Episode 596: The Krugersdorp Cult Murders Part III - Your English Teacher Loves Murder

Speaker 1 Pacifico is a Mexican lager brewed to be discovered. It's like fresh tracks on a powder day.

Speaker 1 Like that uncharted trail a stone's throw away.

Speaker 1 Like the perfect wave on a sunny day.

Speaker 1 Pacifico, find your own way. 21 plus drink responsibly.
Imported by Crown Imports, Chicago, Illinois.

Speaker 2 Try angel stuff for your tushi.

Speaker 1 It's made by angels.

Speaker 1 Soft and strong, budget-friendly.

Speaker 1 The choice is simple. A roll that feels like paradise.
And always at a heavenly prize.

Speaker 1 Angel Soft, Angel Soft. Soft and strong, so it's simple.

Speaker 2 Pick up a pack today. Angelsoft.
Soft and strong.

Speaker 1 There's no place to escape to. This is the Lost Todd Castle.
On the left.

Speaker 1 your gloves. That's when the cannibalism started.

Speaker 1 South Africa. Certificate.
Certificate is covered in blood.

Speaker 1 When I found the bodies, they were covered in blood. Sorry, we're trying to get into the mindset again.
It's been a second. Keep it in blood, covered in blood.
We are absolutely covered in blood.

Speaker 1 Did you listen to more of the podcast? Oh, yeah, buddy. Yeah, how was it? Is it getting better? You know what?

Speaker 1 Actually, it made me have, I did have a realization as I was listening through Candace's podcast of like, I started to realize a little bit more of the brainwashing techniques.

Speaker 1 I'll get it more into the show.

Speaker 1 Cecilia Stein, the more that we read, the more that we cover her, the more we get deeper into this story, this is one of the most puzzling examples of a cult leader and family that I have ever been across.

Speaker 1 She just seems so unfollowable. Dude, they followed her to fucking, it was jogging pant.
It's not infant to joggin' pant. They were butts were pressed.

Speaker 1 These people were sleeping next to each other in the same beds. That's a part of how she did it.
We'll talk about it. She wasn't even attractive.
Hey, hey, you never know.

Speaker 1 Krugersdorp went in Kruger's Dorp. Kruger's Dorp.
I love

Speaker 1 all day. I've just been like, Kruger's Dorp, dude.
Dog. Kruger's Kruger Dorp, baby.
I'm Beholder, my friends. Welcome to the last podcast on the left.
My name is Marcus Parks.

Speaker 1 I'm here with the South Ifrikin, Henry Zabraski. Still South Ifikin.

Speaker 1 My name is Imi Zabiski. I'm South Ifrikin.
It is one of the most difficult accents to pin down. Yeah, it's really strange.
There's a lot of variances. Everybody kind of sounds different.

Speaker 1 Like, I feel like some people are more Dutch. Some people are more.
Like, I don't know what it is. It's strange.
Now, I tried listening to some Afrikaans today to try to see if I could maybe say

Speaker 1 some Afrikaans phrases. Couldn't even penetrate it.
Couldn't even come close. Try one.

Speaker 1 Wow. Yeah, they're hard to understand.
We just lost a whole fucking South African market. Well, not all of them.
You only lost the Afrikaans.

Speaker 1 The rest of them love making fun of them.

Speaker 1 And of course, Ed Larson, how are you, sir? Oh, I'm doing good. I'm doing.
I was just thinking about my time in Soweto. It was so hot, man.
Yeah, you could say I was so wetting my balls off.

Speaker 1 Hey, just.

Speaker 1 We didn't even get in. We didn't even begin

Speaker 1 this story.

Speaker 1 And we have to immediately dig ourselves out of a hole. And we're recording this on Halloween.

Speaker 1 Halloween, Halloween. I've listened to The Monster Mash twice today.
Once on the radio and once by myself on my own volition. Have you listened to The Monster Mash yet? Yes, I did.

Speaker 1 I listened to the Halloween song from the Oogie Boogie Bash a couple of times. No, not anymore.
No, no, we know, everybody. Stop it.
No. Halloween, Halloween.

Speaker 1 But you know what? I realized

Speaker 1 what's his name that does Monster Mash. Bobby Boris Pickett.
He has a follow-up song. He had a follow-up album.
Yeah, I put it on my Halloween soundtrack for

Speaker 1 Mashash. It's disgusting.
Get some tea, man. You put it on your mummy bones.

Speaker 1 Uh-oh.

Speaker 1 Sounds like that. Old vampire was a bit too popular.

Speaker 1 We're here for the Kruger's Dirt Cult Murders.

Speaker 1 And now we're really going to get covered in blood my god this is a bloody episode so when we last left the electus per deus cult they just committed a double murder on the command of their leader cecilia stain and that was the first one yeah you know think about this i just constantly want to put people in the the mindset because i feel like last episode some people were talking about why did you take a kind of meandery trip through the middle of this cult and i think it's really to try to make you understand that jump from being

Speaker 1 little church people. I'm talking about the most churchy, churchy, dumb shit people, and becoming the.
Pushy fundamentalist church people. Let's be fair here.

Speaker 1 But that is obviously the secret ingredient that turns them into truly mass murderers. According to Candice, which I do actually kind of believe that they had way more than 11 victims.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they might have.

Speaker 1 Some people think it might be 15, 16, somewhere around there. Why not just admit it? Because

Speaker 1 they were saying they weren't guilty guilty of any of them. They were trying to get away with it.

Speaker 1 Well, Cecilia had told Electus Perdeus that if they killed a member of their former group, Overcomers Through Christ,

Speaker 1 they would be saving a group of fictitious orphans in America who were being killed en masse because the Overcomers Through Christ were praying for them and activating the death curses that have been placed on their souls.

Speaker 1 Got it? Got it. All right.

Speaker 1 But as absolutely ridiculous as that sounds when you boil it down to its essence, the first murders committed by Electus Perdeus were scary enough to make Rhea Grunwald shudder the Overcomers Through Christ because she fully believed that one of her people had been murdered by satanic witches.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it's bad that

Speaker 1 it's bad, right? They're bad. They're bad at it and it's bad what they're doing.
But it's just like, you know, if it was done by another group of people, it's kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 I mean, like, the fact that Rhea Grunwald, like, that's her first response. Like, that shows how deep the brainwashing went.
She's already broken off.

Speaker 1 Well, that's the thing is that with Rhea Grunwald, like, I don't even know if it's if you could consider it necessarily brainwashing because she was already on that tip to begin with.

Speaker 1 She already believed that Satanists were running the world and were hiding behind every corner. Rhea just fucking pulled her further in.
And then what sounds like what Candace?

Speaker 1 Cecilia just pulled her further in. And it sounds like what Cecilia then also did was give Rhea purpose and evidence of the fact that her life was

Speaker 1 actually meaning something.

Speaker 1 And ironically, Rhea Grunwald was also the main suspect in the double murder because police had interpreted the overcomers through Christ literature found in the murder victim's home as occult material and had therefore concluded that overcomers through Christ were a secret occult group and Rhea was a closet Satanist.

Speaker 1 God, I love it. I love it when they all turn on each other.
It's like

Speaker 1 because it's the truth is that she's the closest, she's the most occultist person of all of them. Well, she's the expert.

Speaker 1 But that's the thing is that absolutely nobody had any idea what was really going on except the leader of electus perdeus cecilia stain who was proving to be a master manipulator on a level that is nearly inconceivable you know you know that she's an actual master manipulator is her use of the term townhouse in the description of where they all live

Speaker 1 She constantly, whenever I was watching a bunch of trial footage, and then when someone brought up an apartment, like I would build, she was like, it was a townhouse.

Speaker 1 And there's something about that that

Speaker 1 just shows me that I hate you. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was in a tiny yard. Do you think it was almost like a duplex? It was a duplex, actually.
Yeah. Townhouse.
Townhouse.

Speaker 1 Now, the kill crew on the double murder had been Zach Valentine and his wife, Michaela.

Speaker 1 And it was Cecilia's command that Michaela be the one to kill the intended target's neighbor, the neighbor that had been used as a decoy, if you'll remember.

Speaker 1 Michaela, however, couldn't go through with it because unlike her surprisingly ruthless husband, she was not a killer.

Speaker 1 The double murder actually greatly traumatized Michaela Valentine, who soon went full goth by dyeing her hair black, dressing in hot topic gear, wearing dark makeup, and falling deep into a gloomy depression.

Speaker 1 Oh, so be on the lookout for these people spending lots of money at hot topics. No, no, no,

Speaker 1 don't come for the goths.

Speaker 1 Not every goth is a

Speaker 1 new murderer. Oh, fingerless gloves, I see.
Ah,

Speaker 1 the worst kind of gloves to hide evidence. Perfect.

Speaker 1 It's crazy, though, because that's what she, like, these, again, these are Christians. Now she's so sad and so, she's a murderer.

Speaker 1 She's actually not a murderer. She did not commit murder.

Speaker 1 She's an accomplice. But straight up, it's like she became a Satanist.
More of a witness, yeah. Yeah, she did accidentally become a Satanist.
She's just there all making it real.

Speaker 1 But it is like, it's that weird thing of like, I dress how I feel inside.

Speaker 1 Like, and she actually was. Oh, yeah, of course.
She fucking watched the mass murder. Two people get brutally stabbed to death in front of her.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's just like you watch the crazy murder and you're like, I need to go shopping. Yeah, I need to dye.
I find a wardrobe. I need to dye my hair.

Speaker 1 She's looking at this hair's like not me anymore.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, honestly, she's got that shirt that says hang in there with the cat hanging on the ledge, you know, just being like, oh, I don't know if this is, I think, you know what I need?

Speaker 1 I need some Shirley Manson gear.

Speaker 1 Michaela's change in demeanor, however, meant absolutely nothing to Cecilia Stain.

Speaker 1 In fact, Cecilia relished in the fact that she had convinced others to commit murders on her behalf, so she very quickly zeroed in on her next target.

Speaker 1 Now, it seems to me that part of Cecilia's game was completely perverting the beliefs of the people she manipulated.

Speaker 1 For example, by this point, she had convinced her fundamentalist Christian followers to bomb a prayer group, burn down a church, and murder a committed Christian that they all knew personally.

Speaker 1 Not to mention the murder of an innocent old lady. These people were, it's partially because of their histrionic Christian beliefs that even led them to this.

Speaker 1 This is one of the, you can't blame, like we've talked about this. I think we talked about this last episode.

Speaker 1 About every other cult, we're trying to find sympathy for the people that are involved, where it's just this.

Speaker 1 It's like they had kind of the perfect set of original attributes to jump into bombing a fucking, like, bombing and murdering a church is is wild to me.

Speaker 1 Now, do you think they're just stupid? Yes.

Speaker 1 And arrogant. I know it's rude to say stupid, but they're murderers.
No, they're stupid and arrogant, and

Speaker 1 they believe that they are the hands of Christ. Stupid, I think, is the wrong word.
Naive, I think, is a better word for it. I think they're naive.
But that's the thing.

Speaker 1 Arrogant is very much the right word. I believe it's like a malignant naivete.
It's like this idea of they're floating in this world of God's going to take care of shit.

Speaker 1 Where it's just like, don't you think God would also take care of the satanic armies as well? He's more equipped.

Speaker 1 Doesn't he have a giant army of angels with spears and fucking floating eyes and many wings covered in flames? Ah, but they cannot come till Judgment Day. Why? Because that's what he said.

Speaker 1 You could change it. Executive order.
We need an election. God needs to be replaced.

Speaker 1 Well, after taking the manipulation to these heights, Cecilia decided to take the sacrilege to the highest level possible by convincing her followers to murder a retired pastor named Reg Bendixon.

Speaker 1 Yeah, fuck out.

Speaker 1 I can't talk.

Speaker 1 It's a murder victim. He got killed.
I know, I know, but

Speaker 1 it's bad to pass. It's bad to murder.
I know, it is. It is.
It's super bad. It's bad to murder.

Speaker 1 Now, in early August of 2012, Cecilia began telling the members of Electus Perdeus that Reg Bendixon was one of, quote, Rhea's people, which is how Cecilia now referred to overcomers through Christ.

Speaker 1 See, what she was doing is she was was separating their past lives.

Speaker 1 Like they were no, like, it's not like you were a part of overcomers through Christ and this is overcomers through Christ and we're going to kill this group that you were a part of.

Speaker 1 She gave them a different name. It's very, very important for the manipulation.

Speaker 1 Nomenclature, basically, when it comes to cults. Where does this lady learn all of this stuff?

Speaker 1 We talked about it again and again. She is a reader.
It is innate.

Speaker 1 There's something about human beings. A certain type of human being is very, like, all of us are naturally good at at something.
Like everybody in the world is naturally good at something.

Speaker 1 You're just built for this one thing. Yeah, I'm good at eating pussy and playing basketball.

Speaker 1 I'm pretty bad at basketball.

Speaker 1 But some people just have this innate knowledge of how to be a cult leader and how to manipulate people and how to be a leader.

Speaker 1 Like some people are like, you talk about a natural-born leader, like they're not always fucking quarterbacks. Like sometimes they're Cecilia Stain.
No. I'm looking for my Cecilia.

Speaker 1 And just as an aside, if you're wondering why they didn't just kill Rhea Grunwald, that answer is twofold.

Speaker 1 Firstly, a big part of Cecilia's game during this time period in the cult's life cycle was torturing Rhea, because Rhea had rejected Cecilia personally. It was just simple revenge.

Speaker 1 But the other reason had to do with a lie Cecilia had told years before.

Speaker 1 If you'll remember from the last episode, Cecilia had claimed that her biological mother had been ritualistically sacrificed in Cecilia's place because her former coven couldn't get to Cecilia for unspecified unspecified reasons.

Speaker 1 We don't need to specify reasons. It's just reasons.

Speaker 1 But after that fictitious sacrifice, Cecilia told Rhea that Rhea had been granted maternal rights over Cecilia and all of her many multiple personalities.

Speaker 1 That meant somehow that if Rhea were to be killed, then Cecilia would also die.

Speaker 1 Although, I suppose the reason Cecilia gave as to why she didn't die when her mother died was because those maternal rights had been transferred before Cecilia's mother was sacrificed on the altar of Satan.

Speaker 1 And that's only just because Satan had control of the House of Representatives. And actually takes about two to three, I believe, two-thirds of that to restore the maternal rights.

Speaker 1 So eventually the filibuster can actually be put in place at some point. But again, you got a log jam.
You got to get the whip. You know what? Was it with the whip? The majority.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 That guy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
I think I described it correctly. There's also, I think, the factor of, what is Batman without his Joker? That's true.
Like, I feel like Rhea is the villain.

Speaker 1 It's the central villain. Like, if you knock out Rhea, then if you immediately knock out the most powerful member of the inner

Speaker 1 Satanist cabal,

Speaker 1 kill you? Why would I kill you? You're so much fun. Yeah, that it's like, I need you.
And then thinking about them blaming the double homicide on Rhea, I can't stress it enough.

Speaker 1 Rhea looked like Angela Lansberry. Like, this is the smallest, cheekyest hair.
Dude, they're all like 60-year-old ladies.

Speaker 1 40s, late 40s,

Speaker 1 early 50s, something like that.

Speaker 1 She's not dressed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but an unhealthy 55. And I don't mean this.
She looked like shit, right? But like, Rhea's a man.

Speaker 1 But Ria, like, it's like, she's just like, oh, no, I couldn't possibly have done that. She can't open a bag of Doritos.
Like, the idea that she could fucking stab somebody a bunch of times.

Speaker 1 It's just not going to... It isn't.
It's just so funny. Them pulling her in there and be like, we believe you're Satanist.
You're the leader of the Satanist cabal.

Speaker 1 And she's just sitting there going like, I just, I just made a doily.

Speaker 1 The doily took so long, my thumbs broke.

Speaker 1 Die from your blade.

Speaker 1 What if I told you the biggest crime story of our time is happening right under our noses, and we're all witnesses?

Speaker 1 Introducing Lawless Planet, the new podcast from Wondery that exposes the dark underbelly of the climate crisis.

Speaker 1 From the Amazon rainforest to small-town America, host Zach Goldbaum uncovers shocking tales of murder, corporate cover-ups, and greed.

Speaker 1 You'll hear about the brave activists risking their lives for their beliefs, the corrupt tycoons destroying ecosystems for profit, and the ordinary people caught in the crossfire.

Speaker 1 This isn't some distant threat. It's happening right now.

Speaker 1 Each episode drops you into a battle for our planet's future. We're talking mysterious deaths, daring heists, and billion-dollar scams, all within the fate of our world hanging in the balance.

Speaker 1 This is Lawless Planet.

Speaker 1 Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus and the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace.

Speaker 1 Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to help your business stand out and succeed online. Every dream needs a domain, which is why I have finally solidified the borders of my own.

Speaker 1 AnimalsURLREGISTER.com. You will bend to my will.

Speaker 1 Thanks to the power of Squarespace, I have been quantifyingly organizing every single available animal-based creative business URL that is around, and I'm coining them for for myself.

Speaker 1 Wonderful things such as buffaloesauce sauce.com such as kangaroo pats.com

Speaker 1 such as many different chickens shoes.com and it's all held behind the giant iron powerful Squarespace fuel gates of animalsurlregister.com and any one of you that dares defy me or the unilateral power of Squarespace with their blueprint AI, Squarespace AI-enhanced design partner, which sounds like the most hand in hand, we will march across the graves of URLs that people have been trying to steal from under me using the cannons of animalsurlregister.com.

Speaker 1 Me, AI, my old buddy Jeff Bezos, we're coming for you. All right, Squarespace is gonna help me.
Squarespace is my bullets. Squarespace is my canvas.
Squarespace is my God.

Speaker 1 We like Squarespace here. Head to squarespace.com/slash left for a free trial.
When you're ready to launch, use offer code LEFT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

Speaker 1 Most holiday gifts end up in a drawer, not this one. Mint Mobile is offering unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month.
That's their best deal of the year.

Speaker 1 AKA, the only holiday gift you'll actually use every day. It is amazing the quality of Mint Mobile's wireless service.

Speaker 1 It's like I'm talking to them right in front of me, but I can't see them or taste them or smell them. And in ways, the Wi-Fi signal is so strong and so clear that it frightens me.

Speaker 1 It makes me angry when my loved ones aren't in front of me. So thank you, Mint Mobile, because it's like I'm talking to the person I love right next to me, but they're not.

Speaker 1 And yes, it makes me more lonely in the end, more cripplingly alone, like a man in a casket at the bottom of a giant grave, six feet under, surrounded by the roots of the elms.

Speaker 1 I can just pick up the phone and call somebody, and then I'm fine, I guess. Thanks, Mint Mobile.
Really clear service. Don't get them socks.
Get them premium wireless for $15 a month.

Speaker 1 Shop Mint Unlimited Plans at mintmobile.com slash LPOTL. That's mintmobile.com/slash LPOTL.
Limited time offer. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 months.

Speaker 1 Plan required. $15 per month equivalent.
Taxes and fees extra, initial plan term only. Greater than 35 gigabytes may slow when network is busy.
Capable device required.

Speaker 1 Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.

Speaker 1 But concerning Electus Perdeus's next target, Pastor Reg Ben Dixon, nobody in the cult knew him personally, and it's a little unclear as to why Cecilia chose him in particular.

Speaker 1 It seems like Ben Dixon was merely convenient, because Cecilia was able to tell whatever story she wanted to about Reg.

Speaker 1 Well, the story that Cecilia told was that it was actually Pastor Reg who had led Rhea astray by stealing her sermons and perverting them to spread the message of Satan.

Speaker 1 And that was the real reason why the overcomers were now doing Satan's bidding.

Speaker 1 So Rhea wasn't to blame at all. She was just reading the prompter.
Yes. Yeah, Rhea was reading the prompter.

Speaker 1 The Anchorman prompt

Speaker 1 is what she had. Yeah, yeah.
Go fuck yourself, God. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And if they killed Reg, Cecilia posited, then maybe the Overcomers would return to the light, although there were no guarantees.

Speaker 1 I've just noticed, Reg, in your latest draft of my sermon, it says at the end, Hell Satan. Do you mean that? He was just like, Yeah,

Speaker 1 I'm sorry, I must have misspelled Santa. Looks the Christmas.
Christmas.

Speaker 1 Yes, well, I'm just sure I should go ahead and read this anyway.

Speaker 1 I should say hello to Satan.

Speaker 1 Well, she might as well.

Speaker 1 It is in Satan's league that we serve.

Speaker 1 Well, either way, Cecilia believed that it was worth a shot. So Alectus Perdeus began planning the murder of a bona fide man of God.
Damn!

Speaker 1 But not everyone was on board with Reg's murder.

Speaker 1 Marcel Stain, the 14-year-old daughter daughter of the school teacher Miranda Stain, no relation to Cecilia, she vociferously questioned if it was right to murder a former pastor. The 14-year-old

Speaker 1 of the group.

Speaker 1 Also, remember, it's a family. She has got an entire little family.

Speaker 1 She's got a mother with two young, like, high school-age kids. One was 14 and one was 18 at this time.
Kids asked the most questions. Yes, absolutely.
It is the babes of the most innocent auntie.

Speaker 1 Like, she could see if, like, freaking out, she's just raising her hand, being like, all right, listen, I get it. Satanist cabals, knocking them out, don't know what they look like.
We found one.

Speaker 1 We're going to get one.

Speaker 1 Seems like it's a...

Speaker 1 We're going to kill a priest. I just feel like it's like one of those things that's like not...

Speaker 1 Like it doesn't really hold water. And they're all like, ah, you fucking bitch.

Speaker 1 Well, Cecilia, ever ready with an answer, shouted that this was war. They were all living in the end times.

Speaker 1 And how dare Marcel question her while Pastor Reg was actively plotting to kill people just like Cecilia who just wanted to escape the clutches of Satanists.

Speaker 1 First thing on my to-do list was number one, get my boots fixed. Number two, more anchovies.

Speaker 1 Number three,

Speaker 1 subjugate the Christian church, one lesbian at a time.

Speaker 1 Well, to justify the murder, Cecilia cited the Old Testament, saying that God had told David to murder women and children.

Speaker 1 This was either a misinterpretation of the passage on Cecilia's part, or more likely, a willful distortion. But in the end, it was what finally worked.
It's it's everyone on board. She

Speaker 1 just says that, and they're all go like, yeah, actually, yeah. Yes.
Yeah. Wow.
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 What's important? Well, either that or, you know, she's a 14-year-old girl. What is she going to do? What's she going to do? And she's already watched.

Speaker 1 They murdered a bunch of people. Now you're kind of watching.

Speaker 1 Marcel hadn't, I don't think Marcel had gone on the first murder. They were all talking about it.
No, she knew. She knew it was up.
She definitely knew it was up.

Speaker 1 But she's not really in a position to argue. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 What's important to keep in mind about all this, though, is that even though Electus Pradeus were a small group, not everyone knew about the murders.

Speaker 1 See, it's not like they were all living on a compound together, nor was this a day-to-day cult where people lived a lifestyle based around the leader's teachings.

Speaker 1 Instead, this was a cult comprised of meetings, get-togethers, and hangouts.

Speaker 1 So if they wanted to keep some members in the dark about the murderous side of the cult, all they had to do was not include them on the planning committee.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God, just showing up once a week for fucking bowling. And you're like,

Speaker 1 hey, it was good on you. It's exactly what it was.

Speaker 1 Hey, guys. Power of Christ, huh? All right.
Let's go bowl.

Speaker 1 Bulling. We're going to get bowling and say the eviction.

Speaker 1 And they didn't know that there were three meetings in between the last meeting in which they were planning the murder of a pastor.

Speaker 1 Now, Zach of Valentine had already proved himself to be a capable and enthusiastic killer, but after Michaela had balked at committing murder herself, it showed Cecilia that the rest of them could use a little practice before going into the next mission.

Speaker 1 So they procured a pig's head, and Cecilia made her followers practice murder in her bedroom of all fucking places by stabbing the pig's head with knives and burying axes into its skull.

Speaker 1 They'll probably put down some newspapers.

Speaker 1 I mean, who knows?

Speaker 1 Who knows? Got some taps. But

Speaker 1 Cecilia, like, it is interesting in that way because when they were all, the way she talks about it is that I feel like it's this selling, it's the way she sells things.

Speaker 1 Where I, something keyed into me with Candace, where I realized it was something that Candace had said. Candace.
You also remember Candace is the biggest idiot of them all. Yes.
But

Speaker 1 yes.

Speaker 1 Only the world's biggest idiots record your thoughts.

Speaker 1 So this, but

Speaker 1 so she keyed into something, which is like, she's like, what I didn't understand is that if Cecilia was always wrong, how did she knew what I was doing in her dreams?

Speaker 1 Because she said they would astral project together.

Speaker 1 One of the big exercises they would all do is they would sit and astral project and go around because she said she could teach you how to like leave your body and go and spy on people, do all this kind of shit.

Speaker 1 And I started to realize, because she would say that what they would did at that point, Candace, she would get someone to be sleeping in her bed, right? That's the part where the rumors came from.

Speaker 1 Is that they were sleeping in bed together. And what she was doing in an almost Bugs Bunny-like fashion was whispering into her ear as she was sleeping.

Speaker 1 And it is, I now believe that is exactly what she was doing.

Speaker 1 And that she was, which is the reason why she knew everything that she said, because she said that Cecilia would do this like nighttime rap where she'd start talking about how we're all going to go together in our dreams tonight.

Speaker 1 And she would start start it as everyone's going this whenever when she would do these actual projecting parties and they're all like slumber parties and it's the way she sold it where it's like aha like the stuff with the the pig's head that was like viewed as like pumpkin carving you know I mean where it was like a funny evening of like oh my god what are we doing tonight this is crazy meanwhile they've already killed two people but they're still like this is we're crazy tonight you know and they're all just stabbing ahead so it's this weird like subtle, yet utterly not subtle

Speaker 1 way of telling you they're turning you into a murderer. Well, I think like it almost, I think I brought this up in the last episode.

Speaker 1 It's almost like when someone pretends to go along with a hypnotist just because they want to be a part of the party. And that's called being hypnotized, technically.

Speaker 1 But I mean, but really, it's not subtle at all because she's telling them, like, you have to get good at murder, so you have to stab this pig's head. But then it's how she does it.

Speaker 1 Then she brings in Gorman, like, what a fun pig head-stabbing game we're playing. And they're like, oh, yeah, I love Pig Stabby.
And we're like, Pig Stabby is my favorite new South African game.

Speaker 1 Well, when Cecilia felt that everyone was ready, the plan to kill Pastor Reg Ben Dixon was put into motion.

Speaker 1 Zach Valentine and Larue Stain, Mirinda's teenage son, made a call to Ben Dixon's home to make an appointment for spiritual counseling.

Speaker 1 Ben Dixon readily agreed and made plans to meet at a coffee shop called Mug and Bean the next Monday afternoon. That's where Christ does his best work

Speaker 1 at the coffee store. Don't even kill me until I've had my coffee.

Speaker 1 But just before the meeting, Zach canceled the appointment. The whole thing was just a ruse, I think, to check Ben Dixon's schedule and specifically to see when his wife would be out of the house.

Speaker 1 Just to fucking laugh at him. They're watching him from across the street, watching him go and be like, looking at his watch, going, I guess Christ can't help you, help you be on time.

Speaker 1 And somehow, they learned that Mrs. Ben Dixon came home late on Mondays, so they chose the following Monday to kill Pastor Reg.
But killing Pastor Reg was only part of the game here.

Speaker 1 To ratchet up the fear, Electus Perdeus used their burner phones to once again pose as satanic witches, and they began texting the members of Overcomers Through Christ that a pastor was going to die, and there was nothing they could do about it.

Speaker 1 No one told the pastor? Well, that's the thing. Growing even more bold, they texted Rhea and told her specifically to say her goodbyes to Pastor Reg.
No, this must be

Speaker 1 a funny, sarcastic joke. It says here that they're going to turn the pastor into Pastor Harvey.

Speaker 1 What is even that?

Speaker 1 Incredibly, though, for reasons I can't understand, nobody seemed to warn Reg, or if they did, Reg didn't or couldn't do anything to protect himself.

Speaker 1 Because as we're going to get into later, the South African police, not great at their jobs. No, no.
Really not great at their jobs. What if I just actually said, thank God,

Speaker 1 I'm relieved.

Speaker 1 Please release me from this life.

Speaker 1 And so, on their second outing involving murder, Zach Valentine once again took the Tex Watson role and led Mirinda Stain and her 14-year-old daughter Marcel on a mission to brutally murder a pastor.

Speaker 1 I never got to do anything fun with my dad.

Speaker 1 Again, the crew wore wigs. Zach had a long, luxurious red wig, while Mirinda wore a short black bob wig.
Yeah, now you're the lady, and I'm the guy.

Speaker 1 Mirinda's a fucking piece of work. We're going to get there.

Speaker 1 Well, the difference this time was that they also had police uniforms that belonged to Cecilia's husband, whose role as a cop will play a big part later on in this story. And they were there.

Speaker 1 The uniform was just hovering there by how fast he left after work.

Speaker 1 How fat, like the fact that he specifically wouldn't be home ever to see an ounce of cult activity.

Speaker 1 So, armed with axes and knives, Zach, Miranda, and Marcel drove to Pastor Reg's housing complex and stopped at the security gate.

Speaker 1 Using a burner phone, Miranda called Pastor Reg and told him that they were police who had questions about the murders of Natasha Berger and Joy Boonzair.

Speaker 1 The very murders they themselves had committed.

Speaker 1 Pastor Reg, of course, buzzed them in. Of course, I love to discuss violence.

Speaker 1 But since it would look weird if there was a 14-year-old police officer in tow, Marcel Stain was crouched down behind the car. And when Mirinda and Zach pulled in, Marcel crept in after them.

Speaker 1 She would not participate, but she would witness the entire ordeal to come.

Speaker 1 So, after chatting about the phony murder investigation for just a few minutes, Zach walked up behind the 72-year-old pastor and smashed in Reg's skull with his weapon.

Speaker 1 Zach then stood over Ben Dixon's prone body and chopped his head over and over again

Speaker 1 with an axe.

Speaker 1 It was a violin. Don't worry about it, old joke.

Speaker 1 But while he was doing it, Mirinda joined in and proved herself to be just as bloodthirsty and aggressive as Zack.

Speaker 1 She stabbed him in the chest and stomach 13 times and kept doing it until Pastor Reg's blood stopped pumping. They then left Reg's body in his own flower bed and fled the scene covered in blood.

Speaker 1 Oh, they did it outside? Yeah. Yeah.
I mean,

Speaker 1 how do they not get caught? It's an apartment complex. Big fences.
Wen and Krugersdorf.

Speaker 1 Well, these are housing complexes. They're not apartment complexes.
Like in South Africa,

Speaker 1 think of it as a gated community. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, but yeah. So there is.
And those are really tall walls.

Speaker 1 They keep them. They're like 10 feet tall, I remember.
Yeah. And really, like, the most noise you're going to hear from Pastor Edge is

Speaker 1 like right when the fucking axe

Speaker 1 goes into his scope.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was it. Yeah, he wasn't conscious for the rest of it.
And then the sound of his soul escaping.

Speaker 1 Was that

Speaker 1 out of his? Was that a fart? It was out of his mouth. No.
No, that wasn't a fart. That was a soul coming out of his mouth.

Speaker 1 That sounds like a soul coming out of his mouth.

Speaker 1 Holy trader, I forgot he's a pastor.

Speaker 1 Getting back into their rental car, which I'd imagine had to be cleaned quite thoroughly before they returned it. I don't know.
I don't know if these guys are super conscientious renters.

Speaker 1 They drove to a pre-planned location where Michaela Valentine was waiting with another car.

Speaker 1 The murder crew then changed clothes and headed home, throwing their bloody garments and their murder weapons out of the car window on their way back to Krugersdorp.

Speaker 1 Michaela, meanwhile, asked the crew to recount all the gory details: like how long did it take him to die? What kind of weapons did you use? How many times did you stab him?

Speaker 1 But it's most likely that Michaela was just feigning interest because she didn't want to get into trouble with Cecilia again for not being enthusiastic about murder.

Speaker 1 That's how I was good at English class.

Speaker 1 Even if I was falling asleep, you just always make sure whenever you get asked a question, you got an improv a good, you have the improv a good answer. Yeah.
Whatever it is.

Speaker 1 Also, I found that in English class, if you ask a lot of questions about the reading, you don't have to do the reading. Dude, that is the biggest key.
I didn't understand that until about junior year.

Speaker 1 And then I was like, I don't have to read read anything if I just say, like, what does the color red represent in this paragraph?

Speaker 1 Like, you could just, like, say things that sounds like you've been pondering it. Deflection.
That's nice.

Speaker 1 But the person who had surprised themselves most that day was Mirinda Stain.

Speaker 1 And it's important to note that this woman, the woman who had stabbed this pastor until his blood stopped pumping, she was still teaching high school English every weekday during this entire saga.

Speaker 1 Your English teacher loves murder.

Speaker 1 She later said that she loved the act of murder, but she felt a release afterward, an adrenaline rush that was both scary and exciting. You know how you're scared of your teacher sometimes? Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's why. It's because they are craving your blood.

Speaker 1 They want to cut you open. They want to see your entrails.
It's a very frustrating job, from what I'm told. I think it's because of questions like Eddie and I

Speaker 1 realized how we could derail the entire class.

Speaker 1 All she probably thought thought about is that she probably, as she was stabbing him, she just thought of a big fat-faced kid that looked just like Eddie with a big dolphin's hat on going, oh.

Speaker 1 Can we have lunch again?

Speaker 1 She said that she didn't know it until she did it, but she'd been waiting her whole life to murder someone. Wow.
As she put it in a way. Not for her.

Speaker 1 I guess there's only one way to find out. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, as she put it in a way that was appropriate for a teacher, murdering Reg Ben Dixon was like taking an exam where you have all this tension beforehand, but after you write and pass it, there's a release that's very enjoyable.

Speaker 1 Yeah, wow, yeah.

Speaker 1 It must be a lot like an essay writing portion on an exam.

Speaker 1 And for me, hearing this school teacher talk about how much she loved murder really goes a long way towards explaining how normal people are able to participate in large-scale horrors like the Holocaust and other genocides.

Speaker 1 See, some people are like Michaela Valentine, who are immediately repulsed by killing no matter what the justification, but they basically go along to survive, which only encourages the people in the other group, people like Miranda Stain.

Speaker 1 See, people like Miranda would otherwise never murder someone unless they were given a righteous reason. But when they finally do it, they find that they absolutely love it.

Speaker 1 In fact, the bar for justification just keeps getting lower, specifically because they want reasons to do it again and again.

Speaker 1 Now extrapolate those dynamics to millions of people and you can start start to understand how horrible things are committed by seemingly normal people on a fucking massive scale. That's great.

Speaker 1 Do you think if they stopped after this guy, they would have not gotten caught? Yes. Yeah.
They would have moved on. They would have moved.

Speaker 1 Actually, if they would have stopped after the next four people, they wouldn't have gotten caught. Crazy.
Yeah. But do you also feel like...

Speaker 1 Five. Wow.
Even better.

Speaker 1 Do you even like maybe think that there's something to the idea of like once you've then killed killed for that reason, you then kind of put your own superiority, like you begin to gain a sense of superiority.

Speaker 1 Oh, you're an avenging angel at that moment.

Speaker 1 Like you are one of God, you are a Christian soldier. Yeah.
You know, and an actual one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Everybody else who sings about it on Christmas has no fucking idea what they're talking about because I've tasted blood.

Speaker 1 And not only that, but you're good at it. Yeah.
And you love it. So you're going to do it more because it makes you feel really fucking good.
Hey, man, it's always about finding something.

Speaker 1 What can you throw yourself into all the way? Mm-hmm. Now, incredibly, the main suspect for the murder of Regmin Dixon was once again Rhea Grunwald.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, I'm just simply, what happened to you? Like, they tried it, like, she's trying to open the door to the police station. Oh,

Speaker 1 my, this has separated.

Speaker 1 Oh, my elbow is also separated. I can't be here too long.
I have to get back to my plants.

Speaker 1 Yes, I did drive three hours to murder.

Speaker 1 Yes, this is a suspect for the brutal ex-murder out in Johannesburg. I used to be a pot,

Speaker 1 and then I was magically transformed into a woman.

Speaker 1 Well, they linked these murders because the murder of Regman Dixon had all the hallmarks of the double murder committed by Electus Berdeus.

Speaker 1 Rhea, meanwhile, believed that all of this was the work of the satanic church, who was once again framing her for their own murders. Rhea, get your shit together!

Speaker 1 Now, Ria completely refused to hear any other point of view as to what was going on that didn't involve Satanists.

Speaker 1 She did finally lawyer up after being accused of a third murder, but she almost immediately fired him when he scolded her for being so deeply involved in a lot of horse shit that was obviously ruining her life.

Speaker 1 What are you talking about? I'm steadily losing the war to Satanists.

Speaker 1 But when she fired her lawyer, her children, who had already had a strained relationship with her, they went no contact.

Speaker 1 Because like we're seeing today with people lost to the QAnon and MAGA cults, people like Rhea live in entirely separate realities that are impenetrable to those who don't believe.

Speaker 1 And again, it's her arrogance.

Speaker 1 It is because she believes that she is correct and everybody else that is screaming to say, no, no, you are not correct is wrong because she has the she is fueled by the power of Christ and she was chosen by the by Christ in order to help people on this planet.

Speaker 1 And guess what? Who Christ doesn't choose? Anybody? Because Christ is dead. If Christ was a man, he's dead.
All right. And he can't do anything now because he's fucking worm food.

Speaker 1 And everything else is going on around him. They're all fucking dead.

Speaker 1 Fucking other guys are dead. The gay dudes are falling around are fucking dead.
Mary Magdalene's fucking dead. They can't do jack shit.
God shot himself in the head two years ago. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 After he found out about J.K. Rowley.
Yo, he was so upset. He can't believe how much work went into that.

Speaker 1 Surprisingly, God's a Hufflepuff.

Speaker 1 It seems like Cecilia knew that she was, in effect, untouchable when it came to these murders.

Speaker 1 Because the day after Pastor Reg was killed, one of her cultists left a pile of bloody meat on Rhea's doorstep.

Speaker 1 There was a note beside it that said, quote,

Speaker 1 Sorry, this is all the doggies left you. Here's Here's your own little piece of Reggie.

Speaker 1 It was not, however,

Speaker 1 I mean, honestly, though, I would believe it.

Speaker 1 And then she looks back and forth.

Speaker 1 It is pastor.

Speaker 1 Spicy, it means pineapple. It was not, however, Reggie's flesh.
Rather, it was the leftover brains from the pig's head that Alectus Perdeus had used to practice murder.

Speaker 1 The very same pig's head that had been in the home of a police officer who was willfully turning a blind eye to everything happening around him. A deaf ear, a mute mouth.

Speaker 1 He had wrapped his head in fucking plastic. And he is anywhere but this house.
I just want, I want his life. I want to be in that beautiful, oblivious life of that man just walking.

Speaker 1 Talking shit to fucking teenagers over online gaming.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's like playing FIFA, saying the F-word, fucking fighting with guys, leaving, going down again. He's saying, I need some more monster energy drink.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go down there. And it's just like, oh, the hot dogs look good today.
You know, like in the 7-Eleven clothes.

Speaker 1 Just hanging out there for half an hour talking to the guy, going to look at the milk, being like, new milking, huh? Like, what an incredible life that guy has. What meds is he on?

Speaker 1 Oh, honey, you left your wolf teeth by the bed again. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What? Who were you?

Speaker 1 Now, Rhea took this pile of pigs' brains to the police, who amateurishly asked her to put it back where they found it so they could take pictures.

Speaker 1 They then searched her apartment, treating her like the prime suspect. Then they accused her of being knocking shit over, going through all the fucking hummel figurines, knocking the shining camera.

Speaker 1 I got that when we went to Amsterdam. No,

Speaker 1 just, you know, be like tearing up pictures of the Pope.

Speaker 1 They then accused her of being the one who sent the threatening text messages that were supposedly coming from Satanists. One woman operation.
I literally don't know how to use my own phone.

Speaker 1 And the phone is magic.

Speaker 1 Now, if I had to guess as to why the cops made Rhea their prime suspect, the only answer I can come up with is that the cops had created this story that Rhea wanted her satanic panic story to be true so badly that she was making it a reality herself by sending texts, faking threats, and murdering three people.

Speaker 1 You know, they're not...

Speaker 1 I will say they are doing it poorly, but if you're looking at who is the center of all of these murders. Yeah.
There's got to be so many innocent people in South African prisons.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 1 It's going to get so much worse. And to that point, I can honestly, I can see why Rhea Grunwald thought that the satanic church had infiltrated the South African police.

Speaker 1 Because she must think that, obviously, she's flawed, but she must think she's going insane. Oh, yeah.
Because it's happening to her. Yeah.
People are dying.

Speaker 1 You're like, it's not like, it's like at some point, you're like, I know you, like, you have to be delusional to even believe all the other stuff, but still, like, it's just like, you're like, I seriously can't like extress enough just how brutal the murders are that are right next to me, you know?

Speaker 1 And it's not me. It's like very much not the little old lady.

Speaker 1 But as we've said before, we must always be very careful to never confuse incompetence for malice. From what it seems to me, the South African police had somewhat the right idea, but the wrong person.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. And it could very well be that this confusion may have been deliberate, because the more likely person in this scenario was, if you'll remember, married to one of their own.
Ah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, definitely. Also, just the

Speaker 1 you could just see them look at, like, I mean, it makes some sense. You read the texts, and you know, these texts are not from a cabal of evil Satanists.
Like, you know that this is real. Or do you?

Speaker 1 I don't know how many of these fucking cops think that the cabal is real. It's true.
They do think it's all real. Some of them do, some of them don't.
It also could be a whole bunch of laziness.

Speaker 1 That's a big part. Yeah, I mean, because that's the thing.
You said you said that, you know, she is the person in the middle of all this.

Speaker 1 She's the link that connects all these together, but it's like they don't have the critical thinking skill or they don't have the gumption to go beyond that. No.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh, this person's in the middle of all of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 They probably did it.

Speaker 1 Just fucking get her ass. Yeah, we don't need to.
It's just,

Speaker 1 as I'll go into later. Hey, Daryl, can I go beat the fuck out of the old lady now?

Speaker 1 Is that cool? Can I do that? Because I've been wanting to.

Speaker 1 Can I?

Speaker 1 Now, as I said, Miranda Stain was absolutely invigorated by the murder of Reg Ben Dixon, and she wanted more.

Speaker 1 But her son, La Rue, was understandably troubled that his mother had so fervently taken to killing. I do not know, mommy, why you have become

Speaker 1 so antagonistic.

Speaker 1 Because I seem to remember when I came out your beautiful pussy, it was as smooth as a seal's back.

Speaker 1 Ah,

Speaker 1 it is good to be French.

Speaker 1 LaRue started numbing the pain with drugs. Harohan.

Speaker 1 I don't know why, yeah. LaRue and Marcel.

Speaker 1 I don't know. It's very French.
But Marcel, she'd actually witnessed the murder of Reg Ben Dixon. And she went the opposite direction and threw herself into school work and total denial.

Speaker 1 Michaela Valentine, however, was having the hardest time.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, school and denial.

Speaker 1 Great college.

Speaker 1 Take you away from there. Michaela Valentine, however, was having the hardest time accepting the turn that Alectus Perdeus had taken.

Speaker 1 She tried overdosing on pills, but she survived, and afterward told her mother that she was scared because other people who'd left Electus Perdeus had been killed.

Speaker 1 That's some of the other murders that they think Electus Perdeus may have been responsible for.

Speaker 1 And she also said that the police were starting to ask her questions that she couldn't answer out of fear for her own life.

Speaker 1 So we do know there was some investigation going on on the periphery of Electus Alectus Pradeas, but not enough.

Speaker 1 And as it turned out, Michaela had very good reason to be scared because Cecilia had already decided that it was time to start the inevitable purge from within that usually happens with violent cults.

Speaker 1 Well, usually, always. Always.

Speaker 1 Because you got to take some of the dead leaves off.

Speaker 1 And it's easier to kill them. Well, people start asking questions and they start asking like, well, why are we doing this? Well, this isn't what I signed up for.

Speaker 1 Like, that's all, that's always someone starts saying, like, this isn't what I signed up for.

Speaker 1 And if you want to keep moving forward that person has to go away But after you've already committed violent crimes that person can only go away one way and that's

Speaker 1 and that's what these guys don't understand That's what the people they murdered is that the cults don't understand is that they because they hold forbidden knowledge They are they are have a short expiration date.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like the mafia except the shoes are worse Oh, yeah, this is bad fashion mafia

Speaker 1 Yeah, so Cecilia did what she did best and she began manipulating the other members essentially committing murder by gossip.

Speaker 1 Playing heavy on the sunk cost fallacy, Cecilia told the others that if Michaela left Electus Perdeus, then she'd probably go to the cops. And if she went to the cops, the cult would go to jail.

Speaker 1 And if the cult went to jail, then that was end game for all those American orphans. Not the orphans! No!

Speaker 1 And that would make the three murders that they'd already committed totally meaningless. So what's another murder?

Speaker 1 The most flabbergasting part of this is that Zach Valentine, Michaela's husband, he was immediately on board with killing his wife. Hot dog.

Speaker 1 First he said, Hot dog. Yeah, definitely.
So at this point, he believed that it was his destiny to marry Cecilia.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 1 So by murdering his wife, he was one step closer to greatness. And then I can see the secrets of the hair gel.

Speaker 1 What's under that windbreaker?

Speaker 1 I'm going to know soon enough. My God, I love your Steve Buscemi-like body.
Always wanted to be with a lot lizard.

Speaker 1 No, she's the one that chases the lot lizards away. Yeah.
Get out of here.

Speaker 1 You're stealing my cock.

Speaker 1 All right, I'm going away. Don't want to take all the cock.

Speaker 1 And so, when Michaela inevitably confided in her husband and told him that they should maybe think about leaving the murder cult, he decided then and there that it was only a matter of time. Wow.

Speaker 1 On October 3rd, 2012, about two months after after Pastor Red was killed, Michaela told Alectus Perdeus that she was leaving. I'm putting in my two weeks.

Speaker 1 And as soon as Michaela left the room, Cecilia told her kill crew that they had an obvious mission ahead of them.

Speaker 1 You know who we're going to murder next? I want you all to know that we are going to murder someone very important next.

Speaker 1 It's Michaela.

Speaker 1 She's just in the other room, like getting ice in the water.

Speaker 1 But as opposed to their other intricately planned murders, this one was going to be relatively simple. Actually, now that I say it, this isn't relatively simple at all.

Speaker 1 There's a whole fuck, everything has this fucking Byzantine network of fucking plans within plans upon it.

Speaker 1 Because it gets them busy on the details of the plans and they're not thinking about the murder until it's too late. That's very true.
And they're just creating more evidence.

Speaker 1 The plan was to send Miranda and Marcel into Zach and Michaela's house to kill Michaela and trash the house to make it look like a robbery had gone wrong. That's the simple part.

Speaker 1 Zach, meanwhile, was set set to meet a real estate agent under the auspice of selling his home.

Speaker 1 And when they walked into Zach's house to find Michaela's dead body, Zach could be like, oh no, they murdered my wife. Oh no, what happened? And you have to practice that.

Speaker 1 Have you guys practiced that? My wife! Very good, very good. Very convincing.
Very good.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 That's a part of my vocal warm-ups in the morning. I pretend I find Natalie dead.

Speaker 1 She doesn't like it.

Speaker 1 And imagine not. And so at 8 a.m.

Speaker 1 on October 4th, the very next day after Michaela told Electus Perdeus that she was leaving, Miranda and her 14-year-old daughter, Marcel, drove to Zach and Michaela's house with a 14-inch serrated knife and a hammer.

Speaker 1 Now tell me, do you want the hammer? You want the knife, honey? Why would they have better weapons? I think they liked it. It's that whole like make-it-witchy thing.

Speaker 1 Like the, if the weapons are just simple, it looks horrible. Also, I think that they, to be honest, I don't think they knew where to get weapons.
I think they're just getting what they can.

Speaker 1 Your husband's a cop. They're stealing his uniform.
They can't take a gun. I think they knew.
They'd show later on they know exactly where to get weapons. Yeah, they know exactly where we're going.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think they just wanted it to be like a

Speaker 1 movie. I think they wanted it to be like a horror movie.

Speaker 1 You wanted as much blood as possible. They're obsessed, or she was, Cecilia was obsessed with a horror movie.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, for Zach's part, he made sure to drug Michaela's coffee before leaving for work to make sure that the murder would be an easy one.

Speaker 1 And so, just after Zach gave the signal to Miranda and Marcel when he was on the way out of the house that Michaela was passed out, the murder crew walked inside.

Speaker 1 When the mother and daughter found Michaela fast asleep, Mirinda, hungry for another murder, she bashed Michaela's head with a hammer, working herself into a frenzy.

Speaker 1 She soon switched to the knife, stabbing and slashing Michaela over and over again, all in front of her 14-year-old daughter.

Speaker 1 But, as we all know from Ed Kemper, it's far harder to kill someone without a gun than you might think. And Michaela woke up in the midst of being murdered.

Speaker 1 All she could get out was the word Mirinda, to which Mirinda said, I'm going to murder you now.

Speaker 1 But as Michaela mumbled out a prayer in a drugged stupor, Mirinda remembered that Cecilia had requested that the teenage Marcel participate in the murder as well.

Speaker 1 Mirinda handed her daughter the knife and told her to stab Michaela, but Marcel only gave it a half-hearted attempt, claiming that the knife wouldn't go in.

Speaker 1 Unfazed, Mirinda said that it was all right because she was almost finished anyway.

Speaker 1 And after taking the knife back, Mirinda stabbed Michaela over and over again until both the prayers and the blood spurts ended.

Speaker 1 In all, Michaela Valentine was stabbed 64 times, which does sort of negate the whole robbery gone wrong ankle. Now, would you call that gentle parenting?

Speaker 1 It's okay. I can take it.
It's definitely more grace than my dad gave me when we tried fixing the fucking lawnmower. Oh, God forbid I try to help my father with anything technical.

Speaker 1 Like, I can't even imagine trying to murder somebody with my dad. He would be on my ass.

Speaker 1 After Michaela died, Mirinda and Marcel wrapped the body in a heated blanket because Cecilia had told them that heating up the body would cause it to decay quicker and the time of death would be harder to determine.

Speaker 1 This is all Cecilia's just sitting in the townhouse, just making up random shit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and staying with the original plan, Miranda took all the valuables from the home, then went back to Cecilia's apartment where they all sat around watching DVDs with LaRue.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's just incredible to think that they just sat there watching movies after committing an 8 a.m. murder on a Thursday.
All I know is that nothing makes me feel more whimsical

Speaker 1 and comedic than watching that little squirrel in Ice Age.

Speaker 1 i love the hijinks he goes

Speaker 1 ah yas

Speaker 1 see i was gonna guess wedding crasher for some reason

Speaker 1 i looked up what movies were really big that year i'd say pitch perfect

Speaker 1 i can see that making a making the jump over the ocean oh yeah

Speaker 1 or 21 jump street either one both fun yeah fun and staying with you

Speaker 1 well technically if it's a celia it is just horror movies from top to bottom that's all she would watch because she would watch they said that like hundreds and hundreds of horror movies.

Speaker 1 Well, that's likable. Yeah, it makes me kind of get her.

Speaker 1 But while the murder crew were hanging out at Cecilia's, Zach Valentine had to complete his part of the plan.

Speaker 1 At 2 p.m., about six hours after his wife was murdered, Zach showed up to his house with the real estate agent, a woman named Estelle Schute, who was there to take photos for a listing and show the house to some potential buyers that afternoon.

Speaker 1 And so, when Zach and Estelle parked in the garage, Zach made a big show of saying that his wife was at home before they headed inside.

Speaker 1 You're gonna love my wife, she's totally alive, and she is the nicest lady in the living room.

Speaker 1 All right, we're gonna go up the four flights of stairs to my wife, and we're gonna go say hello to her alive face, and we're gonna hang out, and you're gonna look at our totally unsullied half-bath.

Speaker 1 Zippity-doo-doo.

Speaker 1 Do you sell houses often?

Speaker 1 The house, however, was dark, and Zach kept calling out, hello, my love, over and over again, until they finally found Michaela's body. Zach, of course, gave it a perfunctory, oh, no.
Oh, I got, oh,

Speaker 1 oh, not alive.

Speaker 1 And Estelle called the police. Zach, meanwhile, went to the kitchen to get some juice because he was diabetic.
And seeing the body of your murdered wife apparently dropped your blood sugar.

Speaker 1 That's good to know. Yeah.
Zach then called his father while they waited for the cops.

Speaker 1 But after hanging up, zach asked estelle quote this is what estelle said that he asked her will you still be able to sell the house are the buyers still coming this afternoon because we don't want to miss on that i know how hard that is she's making a little scrub brush

Speaker 1 honestly i feel like this way we could bump it up yeah right yeah true crime well dumbfounded realistic dumbfounded estelle told zach that she'd already canceled the appointment damn dude that's fast you even fucking asked me yeah come on i'm trying to sell this house by 4 30 both the police and the trauma counselor were on the scene.

Speaker 1 But the counselor was also surprised when he heard Zach laughing and chatting with his parents on the phone. Yeah, I told her he wouldn't even believe it.

Speaker 1 We were coming up in the elevator, and the first thing I was being like, my wife's totally alive upstairs. And I was just like, you're going to see a load of her live face.

Speaker 1 And we're going to go through the living room. She's the most alive woman in the living room.
The egg on my face.

Speaker 1 You wouldn't believe it, Dad. You would have loved it.

Speaker 1 Likewise, the police were surprised when Zach asked them how long they were going to be carting his wife away. Wow.
Because he was worried about the cats. Yeah.
Yeah. Had to feed the cats.
Naked Sab.

Speaker 1 This was a question he asked multiple times to many people at the scene. We're wrapping this up soon? Are you going to slap her in a doggy bag or something?

Speaker 1 It's got to be easier to pick her up with all the holes, huh? We get a fork or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She's got to be lighter without all the blood. We just slapped away a lot, right?

Speaker 1 What I was thinking, too, is we don't even have to take the stairs. We could just slide her body out the window.

Speaker 1 And his almost eager desire to return to the scene of his wife's murder was was seen as strange, to say the least. Zach even joked to Estelle because she was supposed to take pictures of the house.

Speaker 1 So he turns to her as the police are taking pictures of the crime scene, and he says, You'll get your photos, just not the ones he had in mind.

Speaker 1 Man, he's a funny guy. He's a real funny guy.
Is he Rob Schneider? You know, that's the thing that sometimes, you know, like dark comedy, that's just how you deal with it. Yeah, I mean, that's

Speaker 1 gallows humor. Just jokes, it's how you deal with the murder of your wife immediately after house.
64 stab wounds

Speaker 1 like it's not even like yeah it's not like she got it's an accident i mean i not that any form of your wife being murdered is better or worse but if she's turned into charcuterie and you're just like when are we wrapping this up actually i got to um i gotta i'm supposed to learn how to play racquetball at four

Speaker 1 saying nothing would have been better yeah yeah that's what these people always do they always get really chatty because they're nervous so they get chatty and they don't and they're not but they're not feeling anything so they forget themselves.

Speaker 1 They're not good actors.

Speaker 1 Now, all of this behavior was extremely suspicious, and the ominous feeling at the scene only grew when police discovered two assassination kits under Zach and Michaela's bed that included a pair of gloves, a balaclava, cable ties, knives, strangling wire, and a handgun.

Speaker 1 No, it's our whole ISIS role-playing thing. It's a whole thing.
We do a thing. I'm Osab and Bin Laden.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 She comes in. She's the President Georgina Bush.

Speaker 1 We're fucking each

Speaker 1 What's a balacla? That's like the thing that you put over your face to hide your face. Yeah, ski mask.
Oh, balaclava. Yeah.
Zach, however, wasn't questioned or taken into custody. He was left at home.

Speaker 1 And that night, instead of sleeping on the couch, he just flipped over the bloody mattress where his wife had been killed, and he slept just fine on the other side.

Speaker 1 Hotel room, you know, call your cousin. Anything.

Speaker 1 No, flip over the mattress. Now, concerning cult relations here, there were still people that were not firmly in either Cecilia Cecilia or Rhea's camp.

Speaker 1 Melanie Vandermerve, for example, she was still talking to both of them, and she told Rhea that Michaela Valentine had been murdered. Again, Rhea had the right idea, but the wrong motivation.

Speaker 1 She immediately thought that Cecilia was responsible, and the death of Michaela Valentine also put together some pieces in Rhea's mind that made her think that Cecilia was also probably behind the deaths of Natasha Berger and Pastor Regbin Dixon.

Speaker 1 I think I finally know what's happening here.

Speaker 1 What she got wrong, though, was that she believed that Cecilia was collaborating with the satanic church but was acting alone, while everyone else in Electus Pradeus were completely innocent.

Speaker 1 In other words, her insane worldview was completely distorting reality and was preventing her from seeing what was really happening.

Speaker 1 Because she can't possibly believe that she is not the subject of the forces of Satan. Yeah.
And they are not coming to topple her most powerful, truly redemptive

Speaker 1 version of the power of Christ. Like, she literally just thinks that, like, it's all about Rhea.

Speaker 1 Well, I think it's also because, like, she can't believe that the other people on Electus Perdeus are cult members because she's still seeing them as lost sheep.

Speaker 1 Well, because she thinks everybody that's not, anybody that's not saved the way she's saved is lost sheep. Because remember, she was in the group.
Yeah. So she was there.

Speaker 1 She was the founder of the group. And essentially, I think that it's almost the idea of being like, poor them.
if my magical powers can't work, they're all just a bunch of lost cats.

Speaker 1 Also, it's not like she's doing a worse job of finding out who the killer is than the cops. No, she's actually closer than they are.
What if OJ just shows up?

Speaker 1 Cecilia, meanwhile, was telling the members of Electus Perdeus, who weren't involved in Michaela's murder, that it was the Overcomers who'd killed her.

Speaker 1 Everyone knew, however, that it wasn't a coincidence that Michaela had been killed the day after she left.

Speaker 1 And they took note that whether it was the other members of Electus Perdeus or the satanic church itself who did the deed, death was the consequence of disobeying Cecilia.

Speaker 1 Going even deeper into that concept, Miranda directly told her children, Marcel and LaRue, that if they ever told anyone what happened or if they tried to run away, then she would kill them herself, just like she'd murdered people twice before.

Speaker 1 Just remember, I'm the baby factory, and I can make two more just like you.

Speaker 1 But it's kind of funny because that's like, truly, that was like a joke my parents used to say every parent has that one they were being like you know like i take i brought you into this world and i'll take you out oh yeah they all say that

Speaker 1 oh i know yeah now some of the people who had just

Speaker 1 oh i know it's one of my favorites

Speaker 1 now some of the people who had just a foot in the door of this cult were shocked enough by michaela's murder that they slowly began backing away but they never fully left after seeing what had happened to michaela see while cult member amber dupree was initially drawn closer into the cult by by the murder of Natasha Berger, she now began to realize that Cecilia was the real danger here.

Speaker 1 So she limited herself to weekly meetings to keep up appearances. What, like, yo, so she became like a lapsed like perdeus?

Speaker 1 She goes to mass on Sundays, but not on Wednesday nights. I get it.

Speaker 1 But Amber's boyfriend James Vermach, he started spending more time with the cult after the murder of Michaela Valentine, and he became closer to Zack, possibly out of some sense of sympathy for the death of Zack's wife.

Speaker 1 But once Vermont came closer, Cecilia started grooming him for the murder crew by giving her a knife from her personal collection. This, it was said, this was how you knew that Cecilia liked you.

Speaker 1 But as far as their next murder victim went, the logical choice was Rhea Groomwald. Oh, yeah!

Speaker 1 But, as I said earlier, Cecilia had painted herself into a corner when she said that Rhea couldn't be killed lest Cecilia die as well due to their so-called maternal bond.

Speaker 1 And again, but I feel like she could change the rules if she wanted to, so I think that this is, it is just, what do we do without Rhea?

Speaker 1 Like the fact that she also knows heat's going towards Rhea and whether or not her husband has anything to do with it is also might have to factor. Yeah.
She couldn't die. She couldn't.

Speaker 1 What if Rhea was unable to be killed? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Ah, God.

Speaker 1 But Cecilia still wanted to hurt Rhea as badly as she possibly could. So it was finally time to take it to the highest level.
Alectus Perdeus decided to murder Rhea's son, Joshua.

Speaker 1 Second highest level.

Speaker 1 What's the highest level? Is Rhea? Rhea. Ah, yeah.
And then God himself

Speaker 1 for being a double agent. Did you know that? Oh,

Speaker 1 I didn't realize that was happening. Yeah, God's a fucking double agent, dude, for Satan on himself.

Speaker 1 That's what's going on here. That's why he made abortion awesome and illegal.

Speaker 1 This is an ad by BetterHelp. You know,

Speaker 1 I really lost contact with my ascended masters recently. It's been so hard to psychically reach them because so much aluminum is built up in my pituitary gland.

Speaker 1 I guess it's because I've been using all this fancy, dancing, natural deodorant that apparently has extra aluminum in it. But honestly, I just wish I could reach out sometimes.

Speaker 1 You know, it's just nice to make somebody's day. My ascended masters always tell me I'm right and that I'm not too fat for life.

Speaker 1 But some people don't have ascended masters to talk to. Some people wish they could reach out to somebody.
And this season, BetterHelp encourages you to reach out.

Speaker 1 Check in on friends, just like it takes a little courage to send that text or grab coffee with someone or ask one of your ascended masters what's the proper way to destroy communism.

Speaker 1 Reaching out for therapy can also feel difficult, but it can be worth it. So I say you get out there and just like I want to, give a call using the powers of Votan.

Speaker 1 For those of you that don't have Votan, enjoy BetterHelp. This month don't wait to reach out.

Speaker 1 Whether you're checking in on a friend or reaching out to a therapist, BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash lastpod.

Speaker 1 That's betterhlp.com slash lastpod.

Speaker 1 If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the idea of learning a new language, you're not alone. Studies show that 70 to 90% of people trying to learn a new language give up.

Speaker 1 Fortunately, Babel's built so that it's really easy to get started. Learning a language with Babel is all about small steps, big wins, and progress you can actually track and feel.

Speaker 1 Their bite-sized lessons fit easily into your daily routine and are also easy to remember. It's easy to use Babel.
It's easy for you to learn different words.

Speaker 1 Stuff like if you're in Germany and you need to be like, hey, where can I get some see-through laterhosen?

Speaker 1 You can learn that. If you go to Mexico City and you want to learn how to say,

Speaker 1 do you have any see-through laterhosen?

Speaker 1 In Mexico City, you can learn how to do that. I believe the Spanish word for laterhosen

Speaker 1 is laterhosen. And I learned that from Babel.

Speaker 1 Here's a special limited time deal for our listeners. Right now, get up to 55% off your Babel subscription at babble.com forward slash left.
Get up to 55% off at babble.com forward slash left.

Speaker 1 Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com forward slash left. Rules and restrictions may apply.

Speaker 1 You know you've reached peak couple energy when your undies match. Me undies match me has you both covered, literally, in super soft ultra-modal undies, socks, PJs, and loungewear.

Speaker 1 Festive prints, check. Cozy vibes, double check.
And right now, it's deal season. Get up to 50% off site-wide for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Speaker 1 Take your couple game to the next level with Meundies Match Me. To get deals up to 50% off, go to meundies.com slash SXM.
Enter promo code SXM. That's meundies.com slash SXM code SXM.

Speaker 1 Now for justification for murdering Rhea's son, Cecilia once more returned to the orphans, who had pretty much become priority number one for Electus Perdeus. No one talking to the American officials.

Speaker 1 Like, honestly, like, where are the orphans? Are they just America? Are they just in a fat? Like, they're in, like, a warehouse, like, it's like a Batman, old Batman cartoon.

Speaker 1 Like, are they all like tied up in one big rope? Are they just like hanging out there with the evil Satanists?

Speaker 1 Going, like, yes, the one thing Satanists love more than anything is hanging out with children.

Speaker 1 Especially fucking whiny ass orphans.

Speaker 1 No, these are orphans that have been sent to a special orphanage because their Satanist parents had abandoned them because they didn't want the kids to grow up in Satanism. So they're fucking.

Speaker 1 Evil annie, dude. That's a fucking show.

Speaker 1 Oh my God. Evil anti-Satanist children and the fucking everybody's a problem child? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Awesome. Yeah.
I'm writing that. Really?

Speaker 1 Cecilia said that she was having visions that the satanic church was using someone to target the safety of the orphans. And that someone was Joshua Grunwald.

Speaker 1 For Joshua's part, he was very much just some guy working at a tech company who had, at best, a frayed relationship with his insane mother, being the only one of Rhea's children who still spoke to her.

Speaker 1 And he spoke to her sporadically at that.

Speaker 1 He's doing his best to not be involved. Proving all the other kids right.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, that's what happened when you barely talk to mom? Yeah, yeah, you get involved in a murder plot.

Speaker 1 But when Cecilia named Joshua as their target, the only one who pushed back was James Vermock.

Speaker 1 He had been called into the inner circle for this one, but was apparently unaware of all the murders Alectus Perdeus had committed previously.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but

Speaker 1 no!

Speaker 1 But my thing is, honestly,

Speaker 1 I thought this was going to be like an orgy kind of thing. You know what I mean? Like, I came here.
That's usually what an inner circle is.

Speaker 1 I thought that this was going to be, I thought we were going to have a sex with the whole family. I was like...
Kind of interested in that.

Speaker 1 That was kind of what I was really hoping for, you know, having sex with the daughter, having sex with the son, having sex with the mom, having sex with the daughter with the son, having sex with the son and the mother in one you know what i mean you're telling me we're gonna murder someone

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 oh i'm glad we weren't overcomers but i thought we were at least comers yeah i mean geez

Speaker 1 well james spoke to cecilia alone and suggested that maybe as christians wasn't murder kind of wrong like sort of a biggie

Speaker 1 oh no first mistake but cecilia pulled out the old testament once again saying that god ordered murder all the time so why shouldn't she do the same if it was justified? Which it always was.

Speaker 1 Because it was God. And then New Testament, technically, theologically is supposed to like rebirth the idea of the angry, vengeful God into a more considerate, forgiving God.

Speaker 1 Ah, nah, you know what they do. They like to pick and choose the shit that they like and put it to the new and it's the true also if God was real.
He'd be a fucking asshole.

Speaker 1 He would be a fucking thing about that. He gives AIDS to kids.
He likes it.

Speaker 1 Now, James was somewhat convinced, but still struggled to understand why they were allowed to break the First Commandment so willy-nilly.

Speaker 1 But he nevertheless agreed to put a tracking device on Rhea's car so they could find Joshua.

Speaker 1 Now, the plan to kill Joshua was to call him where he worked, a place called Internet Solutions, and tell him that he needed to come out to fix their Wi-Fi.

Speaker 1 Because their Wi-Fi wasn't working, you got to come out and fix it. Well, you know, yeah, okay.
Sure, but

Speaker 1 Joshua was a systems engineer. Yeah, I don't do Wi-Fi installation.
You're talking to the cable company.

Speaker 1 Well, he kept referring them to IT because the company did do, they were called Internet Solutions. They were like

Speaker 1 an IP, like they were an internet company back before it all got bundled in with cable. Have you typed in www.website name.SouthAfrica?

Speaker 1 Have you unplugged it and waited two minutes and then plugged it back in? Have you? Wilkie kept referring them to IT, no matter how irate they became in their constant calls.

Speaker 1 He's like, I'm sorry, it's not my job. I don't know why you keep calling me and asking me to do this.
This isn't my job. I don't do this.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 When this plan didn't work, the cult decided to just follow Joshua until no one was around. They'd jump him, throw him in the trunk of the car, stab him to death, and bury his body.
Yeah, done.

Speaker 1 That is very proficient.

Speaker 1 In preparation, Cecilia even had LaRue pre-dig graves in three locations, one of which would be chosen depending on the location of the murder. You never want to be too far away from an open hole.

Speaker 1 Yes, I know that for certain.

Speaker 1 All I want want to be is within two to three moist inches of a big water gaping open here.

Speaker 1 Finally, they decided to contact Joshua Grunwald directly through Zach Valentine, who used his job as an insurance agent as an excuse to contact Joshua so he could sell him life insurance.

Speaker 1 How is Zach not in prison? Jesus's.

Speaker 1 It's insane how he took so long.

Speaker 1 Joshua actually agreed and set up a meeting with Zach outside of his workplace.

Speaker 1 At that meeting, just like they'd done with Natasha Berger, Zach pumped him for intel that could be used to work up a better murder plan. Where do you eat sleep?

Speaker 1 What's your favorite thing to do on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? What do you do nights? What do you do in the morning? What do you do? How do you like your coffee? Where do you go for coffee?

Speaker 1 Why did they just kill him then? Well, because you got to get the information so no one else is around.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, in a risky attempt to get James Vermock fully on board, Cecilia bragged to him about about how she got Zach to murder Pastor Reg Ben Dixon with an axe.

Speaker 1 Zach then said, Oh, yeah, I totally murdered that guy with an axe. You know what I did, buddy?

Speaker 1 Man, that day was a fucking day. It was awesome, buddy.
You're not recording this, are you?

Speaker 1 This confession, however, had the opposite effect on James Vermock. Yeah, it should have.
Yeah, it freaked him the fuck out.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because they're all like, buddy, if you're here for, oh, you thought you were going to fuck this family? No, no, friend. We're killing people.
Yep.

Speaker 1 Vermock, however, did not go to the police immediately because he, like many people in these types of realities, was able to hold two opposing ideas in his head at the same time.

Speaker 1 He believed Cecilia when she said that the police were working for her, so he couldn't go to him for that reason.

Speaker 1 But he also believed that the police were working for the satanic church, meaning that he thought he had nowhere to go with the information he was given.

Speaker 1 So, after calming down and realizing that he would die if he pushed back any further, he pretended like he was gung-ho for the murder of Joshua Grumwald while also trying to figure out how to escape the cult.

Speaker 1 Can I give a

Speaker 1 this is a helpful get-out thing. All right, for anybody right now, let's say you are listening to this episode while you yourself are stuck inside of a death cult and you want to leave.

Speaker 1 This is what you do.

Speaker 1 Hey, I'm going out to the store to buy some bullets. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Don't come back. It don't even have to be bullets.
It could be Pepsi.

Speaker 1 Go out there and just say, like, if there needs a run, like anytime someone says, oh, we're out of toilet paper, you just go, like, I'll make the run. Yeah.
Don't come back. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just fucking keep driving. But the problem with that was with these people in this worldview is that they believe that they can get you anywhere.

Speaker 1 No matter where you go, they're going to be able to find you and they're going to get you. But I just don't really understand because then isn't God also.

Speaker 1 That's the whole thing.

Speaker 1 Isn't God super powerful? Well, no, it's, but that's the thing.

Speaker 1 You're applying logic to this thing. You can't apply logic to this thing at all, to none of this.
It's cognitive dissonance at its best. They're holding a bunch of opposing ideas.

Speaker 1 I think it's cognitive dissonance at its worst.

Speaker 1 Unbelievable. Cognitive dissonance at its best was the smile album.
Oh, yeah. It really was.

Speaker 1 Well, as far as why he was spending less time with Alectus Perdeas, Vermock told Cecilia that he was really just under a lot of pressure at work. Just so stressed.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, that's what it is. That's why I reacted negatively to the plan of murder.
I was just so like,

Speaker 1 you know, I just had so much going on. It's like so much in my plate.
Yeah, he said he had to concentrate on that for the time being instead of their holy war against Satan. Hey, you know.

Speaker 1 Finally, though, Zach approached James and asked him if he was in or out regarding the murder of Josh Grunwald, telling Zach quite explicitly that if he was out, he was going to end up like Michaela.

Speaker 1 Cecilia then told him the exact same thing. In Way Too Deep, James said, sure,

Speaker 1 totally in for murder. Just say when.
I'll move the numbers meeting to Friday.

Speaker 1 Behind their backs, though, James confided to a friend from work named Justice Ramashia about the whole situation and asked him how he thought they could prevent Joshua's murder, not to mention his own.

Speaker 1 Give us a little advice.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you want to go get Tender Greens?

Speaker 1 Can I get a, what would you do here? Yeah,

Speaker 1 yeah, sure, absolutely. I think the main thing is that take all of Brad's notes.
You're going to want to collate a lot of the pages here.

Speaker 1 So that's, yeah, if you're looking for advice, yeah, that's what I tell you. No, it's more of like, I'm in this death call.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 You too. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So are you on the are you an overcomer or an undercomer? Oh, no, no. I work for the government.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes, we're going to kill a man named Josh.

Speaker 1 Well, Justice, who's an incredible work friend. Yeah, that is a very trusted work co-worker.
Yeah, he came up with a plan. Now, it's a little confusing, but James Vermock.
he played by Seth Rogan?

Speaker 1 Is this a bad guy,

Speaker 1 bro?

Speaker 1 Well, bro, sounds like quite the tough situation. I'll tell you what you got to do, man.
You just got to let that bitch cry it out.

Speaker 1 Murder is a little more casual over there. It does seem so.

Speaker 1 It's the fourth highest murder rate in the world.

Speaker 1 Now, it's a little confusing, but James Vermock convinced Alectus Perdeus that because his friend Justice was an undocumented immigrant, he could be the one to kill Joshua joshua groomwald and then he just disappear and zach agreed yeah justice comes he's like ola compadres

Speaker 1 cc uh me necesito murderer because uh

Speaker 1 then uh me have reason o to go back to mexico fingerprint toes

Speaker 1 entirely foreign Zach agreed, but when he gave Justice the gun and a payout, Justice just disappeared and nobody got killed. Fucking smart guy, the whole fucking story.
Yeah, fuck it.

Speaker 1 Just take the money and run. Good for you, dude.
Yeah, way to go, man. Weirdly, though, Cecilia didn't immediately follow up on the plan to kill Joshua.
Instead, they just sort of sat on it.

Speaker 1 Honestly, it's just ruined for me now.

Speaker 1 I like his name.

Speaker 1 It's like you trust people

Speaker 1 and say, just break your heart. Break your heart every time.

Speaker 1 But them sitting on it gave James the time to build up the courage to finally go to the police.

Speaker 1 He told them everything he knew, which included direct confessions to multiple murders and two credible threats for future murders. And so James was set up with a wire.

Speaker 1 And next time he visited the cult, he recorded not only full confessions to the murders of Natasha Berger, Joy Boonzayer, Regbin Dixon, and Michaela Valentine, but also the future plan to one day get around to maybe killing Josh Grunwald.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so all right, so they were arrested. We'll see you next week.

Speaker 1 This is a big, what a great series. Good work, Professor.

Speaker 1 You'd think that would be the end of the story. That James would return to the cops with the recordings, and the Alexis Perdeus cult will be arrested immediately.

Speaker 1 And bing, bang, boom, we've got this weird story of a Christian cult who pretended to be Satanist and killed four people. Oh my God, what a great series.
But that's not at all what happened.

Speaker 1 See, James Vermock and his girlfriend Amber Dupreez were placed into witness protection.

Speaker 1 And Joshua Grunwald was contacted by the National Occult Unit and warned about a Satanist plot to kill him, albeit two weeks after James Vermock turned in the tapes.

Speaker 1 They had to go through a lot of tapes.

Speaker 1 But absolutely nothing happened to anyone in Electus Perdeus, and we have no idea why.

Speaker 1 It's claimed that the files containing their confessions were corrupted or damaged somehow, and there was supposedly some sort of investigative kerfluffle that derailed the whole thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But we do do know that the information did make it through some pipeline because Joshua Grunwald was warned and he did move away as a result. And the other two were put in a witness protection.

Speaker 1 Paperwork had to be filled out for that. Yeah.
And later, police officers would claim that they had infiltrated the cult after they got the tapes. But there is no evidence of this claim at all.

Speaker 1 From what it seemed, someone just made the whole thing go away. Or it's another example.

Speaker 1 It could possibly be another example of if you tell everybody we've spent all this money creating these occult crime investigative units.

Speaker 1 This entire country is gripped in a religious fervor that is still like reverberating. It's killing, it's now officially killing people.

Speaker 1 We have, as a government, an agency, we have the government came forward and said satanic cults are real and they're killing people and they're doing all this shit. So this is a huge story that shows

Speaker 1 what is actually happening, which is the idea of a satanic cult going on a murder spree is extremely fucking stupid. Yeah.
And it doesn't actually happen like that.

Speaker 1 Like it just doesn't, that's not reality. It's a movie.

Speaker 1 And not only that, but the way that they've been positing it for years has actually created the very murder sprees that they were afraid of happening in the first place.

Speaker 1 Yes, and Cecilia based everything she knew about Satanism from horror films. And she's just Michelle remembers in Satanic Panic shit.
She's just kind of recycling it back out.

Speaker 1 So if they were to bust this crime and go through this whole thing, kind of showing that this gigantic system of

Speaker 1 murderous satanic cults could possibly be orchestrated by this pack of fucking idiots that maybe there's like a thing of like, you know,

Speaker 1 if we show everybody that these satanic cults are real, are we out of jobs? I mean, I think it's,

Speaker 1 I think even that's too complicated. Yeah, I guess, sure.
If I were to take a guess, I'd say that Cecilia's police officer husband finally

Speaker 1 took her aside and said,

Speaker 1 Listen here, Missy. All right, listen.
All right, you're right. Hold on one second.
I just have to get to a save point.

Speaker 1 All right,

Speaker 1 one second. I'm just in the middle of a side quest.
I just have to. I hate these fucking.
I hate, don't you? I hate these things where you have to get the one guy from the other.

Speaker 1 You know, you have to like accompany the guy. You know, the escort quests.
I hate escort quests. It's fucking crazy.
Give me one second.

Speaker 1 Start a cutscene.

Speaker 1 You pause during a cutscene. I got to see.
You can't. Just hold.
Hold. Do it.

Speaker 1 Give Give me an hour.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he probably, he might have

Speaker 1 took her aside and said, hey, whole thing, whole cult thing's gone a little too far. Knock it off.
Yeah. Because we can only cover up so many murders.

Speaker 1 That's what my dad had to do with my mom's quilt store.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 1 All the murders.

Speaker 1 Too many murders.

Speaker 1 The only other explanation I can think of as to why the investigation went nowhere, even after full confessions, is Cecilia really was a satanic witch werewolf this whole time. You're right, she is.

Speaker 1 And that the South African police really were on the satanic payroll. Yeah.
Actually, you know what? Yeah. Yeah.
So she's right.

Speaker 1 The occult cops, wouldn't it just prove their worth if they're not? No, it's no, it's the opposite. Yeah, it was the absolute opposite button.

Speaker 1 You could show that the cult isn't real, that it's a bunch of idiots in a fun. Well, there is a cult, but they're calling themselves a Christian cult.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's like when they showed the guy who shot Donald Trump and who was a Republican.

Speaker 1 And they buried the story pretty quickly. But knowing what we know, corruption corruption involving the thin blue line is a far more likely scenario, especially in South Africa.

Speaker 1 Now, perhaps because Cecilia was given a stern talking to, the cult never got around to murdering Joshua Groomwald. And besides, he had moved away and they couldn't find him anyway.

Speaker 1 Wow, he just got to go on and live his life. That's nice for him.
Believe it, Mom.

Speaker 1 Probably not even that. He had no idea that he was this close to being murdered.
He had a very good idea when the Occult Crimes Unit got a hold of him.

Speaker 1 It's like, hey, there's a cult that's planning to murder you. You better move.
He's like, why won't they kill my mom?

Speaker 1 Well, partly it might be because Rhea Grunwald finally gave up her own personal crusade.

Speaker 1 After trying to work with the police to take down Cecilia and getting nowhere, Rhea ran away to another town and started a new life under a new name.

Speaker 1 And understandably, her family never spoke to her again. Tria.
Yeah. Leah.

Speaker 1 And so, with no enemy to focus upon and therefore no more murders to order, Electus Perdeus basically did nothing except smoke meth and meet up to jabber at each other for hours on end for the next two years.

Speaker 1 I do have to remember that. It's just how much meth is involved.
Yeah, and just so everyone knows, we were contacted by many former meth users. I'm proud.
Thank you, guys.

Speaker 1 Good work. Very proud of you for getting through that.
Very proud of you. But they told us that, yes, $400 a week on meth does indeed mean you're spending a lot of money on meth.

Speaker 1 You're doing a lot of meth. Sounds like a lot.
It does.

Speaker 1 And I do think that that is the secret ingredient of this whole thing yeah and it's even if it's a group of people they said like even you get five people 400 worth of meth like you can still invite another friend yeah yeah but regardless zach eventually sold the home where michaela was murdered and moved closer to cecilia while la rue graduated high school and tried to live a normal life even though he still lived under his mother's thumb la rue worked as a salesperson for a furniture store called house and home during the day and spent evenings as a bartender at cecilia's favorite bar.

Speaker 1 That name is redundant.

Speaker 1 House and Home.

Speaker 1 It is. You don't need to call it both.
Very much so. He is very dumb.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 he was a bartender at the Limelight Pup and Grill. Well, actually, house is where you fuck a drifter, and home is where then you go home and make love to your wife.
Oh, okay.

Speaker 1 Zach Valentine.

Speaker 1 That's what makes it. I'm all so mistaken.
Yeah, that's a bitch.

Speaker 1 A house has no electricity, and you can commit many crimes there. Yeah, and you can take a dump in the living room and no one says anything.
But yeah, home has like blankets. Bruger Storm?

Speaker 1 Zach Valentine, meanwhile, bought a new house, two BMWs, and a Mercedes-Benz. Living the life.
How has this guy not been caught? Because he's a fucking baller, dude.

Speaker 1 He's the most confident man who's ever lived.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and this is all while he was still donating large sums of money to pay for the fictitious American orphans, while also paying for Cecilia's psychiatrist appointments which must have been wild you know or is it the opposite it's going to mean like i'm really having like it's like i wanted to sing karaoke's the other night

Speaker 1 i was just so not feeling down on myself

Speaker 1 and then i realized talking to dr nishnish

Speaker 1 that i

Speaker 1 i should sing

Speaker 1 whenever i walked do you think she was actually going to the psychiatrist appointments she was just taking money but also she was taking just.

Speaker 1 Well, I think when she wanted to. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that's the thing is that she kept the orphan thing going constantly. Like it was like, it was that whole two years.
It's always like, hey, Zach, so where's the orphan payment for this month?

Speaker 1 Like, got to keep those orphans alive. So is Cecilia also doing meth? Yeah.

Speaker 1 How is she keeping a schedule? It's going to, it does unravel. Yeah, and there have been many functional meth heads over the years.
Yeah, Johnny Depp.

Speaker 1 That Mayor Dinkins. Was it the the Mayor? What was his name there? That was crack.
Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 and it was Marion Berry. Marion Berry, yeah.
Johnny Depp just has to be a pirate.

Speaker 1 But things started heating up again when a man named John Barnard moved in with Miranda sometime in 2014.

Speaker 1 Barnard worked at a local shop called Color Magic Printing, which was owned by a wealthy Krugersdorf couple named Peter and Joan Mayer.

Speaker 1 Barnard had known Cecilia since 2007, back when he was a meth dealer, and he reconnected with Cecilia in 2013 when she started burning and selling bootleg DVDs. Yeah, I mean, that's cool, that's hot.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And he soon after started sleeping with Miranda.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, allegedly, Barnard had no knowledge of the four murders the cult had already committed when he was welcomed into the social circle.

Speaker 1 Because he was welcomed to the social circle first before he was welcomed into the cult itself. Two different things.

Speaker 1 Little did he know, though, that the cult was just getting started and still had seven murders to go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, dude, it's just kicking off. The rest of Electus Perdeus, meanwhile, kept going with their daily lives a little while longer.
But everything changed when Zach got a little too confident.

Speaker 1 Hey, where do you think that confidence is going to go, dude?

Speaker 1 When he quit his job as an insurance agent to start his own business called Entire Deity Trading. Yeah, man.
Stockbroker. Yeah.
Where's he going to, like, where else is a meth head going to go?

Speaker 1 Yeah, man, you're already super confident. You're laced to the tits on meth.
Of course you're selling. You're going to be sure it's all in a second.
And they got a bunch of phones that they can use.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, dude, it's all never off the phone. Yeah, he's still sleeping on the same mattress.

Speaker 1 I know he moved to the same to a different house. I don't know if he did.
Along with LaRue, Zach tried breaking into the foreign exchange because he brought in a little LaRue too.

Speaker 1 He's like, Man, La Rue, you got to quit your fucking job, you got to come work with me at Insider Day Exchange.

Speaker 1 Nothing would make me happier than to play with fake money because, in a way, it's not all life a game.

Speaker 1 Yes, I'm high as balls.

Speaker 1 But as it turned out, both of them were terrible at the job and Zach was soon losing his client's money as well as his own.

Speaker 1 Let's just say, haha, you know,

Speaker 1 it can't always go up.

Speaker 1 Stocks gotta go to sleep for a little while. It's called resting.

Speaker 1 And then they're gonna get back up, get breakfast, get lunch, and that's where we're gonna be at. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 Well, with her cash cow now running dry, Cecilia started getting anxious about money.

Speaker 1 So she trotted out the old orphan chestnut one more time to get her people worked up again, saying that if they didn't get more money somehow, the orphans would fall prey to Satan.

Speaker 1 But now once they turn 18, they're on their own. Oh, yeah, yeah, then they're back to God.

Speaker 1 Now, by this point, the cult was down to bare bones. The only OG members left were Zach, Miranda, and her two kids, LaRue and Marcel.

Speaker 1 But in order to get the information on a good target, she needed to bring John Barnard fully into the cult. Now, as I said, Barnard worked for a company called Color Magic Printing.

Speaker 1 And having worked there for 19 years, he knew that the owners, Peter and Joe Meyer, were worth millions.

Speaker 1 And so, the Myers became the next target of Electus Perdeus, so they could once again, ostensibly, send money to the satanic orphans. It's really, then, it's getting looser and looser.
Yes.

Speaker 1 The reasons why. Now, the plan at the outset was not to kill the Meyers, but to simply rob them.
And that sort of intimidation game was a lot easier with a gun.

Speaker 1 So Cecilia used her connections to the local brothel Elite 24 to find an illegal arms dealer.

Speaker 1 Through him, Alectus Perdeus bought a 38 special, several Glocks, a 303 hunting rifle, a shotgun, and a 22 revolver. Jesus Christ, he really goes all out.
She's one of those. She's a completist.

Speaker 1 It's crazy that people just believe she's sitting there doing meth. She knows all these sex workers.
She's buying guns. And everyone's like, you you know what? She's closer to God than me.

Speaker 1 It does seem. She really has a special relationship with Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 Each member of the cult was able to choose their own gun, but Cecilia insisted that each one of them give their weapon a name. Miranda, for example, chose the 38th Special, named it Charlie.
Cute.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Once the cult was armed, they began reconnaissance on the best way to rob Peter and Joan Meyer.

Speaker 1 Their eventual plan was to visit the Meyer home disguised as officials from the Department of Trade and Industry because their inside man, John Barnard, had told Cecilia that the Meyers were wanting to build a water park in South Africa.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 and they were like,

Speaker 1 two words for you, my friend: wave pool.

Speaker 1 Have you heard of it? It's also. No, I haven't.
I live in South Africa. Yes, well, it's a place.
You know how waves are in the ocean.

Speaker 1 Yes. Now, imagine smaller controllable waves.
In a way? I've saw it in a magazine. They're also famously running out of water in South Africa.
I know, I know.

Speaker 1 So, posing as a government official named Gloria, Miranda cold-called the Myers to offer financing to make their insane dream of a South African water park a reality.

Speaker 1 Hello, I heard before our little birdie told me we were trying to build a water park.

Speaker 1 I'd have been like, my God, yes.

Speaker 1 I was trying to build a water park, and all I have is this shovel.

Speaker 1 This call, however, was confusing to the Myers because they hadn't made their water park plans public.

Speaker 1 But maybe blinded by their own ambition, the Myers agreed to an appointment on November 19th, 2015. That meeting, however, had to be postponed when LaRue accidentally shot himself in the groin.

Speaker 1 I missed my teeth!

Speaker 1 Thank God I missed my

Speaker 1 dumbest way to masturbate. Ah, my balls!

Speaker 1 My balls are aired.

Speaker 1 You look so sexy, gun.

Speaker 1 Oh, my penis.

Speaker 1 My penis is thin enough to fit in the hole.

Speaker 1 But when the meeting was rescheduled to November 24th, it was decided that the robbery team would be comprised of Miranda, Zach, and Marcel.

Speaker 1 Now, Miranda was able to bullshit quite well. During the meeting on the 24th, she kept the Meyers talking for 45 minutes, wherein Peter discussed his water park plans at length.

Speaker 1 zebras in there. And you go a couple of parrots in there, and there's an area binary spiders in there.

Speaker 1 Sounds more like a zoo.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, wait.

Speaker 1 And we get some

Speaker 1 lions in there.

Speaker 1 We go in a water park.

Speaker 1 Like halfway through, Miranda's like, you know, I kind of want to build this water park. Yeah, immediately.
Like,

Speaker 1 this is an incredible cards on the table here. I'm actually in a cult.

Speaker 1 But Miranda, she actually called an audible and changed the plan from robbery to a straight-up scam.

Speaker 1 She called the Myers the next day and tried pulling a Nigerian prince, saying that she needed almost $60,000 to complete some paperwork and bribe government officials.

Speaker 1 And as soon as you give me the money, I can give you the money back and we can get this water park made. Smartly but fatally, the Myers declined the offer.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, the cult really did a song and dance for this one, even going so far as to fake and print out financing paperwork. God, they work so hard.
Just build the water pool.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was like, start your dream now.

Speaker 1 But when a second attempt at a scam failed, Mirinda called Peter and insisted they meet at his home to try and work it out. Reluctantly, Peter agreed.

Speaker 1 And so at 5 p.m., Zach arrived at Peter's home with Mirinda and Marcel with a plan to rob Peter and Joan Myers.

Speaker 1 See, the last time they'd been there, the cult noticed that the Myers had an empty pool. So their plan was to tie up Peter and Joan and throw them in the pool while they robbed the place.

Speaker 1 You want to build a water park and you can't even put water in your own pool? That's the ironic part about it. Honestly, it's been a bit of a challenge across the board.

Speaker 1 I don't even like to drink water.

Speaker 1 Ah, but much to their surprise, the pool had been filled since their last visit. Cement!

Speaker 1 Cement to the very top!

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 now have a sidewalk. Congratulations.
Ah, once again, foiled on my way to a water park.

Speaker 1 So the crew improvised. While Miranda made small talk, Zach looked around nervously for other options.
Yeah, he could be like, ah, what do I do? Ah, there's no water there.

Speaker 1 There's no water over there. Ah, we can't do it.
We timer the roof. She would call a realtor.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Let me get a realtor on the wall.

Speaker 1 But when it became clear that their only way forward was brute force, Miranda pulled out her revolver and told Peter and Joan to get on the ground.

Speaker 1 They complied. And while Marcel tied up their hands and feet with cable ties, Miranda demanded that they hand over their cash and tell them where their safe was.

Speaker 1 Peter, truthfully, told them that they didn't have a safe and they didn't keep any cash in the house. You didn't

Speaker 1 do your recon correctly. Yep.
Then the situation very quickly devolved into a full clutter. Zach pulled out a knife and asked again.

Speaker 1 And when Peter didn't have an answer because he really didn't have a safe, Zach stabbed Joan Meyer.

Speaker 1 Peter then started saying the Lord's Prayer because he knew all fuck were dead, which caused Zach to stab him over and over again. I hate this fucking prayer.
I hate this stupid ass prayer.

Speaker 1 Surprisingly though, the usually bloodthirsty Miranda asked Zach how he expected to find the safe if they killed the fucking hostages. But Zach was now deliriously homicidal.
Yes! Yeah!

Speaker 1 Tell me I'm an idiot for becoming a stuck guy! Joan, I can't move stocks. Fill in the pool, why don't you?

Speaker 1 And he started switching between the bodies, stabbing Peter, then stabbing Joan, then going back and forth again and again and again until both of them were dead.

Speaker 1 But at that moment, one of Peter's employees knocked on the door. Peter, unbeknownst to the cult, had asked one of his guys to join the meeting.
But Peter's guy cooked a couple coffees

Speaker 1 blowing on it. It's too hot.

Speaker 1 I shouldn't have stopped to get a coffee. I wonder if I could be a lifeguard.
But Peter's guy had shown up late. When there was no answer at the door, he called Peter's cell.

Speaker 1 And for some reason, of all people, Marcel answered the phone.

Speaker 1 This girl, who was now 18 years old, improvised and told the police that Peter and his wife were fighting and things were a bit hectic at the house.

Speaker 1 So if he wouldn't mind, it'd probably be best if he came back later. The employee thought it was odd that this girl that he didn't know was imparting this information.

Speaker 1 But hey, man, it's my fucking boss, and I don't care. I'm getting the hell out of here.

Speaker 1 Yep. He did as he was told and he went home.
In the end, though, after searching through the entire house, the cult came out of this double murder with the whopping sum of $40.30.

Speaker 1 Hard one. Needless to say, Cecilia was not happy when the crew returned to her apartment.
Immediately, Cecilia started screaming at Zach for fucking up and killing two people for $40.

Speaker 1 It's important to note that Cecilia's police officer husband was in the apartment for all of us. What'd you say back there? Oh, just give me one.
Oh, man.

Speaker 1 I'm going to have to do it again. I have to equip my fucking shield.
What are you guys talking about murder in there?

Speaker 1 I bet you're. I hope you're being allegorical.

Speaker 1 I really wish these fucking Dark Souls games could pause, but they can't. They can't.
I have to stay. But even though the take was minuscule, Cecilia still honored the cuts.

Speaker 1 And John Barnard got $11.50 for selling out the people who'd given him a job for almost 20 years. They all then went to the casino to try to make something out of their paltry sums.
Sun City.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but Zach and John immediately lost their shares. And that's why they call it craps.

Speaker 1 Marcel, however, turned her $10 into $115.

Speaker 1 So there's some small celebration to be had. That's nice.
Good for them.

Speaker 1 But it just so happened that Cecilia needed exactly $115 to pay for medication to treat her failing kidneys.

Speaker 1 What a little miracle. Yeah.
So the money went right back to the leader. Wow.

Speaker 1 Now the police were again no help in solving or even investigating the murder of Peter and Joan. And it's worth noting that things have not gotten any better in South Africa.

Speaker 1 Their murder clearance rate as of today is embarrassingly low. It's 12%.

Speaker 1 So again, I wouldn't be too quick to ascribe conspiracy here. That low clearance rate could be why the children of Peter and Joan Meyer hired a private investigator to solve the case.

Speaker 1 Very quickly, the PI spotted a silver BMW on CCTV footage, and that BMW was quickly traced back to Zach Valentine because he'd finally fucked up. He'd forgotten to switch the plates.

Speaker 1 Usually they always switch the license plates, but this time he just forgot because it was just supposed to be a robbery. It wasn't supposed to be a murder.

Speaker 1 In addition, they found an envelope with Miranda Stain's fingerprints at the scene. And both very strong pieces of evidence were handed over to the police.

Speaker 1 Zach and Miranda were soon questioned and told the police that, yes, they had been at the Myers house the day they were murdered. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 But there was this other couple there that were crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 They had one in a cowboy hat. Yeah, and the other one was some kind of Asian.

Speaker 1 Brack and Belinda. There was a lady riding a horse.

Speaker 1 You wouldn't have seen you couldn't imagine the calamity in this house earlier today. And they were waving guns and dives around and like, we're going to kill them or we're building a water park.

Speaker 1 I can't even believe it. And those guys called, those fucking R-words called us over there to fucking plan a water park.

Speaker 1 Well, apparently, the cops were unaware that both of these people had been suspects in a series of brutal murders just two years before.

Speaker 1 The cops then called the employee who dropped by for the meeting that day, who told them about the call concerning the fabricated fight between Peter and Joan.

Speaker 1 Finally, Finally, Peter's son positively identified Zach and Mirinda as government officials, but the police apparently didn't make a single phone call to confirm or deny the claim.

Speaker 1 As a result, the cops let Zach and Mirinda go and instead focused on Peter and Joan's children as the main suspects. They're like, we're not there.
We weren't there. Yeah.
I don't know. Like,

Speaker 1 maybe it's a funding issue. And there's just not a lot of like

Speaker 1 and the cops are like super overwhelmed. I don't know.
They just don't care, man. Yeah.
They just don't care. I mean, I'm trying to get them the benefit of the doubt here.

Speaker 1 When I was out there, one of the things I was told that if you're driving and a cop wants to pull you over, make sure you drive all the way to the police station before you pull over because otherwise the cop will rape you.

Speaker 1 Jesus. That's what they told us.
Like, it's not good.

Speaker 1 The only thing the cops did with the cult members was schedule them for polygraphs the next month.

Speaker 1 But that also also went nowhere because of this extreme gross incompetence five more people would die in what would be called the appointment murders which is where we'll end our series on electus per deus next week we're doing more yeah dude

Speaker 1 We have a whole fucking day,

Speaker 1 it's a whole other series of murders. These guys are extremely busy.

Speaker 1 And the fact, yes, we probably spent like a lot of time building up context, but this is like, it's just hard to really like think about where it went.

Speaker 1 The A point of this story to the Z point of this story is fucking insane. And I think it's partially because it is where it is, is where it's located.
It's the amount of

Speaker 1 importance they put upon these occult crimes and all like all of this shit. It's like, it's all just feeding itself in a miraculously stupid way.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and that's the thing is that if we hadn't spent so much time giving context, you'd be sitting there right now and wondering, it's like, how did this woman get these people to commit 11 murders?

Speaker 1 Yeah, like you have to have the fucking insane context to really see how something like this can actually happen. 12 murders if you include the plans for a nice water park.

Speaker 1 Honestly, one of the saddest losses.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, that's the thing. The first South African water park.
What a loss to the world. The ninth wonder of the world it would have been.
I want to go.

Speaker 1 Well, thank you. Yes, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for patreon.com/slash last podcast on the left to watch us slap around.

Speaker 1 Ladies and gentlemen, go to LP on the left for all the social medias. Ladies and gentlemen,

Speaker 1 Twitch says ZV slash LPNTV. Ladies and gentlemen, you want to go in there.
Let's podcast onleft.com for all our shows, our live shows. We have lots of new shows.
We got a lot of shows.

Speaker 1 Press the shows. We got hoopo-goo-goo.

Speaker 1 So it's tonight. Tonight.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 We are talking about the tour, man. We got the new tour show.
Tour. we're playing the Wilton tomorrow.
Wiltson tomorrow. We do, yeah, we are.
Yes, there are still tickets.

Speaker 1 Also, we're going to be at King's Theater in December. We are.
And then we announced five more huge dates in 2025. Yeah, that's next week, though.

Speaker 1 Sorry, they've already been promoting it. Oh, really? Yeah,

Speaker 1 I ain't paying attention. I spend a lot of time on these scripts.
Please,

Speaker 1 I can do the promo.

Speaker 1 We're going to be in Atlanta in January, Dallas in February, Nashville in March, Detroit in April, and Toronto in May. So come, get tickets.
They are available now. Cool.
Nice.

Speaker 1 Hail Satan. Because he would never do this to you.
No, even though they've tried to point their finger at him. They did try to frame him.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He didn't do that.

Speaker 1 Think Satan.

Speaker 1 Also not real. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Exactly. So.

Speaker 1 Sleep on that. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Oh, no, I already do.
Did you sleep on it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's good. I feel nothing about it.
You really? Because I know Satan's not real. Yeah.
You know who's real? You know who is real? Who?

Speaker 1 Me. Whoa, too real.
Too real. Too be enjoyed.

Speaker 2 Hi, I'm Jenny Slate. And believe it or not, someone is allowing us to have a podcast.

Speaker 1 I'm Gabe Leidman. I'm Max Silvestri.
And we've been friends for 20 years. And we like to reach out to kind of get advice on how to live our lives.
It's called I Need You Guys.

Speaker 1 Should I give my baby fresh vegetables?

Speaker 2 Can I drink the water at the hospital?

Speaker 1 My landlord plays the trombone and I can't ask him to stop.

Speaker 2 You should make sure that you subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

Speaker 1 I need you, girl.

Speaker 3 Hey everybody, it's Babs. You know, one thing that makes the holiday season so magical is the traditions we share year after year.
And that's why I'm so excited to tell you about Birch Lane.

Speaker 3 Their classic furniture and festive decor is carefully crafted to bring joy to every seasonal celebration. Plus, it's delivered fast and free so you can start spreading the holiday cheer.

Speaker 3 Shop my hand-picked Birch Lane collection and more classic styles at birchlane.com.