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Women Cult Leaders: Part 2 · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. A step fund ever
0:07
Speaker 1: told your production of I Heart Radio? How often do
0:19
Speaker 1: we do two partners? Is it an often thing? It
0:22
Speaker 1: is less often as of recent m I think the
0:26
Speaker 1: last big two partter was Women Who Loves You A
0:29
Speaker 1: Village that it was that a two parter. I know
0:32
Speaker 1: that one wasn't, but the Women's Serial Killers was for
0:35
Speaker 1: sure something else we did not too long ago. Oh,
0:37
Speaker 1: Women Who Organized? That was a two parter, I think.
0:40
Speaker 1: And then Star Wars obviously obviously those are those two
0:44
Speaker 1: are two partners. Yeah. I used to be really hesitant
0:47
Speaker 1: about two partners that I would try really hard to condense.
0:50
Speaker 1: But there's a certain point. I believe it was yesterday
0:53
Speaker 1: where I contacted you and I was like, I think
0:55
Speaker 1: this women is going to have to be a two partner, right.
1:00
Speaker 1: I think we both like there's moments that we think
1:02
Speaker 1: it's not going to be big, and then we're like, oh,
1:04
Speaker 1: oh mind because the Women who Organized I did not
1:08
Speaker 1: anticipate doing but it felt so sad to cut it off,
1:13
Speaker 1: so we wanted to add as much as we could.
1:14
Speaker 1: And sometimes, as it means two parters, yes, and here
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Speaker 1: is a second part of a two part series we
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Speaker 1: had on women leading cults, So highly recommend you go
1:25
Speaker 1: listen to part one first because we do a lot
1:28
Speaker 1: of baseline what are cults? Sort of all the arguments
1:30
Speaker 1: about cults um, which is really key to this conversation.
1:35
Speaker 1: There's so much we could unpack in all of this, right,
1:39
Speaker 1: all of it. So if that's something that you listeners
1:42
Speaker 1: would like to hear, please let us know. But just
1:46
Speaker 1: we're kind of doing um I won't say superficial, but
1:49
Speaker 1: we're not going into the depths we could on all
1:51
Speaker 1: of these cults and all of these women and whether
1:53
Speaker 1: or not their cults. We're talking more about examples rather
1:57
Speaker 1: than the psyche and more trauma behind it, so that
2:00
Speaker 1: muld be later though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah for sure.
2:03
Speaker 1: I don't know why I got so weirdly excited, but
2:05
Speaker 1: it's just that psych aspect. Its interesting when you always
2:10
Speaker 1: look deeper about the why, it's always more fascinating to
2:14
Speaker 1: know it is it is. So before we get into
2:17
Speaker 1: these examples, quick trigger warning, there will be discussion of suicide,
2:21
Speaker 1: sexual abuse, violence, death, murder, general abuse. We're not going
2:25
Speaker 1: to go too deep into any of that. But when
2:27
Speaker 1: you're talking about colts, it can get pretty grizzly and disturbing.
2:31
Speaker 1: And yes, as we said in part one, there's a
2:35
Speaker 1: lot of argument going on in debate around what constitutes
2:38
Speaker 1: a cult, and there are lots of layers of sexism, racism,
2:41
Speaker 1: and anti any religion that's not Christianity involved in these discussions.
2:45
Speaker 1: But yeah, just to acknowledge that that's going on. And
2:50
Speaker 1: but the women were talking about, and the organizations were
2:53
Speaker 1: talking about, not everyone agree these women were coal leaders,
2:55
Speaker 1: and I think those conversations are well worth having. Some
2:59
Speaker 1: of these organizations might not be considered cults at all
3:02
Speaker 1: points in history, but with the right person, they can
3:04
Speaker 1: become cults or at the very least run by someone
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Speaker 1: who fits the cult leader stereotype. Who yeah, we talked
3:11
Speaker 1: about that in part one as well, but like charismatic
3:14
Speaker 1: is one of the very key things there, and controlling
3:17
Speaker 1: and like just demanding all this adoration and complete submission.
3:23
Speaker 1: That being said, these are some of the women that
3:25
Speaker 1: frequently come up when you're digging around the internet for
3:28
Speaker 1: women cult leaders. And another disclaimer, the histories of these
3:33
Speaker 1: can be a bit murkier fantastical. As we said in
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Speaker 1: our Serial Killers episode, it just can get a real
3:39
Speaker 1: difficult because even even reputable newspaper sources sometimes like to
3:45
Speaker 1: really lean into that morbid, ghastly side of all of this,
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Speaker 1: So it's hard to say for sure, right right, definitely
3:52
Speaker 1: level shock factor for sure. And speaking of let's start
3:57
Speaker 1: this one with a Clementine Barnavett, sometimes is called the
4:00
Speaker 1: first black female serial killer in the United States. In
4:04
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, a Louisiana police department got a frantic call
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Speaker 1: about a suspected incident. Sure enough, when police arrived on
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Speaker 1: the scene, they discovered the bodies of a man, woman
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Speaker 1: child with their skulls split open, a bloody dacs at
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Speaker 1: the head of the bed, a bucket of blood in
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Speaker 1: the corner, bloody footprints throughout the room, and they deduced
4:20
Speaker 1: the killer must have come through the windows since the
4:22
Speaker 1: doors were locked at the time. A local newspaper called
4:25
Speaker 1: it quote the most brutal murder in the history of
4:28
Speaker 1: the section. It was not the only acts murder to
4:31
Speaker 1: take place in nearby areas of Louisiana and Texas. These
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Speaker 1: murders were believed to be the work of a cult
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Speaker 1: by the name of the Church of Sacrifice that required
4:41
Speaker 1: human sacrifices for their religious rights, rumored to be led
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Speaker 1: up by a voodoo priestess. Even so, all of the
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Speaker 1: initial suspects were men. One source described the murders as
4:52
Speaker 1: reigned with acts, and after other similar murders took place,
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Speaker 1: usually a families, the authorities began to suspect that they
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Speaker 1: were quote the work of the same terrible monster. Sources
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Speaker 1: indicate most, if not all, of these families were black families,
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Speaker 1: so the police eventually turned their sights on a sharecropper
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Speaker 1: on the wrong side of town uh named Raymond Barnabette.
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Speaker 1: Both his children, Zephyrn and Clementine, testified against them, claiming
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Speaker 1: they were scared for their lives. He was abusive to
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Speaker 1: his whole family. According to records. However, more murders took
5:23
Speaker 1: place while Raymond was in jail. Both of the children
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Speaker 1: were arrested, in part because their neighbors described them as
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Speaker 1: the generous and in part because Clementine had blood from
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Speaker 1: one of the murders on her shirt. A local newspaper
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Speaker 1: reported in nineteen eleven that when the police searched the
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Speaker 1: Barnabot household, they found a complete set of women's clothes
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Speaker 1: in her room saturated with blood. And covered with human
5:45
Speaker 1: brains with no albi. Clementine went to jail. The murders
5:50
Speaker 1: did not let up. Three families were murdered in January
5:53
Speaker 1: of nineteen twelve. The dead's hands were splayed apart with wood,
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Speaker 1: and messages like this one were left on the walls.
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Speaker 1: When he make a the inquisition for blood, he forgetteth
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Speaker 1: not the cry of the Humble A bit of a
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Speaker 1: twist on a Bible verse. By the way, these messages
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Speaker 1: were written by hand and signed Human five. And the
6:12
Speaker 1: press began attributing these murders to the Human five gang,
6:15
Speaker 1: and they really went all in on this voodoo aspect,
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Speaker 1: just as more and more people were talking about Clementized
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Speaker 1: possible connection to the mysterious Church of Sacrifice. Reverend King
6:25
Speaker 1: Harris was sought to be the leader of this church,
6:28
Speaker 1: but upon questioning police dismissed them as a suspect. Lementine
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Speaker 1: confessed to killing seventeen people in April of nineteen twelve.
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Speaker 1: She further explained that she wore a voodoo charm for
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Speaker 1: protection while she killed. In her words, it was gifted
6:40
Speaker 1: to her by a vodoo priest, a man who did
6:42
Speaker 1: not claim himself as a foodoo priest in question, so
6:44
Speaker 1: it was somebody that they followed up with and he
6:47
Speaker 1: was like, whoa what And straws were drawn, according to her,
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Speaker 1: between her and her accomplices to see who would commit
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Speaker 1: the murders. She went on to say she dressed as
6:55
Speaker 1: a man to be left relatively alone and unnoticed. On
6:58
Speaker 1: night she was planning on killing someone, and a local
7:00
Speaker 1: paper reported that she said she killed the kids so
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Speaker 1: as not to leave them an orphan in this world.
7:06
Speaker 1: She said that she would quote Chariss the Corpses, and
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Speaker 1: one district attorney called her a moral pervert because of
7:13
Speaker 1: what she said in her testimony against her father. People
7:16
Speaker 1: were still confused about the veracity of her claims. When
7:20
Speaker 1: she gave the names of her accomplices, all that was
7:23
Speaker 1: turned up. They were all dead ends. She said she
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Speaker 1: believed that sacrifices were the way to achieve immortality. A
7:30
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve article headline read the x men as a woman,
7:33
Speaker 1: what's the exclamation point? So later examination found there was
7:38
Speaker 1: no church of sacrifice, and that perhaps it was confused
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Speaker 1: with Harris's sanctified church, especially with the swirling rumors of voodoo,
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Speaker 1: and none of those was helped by the fact that
7:48
Speaker 1: during her time and Jill, Clementine constantly modified her story
7:52
Speaker 1: and ended up confessing to thirty five murders who her
7:57
Speaker 1: attorneys argued that she was insane, but this did not
8:00
Speaker 1: prevent a judge from dancing her to life at nineteen
8:03
Speaker 1: years old. She tried and fell to escape early on,
8:06
Speaker 1: but other than that didn't really cause much trouble. In fact,
8:09
Speaker 1: one report about her imprisonment claimed that a procedure returned
8:13
Speaker 1: to her normal condition and she was released on good
8:15
Speaker 1: behavior after a decade had passed. So that's all pretty murky.
8:19
Speaker 1: People who have delved into this belief that Clementine did
8:22
Speaker 1: commit some of the murders, but maybe not all of them. However,
8:26
Speaker 1: they think someone in that household was the primary murderer.
8:31
Speaker 1: Over at True Crime Daily, James Horror wrote, she scandalized
8:34
Speaker 1: the press, stirring up a gumbo of moral panic and
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Speaker 1: a state where civil war and slavery remained a living memory.
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Speaker 1: Everything about Clementine Barnabett represented a collision, even a perversion,
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Speaker 1: of cultures in the eyes of white Louisiana. From her
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Speaker 1: mangled Creole French to her mangled beliefs a tabloid baiting
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Speaker 1: blend of voodoo itself, a blend of Catholicism and West
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Speaker 1: African tribal rights and Evangelical Christianity. So I wanted to
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Speaker 1: include that because for this one, like her name came
9:00
Speaker 1: up a lot. But there's just clearly to me, like
9:03
Speaker 1: even in the language of the newspapers, like degenerates, the
9:05
Speaker 1: wrong side of town, and this whole like voodoo thing
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Speaker 1: that the press was really pushing that there's just like
9:12
Speaker 1: a layer of racism over the whole thing. And it
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Speaker 1: doesn't feel because this was kind of debunked, right that
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Speaker 1: they found no proof of this church, but it's still
9:23
Speaker 1: she comes up as a woman needing a cult. Yeah
9:28
Speaker 1: so yeah. So in nine in an Amazonian town in Brazil,
9:32
Speaker 1: there were several reports of missing children. The authorities looked
9:35
Speaker 1: into it but couldn't find in the elites, and the
9:38
Speaker 1: cases jumped to nineteen missing children between the ages of
9:40
Speaker 1: eight and thirteen. Five other children had been found dead,
9:44
Speaker 1: castrated with signs of torture. Officials believed that the murders
9:47
Speaker 1: and disappearance were related to a medical guild due to
9:49
Speaker 1: precise nature of castrations. These bodies were identified as homeless boys,
9:54
Speaker 1: but the boys who had been reported missing have been
9:56
Speaker 1: done so by their families and depending on the source,
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Speaker 1: her two boys managed to escape after castration and found
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Speaker 1: some officials. Whatever the case, only one ended up testifying,
10:06
Speaker 1: and the story he told was horrific torture, rape, mutilation,
10:11
Speaker 1: like eyes gouged out and castration. He testified that other
10:15
Speaker 1: children were stabbed and killed, their organs sold on the
10:17
Speaker 1: black market or they ate them, but again this has
10:20
Speaker 1: not been confirmed, and in his testimony he named a
10:24
Speaker 1: handful of people doctor it's a police officer, while the
10:27
Speaker 1: businessman and Valentina de Andrade, the leader of the religious cult.
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Speaker 1: The cult in question was called Superior Universal Alignment, a
10:35
Speaker 1: UFO cult led by Valentina whose members believed the world
10:38
Speaker 1: was ending and the only way to be saved was
10:40
Speaker 1: by following the commands of their leader. She claimed she'd
10:44
Speaker 1: been contacted by extra extraterrestrial beings and that they claimed
10:48
Speaker 1: the apocalypse was not but that if she passed along
10:52
Speaker 1: the message, they would send a ship to collect her
10:54
Speaker 1: and other believers to spare them. She believed that God
10:57
Speaker 1: wasn't real and that Jesus was an alien. Perhaps the
11:00
Speaker 1: most shocking thing she said, though, was that boys born
11:03
Speaker 1: after which is when she claimed to have received her message,
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Speaker 1: were evil and needed to be killed, both because they
11:10
Speaker 1: were evil but also to serve as payment to their
11:14
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial saviors. Five children were never found of the nineteen
11:19
Speaker 1: reported missing, and four of the perpetrators were captured. However,
11:23
Speaker 1: Valentina managed to escape the country and evaded capture for
11:27
Speaker 1: several years. Even when authorities did locate her, she provided
11:30
Speaker 1: an albi for the murders and was released. Apparently she
11:34
Speaker 1: fainted at this verdict. Yeah, so we have some more
11:38
Speaker 1: examples for you, but first we have a quick break
11:41
Speaker 1: for words from our sponsor, every Back, Thank you. Sponsored.
11:57
Speaker 1: Along with Marshall Apple White Blue Nettles co founded the
12:01
Speaker 1: UFO cult Heaven's Gate in the nineteen seventies, and she
12:04
Speaker 1: believed herself to have a divine purpose. She was known
12:08
Speaker 1: as t She also went by Peep while he went
12:11
Speaker 1: by Bow, and the two of them went by the
12:13
Speaker 1: two went together. She was a registered nurse and raised
12:16
Speaker 1: in Texas. She got married, had four children, but then
12:19
Speaker 1: reportedly started doing seances in the early nineteen seventies. According
12:23
Speaker 1: to some sources, she thought among named a brother Frances
12:26
Speaker 1: from the nineteenth century was communicating with her and giving
12:29
Speaker 1: her instructions. She was big into astrology and the occult
12:34
Speaker 1: u and she visited several fortune tellers, at least one
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Speaker 1: of whom told her she would soon meet someone matching
12:40
Speaker 1: apple Wise description um and the stories of how they
12:43
Speaker 1: met very from inside hospital to a theater after an accident,
12:47
Speaker 1: something like that. Allegedly, Nettles was asked to perform a
12:50
Speaker 1: reading on apple White and agreed. She determined they were
12:53
Speaker 1: spiritual matches. Apple White was gay, though he did marry
12:57
Speaker 1: and have two children. His family was very religious in
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Speaker 1: conservative and despite his best efforts, he did engage in
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Speaker 1: a few homosexual relationships. Nettles and apple White had a
13:07
Speaker 1: non sexual relationship, he later wrote of it, but the
13:09
Speaker 1: only relationship they shared, certainly having no physical attraction towards
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Speaker 1: each other, was the compulsion to discover what had brought
13:16
Speaker 1: them together. James Lewis, author on a book of Uflo
13:20
Speaker 1: occults and a professor at the Institute for the Study
13:23
Speaker 1: of American Religion, said quote, apple White was so alienated
13:26
Speaker 1: from his homosexuality that he was teaching people not to
13:28
Speaker 1: have sex. He would put people of opposite sexes together
13:31
Speaker 1: and forced them to learn to become neutral, non sexual. Apparently,
13:35
Speaker 1: apple White had himself castrated and that perhaps others in
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Speaker 1: the group were castrated as well, And in nineteen seventy three,
13:43
Speaker 1: Nettles told her daughter and son she was leaving and
13:46
Speaker 1: that was the last they ever saw of her with
13:49
Speaker 1: apple White. She said that God was leading them in
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Speaker 1: a certain big direction. She said a cryptic religious message
13:55
Speaker 1: to her daughter several months later, claiming that she and
13:58
Speaker 1: apple White were witness members were required to dress alike
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Speaker 1: and cut their hair, which I think people know about.
14:04
Speaker 1: Together they formed Heaven's Gates. Nettles said she'd communicated with
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Speaker 1: aliens about the next level, and apple White declared she
14:11
Speaker 1: was higher rank than him in nineteen seventies six. Her
14:15
Speaker 1: eye had to be removed in nineteen three due to
14:17
Speaker 1: cancer spreading throughout her body, and according to her daughter,
14:20
Speaker 1: the letters changed in the eighties and that she got
14:23
Speaker 1: and since her mother wanted out, but there wasn't a
14:26
Speaker 1: graceful way to leave, as she said. Yes, So Nettles
14:29
Speaker 1: died of cancer twelve years before apple White and thirty
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Speaker 1: others killed themselves in a mass suicide event, believing that
14:34
Speaker 1: it would allow them to access a UFO following in
14:38
Speaker 1: the wake of the Haileybot comment, believing that it would
14:41
Speaker 1: grant them passage to the quote yes next Kingdom um or.
14:44
Speaker 1: Right before this event was carried out, the website was
14:46
Speaker 1: updated with a message that they were happy to leave
14:48
Speaker 1: this world and join quote tease Crew. Experts believe her
14:52
Speaker 1: death was a significant touchstone in terms of beliefs around
14:55
Speaker 1: the body being quote just a vehicle, which is what
14:57
Speaker 1: apple White said about Nettles making base for the tragic
15:01
Speaker 1: event that was about to occur. Nettle's daughter tried to
15:05
Speaker 1: contact her to get her out, but was told her
15:07
Speaker 1: messages wouldn't be passed along unless she told them what
15:10
Speaker 1: she planned to say. When the daughter said it's personal,
15:13
Speaker 1: they hung up. Mm hmmm, said so next, we want
15:17
Speaker 1: to talk about Amy Simple McPherson, who was a faith healer, evangelist,
15:21
Speaker 1: and the founder of Four Square Gospel Church and builder
15:25
Speaker 1: of the Angelist Temple. She was born into a religious
15:28
Speaker 1: family in eighteen ninety, but she soon had questions about
15:31
Speaker 1: their faith. At the same time, she was a vocal
15:34
Speaker 1: opponent of evolution. At a teen, she married and got
15:37
Speaker 1: pregnant and on their honeymoon. Her husband died when she
15:41
Speaker 1: returned to the US. She remarried and had another child,
15:44
Speaker 1: but soon grew restless and absconded with both the children,
15:47
Speaker 1: leaving her husband for a religious calling. She traveled the
15:51
Speaker 1: country in a touring car, the gospel car that had
15:55
Speaker 1: the message Jesus is coming soon and get ready, stopping
15:57
Speaker 1: to speak at churches along the way, and she really
16:00
Speaker 1: knew her way around a crowd um. She would speak
16:03
Speaker 1: in tongues. She would perform faith healing demonstrations and which
16:07
Speaker 1: she appeared to have cured people. She was breaking at
16:10
Speaker 1: tendance records compared to other evangelical leaders. As a woman,
16:14
Speaker 1: she was a rarity in that space. At a San
16:16
Speaker 1: Diego event, over thirty thou people showed up to see
16:19
Speaker 1: her and the Marines had to be called. It was
16:22
Speaker 1: described as the best show in town. And just for example,
16:25
Speaker 1: she would ride motorcycles into these events. Sometimes they had
16:30
Speaker 1: like lights and special effects. She was one of the
16:33
Speaker 1: first women in the US to travel across the country
16:35
Speaker 1: in a car without a male chaperone, and she frequently argued,
16:39
Speaker 1: who says a woman can't preach gospel? Charlie Chaplin was
16:43
Speaker 1: a secret friend of hers and helped her with her sermons. Wow,
16:47
Speaker 1: I can't believe I've never heard of her before this,
16:49
Speaker 1: because yeah, it's so rare to see uh traveling teachers
16:53
Speaker 1: and Hayley that aren't that aren't men? I know, tap
16:57
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard of her either, because it sounds like
16:59
Speaker 1: she had a big pool during her thirty thousand that's
17:03
Speaker 1: a huge number for sure. So eventually she decided to
17:06
Speaker 1: retire from the crowds and travel, settling in La where
17:09
Speaker 1: she raised funds for the angelist church one point five
17:12
Speaker 1: million Wow, where she gave sermons seven days a week.
17:16
Speaker 1: In nine she launched her own radio station called kf
17:19
Speaker 1: q G four Square Gospel, and she also hosted successful
17:23
Speaker 1: radio broadcast, making her one of the first women to
17:26
Speaker 1: receive a broadcast license in the US. Around this time,
17:29
Speaker 1: she formed her own church for Square UH and the
17:32
Speaker 1: name comes from four facets of Jesus, Transformative Salvation, divine healing, Baptism,
17:37
Speaker 1: and the Return of Christ. Mini male leaders in the
17:40
Speaker 1: space were vocal opponents, which not surprised Nope, not at all.
17:46
Speaker 1: In she disappeared on a swim, an event that captured
17:50
Speaker 1: national headlines attention and rampant speculation about what happened to
17:55
Speaker 1: sister Amy, as she was called a believer, literally drowned themselves.
18:00
Speaker 1: It was, it was said in sorrow, but I believe
18:02
Speaker 1: they were just trying to swim out and help with
18:04
Speaker 1: the effort. Members through dynamite in the water, hoping to surface.
18:08
Speaker 1: Her rumors spread like wildfire, that she disappeared to have
18:12
Speaker 1: an abortion, that she had had an affair, that she'd
18:14
Speaker 1: gotten plastic surgery, that maybe there'd be a ransom or
18:17
Speaker 1: foul play was involved. The police received a ransom note
18:21
Speaker 1: demanding five thousand dollars for her release, and it was
18:24
Speaker 1: signed by the avengers I know, getting up to no good.
18:29
Speaker 1: Amy showed up in Mexico a month later. Her identity
18:33
Speaker 1: was proven by her knowledge of her childhood pet pigeons
18:35
Speaker 1: name which I love, and at the location of one
18:39
Speaker 1: of her scars. Amy claimed she had been kidnapped by
18:42
Speaker 1: three Americans who demanded a ransom, but she was able
18:44
Speaker 1: to escape, by her account, sawing out of the rope
18:47
Speaker 1: restraining her and walking twenty miles. After a reporter questioned
18:52
Speaker 1: if this was possible, Amy said, many have said that
18:55
Speaker 1: a woman could not have built Angelus temple and do
18:57
Speaker 1: these others seemingly impossible things, but I did. She sure
19:01
Speaker 1: did so. When she returned home, over fifty thousand cheering
19:05
Speaker 1: spectators met her at the train station with a parade. However,
19:09
Speaker 1: her return was not without suspicion, and officials looked into
19:12
Speaker 1: her kidnapping. She voluntarily showed up at a grain jury,
19:16
Speaker 1: and the rumors swirling, particularly around an engineer of a
19:20
Speaker 1: radio station owned by McPherson's church, who disappeared at the
19:23
Speaker 1: same time she did. However, there wasn't enough evidence to
19:26
Speaker 1: back this claim, so the judge dropped the case against her.
19:30
Speaker 1: McPherson wrote a book about it in ninety seven called
19:33
Speaker 1: In the Service of the King, The Story of My Life.
19:36
Speaker 1: She died in nineteen forty four of what was deemed
19:39
Speaker 1: as probably accidental overdose or Over forty five thousand people
19:44
Speaker 1: came to see her lying in state, and when she died,
19:48
Speaker 1: the Fourth Square Church was worth nine million dollars, and
19:52
Speaker 1: these days there are over nine million members. They're over
19:55
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred four Square churches in the US and over
19:58
Speaker 1: sixties six thou also meeting places worldwide. She's been credited
20:02
Speaker 1: with bringing modern air conservatism into the era of modern media.
20:06
Speaker 1: It's a lot of money. Yeah, so she's been coming
20:09
Speaker 1: up a lot when we were talking about the kind
20:11
Speaker 1: of these personality based shows that do you know the
20:18
Speaker 1: opinion shows, especially when it comes to conservatism, and how
20:22
Speaker 1: religion often plays into that. And this one too is one.
20:26
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this church, but I know that
20:31
Speaker 1: you could foreshure argue whether or not it qualifies as
20:34
Speaker 1: a cult. There's nothing out right that screams to meet
20:40
Speaker 1: cult about it, right, It does come up on several lists,
20:43
Speaker 1: But I'm wondering if that's more about her more of
20:46
Speaker 1: a cult of personality, like she was just so charismatic
20:51
Speaker 1: and people have really really adored her and would do
20:54
Speaker 1: anything for her. Um and again, like we could go,
20:58
Speaker 1: we could do deep dives on all of these and
21:00
Speaker 1: maybe there's just something I don't know about it about
21:03
Speaker 1: this church. But right, that was just kind of my
21:05
Speaker 1: take on it where I'm sort of surprised has kept
21:08
Speaker 1: popping up on other lists about cult leaders. I mean,
21:12
Speaker 1: and again, yeah, there's a conversation of how she's getting
21:15
Speaker 1: this money, where she's getting this money, which also is
21:17
Speaker 1: kind of that political turning and conversation of that as well.
21:21
Speaker 1: But it's also unprecedented that a woman started a church
21:24
Speaker 1: and it still exists today to the popularity that it
21:27
Speaker 1: is saying. I will say I've not heard of this
21:29
Speaker 1: church either before this episode, but it is interesting to
21:34
Speaker 1: see how it continues to pop up. And again, yeah,
21:37
Speaker 1: you're right, cult it seems a little more dark than
21:41
Speaker 1: what this is presenting. But we do also know, like
21:44
Speaker 1: when it comes to followings and especially of the hell
21:48
Speaker 1: Fibrimstone era that she grew up in with a traveling preachers,
21:52
Speaker 1: which has now formed into different religions itself. It also
21:54
Speaker 1: can be seemingly cultish because of the supernatural element to it.
22:00
Speaker 1: And and that's another which we keep saying. But I
22:04
Speaker 1: just know that this is such a like fine line
22:07
Speaker 1: of some people will call this a cult and other
22:09
Speaker 1: people wouldn't. And sometimes that line for some people can
22:12
Speaker 1: be oh, that looks so different and weird and heavy
22:15
Speaker 1: quads compared to what I am used to, So it
22:19
Speaker 1: must be a cult. It makes me nervous. It makes
22:22
Speaker 1: me nervous and a good This is also based on
22:24
Speaker 1: old religion, And when I say old religion, you don't
22:28
Speaker 1: see the practicing of tongues the healing in general. Don't
22:31
Speaker 1: get me wrong, I've seen it. I've seen that it
22:33
Speaker 1: still exists, but you just don't see it as much,
22:36
Speaker 1: and especially in popularity. Yeah, I guess maybe that's maybe
22:42
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons it is classified as a
22:45
Speaker 1: cult to some people. Is that kind of whole faith
22:48
Speaker 1: healing speaking in tongues aspects, which you know can be
22:54
Speaker 1: a lot of religions can have people like that who
22:56
Speaker 1: are just like really bombastic and entertaining. Way, not to
23:00
Speaker 1: dismiss at all like people's beliefs, but I'm just saying like,
23:03
Speaker 1: as part of a somebody who can gather that sort
23:06
Speaker 1: of passion and excitement and that can be almost like
23:09
Speaker 1: an entertainment or a role that you're getting people excited
23:12
Speaker 1: about this thing. Right. And again, though, if we look
23:14
Speaker 1: at what she did compared to some religions today, there's
23:18
Speaker 1: not that much difference. So you do have to question that. Yes, now,
23:22
Speaker 1: probably after this I'll look it up and something super
23:25
Speaker 1: dark involved. I think that would be on the top
23:28
Speaker 1: of like right information, And you're right, like, we don't
23:30
Speaker 1: see that. It's just more of her accomplishments that we
23:32
Speaker 1: see more so than what the religion or the practice did. Yeah,
23:38
Speaker 1: and definitely, like you said, kind of a big impact
23:40
Speaker 1: of like having this first radio station as a woman
23:43
Speaker 1: like license and being in this space and then providing
23:46
Speaker 1: a jumping off platform for conservatism and modern media today.
23:50
Speaker 1: And it could be also the language back then competing
23:53
Speaker 1: I guess church or belief system, you learn to call
23:56
Speaker 1: it something insidious, and so that for cult maybe the
24:00
Speaker 1: automatic name given just because you don't like it, and
24:02
Speaker 1: it is again done by someone who's not given according
24:05
Speaker 1: to them authority, which is a woman, right, which is
24:08
Speaker 1: a whole different conversation. But once again, yeah, no that
24:10
Speaker 1: I had that top thought too. I don't feel I
24:14
Speaker 1: have enough knowledge of this particular event, but I do
24:17
Speaker 1: wonder if there was a layer, if there's a woman
24:19
Speaker 1: doing this thing that seen as a man's space cult.
24:22
Speaker 1: It's weird. Yes, these are just Yes, these are like
24:25
Speaker 1: you and I just hypo analyzing what this is happening. Yes,
24:29
Speaker 1: I mean I think certainly there's at least a layer
24:31
Speaker 1: of that, and most of these there's a layer sexism, racism,
24:34
Speaker 1: and this isn't Christianity like I see it in the
24:36
Speaker 1: United States specifically, and some of these are heinous too
24:40
Speaker 1: though just yes, I don't want to Yes, both of
24:45
Speaker 1: those things exist in this these two episodes. Yes, absolutely
24:50
Speaker 1: absolutely good point to make. Um. But we do have
24:55
Speaker 1: one more woman cult leader we want to share with you.
24:58
Speaker 1: But first we have one more quick break for from
25:00
Speaker 1: her sponsor and we're fact thank you sponsored. We thought
25:15
Speaker 1: we would finish out this two part series about women
25:20
Speaker 1: leading cults with Anne Hamilton's burn the charismatic leader of
25:24
Speaker 1: the Australian Doomsday cult The Family. Hamilton Burne was a
25:29
Speaker 1: woman of many talents. She could sing and play the harp.
25:31
Speaker 1: She was put together, as they say, with style, blonde
25:35
Speaker 1: hair and pearls and shouldnell perfume. One of her ex
25:39
Speaker 1: followers set of her. In ancient times we hear about
25:41
Speaker 1: enchantresses who could enslave people with one glance. She had
25:44
Speaker 1: eyes that looked through your soul. After her mother set
25:48
Speaker 1: her hair on fire, she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia
25:51
Speaker 1: and ended up spending twenty seven years and a psychiatric
25:54
Speaker 1: asylum before she died and spent some time in orphanages
25:59
Speaker 1: and her hers husband died in a car accident when
26:01
Speaker 1: she was twenty. She had given birth to one daughter,
26:04
Speaker 1: and as rumors go, had suffered many miscarriages by then
26:08
Speaker 1: right and in the nineteen sixties Hamilton Burn founded the
26:11
Speaker 1: family and claimed that she was Jesus reborn as a woman.
26:15
Speaker 1: She was reportedly inspired by Russian born medium by the
26:17
Speaker 1: name of Helena Bilovotski, who founded the Theosophical Society in
26:21
Speaker 1: New York in eighteen seventy five. Bolovotsky introduced many to
26:25
Speaker 1: Hinduism and Buddhism. When Hamilton's Burn took up yoga in
26:29
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties as a bomb to her grief, she
26:33
Speaker 1: pretty quickly fell in love with the ideas of Eastern mysticism.
26:37
Speaker 1: She started teaching in the nineteen sixties and by all
26:39
Speaker 1: accounts was a pretty good teacher. She was really good
26:42
Speaker 1: at getting a read on people's vulnerabilities. She allowed gay
26:46
Speaker 1: men in the face of the anti homosexuality laws in
26:49
Speaker 1: place in Australia at the time. She also managed to
26:53
Speaker 1: recruit a physicist and a master at Queen's College at
26:55
Speaker 1: Melbourne University, Dr Rayner Johnson. He was approaching retirement and
27:01
Speaker 1: curious to explore new quote weird areas and interest amongst
27:05
Speaker 1: the scientific community about spiritualism was on the rise, and
27:08
Speaker 1: he just became completely beguiled by Hamilton's Byrne, even naming
27:13
Speaker 1: her the next Messiah. For what he declared to be
27:16
Speaker 1: purely academic purposes, he experimented with LC and took notes
27:20
Speaker 1: about it, including this quote, Her face became divinely beautiful,
27:25
Speaker 1: with sublime authority, unquestionably the wisest, the serenest, and most
27:30
Speaker 1: gracious and generous soul I've ever met. He and his
27:33
Speaker 1: wife bought a home near Hamilton's Burne, and together they
27:36
Speaker 1: birth the family. The family lived in obscurity and Melbourne,
27:40
Speaker 1: and their motto was Unseen, Unknown, unheard. Hamilton Burne targeted
27:45
Speaker 1: well at professionals, telling them that she had quote been
27:48
Speaker 1: waiting for them and that they were special. Dr Johnson
27:51
Speaker 1: lent a scientific and legitimate heir to her claims. Her
27:55
Speaker 1: teachings were a combination of Christianity, Eastern mysticism, and a
27:59
Speaker 1: sort of pacalypticism, and the initiation allegedly involved all members,
28:04
Speaker 1: even children, to indulge in a potentially deadly amount of
28:08
Speaker 1: LSD and hallucinogens for a lengthy amount of time. After that,
28:13
Speaker 1: she controlled practically all aspects of their lives and one
28:17
Speaker 1: survivor's words quote there was only one rule to absolutely
28:20
Speaker 1: everything she said that included what to think, what to wear,
28:23
Speaker 1: what to eat, who to marry, who not to marry,
28:26
Speaker 1: total obedience. She gave sermons or discourses as they were called,
28:30
Speaker 1: from a purple throne in a lodge funded by members money.
28:33
Speaker 1: Many members of the cult tried to take their own
28:36
Speaker 1: lives either during their time there are after, and if
28:39
Speaker 1: you did upsettingly. To keep members in line, she'd beat them,
28:43
Speaker 1: sometimes with the stiletto shoe, but she often left this
28:46
Speaker 1: task to the aunties, who were middle aged women afraid
28:49
Speaker 1: of their own punishment. If they didn't enacted on others um,
28:52
Speaker 1: she would starve members um, emotionally, abuse and manipulate them.
28:56
Speaker 1: The children might also get a daily dose of valium
28:59
Speaker 1: are mogodon to keep them from fighting back, which just
29:02
Speaker 1: kind of keeps them calm. At age fourteen, this switched
29:06
Speaker 1: over to huge, continuous doses of LSD, and for many
29:10
Speaker 1: this was disastrous, resulting in depressia, trauma, nightmares, social withdraw
29:14
Speaker 1: and personality changes. So after two children escaped in nineteen
29:18
Speaker 1: eight seven, police raided the family. Over the past few decades,
29:22
Speaker 1: Hamilton Burne had a massive twenty eight children, The first
29:25
Speaker 1: had arrived in the nineteen seventies, and some of them
29:28
Speaker 1: as gifts and some of them sham adoptions. At the time,
29:31
Speaker 1: Australia's regulation around adoptions were lacking, and the stigma around
29:35
Speaker 1: unmarried motherhood it was pretty quite powerful. According to a
29:39
Speaker 1: detective that tried to bring charges against Hamilton Burne, quote,
29:42
Speaker 1: you had babies born in a cult hospitals, delivered by
29:45
Speaker 1: cult midwives, headed over to cult social workers. Uh hamilton
29:49
Speaker 1: Burn bleached the hair of all of them and adorned
29:52
Speaker 1: them in matching clothes, telling them she was their birth mother.
29:55
Speaker 1: She also told them she was royalty and owned castles.
29:58
Speaker 1: She kept the children separate from the may in compound
30:00
Speaker 1: at a wooden lodge two hours away, where they were
30:03
Speaker 1: home schooled. She desired to be the perfect mother, but
30:08
Speaker 1: had no real interest in actually putting any effort into that,
30:11
Speaker 1: and thanks to property donations from followers in Land, Hamilton
30:15
Speaker 1: Burn collected a hundred fifty million Australian dollars and she
30:19
Speaker 1: was arrested for minor fraud charges in nineteen She and
30:22
Speaker 1: our ex husband, who one follower described as a handsome
30:27
Speaker 1: rich compliant handback got off with only five thousand a
30:31
Speaker 1: U and fines, absolutely no jail time, and one of
30:35
Speaker 1: the rescue teenagers after the nine eight seven Ready explained,
30:39
Speaker 1: it's hard to say how devoted we are to her,
30:41
Speaker 1: how we hung off her every look and every thought
30:44
Speaker 1: she had about us. We wanted so much for her
30:47
Speaker 1: to love us, but I don't think she ever really did.
30:49
Speaker 1: Julie Assange, founder of Wiki Leaks, admitted his mother's boyfriend
30:53
Speaker 1: had been a member of this cult. Assange called him
30:56
Speaker 1: a sinister presence and claimed that they ran from him.
31:00
Speaker 1: Hamilton Burns spent over a decade in a nursing home,
31:03
Speaker 1: where she eventually died. The Family. If you want to
31:08
Speaker 1: know more, there is a documentary on it. Like we said,
31:11
Speaker 1: there's podcast documentaries, Glower and almost all of these, so
31:15
Speaker 1: the information is out there for you. Yes, there's a
31:18
Speaker 1: documentary book called The Family by documentary filmmaker Rosie Jones
31:22
Speaker 1: and journalist Chris Johnston. The creators were unable to interview
31:25
Speaker 1: her due to her dementia and lack of ability to consent,
31:29
Speaker 1: or they weren't able to film it or write it down,
31:31
Speaker 1: but they did get to sit down with her and
31:33
Speaker 1: they described the power of their experience. So yeah, I
31:37
Speaker 1: just feel like there's so many themes we could unpack
31:39
Speaker 1: here because we've really run the gamut of like, yes,
31:43
Speaker 1: sexism and racism, at homophobia, and this idea of the
31:47
Speaker 1: mother did come up a lot, just so much like
31:51
Speaker 1: misogyny and toxic masculinity. Yeah, yeah, we could really come
31:57
Speaker 1: back and dig into that some more. And I'm sure
32:00
Speaker 1: each of the podcasts and the documentary talk about the
32:03
Speaker 1: childhood and the background of the trauma that kind of
32:07
Speaker 1: birth these people to be who they are. And I
32:11
Speaker 1: say that loosely because you know, you don't you never know,
32:12
Speaker 1: not to give any excuse, there's not an excuse, but
32:15
Speaker 1: there's always a beginning, and I think that's that's an
32:20
Speaker 1: interesting way to look at how these are created and
32:22
Speaker 1: again with different personalities that can bring about these perfectly
32:28
Speaker 1: placed disasters and or perfectly placed time frames. I guess
32:33
Speaker 1: it's the best way to say, because we don't know
32:35
Speaker 1: the depth of what has happened truly outside of those
32:39
Speaker 1: who were inside of it. So there's there's a lot
32:41
Speaker 1: of the things the question and to look at. But yeah,
32:44
Speaker 1: just to see the background of what is happening, because again,
32:48
Speaker 1: we see so much of a sensationalization of what has happened,
32:52
Speaker 1: because we know, you know Jonestown, we know Waco, we
32:55
Speaker 1: know the big details, but we don't know the small details.
32:58
Speaker 1: Of course, the after ask for the members what has happened.
33:02
Speaker 1: I know there's been a lot more documentation, documentaries, conversations
33:06
Speaker 1: from survivors because they do want to tell their stories
33:08
Speaker 1: and important for them to tell these stories that we
33:11
Speaker 1: have to pay attention to that. And yet these are
33:13
Speaker 1: not just incidents and though we we are giving off,
33:17
Speaker 1: you know, details of what may have happened of or
33:20
Speaker 1: it's just a small picture of what may have happened. Rather,
33:23
Speaker 1: these were people's lives that are affected. And we do
33:25
Speaker 1: see the lingering effects for different people who have been
33:29
Speaker 1: affected by what we would call it consider a cult
33:32
Speaker 1: that still exists that's not being recognized because of people's
33:37
Speaker 1: opinions and or maybe politics that we again is you
33:40
Speaker 1: talked about the some of these cults had political figureheads
33:44
Speaker 1: behind them. Yeah, and that's one of the things for me,
33:50
Speaker 1: this whole this is all very complicated, right because there
33:53
Speaker 1: is a lot of trauma and you don't want to
33:56
Speaker 1: absolve every anybody of blame. But there is that there's trauma,
33:59
Speaker 1: and there's brainwashing. So if that's complicated, but then you
34:02
Speaker 1: would see like for example, when you're talking about Betty
34:05
Speaker 1: Lou Nettles, and I just noticed like people were really
34:08
Speaker 1: into Oh, she did the seances and she did she
34:10
Speaker 1: was involved in the occult. There's nothing like apparently wrong
34:14
Speaker 1: with any of that, right, um, And I know what
34:17
Speaker 1: they were getting at. They were saying she was looking
34:19
Speaker 1: for quote heavy quote alternative like enlightenment, enlightenment, and she
34:24
Speaker 1: was interested in those things. But I do think that
34:26
Speaker 1: things like that can be problematic when we're having these
34:30
Speaker 1: conversations because that doesn't necessarily mean cult. I know, we
34:36
Speaker 1: keep coming back to that, but I just think that
34:38
Speaker 1: it's really really important. Right. So she use a prime
34:41
Speaker 1: example of someone who looked at alternative what would be
34:44
Speaker 1: classified as new waged to ideas during that time. And yeah,
34:48
Speaker 1: because it's abnormal and because we we are in a
34:51
Speaker 1: country that it is so inundated into Western Christianity and
34:58
Speaker 1: I have to specify that as a Western Christian unity
35:00
Speaker 1: and this very idea of notion that almost takes to
35:03
Speaker 1: the point that you know, the idea that Jesus is white,
35:06
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of level of what Christianity what
35:09
Speaker 1: is right and wrong. So therefore that its cult and
35:13
Speaker 1: that is super very super dangerous when we talk about that,
35:16
Speaker 1: because we know again the New Age ideas and reading
35:21
Speaker 1: palms or you do can through tarot cards does not
35:25
Speaker 1: equate cult in the story. You know, just because you
35:28
Speaker 1: look at astrology or you trust in astrology does not
35:31
Speaker 1: again quite cult. But there's this whole underlying, dark, sinister
35:37
Speaker 1: idea behind it when you've raised up in again Western
35:40
Speaker 1: Christianity ideas and beliefs, which again is dangerous, absolutely for sure,
35:45
Speaker 1: and the same idea because I think me for me
35:47
Speaker 1: growing up, which is why it was so fascinated by
35:49
Speaker 1: Eastern religion, is because it was told me that is
35:52
Speaker 1: forbidden in itself, you know what I mean, and then
35:55
Speaker 1: learning about it and like, you know, this makes sense
35:57
Speaker 1: and I'm not a religious person, but the ideas behind
36:00
Speaker 1: in some of the beautiful sentiment behind understanding Eastern religion,
36:04
Speaker 1: which has existed longer than again Western Christianity right like
36:11
Speaker 1: in itself, is a whole different conversation we could dig into,
36:14
Speaker 1: because yeah, that also is fearmongering in itself and now
36:19
Speaker 1: again the atrocities that we talked about, they are for real.
36:22
Speaker 1: We need to talk about what has happened, how it
36:25
Speaker 1: has traumatized others, and why we need to talk about it.
36:27
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's definitely the balance of we have to
36:30
Speaker 1: remember the biases that could be placed into these reports
36:34
Speaker 1: as well, exactly. Yeah, because it's not that we're seeing
36:39
Speaker 1: these aren't cults or that the terrible, terrible things happened
36:43
Speaker 1: within them, because for a lot of them they did.
36:46
Speaker 1: But I think it's just the language I picked up
36:48
Speaker 1: on in it that I was kind of it kind
36:50
Speaker 1: of made me a little anxious, like I get true
36:52
Speaker 1: and I get it and this did end up being bad,
36:55
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean it always is, right, Yeah, very complex,
37:03
Speaker 1: a lot of nuances, so many things. Glad we got
37:06
Speaker 1: into it, and I hope we Yeah, we'll definitely look
37:08
Speaker 1: at the overall ideas of women and cults in general,
37:12
Speaker 1: just the help being a member, because we do see
37:14
Speaker 1: a lot of times it's heavily women. Yeah, yeah, we're
37:20
Speaker 1: definitely going to return to that. And uh, I'm both
37:25
Speaker 1: excited and nervous anything. Yes, as most episodes on here
37:32
Speaker 1: Um in the meantime listeners. If you would like to
37:34
Speaker 1: contact as you can or email Stuff Media mom Stuff
37:36
Speaker 1: at i heeart media dot com. You can find us
37:38
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Stuff I've Never Told You are on
37:40
Speaker 1: Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. Thanks as always to our
37:42
Speaker 1: super producer Christina, Thank you and thanks to you for
37:45
Speaker 1: listening Stuff I've Never Told You his protection of I
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