Before Jeffrey Epstein, There Was The Franklin Ring

Decades before the name Jeffrey Epstein became synonymous with political pedophilia and the compromising of some of the most powerful people on the face of the earth, there was Lawrence E. King Jr., the Franklin Ring, and the alleged Franklin cover-up.

Beginning in the late 1980s, disturbing tales of sex trafficking, torture, drug abuse, pedophilia, powerful people, and more rocked the midwestern state of Nebraska, where a man named Lawrence E. King Jr., also known as Larry King, stood accused of embezzling tens of millions of dollars from the Franklin Credit Union he managed and treasured. But Lawrence “Larry” King wasn’t just any old bank manager. He also served as the Vice Chairman for Finance of the National Black Republican Council, and he even sang the National Anthem at the 1984 Republican National Convention.

Lawrence King was politically connected. At very high levels.

But it all came crashing down, beginning in 1988, when more than $30 million went missing from King’s employer, the Franklin Credit Union, spawning investigations that, in addition to tracking down missing money, revealed numerous complaints from children and adults alike, alleging that Lawrence King was involved in high-level pedophilia and a sex trafficking ring that furnished girls and boys alike to politicians, donors, bankers, and businessmen. The alleged trafficking ring, which became known as the Franklin Ring, was even said to bear connections to the CIA and non-profits meant to house and assist vulnerable young people.

By December of 1988, the accusations of pedophilic sex trafficking and abuse had gone national, and The New York Times was reporting that the Nebraska Legislature had ordered an investigation after receiving multiple “credible” reports tying King and the Franklin Credit Union to child sex trafficking and abuse. The same report revealed that similar complaints had been received by and were being investigated by the FBI, the Nebraska Attorney General, the Nebraska State Police, and the Omaha Police Department.

As allegations against King began to surface, Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers was quoted as saying that Lawrence E. King Jr. was ”just the tip of an iceberg, and he’s not in it by himself.”

In 1989, King and a group of co-conspirators, including his wife, were charged with embezzlement by federal authorities, a crime to which King later pled guilty in 1991, in exchange for a 15-year prison sentence.

But to borrow a term from Senator Ernie Chambers, the embezzlement charges were just the tip of an iceberg…an iceberg that’s floated through the American political system far too many times, for far too long.

In addition to Lawrence King, notable men accused of participating in the Franklin Ring included those who the media described as “a prominent publisher, a top police official, a judge, a columnist, a multimillionaire, and senior city and state officials.” Alleged victims said that they were flown all over the country, for drug-fueled gay and bisexual orgies with the powerful.

Nebraska State Senators accused law enforcement, at both the state and federal level, of taking a “lax” approach to investigating the Franklin Ring allegations, so they took matters into their own hands, hiring an independent investigator named Gary Caradori to look into the matter.

But in 1990, in the middle of his Franklin Ring investigation, Gary Caradori was killed in a plane crash alongside his 8-year-old son when the plane they were flying aboard fell apart in mid-air and went down in Illinois.

Reportedly, the crash occurred almost immediately after Caradori had obtained new photographic evidence of Lawrence King and the Franklin Ring’s crimes, but it just so happened that Caradori’s briefcase, believed to have been full of that new evidence, went “missing” from the crash site, never to be seen again.

Shortly after the plane crash, the investigation into Lawrence E. King Jr. and others implicated in the Franklin Ring fell apart, along with any hope of learning the truth or pursuing justice for alleged victims.

After Caradori’s death, the FBI, along with legal authorities in Nebraska, took over the case and took a harsh line in dealing with Franklin Ring victims, telling them that they believed their accusations to be fake, and warning them that they were risking criminal charges and time in jail if they stuck to their stories.

So witnesses and victims began recanting their testimony. 

But at least two of them did not: Alisha Owen and Paul Bonacci, both of whom were indicted on perjury charges when they wouldn’t back off their stories of horrific abuse at the hands of the Franklin Ring.

So the federal grand jury that was convened to look into the Franklin Ring charged the victims with felonies.

As a result, Owen was convicted and spent over four years in jail, while Bonacci was acquitted.

As for Lawrence E. King JR., after serving time in the embezzlement case, he was released from prison and sources say that he is currently living in the Washington, DC area, where, in 2023, he was tagged as a member of the Reston, Virginia Community Orchestra in a Facebook post.

Furthermore, in 2024, photographs appeared online showing King as an usher at a Northern Virginia church where, presumably, he’d be in proximity to children.