Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: North Carolina

DEBUNKING: The Asheville bomb arrest, Confederate Fursuiter, and Midwest Furfest attack

by Patch O'Furr

Robert “Magnus Diridian” Sojkowski

The 2014 Midwest Furfest chemical attack is one of the biggest unsolved crimes in furry fandom. It has a main suspect who was raided by the FBI, and they found physical evidence (read below). His name is Robert “Magnus Diridian” Sojkowski, also known as the Confederate Fursuiter.

In separate news from July 2022, two men in Asheville, North Carolina face terror charges in a bomb incident. One is a furry and subject of online rumors. His name is Chioke “Tech Coyote” Fugate.

That’s two separate crimes, with two separate suspects… but when the news about Fugate came out, rumors named him as the Confederate Fursuiter. This is critically misleading. Sojkowski made the suit in 2015 and stayed the ongoing owner and wearer, so the identity belongs to him. The mixup came from a meeting in 2017 where Fugate took photos with the suit and possibly wore it once. Why is it a big deal? It led to falsely naming Fugate for the Midwest Furfest attack he had nothing to do with (he was 14 in 2014).

Huge Twitter accounts fueled rumors that Fugate “was the one behind the MFF Chlorine bombing years back” (1) (2) (3), causing many deletions and corrections (4) (5) (6). It’s critical to untangle the two suspects. Remember, the mixup would help both to deny and mislead — and both have records of doing exactly that — so let’s set the record straight.

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Meet the artists behind the site banners: Meteor05 and Azure Paragon

by Patch O'Furr

Dogpatch Press is commissioning regular new banner art — check out a gallery from past months. Each artist gets an article, with a goal to promote ones outside the USA. Last artist was Glasses Gator from Mexico. It’s a little behind schedule, so here’s catchup with both Azure Paragon (December) and Meteor05 (January.)

Hi Meteor, so you’re in Mexico and have a wolf fursona — why wolf? And you teach — ever teach cartoon art?

I choose a wolf as my fursona because something funny happened to me as kid, when I entered primary school. I was kind of a hyperactive/playful kid, so, in my first class, instead of doing stuff for class, I just wanted to play with the other kids, I started to shout “hey, there’s a wolf at the window!” and ran around, but none of the other kids wanted to play and later they started to call me “Wolf”, something that I hated at the time (and hated for years LOL). I eventually started to accept it, and even liked it, until it became part of myself.

About my work as a teacher, I really don’t teach anything relative to cartoons or art (that would be really nice though). I’m an elementary/primary school teacher, I work at the computer lab from the school, teaching kids how to use the computer (basic stuff of course). But even though my job is not fully related to art, I use it sometimes on school stuff, like the cover of my class planning book.

Can you say a little about fandom activity where you are? Do you go to meets or cons?

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