A conservative Republican senator who is convinced that the Arizona Department of Child Safety is facilitating the global sex trafficking of children removed from negligent parents called the police on one of his GOP colleagues, alleging that she threatened his life.

Sen. David Farnsworth, a Republican from Mesa, filed a report with the Arizona Department of Public Safety this week accusing Sen. Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, of threatening him if he didn’t stop investigating the outrageous claim. The news was first reported by Yellow Sheet Report, a high-priced insider newsletter aimed at lobbyists and government officials.

Farnsworth told Yellow Sheet that he has been looking into how DCS “lost” more than 550 children last year, roughly half of whom are categorized as either runaways or otherwise missing. The rest appear to be flagged for paperwork errors.

He said he fears the children have been abducted and sold into a global sex trafficking ring, and said he has been holding meetings with DCS, critics of the agency and fellow lawmakers, including Brophy McGee.

Farnsworth acknowledged his beliefs were outlandish, but he said it’s not a conspiracy theory. He told Yellow Sheet that he didn’t believe DCS officials were actively selling children into sexual slavery, but that they are being lax at protecting children from predators who will do so.

While he said he hopes his meetings ultimately prove him wrong, Farnsworth said he is more convinced than ever that Arizona children removed from their parents and put into group homes or foster homes are being sex-trafficked, even though he told Yellow Sheet he has turned up no evidence.

“When I first heard about this, I believed that children from Arizona (DCS) were ending up in sex trafficking. Now, after the research I’ve done, I’m confident of it,” he told Yellow Sheet. “But I can’t prove it.”

Farnsworth also alleged that two former Republican state senators from other states who were killed within days of each other earlier this year were “executed” because they were investigating links between their own states’ child protective agencies and global sex trafficking rings.

There is no evidence that either ex-legislator was murdered for that reason. Linda Collins-Smith, a former senator from Arkansas, was killed by a close friend and former campaign aide. And Jonathan Nichols, a former senator from Oklahoma, died by suicide.

The dispute between Farnsworth and Brophy McGee stems from what she said was a conversation in which she told her colleague that both she and her husband were concerned for her safety after some of Farnsworth’s allies in the child-sex-ring investigation began harrassing her and spreading rumors that she and others are involved in illicit child kidnapping schemes. Brophy McGee told the insider publication that Farnsworth’s compatriots are “unbalanced” and have forced her to have Senate security guards escort her to and from meetings about DCS, but Farnsworth has been unconcerned.

Bur Farnsworth told Yellow Sheet that, while he initially didn’t take Brophy McGee’s comments seriously, he decided to file a complaint with DPS because the “best deterrent to a threat is for more people to be aware of it.”