What year specifically was Sadha (William) Riley actually born?
Executive summary
Multiple pieces of reporting that surfaced around late 2025 identify the man known as Sascha or Sadha (also reported as William Sascha Riley and born Manuel Sascha Barros) and give a specific birth year of 1973, but that date rests on a small set of Substack posts and has not been independently corroborated by public records or mainstream outlets cited here [1] [2] [3].
1. What the sources assert: a 1973 birth year appears in the published dossier
At least one reporter’s timeline explicitly states that Riley was born in 1973 while summarizing audio interviews and documents released by journalist Lisa Noelle Voldeng; that claim appears in a Substack piece which says “Riley, born in 1973,” as part of its account of Riley’s allegations and recorded interviews [1].
2. Corroborating material and name variants: the reporting ties multiple identities to the same person but does not repeat the birth year
Other accounts identify the interviewee by multiple names — William Sascha Riley and Manuel Sascha Barros — and describe him as a decorated Iraq War veteran who spoke to journalists in 2025, but those pieces do not themselves state a birth year; instead they focus on the interviews and allegations and note uncertainty about Riley’s public identity [2] [3].
3. Conflicting timeline details that bear on plausibility but do not disprove 1973
Some reporting and open-source research included in the assembled sources discusses adoption dates and alleged trafficking windows that create implied birth-year ranges: one account says an adoption occurred in 1975 in the storyteller’s narrative (which would be consistent with a 1973 birth) while other researcher notes reference paperwork listing 1977–1978 as adoption years and trafficking ages that would place key events in the early-to-mid 1980s [2] [4]. Those discrepancies mean timelines drawn from different documents or witness recollections diverge, but they do not by themselves refute the 1973 birth year asserted in the Substack summary [1] [4].
4. Limits of the public record and mainstream verification
Mainstream reporting sampled here explicitly flags uncertainty about Riley’s identity and the provenance of the claims: a Yahoo piece notes that “it is not clear who Riley is” while linking to the Substack identification of a decorated veteran named William Sascha Riley as one of the people discussed by Voldeng [3]. Major public databases and biographical repositories in the provided results do not supply an authoritative birth record for this individual; for example, the other “William Riley” entries in the search—such as an actor’s IMDb page or historical records on MyHeritage—are unrelated and do not establish the birth year at issue [5] [6] [7].
5. Conclusion: the best-supported answer and the caveats that must accompany it
The most specific year published in the reviewed reporting is 1973; that year is attributed explicitly in a Substack piece summarizing audio interviews and documents [1]. However, that single-sourced assertion stands alongside reporting that acknowledges uncertainty about Riley’s identity and with other documents or secondary research suggesting differing adoption dates and timeline windows [3] [4] [2]. Therefore, the direct answer is: reported birth year 1973, but it remains unverified in the public record presented here and should be treated as a claimed date rather than a confirmed fact [1] [3].