Leader of JFK Jr.-Obsessed QAnon Cult Dies After Dirt Bike Accident

On November 2021, hundreds of QAnon’s most ardent believers gathered at Dallas, Texas’ Dealey Plaza to await the dramatic return of  John F. Kennedy, Jr., who died in a tragic plane crash at Martha’s Vineyard more than two decades ago. As the crowd waited at the same spot where his father, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963, no grand reemergence took place.

Leading the flock of conspiracy theorists to Dallas was Michael Brian Protzman, a QAnon influencer who believed the Kennedy family were the descendants of Jesus Christ. He had used a convoluted mix of “gematria,” numerology, and QAnon’s own posts to convince his followers that the famed family was preparing to retake power and save the nation with his help. The Kennedys’ failure to return from the dead didn’t dissuade Protzman, who continued to espouse increasingly convoluted versions of his conspiracy until last week — when a motocross accident claimed his life. 

According to a medical report obtained by Vice, Protzman died last Friday at the Meadow Valley Motocross track in Millville, Minnesota. The report states that Protzman suffered “multiple blunt force injuries” after losing control of a dirt bike. 

But despite Protzman’s untimely demise, his followers remain committed to the Kennedy comeback he prophesied, and according to Vice, conspiracy theories are already swirling around his death. 

Protzman managed to convince thousands that the Kennedys would return in order to help Trump purge the nation of a cabal of satanic pedophiles, and the devoted group of followers remained with him in Dallas weeks after the failed revival.

A woman named Katy Garner previously told Rolling Stone that her sister had abandoned her children and husband to join Protzman in Texas. A previous report from Vice found that members of Protzman’s circles were making massive financial contributions to his project, including one man who had dumped the entirety of his retirement savings into funding his stay in Dallas. 

Much like the proliferation of QAnon, it’s clear that the failure of predictions to become reality is not enough to dissuade the truly devout from their beliefs, and misfires can be folded into the latest system update. Shelly Mullinax, one of Protzman’s early devotees, who maintains her conviction that the Kennedys will return despite a strained relationship with the cult leader, told Vice that she believed the real Protzman (who is secretly JFK Jr. in a very realistic mask) was alive, and that only “the evil version” of him had died. 

While Protzman’s beliefs register on the more absurdist end of the conspiracy spectrum, conspiratorial thinking has become a default mechanism for sowing distrust in politics. While JFK Jr. is not returning from the dead anytime soon, Trump’s return to power is the ultimate goal for believers. Protzman was a staple at Trump rallies, where the former president regularly makes thinly veiled callouts to QAnon’s presence in his base. In the world of Q, no claim is too ridiculous, no theory too unfounded — so long as someone is willing to believe it