A year ago, Jose “Chille” DeCastro was apparently on the top of the world. Standing in an airport in Colombia, having command over his then federal civil rights lawsuit against Kate Peter and Josh Abrams, DeCastro seemed at the top of his game, demanding Discord users to bow down to his demands for their personal information or face mass doxing at his hands as punishment for compliance with those working against him.
DeCastro had rage in his heart that he was able to focus into unrivaled power. From October of 2022 until a little after the new year of 2023, DeCastro shut down most discussion of himself on YouTube – a then booming industry with over 20 hours a day of new material devoted to him – with his heavy-handed copyright strikes and lawsuit threats.
He had passion then; he had taken action against those who were making money off of his image and his work – and was effective in his silencing of those talking about him. Within two months he had effectively silenced his main critics – Kate Peter, Team Skeptic and Irish Demon – to a point where their booming YouTube channels became shells of themselves as they had to pivot away from coverage of DeCastro or face his wrath.
While he never had the promised army of supporters that he claimed to have, DeCastro’s wrath alone would take down (at least temporarily) critics such as Dogtective, Glober Mom and Uncle Arty. He tried his first attempts to silence the Welsh News Network (a continuing thorn in his side to this day) to varying degrees of success, but going into the last quarter of the year, DeCastro had a strong position and creators had reason to fear him as he turned his attention to suing YouTube/Google itself.
Things began to change in late December of 2022. DeCastro’s Ironton, Ohio, based federal civil lawsuit was thrown out. DeCastro had failed to meet just about every deadline he could in the case and the Judge finally had enough. His lawsuit had no real merit as he never bothered to say exactly who did what to him to cause injury. While it was revived on a technicality in January, he again failed to show the who’s and the what’s and how he was injured for months on end until it was recently dismissed again.
His pivot from a harassment and defamation lawsuit against Kate Peter and Josh Abrams took a turn as he decided to amend his complaint and morph his case into a federal copyright suit against every creator who he felt improperly used his content, naming but not naming them as “John Doe” defendants and going after YouTube/Google itself.
That lawsuit, dismissed in July, again lingered as DeCastro couldn’t state who did what to him to cause him damage or why his claims were relevant. While he was able to drain Kate Peter of over $60,000 to defend herself over the 10 months the lawsuit was active and revived his original lawsuit in California District Court (bumbling the service of Peter in the process), he failed so spectacularly in that lawsuit that it seemed to break his spirit.
DeCastro tried other civil lawsuits that are currently being tied up in the courts. Abandoning his public legal advisors, DeCastro discovered the use of OpenAI programs such as ChatGPT that would allow him to function as a quasi-lawyer using the power of the internet to file a lawsuit against the Las Vegas Metro Police Department after an arrest in March.
The Las Vegas case currently lingers as he’s currently attempting to force a federal appeals court to stay his state level criminal charges from the arrest that sparked the civil lawsuit until the civil lawsuit plays out. His fear of jail time (even if it’s all but assured that the minor charges won’t result in any time in jail), that would somehow result in his death at the hands of guards motivating him to attempt to delay the criminal proceedings indefinitely.
DeCastro has blown through causes and supporters as well. Once fervent supporters such as Deboraugh Rodgers and Laney Hudson’s family are gone, replaced briefly by victims’ families and others he decides to highlight until, like Floyd Wallace and the Dollarhide family before them, they become too problematic to continue supporting.
In his most recent live stream, a broken Jose “Chille” DeCastro fumbled around a parking lot of a State Police barracks in Michigan, throwing half hearted insults at the retro stylings of the Michigan State police vehicles before trying to enter the lobby of the facility that had closed minutes before. An embarrassed DeCastro hurried to remove evidence of his latest failure (quickly captured and featured in the Welsh News Network broadcast above), before any of his real or imagined supporters (over 345,000 subscribers at last count) noticed his latest screw up.
As it stands now, the once mighty Jose “Chille” DeCastro seems to be a broken man. As we look back to his airport rant in Colombia, as he stood at the top of his game last year and was about to effectively silence his critics until the new year, it is clear his powers as an influencer peaked at that point and broke shortly after as he extended himself too far.
Others have stepped in and filled the void left by DeCastro’s fall. “Turtleboy” Aidan Kearney has stepped into DeCastro’s role as most prolific defender of first amendment rights as his actions in the Karen Read murder case have drawn national attention from legitimate media outlets. Rivals James Freeman and SeanPaul Reyes have been more successful in his legal challenges, using actual lawyers and people who know what they’re doing instead of internet based AI programs, to capture the audience that once looked to DeCastro to challenge the very system we live in. DeCastro has fallen so far that even a recent Washington Post article on the most popular first amendment auditors ignored him completely, choosing to highlight once protege Floyd Wallace in his place.
Appearing bloated and weak, again sleeping in the back of a rented van and facing multiple legal setbacks and public failures, DeCastro currently wanders through the mid-west seeking a return to glory and revenge on those who have wronged him. Slightly older, battered by time and his own inability to control his fate, it’s left to those viewing his actions to wonder – is this the end for Jose DeCastro? Has he sunk to the lowest depths of failed dominance of the first amendment auditing community like Glenn Cerio before him? Can he come back to the glory and power that he displayed in the fall of 2022? Those questions will be answered as DeCastro marches through his continued fall of 2023.
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