Rock icon Dave Mustaine has broken his silence, revealing that his late friends — Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington and Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell — were “executed,” not lost to suicide.

According to Mustaine, the two were on the verge of exposing a powerful child trafficking network embedded deep within Hollywood and the music industry, and their deaths were orchestrated to bury the truth — and the documentary they were about to release.

Best known as the frontman and founder of the legendary metal band Megadeth, Mustaine also served as the original lead guitarist for Metallica.

He’s credited as a co-writer on several early tracks, including four songs from Kill ‘Em All and two from Ride the Lightning, helping to shape the sound that defined thrash metal.

Appearing on the Shawn Ryan podcast, Mustaine was asked a question about the music industry. “Is there any advice you could give to young people who want to enter the entertainment industry?”

True to form, Mustaine didn’t mince words—calling pedophilia the darkest and most insidious plague haunting the music industry.

“Yeah, you have to be very careful from pedophilia. There is a lot of stuff on TV right now with Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs and Jeffrey Epstein, with all of these people that are coming out now, getting busted for all these crazy orgies and sex parties and everything.”

“That breaks my heart,” Mustaine continued, referring to Combs’ alleged abuse of Justin Bieber and other minors in the industry.

“To think that somebody who was an adult, with a functioning mind, no matter how depraved it is, that they would assault an innocent child. That to me is reprehensible and I don’t know why there isn’t stricter punishment for that. I think it’s because people don’t know what’s happening.”

Mustaine continued dropping bombshells during the interview, revealing that everybody in Hollywood was talking about the child trafficking documentary being made by Bennington, Cornell and Anthony Bourdain.

“There are a lot of people who were very famous musicians… the rumor has it they were executed because they were getting ready to expose pedophilia.”

“There were rumors going around about Chester from Linkin Park and Chris from Soundgarden, that they were making a movie about child abuse and child trafficking, I think it was. They are both gone and it’s very suspicious.”

When asked whether he personally witnessed abuse—particularly sexual abuse—during his time in the music industry, Mustaine admitted he saw more than his fair share of disturbing and traumatic events

“It depends on what people say abuse is,” he said. “Because if you see stuff that you shouldn’t see, that’s abusive. And I saw stuff I shouldn’t see.” Watch: