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The Texas DEVIL MURDERS_ Were These Siblings KILLED By A CULT · The conspiracy

0:00
Speaker 1: Before we begin today's show, I want to issue a
0:02
Speaker 1: few official statements. Number one, I don't want to take
0:05
Speaker 1: my own life. I have no plans on taking my
0:08
Speaker 1: own life, and if I die in the near future,
0:10
Speaker 1: you know who did it. Number two, all the facts
0:12
Speaker 1: presented in today's episode can be independently verified by visiting
0:16
Speaker 1: the resources in the description of the show. And number three,
0:20
Speaker 1: all parties are considered innocent until proven guilty in a
0:23
Speaker 1: court of law. The opinions presented on this show are
0:25
Speaker 1: solely those of the host and producer of The Conspiracy
0:28
Speaker 1: Files aka Me. Now that we've got all that said,
0:31
Speaker 1: let's do a deep dive. So today on the show,
0:40
Speaker 1: we have devil worship. We have some very ominous, dark,
0:46
Speaker 1: disturbing crimes to cover, some crimes that honestly, I had
0:50
Speaker 1: never even heard about before I started researching cases I
0:53
Speaker 1: wanted to cover for this show, and then I discovered
0:56
Speaker 1: these devil worshiping some would call them murders, covered up
1:00
Speaker 1: deaths that occurred in Texas. It's really really compelling stuff.
1:04
Speaker 1: I think you guys are going to have your minds
1:05
Speaker 1: blown throughout this episode. This is going to be a
1:08
Speaker 1: shorter one, but still one that needs to be heard.
1:11
Speaker 1: So I studied the occult in college before I dropped out.
1:15
Speaker 1: I took a whole semester of I was going to
1:17
Speaker 1: be a religious studies minor, and so I took a
1:19
Speaker 1: class on fundamental Christianity. I took a class on Jewish
1:24
Speaker 1: folklore and kind of Judaic traditions, and then I took
1:27
Speaker 1: a class on the occult where we learned about the
1:31
Speaker 1: Order of the Golden Dawn Aleister Crowley. We talked about Freemasons,
1:36
Speaker 1: Order of the Eastern Star. I think I messed up
1:38
Speaker 1: the Golden Dawn name, but it's the Golden Dawn group
1:41
Speaker 1: and all sorts of different groups and occult practices and
1:44
Speaker 1: esoteric practitioners. Now. The one thing I will say, though,
1:48
Speaker 1: is that back then, I used to be convinced that
1:50
Speaker 1: the Satanic Panic is exactly what the government and what
1:54
Speaker 1: officials have said that it was. The Satanic Panic was
1:57
Speaker 1: essentially a group of parents that work concerned, gravely concerned.
2:01
Speaker 1: But the one thing that I will say, like I
2:04
Speaker 1: said before about the Satanic Panic, so I used to
2:07
Speaker 1: think that it was nothing more than you know, hearsaying
2:11
Speaker 1: that these people were being needlessly blamed for participating in
2:15
Speaker 1: Satanic rituals and all sorts of occult practices. And I
2:18
Speaker 1: used to think, oh, there were no kids that were abused,
2:21
Speaker 1: there were no children that were murdered. This was all
2:23
Speaker 1: just a farce. And you know, Christians being afraid of
2:27
Speaker 1: Satanic people. Now, Satanists are not bad people. I have
2:31
Speaker 1: known a lot of people who are involved in that
2:33
Speaker 1: whole realm. They don't actually worship the devil, they don't
2:36
Speaker 1: want to sacrifice kids. Those people I have no issues with.
2:40
Speaker 1: But time and time again, from stories like the Franklin
2:43
Speaker 1: cover up to even Mark the True whose name I
2:47
Speaker 1: said wrong, you see this satanic cult ritual stuff keep
2:51
Speaker 1: popping up time and time again in these stories. And
2:54
Speaker 1: then you see how back then they used this satanic
2:56
Speaker 1: panic narrative to brush it all kind of under the
3:00
Speaker 1: u and say, yeah, look at this, this is insane.
3:02
Speaker 1: This never happened. You're needlessly blaming this people. And yeah,
3:05
Speaker 1: I just think there were some of these cases that
3:07
Speaker 1: should be reopened and re examined because there does seem
3:10
Speaker 1: to be a cult element to it, and there does
3:12
Speaker 1: seem to be something nefarious that happened, especially in this case.
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Speaker 1: So without further ado let's just get into the script.
3:22
Speaker 1: A town of just over fifty eight hundred people sits
3:24
Speaker 1: in the Panhandle of Texas. Its town web page opens
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Speaker 1: with a welcoming calling card, Come to our town and
3:30
Speaker 1: ask anyone. Childress, Texas is a great place to be.
3:34
Speaker 1: They boast a progressive center of commerce, a convenient location
3:38
Speaker 1: for travelers, and a small town atmosphere known for the
3:41
Speaker 1: fair Park Event Center, a state of the art rodeo arena,
3:45
Speaker 1: Childres's ATV Park, and Stony Ridge golf Course. The city
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Speaker 1: of Childress states it is a fantastic place in which
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Speaker 1: to raise a family, but dark history hides underneath its
3:55
Speaker 1: small town appeal. A horse apple tree stands in infamy
3:58
Speaker 1: in this community, a tree with a broken branch that
4:01
Speaker 1: they all call the Hanging Tree. The people of Childress
4:04
Speaker 1: know this only from a tale spoken about in hushed tones,
4:08
Speaker 1: or in the safety of a living room where only
4:10
Speaker 1: those they trust can hear. They whisper of fear, clandenstein, rituals,
4:14
Speaker 1: and death. They whisper about the tragedy that befella family
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Speaker 1: in their town in the late eighties and early nineties,
4:20
Speaker 1: two young souls who left the world too soon. They
4:23
Speaker 1: also speak about the Satanic cult that may have been
4:26
Speaker 1: behind it. This is the story of Jansen, Tate, Rowland,
4:29
Speaker 1: Terry Trosper, and the dark machinations that led to their
4:33
Speaker 1: twisted fate. So we already touched on this, but let's
4:37
Speaker 1: talk about the Satanic Panic for a second, in case
4:39
Speaker 1: I lost some of the listeners. In the nineteen eighties,
4:42
Speaker 1: big hair and dance were all the rage, famous for
4:45
Speaker 1: explosions of blockbuster movies and new cable networks like MTV.
4:50
Speaker 1: The eighties was a new era for American culture. It's
4:53
Speaker 1: remembered for its consumerism, its materialism, fashion and music glam metal.
4:58
Speaker 1: But something else occurred in the nineteen eighties, something that
5:01
Speaker 1: turned America upside down. Alongside the crumbling of the Berlin
5:04
Speaker 1: Wall and new computer technologies, the eighties saw the beginning
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Speaker 1: of the Satanic Panic, a countrywide hysteria coming from reports
5:12
Speaker 1: of cults that committed mass child abuse. During this time,
5:16
Speaker 1: people went on witch hunts for members of these cults.
5:19
Speaker 1: Police departments were running overtime investigating tips, and some police
5:23
Speaker 1: stations even hired occult experts, people who could help identify
5:27
Speaker 1: practitioners of Satanic warship. Now spending on. Prosecution went into
5:32
Speaker 1: the millions as people were arrested, families were left traumatized,
5:35
Speaker 1: and wild accusations were made left and right. A lot
5:39
Speaker 1: of these cases you can go independently, look at yourself.
5:43
Speaker 1: We're going to be covering it soon. But the Presidio
5:45
Speaker 1: case with Michael Achino, San Francisco, You've got the mc
5:49
Speaker 1: martin preschool case, there was even a daycare case in Austin, Texas.
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Speaker 1: There's tons of this stuff, some of them I believe
5:56
Speaker 1: may have been fabricated. There are plenty after doing research
5:59
Speaker 1: and even I'm working with experts in this field where
6:02
Speaker 1: I can definitely say that kids were abused in these situations,
6:05
Speaker 1: and then that abuse was swept under the rug. It
6:08
Speaker 1: was given a government stamp, and then everybody moved on
6:10
Speaker 1: and forgot about it, called it just satanic panic, craziness.
6:14
Speaker 1: So the Satanic panic really began when the book Michelle
6:17
Speaker 1: Remembers was published and introduced Americans to murderous Canadian Satanists.
6:22
Speaker 1: During this time of advancing conservatism, it hit America like
6:26
Speaker 1: a demonic explosion. People began to fear rock music, associating
6:30
Speaker 1: it with devil warship and news reporters spoke of satanic
6:33
Speaker 1: graffiti along with occult messages hidden within pop songs when
6:36
Speaker 1: played backwards. These allegations mostly revolved around the abuse of
6:41
Speaker 1: children at daycare centers, but in one town late in
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Speaker 1: the eighties, it took on an entirely different light. In Childress, Texas,
6:49
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty eight, the word on the street was
6:51
Speaker 1: ritual sacrifice. So if you've been following the show, you
6:55
Speaker 1: know that we do this in a few different ways.
6:57
Speaker 1: We're first going to present you with the official story
6:59
Speaker 1: of what the author al say happened. Then we're going
7:01
Speaker 1: to explain the conspiracy, what people think really happened, and
7:04
Speaker 1: then we're going to provide evidence behind the conspiracy. So
7:07
Speaker 1: we're not just shouting theories that you were, actually providing you,
7:11
Speaker 1: the viewer, with evidence so that you can make up
7:14
Speaker 1: your own mind around every case that we cover. And
7:16
Speaker 1: the official story here is really strange. Jansen Tate Roland
7:20
Speaker 1: was a seventeen year old boy born and raised in Childress, Texas.
7:24
Speaker 1: He was born on November seventh, nineteen seventy to Jimmy
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Speaker 1: Earl Roland and Patricia joe Anne McNabb Roland. That's a
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Speaker 1: long name. He had two sisters, Sherry don Hamm and
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Speaker 1: Terry Sean Trosper, and one brother, Chad Rowland. They were
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Speaker 1: a large family, especially after his mother and father divorced
7:43
Speaker 1: and his father remarried, earning him two stepsisters. This family
7:47
Speaker 1: grew up in Childress, and for some of them it
7:50
Speaker 1: was where they would spend all of their lives. And
7:52
Speaker 1: as in many small towns, everyone knew each other, but
7:56
Speaker 1: Tate himself had a special reputation. In the year nineteen
7:59
Speaker 1: eighty eight, seven teen year old Tate was known to
8:01
Speaker 1: have a wild streak. He was good looking, popular with
8:04
Speaker 1: many friends, and the sheriff's office knew him as a
8:07
Speaker 1: hot rodder and a drinker. Tate would drive his blue
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Speaker 1: Ford pick up up and down a mile long stretch
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Speaker 1: of US two eighty seven, music blaring from his custom
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Speaker 1: stereo system. At times, he would make the thirty mile
8:18
Speaker 1: drive south to the town of Paduca, flirting with the
8:21
Speaker 1: daughters of rich oilmen. He was known to get into fights,
8:24
Speaker 1: but never won any of them. Tate's friend, Bobby Reynolds
8:27
Speaker 1: commented once on the nature of his friend's free time, saying,
8:30
Speaker 1: in Childress, there isn't a whole lot for a teenager
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Speaker 1: to do except right around, chase girls, drink beer, get
8:36
Speaker 1: in a little trouble, blazing past the town's teen hangout spots,
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Speaker 1: fighting and flirting with girls. Tate was living by those
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Speaker 1: small town pastimes. When you look back at it, half
8:46
Speaker 1: of the town really liked Tate Rowland, but the other
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Speaker 1: half believed that Tate would do well with a little
8:51
Speaker 1: more discipline. One of the many well known bits about
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Speaker 1: Tate's life was his relationship with a girl named Karen Hackler.
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Speaker 1: She was blonde, small in stature, attractive, and the daughter
9:01
Speaker 1: of a prominent farmer. Now Tate and Karen seemed to
9:04
Speaker 1: have a love hate relationship. They were either chasing each
9:07
Speaker 1: other up and down the streets of Childress in their cars,
9:10
Speaker 1: or jealous of each other over one thing or another.
9:13
Speaker 1: But after a while their relationship turned abusive. Karen had
9:16
Speaker 1: tried to break up with Tate, and Karen's family had
9:19
Speaker 1: to make complaints to the police because of his behavior.
9:22
Speaker 1: He was harassing her, they said, driving past her house
9:25
Speaker 1: and stealing her wallet and jewelry. Karen's brother, Kevin, had
9:29
Speaker 1: told Tate to stay away from her, but Tate refused.
9:32
Speaker 1: The story goes that either Tate tried to run her
9:34
Speaker 1: brother over after he made his demands, or that Kevin
9:37
Speaker 1: had hit the side of Tate's truck with an axe handle,
9:40
Speaker 1: but either way there was some sort of a confrontation
9:42
Speaker 1: between Kevin and Tate. The grand jury assigned to the
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Speaker 1: case couldn't decide which of the two boys was telling
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Speaker 1: the truth, so they didn't indict either. Tate's criminal misdeeds
9:52
Speaker 1: didn't stop there, however. He was arrested later in nineteen
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Speaker 1: eighty eight for assault when he attempted to choke Karen
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Speaker 1: while she was at work during one of their fights.
10:00
Speaker 1: Even with this case, he received no indictment, and the
10:03
Speaker 1: two were seen hugging outside of the courtroom, leaving the
10:05
Speaker 1: whole incident behind them. Soon after, however, Tate's father, Jimmy,
10:09
Speaker 1: sent him to live with relatives in Louisiana. He didn't
10:12
Speaker 1: think that the Hacklers were a good influence on his son.
10:15
Speaker 1: The Hacklers even claimed that Jimmy had threatened them. While
10:18
Speaker 1: Tate was away from childress Karen got married. Tate returned
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Speaker 1: stunned and would attempt to call her or what happened
10:25
Speaker 1: to run into her, So when Tate returned, he was
10:28
Speaker 1: obviously stunned. I mean, the woman that he had supposedly
10:31
Speaker 1: loved was now married, and he tried calling her. She
10:34
Speaker 1: didn't pick up, and then he set out went out
10:37
Speaker 1: of his way to try find her in public. Family
10:39
Speaker 1: and friends said that Tate tried to revisit him in
10:42
Speaker 1: Karen's relationship, and that Karen talked to him, often, venting
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Speaker 1: to him about her troubles. However, his efforts seemed to
10:49
Speaker 1: fail because they never rekindled their old feelings. Tate seemed
10:52
Speaker 1: to go back to his usual demeanors soon afterwards, personable
10:55
Speaker 1: and care free. The friends said he would show his
10:58
Speaker 1: sadness when he had a couple of drinks in it.
11:00
Speaker 1: One of his friends, Clifton Hodges, stated that Tate told
11:03
Speaker 1: him that at his funeral he wanted a specific country
11:06
Speaker 1: song played for everyone to hear, a song by the
11:09
Speaker 1: title of he Stopped Loving Her Today. I'd play it,
11:12
Speaker 1: but we would get demounetized. However, even with his musings
11:17
Speaker 1: and depressive episodes, he seemed jovial on the day of
11:20
Speaker 1: July twenty sixth, nineteen eighty eight. On that day, Tate
11:23
Speaker 1: had been at the United Supermarket parking lot at around
11:26
Speaker 1: five in the afternoon, a local hangout spot for the
11:29
Speaker 1: teens of Childress. On that day, he had made plans
11:32
Speaker 1: with a girl he knew to go visit the city
11:34
Speaker 1: park later on that day so that he could act
11:36
Speaker 1: as their coach for a woman's league softball game. Afterwards,
11:39
Speaker 1: he said he would meet his friend Bobby to split
11:41
Speaker 1: a twelve pack of beer and unwind. After Tate set
11:44
Speaker 1: his plans in order, he had a younger friend, Chad Johnston,
11:47
Speaker 1: got in a car and drove away out of that
11:49
Speaker 1: parking lot. It wasn't long after that the dark events
11:53
Speaker 1: were truly set in motion. Six o'clock came and Chad
11:57
Speaker 1: Johnston walked through the front door of the Rowland home.
12:00
Speaker 1: With an even calm voice. He told Tate's stepmother and
12:03
Speaker 1: father that their son was dead. He'd apparently killed himself,
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Speaker 1: hanging himself from the horse apple tree where the two
12:10
Speaker 1: had been drinking. Tate's stepmother recalled that Chad was calm,
12:14
Speaker 1: cool and collected, no tears in his eyes, no panic
12:17
Speaker 1: on his face. I mean, he had just watched his
12:20
Speaker 1: friend take his own life about an hour before, and
12:24
Speaker 1: he was cool as a cucumber. That seemed like he
12:27
Speaker 1: had no reaction. He had no emotions, nothing. He was
12:30
Speaker 1: stone cold. Now. Chad was fifteen at the time, new
12:33
Speaker 1: to the town, unpopular and pretty quiet. Those who knew
12:37
Speaker 1: Chad said he hung out with Tate because Tate always
12:40
Speaker 1: knew how to provide some excitement. However, on that particular evening,
12:44
Speaker 1: Tate had provided nothing of the sort. Tate's family then
12:47
Speaker 1: rushed to the sight of the hanging. Tate's father, Jimmy,
12:50
Speaker 1: took it upon himself to cut his boy down from
12:53
Speaker 1: the horse apple tree that would now stand in infamy.
12:56
Speaker 1: Tate's body was taken away and Chad was sent to
12:58
Speaker 1: talk to the police. As the only witness. Chad told
13:01
Speaker 1: the authorities his version of events. According to Chad, he
13:05
Speaker 1: and Tate had driven to a usual spot where they
13:07
Speaker 1: liked to drink and listen to music. Tate had had
13:10
Speaker 1: a few beers, looped a rope over a branch of
13:12
Speaker 1: the horse apple tree, and explained to his friend that
13:15
Speaker 1: he was going to kill himself. Even explained where he
13:18
Speaker 1: wanted his funeral to be held. Chad told the cops
13:21
Speaker 1: that he thought his friend was telling an elaborate and
13:23
Speaker 1: horrible joke and in the middle of this so called
13:26
Speaker 1: joke that he thought his friend was playing on him.
13:29
Speaker 1: Chad got up and walked to the back of the
13:31
Speaker 1: pickup truck to throw away a beer can and to
13:33
Speaker 1: look and see if anyone was watching them. After three minutes,
13:37
Speaker 1: he returned and Tate was dead, hanging from the tree. Now,
13:41
Speaker 1: obviously this story caused no small amount of suspicion. The
13:46
Speaker 1: police didn't buy it, and it was because the evidence disagreed.
13:49
Speaker 1: You see, Tate was observed to have two rope burns
13:52
Speaker 1: on his neck, not one. One was above the Adams Apple,
13:56
Speaker 1: as is usual with a hanging death when someone takes
13:59
Speaker 1: their own life, and one was below it. When a
14:01
Speaker 1: person is hanged, the weight of the body pulls the
14:04
Speaker 1: chin towards the rope. This means that the rope should
14:07
Speaker 1: not have left a mark anywhere else but above the
14:10
Speaker 1: Adams Apple. I mean, you just gotta think about it.
14:12
Speaker 1: If you're hanging yourself, you're gonna have it come right here.
14:16
Speaker 1: You know, if you're watching the show, you're gonna have
14:19
Speaker 1: the actual rope be pulling you like that. It's not
14:22
Speaker 1: gonna be down here unless it's like the I don't
14:25
Speaker 1: even know how that would be possible, but the suspicions
14:27
Speaker 1: were immediately obvious. Tate could have been strangled by the
14:31
Speaker 1: rope and was then hung in the tree to make
14:33
Speaker 1: it appear as if he had taken his own life,
14:35
Speaker 1: and on the grounds of the suspicion, the cops pulled
14:38
Speaker 1: Chad in for more questioning two days later, this time
14:41
Speaker 1: under a new light, the story Chad told change dramatically. Apparently,
14:45
Speaker 1: according to Chad, Tate, his friend, had tried to hang
14:48
Speaker 1: himself twice before Tate was successful. A first attempt had
14:52
Speaker 1: been made, However, the rope had snapped before it could
14:56
Speaker 1: complete its gruesome job. Horrifically, Chad told the police something
15:00
Speaker 1: Tate had said after his failed attempt. He had said
15:02
Speaker 1: to his friend, apparently, I can't even kill myself. Afterwards,
15:06
Speaker 1: according to Chad, they drove to Tate's home five minutes
15:10
Speaker 1: away so that Tate could go grab a new rope.
15:12
Speaker 1: Then Chad explained how upon their return, Tate had stepped
15:16
Speaker 1: out onto the hood of the car, looped the rope
15:18
Speaker 1: around the tree limb, the other ended around his neck,
15:21
Speaker 1: and stepped off of the vehicle. This would mean that
15:23
Speaker 1: Chad was not only a witness to the full event,
15:26
Speaker 1: but that he hadn't stopped Tate from killing himself, and
15:29
Speaker 1: he told the police as much, saying that he believed
15:32
Speaker 1: he would have gotten in trouble for being complicit, and
15:35
Speaker 1: that's why he had lied. Chad told the police that
15:37
Speaker 1: Tate had talked about ending his own life and that
15:40
Speaker 1: he was upset over losing Karen. Shockingly, the police decided
15:44
Speaker 1: that nothing else could be done here. Tate's death was
15:46
Speaker 1: then ruled a The county judge never ordered an autopsy,
15:51
Speaker 1: and Tate was prepared for burial. And how we start
15:54
Speaker 1: diving into the occult. The people of Childress soon began
15:58
Speaker 1: to whisper about the event. You see, a side in
16:01
Speaker 1: their small town must have been big news. It was
16:04
Speaker 1: a horrible tragedy right on their doorsteps. But what they
16:07
Speaker 1: began to notice led to conclusions that were altogether more
16:11
Speaker 1: horrible than they could have ever imagined. The day of
16:14
Speaker 1: the funeral was somber and filled with sadness, but the
16:17
Speaker 1: funeral soon became tinged with fear. You see a woman
16:21
Speaker 1: slipped into the funeral dressed in all black, sitting in
16:24
Speaker 1: the back row, a dark veil covering her face. Nobody
16:27
Speaker 1: knew who this woman was. They only noticed that she
16:30
Speaker 1: looked kind of creepy. She was sitting in the back.
16:33
Speaker 1: She obviously didn't know anybody because she wasn't conversing or
16:36
Speaker 1: saying anything to anyone, and family members of Tates thought
16:39
Speaker 1: this was suspicious. In fact, tates aunt had come to
16:42
Speaker 1: Childress from Amarillo and began asking around if any of
16:45
Speaker 1: the attendees knew who this mysterious veiled woman was. No
16:49
Speaker 1: one did, and the woman in the veil slipped back
16:52
Speaker 1: out before anybody could ask her who she was. Now,
16:55
Speaker 1: that may seem harmless, if not a bit weird, but
16:58
Speaker 1: in Childress you have to underst everybody knew everyone. An
17:02
Speaker 1: unfamiliar woman at the funeral, which didn't really draw that
17:06
Speaker 1: big of a crowd, raised a bit of suspicion. Tate's stepmother,
17:09
Speaker 1: Brenda Roland, would later say that the woman in the
17:12
Speaker 1: back of the church was a friend of hers, but strangely,
17:16
Speaker 1: at the funeral, she never spoke up about this. She
17:18
Speaker 1: didn't identify her. She claimed that she didn't know her.
17:21
Speaker 1: More disturbingly, another oddity came to the attention of those
17:24
Speaker 1: who had come to mourn the very young soul. In
17:27
Speaker 1: the middle of the service, a young man sat in
17:29
Speaker 1: one of the front rows and he began to chant
17:32
Speaker 1: one word over and over. He was sitting in the
17:36
Speaker 1: front row saying soon, now, all that seems like something
17:41
Speaker 1: straight out of a horror movie. And it only continues
17:44
Speaker 1: to get worse, because you see, the town of Childress
17:46
Speaker 1: was already a buzz with the news of the strangeness
17:49
Speaker 1: that had occurred at the funeral, and it didn't end there.
17:51
Speaker 1: Only a few days passed between the time of the
17:53
Speaker 1: funeral to whin a tip came into the police station
17:56
Speaker 1: from a high school student. When the police responded, a
17:59
Speaker 1: cowsk was found lodged in a tree only a quarter
18:02
Speaker 1: mile from the hanging tree. Beneath this tree, logs were
18:06
Speaker 1: surrounded by a pile of rocks. The police decided at
18:09
Speaker 1: that point that they had just found some sort of
18:11
Speaker 1: an altar. Soon afterwards, a police officer was driving by
18:15
Speaker 1: the cemetery where Tate Roland was laid to rest, and
18:17
Speaker 1: the officer saw a figure standing over his grave. In
18:21
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, this could have been normal, even expected.
18:25
Speaker 1: Maybe it was a grieving family member or a friend
18:27
Speaker 1: that really missed Tate, or even somebody who had to
18:29
Speaker 1: miss his funeral. However, when the officer returned, he checked
18:33
Speaker 1: on the grave and was disturbed by what he saw.
18:37
Speaker 1: Tate Roland's grave was covered in fresh saliva. Someone had
18:41
Speaker 1: been standing there spitting on his grave for an extended
18:45
Speaker 1: period of time. And these reports just kept piling up.
18:48
Speaker 1: Someone had seen a cross burning over Tate's grave that
18:51
Speaker 1: was called in, but there was no evidence that this happened,
18:54
Speaker 1: and soon another even darker report came in. A schoolteacher's
18:58
Speaker 1: dog had been stolen and used as a sacrifice. At first,
19:01
Speaker 1: many thought that this was the work of young pranksters
19:04
Speaker 1: in town. The kids of the town, in fact, love
19:06
Speaker 1: tales of boogeymen and serial killers. This was owed mostly
19:10
Speaker 1: to the line of dialogue from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
19:13
Speaker 1: This is a quote from the movie quote there's no
19:16
Speaker 1: local phone here, we had to drive over to Childress
19:19
Speaker 1: end quote. Because of that one line of dialogue, the
19:21
Speaker 1: town was regarded as the home of the movie's killer.
19:25
Speaker 1: Kids loved to scare each other with stories of madmen.
19:28
Speaker 1: Even Tate himself had once chased a group of girls
19:31
Speaker 1: through the cemetery, fit with a mask overalls and a
19:34
Speaker 1: chainsaw with the chain removed, But the pranks were far
19:37
Speaker 1: from funny in the eyes of the townspeople. Once school
19:40
Speaker 1: began that next fall, the story passed around the school
19:43
Speaker 1: like wildfire. Tate had been involved in some sort of
19:46
Speaker 1: a cult. Specifically, the rumor going around was that Tate
19:49
Speaker 1: was a cultist who was murdered for failing to provide
19:52
Speaker 1: a sacrifice to the cult. The story went that he
19:55
Speaker 1: was supposed to bring the cult to a blonde haired,
19:58
Speaker 1: blue eyed child, one of his stepmother's daughters, or one
20:01
Speaker 1: of the four blonde daughters of his sister Terry. So
20:04
Speaker 1: that's what people were talking about. They were saying Tate
20:06
Speaker 1: must have been in the cult, and they pissed the
20:08
Speaker 1: cult off, so they took him out all these sacrifice rooms.
20:11
Speaker 1: I mean, you can imagine back then how rumors just
20:14
Speaker 1: would spread like wildfire in schools, especially before cell phones
20:18
Speaker 1: and all that stuff really happened. But was this more
20:20
Speaker 1: than just a spooky rumor starting up by kids who
20:23
Speaker 1: loved shock and gore. I think it was. The district
20:27
Speaker 1: Attorney David McCoy reported later on that soon after the
20:30
Speaker 1: rumor began, strangers began to show up in the grade
20:34
Speaker 1: school parking lot trying to kidnap small children. Now this
20:37
Speaker 1: is coming from the district attorney in that town. Could
20:41
Speaker 1: that have just been a coincidence? Were these people bad
20:44
Speaker 1: actors that were inspired by the rumors somehow? These were
20:47
Speaker 1: the cult members themselves who heard that the kids were
20:49
Speaker 1: talking about them at school and they wanted to scare
20:52
Speaker 1: them into staying silent. Or perhaps the most horrible were
20:55
Speaker 1: these rumors about Tate and his death All true. Alarm
20:59
Speaker 1: bells went off in the After the news about the
21:01
Speaker 1: attempted kidnappings broke, the Satanic panics seemed to have gained
21:04
Speaker 1: a foothold in Childress. But this time it may have
21:07
Speaker 1: been a little bit more than hysteria, and the rumors
21:10
Speaker 1: and sightings wouldn't stop there. In fact, more reports came
21:14
Speaker 1: shortly afterwards. They started with a cotton farmer who had
21:17
Speaker 1: been nearby plowing his fields, who said that he had
21:20
Speaker 1: only seen two boys that day at the horse Apple tree,
21:23
Speaker 1: and that he even saw them leave and then return,
21:25
Speaker 1: which corroborated the earlier story. Yet still stories ran rampant.
21:30
Speaker 1: A mother in Childress reported that a few days before
21:32
Speaker 1: Tate's death, she witnessed a group of teenagers in the
21:35
Speaker 1: city park gathering gravel while heavy metal music with satanic
21:39
Speaker 1: lyrics blasted from the stereo of one of the boys cars.
21:42
Speaker 1: When they left, according to this witness, she went over
21:44
Speaker 1: to where they had been collecting the gravel to see
21:47
Speaker 1: what had been done. What she saw apparently shocked her,
21:50
Speaker 1: sending shivers up and down her spine. The gravel was
21:53
Speaker 1: in a perfect circle and the number six sixty six
21:56
Speaker 1: was written just outside of it. More strange occurrences piled
21:59
Speaker 1: up when police department in Lockhart, Texas, called the Childress authorities.
22:04
Speaker 1: You see, a girl from Childress had visited Lockhart recently
22:07
Speaker 1: and told a local girl that she dreamed of a
22:10
Speaker 1: boy being hung by a satanic cult. In the dream,
22:13
Speaker 1: they had met at an abandoned house with a red
22:16
Speaker 1: porch light in the city of Kirkland, just east of Childress.
22:19
Speaker 1: And this report taken by the police went on according
22:23
Speaker 1: to this girl's dream parents were members of the cult
22:25
Speaker 1: as well, and had used a car to run down
22:28
Speaker 1: a boy a few years earlier. Upon following up on
22:31
Speaker 1: this tip, Sheriff's deputies discovered a reportedly haunted house with
22:35
Speaker 1: a red porch light and none other than Kirkland, Texas.
22:39
Speaker 1: And it wasn't all that they found that matched her dream.
22:42
Speaker 1: You see, a few years earlier, a fifteen year old
22:45
Speaker 1: boy had been struck and killed by a car while
22:47
Speaker 1: walking home one night, and his death remained unsolved. After
22:51
Speaker 1: this went public, things really ramped up. And you gotta
22:55
Speaker 1: understand that is really strange. This is the era before
22:59
Speaker 1: you know, the World War web was extremely popular, before
23:02
Speaker 1: cell phones, before you know anything, really, I mean, to
23:05
Speaker 1: research information and to get access to old newspapers, you
23:08
Speaker 1: would have to physically go to libraries and you'd have
23:11
Speaker 1: to hunt all that stuff down. So it doesn't make
23:13
Speaker 1: any sense at all that this random girl who saw
23:16
Speaker 1: this stuff in a dream would know all these really
23:19
Speaker 1: obscure details about what possibly happened. I mean, that definitely
23:23
Speaker 1: strikes me as weird. And as soon as that came out,
23:26
Speaker 1: new versions of the story of Tate's death began to
23:28
Speaker 1: pour in from all over Childress Here's saying speculation turned
23:32
Speaker 1: into a widespread fear of satanic cultists preying on the
23:36
Speaker 1: young men and girls in their city. Tate's stepmother began
23:39
Speaker 1: receiving upwards of ten calls a day, all telling her
23:42
Speaker 1: a new version of her step son's death and letting
23:45
Speaker 1: her know who they thought was truly behind it. The
23:47
Speaker 1: rumors and stories of cultists only began to grow worse,
23:51
Speaker 1: and some were not only rumors. Halloween nineteen eighty eight,
23:54
Speaker 1: a group of eight teenagers visited Tate's grave after rumors
23:58
Speaker 1: spread of the childress Satan and a cult digging up
24:01
Speaker 1: Tate's remains and removing two specific bones, his collarbone and
24:05
Speaker 1: pinky knuckle. In heading to the site with a few dates,
24:09
Speaker 1: the teenagers heard music as they grew closer to the
24:11
Speaker 1: grave in the back portion of the cemetery. One of
24:14
Speaker 1: the teens and eyewitness then said that they stopped the
24:17
Speaker 1: car to see if it truly was music that they
24:19
Speaker 1: had heard. When they stopped, headlights suddenly burned bright in
24:23
Speaker 1: the night at Tate's grave. The teens turned their truck
24:26
Speaker 1: around in a frenzy, driving away as fast as they could,
24:29
Speaker 1: and as they left, according to these eyewitnesses, they saw
24:32
Speaker 1: a chilling sight. Pentagrams were drawn on the cemetery shed.
24:36
Speaker 1: The teens then said that as they jumped out of
24:38
Speaker 1: the truck and began running back to their own respective
24:41
Speaker 1: cars to leave the headlights that were once right next
24:44
Speaker 1: to Tate's grave were suddenly speeding towards them. The vehicle
24:47
Speaker 1: followed one boy as far as the town courthouse before
24:51
Speaker 1: turning off and vanishing into the night. Tate's grave remained untouched.
24:55
Speaker 1: It seemed that whoever was there had lost their nerve
24:58
Speaker 1: and didn't follow through with what they were going to
25:00
Speaker 1: do next. The magazine story by Texas Monthly, which covers
25:04
Speaker 1: the bizarre tale, quotes the main boy who had brought
25:07
Speaker 1: the other teens to visit the grave that night. When
25:09
Speaker 1: the boy found out that the story was going to
25:11
Speaker 1: be published in a magazine, the boy whispered in a
25:14
Speaker 1: terrified voice, Oh Lord, the cult's going to get me
25:17
Speaker 1: for sure now. Soon after that fiasco, on Halloween night,
25:20
Speaker 1: a confession was given to the police by a teen renegade,
25:24
Speaker 1: a boy named Ray Wilkes. He had been arrested for
25:26
Speaker 1: drunk driving and hitting a utility poll with the stolen car.
25:30
Speaker 1: According to Ray's confession, the rumors around Childress were true.
25:34
Speaker 1: He was a member of the Childress satanic cult and
25:37
Speaker 1: had been there when Tate was hanged. Police who witnessed
25:40
Speaker 1: the confession called his voice very spooky. And said that
25:44
Speaker 1: there was an eerie ominousness about Ray while he was
25:48
Speaker 1: detailing these horrific things. This is on the police reports too,
25:52
Speaker 1: that's a direct quote. They said it was very spooky.
25:56
Speaker 1: Ray now says that he was so drunk that evening
25:58
Speaker 1: that he doesn't remember being at the tree or even
26:01
Speaker 1: having told the story, which to me is a little convenient. However,
26:05
Speaker 1: the confession made many people who lived in Childrens believe
26:08
Speaker 1: that the Wilkeses the family, were to blame for the cult,
26:12
Speaker 1: and they began to believe that they were in it.
26:14
Speaker 1: And here's a little detail. The Wilkeses were known well
26:17
Speaker 1: at this point by the police because many of the
26:20
Speaker 1: Wilkes family had already been charged with felonies. And on
26:23
Speaker 1: an even more disturbing note, words were painted on the
26:26
Speaker 1: back of their shed and then sloppily covered with more paint.
26:29
Speaker 1: The words, according to some people in the town who
26:32
Speaker 1: had seen them before they were covered up, read either
26:35
Speaker 1: the Devil's Den, the Devil's Bin, or more harrowingly and
26:40
Speaker 1: more direct quote, we worship the Devil. Frank Wilkes, the
26:44
Speaker 1: patriarch of the family, states that it was just his
26:46
Speaker 1: son confessing his love for a girl named Letty. He
26:49
Speaker 1: says that he ordered his son to remove the markings,
26:52
Speaker 1: and so he painted over it. Ever since, though people
26:55
Speaker 1: have thought it was a confession of devil worship. Frank
26:58
Speaker 1: also said that his two sons who lived in the
27:00
Speaker 1: town couldn't have been there. One was in jail and
27:02
Speaker 1: one was in the youth detention center at the time
27:04
Speaker 1: of Tate's death. His other two sons lived in Dallas
27:08
Speaker 1: at the time, a four hour drive from Childress today.
27:11
Speaker 1: Even though with those explanations, the town at that point
27:15
Speaker 1: was on fire, Kids and parents were calling each other
27:17
Speaker 1: cult members, teenagers wouldn't check out certain books to avoid
27:21
Speaker 1: being labeled Satanists, and the witness to Tate's death moved
27:24
Speaker 1: out of town to get away from all the talk.
27:27
Speaker 1: That's because Chad Johnston was labeled as a Satanist and
27:30
Speaker 1: a cult member by everyone in town, and rumors spread
27:33
Speaker 1: that he either recruited Tate or sacrificed him. That night, Karen,
27:37
Speaker 1: Tate's old girlfriend received the worst slander of all. People
27:40
Speaker 1: walked by her holding up their middle fingers and holding
27:43
Speaker 1: their fingers up in a cross sign. She was reported
27:45
Speaker 1: by townsfolk to have witchcraft paraphernalia in her home, and
27:49
Speaker 1: she herself was blamed by many locals for having lured
27:52
Speaker 1: Tate into the cult in the first place. Some even
27:55
Speaker 1: called her the leader of the cult. Karen, who knew
27:57
Speaker 1: exactly what the town was saying, believe that it was
28:00
Speaker 1: just all rumors brought up by people who had nothing
28:03
Speaker 1: better to do. All of this came from one suspicious
28:06
Speaker 1: and tragic death of a single teen in the town.
28:09
Speaker 1: Of course, at the time it may have even been expected.
28:12
Speaker 1: The fanaticism of the Satanic panic fueled the flames and
28:15
Speaker 1: suspicion into an inferno. All that needed to have happened
28:19
Speaker 1: was one person crying devil and the rest of the
28:22
Speaker 1: town would follow suit. Right the woman in the back
28:24
Speaker 1: of the church wearing the veil was supposedly accounted for,
28:28
Speaker 1: and many of the rumors could have just been teenage pranks.
28:31
Speaker 1: The nearby cotton farmer on the day of the hanging
28:33
Speaker 1: confirmed that two boys had come to the tree, then
28:36
Speaker 1: left and come back soon afterwards. Frank Wilkes and his
28:39
Speaker 1: family were cleared of any wrongdoing, as his two children
28:42
Speaker 1: who lived in town were jailed and the others were
28:45
Speaker 1: Like they said in Dallas, the shed had just been
28:47
Speaker 1: painted with a love confession, then poorly covered up. But
28:50
Speaker 1: what isn't accounted for is everything else. The altar at
28:55
Speaker 1: the tree, only a quarter mile from the hanging Tree,
28:58
Speaker 1: the vehicle in the great on the very night the
29:01
Speaker 1: cult was said to be digging up Tate's body, the
29:04
Speaker 1: strange dream that seemed to stem from clairvoyancy. The people
29:07
Speaker 1: trying to kidnap children from the local grade school, just
29:10
Speaker 1: as rumors of young sacrifices began to spread amongst the pupils.
29:14
Speaker 1: The perfect circle of gravel in the six sixty six,
29:17
Speaker 1: right next to it, the figure standing over Tate's grave,
29:21
Speaker 1: and the spit left on the grave after the figure
29:23
Speaker 1: had gone. The word on the street was that ten
29:26
Speaker 1: or twelve cult members had made their little town home,
29:29
Speaker 1: but one man, the editor of the Childres's newspaper, had
29:32
Speaker 1: heard that that number might be upwards of twenty. So far,
29:36
Speaker 1: the stories had remained secretive, passed from one person to
29:40
Speaker 1: another in trusting atmospheres. It seemed to all be rumors,
29:44
Speaker 1: even if some of these rumors were a bit more substantiated.
29:46
Speaker 1: But after another death drove the town even further into panic,
29:50
Speaker 1: the people of Childress were absolutely positive the devil had
29:54
Speaker 1: indeed come to Texas. You see in small towns, not
29:59
Speaker 1: much escapes the p guy. Everyone knows everything about everybody.
30:03
Speaker 1: People are always interested in the town buzz, and that
30:06
Speaker 1: can be doubled when the buzz is as frightening as
30:08
Speaker 1: it became in Childress. But the police weren't so certain.
30:11
Speaker 1: While some may have believed the stories of a cult,
30:14
Speaker 1: it didn't appear to be obvious. There was no one
30:16
Speaker 1: to arrest, only stories and conjecture eyewitnesses who saw something
30:20
Speaker 1: creepy in the cemetery at midnight. Soon, however, that would
30:23
Speaker 1: all change. They would be forced to confront the darkness
30:26
Speaker 1: of Childress in due time. And now we get to
30:30
Speaker 1: the second life that's claimed. On the day of March thirtieth,
30:33
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, twenty seven year old Terry Trosper was
30:37
Speaker 1: falling on hard times. She had recently separated from her
30:40
Speaker 1: husband and had given up custody of her four girls.
30:43
Speaker 1: She had recently joined a bad crowd, one that was
30:45
Speaker 1: known for extreme partying. Her new boyfriend was an ex
30:48
Speaker 1: Cohn named Ricky Bradford, who had been sleeping around with
30:51
Speaker 1: Terry while his wife Annette Bradford was unaware now Terry's
30:56
Speaker 1: new boyfriend was a close friend of Frank Wilke's son, Darwin,
31:00
Speaker 1: the same Wilkes's son who was allegedly in jail when
31:03
Speaker 1: Tate took his own life. That evening in May, Terry
31:06
Speaker 1: had been drinking at the Wilkes home with Darwin, Ricky,
31:10
Speaker 1: and a few other friends. Frank Wilkes had been in
31:12
Speaker 1: prison that evening for assault charges, something that was relatively
31:16
Speaker 1: common in the Wilkes family, and that night Terry had
31:18
Speaker 1: been drinking heavily, and after a while, she and Ricky,
31:22
Speaker 1: her boyfriend, decided it was time for bed, and so
31:25
Speaker 1: they stumbled off to one of the bedrooms in the home.
31:27
Speaker 1: Ricky stated that Terry got up at one point, staggered
31:31
Speaker 1: around the living room, and then collapsed. She was helped
31:34
Speaker 1: back to bed, and all was well until the next morning.
31:37
Speaker 1: Ricky was the one who discovered the horror as daylight
31:40
Speaker 1: broke over the Wilkes residence. Ricky reported the following in
31:44
Speaker 1: a flat, calm and collected voice. I just touched her,
31:48
Speaker 1: and she was cold and stiff. I didn't even look
31:50
Speaker 1: at her. I just got up and I informed everybody
31:53
Speaker 1: I thought she was dead, and Terry was indeed deceased.
31:58
Speaker 1: She was immediately taken away and an autopsy was performed.
32:02
Speaker 1: The autopsy found that she was point two to three
32:04
Speaker 1: times over the legal intoxication limit for alcohol, but her
32:08
Speaker 1: cause of death was ruled as having choked on her
32:11
Speaker 1: own vomit. But what was also found in her blood
32:15
Speaker 1: was a high level of the psychiatric drug out bill.
32:18
Speaker 1: It seemed to the police that Terry had taken her
32:21
Speaker 1: own life mixing pills with alcohol. At the time, there
32:26
Speaker 1: was no evidence of foul play, and just like with Tate,
32:29
Speaker 1: the Children's police quickly closed the case, but more strange
32:32
Speaker 1: rumors began to pass around the town soon after her demise.
32:36
Speaker 1: Terry's death was linked to Tate's, the town said, and
32:39
Speaker 1: the reason well, Terry never believed that Tate took his
32:43
Speaker 1: own life. Terry believed that Tate was murdered, and she
32:47
Speaker 1: had been very outspoken and vocal about those beliefs, and
32:50
Speaker 1: for the past few months and years, Terry had been
32:53
Speaker 1: dedicated to finding out exactly who had killed Tate. She
32:58
Speaker 1: was dedicated to finding exactly who had killed her brother. Terry,
33:02
Speaker 1: like many others, believed that it was the work of
33:04
Speaker 1: the Childress Satanic cult. Her closest friends believed that Terry
33:08
Speaker 1: began to get too close to the people responsible for
33:11
Speaker 1: the death of her brother and too close to finding
33:13
Speaker 1: who the real members of the cult were. Terry's friends
33:16
Speaker 1: to this day believed she was killed to hide the truth.
33:20
Speaker 1: A longtime friend of Terry's, a woman named Lisa Barber,
33:23
Speaker 1: learned of a shocking truth from the mouth of Ricky,
33:26
Speaker 1: Terry's boyfriend at the time of her death. According to Ricky,
33:29
Speaker 1: Terry had been warned of dark tidings by Tate himself
33:33
Speaker 1: before he died. Tate had told her to keep her
33:36
Speaker 1: daughters in the house because the cult was going to
33:39
Speaker 1: sacrifice one of them in a Satanic ritual. Earlier, it
33:43
Speaker 1: was mentioned that others in the town knew of the
33:45
Speaker 1: plot as well. The teens of the town high school
33:47
Speaker 1: had spread the rumor like wildfire. One of the Trosper
33:50
Speaker 1: children was supposed to be kidnapped and used as a sacrifice.
33:54
Speaker 1: Now Ricky went on to tell her that he had
33:57
Speaker 1: lived in Childress his whole life and that he had
33:59
Speaker 1: never seen any cult or any cult activity. He added
34:02
Speaker 1: that Terry had been horribly depressed over her situation and
34:06
Speaker 1: the loss of her brother, and that he believed she
34:08
Speaker 1: had taken her own life. Ricky also added that she
34:11
Speaker 1: had tried to overdose on pills before, but this time
34:14
Speaker 1: she had sadly done it successfully. But a statement came in,
34:18
Speaker 1: one that further tied Terry's death to the children's cult.
34:21
Speaker 1: Frank Wilkes gave a statement to the police, a statement
34:24
Speaker 1: where he claimed that Ricky Bradford had referred to himself
34:28
Speaker 1: as the Devil in a boastful way. Ricky denied that
34:31
Speaker 1: he had ever said this, and even followed it up
34:33
Speaker 1: by saying he didn't even think the devil existed. While
34:36
Speaker 1: Ricky may not have believed in the Devil, his family,
34:39
Speaker 1: the Bradford family, like many others in the town, were
34:42
Speaker 1: sure that he was real. The Bradford's believed the same
34:45
Speaker 1: rumor that was spread around town. The family behind the
34:48
Speaker 1: devil worship was the Wilkeses. They were the same family
34:51
Speaker 1: in whose home Terry had suddenly died, and remember there
34:56
Speaker 1: the home, the Wilkes home is where that satanic graffiti
34:59
Speaker 1: was painted, and the Wilkes son confessed to the police
35:03
Speaker 1: that he was there on the night of the murder.
35:05
Speaker 1: So the Wilkes family is incredibly intertwined with this case,
35:09
Speaker 1: not only with Tate's hanging on the tree, but now
35:12
Speaker 1: Tates family member Terry dying inside of the Wilkes family home.
35:17
Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't really get more bizarre than that.
35:19
Speaker 1: And then it makes you think, could Terry have been
35:22
Speaker 1: there trying to learn about the truth behind all these allegations?
35:26
Speaker 1: Was she there to actually try and uncover who the
35:29
Speaker 1: leaders of that cult were. Ricky's younger brother, Ronnie, said
35:32
Speaker 1: that he had seen the Wilkes brothers wearing black capes
35:35
Speaker 1: and using Ouiji boards. He also made another claim the
35:38
Speaker 1: Wilkes brothers had once loaded goats into the back of
35:41
Speaker 1: their car. Now in a town like Childress, Ouiji boards
35:45
Speaker 1: were instantly obviously associated with the devil. In fact, witchcraft
35:49
Speaker 1: of any kind was, and so the Wuigi board itself
35:52
Speaker 1: may not have been a smoking gun, it was somewhat
35:55
Speaker 1: superficial evidence. The use of Ouigi is now considered to
35:59
Speaker 1: be a relative harmless way by many to contact the debt.
36:03
Speaker 1: I have done lots of Wigi board sessions. If you
36:05
Speaker 1: actually want to see a great Wigi board documentary. Last
36:09
Speaker 1: Halloween we did a Wigi board in I think seven
36:12
Speaker 1: different haunted locations across America. It's absolutely insane. That whole
36:16
Speaker 1: documentary is on my other YouTube channel, The Paranormal Files.
36:20
Speaker 1: Now and the use of wigi is now considered to
36:23
Speaker 1: be harmless. However, in the middle of the Satanic panic
36:26
Speaker 1: back then, when you got to imagine, there were already
36:29
Speaker 1: tons of rumors spreading around Childress that there was a
36:32
Speaker 1: Satanic cult operating within their small town. If someone was
36:36
Speaker 1: seen with the Ouiji board at that point, it was
36:38
Speaker 1: seen as nothing but an apparatus for worshiping darkness. What's
36:42
Speaker 1: more concerning, however, is those goats I just mentioned. Obviously,
36:46
Speaker 1: goats have long been associated with the devil. Even in film,
36:50
Speaker 1: especially in horror movies, the devil is constantly portrayed as
36:54
Speaker 1: a goat, generally a goat with black fur. Satan himself
36:58
Speaker 1: is often depicted with goats or as a hooved creature.
37:01
Speaker 1: This is in reference to the Gospel of Matthew, where
37:04
Speaker 1: it said that Jesus will separate the sheep from the
37:07
Speaker 1: goats on Judgment Day. In twenty twenty one, a news
37:10
Speaker 1: article from the El Paso Times obviously also located in
37:14
Speaker 1: Texas reported about a suspected Satanic ritual where fifteen goats
37:19
Speaker 1: and sheep had been decapitated and gutted without the edible
37:22
Speaker 1: portions removed, then dumped afterwards in the desert. So could
37:26
Speaker 1: the goats that the brothers were loading up into their
37:28
Speaker 1: truck have been some part of a ritual. The Bradford
37:31
Speaker 1: family certainly seemed to believe as much. Letitia Broome, Ricky's sister,
37:36
Speaker 1: said that she had heard from Darwin Wilkes that he
37:39
Speaker 1: worked for the devil and knew the devil personally. Letitia
37:42
Speaker 1: at one point had been Ray Wilkes's girlfriend. So he
37:45
Speaker 1: got all these people all of a sudden coming forward
37:48
Speaker 1: and telling, going to authorities and going public with these
37:51
Speaker 1: claims that the Wilkes family and Ricky, that all these
37:54
Speaker 1: guys were heavily invested into some sort of demonic devil worship.
38:00
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what level they were getting into,
38:02
Speaker 1: what they were exactly going for or practicing, but it
38:05
Speaker 1: is concerning to have all these people saying these things
38:08
Speaker 1: when they were just allegations a while ago, and now
38:10
Speaker 1: they're suddenly coming into reality. Ronnie Bradford also claimed that
38:15
Speaker 1: Darwin Wilkes, along with several other young men, had once
38:19
Speaker 1: asked him to join them in a graveyard to call
38:22
Speaker 1: up spirits. Darwin himself, when asked about the allegations, said
38:26
Speaker 1: that it was all just a hoax to scare people.
38:28
Speaker 1: When the Wilkes brothers got angry, he said that they
38:30
Speaker 1: would make up stories about being the masters of Satan,
38:33
Speaker 1: that horns would come out of their heads. But then
38:35
Speaker 1: it was all simply in good fun. And yet something
38:39
Speaker 1: was really odd about this whole case. Jimmy Rowland had
38:42
Speaker 1: now lost four of his children. Two were dead after
38:46
Speaker 1: having killed themselves, one died in infancy of crib death
38:50
Speaker 1: and another in a car wreck at just four years old.
38:53
Speaker 1: Jimmy and Brenda Rowland were concerned, and so they ordered
38:56
Speaker 1: an investigation. The county sheriff at the time refused to
38:59
Speaker 1: own open the case. He told them it was flat outside,
39:03
Speaker 1: that was all that it was. But this only fueled
39:05
Speaker 1: the speculation, making people wonder if the sheriff himself was
39:09
Speaker 1: in on the occult dealings within Childress. And that is
39:12
Speaker 1: something we see time and time again in these stories,
39:14
Speaker 1: is that these people in power are involved in these
39:17
Speaker 1: rituals behind the scenes. Whether or not you're Christian, whatever
39:21
Speaker 1: religion you're involved with, if you're not religious at all,
39:24
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter because a lot of times these people
39:27
Speaker 1: in power, they believe in this stuff and they do it.
39:30
Speaker 1: And a lot of times these rituals will involve molestation, murder,
39:34
Speaker 1: drug abuse, you know, physical abuse, torture. That's truly horrific stuff.
39:38
Speaker 1: Later on, in fact, Sheriff Lane, that same sheriff who
39:42
Speaker 1: refused to open up the investigation, was arrested himself and
39:46
Speaker 1: removed from his position for selling Marna while still acting
39:50
Speaker 1: as the town sheriff. Rhys Bowen, the new sheriff, obliged
39:53
Speaker 1: the family's wishes and reopened the case. He and his deputy,
39:57
Speaker 1: Kevin Overstreet, reinterviewed all of the witnesses, and soon even
40:01
Speaker 1: more shock and terror came to childress. Darwin Wilkes, the
40:05
Speaker 1: man accused of being involved in this occult activity, attempted
40:09
Speaker 1: to take his own life himself by swallowing a large
40:13
Speaker 1: quantity of em the same drug that Terry had in
40:16
Speaker 1: her system at the time of her autopsy, and Darwin's
40:20
Speaker 1: sad note was even more disturbing. The letter that he
40:23
Speaker 1: penned himself read the following, I know something that the
40:26
Speaker 1: cops don't know. I know who killed Terry. I can't
40:30
Speaker 1: live anymore. That's what he wrote down upon recovering in
40:33
Speaker 1: the hospital, though Darwin denied writing the note, saying that
40:38
Speaker 1: he didn't know who killed Terry. Before the police could
40:41
Speaker 1: submit him to a lie detector test, he fled for Dallas,
40:44
Speaker 1: and with the case reopened and fear coming to a head,
40:47
Speaker 1: a doctor from Amarillo came to visit Childress. The doctor
40:51
Speaker 1: Spark's FISI, said that an autopsy should have been performed
40:55
Speaker 1: on Tate before he had decomposed. Sparks examined the photos
40:59
Speaker 1: of the rope burn on Tate's neck and said that
41:01
Speaker 1: an autopsy would have proven if the boy had been
41:04
Speaker 1: strangled and then hang to make it appear as if
41:07
Speaker 1: it was. And that's another strange thing about this entire thing.
41:11
Speaker 1: Taate was never given a proper autopsy, even after the
41:15
Speaker 1: second rope burn had been found, which is really strange.
41:19
Speaker 1: You have two rope burns, high least suspicious things to
41:22
Speaker 1: find on a dead body that you never see. According
41:26
Speaker 1: to experts and officers and people who testify about this stuff,
41:29
Speaker 1: that just doesn't happen. And I mean, you can imagine science,
41:32
Speaker 1: you're not going to have a burn that same thickness
41:35
Speaker 1: as the one up here down here. And yet they
41:37
Speaker 1: don't do an autopsy, they don't look at what was
41:39
Speaker 1: in his system, they don't analyze the injuries. And then
41:42
Speaker 1: on top of that, the sheriff refuses to reopen the
41:45
Speaker 1: case before he's eventually fired. And this is something we
41:48
Speaker 1: see all the time with these conspiracies, that the authorities
41:51
Speaker 1: seem to have been determined not to put any manpower
41:54
Speaker 1: forth to examining this case. But why three years had
41:58
Speaker 1: passed since his death and Tate's body was finally exhumed
42:02
Speaker 1: for an autopsy. The media also finally made its first
42:05
Speaker 1: public report in the Index, with the headline that read
42:09
Speaker 1: autopsy to determine if death was sacrifice. Television and news
42:13
Speaker 1: cameras quickly came to childress. The news crews had heard
42:16
Speaker 1: reports that hadn't been revealed before of cult members dancing
42:20
Speaker 1: around bonfires at the Red River north of town. District
42:23
Speaker 1: Attorney McCoy reported receiving anonymous death threats. This whole thing
42:28
Speaker 1: started to blow up. But why would the district attorney
42:30
Speaker 1: be receiving death threats? Well, not only was he personally
42:33
Speaker 1: digging around in this case trying to find the truth,
42:36
Speaker 1: but he knew of a third story that Chad had
42:39
Speaker 1: told the police. Remember, Chad was the guy who was
42:41
Speaker 1: with Tate who allegedly helped him get the rope so
42:43
Speaker 1: that he could hang himself. And Chad's story seemed to
42:46
Speaker 1: continue to change. Now in this story that Chad had
42:49
Speaker 1: told the district attorney, Similarly to the first story, Chad
42:53
Speaker 1: had left Tate to his own devices for only a
42:55
Speaker 1: moment as Tate was swinging around the tree with the rope,
42:59
Speaker 1: and when Chad returned, and according to this third telling
43:02
Speaker 1: of the story, Tate was hanging there debt But media
43:05
Speaker 1: coverage wasn't the only consequence of Tate's exhumation. The autopsy
43:10
Speaker 1: finally found the one thing that could tie all of
43:13
Speaker 1: this together in some sort of a twisted, demonic knot.
43:17
Speaker 1: And this is shocking stuff to me. This is one
43:19
Speaker 1: of those things when I first read about this case,
43:22
Speaker 1: I knew that these were connected and that there was
43:24
Speaker 1: more to this. When they exhumed Tate's body from the grave,
43:28
Speaker 1: you got to imagine his rotted corpse three years after
43:31
Speaker 1: he died. They obviously couldn't examine the injuries in all
43:35
Speaker 1: Max's his body was rotted, but they could do a
43:39
Speaker 1: talks panel, and what they found was that in Tate's
43:42
Speaker 1: system when he died was the drug el though the
43:46
Speaker 1: same drug that was in Terry's body and the same
43:49
Speaker 1: drug that had been used in Darwin's attempt. Now, one
43:54
Speaker 1: might think that the teens and adults might have simply
43:57
Speaker 1: been using the drug for a recreational use, have a
44:00
Speaker 1: good time, and EEL is used sometimes for these effects,
44:04
Speaker 1: even though it's generally said to be non addictive and
44:07
Speaker 1: that you can't really feel anything from it. However, the
44:10
Speaker 1: facts were that these three people suddenly died or attempted
44:14
Speaker 1: to die, and all three of them tied together, not
44:17
Speaker 1: only through these stories and reports, all three of them
44:20
Speaker 1: were now tied together because they had the same drug
44:23
Speaker 1: in their systems. But why would the three have been
44:25
Speaker 1: given ELL? What would it be useful for? El is
44:29
Speaker 1: generally used to treat pain from conditions like arthritis in fibermyalgia,
44:33
Speaker 1: but it also works as a powerful sedative. Was Elleville
44:37
Speaker 1: used to subdue and then kill the two young people?
44:41
Speaker 1: The sedatives and the rumors were enough for the District
44:43
Speaker 1: Attorney McCoy convened a grand jury to study all this
44:47
Speaker 1: evidence and decide if it had truly been aside or
44:50
Speaker 1: if these two individuals had been the victims of murder
44:53
Speaker 1: at the hands of some sort of satanic cult. Chad
44:56
Speaker 1: Johnston and Darwin Wilkes failed to appear before this jury
45:00
Speaker 1: to give their testimonies, and so they learned a little
45:02
Speaker 1: from the statements gathered, but they didn't need testimony to
45:05
Speaker 1: learn the truth about Terry's death. While they were looking
45:08
Speaker 1: into all this, Terry Trosper's body was ordered to be
45:11
Speaker 1: exhumed by the jury, as doctor VC's studies of her
45:15
Speaker 1: previous autopsy concluded that it was unlikely for her to
45:18
Speaker 1: have choked while lying face down in bed. The doctor
45:22
Speaker 1: who had presided over that autopsy had been indicted on
45:25
Speaker 1: two counts of misconduct already, so had he failed in
45:28
Speaker 1: Terry's autopsy as well. The new autopsy revealed something that
45:32
Speaker 1: should have been easily caught much sooner, unless there was
45:35
Speaker 1: a reason why they didn't want anybody to catch it. Terry,
45:39
Speaker 1: as it turns out, had died of asphyxiation. She had
45:42
Speaker 1: most likely been smothered to death and there were bruises
45:46
Speaker 1: on her inner thigh and inside of her mouth. These
45:48
Speaker 1: wounds revealed that Terry had most likely been the victim
45:52
Speaker 1: of blunt force trauma. The district attorney concluded that it
45:56
Speaker 1: was likely that Terry had been held down by one
45:58
Speaker 1: person and disturbingly smothered by the other. Two pathologists worked
46:03
Speaker 1: on Terry's autopsy, and only one of the two had
46:06
Speaker 1: a belief that she may have been murdered. Even though
46:08
Speaker 1: at the end of the day the autopsy was ruled inconclusive,
46:12
Speaker 1: District Attorney McCoy was determined to find out who had
46:15
Speaker 1: killed Terry. Throughout the investigation, police had been calling the
46:19
Speaker 1: Sheriff's office reporting more satanic deeds that they had witnessed
46:22
Speaker 1: throughout their town. They were seeing people in robes meeting
46:26
Speaker 1: at different locations in town. Others provided reports that animals
46:30
Speaker 1: on their property were being mutilated, their guts cut out
46:34
Speaker 1: of their bodies. But what the police truly took to
46:36
Speaker 1: heart from these reports were the confessions of people who
46:39
Speaker 1: said they were actually a part of this cult, or
46:43
Speaker 1: people who called in, sometimes anonymously, giving the names of
46:47
Speaker 1: people who they suspected were involved. An expert was brought
46:50
Speaker 1: into the town an expert on Satanic cults because of
46:54
Speaker 1: all these mass reports. This expert then gave seminars to
46:57
Speaker 1: the people of Childress, telling them how to spot debt
47:00
Speaker 1: worshippers and how to protect their children from them. The
47:02
Speaker 1: experts said that teens and young adults were being lured
47:05
Speaker 1: with six drugs and heavy metal music. They said that
47:08
Speaker 1: they were being taught to dig up coffins and have
47:11
Speaker 1: with the corpses. Over four hundred and fifty residents attended
47:14
Speaker 1: that seminar. The expert even helped in the investigation, working
47:18
Speaker 1: with the sheriff to help sift through evidence. The first
47:20
Speaker 1: jury session had only just ended, but it was soon reconvened.
47:24
Speaker 1: Many people came to testify, yet Darwin Wilkes and Ricky
47:28
Speaker 1: Bradford were nowhere to be found. Frank Wilkes took the
47:31
Speaker 1: stand in the second convening of the grand jury, as
47:34
Speaker 1: it had been found out that the e bill probably
47:37
Speaker 1: came from Frank's aging father, and Frank himself revealed what
47:41
Speaker 1: Darwin had tried to hide. Darwin had told his father
47:45
Speaker 1: that someone in the house had murdered Terry, yet no
47:48
Speaker 1: one who was there that evening would admit to it.
47:50
Speaker 1: Darwin had said as much also in his allegedce known
47:54
Speaker 1: after Frank dropped this bombshell. Keep in mind, this is
47:57
Speaker 1: in court now, So after Frank drops his bombshell talking
48:01
Speaker 1: about Darwin admitting that Terry was murdered, the Hackler family
48:04
Speaker 1: took the stand to clear their names. Karen Hackler's younger sister,
48:08
Speaker 1: said that Tate had called earlier on the day of
48:10
Speaker 1: his death to tell her that he wanted to commit
48:13
Speaker 1: sup Karen herself said she knew nothing of any cult.
48:16
Speaker 1: They were trying to protect themselves from the rampant rumors,
48:19
Speaker 1: but it seemed that the Wilkeses were already the new target.
48:22
Speaker 1: Chad Johnston finally arrived and took the stand. Soon afterwards.
48:26
Speaker 1: He stuck this time with his third story, his third
48:29
Speaker 1: version of the events. All three of them were different
48:31
Speaker 1: than the other. I don't know how you mix this
48:33
Speaker 1: stuff up so badly when it's a short window of time.
48:35
Speaker 1: That's very, very important to remember. And he said that
48:39
Speaker 1: Tate had been dead after he returned from going behind
48:41
Speaker 1: Tate's truck, and that it had indeed been He reported
48:45
Speaker 1: the following According to District Attorney McCoy. Tate thought his
48:49
Speaker 1: ex Karen was messing with his mind. He was tired
48:51
Speaker 1: of it, and he thought he could make Karen feel sorry. Strangely, however,
48:56
Speaker 1: Chad could not account for the second rope burn around
48:59
Speaker 1: Tate's neck, and nobody, nobody throughout any of the court
49:02
Speaker 1: proceedings could account for the evil that was found in
49:06
Speaker 1: Tate's body. No one could say who had killed Terry,
49:09
Speaker 1: but District Attorney McCoy believed that they were only one
49:12
Speaker 1: witness away. The stories in the town surpassed many of
49:16
Speaker 1: the Satanic scares simply out of peculiarity. Confessions at that
49:20
Speaker 1: time came from left and right, and people were accusing
49:22
Speaker 1: each other on a daily basis of being in bed
49:25
Speaker 1: with a devil. So many of these stories just don't
49:27
Speaker 1: add up, but so many strange things were witnessed that
49:30
Speaker 1: all this couldn't just be a coincidence. You know, mass
49:33
Speaker 1: hysteria could have been a culprit. But what about all
49:36
Speaker 1: of the confirmed stories that the police himself had seen
49:39
Speaker 1: and investigated. Was this whole thing just some sort of
49:41
Speaker 1: twisted modern day witch hunt or was it something more?
49:45
Speaker 1: I think it was something more. Your freedom take up
49:47
Speaker 1: your own mind, because you see, there were many stories
49:49
Speaker 1: of cultists and childress that had at least some substance.
49:53
Speaker 1: I have to go back again to those reports that
49:55
Speaker 1: the police handled of people attempting to kidnap children. Once again,
49:59
Speaker 1: that girl girl who had a seemingly prophetic vision. Everything
50:02
Speaker 1: from the weird woman at the funeral to the person
50:04
Speaker 1: spinning on the grave. So many people were accused of
50:07
Speaker 1: being a part of the cult as the accusations flew,
50:10
Speaker 1: but one family name stood above all the rest. The Wilkeses,
50:13
Speaker 1: according to everyone, were the devil worshippers, it was said,
50:16
Speaker 1: and when it was time for one of them to
50:18
Speaker 1: clear his name, Darwin Wilkes simply failed to appear in court.
50:22
Speaker 1: For four months, everything stood still. There wasn't another big break,
50:26
Speaker 1: and no one had been charged with anything. Fears still
50:29
Speaker 1: trod the paths of childress, and people waited for the
50:32
Speaker 1: next sighting of people in black robes in the cemetery.
50:35
Speaker 1: But then in March of nineteen ninety two, the case
50:38
Speaker 1: opened back up wider than ever before. Frank Wilkes led
50:42
Speaker 1: a familiar face into the Sheriff's department. With him was
50:45
Speaker 1: his son, Darwin, and they finally then knew who was
50:48
Speaker 1: responsible for Terry's death. The night before they arrived, the
50:52
Speaker 1: Wilkeses had been having a barbecue at their home. Ricky Bradford,
50:55
Speaker 1: Terry's boyfriend at the time of her death, was in
50:58
Speaker 1: attendance at the barbecue, and that evening he confessed to
51:01
Speaker 1: the people there that he was Terry's killer. And not
51:04
Speaker 1: only did he say that he had killed her, but
51:06
Speaker 1: Ricky stated that he would kill the Wilkeses as well
51:09
Speaker 1: if they ever told another soul what he had just
51:12
Speaker 1: admitted to. According to the Wilkeses, Ricky said, yes, I
51:16
Speaker 1: killed the bach and threatened to burn down the wilkes
51:18
Speaker 1: home and cut out Darwin's eyes if they ever spoke
51:21
Speaker 1: a word about what they had saw. Ricky was soon
51:24
Speaker 1: arrested on a charge of first degree murder. He insisted
51:26
Speaker 1: that he had never harmed Terry his girlfriend, that Darwin
51:29
Speaker 1: had set him up, and even claimed that all Darwin
51:32
Speaker 1: wanted was the one thousand dollars reward for information about
51:36
Speaker 1: Terry's death, and Ricky could have been telling the truth.
51:39
Speaker 1: Darwin did get the reward money, but not only that.
51:42
Speaker 1: Darwin admitted to a journalist that he was afraid he
51:45
Speaker 1: would be arrested. He had taken a lie detector test
51:47
Speaker 1: only a couple of weeks before Ricky's arrest, and Darwin
51:51
Speaker 1: at the time was asked if he had smothered Terry.
51:53
Speaker 1: He said no, obviously, but the light detector test noted
51:57
Speaker 1: his response as a failure, showing that he was being untruthful, which,
52:01
Speaker 1: if you go with those results, showed that Darwin could
52:05
Speaker 1: have smothered Terry, but Darwin was certain that the cops
52:08
Speaker 1: were just trying to frame him. He said he had
52:10
Speaker 1: been asleep when Terry died and that he couldn't have
52:12
Speaker 1: killed her. In the next polygraph taken after Ricky's arrest,
52:15
Speaker 1: he passed, so it's all up in the air. District
52:18
Speaker 1: Attorney McCoy, even after all these new revelations, still wasn't
52:22
Speaker 1: sure if Terry's death was actually solved. He had little
52:25
Speaker 1: evidence against Ricky, only an inconclusive autopsy and unreliable witnesses,
52:30
Speaker 1: and he said that Ricky wasn't a good person by
52:33
Speaker 1: any means, but that didn't mean that he was in
52:35
Speaker 1: fact Terry's killer. He didn't want to put him away
52:37
Speaker 1: for no reason, but with a murder trial set and
52:40
Speaker 1: Ricky named as the culprit. New rumors abounded of satanic sightings,
52:44
Speaker 1: and once again some of these were real. You see,
52:47
Speaker 1: at one point, a white cat was found outside of
52:50
Speaker 1: Childress with its heart cut out and dumped on the
52:53
Speaker 1: side of the road. After this was called in, the
52:56
Speaker 1: police were sent to investigate the disturbing scene and take
52:58
Speaker 1: photos of it, and Sheriff Bowen was certain that this
53:02
Speaker 1: wasn't a coincidence. Around the same time, a middle aged
53:05
Speaker 1: couple was found to possess strange works of art in
53:08
Speaker 1: their home. Some of these works of art were praffic
53:11
Speaker 1: but the others were altogether frightening. In one, a devilish
53:14
Speaker 1: goatthead was drawn over a human body. Another depicted an
53:18
Speaker 1: outline of Texas within an emblem of a pentagram. And
53:21
Speaker 1: along with this disturbing artwork, a staff was found, a
53:25
Speaker 1: thick metal rod that was described as the kind of
53:28
Speaker 1: staff that the priest of a cult organization is supposed
53:31
Speaker 1: to have. But the most frightening fact is this, just
53:34
Speaker 1: before Ricky's murder charge was sent to the jury, District
53:37
Speaker 1: Attorney McCoy's house was burned to the ground. The fire
53:41
Speaker 1: marshal reported this as nothing more than an accident, but
53:44
Speaker 1: obviously District Attorney McCoy believed that it was only made
53:48
Speaker 1: to look accidental. He believed at the time that someone
53:52
Speaker 1: was after him, that he was almost at the truth,
53:54
Speaker 1: and that he was about to expose the whole thing.
53:57
Speaker 1: But at the end of the story, at the end
53:58
Speaker 1: of the day, no cult was ever found. Terry's death
54:02
Speaker 1: went unsolved as no weapon was ever located, and the
54:05
Speaker 1: two pathologists over the case could not definitively decide if
54:09
Speaker 1: she had even been murdered at all. But Terry had
54:11
Speaker 1: only been examined four months after her death, and Tate
54:15
Speaker 1: was too decomposed to perform an adequate autopsy. What information
54:19
Speaker 1: would have been recovered if the two had been studied
54:21
Speaker 1: directly post mortem, And why, even in the case of
54:24
Speaker 1: a side wasn't an autopsy performed. Could some of the
54:28
Speaker 1: police truly have been in on the cult killings, as
54:31
Speaker 1: some of the townspeople said, there were people saying, I mean,
54:34
Speaker 1: I didn't even report on a lot of the things
54:35
Speaker 1: people were saying because it's so much hearsay. But obviously
54:38
Speaker 1: people were claiming, like the mayor was in the cult,
54:41
Speaker 1: the police were in the cult. Who knows who was
54:43
Speaker 1: doing what? I mean, you truly have no idea? Or
54:46
Speaker 1: was all of this just one big coincidence, an open
54:49
Speaker 1: and shut case which wasn't even worth looking into in
54:52
Speaker 1: the first place. The man in charge of Terry's first
54:54
Speaker 1: autopsy had indeed been charged with falsifying autopsy reports. Is
54:59
Speaker 1: it possible that more victims of his simply went unnoticed,
55:03
Speaker 1: or was he covering up victims of ritualistic sacrifice acting
55:06
Speaker 1: on the orders of a local cult. The town sheriff
55:09
Speaker 1: was adamant he would not perform an autopsy on tape.
55:13
Speaker 1: He didn't, and he had no reason to reopen the investigation.
55:17
Speaker 1: Was the sheriff working with the cult working to hide
55:20
Speaker 1: the truth of the cult's existence. Too many stories of
55:22
Speaker 1: Satanic cult members and their deeds spread around Childress to
55:25
Speaker 1: simply be the work of a couple people's imagination, disregarding
55:30
Speaker 1: all the tales of the Satanic cult would leave the
55:33
Speaker 1: story half untold, as these rumors directly inspired the reopening
55:38
Speaker 1: of the case. And I mean, what's up with that?
55:40
Speaker 1: The people stealing, trying to steal kids, and the people
55:42
Speaker 1: at the funeral, the sightings in the graveyards, all these
55:45
Speaker 1: people saying this guy said this, he's a devil worshiper
55:48
Speaker 1: of the graffiti, the pentic. I mean, there's a lot
55:50
Speaker 1: of evidence here of something really bizarre happening. And this
55:54
Speaker 1: is you know, if you want to look into a
55:55
Speaker 1: case of a legit satanic evil cult that was murdering
55:58
Speaker 1: people that was all also covered up, look into the
56:01
Speaker 1: Son of Sam killings. Look into The Sons of Sam
56:04
Speaker 1: Ultimate Evil by Mari Terry, the book that's a great read.
56:07
Speaker 1: But what was left at the end of this whole
56:09
Speaker 1: thing was a striking secret. Both of the alleged murder victims,
56:13
Speaker 1: or who some people believed there were murder victims. Both
56:16
Speaker 1: of them had either been taken or been drugged with
56:18
Speaker 1: el and both had died that night. Were these two
56:22
Speaker 1: death skids or were they murders? Bones were set to
56:25
Speaker 1: be taken from Tate's grave one night, as rumors said,
56:28
Speaker 1: and the group of teens had gone out to investigate,
56:31
Speaker 1: only to find someone already there who chased them out
56:33
Speaker 1: of the cemetery and all the way to the courthouse,
56:36
Speaker 1: only to disappear. The grave remained untouched, perhaps because the
56:40
Speaker 1: town was onto them and the cult knew they had
56:42
Speaker 1: to back down. According to a source who wishes to
56:45
Speaker 1: remain anonymous, these specific bones may have had some sort
56:48
Speaker 1: of disturbing meaning to them, because you see, Tate's grave
56:51
Speaker 1: was said to have been dug up for a pinky
56:54
Speaker 1: knuckle and his collarbone that they had had contact with
56:57
Speaker 1: members of a satanic cult that operated in the win
57:00
Speaker 1: Causiana around the time that Tate and Terry had died.
57:03
Speaker 1: The source states that the significance of the bones is
57:05
Speaker 1: as such, the piggy bone represents a mockery of the
57:08
Speaker 1: phrase idle hands are the Devil's plaything, and that bones
57:12
Speaker 1: are a symbol of sacrifice. So could the bones of
57:15
Speaker 1: Tate have been chosen to represent this as he was
57:18
Speaker 1: a sacrifice himself. And could Terry, in her suspicion, have
57:22
Speaker 1: been getting too close to the truth that the cult
57:24
Speaker 1: wanted to hide? Had she been looking too deeply, and
57:27
Speaker 1: did someone feel that they needed to silence her. It
57:29
Speaker 1: would be hard to imagine that people would mutilate animals
57:32
Speaker 1: and leave them in the streets as a prank to
57:34
Speaker 1: scare the people of a small Texas town, as Terry believed.
57:38
Speaker 1: It seems much more likely that the town of Childress
57:40
Speaker 1: was subjected to true horror in the late nineteen eighties
57:44
Speaker 1: and early nineties. What hysteria can't explain. Facts reveal there
57:48
Speaker 1: were indeed kidnapping attempts as the teens talked about young
57:51
Speaker 1: sacrifices being selected. There was indeed saliva covering Tate's grave
57:55
Speaker 1: after an unknown figure had been standing over it in
57:58
Speaker 1: the dead of night. There was indeed a utilated cat
58:00
Speaker 1: dumped on the road with its heart removed. And there's
58:03
Speaker 1: the same drug he's found in Tate and Terry, and
58:07
Speaker 1: one of the suspects tries to take his own life
58:09
Speaker 1: with this drug. Everybody's talking about this. The district attorney's
58:13
Speaker 1: house burns down, he's getting death threats. All of this
58:16
Speaker 1: is happening, and it's just brushed away. And if all
58:18
Speaker 1: those things aren't frightening enough, this may be more than
58:21
Speaker 1: one person during this whole thing, when all these events
58:24
Speaker 1: were unfolding, reported watching a man eat pages from the
58:28
Speaker 1: Bible as he foamed at the mouth in town. That's right.
58:31
Speaker 1: Multiple people called into the police and said that they
58:34
Speaker 1: had just witnessed a crazed looking man eating a Bible
58:38
Speaker 1: with foam coming out of his mouth, sitting on the
58:40
Speaker 1: side of the road or in a parking lot, and
58:42
Speaker 1: with numerous sightings of dark robed figures of dancing in
58:45
Speaker 1: the light of a bonfire, of stone altars and defaced
58:48
Speaker 1: tombstones pentagrams in six six sixes, was this all really
58:52
Speaker 1: just imagination? Or could a cult that practiced human sacrifice
58:56
Speaker 1: have been walking the streets of Childress in those years
58:59
Speaker 1: of the Satanic pay? More pressingly, do they still walk
59:02
Speaker 1: those very streets today? Peeling back the facade of this
59:05
Speaker 1: small western town may reveal mysteries too horrible for one
59:08
Speaker 1: to imagine, or perhaps too terrible to face. The events
59:12
Speaker 1: of Terry and Tate's deaths may serve as a gateway
59:15
Speaker 1: to a world unimaginable by most, one where darkness hides
59:18
Speaker 1: behind every corner and danger lurks in every shadow that
59:22
Speaker 1: we pass. Well, holy shit, I thought that one was
59:26
Speaker 1: gonna be a little bit shorter, but it was not.
59:29
Speaker 1: That one is absolutely crazy, guys. It's just the more
59:32
Speaker 1: that I do this research for the Conspiracy Files and
59:35
Speaker 1: I find these stories, I want to tell shout out
59:38
Speaker 1: to the writing team who's helping bring all of these
59:40
Speaker 1: to life. Like Sabran wrote this one, it is just
59:43
Speaker 1: it's shocking doing this research because I'll sit down and
59:46
Speaker 1: I'll try to think, like, what story do I want
59:49
Speaker 1: to do next, So I'll start researching this story, or
59:52
Speaker 1: I use newspapers dot Com to search up stuff, and
59:55
Speaker 1: like just the other day, I was looking at newspapers
59:57
Speaker 1: dot Com and I came across this snow film case
1:00:01
Speaker 1: where these children described watching these three kids get brutally
1:00:04
Speaker 1: beaten with a hammer and mutilated on camera in California
1:00:08
Speaker 1: in the eighties. And then a couple of the guys
1:00:11
Speaker 1: who were named as suspects, they had previous child molestation charges,
1:00:15
Speaker 1: but all the charges were dropped because it was linked
1:00:17
Speaker 1: to some sort of political thing. Then there's like a
1:00:20
Speaker 1: pedophile ring in a South American country that I just
1:00:24
Speaker 1: found out about, where they were politicians and celebrities involved
1:00:28
Speaker 1: in it. Another cover up, and then you have the
1:00:30
Speaker 1: Satanic stuff. The more you read into all this, the
1:00:33
Speaker 1: more you start realizing the Satanic panic. I get it.
1:00:37
Speaker 1: Satanists are not bad people. The Church of Satan was
1:00:40
Speaker 1: a hokey thing. Anyways. With Anton Levey, they weren't sacrificing
1:00:44
Speaker 1: and killing children. To my knowledge, he was a carnival
1:00:47
Speaker 1: guy in the past, So I think it was just
1:00:49
Speaker 1: more of a statement that they're not religious, you know,
1:00:51
Speaker 1: and using inverting those symbols that people have worshiped for
1:00:56
Speaker 1: so long. Taking that evil symbol and kind of like
1:00:58
Speaker 1: putting it in people's faces is a sign of revolt.
1:01:01
Speaker 1: That's where I'm confused, because in studying all this shit
1:01:04
Speaker 1: and going deep down all these rabbit holes, it really
1:01:06
Speaker 1: does seem that there were Satanic cults there still are there,
1:01:10
Speaker 1: definitely still are. I don't know if they're really Satanic
1:01:13
Speaker 1: cults or they're just these evil groups of people that
1:01:16
Speaker 1: use Satan to scare victims, or maybe they really believe
1:01:19
Speaker 1: in this black magic evil, but they were there, especially
1:01:22
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties, and a lot of these
1:01:24
Speaker 1: events that were Satanic, panicked and forgiven. I think that
1:01:28
Speaker 1: there's a lot, a lot more dark truth behind a
1:01:31
Speaker 1: lot of those that really has yet to come to
1:01:34
Speaker 1: the surface. We're starting that journey here on the channel.
1:01:36
Speaker 1: But thank you guys for listening, Thank you guys for watching.
1:01:40
Speaker 1: Maybe say a prayer after this one. I don't know
1:01:41
Speaker 1: what religion you guys follow or belief system you have,
1:01:44
Speaker 1: but maybe protect yourself after all this evil. I love
1:01:48
Speaker 1: each and every one of you. Thank you for joining
1:01:50
Speaker 1: me on this crazy journey. Keep that tinfoil hat on,
1:01:53
Speaker 1: and I'll see you guys next week.