Michael Brian Protzman, the leader of a QAnon-centric group who brought hundreds of followers to Dallas to await the supposed resurrections of long-dead President John F. Kennedy and his son — tearing countless families apart in the process — died following a crash last month, according to authorities in Minnesota.
Protzman was 60. His death, which occurred last Friday, was confirmed to The Dallas Morning News by the bureau of vital statistics in Olmsted County, about 100 miles south of Minneapolis.
According to a death report obtained by Vice News, Protzman died of blunt-force injuries after losing control of a dirt bike on June 23, one week before his death.
Originally from Washington State, Protzman convinced hundreds, possibly thousands, of people to uproot their lives and leave their families to come to Dallas in 2021 under the belief that Kennedy, who was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, and his son, who died in a plane crash in 1999, would reveal themselves to be alive, help usher in the reinstatement of Donald Trump as president, and commence a “storm” of military tribunals and executions of prominent Democrats and celebrities, who his followers baselessly believed were involved in the sexual abuse of children.
Those predictions did not come to pass.
Protzman and his followers, though, were not demurred. For several months, they lived relatively lavishly in Dallas, where many of them stayed at the Hyatt Regency downtown. The group frequently wore t-shirts bearing the faces of Trump and Kennedy Jr., who they believed would become vice president under the new Trump administration.
They attended Rolling Stones concerts and Trump appearances in Dallas and frequently held vigil on the Grassy Knoll in Dealey Plaza, where President Kennedy was killed in 1963, expecting him and his son to reveal themselves. They also predicted other dead figures, including Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Princess Diana, would be resurrected.
Protzman began gaining a following on Telegram, the messaging application, during the pandemic. A central component of his belief system is the use of a version of gematria, a coded language that assigns numbers to names and words.
The group eventually left Dallas — though they would repeatedly return over the next two years — but followed Trump as he held rallies across the country.
-------
