have any Russian residents? The only name that comes to mind is Rosenberg, one of the passengers on The Last Bus. Any connections there?

From:

samthereaderman.livejournal.com

Rosenberg is a German (or more likely Yiddish, since most Americans with that name are Jewish). Berg is of course German for city so it would translate to City of Roses.

From:

An interesting footnote on the Hispanic thing; The BBC recently mentioned a US immigration service report claiming that Sunnydale is now the most common address for illegal immigrants in the USA to put on forged documents; since so many records were lost, they're very difficult to verify. See my other comment re. Sunnydale's suspicious lack of off-site backups.

From:

redrikki.livejournal.com

Personally, my main question about the Wilkins dynasty is where did they all come from? In 1903, Richard Wilkins the first married Edna Mae Jones, but according to local church records no child of their was ever baptized, nor were there any birth announcements in the local papers. Instead 40 years later there is suddenly a Richard Wilkins the second running for office. Did Richard the first and Edna Mae just adopt? If so, why do all of the Richards look nearly identical. It's all very suspicious.

From:

Rumour has it that Richard Wilkins the first was a bit of a womanizer. Richard Wilkins II was really his bastard son, by the upstairs maid. Edna Mae made her husband send the child (and the maid) away. The son grew up in the East, and didn't return to Sunnydale to collect his inheritance until after the deaths of his father, and his wife.

From: (Anonymous)

This post will be in two parts:

Part 1....

Hmmm, this assassination theory is a new one on me. After I spent some time thinking about it, I must concede that there could be some grains of truth there.

The way I originally heard it, is that Mayor Wilkins died when the high school collapsed; though must admit that that was mainly conjecture as no body was ever found. The only 'evidence' the Sunnydale PD provided was based on statements by some of the student body present at the graduation ceremony. The reports stated that the Mayor and the then School Prinical, a Mr. Snyder, were inside the school trying to ensure that there was no-one inside it when it collapsed. Principal Snyder's body was never found either. The students that allegedly gave these interviews were never named.

So we have two mysterious disappearances, and considering how closely Principal Snyder was rumoured to work alongside Mayor Wilkins, we have to wonder if they had stumbled across something someone didn't want them to bring to public light.

One thing that never felt right to me was the official explanations as to the destruction of the school. If it was a gas explosion as the newspapers reported, then how could either Mayor Wilkins or Principal Snyder have reacted before it in order to check that the school was empty. This lead me to two possible conclusions, either the school was somehow rigged with demolition charges (which admittedly could work alongside your assassination theory) or there was something else that they were aware of. Considering the final fate of the town, I think that the 'something else' theory would hold the most weight.

In my opinion, that something else could be that the Mayor stumbled across the knowledge that Sunnydale was geologically unstable. It wouldn't be the first part of California that would reside on top of known fault lines... it's just that in this instance, I believe it was being purposely kept from the public.

Think about what one of your other posters stated, Mayor Wilkins definitely hard large plans when it came to expanding our small town. I think while he was approving plans for the airport and other projects he may have come across the information that eventually led to his downfall.

I believe he realised this may have been a conspiracy, and while attempting to work in our best interest kept that knowledge to a small group of people. Namely, himself, his deputy and the high school Principal. We all know the tragic fate of the Deputy Mayor, but the main question on my lips was why the Principal of the local high school was involved at all.

Digging into the history of Sunnydale, I discovered that there had been three major earthquakes. The first in 1812 which buried the Sunnydale Mission; and two relatively close to one another in 1932 and 1937 respectively - an unnamed temple was rumoured to have been destroyed in the first of these.

Personally I can remember a few mild tremors from my own time in Sunnydale; the most notable a few years before the collapse of the high school, and some others afterward. Online searching explained that an earthquake was responsible the destruction of one of the UCSD campuses merely a year after the one that took the high school.

From: (Anonymous)

Part 2...

I'm sure that there are many other examples which could be identified. The one that interested me most, was the survey done after the collapse of Sunnydale. It reported that the epicentre of the final earthquake which destroyed our town, was in fact at the high school. Which to me nicely explained the mystery of why the high school Principal had been brought into the Mayor's inner circle as it were.

I'm sure there are some out there that doubt my theories. "Not much of a mystery," they'll say or possibly comment on it "Not being a big deal, that there are plenty of fault lines in California."

So I challenge these people to go out and do the research for themselves. All reports of any geological surveys done in Sunnydale in the past century or so all say the same thing. That Sunnydale is geologically stable, that there is no evidence of fault lines running anywhere near the town let alone directly through it.

Someone, or some group of people, didn't want the people living there to know about the risks. I can't think of any reason why this may be so, but they went to great lengths to ensure that the evidence would be hidden.

I think that the earthquake that destroyed the high school could have provided just the oppurtunity these people needed to make both the Mayor and the Principal disappear; disposing of the Deputy Mayor had been messy and required someone to take the fall. We don't know if they were actually killed that day, or simply taken away and a cover story for both their disappearance and the earthquake that officially wasn't was set in place. All we know is that that was the last time either of them were ever seen.

Whatever the fates of the Mayor and the Principal may have been, the rest of the facts speak for themselves.

The surveys show that the area was stable, and was at no risk of earthquakes. To that I would counter with the history records and the giant crater that used to be our hometown.

What is still unknown is who was behind the cover-up, and considering that the majority of the town's population managed to leave before the collapse, what was the point of it..?

So to end this I say that next time you're out with any of the other surviving Sunnydalers - raise your glasses in a toast to the Mayor, his Deputy and the Principal... three people who bravely gave their lives to uncover the secrets of our town.

The Sunnydale Theorist
The poster of this wishes to remain anonymous, but be aware they will return.

From:

USGS records show that Sunnydale was *not* geologically stable. There was a long history of earthquake activity in the area. The earliest recorded earthquake was in 1812. That earthquake destroyed the "Old Sunnydale Mission." There were also two major earthquakes in the 1930s, which caused extensive damage. One in 1932, and the second in 1937. The 1937 quake was reported to have "swallowed an entire church into the ground."

There were several smaller quakes in the decade proceeding the collapse. A 5.1 was recorded in May of 1997. There was also a series of earthquakes in January of 2000, ranging in intensity from 4 to 5 on the Richter Scale.

From:

draconin.livejournal.com

The suspicious thing to me is not so much the number of earthquakes - after all Sunnydale IS near a fault line. What made me sit up and take notice though was the locations of the epicentres.

What little information I was able to find indicates that, almost without exception, any earthquake that affects Sunnydale invariably has it's epicentre within the town limits!.

Statistics on this matter are very hard to locate - normal hacking methods don't seem to work as well with Sunnydale institutions. The security measures they seem to regard as 'normal' would only be implemented by databases that were almost continually being hacked into. I theorise that if one could trace back some of the hacking attempts that have occured it might give some interesting insights into what's been going on in Sunnydale.

From:

There is no need to advance some whacked conspiracy theory to explain this. It is merely a conspiracy of convenience. Before the advent of modern seismology, only a very rough estimate of where the epicentre for an earthquake lay could be made. Often it was done by looking to see where the most severe damage was done, which--lo and behold!--is in the town closest to where the earthquake was! So even for earthquakes whose epicentres were far from the actual town site, the epicentre *recorded* was in the town.

Institutions with records from Sunnydale *are* almost continuously being hacked into: by people like you. Everyone with any sort of records about Sunnydale is under an almost constant barrage of requests for information from the conspiracy nuts. Some use legal means, such as FOIA requests, others, like yourself try to use illegal means to obtain that data. Some hackers have deliberately tried to alter records, some laughably (come on, who can believe that story some crackpot planted about the giant snake?) Of course such institutions have implemented security measures that are a bit more stringent than is the norm.

From:

draconin.livejournal.com

C'mon, security measures that are a bit more stringent than is the norm.? I hear that the major's office had to call in a consultant from the NSA to secure their computers! And, at the other extreme, if you check out the Sunnydale Morgue's website you'll find an icon at the bottom of the page labelled "Backdoor" that gives access to all files. Apparently they've been hacked so often that they've simply given up. After all, what possible interest, beyond the macabre, could anyone have in the "cause of death" data?

From:

He wasn't a consultant from the NSA. The NSA doesn't loan out consultants to the mayor's offices of little California cities. He was a guy who padded his resume by claiming to have done some consulting for the NSA. I once had a taxi driver who claimed that he used to work as an assassin for the CIA.

And that "Sunnydale Morgue" web site is a hoax. The real one's been offline since the town was destroyed in the spring of 2003.

From:

Didn't you ever wonder about that? Why were so many Sunnydale sites hosted locally, with no backups outside the city? The web hosting rates there can't have been unusually favourable, I can't think of any company or organisation outside Sunnydale that was hosted there or suffered much disruption as a result of the city's loss.

From:

Three words: Calax Research and Development. (I guess that's four words.)

Up until 1996 they were Sunnydale's leading employer. One of their products was web servers. In a bid to keep Calax in business, when they started experiencing difficulty competing with cheaper Linux offerings, the city bought several Calax systems, and then mandated that all branches of the civic government use those servers. Calax went bankrupt anyway, but the servers that the city had bought were still 100% operational, but with so much money invested in the servers themselves, they didn't have the budget to implement a proper backup plan for them.

I certainly wouldn't be surprised if some money exchanged hands under the table in the Calax deal (and Mayor Wilkins was one of their investors) but it was the sort of petty graft that is endemic in all branches of government.

From:

Was that where they were based? I thought it was Sunnyvale! Hell's teeth... Does that mean that we have to add the Moloch worm to the list of Sunnydale phenomena? There are anti-virus companies that made their first million fighting that one!

From:

samthereaderman.livejournal.com

There's a more simple explanation for why all the Sunnydale websites vanished. Webhosts don't keep sites around when their owners don't pay their bills. And with no post office in Sunnydale to forward mail, even if the survivors had left a forwarding address, the bills wouldn't get to the site owners. Besides a lot of the businesses and organizations in Sunnydale went bankrupt or closed down. I'm sure the Sunnydale PTA for instance, no longer meets so had no need to keep its website.

I mean look at all the chaos with New Orleans, and much of that city and its infrastructure is still there.

That reminds me. Can we find out who handled the Sunnydale evacuation and get them to run FEMA?

From:

geyer-fb.livejournal.com

Someone, or some group of people, didn't want the people living there to know about the risks. I can't think of any reason why this may be so, but they went to great lengths to ensure that the evidence would be hidden.

There's a very good reason. Property values in Sunnydale remained much lower than the average in other communities in Santa Barbara County in the '90s. Developers were desperate to get people to move to Sunnydale. It's a sad fact of life in Southern California that developers will lie about the geological risks, not just from earthquake but from landslides, sink holes, mudslides, and flooding, in order to make their housing developments more appealing. Local government goes along with this because higher property values mean higher property taxes, i.e., more money for the city. The more unscrupulous contractors, including the company responsible for the shoddy construction of the high school, should really be charged with manslaughter as well as fraud.

Something to think about.

From:

geyer-fb.livejournal.com

And by the way, Deputy Mayor Finch was responsible for building code enforcement. Maybe his assassination was meant to be a message to anyone who might want to make the truth known.

Something to think about.

From:

samthereaderman.livejournal.com

School wasn't in session, it was graduation. Everyone connected with the school would have been outside watching the ceremony. So they didn't need to check the building.

Besides, the school principal wouldn't get up and leave in the middle of graduation -- not if he wanted to stay principal.

From:

If Mayor Wilkins death was the result of foul play, it was much more likely to have been a gang "hit" than any sort of political assassination.

Sunnydale had the misfortune to lie on the border between two of California's worst crime syndicates. They also had their own, home grown gangs, who went by the names of "the Vampires" and "the Demons." (Some members were even known to wear Halloween fright masks to hide their identities.) Mayor Wilkins was very adept at playing one gang against the other, while lining his own pockets with bribes from both sides. One of the gang leaders may have tired of paying bribes to Mayor Wilkins, and decided to eliminate him instead. It was no coincidence that the Sunnydale Police force was made up of the bottom 10% of graduates from various police academies around California. Nearly without exception, the cops in Sunnydale were either corrupt, or stupid. (Many were both.)

After Mayor Wilkins' death at the high school graduation, several other city and police officials vanished, along with large quantities of the city's money. Nearly $50,000,000 remains unaccounted for.

Of course there are those who claim that Wilkins never died at all. He had known that the rampant corruption in the city government was about to be exposed. (Only a few months earlier, Deputy Mayor Allan Finch had been murdered. Many believe it was because Wilkins had discovered that he was secretly negotiating with state officials, trying to get immunity for himself, in exchange for his testimony against Wilkins.) There have been countless "Wilkins sightings" since the 1999 explosion. Nearly as many as there have been "Elvis sightings." It is possible that Wilkins used the explosion as an opportunity to make himself disappear.

Whether or not Wilkins planned the explosion, or just took advantage of an opportunity that presented itself is not clear. There are surviving minutes from a meeting of the city Public Works committee, from just a few months before the school explosion, in which Mayor Wilkins himself expressed concern about the state of repair of the city's gas mains. There had been a previous gas leak at the school, in January of 1998, in which several students and teachers were rendered unconscious. Sunnydale Mall was also shut down for several days following a gas explosion in 1998. Was Wilkins expressing genuine concern about the condition of the city's gas mains, or was he already setting up a plausible story to explain the explosion that he was already planning?

From:

Sunnydale had the misfortune to lie on the border between two of California's worst crime syndicates. They also had their own, home grown gangs, who went by the names of "the Vampires" and "the Demons." (Some members were even known to wear Halloween fright masks to hide their identities.)

No arguments about the incompetence of Sunnydale's police, but this particular story seems to have been invented by the National Enquirer in 2004 and isn't documented elsewhere. If I remember rightly their source was 'an unnamed Sunnydale survivor interviewed in a Rio bar' i.e. someone's drunken ramblings. I haven't seen any corroboration from other sources.

Nobody's denying that there are known instances of criminal acts by people wearing fright masks in and around Sunnydale, but the existence of two separate gangs isn't established, and multiple reports describe the "vampires" and "demons" working together. My guess is that someone boosted a job lot of Halloween masks and they were used by the gang(s) fairly randomly.

From:

First you say that there is only a single source for the story about the "vampires" and "demons" gangs, and then you say that there are multiple reports of the gangs working together. Wouldn't those multiple reports constitute additional sources?

The state of affairs in Sunnydale was in constant flux. During his final years in office, Wilkins kept a pretty tight rein on the gangs. Many reports of the vampires and demons cooperating come from this time, but it was an uneasy truce imposed on them from without, and it crumbled after Wilkins died (or absconded.) Other sources have indicated that things fell apart completely after Wilkins' demise, and there was a multi-sided faction war for control, that still wasn't completely resolved four years later, when the town was destroyed.

From:

You misunderstand; I agree that there is evidence for masked gangs, but there's no real evidence of multiple gangs fighting each other. My guess (as I said) is that there was one gang who got hold of a bunch of masks and kept changing them to spread confusion and fear.

From:

What about this report from January 1997 in the Sunnydale Press (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://sunnydalepress.com/jan97) about rival gangs fighting over turf, that killed a bouncer and a girl at a local Sunnydale club?

From: