February 10, 2026 • 48 mins
Robert concludes the story of Romana Didulo, for now, with the tale of her ill-fated invasion of a small Canadian town.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media a welcome back to the podcast that this
is part three of our episodes on Queen Romana.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Dig Youelo of Canada. Uh and you know, Canadians, thank
you for letting us talk about your your monarch. You know,
your your your leader that I know you all love
and respect and I hope that we're being you know,
positively deferential towards towards your your great ruler. You know,
it's I'm sorry, it's just so sad that Canada has
(00:36):
to deal with having this crazy person run their country.
You know, can you imagine really like having like a
crazy asshole in charge of your country? Just like, thank god,
the just a Canada problem, Jesus.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I know.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
It's okay, guys, you'll get your shit together one of
these days, like we have in the Americas like us.
I guess you're in the Americas too. Whatever anyway, too
in by Greenland. All right, right, So August twenty twenty
(01:12):
one to December twenty twenty one were very busy times
for the Queen of Canada. She hits like, you know,
like her peak at least, this is when Christine Startechi says,
she hits her peak number of followers, which is like
seventy something thousand on telegram now at this point in time,
because inflation is a problem, and because the economies not
(01:34):
doing great, and because her followers haven't been paying their bills,
she's focused a lot on, like the fine on providing
like what would look like lifelines to the finances of
her people. She's got like these grocery pages that are
supposed to like help her followers like purchase groceries, find
groceries that they can like afford, and stuff she's issuing
(01:56):
like decrees eliminating taxes and credit card debt. And she's
issue doing like fake money, and it's unclear how this
is supposed to work. It's like a promissory note that
you can print out from a downloadable template with like
instructions that says you can use this money wherever you are.
They're payable by the Kingdom of Canada. She also describes
(02:18):
this as working basically the same as like money at
the at like the Canadian Tire Company, which like is
is this company that like sells I think mostly used tires,
and they have their own like fake company currency, right
that like you can use for stuff within if you're
paying for other products you can like accumulate it. A
lot of businesses do this, and that's kind of which
(02:39):
makes it very unclear how is this supposed to work?
Who is supposed to accept this right? Like what is
the and that's actually never made clear to me. These
promisory notes. I'll pull one up for I'll do a
screen share so you can you can see what these
fucking things look like.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Real groceries. We made up money.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, I think that the idea is like they're supposed
to find, well, it looks like a check.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah, it looks it looks.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Kind of like a check. It's a promisory note. You
get to write your own number in, so it's a
blank check for all of your all of your followers.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
It's really unclear to me how even her followers were
supposed to believe this stuff worked. But obviously like it
doesn't of course not. But you do have people like
printing these out and she issues them when she's as
they're driving around, they're stopping in towns and they're meeting
up with like whatever followers they have in these individual towns,
and she's handing these out to people, you know, so
(03:35):
I think some of them just believe like, eventually, when
this is valued, I'll finally be rich. You know. It's
that's part of the whole big idea that like, uh,
there's a change coming and it's going to completely alter
my financial situation, and that that makes you kind of
want to have.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
To believe her. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, she continues making decrees. This is like the primary
way that she interacts with her followers, and as Sartagi writes,
the Kingdom of Canada was guided by three basic laws.
Quote number one, if you kill, you will be killed.
Number two, if you kill and mass commit genocide crimes
against humanity, we will take out your family and your
DNA strain. We'll go back to that in a second.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Three. War in division are unlawful.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
So if you commit crimes, we're gonna kill your family
and your DNA strain.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
War in division are unlawful. I thought you was telling
us to kill the doctors. Yeah, that's the Yeah, you
got to kill the doctors. But you can't divide people.
Prop that's unlawful. No dividing people.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Kill all the doctors and the nurses, and the school
divisions and the business, but don't divide people, you know.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Don't cut off your DNA strand again.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
YEA, feel like that's got to be a translation issue
because I'm like, I don't think do you you might
actually mean that because you're an alien.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
She does describe her office, the Royal Office of Queen Romana,
to be the highest court in the land, and thus
all Canadian lawyers are now defunct because they have their
members of the British Accreditation Registry as opposed to, you know,
the real judicial system that she, I guess hasn't gotten
around to building yet, you.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Know, commits a bit homie. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
So in January of twenty twenty two, Romana's like tour
of Canada really takes off in a big way. She's
got about a dozen followers. She's got a group of
RVs and they start traveling, you know, initially into like
downtown Ottawa, but after that point they just kind of
continue going right, Like she's meeting people at various small towns.
(05:43):
She's expanding her conception of like what's you know, my
powers are. She's making declarations as to martial law, and
they're just kind of like driving constantly.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
She's taking it.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
She's taken in six figures at this point, well over
one hundred and forty thousand dollars in donations. It's unclear
exactly how, but that's what's got to pay for everything,
because they're RVs are not cheap to drive, right, and
she's got to continue like paying for that. She's got
to pay for uniforms for her people, as we'll talk about,
Like there's a lot of there's a lot of expenses.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Due to this. So who who's who?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
She's got like seventy thousand people on telegram, so some things.
Some of them are getting our money, you know, and
it only takes a few. And she's also got a
couple of her followers that are in person followers. She's
completely soaking, like they're signing over everything to her, right,
like she's she's doing that thing too.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
As twenty twenty two goes along, she's the road trip
Queen of Canada. She's issuing these these declarations, but she
starts to expand what she's offering her followers, because you know,
grocery lists and fake money only go so far. What
people really want is magical powers. And in August of
twenty twenty two, she announces that she has started teaching
(06:58):
her followers powers to her followers.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
She gets on.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Basically, she makes a video saying that like, I've started
teaching people, you know, given an intensive class and how
people can think like me and act like commander in chief.
So I'm teaching them all how to run a country
if that's ever necessary. I'm teaching them how to like
take hostages and negotiate, which is not a great sign
for your cult. Per Christine Starteghi. Didulo also said she's
(07:27):
teaching her core followers how to cloak and uncloak themselves
and how to use high level technologies, including five G
that Digito claims will allow her trainees to see through
the walls of buildings and homes. She contends that all
science fiction movies and television series are disclosures, documentaries, and diaries.
Both the television series Star Trek and the movie The
Tomorrow War seems to have had an unusually strong influence
(07:48):
on Digitlo. The Tomorrow War is her life storyline. Perhaps
have you ever seen The Tomorrow War?
Speaker 3 (07:55):
No? No one did, No one did.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I'm sure someone in the audience to watch The fucking
Tomorrow War, but statistically you didn't.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
No idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Great, great, It's a twenty twenty one sci fi movie
starring Chris Pratt in which soldiers from the future come
back to the present day to warn humanity that in
the future we're losing a war against alien invaders, and
so they need to draft the whole present day military
to go back to the future and fight them.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
And then when we run out.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Of present day military, they just start drafting regular people
to go to the future.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
I think I purposefully said watch this.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Nah, they don't sound good. I was like, anything to
watch this, I know on board. But you lost me
at Chris Pratt.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, you lost me at Chris.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So it grossed about twenty million dollars in theaters from
a budget of two hundred million or so. So it
does not do well. People are People Are like the
writer and director of this movie are dragged out into
the street and shot in downtown Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
It is such a failure.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
But Queen Romana loves this movie because she idolizes the
Queen Alien like the bad guy of the movie. I think,
I haven't seen this fucking movie. But the aliens are
called the White Spikes, and the Queen of the White
Spikes is stronger than all of the males of her species,
and Ramana seems to really really vibe with this, Okay.
(09:27):
Sarteeshi ties this movie to Romana's belief in something called
DNA X, which she describes as God's tool that she
plans to release to every living all caps I AM
in the world to go back to that weird little
cult that we started this with. Dang, I don't know
what this means as best as I can tell, I
(09:47):
think because the original I Am movement was based on
this guy, this fucking dude hundreds of years ago who'd
claimed to be immortal and all knowing because of magic,
and the im movement was like, no, there's all these
it's actually like this divine there's this set of tactics
that you can find. It is still quasi a cult,
and she's taking basically those claimton saying no, no, it's
(10:07):
not the occult. You can have all of these powers
by alien DNA technology.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
That will make you look walk and all knowing. Right.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
I think that's the gist of it. It's a little
unclear to me exactly what she believes because it's silly,
but that's because what's the handle, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Right, because what the hell?
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Two is spent largely on the road and a caravan
of RVs, one of which was gifted to her and
several of which were printed. The exact makeup of her
COLT shifts rapidly at this point. For one thing, formerly
loyal members don't last forever, right, Like, people find this
and think that it's a good idea, and then she
starts to be a crazy asshole to them, and eventually
(10:48):
they have enough and they're like, this isn't fun anymore,
and they belki.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
It right, other people get what I need the water
turned on, Okay, right.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I'm tired of not having watering. Yeah, So people will leave,
but other people will come in. So there's kind of
and it's never large. The in person following is never
bigger than like much bigger than like a dozen people,
but there is some like people will leave, people will
come in. That's sort of happening, right. She's also purging
people for making mistakes periodically, which keeps the numbers down.
(11:22):
She has at this point by the time twenty twenty
two rules around her followers have uniforms. These are generally
white button up shirts with the Queen Romana logo and
blastened on them. Often adorned with official medals that she
awarded in her capacity as Canadian Commander in Chief, right, like,
and these are because like the question whenever you've got
(11:43):
one of these people handing out medals is like.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Okay, what kind of metals are these? Are you?
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Like?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Are these fake military medals? Are these like bottle calfs?
Like what are we looking at here? And as best
as I can tell, I think that these are, at
least from what I have read. And I think this
is mac Lamoreau who made this claim, and I'm sure
he's right. These are like mostly boy scout medals like
these are like boy Scout awarts.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
Love it, love it, change nothing, it's it's it's good stuff. Yeah, dude,
how come nobody in this whole situation was like can
I meet a like a prince or like like you
ain't got no like accountant like this whole like I
ain't never met nobody else in this kingdom?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yeah, like does anybody work for you?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You're the only one who believes you're the queen? And
I guess the people who live in this RV and
the handful of folks that we meet traveling, you know, yeah, but.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
None of them are a part of your court, Like who, yeah,
where's the rest of your administration?
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Right?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, where's the rest of this doesn't feel like a
government again. That's that gets down to the hole. I
think there's a lot of like play acting. You know,
it takes you to tango with something like this. I
do want to show you, guys these uniforms because they're
not as elaborate as they might sound. From what I
it's mostly she's just got people wearing like white shirts
with fucking metals and stuff on them. But yeah, like
(13:06):
those and those are as soon as I saw peopre like, yeah,
those do look like boy Scout metals. Look like boy
Scout metals.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
That's not a uniform, and those are boy Scout medals. Yeah,
they're just all dressed in white.
Speaker 6 (13:16):
They look a little look like a golf caddies.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah, they look like he's got his all access pass on,
like and you can see behind him.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
As an r V that has like meet and greet
her Majesty Queen Romana, YadA YadA YadA like that. This
is this is how they drive around their Their RVs
are also billboards. He's got his finger pointed up at
the sky, which is a thing that all of her
followers do. I think they took this from this is
a thing in like the Muslim world, like you'll see,
like it basically means that, like, you know, God's in
(13:44):
charge right all right, Like that's the idea at him.
I don't know if that's what it means to her
for her followers to.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Do that, but they are.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
That is the gesture they're doing, and that's I'm sure
that's where it can imagine must have just seen it
on TV or something and liked it.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Dang, imagine being that guy and then now you're like,
that's on the internet forever.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
That's on the internet forever. You in this uniform with
like whatever fucking id she made for you hanging around
your neck and your boy Scout awards for being the
best special boy in the cult whatever. Damn, Like one
day that's he's Because the guy in this is pretty young.
He looks like he's in his twenties, maybe thirty. Like
if he doesn't have kids, he very well might one
(14:26):
day and some day they're gonna find that, Hey, dad,
are you in a uniform? What are these awards? Is
that Let's say the Queen of Canada's RV. Let me
tell you a story about the time Dad made a mistake.
Queen did youulo was incredibly is incredibly serious about her schedule,
(14:49):
and one of the worst things you can do if
you really want to get kicked out of this cult,
the easiest way to do it is to cost her time,
because that is a capital offense. Corey, one of her
form inner circle members, lost his position after a series
of minor errors, including booking an RV to be picked
up at five pm instead of four pm. The Queen
called this treason and threatened to have him executed. She'd
(15:12):
done this numerous times before, and mac Lamora notes that
the methods varied from quote being shot in the head
or thrown from a helicopter. So she's saying, like, I'm
going to have my men shoot you in the head.
I'm gonna throw you out of a helicopter because you
made me wait an hour to get in my new
RV that you rented.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Forticulous. I am royalty. Yeah, I need to borrow this RV. Right.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
She justifies these punishments to the rest of our followers
by saying, nobody controls my timeline. Anybody that screws up
my timeline is going to be tried for treason and
shot in the head.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Except for.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Right, they might have more control over your timeline here,
but you know who won't have you tried for treason
and shot in the head?
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Prop hey better not better not sponsored this podcast.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Very rarely have people shot in the head, you know.
I'm not going to say never. I'm not going to
say never. Might be doing an ad. They've definitely had
some people shot in the head, you know.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
But can you stop naming brands.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Please, Sophie one knows they've had some people shot in
the head. It's fine, we don't. We all keep drinking
the soda. It's okay.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
The soda can literally clean your car battery and we
still drink it.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Please believe the name of the brand.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
No, don't know what it is when when prompt said
it eats car batteries, now you have to keep the bit.
But still anyway, here's ads and we're back. You're killing me, Yeah, baby,
(16:48):
we might and everybody.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Just like I mean you, you're doing numbers. We might.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
We might want that that sponsor money. Though they did
invent the visual description as.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
So as I noted earlier, Corey and Daisy were foundational
cult members. Romana wouldn't have gotten this crazy train off
the ground without them, and this did not stop her
from abusing them relentlessly. The people you are most reliant
on are the people you're going to be most shitty
on if you're this kind of cult leader.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
And in fact, the fact that they were so useful
and key may have encouraged her to abuse them. Maybe
she felt kind of insecure that she needed them so much,
and she she was really trying to keep them beaten down.
I don't actually know, but the two were doing a lot.
They went from managing her telegram channels to becoming her bodyguard,
mechanic and secretary. Daisy was also the Royal Bank account,
(17:38):
setting up fundraisers and taking donations on behalf of the Queen.
Didulo made impossible demands regularly to these people, and whenever
money came up short or the built in limitations of
technology thwarted her, whims of the moment, she would bully Daisy,
who later said the abuse was NonStop. It was never ending,
no proper meals, you know, no sleep, she continued, She
(17:59):
did care. She said, if you work for the Queen,
you work for the queen, you volunteered to be here.
Why are you complaining? And like she's got a little
bit of a point, She's she's got a little a point. Yeah,
Like why do you have to be here? You knew
what you were You should have known what you were
getting into with this this dumb bullshit, Like come on now,
like you know what you were getting into?
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yeah, we do.
Speaker 6 (18:25):
We have any idea how old this married couple Daisy
and I've forgotten the name of.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Guessing they were mature adults, probably in middle aged. Maybe
we'll pass it a decent number of but they're not all.
Some of them are pretty young. I don't actually know
they're they're like age range, but you know they're they're
old enough to know better. Yeah, yeah, sure. So during
(18:52):
her months with the Queen, Daisy estimates that she lost
between ten and fifteen pounds. Mark Lammereau, who interviewed a
number of former followers, describes the degree of troll the
Queen exercised over the day to day lives of her
immediate tribe as pretty extensive. People would have to ask
her for permission to even shower, which she periodically denied
some individuals for days at a time.
Speaker 6 (19:11):
And why is that a Thingermber, It's pretty normal cult leaders.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
It's control over their bodies, over even like their ability
to clean themselves. You're you're practicing, you know.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
You're in such closing in the RV.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 6 (19:30):
Such close quarters and your punishment as that everybody has
to smell, numbers and stink.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah, that's crazy. Well she's not.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
She's the the r V where the people stay. It's
different from the Queen's r V.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
True of Oh I forgot, she got the royal RV.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Okay, she sometimes had a separate RV just to use
as a bathroom.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
This lady has figured some out.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Uh huh again, she is living well based on her
previous life. She's doing really good.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
In relation to Yeah, but that's weird. Body control about smell.
I feel like I would want people to smell amazing
in front of me.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Yeah, I'm royal. If I'm royal, it's three showers a day, y'all.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
C Yes, it's just about exercise and control. If you
can get them to do that, you can get them
to do anything, you know. True, and Romana spends most
despite claiming that she's she's taking back Canada.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
She's the rightful ruler.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
All of her time has spent managing her followers, this
very small number of in person. That's what she does
her most of them right, right, And that's most of
her work is keeping these people busy, you know, keep
these people too busy and too beaten down to leave
or to realize that like they're in, like how fucked
up the situation. Is part of how she does this
is she she hands up every morning. The day starts
(20:45):
with her gathering everyone together and issuing them their tasks
for the day. And we're talking a mix of stuff,
like we're all living in RV's, so there's waste tanks
that have to be emptied, there's water tanks they have
to be refilled, there's food that has to be purchased.
But there's also bullshit work, like we need new signs
for the vehicles. I need someone to print out a
bunch of these fake money things to hand out at
(21:07):
the next stop. Right, And she's the point of this
is there's some stuff that has to get done. There's
a lot of busy work. What's most important, though, is
that she's keeping everyone busy all day. People would regularly
work sixteen hours at a time. But she's keeping the
busy doing mostly bullshit tasks or like petty work tasks
that they don't get anything done.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
They're not there.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
They came here to be part of this crusade to
fix Canada, and all they're doing is like maintaining the
caravan and handling bullshit work for her, printing stuff out
or making new signs or whatever and so. And this
is something former members will say, It's like I felt
like I worked all the time and nothing ever got done.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Right, Yeah, you're just running a how cold? Running a
Kinko's just too.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Basically you think you think about it, this isn't so
unique to her. It's it's shabbier and sadder because this
is just like ten people or twelve people living in
a series of RVs. But that's what scientology is, right,
that's the whole point. And you have, yeah, you have
the Sea Org and you have all these people, these
auditors doing It's that you have petty work and tasks
(22:11):
to keep the people who are full time members of
the cult constantly working, right, You want them always using
up their energy, otherwise they're going to put that energy
towards maybe realizing that they're in a fucking cult, you know.
And Didulo's goal was to make sure everyone's exhausted and
working all the time so they don't have time to
plot against her. One good example of this would be
the account of a cult member who claims Romana made
(22:32):
her wake up at four am to turn on her
hotel coffee maker. She would do stuff like this, demand
people do very basic tasks for her. Yeah, that shouldn't
even be necessary, just because it's an exertion. It's her
use exercise and control.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Right. Yeah, that's that's that's some bully gang stuff right there.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, life inside the cult on the road sounds like
living hell to me. Here's one description of how Romana
liked to start off their days. Per an article advice quote,
every morning, at six or seven am, the queen would
play her favorite song, disco supergroup bony m smash hit Rasputant,
about the well endowed Russian mystic of the same name. Often,
(23:10):
the funky vibes would last an hour. Once Didjulo played
Rasputant for the entire duration of a ten hour drive
while her staff just sat and listened. Her followers even
recorded their own version of the song with lyrics about her, and.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
It's the worst anti ever, Like, yeah, oh man.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
It's all like ten hours a fucking rasp buttant and
I love that song. It's a great, it's a great.
It's a banger of a hit, don't get me wrong,
But ten hours of that and her obsession with it
is so weird. Like there's a I'll pull up, there's
a like you should actually hear her followers version.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Of Respue Me Too. I was going to be my
next request.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
So if you want to, if you listen in check
in to the QAnon Anonymous episodes.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
I think it's the second one about Ramana that has
with mac Lamreau that as the actual audio of the song.
I don't want us to get copyright struck, and I'm
kind of worried that we might, especially what with the
Netflix thing going on. So I'm just gonna actually sing
you the lyrics, So you're gonna get to listen to
me sing yes as best as I can recall in
tune to the original song resputin by Boney m Okay,
(24:17):
Are we ready?
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Yes, there lives a fearless Queen Romana.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Did you low?
Speaker 2 (24:23):
She may seem quite small, but she's oh so powerful.
When communists a mess to subjugate her peeps, She's summoned
allied forces to obliterate. Queen Romana lives for we the people. Strong,
benevolent and just. She's discreet, lee waking, sleeping people, daily
(24:44):
building trust. Rah Rah Romana, Precious Queen of Canada. She's
taken names and she's kicking ass. Rah Rah Romana, Precious
Queen of Canada. Please hop on board or get off
the bus. And there's a lot more to it. There's
a fun line. She's liberating earth with wisdom and with grace.
But if her RV's rockin', she is dancing late, That's
(25:07):
that's weird. That's a weird line to that's weird in them.
Kind of makes me wonder if there's some weird sex
stuff going on.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
I don't know. But yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah again, Yeah, beautiful stuff, beautiful stuff. We all love
to see people repurposing Boney M's work for the good
of the world.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Yes, so, as you might expect.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Hearing hours and hours of the song raspute and played
over and over again. Even though that song's kind of
a banger, might lead some people in the colt to
wonder like, well, as Corey put it, oh my fucking lord,
what are we doing?
Speaker 3 (25:40):
What the hell?
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Yes, she's yelling we got a war people, time to
get up and dancing around like a lunatic. So this
start does start to wear short on some people. The
ridiculousness is kind of hard to continue to uh stretch
your sense of disbelief towards. One former member of the
group told Weiss that one day he took one of
(26:03):
their RVs out to do errands, like there were parts
that they needed to pick up, I think for like
their streaming rig. They needed to get food for dinner,
so this was stuff he needed to do. But he
didn't get Queen Romana's permission beforehand, like he didn't double
check with her. I can take the RV out, I
have to go on an errand, and she exploded at him,
relieving him of duty, alongside the members who had left
(26:25):
in the RV with him, just firing a bunch of
her cult members and saying, you can't split up the
convoy otherwise our military is.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Going to shoot you.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Okay, where where's the military that's going to shoot you?
Speaker 3 (26:36):
When the military?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah right, yeah, what military? And the former member who
gets kicked out is that guy named Cowan who was
He was disturbed at how distraught one of the one
of the cult members was that she fires that like this,
he's kind of I think done with it at this
point when she fires him, he's like.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Good, I'm out of here.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
But this lady's like losing her mind, weeping and stuff.
Quote she really thought it was her destiny to be there.
And I think that that's gets that really gets something important.
I try to emphasize a few times. Some people are
begging to be in a cult, right. They are desperate
for any kind of meaning, right, yea, even this, even
something that it's something, it's more meaningful, go to work
(27:20):
and pay your bills, right yeah, anything.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Yeah, something important. Nah.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
That's now we're getting at something because to weep for
about this rather than being like, yeah, this game is trash.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
This is this was fucked up from the beginning, and
it just it's said, there's something like almost physically painful
to some people at being cut off from this when
you finally found it, right, when you finally found the
thing that gives you a sense of belonging and you
get kicked out of it, like that's.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Like losing a limb.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Cohen, though, is you know, he's fed up by the
time he gets fired, and so he takes his personal
video and recording equipment with him. He's one of the
guys who knew how to do things, who joined the
Cold and the Queen is not happy about this. She
gets on telegram, she declares him a thief. She claims
he's kidnapped other staff who left with him. She posts
videos of Cohen along with his picture and links to
(28:09):
his social media. She calls him a devil worshiper, and
she sentences him to death, and her followers, you know,
attack him with as much zealousness as they attacked all
of the other enemies of the group.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
One follower posted, he will not survive what is coming.
Another added that Cohen was quote a fan of Satan
and a trader, and another wrote maybe he should be
the first to hang publicly for all the other traders
to see what to expect. So that's kind of a
blister of at least things that are adjacent to death threats.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
And all Cohen could.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Do was sort of hunker down to avoid the storm.
I didn't answer a single phone call, but my phone
was constantly blowing up with telegram messages and text messages.
Then a few people found my personal Facebook page and
commented randomly on some posts. One of them like a
six year old woman who looks really nice, and she
was like, you it will burn what, Well, it's just
the amount of rage when you tell people like this
(29:06):
your bullshit game that has become the entire core of
your like life.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
This is all the only thing that excites you.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
This is like, this is your friend group, this is
you're addicted to this, and this guy doesn't believe it.
He left even though he actually just got fired. Like, yeah,
you get enraged, and a part you're kind of taking
out your anger at the rest of the world on
this person because at some level they all know this
isn't real, right, and that makes them pissed. So, as
(29:35):
you might get from some of this, Romana's not wildly
loyal to her cult members, and in fact, she is
so unsatisfied with the quality of her first band of
cult members that she fires them all. This is one
of my favorite things about her story. It also kind
of hints at the weird resilience of her grift. From
what I can tell, it sounds like the breakdown started
because she was planning to extend her road trip into
(29:56):
the United States and a desperate attempt to avoid going
back to her normal life and to try to get
some of that American money.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, But some of her followers, including Cordy and Daisy,
had children, and we're like, well, we're just going to
Ottawa and then you like wanted to drive around for
a few months, and we were down with that, but
we can't do this forever. And so Raman is like, well,
if you have kids, simply have moved them in with
your family and then abandon them for the cause. And
a few of her followers have kids and they're like, what, Okay,
(30:25):
I didn't think that's what we were doing.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
This yu guys abandoned shit out man, yep, yep.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
So this is all coming to a head as the
caravan makes its way into Newfoundland, which is not a
heavily populated part of Canada, and they're kind of in
the middle of nowhere of Newfoundland, which is itself kind
of the middle of nowhere. And the day after she
makes everyone listen to Rasputin for ten hours while driving
through the middle of nowhere Canada, right, they're stopped, they're
all tired. She probably keeps them up late, and then
(30:54):
she wakes everyone up early, playing her fucking rasputant song
and yelling about how there's a war on and says, everyone,
skip breakfast, we got to start driving right now. And
Corey and Daisy have finally had enough and they closed
the door in her face and they're like, no, we're
going to sleep, like we're not getting up yet and
we're gonna eat, and Queen Didulo just leaves them. She
abandons almost it sounds like pretty much all of her
(31:15):
staff two thousand miles away from her homes, takes the
RVs so that's like rent cars to get home, and
declares them traders and warns them to watch your backs right,
just leaves them in Newfoundland.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Traiders all right.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Yeah, she's smelling her own stuff way too much, man. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
So you know, not long after that, in August of
twenty twenty two, Queen Didulo carries out her next major
real world endeavor. This is in a town called Peterborough,
where she has gotten been convinced for a while and
been ranting for a while about like the police in
Peterborough and how they're enforcing COVID mandates and whatnot. They're
(31:57):
they're corrupt, We're gonna do a citizens erect all that
good stuff, right Like that's this is all kind of
like and it's a little hard for me to tell,
like why she focuses specifically on this small town. I
think maybe some of it is just that, like, well,
this was like a small enough town that maybe she
thought it would work. Some of it is that one
(32:18):
of her followers, this guy Frank Curtin, lives in the
town and he starts like he organizes like a mass
event to do a citizen arrest of all these police.
So I think it may have just been that, like
she had a follower who was like, no.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
It'll work if we do it here.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
You know they have there's this they've got this meme
going on that's like they're calling the police chief the
retire borough police chief, because they're trying to get him
to retire and threatening to arrest him if he doesn't.
To quote from Sarteghi's piece about Frank Curtin. Curtin is
one of Digulo's most art and supporters and provides a
useful example of an active agent curtain came to believe
(32:54):
in Digulo's ideas after parting ways with his employer a
part approximately one year before the Peterborough event. Problems between
Curtin and his employer. When his employer received funds from
the government to boost the manufacturing of hand sanitizer as
part of the fight against COVID nineteen. Curtin considered this
government funding suspicious. He believes that COVID nineteen is fake
and that his employer had collected that money illegally. These
conspiratorial beliefs then allegedly led to Curtain's departure from the company.
(33:17):
After leaving the company, Curtin began regularly serving Digelos ceased
and desist orders to public officials. He then specifically targeted
Police Chief Scott Gilbert of the Peterborough Police Department. Curtin
was upset about not receiving from the police Chief Gilbert
what Gilbert deemed to be an appropriate response to his
complaint about his employer's supposed illegal activities. Curtin recorded himself
serving a cease and desist order upon Chief Gilbert and
(33:39):
posted the video on his YouTube channel. Right, so, yeah,
this is a really good example of how these kind
of things snowball, right, this is not a guy who's
living with the caravan. He starts just serving her cease
and assists, but she's following him. He's posting as he's
in the telegrams, he's putting these up. He's talking about
a corrupt the police are. Roman is like, oh, this
might be useful. So she starts some memes about retire,
(34:02):
you know, the police chief, and we're going to arrest
all of them, and it just becomes an increasing thing
to her followers. And this kind of makes it inevitable
that there's going to be a showdown in Peterborough, right,
Like they're gonna have to do something there.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Yeah, This goes from funny to annoying to like, okay,
you have to stop, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Right right, yeah, And we're gonna talk about what happened next,
but first, ads, we're back. So this guy, Frank Curtin
has becoming gotten you know, as a result of getting
fired and losing his mind over like COVID stuff, both
(34:41):
lost his job and is increasingly becoming unhinged. He's fallen
into this rabbit hole of didulo stuff, and he's gotten
obsessed with Chief Gilbert, his town's police chief. He's posting
videos about how like there's this plane that he'll see
flying every now and then that he believes the police
chief is flying above his house to like fuck with
him specif. So this is not a well man, right,
(35:05):
This is really not a well man. And he's incredibly
angry about like the vaccines and the police are showing
up at like vex to protect vaccine sites because of
crazy people like Frank Curtin, right, And so this all
comes to a head in August of twenty twenty two,
which is when Queen Didulo's caravan shows up in Peterborough
(35:25):
for her next major real world endeavor. She's gathered around
forty of her followers and she's told them these officers
and their chief are all complicit in COVID crimes and
we're going to arrest them. And so they show up
in this town and she attempts to arrest the entire
police department. Frank Curtin starts by announcing today we are
going to turn the members of the Peterborough Police Station
(35:46):
over to the US Special Forces military, the Canadian military,
and the Global Military Alliance will pick them up once
we detain them. The who, well, it makes a lot
of sense problem. It's the US Special Forces military, regular military.
They're not involved, but the regular Canadian military is involved
them of course, the Global Military Alliance. They're all going
to show up after we arrest them. They can't arrest
(36:09):
the cops themselves, all the militaries in the world, they
don't have to. We the people do that, but then
they'll detain them once we the people have detained them.
In response, the police use one of the most dastardly tricks.
Right These people show up outside of the police station.
They say they're going to arrest them, and the cops
lock the door, just like, eh, not dealing.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
With this right now. Let's see if they go away.
I'm almost all.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Today, so Didilo is reduced for a while to heckling
them over a bullhorn, demanding the police turn themselves in. Eventually,
the police reinforcements arrive. One man tells them they're under arrest,
and the cops are like, no, I mean, like, you're
actually under arrest.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
We are are the cops. We have like the guns
and stuff. Yeah, you're just got to be guys. Were
really some RVs behind you? Yeah, but you're not cops.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
You are definitely not cops. The Guardian summarizes what happened next.
Speaking to supporters over a megaphone, Digitlo fired up the
small crowd, but fled to her RV when scuffles with
the police. Bagan and some of her disciples were arrested.
She was somebody who was boosting this effort and was
very much in favor of it until it went south,
in which case she threw all of her followers under
the bus. She's very big on self preservation, clearly, a
(37:29):
quote from one of the observers. Yeah, six people were arrested,
two with assaulting a police officer, but there were no
charges for the queen, and so her mery road trip continued.
She gathered another gaggle of a dozen or so followers.
Together she bought a sixty two thousand dollars RV with
some of the donated money, and had another RV donated
to the cause. Wow, and she attempted at this point.
(37:51):
I do think though she's starting to see it's expensive
to drive around all the time. I want to settle somewhere,
but I can't get I still am not willing to
go back to my normal life, which is when she
finds a small town called Richmond in twenty twenty three,
and she finds this because one of the guys who
lives in the town has bought Richmond had a school.
But it's a very small town, right, and it's one
(38:13):
of those things. The school becomes defunct, you know, Okay,
I think because they're just like, aren't enough people to
keep it going. Yeah, and there's this local guy who's
become a follower of her cult, or at least a
partial follower of her cult, who buys, who's like purchased
the school and the land that it's on, and he
invites them to come over and like move in basically like, hey,
(38:38):
like you can live in this old school that I
technically own and live in Richmond, this tiny ass, little
small tan candid like a good life.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Don't sound royal fan.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, So there's a mix of problems. For one thing,
there's a couple of people in town who believe her, so,
like at least one Richmond resident told W five News
that her father stopped paying his bills because Digulo said so.
But a lot of people are just unhappy about it.
For one thing, Yeah, they've been kicked out of at
least one town prior to this where like they showed
(39:12):
up and were trying to set up shop there, and
like the mayor and a bunch of the local residents
had it out from and like ran them out of
town by banking it a really uncomfortable place for them
to live. Yeah, and they try to do that in Richmond.
A lot of people do. There's a lot of complaints,
there's local government meetings about it. But they're not quite
able to kick them out of Richmond with the speed
that they want to because in part they have a
(39:34):
really good thing going. They have this whole school that
they can live in that they're turning into like their
government headquarters. So they don't they don't want to.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Go yeah right, Yeah, they got some progress.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah right.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
I think there's also she's starting to lose followers by
this point, she's not at her height. So I think
there's this understanding that like, well, I may be near
the end of this scrift from the beginning, and I
want to settle down somewhere where like we've got a
stable place to live and whatnot. Like maybe that's the
and man's who's the guy who's bought them to the
(40:07):
property is also just kind of somebody who's he's like
a right wing crank who hates COVID nineteen vaccine, and
so some of this is just I think he hates
everyone around him and wants to piss them off. Yes,
this is a huge issue in Richmond for a while, right,
there's protests. Some people do go a little bit overboard
and being paranoid about the cult too, but I understand
(40:28):
basically they don't want these people fucking up their little down, right,
that's weird. And she starts making claims and the cult
as that like, well, there's a lot of us. If
we all become residents, you know, we can vote in
local elections and shift the elections they're kind of doing,
like what that cult and Antelope, Oregon did that. Yeah,
Wild Wild Country died. Yeah they're talking about it. Right,
So this also really pisses off people like I don't
(40:50):
want my tiny town to be taken over here by
these weird assholes, right, Yeah, it just sounds like, yeah,
kind of shitty. So you know, this goes on for
I think like a year and change, and it only
really hit there's like kind of an inflection point that
came recently where a bunch of them got arrested very recently,
(41:16):
Like this is yeah, yeah, fucking finally right in September,
like the fall of twenty twenty five, she gets arrested,
and it's it's kind of some bullshit. She doesn't get
arrested for any of the actual like really fucked up
shit that she does. Yeah she arrested, Yeah, right, Like
(41:40):
she gets arrested. It's that it's just like they don't
arrest her for the actual bad stuff. They arrest her
for like intimidating four people, including a police officer, and
uh like basically for intimidating people in town as opposed
to be the time she tried to get people killed
or tried to all those police arrested, or got people
(42:02):
to stop paying their bills. It's like kind of like
witness intimidation. Almost ed you for being weird. They rested
her for being weird, and she's you know, she live
streams the arrest. There's this satisfying moment where the officers
are like, leave the phone here.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Under her arrest.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
They part of what it prompted the the RCMP to
rate in the first place was that there were pictures
of guns from inside the property. But they turned out
to be replica handguns. I don't know how far this
case is going to go. There's a good chance she
gets fucked over just because she is representing herself, which
is a bad decision. So she might go herself over here.
(42:42):
But the charges aren't super crazy, right, Like she's not
getting charged with most of the actual bad cult leader stuff.
Maybe she'll successfully fund raise off of this. We don't
really know where things are going to go from here, right,
But no, there's not a body count other than that cat.
Maybe it's a pretty tame story, right, It's just I
(43:02):
thought it was fun. I thought we'd all have some
fun man.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Yeah. Stuff.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
It's like, yeah, like you don't make fun of like
people who fall into colts because, like you said, you
know glasshouses and stones and all that you know.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
And then on.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
The other hand, it's like, bro, you stop paying your
utilities and that wasn't I feel like I can make
fun of you for that.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Now there is a nice little PostScript to this cult
because we don't know what's gonna happen with Romana. But
I do want to talk for just a second about
the King of America David Carlson.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Okay, yes, please.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Because he did crop up a year or two ago,
and people started talking to him, and at first he
was very positive towards Romana, and then he kind of
soured on her and he started making it clear like, oh,
I didn't say she was the queen. I said she
was like in the running to be the queen. Like
she might be right, that's not what I'm say. Had
(44:00):
a break right, And there's a I want to read.
I'm just gonna read the start of this this Vice
article about him because it has a really funny opening.
Wearing a Florida Gators T shirt, an Arizona man in
his mid forties attempts to convince the hundreds of thousands
of conspiracy theorists watching his laptop live stream that he's
the real leader of the United States. King David Carlson
(44:20):
explains that he still has a few million people to
take out before he's finally done with his plan installing
QAnon kings and queens around the.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
World, around the world. Great.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
He claims, they've replaced Joe Biden was taken out on
election day. We've replaced sheriffs and other leaders you know,
and where we and he's been appointing a lot of kings.
He's appointed a king to the Kingdom of Britain, which
I think already has a king. Is king's the Kingdom
of Sweden, which I think already has a king. There's
a King of New Zealand, which I don't think had
a king.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
He was Maori.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
There's a there's a Minister of North Carolina. There's a
Queen Helen Edwards of the Kingdom of Australia. And then
there's her Excellency Karen Minister of New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Obviously. Oh these guys are They're so wonderful, man, Yeah,
they're great. This is fun. They're great.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
My favorite is that since Queen Romana has fallen out
of the King's favorite, she's no longer the Queen of Canada,
but he has appointed a new Queen of Canada, the
bec woman who was a follower of Queen Romana and
wrote a fan poem about her, but has now been
appointed the real Queen of Canada. And so I guess
took the throne and a coup of some sort.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
This is great, yeah, and there's a great I'm gonna
show you.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
The last thing I'll show you is I want to
show you the Royal Seal of I think who we
can all agree is a better pick for Queen of Canada,
Queen Charmaine. And I just I just love this. I
love this Queen, Queen Charmain of Canada. First of her name,
it's like a pink log with a with a very
(45:57):
air brushed face of a blonde wild Queen Charmain's Yeah,
natural laws, zero politics, royal decrees, benevolent monarchy.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
It's like if mar.
Speaker 6 (46:09):
A Lago face and Toddler's and tiaras.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
This is, this is she does on Instagram.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
Who shouldn't be on Instagram keeping all them filters on
her face?
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yep ye wow, Queen Charmaine, thanks for sharing, Robert Well,
I know for for my part, I now have am
declaring my allegiance to Queen Charmaine.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
You know I will take.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Let's do it, all right, Queen Charmaine. It is everyone
all right, as long as as long as I can shower. Listen,
sure she looks like she showers.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
All I gotta say is.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
Listen to politics, but please politics prop with more.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
It is foolishness. Oh my gosh, mm hmm, my lord,
thank you, thank you for this. I needed this really refreshing.
Speaker 6 (47:06):
Thank you, Robert.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
All right, everybody, this as I ain't gonna hold you
like just for.
Speaker 4 (47:17):
Go to hell.
Speaker 6 (47:17):
I love you. Is that what you said, Robert?
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yeah, I say that sometimes.
Speaker 6 (47:21):
That's nice. All right, Bye bye. Behind the Bastards is
a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com or
check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes, but Behind
(47:43):
the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday
and Thursday. Remind me of Netflix. You don't miss an episode.
For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe
to our YouTube channel YouTube dot com slash at behind
the Bastards. We love about forty percent of you, sickly speaking,
Also media a welcome back to the podcast that this
is part three of our episodes on Queen Romana.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Dig Youelo of Canada. Uh and you know, Canadians, thank
you for letting us talk about your your monarch. You know,
your your your leader that I know you all love
and respect and I hope that we're being you know,
positively deferential towards towards your your great ruler. You know,
it's I'm sorry, it's just so sad that Canada has
(00:36):
to deal with having this crazy person run their country.
You know, can you imagine really like having like a
crazy asshole in charge of your country? Just like, thank god,
the just a Canada problem, Jesus.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I know.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
It's okay, guys, you'll get your shit together one of
these days, like we have in the Americas like us.
I guess you're in the Americas too. Whatever anyway, too
in by Greenland. All right, right, So August twenty twenty
(01:12):
one to December twenty twenty one were very busy times
for the Queen of Canada. She hits like, you know,
like her peak at least, this is when Christine Startechi says,
she hits her peak number of followers, which is like
seventy something thousand on telegram now at this point in time,
because inflation is a problem, and because the economies not
(01:34):
doing great, and because her followers haven't been paying their bills,
she's focused a lot on, like the fine on providing
like what would look like lifelines to the finances of
her people. She's got like these grocery pages that are
supposed to like help her followers like purchase groceries, find
groceries that they can like afford, and stuff she's issuing
(01:56):
like decrees eliminating taxes and credit card debt. And she's
issue doing like fake money, and it's unclear how this
is supposed to work. It's like a promissory note that
you can print out from a downloadable template with like
instructions that says you can use this money wherever you are.
They're payable by the Kingdom of Canada. She also describes
(02:18):
this as working basically the same as like money at
the at like the Canadian Tire Company, which like is
is this company that like sells I think mostly used tires,
and they have their own like fake company currency, right
that like you can use for stuff within if you're
paying for other products you can like accumulate it. A
lot of businesses do this, and that's kind of which
(02:39):
makes it very unclear how is this supposed to work?
Who is supposed to accept this right? Like what is
the and that's actually never made clear to me. These
promisory notes. I'll pull one up for I'll do a
screen share so you can you can see what these
fucking things look like.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Real groceries. We made up money.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, I think that the idea is like they're supposed
to find, well, it looks like a check.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah, it looks it looks.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Kind of like a check. It's a promisory note. You
get to write your own number in, so it's a
blank check for all of your all of your followers.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
It's really unclear to me how even her followers were
supposed to believe this stuff worked. But obviously like it
doesn't of course not. But you do have people like
printing these out and she issues them when she's as
they're driving around, they're stopping in towns and they're meeting
up with like whatever followers they have in these individual towns,
and she's handing these out to people, you know, so
(03:35):
I think some of them just believe like, eventually, when
this is valued, I'll finally be rich. You know. It's
that's part of the whole big idea that like, uh,
there's a change coming and it's going to completely alter
my financial situation, and that that makes you kind of
want to have.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
To believe her. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
Yeah, she continues making decrees. This is like the primary
way that she interacts with her followers, and as Sartagi writes,
the Kingdom of Canada was guided by three basic laws.
Quote number one, if you kill, you will be killed.
Number two, if you kill and mass commit genocide crimes
against humanity, we will take out your family and your
DNA strain. We'll go back to that in a second.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Three. War in division are unlawful.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
So if you commit crimes, we're gonna kill your family
and your DNA strain.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
War in division are unlawful. I thought you was telling
us to kill the doctors. Yeah, that's the Yeah, you
got to kill the doctors. But you can't divide people.
Prop that's unlawful. No dividing people.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Kill all the doctors and the nurses, and the school
divisions and the business, but don't divide people, you know.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Don't cut off your DNA strand again.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
YEA, feel like that's got to be a translation issue
because I'm like, I don't think do you you might
actually mean that because you're an alien.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
She does describe her office, the Royal Office of Queen Romana,
to be the highest court in the land, and thus
all Canadian lawyers are now defunct because they have their
members of the British Accreditation Registry as opposed to, you know,
the real judicial system that she, I guess hasn't gotten
around to building yet, you.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Know, commits a bit homie. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
So in January of twenty twenty two, Romana's like tour
of Canada really takes off in a big way. She's
got about a dozen followers. She's got a group of
RVs and they start traveling, you know, initially into like
downtown Ottawa, but after that point they just kind of
continue going right, Like she's meeting people at various small towns.
(05:43):
She's expanding her conception of like what's you know, my
powers are. She's making declarations as to martial law, and
they're just kind of like driving constantly.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
She's taking it.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
She's taken in six figures at this point, well over
one hundred and forty thousand dollars in donations. It's unclear
exactly how, but that's what's got to pay for everything,
because they're RVs are not cheap to drive, right, and
she's got to continue like paying for that. She's got
to pay for uniforms for her people, as we'll talk about,
Like there's a lot of there's a lot of expenses.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Due to this. So who who's who?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
She's got like seventy thousand people on telegram, so some things.
Some of them are getting our money, you know, and
it only takes a few. And she's also got a
couple of her followers that are in person followers. She's
completely soaking, like they're signing over everything to her, right,
like she's she's doing that thing too.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Now.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
As twenty twenty two goes along, she's the road trip
Queen of Canada. She's issuing these these declarations, but she
starts to expand what she's offering her followers, because you know,
grocery lists and fake money only go so far. What
people really want is magical powers. And in August of
twenty twenty two, she announces that she has started teaching
(06:58):
her followers powers to her followers.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
She gets on.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Basically, she makes a video saying that like, I've started
teaching people, you know, given an intensive class and how
people can think like me and act like commander in chief.
So I'm teaching them all how to run a country
if that's ever necessary. I'm teaching them how to like
take hostages and negotiate, which is not a great sign
for your cult. Per Christine Starteghi. Didulo also said she's
(07:27):
teaching her core followers how to cloak and uncloak themselves
and how to use high level technologies, including five G
that Digito claims will allow her trainees to see through
the walls of buildings and homes. She contends that all
science fiction movies and television series are disclosures, documentaries, and diaries.
Both the television series Star Trek and the movie The
Tomorrow War seems to have had an unusually strong influence
(07:48):
on Digitlo. The Tomorrow War is her life storyline. Perhaps
have you ever seen The Tomorrow War?
Speaker 3 (07:55):
No? No one did, No one did.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I'm sure someone in the audience to watch The fucking
Tomorrow War, but statistically you didn't.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
No idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Great, great, It's a twenty twenty one sci fi movie
starring Chris Pratt in which soldiers from the future come
back to the present day to warn humanity that in
the future we're losing a war against alien invaders, and
so they need to draft the whole present day military
to go back to the future and fight them.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
And then when we run out.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Of present day military, they just start drafting regular people
to go to the future.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
I think I purposefully said watch this.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Nah, they don't sound good. I was like, anything to
watch this, I know on board. But you lost me
at Chris Pratt.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, you lost me at Chris.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So it grossed about twenty million dollars in theaters from
a budget of two hundred million or so. So it
does not do well. People are People Are like the
writer and director of this movie are dragged out into
the street and shot in downtown Hollywood.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
It is such a failure.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
But Queen Romana loves this movie because she idolizes the
Queen Alien like the bad guy of the movie. I think,
I haven't seen this fucking movie. But the aliens are
called the White Spikes, and the Queen of the White
Spikes is stronger than all of the males of her species,
and Ramana seems to really really vibe with this, Okay.
(09:27):
Sarteeshi ties this movie to Romana's belief in something called
DNA X, which she describes as God's tool that she
plans to release to every living all caps I AM
in the world to go back to that weird little
cult that we started this with. Dang, I don't know
what this means as best as I can tell, I
(09:47):
think because the original I Am movement was based on
this guy, this fucking dude hundreds of years ago who'd
claimed to be immortal and all knowing because of magic,
and the im movement was like, no, there's all these
it's actually like this divine there's this set of tactics
that you can find. It is still quasi a cult,
and she's taking basically those claimton saying no, no, it's
(10:07):
not the occult. You can have all of these powers
by alien DNA technology.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
That will make you look walk and all knowing. Right.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
I think that's the gist of it. It's a little
unclear to me exactly what she believes because it's silly,
but that's because what's the handle, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Right, because what the hell?
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Two is spent largely on the road and a caravan
of RVs, one of which was gifted to her and
several of which were printed. The exact makeup of her
COLT shifts rapidly at this point. For one thing, formerly
loyal members don't last forever, right, Like, people find this
and think that it's a good idea, and then she
starts to be a crazy asshole to them, and eventually
(10:48):
they have enough and they're like, this isn't fun anymore,
and they belki.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
It right, other people get what I need the water
turned on, Okay, right.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I'm tired of not having watering. Yeah, So people will leave,
but other people will come in. So there's kind of
and it's never large. The in person following is never
bigger than like much bigger than like a dozen people,
but there is some like people will leave, people will
come in. That's sort of happening, right. She's also purging
people for making mistakes periodically, which keeps the numbers down.
(11:22):
She has at this point by the time twenty twenty
two rules around her followers have uniforms. These are generally
white button up shirts with the Queen Romana logo and
blastened on them. Often adorned with official medals that she
awarded in her capacity as Canadian Commander in Chief, right, like,
and these are because like the question whenever you've got
(11:43):
one of these people handing out medals is like.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Okay, what kind of metals are these? Are you?
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Like?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Are these fake military medals? Are these like bottle calfs?
Like what are we looking at here? And as best
as I can tell, I think that these are, at
least from what I have read. And I think this
is mac Lamoreau who made this claim, and I'm sure
he's right. These are like mostly boy scout medals like
these are like boy Scout awarts.
Speaker 5 (12:06):
Love it, love it, change nothing, it's it's it's good stuff. Yeah, dude,
how come nobody in this whole situation was like can
I meet a like a prince or like like you
ain't got no like accountant like this whole like I
ain't never met nobody else in this kingdom?
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yeah, like does anybody work for you?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
You're the only one who believes you're the queen? And
I guess the people who live in this RV and
the handful of folks that we meet traveling, you know, yeah, but.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
None of them are a part of your court, Like who, yeah,
where's the rest of your administration?
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Right?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Yeah, where's the rest of this doesn't feel like a
government again. That's that gets down to the hole. I
think there's a lot of like play acting. You know,
it takes you to tango with something like this. I
do want to show you, guys these uniforms because they're
not as elaborate as they might sound. From what I
it's mostly she's just got people wearing like white shirts
with fucking metals and stuff on them. But yeah, like
(13:06):
those and those are as soon as I saw peopre like, yeah,
those do look like boy Scout metals. Look like boy
Scout metals.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
That's not a uniform, and those are boy Scout medals. Yeah,
they're just all dressed in white.
Speaker 6 (13:16):
They look a little look like a golf caddies.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah, they look like he's got his all access pass on,
like and you can see behind him.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
As an r V that has like meet and greet
her Majesty Queen Romana, YadA YadA YadA like that. This
is this is how they drive around their Their RVs
are also billboards. He's got his finger pointed up at
the sky, which is a thing that all of her
followers do. I think they took this from this is
a thing in like the Muslim world, like you'll see,
like it basically means that, like, you know, God's in
(13:44):
charge right all right, Like that's the idea at him.
I don't know if that's what it means to her
for her followers to.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Do that, but they are.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
That is the gesture they're doing, and that's I'm sure
that's where it can imagine must have just seen it
on TV or something and liked it.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Dang, imagine being that guy and then now you're like,
that's on the internet forever.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
That's on the internet forever. You in this uniform with
like whatever fucking id she made for you hanging around
your neck and your boy Scout awards for being the
best special boy in the cult whatever. Damn, Like one
day that's he's Because the guy in this is pretty young.
He looks like he's in his twenties, maybe thirty. Like
if he doesn't have kids, he very well might one
(14:26):
day and some day they're gonna find that, Hey, dad,
are you in a uniform? What are these awards? Is
that Let's say the Queen of Canada's RV. Let me
tell you a story about the time Dad made a mistake.
Queen did youulo was incredibly is incredibly serious about her schedule,
(14:49):
and one of the worst things you can do if
you really want to get kicked out of this cult,
the easiest way to do it is to cost her time,
because that is a capital offense. Corey, one of her
form inner circle members, lost his position after a series
of minor errors, including booking an RV to be picked
up at five pm instead of four pm. The Queen
called this treason and threatened to have him executed. She'd
(15:12):
done this numerous times before, and mac Lamora notes that
the methods varied from quote being shot in the head
or thrown from a helicopter. So she's saying, like, I'm
going to have my men shoot you in the head.
I'm gonna throw you out of a helicopter because you
made me wait an hour to get in my new
RV that you rented.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Forticulous. I am royalty. Yeah, I need to borrow this RV. Right.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
She justifies these punishments to the rest of our followers
by saying, nobody controls my timeline. Anybody that screws up
my timeline is going to be tried for treason and
shot in the head.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Except for.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Right, they might have more control over your timeline here,
but you know who won't have you tried for treason
and shot in the head?
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Prop hey better not better not sponsored this podcast.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Very rarely have people shot in the head, you know.
I'm not going to say never. I'm not going to
say never. Might be doing an ad. They've definitely had
some people shot in the head, you know.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
But can you stop naming brands.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Please, Sophie one knows they've had some people shot in
the head. It's fine, we don't. We all keep drinking
the soda. It's okay.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
The soda can literally clean your car battery and we
still drink it.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Please believe the name of the brand.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
No, don't know what it is when when prompt said
it eats car batteries, now you have to keep the bit.
But still anyway, here's ads and we're back. You're killing me, Yeah, baby,
(16:48):
we might and everybody.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
Just like I mean you, you're doing numbers. We might.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
We might want that that sponsor money. Though they did
invent the visual description as.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
So as I noted earlier, Corey and Daisy were foundational
cult members. Romana wouldn't have gotten this crazy train off
the ground without them, and this did not stop her
from abusing them relentlessly. The people you are most reliant
on are the people you're going to be most shitty
on if you're this kind of cult leader.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
And in fact, the fact that they were so useful
and key may have encouraged her to abuse them. Maybe
she felt kind of insecure that she needed them so much,
and she she was really trying to keep them beaten down.
I don't actually know, but the two were doing a lot.
They went from managing her telegram channels to becoming her bodyguard,
mechanic and secretary. Daisy was also the Royal Bank account,
(17:38):
setting up fundraisers and taking donations on behalf of the Queen.
Didulo made impossible demands regularly to these people, and whenever
money came up short or the built in limitations of
technology thwarted her, whims of the moment, she would bully Daisy,
who later said the abuse was NonStop. It was never ending,
no proper meals, you know, no sleep, she continued, She
(17:59):
did care. She said, if you work for the Queen,
you work for the queen, you volunteered to be here.
Why are you complaining? And like she's got a little
bit of a point, She's she's got a little a point. Yeah,
Like why do you have to be here? You knew
what you were You should have known what you were
getting into with this this dumb bullshit, Like come on now,
like you know what you were getting into?
Speaker 3 (18:24):
Yeah, we do.
Speaker 6 (18:25):
We have any idea how old this married couple Daisy
and I've forgotten the name of.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Guessing they were mature adults, probably in middle aged. Maybe
we'll pass it a decent number of but they're not all.
Some of them are pretty young. I don't actually know
they're they're like age range, but you know they're they're
old enough to know better. Yeah, yeah, sure. So during
(18:52):
her months with the Queen, Daisy estimates that she lost
between ten and fifteen pounds. Mark Lammereau, who interviewed a
number of former followers, describes the degree of troll the
Queen exercised over the day to day lives of her
immediate tribe as pretty extensive. People would have to ask
her for permission to even shower, which she periodically denied
some individuals for days at a time.
Speaker 6 (19:11):
And why is that a Thingermber, It's pretty normal cult leaders.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
It's control over their bodies, over even like their ability
to clean themselves. You're you're practicing, you know.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
You're in such closing in the RV.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 6 (19:30):
Such close quarters and your punishment as that everybody has
to smell, numbers and stink.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah, that's crazy. Well she's not.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
She's the the r V where the people stay. It's
different from the Queen's r V.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
True of Oh I forgot, she got the royal RV.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Okay, she sometimes had a separate RV just to use
as a bathroom.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
This lady has figured some out.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Uh huh again, she is living well based on her
previous life. She's doing really good.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
In relation to Yeah, but that's weird. Body control about smell.
I feel like I would want people to smell amazing
in front of me.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Yeah, I'm royal. If I'm royal, it's three showers a day, y'all.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
C Yes, it's just about exercise and control. If you
can get them to do that, you can get them
to do anything, you know. True, and Romana spends most
despite claiming that she's she's taking back Canada.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
She's the rightful ruler.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
All of her time has spent managing her followers, this
very small number of in person. That's what she does
her most of them right, right, And that's most of
her work is keeping these people busy, you know, keep
these people too busy and too beaten down to leave
or to realize that like they're in, like how fucked
up the situation. Is part of how she does this
is she she hands up every morning. The day starts
(20:45):
with her gathering everyone together and issuing them their tasks
for the day. And we're talking a mix of stuff,
like we're all living in RV's, so there's waste tanks
that have to be emptied, there's water tanks they have
to be refilled, there's food that has to be purchased.
But there's also bullshit work, like we need new signs
for the vehicles. I need someone to print out a
bunch of these fake money things to hand out at
(21:07):
the next stop. Right, And she's the point of this
is there's some stuff that has to get done. There's
a lot of busy work. What's most important, though, is
that she's keeping everyone busy all day. People would regularly
work sixteen hours at a time. But she's keeping the
busy doing mostly bullshit tasks or like petty work tasks
that they don't get anything done.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
They're not there.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
They came here to be part of this crusade to
fix Canada, and all they're doing is like maintaining the
caravan and handling bullshit work for her, printing stuff out
or making new signs or whatever and so. And this
is something former members will say, It's like I felt
like I worked all the time and nothing ever got done.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Right, Yeah, you're just running a how cold? Running a
Kinko's just too.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Basically you think you think about it, this isn't so
unique to her. It's it's shabbier and sadder because this
is just like ten people or twelve people living in
a series of RVs. But that's what scientology is, right,
that's the whole point. And you have, yeah, you have
the Sea Org and you have all these people, these
auditors doing It's that you have petty work and tasks
(22:11):
to keep the people who are full time members of
the cult constantly working, right, You want them always using
up their energy, otherwise they're going to put that energy
towards maybe realizing that they're in a fucking cult, you know.
And Didulo's goal was to make sure everyone's exhausted and
working all the time so they don't have time to
plot against her. One good example of this would be
the account of a cult member who claims Romana made
(22:32):
her wake up at four am to turn on her
hotel coffee maker. She would do stuff like this, demand
people do very basic tasks for her. Yeah, that shouldn't
even be necessary, just because it's an exertion. It's her
use exercise and control.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Right. Yeah, that's that's that's some bully gang stuff right there.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, life inside the cult on the road sounds like
living hell to me. Here's one description of how Romana
liked to start off their days. Per an article advice quote,
every morning, at six or seven am, the queen would
play her favorite song, disco supergroup bony m smash hit Rasputant,
about the well endowed Russian mystic of the same name. Often,
(23:10):
the funky vibes would last an hour. Once Didjulo played
Rasputant for the entire duration of a ten hour drive
while her staff just sat and listened. Her followers even
recorded their own version of the song with lyrics about her, and.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
It's the worst anti ever, Like, yeah, oh man.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
It's all like ten hours a fucking rasp buttant and
I love that song. It's a great, it's a great.
It's a banger of a hit, don't get me wrong,
But ten hours of that and her obsession with it
is so weird. Like there's a I'll pull up, there's
a like you should actually hear her followers version.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Of Respue Me Too. I was going to be my
next request.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
So if you want to, if you listen in check
in to the QAnon Anonymous episodes.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
I think it's the second one about Ramana that has
with mac Lamreau that as the actual audio of the song.
I don't want us to get copyright struck, and I'm
kind of worried that we might, especially what with the
Netflix thing going on. So I'm just gonna actually sing
you the lyrics, So you're gonna get to listen to
me sing yes as best as I can recall in
tune to the original song resputin by Boney m Okay,
(24:17):
Are we ready?
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Yes, there lives a fearless Queen Romana.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Did you low?
Speaker 2 (24:23):
She may seem quite small, but she's oh so powerful.
When communists a mess to subjugate her peeps, She's summoned
allied forces to obliterate. Queen Romana lives for we the people. Strong,
benevolent and just. She's discreet, lee waking, sleeping people, daily
(24:44):
building trust. Rah Rah Romana, Precious Queen of Canada. She's
taken names and she's kicking ass. Rah Rah Romana, Precious
Queen of Canada. Please hop on board or get off
the bus. And there's a lot more to it. There's
a fun line. She's liberating earth with wisdom and with grace.
But if her RV's rockin', she is dancing late, That's
(25:07):
that's weird. That's a weird line to that's weird in them.
Kind of makes me wonder if there's some weird sex
stuff going on.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
I don't know. But yeah, it's great.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah again, Yeah, beautiful stuff, beautiful stuff. We all love
to see people repurposing Boney M's work for the good
of the world.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Yes, so, as you might expect.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Hearing hours and hours of the song raspute and played
over and over again. Even though that song's kind of
a banger, might lead some people in the colt to
wonder like, well, as Corey put it, oh my fucking lord,
what are we doing?
Speaker 3 (25:40):
What the hell?
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Yes, she's yelling we got a war people, time to
get up and dancing around like a lunatic. So this
start does start to wear short on some people. The
ridiculousness is kind of hard to continue to uh stretch
your sense of disbelief towards. One former member of the
group told Weiss that one day he took one of
(26:03):
their RVs out to do errands, like there were parts
that they needed to pick up, I think for like
their streaming rig. They needed to get food for dinner,
so this was stuff he needed to do. But he
didn't get Queen Romana's permission beforehand, like he didn't double
check with her. I can take the RV out, I
have to go on an errand, and she exploded at him,
relieving him of duty, alongside the members who had left
(26:25):
in the RV with him, just firing a bunch of
her cult members and saying, you can't split up the
convoy otherwise our military is.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
Going to shoot you.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Okay, where where's the military that's going to shoot you?
Speaker 3 (26:36):
When the military?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah right, yeah, what military? And the former member who
gets kicked out is that guy named Cowan who was
He was disturbed at how distraught one of the one
of the cult members was that she fires that like this,
he's kind of I think done with it at this
point when she fires him, he's like.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Good, I'm out of here.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
But this lady's like losing her mind, weeping and stuff.
Quote she really thought it was her destiny to be there.
And I think that that's gets that really gets something important.
I try to emphasize a few times. Some people are
begging to be in a cult, right. They are desperate
for any kind of meaning, right, yea, even this, even
something that it's something, it's more meaningful, go to work
(27:20):
and pay your bills, right yeah, anything.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
Yeah, something important. Nah.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
That's now we're getting at something because to weep for
about this rather than being like, yeah, this game is trash.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
This is this was fucked up from the beginning, and
it just it's said, there's something like almost physically painful
to some people at being cut off from this when
you finally found it, right, when you finally found the
thing that gives you a sense of belonging and you
get kicked out of it, like that's.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Like losing a limb.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Cohen, though, is you know, he's fed up by the
time he gets fired, and so he takes his personal
video and recording equipment with him. He's one of the
guys who knew how to do things, who joined the
Cold and the Queen is not happy about this. She
gets on telegram, she declares him a thief. She claims
he's kidnapped other staff who left with him. She posts
videos of Cohen along with his picture and links to
(28:09):
his social media. She calls him a devil worshiper, and
she sentences him to death, and her followers, you know,
attack him with as much zealousness as they attacked all
of the other enemies of the group.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
One follower posted, he will not survive what is coming.
Another added that Cohen was quote a fan of Satan
and a trader, and another wrote maybe he should be
the first to hang publicly for all the other traders
to see what to expect. So that's kind of a
blister of at least things that are adjacent to death threats.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
And all Cohen could.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Do was sort of hunker down to avoid the storm.
I didn't answer a single phone call, but my phone
was constantly blowing up with telegram messages and text messages.
Then a few people found my personal Facebook page and
commented randomly on some posts. One of them like a
six year old woman who looks really nice, and she
was like, you it will burn what, Well, it's just
the amount of rage when you tell people like this
(29:06):
your bullshit game that has become the entire core of
your like life.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
This is all the only thing that excites you.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
This is like, this is your friend group, this is
you're addicted to this, and this guy doesn't believe it.
He left even though he actually just got fired. Like, yeah,
you get enraged, and a part you're kind of taking
out your anger at the rest of the world on
this person because at some level they all know this
isn't real, right, and that makes them pissed. So, as
(29:35):
you might get from some of this, Romana's not wildly
loyal to her cult members, and in fact, she is
so unsatisfied with the quality of her first band of
cult members that she fires them all. This is one
of my favorite things about her story. It also kind
of hints at the weird resilience of her grift. From
what I can tell, it sounds like the breakdown started
because she was planning to extend her road trip into
(29:56):
the United States and a desperate attempt to avoid going
back to her normal life and to try to get
some of that American money.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Yeah, But some of her followers, including Cordy and Daisy,
had children, and we're like, well, we're just going to
Ottawa and then you like wanted to drive around for
a few months, and we were down with that, but
we can't do this forever. And so Raman is like, well,
if you have kids, simply have moved them in with
your family and then abandon them for the cause. And
a few of her followers have kids and they're like, what, Okay,
(30:25):
I didn't think that's what we were doing.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
This yu guys abandoned shit out man, yep, yep.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
So this is all coming to a head as the
caravan makes its way into Newfoundland, which is not a
heavily populated part of Canada, and they're kind of in
the middle of nowhere of Newfoundland, which is itself kind
of the middle of nowhere. And the day after she
makes everyone listen to Rasputin for ten hours while driving
through the middle of nowhere Canada, right, they're stopped, they're
all tired. She probably keeps them up late, and then
(30:54):
she wakes everyone up early, playing her fucking rasputant song
and yelling about how there's a war on and says, everyone,
skip breakfast, we got to start driving right now. And
Corey and Daisy have finally had enough and they closed
the door in her face and they're like, no, we're
going to sleep, like we're not getting up yet and
we're gonna eat, and Queen Didulo just leaves them. She
abandons almost it sounds like pretty much all of her
(31:15):
staff two thousand miles away from her homes, takes the
RVs so that's like rent cars to get home, and
declares them traders and warns them to watch your backs right,
just leaves them in Newfoundland.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
Traiders all right.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
Yeah, she's smelling her own stuff way too much, man. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
So you know, not long after that, in August of
twenty twenty two, Queen Didulo carries out her next major
real world endeavor. This is in a town called Peterborough,
where she has gotten been convinced for a while and
been ranting for a while about like the police in
Peterborough and how they're enforcing COVID mandates and whatnot. They're
(31:57):
they're corrupt, We're gonna do a citizens erect all that
good stuff, right Like that's this is all kind of
like and it's a little hard for me to tell,
like why she focuses specifically on this small town. I
think maybe some of it is just that, like, well,
this was like a small enough town that maybe she
thought it would work. Some of it is that one
(32:18):
of her followers, this guy Frank Curtin, lives in the
town and he starts like he organizes like a mass
event to do a citizen arrest of all these police.
So I think it may have just been that, like
she had a follower who was like, no.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
It'll work if we do it here.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
You know they have there's this they've got this meme
going on that's like they're calling the police chief the
retire borough police chief, because they're trying to get him
to retire and threatening to arrest him if he doesn't.
To quote from Sarteghi's piece about Frank Curtin. Curtin is
one of Digulo's most art and supporters and provides a
useful example of an active agent curtain came to believe
(32:54):
in Digulo's ideas after parting ways with his employer a
part approximately one year before the Peterborough event. Problems between
Curtin and his employer. When his employer received funds from
the government to boost the manufacturing of hand sanitizer as
part of the fight against COVID nineteen. Curtin considered this
government funding suspicious. He believes that COVID nineteen is fake
and that his employer had collected that money illegally. These
conspiratorial beliefs then allegedly led to Curtain's departure from the company.
(33:17):
After leaving the company, Curtin began regularly serving Digelos ceased
and desist orders to public officials. He then specifically targeted
Police Chief Scott Gilbert of the Peterborough Police Department. Curtin
was upset about not receiving from the police Chief Gilbert
what Gilbert deemed to be an appropriate response to his
complaint about his employer's supposed illegal activities. Curtin recorded himself
serving a cease and desist order upon Chief Gilbert and
(33:39):
posted the video on his YouTube channel. Right, so, yeah,
this is a really good example of how these kind
of things snowball, right, this is not a guy who's
living with the caravan. He starts just serving her cease
and assists, but she's following him. He's posting as he's
in the telegrams, he's putting these up. He's talking about
a corrupt the police are. Roman is like, oh, this
might be useful. So she starts some memes about retire,
(34:02):
you know, the police chief, and we're going to arrest
all of them, and it just becomes an increasing thing
to her followers. And this kind of makes it inevitable
that there's going to be a showdown in Peterborough, right,
Like they're gonna have to do something there.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Yeah, This goes from funny to annoying to like, okay,
you have to stop, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Right right, yeah, And we're gonna talk about what happened next,
but first, ads, we're back. So this guy, Frank Curtin
has becoming gotten you know, as a result of getting
fired and losing his mind over like COVID stuff, both
(34:41):
lost his job and is increasingly becoming unhinged. He's fallen
into this rabbit hole of didulo stuff, and he's gotten
obsessed with Chief Gilbert, his town's police chief. He's posting
videos about how like there's this plane that he'll see
flying every now and then that he believes the police
chief is flying above his house to like fuck with
him specif. So this is not a well man, right,
(35:05):
This is really not a well man. And he's incredibly
angry about like the vaccines and the police are showing
up at like vex to protect vaccine sites because of
crazy people like Frank Curtin, right, And so this all
comes to a head in August of twenty twenty two,
which is when Queen Didulo's caravan shows up in Peterborough
(35:25):
for her next major real world endeavor. She's gathered around
forty of her followers and she's told them these officers
and their chief are all complicit in COVID crimes and
we're going to arrest them. And so they show up
in this town and she attempts to arrest the entire
police department. Frank Curtin starts by announcing today we are
going to turn the members of the Peterborough Police Station
(35:46):
over to the US Special Forces military, the Canadian military,
and the Global Military Alliance will pick them up once
we detain them. The who, well, it makes a lot
of sense problem. It's the US Special Forces military, regular military.
They're not involved, but the regular Canadian military is involved
them of course, the Global Military Alliance. They're all going
to show up after we arrest them. They can't arrest
(36:09):
the cops themselves, all the militaries in the world, they
don't have to. We the people do that, but then
they'll detain them once we the people have detained them.
In response, the police use one of the most dastardly tricks.
Right These people show up outside of the police station.
They say they're going to arrest them, and the cops
lock the door, just like, eh, not dealing.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
With this right now. Let's see if they go away.
I'm almost all.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Today, so Didilo is reduced for a while to heckling
them over a bullhorn, demanding the police turn themselves in. Eventually,
the police reinforcements arrive. One man tells them they're under arrest,
and the cops are like, no, I mean, like, you're
actually under arrest.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
We are are the cops. We have like the guns
and stuff. Yeah, you're just got to be guys. Were
really some RVs behind you? Yeah, but you're not cops.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
You are definitely not cops. The Guardian summarizes what happened next.
Speaking to supporters over a megaphone, Digitlo fired up the
small crowd, but fled to her RV when scuffles with
the police. Bagan and some of her disciples were arrested.
She was somebody who was boosting this effort and was
very much in favor of it until it went south,
in which case she threw all of her followers under
the bus. She's very big on self preservation, clearly, a
(37:29):
quote from one of the observers. Yeah, six people were arrested,
two with assaulting a police officer, but there were no
charges for the queen, and so her mery road trip continued.
She gathered another gaggle of a dozen or so followers.
Together she bought a sixty two thousand dollars RV with
some of the donated money, and had another RV donated
to the cause. Wow, and she attempted at this point.
(37:51):
I do think though she's starting to see it's expensive
to drive around all the time. I want to settle somewhere,
but I can't get I still am not willing to
go back to my normal life, which is when she
finds a small town called Richmond in twenty twenty three,
and she finds this because one of the guys who
lives in the town has bought Richmond had a school.
But it's a very small town, right, and it's one
(38:13):
of those things. The school becomes defunct, you know, Okay,
I think because they're just like, aren't enough people to
keep it going. Yeah, and there's this local guy who's
become a follower of her cult, or at least a
partial follower of her cult, who buys, who's like purchased
the school and the land that it's on, and he
invites them to come over and like move in basically like, hey,
(38:38):
like you can live in this old school that I
technically own and live in Richmond, this tiny ass, little
small tan candid like a good life.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Don't sound royal fan.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, So there's a mix of problems. For one thing,
there's a couple of people in town who believe her, so,
like at least one Richmond resident told W five News
that her father stopped paying his bills because Digulo said so.
But a lot of people are just unhappy about it.
For one thing, Yeah, they've been kicked out of at
least one town prior to this where like they showed
(39:12):
up and were trying to set up shop there, and
like the mayor and a bunch of the local residents
had it out from and like ran them out of
town by banking it a really uncomfortable place for them
to live. Yeah, and they try to do that in Richmond.
A lot of people do. There's a lot of complaints,
there's local government meetings about it. But they're not quite
able to kick them out of Richmond with the speed
that they want to because in part they have a
(39:34):
really good thing going. They have this whole school that
they can live in that they're turning into like their
government headquarters. So they don't they don't want to.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Go yeah right, Yeah, they got some progress.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Yeah right.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
I think there's also she's starting to lose followers by
this point, she's not at her height. So I think
there's this understanding that like, well, I may be near
the end of this scrift from the beginning, and I
want to settle down somewhere where like we've got a
stable place to live and whatnot. Like maybe that's the
and man's who's the guy who's bought them to the
(40:07):
property is also just kind of somebody who's he's like
a right wing crank who hates COVID nineteen vaccine, and
so some of this is just I think he hates
everyone around him and wants to piss them off. Yes,
this is a huge issue in Richmond for a while, right,
there's protests. Some people do go a little bit overboard
and being paranoid about the cult too, but I understand
(40:28):
basically they don't want these people fucking up their little down, right,
that's weird. And she starts making claims and the cult
as that like, well, there's a lot of us. If
we all become residents, you know, we can vote in
local elections and shift the elections they're kind of doing,
like what that cult and Antelope, Oregon did that. Yeah,
Wild Wild Country died. Yeah they're talking about it. Right,
So this also really pisses off people like I don't
(40:50):
want my tiny town to be taken over here by
these weird assholes, right, Yeah, it just sounds like, yeah,
kind of shitty. So you know, this goes on for
I think like a year and change, and it only
really hit there's like kind of an inflection point that
came recently where a bunch of them got arrested very recently,
(41:16):
Like this is yeah, yeah, fucking finally right in September,
like the fall of twenty twenty five, she gets arrested,
and it's it's kind of some bullshit. She doesn't get
arrested for any of the actual like really fucked up
shit that she does. Yeah she arrested, Yeah, right, Like
(41:40):
she gets arrested. It's that it's just like they don't
arrest her for the actual bad stuff. They arrest her
for like intimidating four people, including a police officer, and
uh like basically for intimidating people in town as opposed
to be the time she tried to get people killed
or tried to all those police arrested, or got people
(42:02):
to stop paying their bills. It's like kind of like
witness intimidation. Almost ed you for being weird. They rested
her for being weird, and she's you know, she live
streams the arrest. There's this satisfying moment where the officers
are like, leave the phone here.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Under her arrest.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
They part of what it prompted the the RCMP to
rate in the first place was that there were pictures
of guns from inside the property. But they turned out
to be replica handguns. I don't know how far this
case is going to go. There's a good chance she
gets fucked over just because she is representing herself, which
is a bad decision. So she might go herself over here.
(42:42):
But the charges aren't super crazy, right, Like she's not
getting charged with most of the actual bad cult leader stuff.
Maybe she'll successfully fund raise off of this. We don't
really know where things are going to go from here, right,
But no, there's not a body count other than that cat.
Maybe it's a pretty tame story, right, It's just I
(43:02):
thought it was fun. I thought we'd all have some
fun man.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Yeah. Stuff.
Speaker 4 (43:07):
It's like, yeah, like you don't make fun of like
people who fall into colts because, like you said, you
know glasshouses and stones and all that you know.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
And then on.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
The other hand, it's like, bro, you stop paying your
utilities and that wasn't I feel like I can make
fun of you for that.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Now there is a nice little PostScript to this cult
because we don't know what's gonna happen with Romana. But
I do want to talk for just a second about
the King of America David Carlson.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Okay, yes, please.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Because he did crop up a year or two ago,
and people started talking to him, and at first he
was very positive towards Romana, and then he kind of
soured on her and he started making it clear like, oh,
I didn't say she was the queen. I said she
was like in the running to be the queen. Like
she might be right, that's not what I'm say. Had
(44:00):
a break right, And there's a I want to read.
I'm just gonna read the start of this this Vice
article about him because it has a really funny opening.
Wearing a Florida Gators T shirt, an Arizona man in
his mid forties attempts to convince the hundreds of thousands
of conspiracy theorists watching his laptop live stream that he's
the real leader of the United States. King David Carlson
(44:20):
explains that he still has a few million people to
take out before he's finally done with his plan installing
QAnon kings and queens around the.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
World, around the world. Great.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
He claims, they've replaced Joe Biden was taken out on
election day. We've replaced sheriffs and other leaders you know,
and where we and he's been appointing a lot of kings.
He's appointed a king to the Kingdom of Britain, which
I think already has a king. Is king's the Kingdom
of Sweden, which I think already has a king. There's
a King of New Zealand, which I don't think had
a king.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
He was Maori.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
There's a there's a Minister of North Carolina. There's a
Queen Helen Edwards of the Kingdom of Australia. And then
there's her Excellency Karen Minister of New Jersey.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Obviously. Oh these guys are They're so wonderful, man, Yeah,
they're great. This is fun. They're great.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
My favorite is that since Queen Romana has fallen out
of the King's favorite, she's no longer the Queen of Canada,
but he has appointed a new Queen of Canada, the
bec woman who was a follower of Queen Romana and
wrote a fan poem about her, but has now been
appointed the real Queen of Canada. And so I guess
took the throne and a coup of some sort.
Speaker 3 (45:29):
This is great, yeah, and there's a great I'm gonna
show you.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
The last thing I'll show you is I want to
show you the Royal Seal of I think who we
can all agree is a better pick for Queen of Canada,
Queen Charmaine. And I just I just love this. I
love this Queen, Queen Charmain of Canada. First of her name,
it's like a pink log with a with a very
(45:57):
air brushed face of a blonde wild Queen Charmain's Yeah,
natural laws, zero politics, royal decrees, benevolent monarchy.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
It's like if mar.
Speaker 6 (46:09):
A Lago face and Toddler's and tiaras.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
This is, this is she does on Instagram.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
Who shouldn't be on Instagram keeping all them filters on
her face?
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yep ye wow, Queen Charmaine, thanks for sharing, Robert Well,
I know for for my part, I now have am
declaring my allegiance to Queen Charmaine.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
You know I will take.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Let's do it, all right, Queen Charmaine. It is everyone
all right, as long as as long as I can shower. Listen,
sure she looks like she showers.
Speaker 3 (46:48):
All I gotta say is.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
Listen to politics, but please politics prop with more.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
It is foolishness. Oh my gosh, mm hmm, my lord,
thank you, thank you for this. I needed this really refreshing.
Speaker 6 (47:06):
Thank you, Robert.
Speaker 3 (47:08):
All right, everybody, this as I ain't gonna hold you
like just for.
Speaker 4 (47:17):
Go to hell.
Speaker 6 (47:17):
I love you. Is that what you said, Robert?
Speaker 2 (47:20):
Yeah, I say that sometimes.
Speaker 6 (47:21):
That's nice. All right, Bye bye. Behind the Bastards is
a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com or
check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes, but Behind
(47:43):
the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every Tuesday
and Thursday. Remind me of Netflix. You don't miss an episode.
For clips in our older episode catalog, continue to subscribe
to our YouTube channel YouTube dot com slash at behind
the Bastards. We love about forty percent of you, sickly speaking,
Behind the Bastards News
Host
Robert Evans
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Betrayal Season 5
Saskia Inwood woke up one morning, knowing her life would never be the same. The night before, she learned the unimaginable – that the husband she knew in the light of day was a different person after dark. This season unpacks Saskia’s discovery of her husband’s secret life and her fight to bring him to justice. Along the way, we expose a crime that is just coming to light. This is also a story about the myth of the “perfect victim:” who gets believed, who gets doubted, and why. We follow Saskia as she works to reclaim her body, her voice, and her life. If you would like to reach out to the Betrayal Team, email us at betrayalpod@gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com