Vandals Scandal
The original Vandals • documentary archive
A public record of disputed authorship, altered credits, contested masters, royalty payments, licensing income, and the early band members who said their work was taken from them.
Provenance
Vandals Scandal was created and maintained by M Otis Beard at the request of Steve “Human” Pfauter. Human supplied documents and the underlying account; Beard interviewed him, organized the chronology, hand-coded the original HTML, made the graphics, and published the archive.
Human needed plausible deniability while he was alive. He was poor and still depended on small, irregular payments that he believed represented only a fraction of his rightful royalties. Publicly identifying him as the source could have cost him even that income.
The site was never offered as a bargaining chip. Beard refused to remove it, but told Joe Escalante that any reconciliation, corrected credits, or proper payment would be added to the narrative. The promise was to tell the whole truth, including redemption if it occurred.
Searchable chronology
Use the decade filters or search names, songs, documents, and events. Claims are labeled by source type so readers can distinguish records, testimony, and interpretation.
Primary-source index
The redesign keeps the legacy filenames so it can be deployed over the existing site without breaking the archive. Copy the existing evidence files into the same directory as this page.
Important: the prototype does not bundle the legacy court scans or copyrighted album artwork. It links to their existing filenames, allowing the site owner to reuse the original archive files already under their control.
How to read the site
A stronger redesign should make the case more credible by clearly distinguishing what a document shows, what a firsthand witness recalls, and what the site concludes from those facts.
Original album credits, court filings, declarations, correspondence, sales records, and licensing documentation.
Statements by M Otis Beard, Human, other original members, and people directly involved in the transfers and disputes.
The site’s interpretation of the record, presented plainly as argument rather than disguised as a court judgment.
No court found Joe Escalante guilty of perjury. The archive argues that documentary contradictions support that accusation, but the original members could not afford to obtain a full ruling on the merits.