I also know for certain that all of those former posters I named were the same individual because I helped to get them zotted at the time. There was a period about a year or two back when LLAN-DDEUSSANT showed up, posted for about 2 months until his leftism caught up with him, and got banned. About days later the next showed up, I think it was Titus_Fikus, that time and did the exact same thing - same language, same style, same kooky leftist beliefs. He lasted about a month then got the boot. Two or three days passed then another, Mortin_Sult, registers as a "new" freeper and posts for a while. He too gets kicked off, then another shows up, and another after that, and another after that.
I hadn't seen him for a while (though he may well have been posting under yet another name and avoiding me) when Held_to_ransom showed up a few months ago. Something stood out about the way he posted - a similar style of language, a similar abrasiveness as a poster, a similar near-idolatrous veneration for two historical figures (Lincoln and Charles Sumner), a similar tendency to randomly make up "facts" and post them without substantiation, and, of course, a similar tilt to the left. A few weeks ago I began publicly confronting him in firm but polite queries over his suspected former identities. Other freepers who have noticed the same similarities have done so as well He carefully evaded each and every one by either responding to everything in my post except the one line about his identity or, more recently, avoiding me, and anyone else who suspects him, all together. In short, he has behaved as if he knew that I knew who he really was at a time when he did not want others to know who he really was. Needless to say, the direct confrontations on this thread combined with his evasions here seem to support the theory that Held_to_Ransom is FR's longtime resident schizo Titus_Fikus aka Mortin_sult et al.