The cave explorer who was slurred as a “pedo guy” by Elon Musk on Twitter has broken his silence on the ordeal — revealing that the Tesla founder at one point had a private investigator go through his trash to find “dirt” on him.

“My legal battle with Musk has cast a very dark cloud and come close to wrecking my life,” caver Vernon Unsworth, who recently lost a defamation suit against Musk, told The Mail.

Musk had tweeted the explosive slur as Unsworth labored heroically with a team of cavers to save 12 boys trapped in northern Thailand.

Musk would admit in court that Unsworth is not a pedophile and “explain” he’d only meant to call the caver a “creepy old man.”

But Unsworth claims now that Musk hired a British private eye to “dig dirt” up on him — including by rifling through his trash — in an attempt to justify the initial tweet, according to the Mail.