Speaker 1: Oh better there m hm. Trigger warn This podcast may
Speaker 1: include explicit content that will take you out of your
Speaker 1: comfort zone and make you question reality.
Speaker 2: Listener's discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the show. This is part
Speaker 1: one of the brand new mini series into the Culti Verse,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna be talking about some of the most
Speaker 1: obscure cults of all time. I have my ride or
Speaker 1: die with me, Colby, how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm hoping this is a ride.
Speaker 1: I'm not a die but you never know. With the
Speaker 1: cosmic Peach, I like to talk about the die bart
Speaker 1: of law.
Speaker 2: Well, with the Colts, I'm sure there'll be no shortage of.
Speaker 1: Carnage, lots of death, lots of mayhem, and so we're
Speaker 1: kicking it old school. And I have prepared a list
Speaker 1: of cults to present to you. You have prepared some
Speaker 1: cults to present to me, but we don't know anything
Speaker 1: about the other one's cults, right.
Speaker 2: I don't even remember which ones you picked as far
Speaker 2: as this episode goes good, I have not heard of
Speaker 2: the Solar Sunshine Flair cult.
Speaker 1: That's not what it's called. What is it, Well, it's
Speaker 1: called the the I'll get into it in a minute.
Speaker 1: But that I mean, so, I tried to like find
Speaker 1: interesting ones that I don't feel like a lot of
Speaker 1: people talk about, but that are they should be because
Speaker 1: they got like super weirdness and like high death counts
Speaker 1: and like whyatt aren't they like somebody needs to make
Speaker 1: a documentary on this first one I got it's cray Cray.
Speaker 2: Maybe you should make the documentary.
Speaker 1: I just don't have the time or the patients. I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy it, though.
Speaker 2: Maybe you should make a podcast episode about it.
Speaker 1: That I'm in the process of doing right now.
Speaker 2: So, how you been splendid?
Speaker 1: Any major changes in your life that you want to
Speaker 1: show here with the class?
Speaker 2: Yes, I just passed my first kidney stone one kilo.
Speaker 1: One? Yeah? Is that why you haven't been wanting to
Speaker 1: get frisky? No? Well, I guess if you're not gonna
Speaker 1: say it, I will.
Speaker 2: What are you gonna say?
Speaker 1: I was just gonna tell everyone that we are mister
Speaker 1: and missus cosmic peach.
Speaker 2: This is the first time hearing of that we would you.
Speaker 1: Like it to be the other way around? Mister and
Speaker 1: missus conspiracy play time?
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm a tad husband, take my name.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, but in all seriousness, though you've agreed to
Speaker 1: sign on to a lifetime of craziness.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Divorce is pretty easy these days, so
Speaker 2: we'll see.
Speaker 1: Oh, thanks, Ton, Well, I'm glad you have such a
Speaker 1: positive outlook for us.
Speaker 2: Hey, I told you when we got married that if
Speaker 2: you wanted to get divorced, I'm not because I don't
Speaker 2: believe in divorce.
Speaker 1: Do you believe in? So if you're ready for this
Speaker 1: transaction to end, you'll just, you know, till death do
Speaker 1: us part me?
Speaker 2: No? Okay, good, you can just go give with someone
Speaker 2: else and I'll give with someone else and we'll still
Speaker 2: be married and we'll have to explain it to people
Speaker 2: of parties.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, Well, anyways, though, I think mister missus cosmic playtime.
Speaker 1: How about that?
Speaker 2: Am I the mister?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay, yeah, let's I mean, it's twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: You can be the missus if you want. Isn't it
Speaker 1: that how things go these days?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Get a niptuck, Sure you can.
Speaker 1: It'll go along with your kidney stone, and.
Speaker 2: I'll actually make passing kidney stones easier, that's what you think,
Speaker 2: because you have a badge hole now instead of a ween.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the kidney stone ain't gonna come.
Speaker 2: Out your badge hole, your man badge.
Speaker 1: Well, are you ready to learn about some fucking cults
Speaker 1: and shit dazzle me? All right, Well, I want to
Speaker 1: take you on a little journey to Geneva, Switzerland circa
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: I say, hell sinky, you hear Geneva? I know you
Speaker 2: don't know what that's from.
Speaker 1: No, I don't enlighten me.
Speaker 2: Pretty got fingered?
Speaker 1: Okay, maybe somebody else got it. You ever been to Geneva, Switzerland?
Speaker 2: Not since breakfast? No, I've never left the country except
Speaker 2: for one.
Speaker 1: Time, not even on a cruise. You never went to Mexico.
Speaker 2: I will not go on cruises.
Speaker 1: Get your hair braided for five dollars? No? All right,
Speaker 1: well we are going there tonight. Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: a two men named Joseph de Mambro and Luke Gerret.
Speaker 2: I don't believe so.
Speaker 1: So they formed a secret society called the Order of
Speaker 1: the Solar Temple. But it's not to be confused with
Speaker 1: the Solar Lodge of the Ordo templey whatever orientis. This
Speaker 1: isn't an oto thing. They started their own shit, and
Speaker 1: it was called the Order of the Solar Temple, and
Speaker 1: they were claiming to be a continuation of the Knight's
Speaker 1: Templar and incorporated an eclectic range of beliefs with aspects
Speaker 1: of Rosicrucianism, theosophy, and New Age ideas.
Speaker 2: So is it what was the called again?
Speaker 1: See the Order of the Solar Temple. Okay, are you
Speaker 1: familiar with like Rosicrucianism and stuff like that, and like okay,
Speaker 1: so they basically hodgepodged a bunch of stuff together, but
Speaker 1: really they essentially just preached about other worlds and planets
Speaker 1: and they were obsessed with extraterrestrials and the Knights Templar.
Speaker 1: So if you can imagine combining the Knights Templar with
Speaker 1: like some fucking et shit, that's what it was. It
Speaker 1: was like this new ag there's life on other plane.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like Heaven's Gate, Like they're coming for us,
Speaker 1: and they inspired all of the ancient cultures, and they
Speaker 1: inspired all of the ancient civilizations and now they're coming
Speaker 1: back for us talking about extraterrestrials.
Speaker 2: So like a pan Spermia doomsday.
Speaker 1: Cult kind of. So they were also obsessed with the
Speaker 1: Dog Star serious they got all of their inspiration from
Speaker 1: ancient civilizations, like ancient Egyptians, the civilization on Malta, who
Speaker 1: built jig and tea? Have you ever heard of that
Speaker 1: jig and tea. It's one of those places that Graham
Speaker 1: Hancock talks about a lot. Okay, So they were talking
Speaker 1: about the civilization on Malta. They were talking about the
Speaker 1: civilization in ancient Turkey that built go Beckley Tepe.
Speaker 2: That's the one I always hear in Tucker. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then they were talking about the ancient Egyptians because
Speaker 1: they all built structures in alignment with the dog Star Serious,
Speaker 1: and so they had like the super hard on for
Speaker 1: like these extraterrestrials that are gonna come from Serious and
Speaker 1: they're gonna come get them and they're gonna enlighten them
Speaker 1: with all this wisdom and stuff because they were our
Speaker 1: ancient past masters. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so far it's kind of a common thought process
Speaker 2: that we see a lot of today.
Speaker 1: But this is in the eighties, right, So it's like
Speaker 1: one of the first ones to kind of catch on
Speaker 1: to that idea, right besides Heaven's Gate, but heaven Skate
Speaker 1: I don't think was as steeped in like culture as
Speaker 1: these guys were, do you, because I feel like they
Speaker 1: just made up a bunch of shit.
Speaker 2: Well, they were convinced that they had to hop on
Speaker 2: the craft that was hiding and is it Haley's common
Speaker 2: or hell bop, I always forget Haley's. So they weren't
Speaker 2: really talking.
Speaker 1: About civilizations and shit or theosophy. Yeah, they were kind
Speaker 1: of making their own rules anyways, like we gotta castrate ourselves,
Speaker 1: we gotta shave our heads, we gotta wear nikes, like
Speaker 1: just weird shit like that, you know. But these guys
Speaker 1: were kind of on a whole upper echelon type shit.
Speaker 1: So Joseph Demambro was a French jeweler and an esotericist
Speaker 1: with a history of fraud, and Luke Garret was a
Speaker 1: Belgian homeopath known for lecturing on alternative medicine and spirituality.
Speaker 2: So these two guys, if they were alive today, they
Speaker 2: would both definitely have.
Speaker 1: Podcasts, right yeah, no shit, they would be co hosts.
Speaker 1: I don't know. There's not a lot of information about
Speaker 1: how these two met though, because it seems like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this French jeweler with a history of fraud, why is
Speaker 1: he in the circles with this this Belgian homeopathic guy
Speaker 1: lecturing on alternative medicine and spirituality.
Speaker 2: Well, you know a lot of the occult, he said.
Speaker 2: The first guy, the French.
Speaker 1: Dude, Joseph de Mambro, they're both friends.
Speaker 2: So he was into the occult and the other guys
Speaker 2: into alternative living and spiritualities. So I could see where
Speaker 2: those pasts could cross.
Speaker 1: They travel in small circe.
Speaker 2: Maybe they met at a conference or something.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing about Joseph de Mambro. He actually
Speaker 1: before he started the Order of the Solar Temple, he
Speaker 1: had founded several past esoteric groups, and he had previous
Speaker 1: affiliation with a number of other organizations, and some of
Speaker 1: them included the Pyramid Organization and a new age group
Speaker 1: founded by Dimambro that was later replaced by the Temple
Speaker 1: was the Golden Way Foundation. So he was involved with
Speaker 1: the Pyramid in and then he started another foundation called
Speaker 1: Golden Way that he replaced with the Solar Temple after
Speaker 1: he met Luke Jerai.
Speaker 2: This kind of sounds like musicians, like you have maybe
Speaker 2: two or three bands you're kind of experimenting, and then
Speaker 2: you find the one that hits right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Shit, the Pyramids not that top charts. Yeah, gold So
Speaker 2: the Solar Solar Temple that's his third band.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's his third band.
Speaker 2: This is the one that sells autarinas.
Speaker 1: And I think it didn't I think he didn't have like,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to have the other Kouk in
Speaker 1: the crew to really get people on board. Like he
Speaker 1: started the Pyramid and he started the Golden Way Foundation,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't really gaining any traction in until he
Speaker 1: involved Luke Jerra, who's like this homeopath guy. And so
Speaker 1: it's like you get you two to.
Speaker 2: Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham.
Speaker 1: Yet right, Yeah, you have to have your your like us,
Speaker 1: you needed me. So if you were to guess the
Speaker 1: type of members that they recruited, who would just say that.
Speaker 2: They were, oh, probably some freaks, some people that like
Speaker 2: to you know, maybe ten years before they joined this cult,
Speaker 2: they were following the Grateful Dead around.
Speaker 1: Do you think they would like rub ointments on each
Speaker 1: other holes?
Speaker 2: And like it sounds like from the two mixes of
Speaker 2: thoughts that these guys brought to the I assume they
Speaker 2: call it a cult, but probably not they brought to
Speaker 2: the group. It seems like there's a wide range of
Speaker 2: people that could be into that stuff. You could get
Speaker 2: your philosophers, you're you're you know, magic practitioners, h you're Yeah,
Speaker 2: the people that were gyps and oil on each other's bumholes.
Speaker 1: So that's what I thought too. But you know what
Speaker 1: the crazy thing is, they somehow managed like ninety percent
Speaker 1: of their members were affluent former Catholics.
Speaker 2: Well, you said Rosicrucianism was.
Speaker 1: Right, So when you actually look at their mid Catholics, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they converted them from Catholicism over to their brand of
Speaker 1: like religiosity, I guess because they incorporated aspects of the Freemasons, Occultism, Christianity,
Speaker 1: and Catholicism and they made this new religion I guess.
Speaker 1: So most of the members were former Catholics, and most
Speaker 1: of the members were actually drawn from the elite of society,
Speaker 1: which also struck me as odd because members of the
Speaker 1: Solar Temple were wealthy and socially successful, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of in contrast to other cults who would pretty much
Speaker 1: take any piece of shit that was willing to accept
Speaker 1: their message or whatever. The Solar Temple members were described
Speaker 1: as middle aged professionals who were highly cultured. Does that
Speaker 1: seem odd to.
Speaker 2: You, not necessarily, And when we get into Mike Colt
Speaker 2: in the second half of this episode, you're going to
Speaker 2: see a lot of that similar like you'll see. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it doesn't surprise me. When you look at a lot
Speaker 2: of the people who join cults. It's a lot of
Speaker 2: times people who have lived lives that were unfulfilled and
Speaker 2: they're having a crisis and they need some kind of
Speaker 2: new identity or new path and instead of finding religion
Speaker 2: or joining a book club, they they go extreme with it.
Speaker 2: It doesn't surprise me. It seems to be common. I mean,
Speaker 2: you even brought up Heaven's Gates. I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot of people in there. They already had kids and stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, it just you know, when people think of colts
Speaker 1: and cult members, you think of like the Manson family,
Speaker 1: like a bunch of long hairs with fucking Harry Pitts
Speaker 1: and shit that are just like peace and love and
Speaker 1: all like having sex with each other and rebind ointment
Speaker 1: on each other's be holes.
Speaker 2: I don't know, there's a lot of different elements to
Speaker 2: Colts and I I don't know. I'm I don't automatically
Speaker 2: think of the Manson family with Colts.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think of like Mormon colts.
Speaker 2: Like you know, I think of like Jonestown.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Sure Jonestown wasn't picky on their members either though.
Speaker 1: But so anyways, this guy, Joseph de Moombro, managed to
Speaker 1: convince his followers that his baby daughter, who he named Emmanuel,
Speaker 1: was possessed by an alien and that alien was communicating
Speaker 1: to him through her and giving him all this inside
Speaker 1: info on how the aliens were going to take him
Speaker 1: and the followers to another planet near Sirius, and all
Speaker 1: they had to do was believe so hard and devoutly
Speaker 1: that they would be willing to give up their lives.
Speaker 2: Sounds like most religions. So how old was this little girl?
Speaker 2: An infant when he was receiving the message from her?
Speaker 1: Yes, and the cult went on for several years, so
Speaker 1: I think she was like three by the time everything ended.
Speaker 2: Well just spoiler alert, but only last three years.
Speaker 1: Well, they had started it before she was ever born,
Speaker 1: and then she was born. He names her Emmanuel. He
Speaker 1: says he's getting these messages.
Speaker 2: So they had already been together for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he has this daughter.
Speaker 1: That's where things start to go to crazy town. And
Speaker 1: they were already so established at that point that they
Speaker 1: the members were like, ooh, this is just the new
Speaker 1: part of the fucking ascension.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were getting a message.
Speaker 1: Right, And so basically these two yahoos went around telling
Speaker 1: their follow they're all of their followers that the apocalypse
Speaker 1: was coming, and they were getting these messages from the
Speaker 1: baby girl.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, did you say how many like roughly people
Speaker 2: were in there?
Speaker 1: Well, I can't tell you yet because I'm when I
Speaker 1: reveal it, you'll be surprised at the end.
Speaker 2: That's like the big twist is there is only three people,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: So the this a little backstory. The Solar Temple was
Speaker 1: heavily influenced by theosophus Alice Bailey. Have you heard of her?
Speaker 2: This sounds familiar. That's theosophy, that's the Blevotsky I don't
Speaker 2: know if I've heard of her.
Speaker 1: So I just put a little bit about her in
Speaker 1: my notes because I feel like it's important because she
Speaker 1: was Alice Bailey was inspired by Blovotsky. But she was
Speaker 1: a British and American writer and she wrote about twenty
Speaker 1: five books on theosophy, and one of she was one
Speaker 1: of the first writers to ever use the term new age.
Speaker 2: So this is I think I heard of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Alice Bailey was actually one of the first ever
Speaker 1: to use that term new age. And then she inspired
Speaker 1: douchebags like this and they started cults and shit. But
Speaker 1: Alice Bailey's works, written between nineteen nineteen and nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: describe a wide ranging neo theosophical system of esoteric thought,
Speaker 1: covering topics like how spirituality relates to the solar system, meditation, healing,
Speaker 1: spiritual psychology, and the destiny of nations. She described the
Speaker 1: majority of her work as having been telepathically dictated to
Speaker 1: her by a master of wisdom, who she referred to
Speaker 1: only as the Tibetan or by the initials d K.
Speaker 1: And it's no surprise Alice Bailey was initially inspired by
Speaker 1: Madam Blovotsky, who also channeled a Tibetan spirit to write
Speaker 1: all of her theosophical works, and Aleister Crowley also channeled
Speaker 1: a Tibetan entity that he called Lom. And so all
Speaker 1: three of them have Tibetan entity inspired theosophical work, and
Speaker 1: they all three have inspired some real fucked up shit.
Speaker 2: So what is it about Tibet?
Speaker 1: Well, do you remember an episode I did where I
Speaker 1: covered Tibetan weirdness and like all the dead bodies and
Speaker 1: shit that turn up by that mountain because they're searching
Speaker 1: for that hidden kingdom.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: So I actually did this presentation on the cult of Conspiracy,
Speaker 1: and anybody who's listening to this right now can go
Speaker 1: back and find that episode. But a lot of Theosophists
Speaker 1: and Hitler have been obsessed with tibet for the longest
Speaker 1: and they think there's like this hidden civilization there and
Speaker 1: if you get high enough on the mountain you can
Speaker 1: find it, or like these entities can be channeled there. Bolvotsky, Crowley,
Speaker 1: Alice Bailey, Hitler, they were all really really interested in Tibetan.
Speaker 1: I don't want to call it folklore, but it's that's
Speaker 1: kind of what it was.
Speaker 2: Well, they did bring us the best form of Buddhism
Speaker 2: and the best book of the dead.
Speaker 1: What are they called.
Speaker 2: The Tibetan Book of the Dead and Tibetan Buddhism.
Speaker 1: Oh, there's no fancy name.
Speaker 2: Maybe another languages.
Speaker 1: So are you a big tibet fan.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I really do like the Tibetan Book
Speaker 2: of the Dead. I tried to read the Egyptian Book
Speaker 2: of the Dead and I couldn't.
Speaker 1: Do you want to start a cult behind it?
Speaker 2: I already did. It only lasted about three years.
Speaker 1: Well, listen, before I did that presentation, you know what
Speaker 1: the extent of my knowledge on Tibet was the Dali
Speaker 1: Lama watching the Golden Child with Eddie Murphy.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean that pretty much covers it all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what else do you need to know? So because
Speaker 1: of this inspiration, like they took from Alice Bailey to
Speaker 1: and Rosicrucianism and the Freemasons and all this stuff. Night's
Speaker 1: Temple our stuff, and it's, like I said before, they
Speaker 1: hodgepodged it into one religion. So bustin if you have
Speaker 1: any questions, Okay, I have.
Speaker 2: Been and I will continue to do so.
Speaker 1: So there were a number of initiation rituals of a
Speaker 1: Masonic nature. The members also moved up in degrees like Masons,
Speaker 1: but they only had three degrees first degree, p second degree,
Speaker 1: third degree, and they practiced, like I said, Masonic rituals,
Speaker 1: but they also practiced a number of magical rituals. They
Speaker 1: used to leucinogens and invoked sex magic in which sexual
Speaker 1: activities were performed in order to acquire some type of
Speaker 1: spiritual gain.
Speaker 2: This sounds like my kind of cult. Fucking unpsychedelics. Yeah,
Speaker 2: fucking on psychoedegic ald me is the easiest thing to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, you told me you didn't want no part
Speaker 1: of it when you on psychedelics.
Speaker 2: Mushroom sex is the weirdest thing you'll ever do.
Speaker 1: Would you would you give it one out of five mushrooms?
Speaker 2: Or it's just I don't know how to explain it.
Speaker 2: Just the concept of it is hard to wrap your
Speaker 2: mind around when you're tripping. I do know that certain
Speaker 2: people do have sex on psychedelics, and certain psychedelics are
Speaker 2: different than others. But yeah, I don't know. To me
Speaker 2: those two whenever they mix it is in a cult
Speaker 2: like ex setting.
Speaker 1: It seems you want to do DMT and half sex.
Speaker 2: That'd be impossible.
Speaker 1: You want to do acid in half sex?
Speaker 2: No, I'm not a fan of it.
Speaker 1: Well, that's they had to be doing something in these
Speaker 1: sex rituals, hallucinogens and invoked sex magic. So they're just
Speaker 1: all tripping balls and just like netting all over each
Speaker 1: other out in the woods somewhere France.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you never said where they're really really like practicing out.
Speaker 1: Of Geneva, Switzerland.
Speaker 2: So that's the headquarters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, But so this Colt did as Colt stew
Speaker 1: and it came down to transit time, as they called it,
Speaker 1: and Joseph de Mambro and Luke Jerra came up with
Speaker 1: a list of how their members were going to die,
Speaker 1: and it went a little something like this. There was
Speaker 1: three categories.
Speaker 2: There's so many threes in this. There's three degrees. You
Speaker 2: said the chick was three when the cult, right, yeah, banded,
Speaker 2: and I said, there's only three members that.
Speaker 1: Listen, all right, there's three categories. The traders who had
Speaker 1: to be murdered, the immortals who were going to be
Speaker 1: helped in death, which essentially just means they're going to
Speaker 1: be killed by other members, and then the awakened ones
Speaker 1: who were going to commit voluntary suicide. And that was
Speaker 1: the three categories.
Speaker 2: Well, if it's involuntary, it's not suicide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's the I guess that's the traders category
Speaker 1: because they're just going to get straight up murdered. So
Speaker 1: you still want to be a part of this cult.
Speaker 2: So you will be killed in one of those three ways.
Speaker 2: No matter like.
Speaker 1: What, no matter what. Yes, as part of the transit,
Speaker 1: the transit is leaving this yeah vessel. Yes, the great transitioning.
Speaker 2: And some fucking baby told them this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that fucking bitch tit.
Speaker 2: Of a baby, alien possessed baby. Yes, so far this
Speaker 2: shit tracks.
Speaker 1: So on September thirtieth, nineteen ninety four, I should have
Speaker 1: put this in the nineties. Fucking well, you didn't know
Speaker 1: about it? Yeah, I didn't.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: On September thirtieth, nineteen ninety four, the Duteaux family was
Speaker 1: the first to get it. They were lured into an
Speaker 1: underground tunnel of some sorts by two other members and
Speaker 1: repeatedly stabbed to death, including their three month old baby.
Speaker 2: They stabbed the baby, Yeah, dude, damn what the baby?
Speaker 1: Do you think?
Speaker 2: They stabbed it three times?
Speaker 1: But don't you think that's crazy though?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's hard to do anything crazy when you're
Speaker 2: in a could just trying to out crazy the last guy.
Speaker 1: But I guess they would fall into the immortals category
Speaker 1: who had to be helped in their death, because there
Speaker 1: was the ones who were going to get murdered, the
Speaker 1: ones that were going to get helped. Quote unquote, and
Speaker 1: then the awakened ones who were going to murder themselves.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what the fuck's the difference between being murdered
Speaker 2: and being helped die the same thing? Sounds like they
Speaker 2: murdered those fuckers in the cave.
Speaker 1: It's like doctor Kovorkian type shit.
Speaker 2: They just wasn't that this was murdered. This is their traders, right.
Speaker 1: I guess they must have been traders.
Speaker 2: They had some Syrian summon them to a cave to
Speaker 2: get stabbed repeatedly. That is being helped to die. I
Speaker 2: suppose you know, that should be the one of the
Speaker 2: things you can plead in court murder in the first
Speaker 2: second manslaughter And I just helped him.
Speaker 1: Die assisted in a cave repeatedly.
Speaker 2: Step he was gonna die anyway.
Speaker 1: But so, as the list suggests, all the members got
Speaker 1: different outcomes, and so their cult expanded from Switzer to France,
Speaker 1: and there was kind of like two camps, if you will.
Speaker 1: And in France they find twenty dead bodies that had
Speaker 1: been shot point blank in the head with one gun.
Speaker 1: They find twenty one dead bodies who had died from
Speaker 1: gunshot wounds but were previously drugged with sleeping pills. They
Speaker 1: were helped, they were hoped, and they find another two
Speaker 1: that died of suffocation from plastic bags. Now in Switzerland,
Speaker 1: so oka in Switzerland. The dead bodies they found had
Speaker 1: been injected with poison and or acid.
Speaker 2: Acid not like the driver Hoffmann, No.
Speaker 1: Like like the kind that'll kill you if you get it.
Speaker 2: Intervenious fuck that would sing. Oh, I think about it.
Speaker 1: I bet that kidney stone doesn't.
Speaker 2: Just traveling up? Did it? All?
Speaker 1: Right? So but basically in the end, they found all
Speaker 1: these bodies arranged in a network of chalets in both
Speaker 1: France and Switzerland with timed explosives that went off and
Speaker 1: set these chalets on fire because they were basically trying
Speaker 1: to dispose of the bodies. But it didn't work because
Speaker 1: they were able to put the fire out and they
Speaker 1: found all these dead people.
Speaker 2: No, I apologize if you already said this. But did
Speaker 2: the two leader dudes have to do it too?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they also died, but they didn't they weren't counted
Speaker 1: as a part of the.
Speaker 2: Victims victimsly slash members. So what about the baby?
Speaker 1: She died too?
Speaker 2: How did she die? I will have to have help because.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I'll have to look it up. Because there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of information on what happened with the
Speaker 1: little girl, so she was other than the fact that
Speaker 1: they all committed suicide, so I would assume they gave
Speaker 1: her pills or something.
Speaker 2: So was there any way to like leave some of
Speaker 2: them alive so they would burn alive or they all
Speaker 2: died before they were burned.
Speaker 1: It looked like they had all died before they were burned.
Speaker 1: And total fifty two members were counted that day, apart
Speaker 1: from the leaders and their children, and it was later
Speaker 1: determined that out of the fifty two, only fifteen were
Speaker 1: genuine suicides.
Speaker 2: So these guys had wives that were on board with
Speaker 2: this shit. Sure advanced me.
Speaker 1: What's crazy about this is the year that this went
Speaker 1: down with all the mass murder slash suicide. It's the
Speaker 1: same year that the Heaven's Gate cult poisoned themselves to death.
Speaker 2: And it's the same year you were born. Well, fuck you,
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: Do you think I'm Joseph the mom brow crazy?
Speaker 2: This was two months before your birthday?
Speaker 1: It was. But I'm just saying, they have the Heaven's
Speaker 1: Gate cult in this cult have so many similarities and
Speaker 1: they both killed themselves in the same year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, why didn't this one get any press?
Speaker 1: It makes you wonder, Well, it was a European ordeal
Speaker 1: where but we hear about stuff like that all the time.
Speaker 2: Was this before or after I don't remember.
Speaker 1: I think this Heaven This was after Heaven's Skates, Yes.
Speaker 2: Spring, So yeah, these days, that's plenty of time for
Speaker 2: that ship to die out for the next one to
Speaker 2: be big in the news. I don't know. Back then,
Speaker 2: I don't remember seeing this. No Heaven's Gate shit, that's
Speaker 2: seared into my memory.
Speaker 1: But if those two happened in the same year, you
Speaker 1: would think that they would have gotten equal coverage, especially
Speaker 1: since they had such similar beliefs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's gotta be some dateline episode out there about this.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's crazy. It doesn't even stop there,
Speaker 1: because apparently there were surviving members of the Solar.
Speaker 2: Temple they like boogied before the death ritual.
Speaker 1: Well, they backed out last minute, and some were not
Speaker 1: chosen for the transit as they were told.
Speaker 2: So some backed out and some were told you're not coming. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you don't need to die by murder.
Speaker 1: Help or they wantide they wanted it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it was like getting cut from the varsity team.
Speaker 1: Right, so on dissembled twenty third, nineteen ninety five. A
Speaker 1: year later, fourteen more members surviving members of the Solar Temple,
Speaker 1: including three children, were found in a circular star formation
Speaker 1: and an isolated clearing of some park in France.
Speaker 2: So the JV squad finally got to travel, right, they
Speaker 2: made the transit. I wonder if they were just like,
Speaker 2: let's just try, and I know they said we couldn't come.
Speaker 1: Peter, dude, they thought about it.
Speaker 2: Part Maybe they were getting messages. Did any of them
Speaker 2: have a baby?
Speaker 1: They had? There was three children there.
Speaker 2: Who are like, hey, no, could come now.
Speaker 1: So there were two other bodies that were found near
Speaker 1: the fourteen, right, and so the investigation hypothesized that the
Speaker 1: fourteen people, including the three children, had taken sedative pills.
Speaker 1: Then the two others that they found near the fourteen,
Speaker 1: they were identified as Jean Pierre and Andre Friedel, shot
Speaker 1: each member in the head one by one with two
Speaker 1: twenty two caliber rifles. After that, they poured gasoline on
Speaker 1: the bodies and set them ablaze before they both shot
Speaker 1: themselves in the head with a revolver.
Speaker 2: So that they would fall into the fire.
Speaker 1: Nope, the two the bodies of the two perpetrators were
Speaker 1: found alongside the burned ones, but they were not themselves burned.
Speaker 1: So that's I said fifty two before. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: was fourteen fifteen, sixteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that number fifty two you said didn't include
Speaker 2: the family members.
Speaker 1: It didn't include the members, the founder, the founders, So
Speaker 1: we're talking just cult members right now, that'd be fifty
Speaker 1: two plus sixteen.
Speaker 2: Well, why don't the families of this founders.
Speaker 1: Count because they're not technically cult members? Right? Would you
Speaker 1: count Jones in with the Jonestown?
Speaker 2: Well, there's cult leaders and there's cult members, and it
Speaker 2: just seems to me that it's weird that they differentiate
Speaker 2: the death total.
Speaker 1: Well, to look into this, which I tried to find,
Speaker 1: they make no mention of wives, and they make no
Speaker 1: mention of other children except for Emmanuel. And it's almost
Speaker 1: impossible to find information on how they uh ended up
Speaker 1: killing themselves.
Speaker 2: I wonder why.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2: Check Reddit.
Speaker 1: It's almost as if they maybe didn't go through with
Speaker 1: it and skip town or something.
Speaker 2: Or like, but it did say they did die or
Speaker 2: did I just assume that?
Speaker 1: But you know how they'll say like, oh, yeah, and
Speaker 1: the members were or in the cult leaders were found
Speaker 1: in there in a house nearby, and they had all
Speaker 1: committed suicide. But it's like, how do we know that,
Speaker 1: Like I like, we didn't see their bodies.
Speaker 2: Well that's what I always say, how do we know
Speaker 2: any of it's real?
Speaker 1: But so anyways, there goes another sixteen but it doesn't
Speaker 1: even stop there because on March twenty second, nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: two five more surviving members of the Solar Temple died
Speaker 1: in a mass suicide in Saint Casimir, Ca, Quebec.
Speaker 2: So at this time you could just off a bunch
Speaker 2: of motherfuckers and make it look like they were Solar
Speaker 2: Temple members. Yeah, I guess, because seems like there's not
Speaker 2: a lot of there's not like a roster you can
Speaker 2: go check for membership of this thing.
Speaker 1: If you looked hard, well there were they were members
Speaker 1: that had been So this cult did a lot of
Speaker 1: like video ritualism where they'd film it, and a lot
Speaker 1: of these surviving members were on like the videos and stuff,
Speaker 1: and they knew who they were and had been identified
Speaker 1: in like the You remember how was his fuck from
Speaker 1: Heaven's Gate used to film himself and his members all
Speaker 1: the time. So these mass suicides that they kept finding
Speaker 1: were confirmed members. But it just seems odd to me
Speaker 1: that it was like they were not chosen for the
Speaker 1: transit or whatever, and then still ended up years later
Speaker 1: doing this mass suicide business, like nineteen ninety five, flash forward,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, five more.
Speaker 2: Maybe the transit comes in waves, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But so they basically burnt their house down with them
Speaker 1: inside of it.
Speaker 2: And Marie, did you say how many there were.
Speaker 1: Five more the family? It was two couples and one
Speaker 1: of the people their dad, So it was two couples
Speaker 1: and a dad of one of the people apparent, so
Speaker 1: five total. And then the responding officers found three teenage
Speaker 1: survives at the scene, the children of one of the
Speaker 1: couples who were found to be completely drugged out of
Speaker 1: their mind, and the teenagers burned the house down at
Speaker 1: their parents' request after being drugged and begging for their lives,
Speaker 1: and they managed to survive the ordeal. But that brings
Speaker 1: the death toll, not including Joseph de mambro and Luke Gerrei,
Speaker 1: to seventy four. That's crazy, isn't it. And over the
Speaker 1: course of what ninety four to ninety seven, it's.
Speaker 2: Kind of quick really well as far as cult stories go.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath, many conspiracy theories quote unquote quote revolved
Speaker 1: around the event's most allegend government and organized crime involvement.
Speaker 2: See I was looking for like somewhere to go with that,
Speaker 2: and you didn't really see anything. But so what was
Speaker 2: the speculation on that?
Speaker 1: So Luke JARREI there's not much to find on him,
Speaker 1: but Joseph de Mombro had been caught up in a
Speaker 1: bunch of fraudulent schemes where he was like transporting illegal
Speaker 1: weapons and stuff like that. And there was a lot
Speaker 1: of money laundering going on with the Red Cross in
Speaker 1: the Solar Temple, and with the members being so affluent
Speaker 1: and wealthy, and they kind of were picky and choosy
Speaker 1: on who they would let in. They kind of were
Speaker 1: starting to put the pieces together and they thought that
Speaker 1: they could be involved in like some kind of governmental
Speaker 1: or organized crime business. So, I mean, how do you
Speaker 1: feel about that? How many would you give it? One
Speaker 1: out of ten Solar Temples?
Speaker 2: I think I need more information. It just seems like
Speaker 2: it's a pretty There had to be so many details
Speaker 2: in there that we need to.
Speaker 1: Know, Like just on what I gave you, I would
Speaker 1: give it six solar temples. Six Yeah, m.
Speaker 2: I'd go five. It's like your average cult story. It's
Speaker 2: it's interesting. I mean, it seems like it's got a
Speaker 2: lot of foundation.
Speaker 1: Do you not find it so interesting though? That it's
Speaker 1: one It was one of the first New Age cults,
Speaker 1: and it had so many connections back to Heaven's Skate
Speaker 1: who we know. Seems like there was more going on there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that part's intriguing too, that they were kind of
Speaker 2: going on at the same time. There was some alien
Speaker 2: aspect to both of their belief systems. And I mean,
Speaker 2: suicide's pretty common in these these big cult stories, so yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean there's probably a lot more in there that
Speaker 2: we could uncover.
Speaker 1: I also just think it's interesting how like a lot
Speaker 1: of these things that get started on these like new
Speaker 1: ag weird theosophical principles, they always end up in like
Speaker 1: just skill your just die.
Speaker 2: Well, if the Tibetan Buddhists are ray, they're gonna come
Speaker 2: back as Ambas on dog shit do it all over again.
Speaker 2: They just lost like five karma points, maybe even three.
Speaker 1: So did you find it interesting at least?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It was? It was a good one to hear
Speaker 2: about that I like I said, I'd never heard of
Speaker 2: this one. Well, thanks for listening, Thanks for sharing.
Speaker 4: On October the fifth, nineteen ninety four, five people were
Speaker 4: found dead in this house in Canada. Ten hours later,
Speaker 4: in Switzerland, twenty five bodies were discovered in a chalet
Speaker 4: in the small town of Salva, and twenty three more
Speaker 4: in a nearby village. In less than twenty four hours,
Speaker 4: fifty three people had died there remained set alight by
Speaker 4: identical incendiary devices. Among the dead eight children, several senior
Speaker 4: civil servants, and two millionaires. But they had something else
Speaker 4: in common. All were members of a secretive sect, the
Speaker 4: Order of the Solar Temple.
Speaker 1: Do you have something for me? I do I feel
Speaker 1: like yours is going to be better than mine?
Speaker 2: You feel like mine's going to be better?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, I don't know, because it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: you were very impressed by the Solar Temple.
Speaker 2: Well you didn't start to fucking think if you want
Speaker 2: me to be impressed, if you want to impress me,
Speaker 2: start a real cult.
Speaker 1: I want. But I was trying to go for these
Speaker 1: ones that nobody's heard about. So I mean the ones
Speaker 1: that have like all the obvious cult or like government
Speaker 1: connections or like weird CIA stuff. Everybody knows about those ones,
Speaker 1: you know, but these lesser known ones that are not
Speaker 1: as researched are harder to dig stuff up on.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, I was surprised that you looked and couldn't
Speaker 2: find like details on the guy's families and that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff, because seems like that was almost deliberately left out.
Speaker 1: Well, there's more information on Alice Bailey than either Luke
Speaker 1: Gree or Joseph Demambro. I mean, it's hard to find
Speaker 1: fucking dogshit on them, and a lot of the not Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: but like a lot of the other sites you can
Speaker 1: go to if you google the Solar Temple, they have
Speaker 1: the death count wrong. They say only sixteen died, So
Speaker 1: it's like they purposely manipulate the numbers too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which time were they talking.
Speaker 1: About, right, that's because it was over a span of
Speaker 1: a few years.
Speaker 2: There, you go, maybe that's the missing number because you
Speaker 2: said there was. I did the math when you were
Speaker 2: talking about the deaths in France forty three and then
Speaker 2: in Geneva. Yeah, you said fifty two in total, forty
Speaker 2: three plus sixteen is fifty nine, So maybe that extra
Speaker 2: five is luxure right the families? Yeah, who knows that
Speaker 2: they need to make a documentary on Netflix about it?
Speaker 1: That's what I said.
Speaker 2: Well, I was being facetious, but it'd be a good one.
Speaker 1: If they could find more info.
Speaker 2: On it, Well they would netflixify it. Yeah, they sure won,
Speaker 2: and then Tom O'Neill.
Speaker 1: Would cry, So what cold do you have for me?
Speaker 2: Yes, for my cult? On this edition of Inside the
Speaker 2: CULTI Verse, I chose I probably way more well known
Speaker 2: one than the one you talked about. In fact, definitely
Speaker 2: more well known. And it's called Synanon any.
Speaker 1: Relation to the nutmeg or pumpkin spice cult?
Speaker 2: What's that.
Speaker 1: Cinnamon?
Speaker 2: Some reason? I don't think you're gonna edit that one. Well,
Speaker 2: it's kind of funny why they named it Synanon. Why, Oh,
Speaker 2: we will get to that. But so Cynanon is kind
Speaker 2: of something that maybe older people would know about because
Speaker 2: it was kind of a phenomenon when it was taking place,
Speaker 2: and it did get a lot of attention and coverage,
Speaker 2: especially as it like progressed. And this thing ran from
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty eight to nineteen ninety one, where it officially disbanded,
Speaker 2: but as we'll see, there is still remnants of it
Speaker 2: in the culture, and I think they just did some
Speaker 2: documentaries in the last couple of years. Both of them
Speaker 2: stream on like I think Paramount Plus and HBO oh, so.
Speaker 1: This one is probably more well known.
Speaker 2: Yeah it is, and I just I.
Speaker 1: Started to actually haven't heard of it though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hadn't either. When Brandy Renee came on Conspiracy
Speaker 2: Playtime to talk about Matthew North, we ended up going
Speaker 2: down a lot of different rabbit holes, and se Do
Speaker 2: is one of them, and we ended up mentioning c
Speaker 2: do ce do. It's all caps ce edu. It's one
Speaker 2: of those wilderness programs where you send troubled teens. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we're getting to end, so at the beginning of this thing,
Speaker 2: it revolves around a guy named Charles D. Dric, who
Speaker 2: we might refer to at certain points as Chuck or
Speaker 2: Daddy because he was big Daddy.
Speaker 1: Was he a good looking guy.
Speaker 2: He should sue Sam Tripoli for copyright infringement. He was
Speaker 2: not a good looking guy. In fact, he was kind
Speaker 2: of weird looking. He was kind of a heavy set dude.
Speaker 2: He'd had about with meningitis when he was a young kid,
Speaker 2: and so like half his face was kind of.
Speaker 1: Almost paralyzed Bell's palsy.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, here, I'll show you a picture of him
Speaker 2: and you could even clip it in.
Speaker 1: But oh let's see. Oh no, no, no, I mean
Speaker 1: he looks like he could be a He looks like
Speaker 1: John Wayne Gacy with Bell's palsy.
Speaker 2: Okay, tell me he doesn't. I mean all fa why
Speaker 2: guys look alike?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, So he's big daddy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Chuck's story is he was born in Ohio,
Speaker 2: one of the least good states out there. Fuck you, no,
Speaker 2: I've never been about to go right, but he was
Speaker 2: born in Ohio. No hate, I'll check it out, report back.
Speaker 2: But he had a father who was kind of a raging, drunk,
Speaker 2: not very nice guy, and he ended up dying in
Speaker 2: a car accident with another woman who he'd been running
Speaker 2: around town with. And I think Chuck was four at
Speaker 2: the time, and he had two little brothers. He was
Speaker 2: the oldest of three, and he kind of took on
Speaker 2: the father role and was very close with his mother,
Speaker 2: some would say almost inappropriately. So I think there was
Speaker 2: some interview footage where he was talking about how when
Speaker 2: she married. I think he was in his early teens.
Speaker 2: It kind of tore their relationship apart, and he said
Speaker 2: that his woman or his girl had been stolen.
Speaker 1: From him talking about his mom.
Speaker 2: Yes, So anyway, one of Chuck's brothers died from complications
Speaker 2: of the flu, and he kind of always blamed himself
Speaker 2: for that. He kind of was aimless. But somehow he
Speaker 2: managed to get into Notre Dame and he got real
Speaker 2: close with one of the I don't know the title,
Speaker 2: but one of the Catholic guys there. Spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time with him, said to have had a lot
Speaker 2: of influence on his life. And then he returned home
Speaker 2: and because he flunked out of school, returned home, he
Speaker 2: was just a royal fuck up, just drunk all the time.
Speaker 2: And he ended up having some friends talk him into
Speaker 2: and this is after he'd moved to California. So he
Speaker 2: moved to California and made some friends. A couple of
Speaker 2: them talked him into going to an AA meeting, and
Speaker 2: this was like groundbreaking for Chuck. He saw these drunks
Speaker 2: in one room telling stories, and as soon as he
Speaker 2: saw anybody could talk, he rushed to the stage and
Speaker 2: he talked for over an hour, and his style was
Speaker 2: kind of like, you know, he didn't hold any punches,
Speaker 2: and he found like, wow, I can really connect, I
Speaker 2: can get through with these people. And he started having
Speaker 2: little meetings on his own, you know, with members of AA,
Speaker 2: and he would do it at his house and it
Speaker 2: just kind of started snowballing, and before he knew it,
Speaker 2: they all couldn't fit in his house anymore. So he
Speaker 2: ended up getting some donations from few of them, and
Speaker 2: they rented this kind of a shitty building in Santa
Speaker 2: Monica and moved in there. And at this point there's
Speaker 2: like heroin addicts. They're also starting to gravitate towards this.
Speaker 2: At the time, in the late fifties, heroin was big
Speaker 2: and a lot of people were doing it, but there
Speaker 2: was no treatment centers.
Speaker 1: For it, so they were trying to get help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were okay, it was like AA, so people
Speaker 2: trying to quit.
Speaker 1: Drinking and also heroin a.
Speaker 2: Well, Heroin kind of started coming into this into the circle.
Speaker 2: These these heroin addicts that wanted help, like you said,
Speaker 2: and they kind of rubbed the alcoholics the wrong way.
Speaker 2: They thought they were like a lower class of people.
Speaker 2: And a couple of the alcoholics ALKI.
Speaker 1: Thought the heroin addicts were a lesser class of people.
Speaker 2: That's what they said. A few of them had some
Speaker 2: concerns with the people that they were starting to let in.
Speaker 2: And at this point it was called TLC for Tender
Speaker 2: Loving Care. That's what he had on the building. But
Speaker 2: so to kind of get into like why the heroin
Speaker 2: guys liked it and gals was because he it's called
Speaker 2: attack therapy. He incorporated this technique into these sessions and
Speaker 2: they called it the game.
Speaker 1: What was fun about it?
Speaker 2: Okay, so the game, I'm going to read a little
Speaker 2: excerpt from an article from Cabinet that talks quite a
Speaker 2: bit about this Synanon group. The game consisted of a
Speaker 2: dozen or so addicts sitting in a circle. One player
Speaker 2: would start talking about the appearance or behavior of another,
Speaker 2: picking out their defects and criticizing their character. But as
Speaker 2: soon as the subject of the attack tried to defend
Speaker 2: him or herself, other players would join the barrage, unleashing
Speaker 2: no holds barred, verbal onslaught. Bulgarity was encouraged, talk dirty
Speaker 2: and live clean, said Deidrich, and so the other members
Speaker 2: would accuse the defendant of real and imagined crimes. Of
Speaker 2: being selfish, unthinking, of being a no good, ugly diseased
Speaker 2: cocksucker who was too weak to go straight and was
Speaker 2: much too much of an asshole junkie, cry baby motherfucker
Speaker 2: to admit it.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 2: Faced with this unrelenting group assault, the recipient would eventually
Speaker 2: have a little choice but to admit their wrongdoing and
Speaker 2: promise to him in their ways. Then the group would
Speaker 2: turn to the next person and begin all over again.
Speaker 1: So they got braided until they got clean. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the thought behind it.
Speaker 2: And to go back a little bit with these sessions
Speaker 2: that he was having and when it was like an
Speaker 2: official meeting place and it was in that brick building.
Speaker 2: His only rules there was two was of course no
Speaker 2: drugs or alcohol and no violence. And so in the
Speaker 2: in the game, the rule was you were encouraged to
Speaker 2: stay seated while you did it, but you could say
Speaker 2: anything you wanted as long as it wasn't like threatening
Speaker 2: vio it.
Speaker 1: But they took turns, right, everybody got berated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And well, that's the funny thing is Chuck was
Speaker 2: not a participate part of the game unless he was
Speaker 2: helping Barid somebody else. And you're going to see was
Speaker 2: he still ALKI No, he took his last drink the
Speaker 2: day before he went to the AA. Mab at hypocrite
Speaker 2: until later in the story. But no, he's a hypocrite.
Speaker 2: You're going to see like the rules of this thing
Speaker 2: as it grows, it all kind of suits Chuck, Sure,
Speaker 2: big daddy. So this thing started to kind of like
Speaker 2: gain some following after these heroin addicts, many of who
Speaker 2: attributed their success in staying clean to participating in the game,
Speaker 2: and the alcoholics didn't really like it. So pretty much
Speaker 2: around the time that this thing was taking off, it
Speaker 2: pretty much switched from alcoholics to strictly heroin addicts. And
Speaker 2: he kind of went along with this. He thought, you know,
Speaker 2: there's not you know, NA wasn't a thing yet, it
Speaker 2: was just AA, and so he took it upon himself
Speaker 2: to kind of just build this thing that he saw working.
Speaker 2: And so one of the junkies or as Chuck I mean,
Speaker 2: he demanded that they call themselves dope fiends. So one
Speaker 2: of the dope fiends slurred the words symposium and seminar
Speaker 2: together just kind of on accident, and it came out
Speaker 2: Cininar and Chuck sat there and went sennin On, like
Speaker 2: you get Zion, you get the a Noon, you know,
Speaker 2: and he just thought it kind of rang, and so
Speaker 2: they officially became Synanon. And I think there was even
Speaker 2: some issues with him calling his center TLC Tender Loving Care,
Speaker 2: because that already existed. So Synanon is what it officially
Speaker 2: became known as. And he kind of started seeing that
Speaker 2: he could build something bigger, like an alternative lifestyle, almost utopian,
Speaker 2: and so members started moving in and staying there. And
Speaker 2: at first you could graduate from the program, but he
Speaker 2: saw that so many of them that left kind of
Speaker 2: relapsed and came right back. So as this thing continued
Speaker 2: to grow, he decided that, yeah, you stay here even
Speaker 2: after you're sober, and it kind of became a like
Speaker 2: intentional community where there was work, there was chores, and
Speaker 2: they would all split.
Speaker 1: So do you think this started out as like something
Speaker 1: that was actually helping.
Speaker 2: People for sure? Yeah, because in the beginning, I was
Speaker 2: to say, this thing goes from like addiction treatment to
Speaker 2: a societal experiment to eventually almost like a terrorist organization.
Speaker 2: Oh god, And I mean all along you're starting even now,
Speaker 2: you're starting to see like cult undertones with the thing
Speaker 2: about alcoholics Anonymous was there was no leader, and that's
Speaker 2: why so many people love it to this day. It's just,
Speaker 2: you know, a group of people and this was not that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's almost like I thought, as I was
Speaker 2: researching this, it's like if you mixed alcoholics Anonymous with
Speaker 2: scientology and Waco oh Ricky would get the story of Synanon.
Speaker 2: Really Yeah, so yeah, they had twenty four hour day
Speaker 2: split into two twelve hour shifts, and some people would
Speaker 2: work the days and some people would work the nights,
Speaker 2: and you would show up. And a lot of the
Speaker 2: heroin addicts said that it was obvious that Chuck, big
Speaker 2: daddy guy, he did not know shit about like what
Speaker 2: heroin withdrawal was. I mean, he would just make sure
Speaker 2: people were in a room and they would come down,
Speaker 2: and then once they were weren't feeling so shitty, he
Speaker 2: would put him into the groups and they would participate
Speaker 2: in this community. And it really started to kind of
Speaker 2: drawing some attention. A lot of people loved the game.
Speaker 2: I guess Lennard Nimoy went, Barry Seal from the Black Panthers.
Speaker 1: They were all heroin addicts.
Speaker 2: No, but they liked the game, and they.
Speaker 1: Like they just liked telling people what pieces of shit
Speaker 1: they were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess Lennard Nimoy loved to go just fucking
Speaker 2: scream at people. He was probably like Chuck, I doubt
Speaker 2: anybody would fucking start talking shit to Spock. So this
Speaker 2: thing out.
Speaker 1: So another star Trek involved in a cult.
Speaker 2: Weird And there was a movie in nineteen sixty one
Speaker 2: made about this Synanon and there was like a motown
Speaker 2: jazzy song that was because I guess they would just
Speaker 2: have parties. And I guess the heroin addicts really knew
Speaker 2: how to dance. That's what a lot of them were saying.
Speaker 1: Just throw them out there and let them few call
Speaker 1: over everybody.
Speaker 2: Well they're not on heroin at that time, they're recovered.
Speaker 1: So can I ask you something? This is working just
Speaker 1: based on pure humiliation alone.
Speaker 2: Well that apparently people needed to like be shamed in
Speaker 2: order to look at themselves. This attack therapy model wasn't unique.
Speaker 2: He made it big, and I mean there's elements of
Speaker 2: that stuff that I've seen in other cults.
Speaker 1: Well, you sure don't like it when I use it
Speaker 1: on you?
Speaker 2: What do you mean? It's like a nat there, It's
Speaker 2: like a nightly ritual, I'm not allowed to turn it
Speaker 2: on you. So around the time that like he's taken
Speaker 2: in all these heroin addicts, this one thing is this
Speaker 2: thing was always like egalitarian he had. I mean in
Speaker 2: the days that this was going on in the late fifties,
Speaker 2: it was still pretty integrated. But yeah, so a woman
Speaker 2: named Betty she ended up joining, and.
Speaker 1: She was they were they calling them in's and.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure in other parts of the world.
Speaker 1: But that was part of the attack therapy.
Speaker 2: I wasn't in all these game sessions. It's so curious,
Speaker 2: but you could call anybody anything, who knows. But there
Speaker 2: was a guy who was a football player. I don't
Speaker 2: remember what school it was. It was a big college
Speaker 2: in California, somewhere where John Madden was like the defensive coach.
Speaker 2: And this black guy he ended up joining. And the
Speaker 2: thing he said he loved about it was like he
Speaker 2: walked in there and he saw a bunch of people
Speaker 2: just kind of co mingling, and so him and his
Speaker 2: wife joined and he kind of ended up being a
Speaker 2: bigger part of it too as this story progresses. But
Speaker 2: I don't remember his last name. His name was Buddy.
Speaker 2: But he liked that and then Chuck ended up marrying Betty,
Speaker 2: and so you had an interracial marriage there. And that's
Speaker 2: another thing he would like arrange marriages. He would say, oh,
Speaker 2: you guys have been dating. You know, you've been together
Speaker 2: for six months. In my opinion, you either hit six
Speaker 2: months and you either break up or you marry. So
Speaker 2: a lot of these people he was making them get married. Well,
Speaker 2: and there was kids born into this thing, and that
Speaker 2: becomes a big part of this story. So it was
Speaker 2: kind of a commune. As it grew even more, I was.
Speaker 1: Gonna say, you can at some point they just start
Speaker 1: fucking each other.
Speaker 2: Well, it gets weird with that, and so he would
Speaker 2: make the kids go to this Synanon school and instead
Speaker 2: of teachers, they had people who were nowhere near being
Speaker 2: certified to teach. They were called demonstrators, and they would
Speaker 2: they're just ex heroin addicts who would I guess always
Speaker 2: an addict or once an addict, always an addict. So
Speaker 2: they were heroin addicts in recovery, and they were in
Speaker 2: charge of these kids. And if you had kids, or
Speaker 2: you came in there with kids, you thought of everybody
Speaker 2: as your parents. And so some of these kids would
Speaker 2: go like weeks at a time without seeing their moms,
Speaker 2: and they weren't allowed to call their moms anything but
Speaker 2: their names because it's kind of like, yeah, we're all
Speaker 2: your mom and dad in here. And so people stuck
Speaker 2: around for it, and a lot of them thought it
Speaker 2: was a good idea to raise kids communally instead of
Speaker 2: like the family unit. At some point the government stepped
Speaker 2: in and said, you have to shut this thing down.
Speaker 1: Where was it taking place at?
Speaker 2: So it started in Santa Monica and California. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: it started in a seedy neighborhood when he was in
Speaker 2: that brick building. And once he starts getting like some
Speaker 2: donations from members, he kind of moves into I think
Speaker 2: it's called the del Mar Club, and it was a
Speaker 2: kind of ritzy thing.
Speaker 1: And how was he able to move into some ritzy thing.
Speaker 1: It's not like heroin attics are huge contributors to shit.
Speaker 2: No, But he actually at one point started getting people
Speaker 2: who were just entranced by the thing he was building
Speaker 2: and they wanted to be a part of.
Speaker 1: It, and they would just give him money.
Speaker 2: Well, they joined, and he said, you can join, but
Speaker 2: you have to sign stuff over to me. I mean,
Speaker 2: he had one guy sign over an entire mortgage company.
Speaker 2: He had one woman donate a what a million dollars?
Speaker 1: Shut the fuck up.
Speaker 2: So in his mind he starts seeing this and he's.
Speaker 1: He sounds like a TV preacher.
Speaker 2: Well his mind he goes from like wanting to help
Speaker 2: people into I can turn this into a business, and
Speaker 2: he actually starts like buying properties and building more like
Speaker 2: little communes. And at one point he had this nice
Speaker 2: house that he bought and it was called home Place,
Speaker 2: and everybody knew home Place was where Chuck lived, and
Speaker 2: if you were lucky enough to be in his inner circle,
Speaker 2: you could also go up there and like to be
Speaker 2: called to home Place was like the highest honor.
Speaker 1: And this fat guy with Bell's Paul, see that screams
Speaker 1: in people's faces.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he.
Speaker 1: Did not see like how mentally unstable we are as
Speaker 1: a nation when you hear stuff like this.
Speaker 2: Well, the guy had a talent, Like you said, he
Speaker 2: was like a TV preacher. That's what he did in
Speaker 2: these earthies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but when I see people signing stuff over to
Speaker 1: TV preachers, I get just as mad. It's still the same,
Speaker 1: it's still the same mental illness.
Speaker 2: Well, at least these people had a personal relationship. They
Speaker 2: weren't just like going to a megachurch and signing away
Speaker 2: their livelihoods. But it is very similar. But this thing
Speaker 2: was getting so much attention and being like prage.
Speaker 1: After they got clean, they just go out and do
Speaker 1: more drugs and come right back and get more screamed at.
Speaker 2: And well, that's when he decided to not let them graduate.
Speaker 2: He once you graduated, you were still part of the community.
Speaker 2: You didn't really leave this thing at a certain point.
Speaker 1: Oh, you were just enslaved.
Speaker 2: It's not even enslaved. You could leave in the early days.
Speaker 2: It kind of became a problem later on. But at first, anyway,
Speaker 2: this was all voluntary, and I would say it was
Speaker 2: voluntary except for these kids, and that shit gets dark
Speaker 2: with the kids. But we're not quite there yet. So
Speaker 2: I started to mention that the government stepped in and
Speaker 2: said you're not certified to be doing this, and rather
Speaker 2: than to fight it, he pled guilty and he ended
Speaker 2: up serving the thirty days in jail. And when he
Speaker 2: did that, it was just it was like a big
Speaker 2: boom because people saw this guy as someone who's willing
Speaker 2: to like go down for his cause. And I don't
Speaker 2: remember it wasn't Jerry Brown, who was the governor in
Speaker 2: the sixties, like he's mentioned in the World Canyon Book
Speaker 2: a lot, But it was somebody Brown, probably a family
Speaker 2: member or even the dad of him. But this governor
Speaker 2: came in and said and gave him like free reign.
Speaker 2: He said, all right, we'll get the certification worked out.
Speaker 2: Never happened, so he's kind of just allowed now to
Speaker 2: operate however he wants to. And a lot of people
Speaker 2: in surrounding states even were like, Hey, look at what
Speaker 2: they're doing over there. This seems like something I want
Speaker 2: to be a part of. And he called the straits
Speaker 2: the people who didn't have addictions. He called them lifestylers.
Speaker 2: They came in just enamored with what was going on,
Speaker 2: and that's when the money started pouring in. He'd get
Speaker 2: these people who some of them had kids. I listened
Speaker 2: to one guy in an interview and he was like
Speaker 2: fifteen or sixteen, and this was like in the early seventies,
Speaker 2: when this thing really had been rolling for a while,
Speaker 2: and he joined and he was just kind of like,
Speaker 2: what the fuck is this that I'm a part of.
Speaker 2: He thought the school was really weird, and he just
Speaker 2: he didn't want to be there, but he also was
Speaker 2: kind of fascinated by it. And so at one point
Speaker 2: they got to the spot where some of these kids
Speaker 2: were acting rather unruly and he didn't know what to
Speaker 2: do with it. And I was talking about that ex
Speaker 2: collegiate football player he start. He made that guy start
Speaker 2: this program called the Punk Squad, and they would take
Speaker 2: these kids that didn't listen, didn't follow rules, and this
Speaker 2: is when he decided to break his first rule of
Speaker 2: no violence, and if these kids acted out of order,
Speaker 2: you could just kick the shit out of them. I mean,
Speaker 2: there was one girl who said that she got caught
Speaker 2: lying about cheating on some homework or something, and they
Speaker 2: made her go stand in the middle of the gymnasium,
Speaker 2: told her to take her glass off, and they just
Speaker 2: decked her in the face.
Speaker 1: Took turns.
Speaker 2: Well, i mean, I'm sure just one punch. I'm sure
Speaker 2: with this particular instance, it only took one punch.
Speaker 1: So his solution to unruly teenagers was just kicked the
Speaker 1: shit out of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was quoted as saying, there's a difference
Speaker 2: between child abuse and corporal punishment. And so the Punk
Speaker 2: Squad kids, you know, they were kept in line by
Speaker 2: having the shit kicked out of them if they didn't listen.
Speaker 2: And they straight up started this like military program for
Speaker 2: kids who wouldn't listen, and that was called the Punk Squad,
Speaker 2: like I said, And these kids were kind of beaten
Speaker 2: into shape, and some of them.
Speaker 1: So it worked well, they didn't rebel.
Speaker 2: Some of them did not like it. And we'll step
Speaker 2: ahead to the next part of the story where they
Speaker 2: had this property next to you, a few ranches, and
Speaker 2: the kids would run away and there wasn't a lot
Speaker 2: of places to go. So there was this family I've
Speaker 2: got I want to say they were called the Gambaninis,
Speaker 2: and they had a ranch and they ended up helping
Speaker 2: a run away and so to nip that in the bud,
Speaker 2: Chuck and some of the other people told the kids
Speaker 2: that that ranch over there, if you even go onto
Speaker 2: their property, they'll shoot you. But it kind of spread
Speaker 2: within the circles of the kids that yeah, this is
Speaker 2: a safe place to go. And one of the kids
Speaker 2: gave an interview one of the kids of the ranchers
Speaker 2: and said that they'd watch these kids just come and
Speaker 2: some of them had like been visibly abused, and they
Speaker 2: would call the cops, and then the cops would take
Speaker 2: them right back to senan On.
Speaker 1: What that's like, Jeffrey, don't type shit.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the or two of the debt pops.
Speaker 1: Take the kids back to the abusers.
Speaker 2: It was alleged that the sheriff of this area was in,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Just in and on group No.
Speaker 2: The two deputies were members and the sheriff was getting
Speaker 2: paid off.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And then in one instance, this girl escaped. It was
Speaker 2: the girl I told you about that they decked in
Speaker 2: the face, rade her take her glasses off. She escaped
Speaker 2: and her mom came and picked her up and took
Speaker 2: her right back to senning On, and she ended up
Speaker 2: eventually getting away. She her dad ended up finding out
Speaker 2: what was going on. She went and lived with him.
Speaker 2: So she was one of the lucky ones who was
Speaker 2: able to get out. And at one point Chuck was
Speaker 2: just kind of like, you know, he's business oriented, and
Speaker 2: he was like, why are we even fucking around with
Speaker 2: these kids, Like, obviously we're losing a lot of money.
Speaker 2: Each kid is like one hundred and two hundred grand
Speaker 2: a year, And he decided that they were gonna stop
Speaker 2: having their own kids within and so he uh. He
Speaker 2: made the men get vasectomies, and some of them were
Speaker 2: as young as eighteen, and they would have these doctors
Speaker 2: show up and they would have them all they were
Speaker 2: they were basically I heard them at one point referred
Speaker 2: to as vasectomy parties. What And so one of the
Speaker 2: main dudes who was like ride or.
Speaker 1: Dies it always come to like cutting the dicks and stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, that's another thing I failed to mention. So they
Speaker 2: if you broke a ruler, you got caught lying, or
Speaker 2: if you got caught using, they would shave your head
Speaker 2: and it was kind.
Speaker 1: Of not another humiliation.
Speaker 2: And if you were a woman and you were caught
Speaker 2: doing one of those things, you had to wear a
Speaker 2: baseball cap, and.
Speaker 1: That doesn't seem nearly as bad.
Speaker 2: Well, then they made Betty actually was kind of like,
Speaker 2: you know, first wave feminist, and she decided that this
Speaker 2: isn't equality. So they had this thing called the Wire
Speaker 2: and it was an FM radio feed that was wired
Speaker 2: directly into all the Synanon buildings and you could broadcast
Speaker 2: a video on it too, And she shaved her head
Speaker 2: and then a bunch of the other women started doing
Speaker 2: it too. And so when you're into like the seventies.
Speaker 2: They're all bald. Every member in there has.
Speaker 1: A shaved like Heaven's skate.
Speaker 2: Well, this is before Heaven's Gate.
Speaker 1: Well I'm just saying, look at the patterns, just the.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is before Heaven's Gate.
Speaker 1: Gate also made the members cash straight themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this was just a sect me, babe.
Speaker 1: But why does it always go go to like the
Speaker 1: outer limits of like humiliation, cutting dicks, shaving heads, killing
Speaker 1: each other, sucking each other.
Speaker 2: You're gonna have to do whatever it takes to uh,
Speaker 2: getting rid of your kids, show your loyalty. And so
Speaker 2: you see all of these cults in pop culture. It's
Speaker 2: it's shaved heads that started with these guys.
Speaker 1: But didn't the Mansons shave their heads?
Speaker 2: Uh maybe after the fact, not at first, but they did.
Speaker 2: They did like after, like after during the trial if
Speaker 2: I remember correctly, because he did right, So anyway, I
Speaker 2: don't remember where it was.
Speaker 1: Now you were saying they had vasectomy parties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so this is a darker element. And I
Speaker 2: had to kind of dig for this one because I
Speaker 2: looked through a lot of these stories and this didn't
Speaker 2: come up. But once there was, when he decided no
Speaker 2: more kids, there was five women who were pregnant, and
Speaker 2: Chuck decided that they should all get abortions.
Speaker 1: Oh pregnant.
Speaker 2: Well, one woman said fuck this and she ended up leaving.
Speaker 2: Another woman was eight months.
Speaker 1: Pregnant, Oh my god, stop it.
Speaker 2: And she was one of the four that had an abortion.
Speaker 1: That's not an abortion at that point.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people left over this. So there's,
Speaker 2: like I said, we'll hop back a little bit, probably
Speaker 2: go back and forth in time, but you know, the
Speaker 2: rules kind of always revolved around either what Chuck's doing
Speaker 2: in his own life or what he wants. So at
Speaker 2: one point, you know, it was like any recovery group,
Speaker 2: you could drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. Chuck decided he
Speaker 2: was a smoker that he was going to quit smoking,
Speaker 2: so he decided no more smoking. A lot of people
Speaker 2: left over that, they're like, fuck this. I like cigarettes
Speaker 2: way more than being in a cult. And at another
Speaker 2: point he had some health issues and he had a
Speaker 2: doctor tell him that he needed to cut grain and
Speaker 2: sugar out of his diet. So he made it across
Speaker 2: the board rule no sugar.
Speaker 1: So what's good for the goose?
Speaker 2: Basically, it's good for big Daddy. Yeah, And so oh
Speaker 2: with Yeah, so the vasectomy. Oh so this guy who
Speaker 2: was I don't remember his name off the top of
Speaker 2: my head, but he was a writer die with Bill
Speaker 2: up into the point with the vasectomies. He just saw
Speaker 2: it as like these some of these kids are as
Speaker 2: young or some of these men are as young as eighteen,
Speaker 2: and they don't have, you know, the faculty to decide
Speaker 2: this is what they want to do. And so he
Speaker 2: he kind of spoke out against it, and he was silenced.
Speaker 2: So he went to the sheriff, and the sheriff basically said,
Speaker 2: so you're telling me there's a bunch of drug addicts,
Speaker 2: all of them over eighteen, and they all want to
Speaker 2: give the sectomies, and you think I want to stop this.
Speaker 2: And then when the dude was sitting right there, he
Speaker 2: called and told on him.
Speaker 1: And so really, yeah, so they had he had like
Speaker 1: people on the inside all over the damn place.
Speaker 2: Well, the two of the deputies remembers, and the sheriff
Speaker 2: was on the payroll.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so how does this like come to a
Speaker 1: boiling pole?
Speaker 2: Oh, we'll get there. So when all this was going down,
Speaker 2: Betty was diagnosed with cancer and she ended up slowly dying,
Speaker 2: and he was pretty grief stricken. Everybody said, you know
Speaker 2: that he kind of changed permanently after that, but that
Speaker 2: didn't stop him. He ended up not very long after
Speaker 2: she died, he said, I'm taking applications, probably over the wire,
Speaker 2: I'm taking applications for a new wife. Oh boy, and
Speaker 2: six women. I don't know if they've filled out applications,
Speaker 2: but six women raised their hands proverbally, and he ended
Speaker 2: up picking someone half his age. She's one of the demonstrators.
Speaker 2: Oh and she was I think she was thirty. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he probably just which one's the hottest.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He picked this thirty one year old demonstrator slash what
Speaker 2: we would call a teacher, and they got married, and
Speaker 2: he was so happy with this. He decided, you know,
Speaker 2: what is marriage really? It's kind of confining, Like why
Speaker 2: don't we all do this? And so he decided that
Speaker 2: if you were married, you had to take place in
Speaker 2: this ceremony and you and your spouse would say all
Speaker 2: the things you loved about each other and then part ways.
Speaker 2: And a lot of the married couples were like what,
Speaker 2: and he said, well, it's it's more symbolic. This is
Speaker 2: just a ritual. This is an exercise, and so they
Speaker 2: all did it. And then right after they did it,
Speaker 2: he said, actually, this is real. And there were a
Speaker 2: few couples that said fuck this and left.
Speaker 1: But a lot of them wanted them to split up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of them stayed. He didn't only
Speaker 2: want them to split up, he wanted them all to
Speaker 2: remarry somebody else.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And so there was a lot of people that did this,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people, from what I can tell,
Speaker 2: remained in love. Some of them ended up reconciling and
Speaker 2: getting back together after this all kind of went down.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine? I mean, what do you think would
Speaker 1: have been the straw that broke the cam for you? Like,
Speaker 1: out of the series of events because you said, oh,
Speaker 1: some said fucking and last some said fucking left. Like
Speaker 1: where would you where do you? Where do you think
Speaker 1: you draw the line at?
Speaker 2: I probably would have set in on the first game
Speaker 2: and then went and did Heroin that night and never
Speaker 2: came back. That's just me.
Speaker 1: It definitely would have been where they took away my SIGs,
Speaker 1: because if you were like.
Speaker 2: So, you would have stayed through a lot of that
Speaker 2: other stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, if you were a legit Heroin.
Speaker 2: At what about when you give birth to your baby
Speaker 2: and they take it to the the what did they
Speaker 2: call it. It wasn't a nursery, so you can't even
Speaker 2: be that the hatchery is what they called it.
Speaker 1: You can't even be with your baby.
Speaker 2: Well that's another detail I omitted. But you would take
Speaker 2: turns breastfeeding each other's babies.
Speaker 1: So you couldn't just have your baby.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, no, fuck that was against the rules.
Speaker 1: But in the beginning days, if he was really just
Speaker 1: trying to help heroin addicts, like have a place to
Speaker 1: stay and maybe some food and get off drugs, I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like I could get behind something like that,
Speaker 1: but it just has spiraled into like a complete mayhem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how does I want to help people get off drugs
Speaker 1: and alcohol? Turn into abortions, bisectomies, You can't smoke, You
Speaker 1: gotta give your kids up. You put your babies in
Speaker 1: a hatchery, or let us beat the crap out of them,
Speaker 1: Let me have sex with whoever I want. Oh, by
Speaker 1: the way, get rid of your husband and wife.
Speaker 2: Oh and in the early days before any of this,
Speaker 2: like changing partner stuff went down, when we were recording
Speaker 2: somebody you had to like fill out paperwork and go
Speaker 2: to this specific building to have sex. So it was
Speaker 2: like conjugal life Fay, because he's controlling everything.
Speaker 1: This is just when you give it, you know, you
Speaker 1: give them an inch and they take them My oh
Speaker 1: just wait this this shit.
Speaker 2: I mean, we're getting close. Say that he dies, doesn't everybody?
Speaker 2: I mean, this guy when this thing started, he was
Speaker 2: like I think he was like in his fifties when
Speaker 2: Sinnanan started.
Speaker 1: So he's just an old cragley fu with the thirty
Speaker 1: year old wife.
Speaker 2: Now you're gonna have to just be patient and wait
Speaker 2: to the end, like everybody else. Well, I want to know, Well,
Speaker 2: we'll get there. So a lot of people when they
Speaker 2: I think that the changing partners thing really drove some
Speaker 2: of the people that he considered like real close to
Speaker 2: him away. And so that's when some shit went down
Speaker 2: because like one of the couples left and they found
Speaker 2: out that or they didn't find out they still had
Speaker 2: kids in there. Like so like one couple that ended
Speaker 2: up leaving his old wife from when they first got
Speaker 2: there had the kids and she wanted to stay, and
Speaker 2: so he ended up there was like a custody battle.
Speaker 2: And at this point I think it was Time Life
Speaker 2: magazine wrote how Synanon. It was an article and I'm paraphrasing,
Speaker 2: but it was entitled something like how Synanon went from
Speaker 2: a helpful recovery group to a kooky colt and he
Speaker 2: got pissed and he sued them for slander. And one
Speaker 2: of the things about Chuck was he hated lawyers, but
Speaker 2: there were lawyers in his group that he used when
Speaker 2: he needed them. And he ended up getting settlements from
Speaker 2: Time Life magazine, and he ended up getting a settlement
Speaker 2: from I think ABC, And at the time these were
Speaker 2: like record numbers, I think two point six million from
Speaker 2: Time Life. They ended up they settled out a court.
Speaker 2: They didn't want to like have a trial, and oh
Speaker 2: my god, they just threw him a big chunk of
Speaker 2: And we're kind of hopping around chronologically here, but there
Speaker 2: is a very important thing that happens. So when people
Speaker 2: start like wherever these guys went, they had run ends
Speaker 2: with like the neighbors, like the Ranchers and like that. God,
Speaker 2: I forgot that weird the weird name of that family?
Speaker 1: Did you say it?
Speaker 2: Like the Gambini. I just remember the Gambinos eating paninis
Speaker 2: to remember that name. But one time after they had
Speaker 2: like helped some kids get away, they kind of started
Speaker 2: like an underground railroad to get kids out of there.
Speaker 2: And imagine, so one of the things they did is
Speaker 2: they used their their punk squad like the older boys,
Speaker 2: and they ended up going to the foothills of the
Speaker 2: Sisku Mountains, which isn't far from us. It was this
Speaker 2: place called Badger and that was where they trained and
Speaker 2: they started calling this group the Imperial Marines. And so
Speaker 2: they always had their own police force on the premises,
Speaker 2: like you could volunteer to be a police officer instead
Speaker 2: of like you know, doing dishes or whatever.
Speaker 1: Probably would rather be on the policequog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were some older stories about how.
Speaker 1: They would work in the cafeteria.
Speaker 2: They would police themselves. But Chuck kind of found out that,
Speaker 2: you know, these are addicts. They they lie, and so
Speaker 2: he ended up starting his own police force. That was
Speaker 2: kind of earlier on. But so he just decided to
Speaker 2: have his own marine corps called the Imperial Marines. And they,
Speaker 2: like I said, they trained in Badger, California, in the
Speaker 2: foothills of the Sierra Mountains. They would like make them
Speaker 2: go out and stay the night in the woods, and
Speaker 2: there was just so many rattlesnakes. They learned how to
Speaker 2: hunt rattles snakes and eat them, and that this will
Speaker 2: come back into the story. So what I was starting
Speaker 2: to say is that family, the Gambinini's, one time they
Speaker 2: got home and they were met in their driveway and
Speaker 2: a bunch of shaved head, you know, militant looking guys
Speaker 2: got out and one of the kids, I think there
Speaker 2: was a boy and two girls in the car. One
Speaker 2: of the kids, the boy, he got out and ran away,
Speaker 2: and he from a distant watched them like just punching
Speaker 2: his dad in the face trying to pull him out
Speaker 2: of the car. I mean, they just beat the shit
Speaker 2: out of this guy. But so as this story progresses,
Speaker 2: he kind of decides to arm up even more. He's
Speaker 2: starting to get paranoid from you know, external conflicts. Up
Speaker 2: until this point, it all been kind of internal, but
Speaker 2: with like the media talking shit about him, and he
Speaker 2: kind of started to think that people are out to
Speaker 2: get us. And at this point he had kind of
Speaker 2: gone away from like this is a place to help
Speaker 2: drug addicts to like this is a new way to live,
Speaker 2: this is going to save the world. And he looked
Speaker 2: at it as like an US versus them mentality, and
Speaker 2: that trickled down into the members too. But they ended
Speaker 2: up making a purchase of like three hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: of weapons, and that kind of put him on a list.
Speaker 2: And they were tax exempt because they called themselves a
Speaker 2: treatment center. Like you could be a kid in California
Speaker 2: got caught with marijuana in your pocket and the judge
Speaker 2: would say, you have to go to Synanon and they
Speaker 2: were forced to take them because they wanted to keep
Speaker 2: their tax exempt status. At one point, he ended up
Speaker 2: trying to get religious exemption because he.
Speaker 1: Said, well, that's how colds go.
Speaker 2: Our members don't leave. You never leave a religion. This
Speaker 2: isn't a treatment facility. And so he started kind of
Speaker 2: drawing attention that he didn't even know about. The Iras
Speaker 2: had already been looking into him, but then the FED
Speaker 2: started looking into him. And how he found out was
Speaker 2: Jimmy Carter was president and he decided to go to
Speaker 2: d C with a couple of his other guys and
Speaker 2: they got there and he tried to get in like
Speaker 2: on the you know, the floor of the White House,
Speaker 2: and he wanted to be in with the drugs are,
Speaker 2: and they kind of laughed him out. And this is what.
Speaker 2: When he was in DC, he found out that he
Speaker 2: was being investigated because they made that huge watch weapon purchase,
Speaker 2: and in hindsight, he thought that probably wasn't a good
Speaker 2: idea and he should have spread out the purchases of
Speaker 2: the weapons. But then he said, but we weren't doing
Speaker 2: anything wrong. So I mean, he's always contradicting himself like that.
Speaker 2: But anyway, he found out that there was an investigation
Speaker 2: when he was in d C. And he and his
Speaker 2: wife and like two or three other guys fled to
Speaker 2: Italy for a while. And when he was in Italy
Speaker 2: he started drinking again and the guys that were with
Speaker 2: him were like, this is kind of weird. So now
Speaker 2: the first original he just gets to do whatever he
Speaker 2: wanted the first two rules. First the violence thing and
Speaker 2: then oh and that was another thing that happened. I
Speaker 2: think this was after Betty died. They were doing a
Speaker 2: game session and a woman was talking back to him
Speaker 2: just within the like the confines of the game. But
Speaker 2: he did not like that, as we established earlier, and
Speaker 2: he got up, walked over to her and dumped a
Speaker 2: soda on her head. And so a lot of people
Speaker 2: were like, this is just kind of getting out of control.
Speaker 2: You know, some people would call that. I mean, if
Speaker 2: you did that in public, you could get assault charges.
Speaker 2: And so a lot of people were turned off by that.
Speaker 2: And then when he went to Italy, the word got
Speaker 2: back that he had started drinking again, and when he
Speaker 2: came home, he was just full. Like one guy, I
Speaker 2: think it was Buddy, the ex college football player, he
Speaker 2: said when he heard he was drinking again, He's like, well,
Speaker 2: Chuck does everything he does hard. This isn't good, he said,
Speaker 2: like this is the end of sen and on. And
Speaker 2: when he got back, they started throwing the parties like
Speaker 2: they used to where people would dance, but now he
Speaker 2: was like encouraging everybody to drink. And a lot of
Speaker 2: people left over that. And so this thing's kind of
Speaker 2: starting to peter out, and there was some like I
Speaker 2: said earlier, there was starting to be some custody issues,
Speaker 2: and they ended up sending some of the Imperial Marines
Speaker 2: to one of the guy's house. And this guy was
Speaker 2: really good friends with Chuck up until the change partners thing,
Speaker 2: and he ended up leaving over that, and when he
Speaker 2: was suing for custody of his children. He came home
Speaker 2: one day with his wife and three dudes were waiting
Speaker 2: for him and they beat him almost to death. He
Speaker 2: was in coma for like a week.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And one of the little kids was standing in the
Speaker 2: doorway and saw the whole thing happen and.
Speaker 1: This is horrible.
Speaker 2: Well, most cult stories aren't uplifting, and this one.
Speaker 1: I'd rather be part of this solar temple.
Speaker 2: Well, she'd rather be helped die than this. So there
Speaker 2: was a lawyer and his name was Paul Morantz, and
Speaker 2: he kind of took it upon himself to like shut
Speaker 2: this shit down, and he was helping. I think he
Speaker 2: ended up winning a case where one of the members
Speaker 2: was accusing Sinnanan of brainwashing and he won that. And
Speaker 2: then he was starting to like look at the custody
Speaker 2: stuff and he saw that, you know, the one guy
Speaker 2: got the shit kicked out of him in his driveway
Speaker 2: almost to death, and he was kind of wondering, like, huh,
Speaker 2: I wonder you know, and he was kind of starting
Speaker 2: to think he might be in danger. One day, he
Speaker 2: got home from work and he had like one of
Speaker 2: those mailboxes where there's a slot on the outside and
Speaker 2: you have to reach into a box from the inside
Speaker 2: next to the door. And he was checking his mail
Speaker 2: and he saw a peculiar shape and he thought, what
Speaker 2: is that. It's like a package, maybe it's a scarf
Speaker 2: or something. And he reaches in there and that that
Speaker 2: strain shaped package lunges forward and bites him. And a snake,
Speaker 2: a rattlesnake that had its tail cut off so it
Speaker 2: couldn't rattle, and it bit him. It bit him. He
Speaker 2: ran outside and he chased a neighbor woman down and
Speaker 2: he said, I've been bit by a rattlesnake. Called the ambulance.
Speaker 2: It's Sinninon. I mean he knew right away, of course.
Speaker 2: And you know, like I said earlier, the Marines they
Speaker 2: were always around rattlesnakes and they knew how to kill them.
Speaker 2: So they had caught one cut its tail off, and
Speaker 2: eventually two guys ended up going down for this. One
Speaker 2: of them was an ex heroin addict from New York
Speaker 2: who had been there kind of in the early days,
Speaker 2: and the other one.
Speaker 1: Put a rattlesnake in this man's mailbox.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and right after this happened, guess what goes down
Speaker 2: in South America. I don't fucking know Jonestown.
Speaker 1: Oh, for fox sake, see how they're all related to.
Speaker 2: Kind of get this. So one of the guys was
Speaker 2: watching the news and he's like, Jim Jones, look at
Speaker 2: all those Adidas. So one of their businesses had put
Speaker 2: together a bunch of care packages with the d it
Speaker 2: is in.
Speaker 1: There, the synanos, and they sent care packages to Jonestown. Yes,
Speaker 1: stop it right now. Whah.
Speaker 2: And so Paul Morants, the lawyer, he was like, all right,
Speaker 2: I've got it. I can do this now. And he
Speaker 2: like went hard and he got the law enforcement involved,
Speaker 2: and they went and raided the compound, and.
Speaker 1: Uh did they use the ATF?
Speaker 2: Chuck wasn't there. No ATF. Maybe, I mean they were
Speaker 2: stockpiling guns. But they didn't shoot anybody, they didn't shoot
Speaker 2: any dogs. They just went looking for Chuck and he
Speaker 2: wasn't there. He was in Lake Havasu and they ended
Speaker 2: up finding him there and he was just fucking hammered.
Speaker 2: When they found him. They said he could barely function.
Speaker 2: And they said that at that point it was as
Speaker 2: though he had suffered some kind of like severe alcoholic
Speaker 2: brain damage or he had had a stroke and his memory,
Speaker 2: the part of his brain that was in charge of
Speaker 2: memory and emotions was gone, and so they didn't imprison him, they.
Speaker 1: Said, so he gets off scott free.
Speaker 2: Well, the only thing they did was they said he
Speaker 2: had to officially step down as the leader of Synanon. Now,
Speaker 2: this guy I didn't mention when he had started Synanon,
Speaker 2: and he was just kind of I told you, he
Speaker 2: was just kind of a low life drunk in Santa Monica.
Speaker 2: He'd already had two marriages and he had two kids,
Speaker 2: and two of the kids ended up in their later
Speaker 2: life joining Synanon. One of them was Chuck Junior and
Speaker 2: the other I think the daughter's name, but god, I
Speaker 2: want to say it was JD is what they called her.
Speaker 2: But she ended up assuming the role of leader. But
Speaker 2: he was there and he was just fucking chastising everything
Speaker 2: they did. And so he was still kind of leading
Speaker 2: this place. But it wasn't in Winchell anymore. Only the
Speaker 2: diehard members remained, and he ended up I don't know
Speaker 2: when he died, but the official disbandment of Synanon was
Speaker 2: said to have taken place in nineteen ninety one. But
Speaker 2: the troubled teen industry, you know about that. It's the
Speaker 2: thing that has all these like boarding schools, and se
Speaker 2: DO is one of them boarding schools and labor camps
Speaker 2: and wilderness programs. Paris Hilton did a documentary because she
Speaker 2: was sent to one in Utah when she was young
Speaker 2: and she wanted to expose it. Like god, I want
Speaker 2: to say that was like five six years ago.
Speaker 1: It's part of the Synanon group.
Speaker 2: Well, the troubled teen industry. They branched off, and see
Speaker 2: DO was one of the bigger ones, or I think
Speaker 2: it's still going and that was founded by a next
Speaker 2: Synnon member, and so they use all the same tactics.
Speaker 2: I mean, these kids die or they get severely abused
Speaker 2: all the time.
Speaker 1: And so literally nothing ever came of this.
Speaker 2: Well it branched off into other horrible things. Like the
Speaker 2: worst aspects if you ask me of Synanon was what
Speaker 2: they did to the kids. I mean these adults, yeah,
Speaker 2: brainwashed whatever they were choosing to be there.
Speaker 1: Maybe they put somebody in a coma, input a rattlesnake
Speaker 1: in somebody else's mailbox, you don't. I mean they were
Speaker 1: just on the total outskirts of fucking. They should have
Speaker 1: been in jail all of them.
Speaker 2: Well, listen to this.
Speaker 1: They beat that other dude's dad to pieces that was
Speaker 1: trying to help the kids. Nobody goes to jail. He
Speaker 1: just went and got drunk and a drunken stupor, and
Speaker 1: he still got to run the place via his daughter. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't feel like this this is a happy ending.
Speaker 2: This was something he said when I think when the
Speaker 2: the beef with the media and all that was going on,
Speaker 2: he went on the wire and all this shit was recorded.
Speaker 2: You could actually go find some of it today. I
Speaker 2: listened to a bunch of it. He announced the organization's
Speaker 2: new religious posture, and this was in September of seventy seven,
Speaker 2: after he had lost three hundred thousand dollars for abducting
Speaker 2: and brainwashing a member that Paul Morantskuy won that case.
Speaker 2: But after that happened, he went on the wire and
Speaker 2: said this, we're not going to mess with the old
Speaker 2: time turn the other cheek religious posture. Our religious posture
Speaker 2: is don't mess with us. You can get killed dead,
Speaker 2: literally dead. I am quite willing to break some lawyer's
Speaker 2: legs and next break his wife's legs and threaten to
Speaker 2: cut their child's arm off. That is the end of
Speaker 2: that lawyer. That is a very satisfactory human way of
Speaker 2: transmitting information. I really do want an ear and a
Speaker 2: glass of alcohol on my desk. Yes, indeed, And that
Speaker 2: was a month before Palm Morantz was bitten by the rattlesnake.
Speaker 1: But he doesn't go to jail, even though he made
Speaker 1: statements like that.
Speaker 2: Nope, no jail time.
Speaker 1: So this is not a happy ending.
Speaker 2: I don't know if any of these will have happy endings.
Speaker 2: Did you pick some for future episodes? For the people
Speaker 2: listening the proud cult members of.
Speaker 1: You know what I considered a happy ending. The motherfuckers
Speaker 1: who start the thing dies horribly. I mean, like the
Speaker 1: Solar Temple for example, they suicided themselves.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of them were either murdered or
Speaker 2: helped to die.
Speaker 1: Okay, but good, they're dead. We got rid of them.
Speaker 1: This guy get literally nothing happens to.
Speaker 2: Him and his tactics remakes to this day.
Speaker 1: And yeah, in these they live on, they survive on,
Speaker 1: and they just abuse more and more kids. So my
Speaker 1: happy ending is he would have went to jail or
Speaker 1: he died horribly with like a colostomy bag.
Speaker 2: I don't know why you're getting so bent out of shape.
Speaker 2: I never promised a happy ending.
Speaker 1: Well, it's kind of reminds me of that movie I
Speaker 1: said I wanted to make where the bad guy wins
Speaker 1: in the end, because that's real life shit. The bad
Speaker 1: guy wins in the end, like some pedaphocracy type shit.
Speaker 2: That's the moral of the story. Sleep tight, everyone, So.
Speaker 1: Are you giving it one out of ten? Synanons?
Speaker 2: I give this one ten because I think in Sinana,
Speaker 2: I think it has all the elements of all the
Speaker 2: mainstream cults that we know about. And like I said,
Speaker 2: most people out there have probably at least heard of Cynanon,
Speaker 2: if not even watched one of those documentaries I was
Speaker 2: talking about earlier. So I just think this one needs
Speaker 2: to be known about.
Speaker 1: Because yeah, I didn't know about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, this thing goes from fifty eight to ninety one.
Speaker 2: Remnants of it thrive today in this troubled teen industry
Speaker 2: where you send your kids to get help and sometimes
Speaker 2: they die. Yeah. Joe Rogan's booker for the mother Ship,
Speaker 2: and I think he met this guy at the comedy store.
Speaker 2: I don't remember Adam Eager or something like that. Eagres
Speaker 2: he was someone who went to see do and like
Speaker 2: he tried to expose it. But yeah, these things still
Speaker 2: happened today. I know that one of my ex girlfriends,
Speaker 2: her mom didn't know what to do with her because
Speaker 2: she was just a regular teenage girl rebellion. So she
Speaker 2: sent her to this work camp in Montana. What Yeah,
Speaker 2: how was the She loved it. It turned her into
Speaker 2: a farmer. Really, I mean, she's the one who owns
Speaker 2: the land out in that area we're driving around.
Speaker 1: So she loved it.
Speaker 2: She said it taught her structure and made her a
Speaker 2: good you know, instilled work ethic and well, well don't
Speaker 2: so not all of it's bad, but a lot of
Speaker 2: this shit when you send your kids to these programs
Speaker 2: that are running stuff that was going.
Speaker 1: On, end up helping kids.
Speaker 2: Though for sure, I would say we know about those
Speaker 2: ones more. You don't hear it. You don't watch a
Speaker 2: documentary where they're like, I went to a work camp
Speaker 2: and I learned how to ride donkeys. I'm happy nobody
Speaker 2: wants to watch that shit. But yeah, it's not good.
Speaker 2: I mean to me, it's just like if you're a
Speaker 2: parent and you can't handle your kids so you send
Speaker 2: them away. That's a failure on your part. That's neither
Speaker 2: here nor there.
Speaker 1: Do you know which cult you're covering in our next installment?
Speaker 2: For next episode, I will give you a hint, Anthony
Speaker 2: Fauci with a smile. That's all I'm going to say.
Speaker 1: I am covering one that goes all the way back
Speaker 1: in time. For mine. It's it's one of the og cults,
Speaker 1: if you will, a cult, granddaddy of all cults that
Speaker 1: kind of like sin and on bits and pieces of
Speaker 1: it still remain today.
Speaker 2: Christianity, honey, what you have to leave that in there?
Speaker 1: Any closing thoughts.
Speaker 2: Don't forget to leave your house with an umbrella and
Speaker 2: join a cult. And if you do, you probably won't
Speaker 2: hear the next episode.
Speaker 1: Well, what if it's the Cult of Conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Well they've already joined if they're listening to join another one,
Speaker 2: you don't have to leave this Cult of Conspiracy. But
Speaker 2: that's your homework consignment. Go join a local cult and
Speaker 2: report back to.
Speaker 1: Us, and Cult of Conspiracy doesn't count.
Speaker 2: And maybe we'll cover your cult in the bonus episode
Speaker 2: only on Patreon.
Speaker 1: And with that being said, there is one very important
Speaker 1: vital piece of information I need you to learn, just
Speaker 1: as soon as humanly possible.
Speaker 3: That RASSA shut down on me, sent down on you. No, mad,
Speaker 3: that's what.
Speaker 1: I'm not.
Speaker 3: RASA in town.
Speaker 1: It's a family.
Speaker 3: Let's be bum suits.
Speaker 2: Hey y'all, this is cosmic peach coming on at you. Whoo,
Speaker 2: something like that.