Someone recently forwarded me Jonah Goldberg’s column on Alonso de Salazar Frias. That link is probably paywalled, but Wiki has a pretty good summary here. The short version: Frias was a priest and canon lawyer who ended up with a role in the Spanish Inquisition, and expressed extreme skepticism over the witchcraft accusations he was hearing. Rather than buy in to the hysteria, he decided to try to use empirical methods to test the witchcraft accusations, looking for consistency in statements, corroborating evidence. Ultimately, he concluded “I have not found one single proof nor even the slightest indication from which to infer that one act of witchcraft has actually taken place…the testimony of accomplices alone without further support from external facts substantiated by persons who are not witches is insufficient to warrant even one arrest.” This ultimately got him the nickname “the Witches Advocate” and he seemed to be rather successful in getting people freed.

For obvious reasons I am quite taken by this story, but my attempts to locate much information have failed. There appears to be one book written about this from 1980, and it’s $100+ on Amazon and totally unavailable in my local library. So I figured I’d throw it out here and see if anyone knew of any good general books on the Spanish Inquisition that might help me find more information, or if anyone had any other ideas of where to find information. Any help appreciated. Update 3/2/26: My lovely brother informed me he’s developed a talent for finding rare/old books and was able to locate a digitized copy of the specific book I was looking for for free online! The comments helped tremendously though, as I was able to find several other relevant resources and am also going to inquire with my local library about some others. Many thanks to all who weighed in!

While we’re on the topic though, I figured I’d link to another story of false accusations. A Tiktok psychic from Texas has been ordered to pay a college professor from Idaho $10 million for falsely accusing her of the murders of 4 college students in Moscow Idaho. This story may sound obvious to the point of being silly, but in light of my true crime series I think it’s worth looking at the details on this one. When I talk about how out of control true crime has gotten, a lot of people ask me rather skeptically “so what if some idiots say dumb stuff on the internet? People have always said dumb stuff”. This is true, but I think this case is a good example of how dark this stuff can get. The full case docket is here, but I’ll point out a few highlights:

1. By her own admission, the Tiktok psychic (Ashley Guillard), had no evidence that the woman she accused had anything to do with the brutal murder of 4 college students in her town. In fact, there was no evidence this professor even knew the murdered students. Per the defendants own admission, she pointed the finger at this professor (Rebecca Scofield) because when she heard about the murder she went to the college website and did a psychic reading over each member of the history department and Scofield had bad vibes.
2. Guillard had 80k+ followers on Tiktok when this started and gained 20k more when she started making these accusations. She put up over 100 videos, repeatedly sharing this professors contact information and home address with her fans. While you and I may not believe that a psychic can solve crimes, I will note that people who sought one out on Tiktok probably do, and thus took these accusations quite seriously. Scofield experienced harassment, had to install all sorts of security systems at her house, had her workplace flooded with calls, their social media flooded with comments about her and anyone connected to her harassed about her being “the real killer”.
3. Part of Guillards claim about Scofield was an extremely elaborate story about how she had been having an affair with one of the female victims, who was a student. Guillard then claimed Scofield had the 4 students murdered to cover this up. One of the sad parts of the case was Scofield pointed out that while most people at her workplace discarded the murder claim, many more seemed to give some credence to the affair claim. There did seem to be an air of “well there must be something to this, maybe the truth is in the middle”. But again, but Guillard’s own admission, she got this information from doing a psychic reading off a website photo. Sometimes where there’s smoke there is no fire.
4. Scofield filed this lawsuit on December 21st, 2022. It took over 3 years for her to get a judgement against someone who admitted she got her information by picking her photo off a website. Just imagine that was you or someone you love, or heck even just feel friendly towards. Guillard lives off disability and meager Tiktok revenue. Scofield will likely never get back money for her legal bills, will always have people somewhat believing she slept with a student, and for what? The crime of living in the same town a murder happened in, and catching the wrong persons eye at the wrong moment.
5. All of this occurred against the backdrop of a crime for which someone else ultimately pled guilty, and an accusation for which the defendant admitted she had zero actual evidence. Now imagine if the real killer hadn’t been found, or if Scofield had a more plausible connection to the victims, like if she was a neighbor. There still wouldn’t have been any evidence beyond the psychic reading, but one imagines the damage inflicted could have been exponentially greater.

Demanding empirical evidence for serious accusations, even those “just” made on TikTok, should never have gone out of style.