Source: illinoistimes.com 10/15/26
Jeff Bast, who goes by Millstone the Klown on social media, says he is protecting children. His online following has brought scrutiny to people on the sex offender registry – and fear and lost work to people around them.
Lucy Reid took down the signs in broad daylight.
They had been posted around Winchester for weeks, calling attention to a child sexual abuse case. Reid understood the anger behind them. But the signs seemed to be everywhere, and she had grown weary of seeing her hometown defined by the worst thing alleged to have happened there.
She expected the person who put them up to be upset. She did not expect strangers to call her a “pedophile protector” or contact Our Town Books in Jacksonville, where she worked as a bookseller. Reid said the store was deluged with calls threatening demonstrations outside the shop unless it cut ties with her. One man contacted an author scheduled to appear there and the store’s book distributor.
Reid was placed on unpaid leave. When she asked to return, she said, the answer was: “No, not yet.”
Then a video began circulating online among some of Millstone the Klown’s followers showing the entrance to the building where Reid lived. She said another video named her and referred to bringing pepper spray and a knife on a future visit. She worried about her 14-year-old son coming over.
One morning, a wood chipper was parked nearby.
In the 1996 film Fargo, a murderer feeds a body into a wood chipper, leaving a leg visible as a police officer approaches. The scene gave the machine a gruesome place in popular culture. Reid said commenters on the Millstone the Klown Facebook page suggested she should be thrown into one. She did not know why the machine was parked near her home. With videos showing her door circulating online, its presence frightened her.
“All I did was pull down some signs,” Reid said.
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