Part Two: The Holy Rollers Sex Cult

Sophie has never been wrong about a single thing in her life. Matt Lieb guests and Robert is also there.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Wolz Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh kay, dope, Albert's just like dry eating like.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
A whole a whole piece of paper sized sheet of seaweed.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
I don't even think you've chewed, You're just inhaling the seaweed.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Oh No, seaweed turns to a sweet, sweet liquid in
your mouth. That's good stuff. Yeah, that's going to really
piss off a significant chunk of the audience. Speaking of
a significant chunk of the audience, Metley.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
I'm back, baby, Wow, got no thing.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Wow, thank you. I was really really had been. We've
been waiting for years to have Nick Cave come in
as a as a guest on our podcast and just
thrilled to have him. Thank you, Nick. Oh, I love
I love that you. Uh yeah great.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Watch Peaky Blinders.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
Oh, man, that's such a banger. Oh, Nick Cave just
a ton of bangers. I'm always a murder ballads guy.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
But mmmm yeah, I mean listen, he's a very talented, talented,
deep voiced man.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
But Peaky Blinders, now that's a god damn. That's a
great show man.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Yeah. Peaky Blinders, which is about children, right, It's.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
About you know, roma people, but there are children in it.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
There's children in it, and there's also children in Portland
and you help them have access to a museum by
texting Bastards to five oh one five five to donate
to the Flip Museum.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
I could have helped you with that transition.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Were happening, but I was like, well, I mean it's
not really well, children just decided to get but to
get that moment.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, there's there's there's kids all over the place. Sure,
in most places except for in this cult, which is well,
actually a lot of them are children. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but you know, let's get back to the story. So
Joshua Craffield, as we kind of closed out the last
episode with, I don't really feel strongly that he was

(02:21):
necessarily worse than the surrounding society. This is one of
those cases where not really a clear good guy, right,
but he was a pretty He was still an abusive
cult leader, right right, because it is a cult.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Leader leader that with it, I think not a good
guy is kind of relative the cult leader.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
I think we can say you make your judgment for yourself.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah yeah. So one of the things about him as
a cult leader is that he decides after he starts
having sex with everyone that he has been given quote,
the authority to regulate the details of their daily life. Now,
his first new rule is quote, everything except the light
of the day is a shoot, which means no lamps,
no fires, and no electric lights. Right, nothing but daylight.

(03:04):
Anything else, and you're angering God. I think it might
have been still okay to navigate via like the fires
caused by lightning strikes, but I don't know if this
ever got brought up to him. Not a lot of
lightning in Oregon, right.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
I mean? And also, how often are you going to
be put in that position?

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Right?

Speaker 3 (03:21):
So.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Joshua had also declared back on the island that sins
had to be atoned for by having his followers roll
on the ground until he ordered them to stop. This
is incorporated into their day long prayer sessions. Creffield also
started telling his followers that God only would speak to
them when they were rolling around on the ground, and
that the way to welcome him in was to shout

(03:42):
prayers as loudly as possible while again rolling around. If
you don't do this, then God's going to smite you.
And again, these are like twenty four hour sessions. Now
you probably won't be surprised to hear. This makes quite
a ruckus, and it was noted that like neighbors as
far as a quarter of a mile away from the
Hurtz house could hear them rolling around and screaming all
night long when they would do these day long sessions.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's not exactly an inconspicuous
way of praying.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
No no.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Joshua next announced that he had to sanctify their food
by touching it with his hands. He exercised extreme discrimination
and what was worthy of sanctification though, So not only
did he have to sanctify your food, but he would
decide what he was willing to sanctify, and if he
didn't sanctify food for a week, you couldn't eat.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
No, that's my hamburger, let me touch it. No, God
doesn't want you to have this. I love it. He's
just everyone's big brother.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Yeah, just jacking their food.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Stealing from them and saying God, he's.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
The professor from that. I think you should leave that. Yeah,
that is exactly what he's doing. God, that is that
is quite funny. So if he doesn't sanctify food, then
you can't eat, right, So like one week he'd be
like God, has only approved me to sanctify bread and

(05:09):
water because he wants you to know what it's like
to be hungry. And then the next week he's like,
you don't know enough yet, so I'm not sanctifying everything.
You can't even have water. And then when people be like,
but we we want water, please don't why why are
we starving it and ourselves, he would be like, if
you don't do this, God's going to take me away,
Like he'll make me leave if you guys don't starve

(05:31):
yourselves this week.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
So yeah, God will get rid of the last good
dick you've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
And they're like, oh fuck, yeah. Can't let the.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Kind of where this is headed because next from Holy
Rollers quote, Joshua ruled that men, women, and children were
all to sleep together on the floor in the same
room while wearing little clothing. They were to do this so,
according to Joshua, they wouldn't know cold, or so so
they would know cold. Joshua established rules about whom they
could community kate with. If someone wasn't one of God's
anointed refused to accept the gift of spirit, Joshua told

(06:05):
them to have no dealings with the infidels, even if
the infidels were members of their own families. So he's
he's isolating everybody. He's now much more directly breaking up families.
And this creates a problem because Crefield and his cult
are now living at the Hurt family house. And while
Maud and most of the rest of the Hurt family,
you know, Maud, her brother, one of her sisters, her mom,

(06:27):
they've all joined Joshua's cult. Their father, the patriarch of
the family, Ov Hurt, and the owner of the house,
has not joined the cult, right he has refused to.
He's letting them all crash here because he doesn't want
his daughter to like freeze to death in the woods.
But he is not in the cult. And Crefield has
just said, you have to like shun everyone who's not

(06:48):
in the cult. And this is kind of it. It's
kind of sad because like in our whole story, Ov
Hurt is the only nice guy, like everyone in town
basically agrees he was just like a really helpful kind man.
And he again, he had agreed to let the cult
live on his family because he loved his family so much.
And he's like, I don't understand what you're doing, but
I don't want you to die in the cold, please

(07:08):
come in with me. Cheryl'll take your cult leader too.
And Joshua we call that enabling. He is he is enabling,
and Joshua punishes him for it because he's like, I
know that we're living in his house, but you all
have to shun your dad. Don't call you can't call
him dad. God's God's the only fan. There's only one
dad here.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
It's me.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Call him the Black Devil. Yeah, very wild shit. And
he's like, you need to tell him whenever you have
a chance, that God's going to kill him, right, Like,
don't call him your dad and let him knowing he's
going to be punished.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Yeah, call him the black Devil and that God wants
him dad. Yeah, but you know, have a regular relationship.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
I don't want to tell you otherwise.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Sure don't be yeah, now, as you probably would not
be surprised to hear. This is kind of a bummer
for ov, right, not a happy way to live. So
by the end of October, he gives in and he's like,
fuck it, I'll join the cult. What else am I
going to do? Life is terrible? Otherwise, he quits his job.
He sends them like his two weeks notice, and he's like,
I now realize I've been living in sin and I'm

(08:15):
going to go join a cult. And he puts a
note on his front door that says positively, no admittance
except on God's business, which I also have on my
front door. Different God, Sure, different God, Think deeper, think older,
more underwater. Anyway, the Holy Rollers are overjoyed that OV
has joined them, and like all of us, they knew

(08:35):
the best way to express their joy was by lighting
shit on fire, which they did using all of Ovi's
possessions as kindling. So they take once he joins, they
take everything he owns, his carpets, his beds, is she
his like precious family heirlooms, his like things he'd inherited
from his dad, family photos, and they light them on fire.

(08:57):
They build a big bonfire, and they're like, this shit's car,
so we have to burn it.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
God, damn it.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
You just yeah, this poor motherfucker. Now, Frank, the guy
who had made the newspaper because he rode his bike
to Oregon City, he throws his bike on the pire
right because he's in the colt, so he has to
burn his bicycle as carnal and once they finished with
the furniture, the Colt digs up all the flowers and

(09:24):
grape vines and fruit trees their garden and they burn
that too. Last, they take all of the family livestock,
their chickens, as well as the pet cat and dog
and burn them alive.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah all right, I officially don't like it.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yes, now, now we're onto the monster part.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Right. Listen, you can fuck my wife all you want,
but you leave my kid cat out of this. You
son them a bitch.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, so that's good, although there's some debate as to
whether or not the animals were alive when this happens.
So okay, I don't know, imagine that it's the less
horrible option.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
I guess yeah. I like him again, my wife.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
So they decide next that they should march on another
family home, the Hartley Residents. Warren Hartley is again not
a follower of the cult, but his wife and daughter
are so like his wife and daughter. Well, he's like
a way at work, start lighting his shit on a
fire and when he comes back, he like gets a shotgun,
like fuck you guys, right, And so this whole brew

(10:24):
haha obviously makes the local papers kind of a kind
of a wild thing to happen in your small city.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Did he shoot anybody with the gun?

Speaker 1 (10:32):
He doesn't, sho, No, he should have, Yeah, but he
does not, probably because it was his family doing a
lot of the burning.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Right.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
So this becomes enough of a story that like several
thousand Oregonians travel from nearby to like drive and walk
past the house where this is all happening, just to
be like, maybe we'll get to see a crazy person.
You know, there's not much going on in Oregon at
this point.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
We very dressed.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
This enough guy burning a bunch of shit with a
shotgun nearby is like literally watching nineteen ninety seven's The Titanic.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah, hey, honey, you know how our lives are unendurable drudgery.
Let's risk them by traveling eighteen hours by foot to
look at a crazy man.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Wow, look at them, Bud.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
This was worth both of our sons dying of tetanus
on the road.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
I hate my child, but it's fun to see that
that lady has almost got a titties.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
How she's dancing oor agaon.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
So this had all gone so oh sorry, So yeah,
this becomes like a whole thing and a rumor starts
to spread right based on the fact that they burnt
their pets on this pire that an adopted child had
also been like because the Hurts have a kid they
adopted and no one is able like they no one's
seen the kid in a while, so they're like a

(11:53):
shit the coat light a baby on fire because Crayfield
has been preaching that this adopted child they like, you know,
you spend some money on the adoption process, right, so
that makes this child profane and of the world and
thus not worth a living dickhead. Yeah, he's really made

(12:13):
a heel turn.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Now I don't like him.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yeah, good stuff. So Craffield has not gone that far, thankfully. No,
no children get lit on fire as far as we're
aware of. No kids die in the story, in fact,
which makes it fairly rare among behind the bathrooms.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, I know this is new for you.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah, celebrate a cut kid not dying in this by
donating to the Portland's Children's Missus please right, yeah five
oh one five five text there then you can donate. Bam,
that's a fucking plug. Well, Craffield has not lit a
baby on fire. The rumor is widely believed enough that
the police have to make a welfare check. And not

(12:53):
very pro police here, but like, yeah, you probably want
to check up on that jarlit and cats and rugs
on fire. They might kill a baby.

Speaker 2 (13:01):
There's no way to know. I mean, what else is
your job? You know what I mean? Right? Like you
like that's a part of it.

Speaker 3 (13:09):
Is like, hey, we got a loose cannon in the neighborhood,
fucking all the wives pets.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
Maybe maybe we take a look at this.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
Ye, let's just give a little knocking knock on the
door here and see if.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Show up at the hurt house and OV lets them
in and they they enter to find the house empty
because everything's been burned. All the furniture has been burned,
and all of the rollers are lying near naked in
a pile in an empty room like weeping. Some of
them are crying, some of them are laughing, all of
them are chanting loudly in prayer. A lot of them
are rolling around. They seem kind of like manic and crazy, right, sure,

(13:44):
none of them have eaten in days. They all look
exhausted and like starving. So the police are like, well, yeah,
this does seem like it could be a problem, But
OV takes them to the adopted daughter, and so like, well,
the kid's not dead. And so next they're like, did
you guys kill your pets in a bonfire? And Frank Hurt,
who's Ov's son and also in the cult, is like,

(14:05):
we killed a dog and cat. I admit, but we
did so because we wanted to get rid of them
but failed. Yeah, no, no, no, that's better.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yeah, listen, we tried to get rid of them. The
cat came back, you know the song, and sometimes the
cat comes back, you got.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
To burn it.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah. Yeah, they did a real homeword bound thing, so
we had to fucking light them on fire.

Speaker 4 (14:26):
The alternative endings, that would be a really different movie
if at the end of that the family is like
the direct the animals followed us.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Studio note is useful.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
So yeah, the cops that ask did you, like, did
you sacrifice these animals? And Crayfield is like, no, no,
we didn't sacrifice the animals, but that would be weird. Yeah, yeah,
and and and Frank says, we have no loss except
the Bible. You find nothing like that in the Bible.
And Ov is like, yeah, we killed the dog, but
it was like a bad dog. It wouldn't obey orders,

(15:03):
and so we had sentences to death for its disobedience. Right, right,
We had a trial.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
We had another dog as judge. It was a jer
of its fears, a bunch of other dogs barking and shit.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
And this is this is this concerns the sheriff because again,
ov is this nice man, like, he's not the kind
of guy to murder his dog.

Speaker 2 (15:24):
But you know, a nice guy, you know, not the
dog murdering.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who
would kill his dog on a fire. Who character, Yes,
it seems kind of weird for you, man, which I
guess it's nice to be known as not the kind
of guy who would do.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, put that on a resume. Yeah, probably not the
kind of guy who would light a dog on fire.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah. So the police asked next, hey, if God told
you that you were supposed to murder your small adopted child,
would you do that? And Creffield's like, well, you know,
it's impossible for me to sin since God is scripting
every action that I take. So if I were to
burn a child, it wouldn't be wrong.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Now, well, he tells us to the cops.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
He tells this to the cops.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Dude, I like, he's going for it.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
He's going for it, right, going for it.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
That is unsettling and honestly probably should be caused for
some sort of action being taken against you. But it's
not illegal, right. The cops are like, well, he has
not committed a crime, right, Like, there's nothing illegal about
killing your own pets, and there's nothing illegal about saying
that it wouldn't be wrong for you to murder a
child if you haven't murdered the child.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
Yeah, you're like, I don't know if it's I mean,
I guess it's a First Amendment issue here.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, there's a lot going on here.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
I mean, I'm a free speech absolutist.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
Obviously we live in an organ with a little bit
of like, uh, whites only whatever.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
But yeah, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
So nineteen oh three not being a high point for
animal rights. There's nothing the police can do legally here
right now. Obviously the Oregon police have acted illegally an
awful lot in this period. Most of them are in
the KKK and like ten years or so when that
comes through, so like they're part of why they're not
willing to do this is like, these are white Christians, right,

(17:14):
so like what are we supposed to do? So instead
of doing anything, the cops are like, well, we can't
arrest you, but like we should. Let you know, all
the men in town are really angry and they are
talking about forming a posse and maybe tarring and feathering
all of the men running this cult. So you know,
heads up and you will not be surprised to hear.
Joshua does not change his behavior as a result of

(17:36):
this warning, because again, part of what he's been preaching
is that once we start teaching the true Gospel, all
of the everyone's gonna hate us. Right, This is within
his co religious cosmology to be expected.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Right.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
The negative attention guy, the more negative attention he gets,
the more he's like, I'm.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Right, yeah, they're trying to cancel.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
Us for cancel call culture where you can't just burn
your pets and fuck everyone's wife, you know, right, right day,
politically correct man, Portland, Oregon town.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's you know what, Matt, that's a great new don't
tread on me flag, like you still have the snake
in the middle, but instead don't treat on me. It's
like kill your pets, fuck your wives. Good stuff, good stuff.
So after this point, after this police visit ends in nothing,
harassment of the cult begins by locals. Right, gangs of

(18:32):
men in the night start running up and like hurling
rocks through the house windows, banging on the door, and
then running off. One father kidnaps back his daughter. Now,
when I say he kidnaps her, she is twenty two
years old, right, So assuming now legally are women are
not independent in this short in time, right, they can't
even vote, So I don't know what the law would

(18:54):
say about this, but like she's twenty two years old
in the society, she wants to be here. He does
steal her, right, right, and he ties her to her
bed in his house to keep her from going back.
She spends days like not sleeping, screaming, refusing to eat.
But like it's it is pretty bad. Again, not a
clear good guy in this story.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah, and tied her down so she can't even roll.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Yeah, she can't roll, right, God's gonna be pissed.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah, she's like going through dts from not rolling.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah. So eventually Crefield and one of his top men, Brooks,
flee like flee town to try to avoid because they
think they're gonna get murdered and try to shack up
at a random house in a nearby town called Wren
and they're like, knock on this old lady's door. News
does not purcole it quickly, so she doesn't know who
they are. She just sees two dirty guys coming off
the road being like, hey, we need a place to

(19:45):
stay for the night. You know, we're starving, and you know,
being a nice person is like, of course you can
sleep here tonight, right Crefield as soon as she like
invites him in, is like, hey, you got any pets. Yeah,
I'm God's prophet. Will you cook me dinner? Now? I
don't know much about this lady other than this, but
I like her because as soon as this guy says, hey,

(20:07):
I'm God's chosen one, make me dinner, lady, She's like, oh, yeah,
of course, I just got to go to the grocery
store real quick. So she rolls down to the grocery
store and then finds the nearest group of armed men
and it's like, hey, I need you to deal with
this guy for me, And so a bunch of like
lumberjacks show up with weapons and are like We're gonna

(20:29):
make this a problem if you don't get the fuck
out of this lady's house. Which is pretty cool. That's
pretty based.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Lady. You know what, she's got a good head on
her shoulder.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Yeah, smart.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
She saw all the red flags and said, I gotta
get lumberjacks.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, I need yeah, some lumberjacks and suns.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
Got that probably look like a tree trunk. We gotta
get some lumberjacks here.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
So Crefield and this other guy returned to the herd
house right because they can't make it, and wrin Ov,
Hurt by this point, has gotten tired of being in
the cult. He was never really into it. He just
didn't want his wife and kids to hate him. So
a friend of his is like, hey, you seem really
depressed and you lit your dog on fire. You want
to like go to Portland with me for a week,

(21:15):
you know, just kind of clear your head, right, And
he's like, yeah, that actually seems like a good idea.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
And then this friend is his daughter's former fiance, James. Right,
they got the rich guy we heard about earlier. So
James is like, why don't we take a drive.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
You look like you needed man to not be around
the ashes of your form.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
So as soon as he gets away from this, he's like,
oh fuck, I don't want to be in a cult, man,
this is this is terrible. I made a horrible mistake.
And so he returns home now de radicalized. I guess
just in time to learn like everyone else, that God
has given another message to Joshua Craffield is pointed great,

(22:01):
and I bet you're not going to be surprised to
hear that messages you should marry a sixteen year old.

Speaker 5 (22:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that was going yeah, that's always
where this was.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
Ends, always where it's going to end up.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
You know, there's a lot of roundabout ways that people
try to eventually marry a sixteen year old, and this
is one.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Well that's that's the thing for all of this, the
enjoyment that I have about the concept of sex cults.
Whenever you're talking sex holt, there is a moment in
which the leader is going to marry a sixteen year old.
And that's every one of these stories. I've read a
lot of them.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
It always goes in that direction. And it's just like
every single time you've ruined sex cults.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
For me, yeah, exactly. It's really we need a new
non problematic sex quest.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Honestly, it's like an ethical sex cult where you know,
sent is key.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yeah, and there's none of this.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Let's just say the minimum age twenty eight, right, We're
really going to go in above the line, you know, right.
I think this is I think we can make a
lot of money. Just do it.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Let's get that island, Robert, Let's do it.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
This is a good idea. This is a good idea.
So so yeah, the sixteen year old that God has
told Joshua Crefield to marry is a cult member named
Esther Mitchell, and so he's like, yep, we're gonna get hitched.
God says it. She's gonna be the new Mary. But
before this can all happen, Esther's sister commits her to
an insane asylum in Portland, which is again, everything about

(23:25):
all of this story is problematic, right, Like, involuntary commitment
is a huge part of what's going to happen, not
just to Esther here but the asylum. Because she's too
young for the straight up insane asylum, she's sent to
the Boys and Girls Aid Society, which is both like
if you're an orphan. If you're like a homeless youth,
it's where you'll go. But it's also where kids who

(23:46):
are declared insane go because they can't go to the
adult asylum quite yet.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Right.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
This is again a lot that's problematic about this, and
Esther fights like hell. As soon as she's institutionalized for days,
she would refuse to eat. She would just shout glory
to God and other such things. Her brother, this is
one of the Her brother George visits her and is like, hey,
me and your other brother, we really love you. We
want you to come home. And she was like, you
are only my brother's in name.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
Yeah, that'll definitely fuck you up. That is not a
cool thing to say.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah you're well, you're fucking bitch.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
That's what I would have said. Yeah, yeah, well you're
fucking stupid.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, she has reason to be angry, let's not anyway,
It's it's messy. So Esther may have been the most
dedicated of Crefield's believers. One night, she told the matron
of the facility that she's stuck at that God had
started speaking directly to her, and the matron for whatever
whatever she says. The woman who runs this is like,
I think she is going to murder one of the

(24:46):
other children. Yeah, we need to go Yeah, not unfair.
I don't think she's reasonable.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, So all of this enrages the community even more,
Like this is not nothing is fun about this anymore.
This is like a virus sweeping through our young women.
That's how the men are treating it, and like, we
need to fucking do something here. And Sophie co One
of the reasons I like her essay here is that
it does a good jomb of describing how a lot

(25:13):
of this anger comes not just out of the fact,
not out of the fact that like aspects of what
Joshua was doing are really abusive, which they are, but
out of the fact that Joshua has made the local
women ungovernable. Right, And here's what Sophie writes. The Corvalis
Times reassured the public of their feelings, saying that they
had good reason to be against Crefield for leading women,

(25:36):
girls and others into delusions and unnatural conditions, into a
state of mind where there is more frenzy than reason,
more folly than since people were not angry that he
had female followers, but that they were only female The
Corvalus Times also explained why this aspect was so significant,
claiming that the idea of women freely running around and
abandoning their husbands, fathers, and brothers was what made it

(25:57):
so maddening. She was out of the world and he
was of the earth, and she would have nothing to
do with him. The fact that women were engaging in
such wild behavior without men threw off the balance of Corbalis,
both in perceptions of social roles and in daily life.
Crawfield was altering the community already, and this was just
the beginning.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
So I love that that was of course, that's the
main issue of these men is they're just like, listen,
I have no problem with like, you know, you guys
fucking like like you'd fuck my wife, but like I
have to watch.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, I like that's my thing, bro.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
Like The fact is is that like, it ain't fun
if the domies can't have none, dog, you're just you're
doing some real selfish shit.

Speaker 1 (26:43):
Well, and you're letting them. You're letting them dress slutty,
you're letting them like they do their heads aren't covered.
They spend a lot of time about how these women
do not wear hats.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
Oh my God, they're not even wearing a hat as hair.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
Crazy. Yeah. Speaking of slutty ass hair, there's nothing slightier
than the sponsors of this podcast.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
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Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah. By the way, listen to Matt Leib's new three
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Speaker 2 (27:22):
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Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah? Yeah, God cries the devil jacks off.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yeah. Here's here's a little preview.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
God cry the devil jacks off?

Speaker 2 (27:36):
What sea so warm?

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah? Oh, I'm sorry if you want to hear the
entire long version of that. Matt is performing every night
at Hillsdale College for the next eleven months, So check
him out.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
There, check me out in Hillsday.

Speaker 5 (27:55):
All right, Ah, we are back back, baby, that's right, motherfucker.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
So good night.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Bye.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Wait, shit, hello, we're back. So that December, Crafield addressed
his flock at the Hurt Home and told them that
God had given him a new message. He strips in
front of his colt after reading them the story of
David and Bethsheba, and he tells them. Clothing was intended
to cover up sin and shame, and if the heart
was made pure, there was no sin, therefore should be

(28:40):
no shame. So like you could be naked again, just
like in the Garden of Eden because you haven't sinned
since you're following me, right.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Yeah, no, it makes it actually kind of, it does sense.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
It makes sense. But what it's the lead in for
as soon as he's got them all naked, they all
start having sex, right, is that is the goal that
he's leading into here, is like, once I get them
all naked, starting the orchie's gonna be a lot easier.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
Yeah, it's way easier when you're have to fumble around
with Yeah, fruit of the loom under loose.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, as the book Holy Rulers describes quote and so,
orgies in the name of God and Purification were held
in Frank's house during the Christmas season of nineteen oh three.
Mothers were debauched in the presence of their daughters, and
daughters were debauched in the presence of their mothers, and
after all had been debauched purified, Joshua instructed the women
and girls to submit themselves to the lust of other men.

(29:30):
The only other men left in the in the flock
where Frank hurt, Charles Brooks, Sampson Levin's, and Lee Campbell,
all of them, that is, but Sarah hurt. She refused
to submit to him, to make love to him. Joshua
finally said that if Sarah would not submit to him,
he would drive her out of the church and God
would smite her. All she would see in the hereafter
was her soul plunging into an everlasting, burning, seething hell.

(29:52):
So rather than risk eternal damnation, Sarah risked hell on
earth and became a bride of Christ by making love
to her son in law in front of her children,
just as they had made love to others in front
of her.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
It was almost cool. It was almost cool.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
This is the first definite evidence I get that there
was like a significant amount of coercion involved in at
least some of these relationships.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
I was like, like, yes, fuck, yeah, Frank's gonna fuck
you know, Samson or whatever.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
And then you said that part. You should have just
left that part out, man.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
So I know it's a lot. It's pretty abusive.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
It's pretty now.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
I think it escalates in its abusiveness over time. Damn,
I think part of why these people get so into
it is that for a while it is much less
abusive than aspects of their daily life. Yeah, but the
clamp down has occurred by this.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
That's always how it goes, man.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
You know.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
You start off, you're just like, you know, it's a
little bit of just like a little porn here and there,
and then one thing leads to another and you're like,
have to have pissing it. Everyone's pissing and pissing on
each other, and you're.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Like, what if I be calm? Is that relatable?

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, that's very relatable, Matt. I'm glad. I'm glad that
we've we've increased your backstory with that at.

Speaker 2 (31:06):
Buildings.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, the fans are really putting together a more complete
picture of your life.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
A heroin addict and he likes pisspoor with the fu.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
Yeah, of course that's like, uh, I don't actually want
to continue that bit. So after quite a lot of orgies,
Joshua informed his followers of the new org chart. God is,
of course the head of the church, Joshua is the
visible head, Maud is now the spiritual mother, and Esther,

(31:36):
who is still in an asylum, was a saint and confusingly,
now the church's spiritual God.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
And that's a weird or chart.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
It is a weird org chart. I'm not sure how
that grabs. But he he tells them all that God
has chosen Esther to be the mother of the New Christ.
Now again, Esther is sixteen. She is also institutionalized. Crayfield
is still obsessed with her, though, because she is. Part
of why, at least part of why the authors of
Holy Rulers suggest he's obsessed with her is because at
this point she is the only virgin left in the church, right,

(32:09):
so he attempts to have several of his followers break
her free of her asylum. But her mother, sensing this,
being like, I'm pretty sure he's going to come for
her and he might succeed, moves his daughter or moves
her daughter to Illinois to be with her estranged father.
So daddy abandoned them a while ago. But she's like, hey,
I need you to like do your job by keeping

(32:29):
your daughter out of this cult.

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Yeah, like one thing, one thing, just one thing you
don't even have to know, and the kidnap her. Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
So the men of the town, who'd spent weeks gathering
at night and vandalizing the Hurt House. Took to calling
themselves the white Caps because they're all wearing these hats
to recognize each other. And this ties into the fact
that again, like a decade after this, all of these
guys are going to be in the KKK. I was
right saying it's huge in Oregon. This is very much

(33:00):
in line with that period of our of our state history, right.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
Yeah, that's where I was. I was like, why they
just have white hats around?

Speaker 3 (33:08):
Yeah, very ready at but let's have it cover the
rest of the face and let's bring wizards.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Into this for some reason.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah, these guys are so ready to be a vigilante mob. Again,
very little is happening in Corvallis.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:22):
So yeah, these guys all eventually corner Crayfield and ov
hurt Son Frank outside of the hurt House and tar
and feather them sick. Uh Yeah, Yeah, I don't have
a problem with this. They have that coming. They've got
it coming.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah, I've been asking for a Yeah, worn for it.
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
So one local paper describes the incident thus Lee quote,
there was no attempt at secrecy by those who took
part in the affair, none more masks and none affected
a diskies. The identity of many of the party is known,
and these are men of standing in character that a
boy or hoodlum in the party.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
That's fun, Yeah, good stuff, standing members of society, you know,
turning a weird you know, rapist fault into yeah, little
birds or whatever?

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Yeah? Is this supposed to make you look like a bird?
I tarring a feathering thing?

Speaker 1 (34:12):
Yeah, So it's not clear to me if the police
refuse to intervene here because they supported the White Caps
and doing violence to Craffield, or if they're just like,
if we intervene, our neighbors will murder us. Right, both
are plausible, you know, sure, like either cowardice or complicity,
perhaps a mix of the two either to me, yep, yep.

(34:32):
Either way, nothing is done about this. Creffield promises that
he will not let the actions of criminals stop his preaching,
but he's also smart enough to know that, like, well,
if turing and feathering doesn't work, they're going to try
to murder me next, right, that's the only place to go. Yeah,
I should probably take evasive action. Yes, So he has
his followers clean him up and then still reeking of Tar.

(34:55):
He gets married, right, and after this he announces that
the cult will be moving to Portland together, inaugurating a
grand tradition that continues to this very day. Now, this
pisss off the men of Corvallis, right, who see their
chance to get their wives and daughters back from Creffield
slipping away. If he gets to this degenerate, big city,

(35:15):
right then there will be nothing stopping him, you know. Yeah,
And Portland is you know, it's still a much more
conservative place than it is today, but it is also
the kind of place where maybe a guy like him
could get away from the justice a bunch of drunk rednecks.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
Right, He's one of many sex cult leaders you know. Yeah, yeah,
get in line.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
So fortunately for them, for the men of Corvallis, Joshua
Craffield was incapable of exactly one thing, and that one
thing is not being on his bullshit. So as soon
as soon as the cult moves to Portland, he tells
them all that we're staying here until the annihilation of
material things, which I think is going to come in
a couple of weeks, So we'll move to China after

(35:55):
that to preach the gospel, right, that's the plan. Yeah,
well they wait for that. He renews his relationship with
the wife of Burgess Star, one of his early followers
who had left once you know, the wife fucking started.
So Star at this point goes to the cops. Because
adultery is illegal in Oregon. You can you can, it's punishable,
wipe to two years in jail. So and this is

(36:16):
it's very rare for this to get prosecuted. Not because
adultery is where I think adultery is about equally common
in every era. It's because if you're going to press charges,
you have to admit that your wife cheated on you,
and like most men would rather die. But it says
something about the kind of guy Burgess is that he
is willing to like kind of take this hit because

(36:37):
a lot of men could press charges for this in Corvalis,
he decides to take this hit on himself, this burden
and report Joshua. And this opens the floodgates. And are
the twelve men who are all former cult members kind
of like come up afterwards and make similar allegations. And
it's one of those things, this is where things get
fucked up. Like obviously I don't think it's super fucked

(36:57):
up for Burgess, given the sitution situation, to do this,
But what is fucked up is what has to happen
to his wife, Donna as a result of this, because
since he's making this allegation for it to be taken seriously,
Donna Starr has to testify that she has slept with
Joshua Craffield, and she is still very much in the cult,
so you might think that it'd be difficult right for

(37:18):
her to get her to admit this, But in this case,
rampant sexism kind of comes to the rescue of the
men of Corvalis once again. So basically Burgess brings his
wife to the police station and the police are like, yeah,
we need you to sign this affid David saying that
you've had improper relations with Joshua Craffield. Well, we need
you to sign this affid David. They don't tell her

(37:39):
what it says, just tell her she has to sign it,
and she can't really read. So they have her sign
a thing that says I fucked the prophet, but she
doesn't actually know what she's signing, right.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Right, right, yeah, yeah, that sounds also like classic cop shit, right.

Speaker 1 (37:52):
Very very classic cop shit, very classic misogyny shit, right,
and yeah, a warrant is issued for Joshua Craffield's arrest.
So this police dragnet starts across the northern chunk of
the state northwest Oregon. But Joshua Creffield fucking disappears, right,
this guy who had been everywhere, who was a publicity hound,
who's got all these cult members, suddenly nobody can fucking

(38:15):
find him. After a couple of weeks, locals assume, well, shit,
maybe he just left the state, right, and we're fucking
done with him, you know. So newspapers start publishing articles
celebrating the end of Crefieldism. We beat him, he ran scared,
you know, we got it. Hallelujah. The cult is over,
you know. So the men who had had their lives
upended by Crefield's cult, like Oah Hurt, tried to move forward.

(38:39):
This also proved difficult. His daughter, Maud, was still in
love with Joshua, and other cult members continued to congregate
curiously at their house. Maud still refused to call him
father because that was reserved for God, and so she
started calling her father old man Hurt. She turned all
of the pictures on their walls around, calling them vain,
and she would fast for days at a time. When

(39:00):
she would agree to eat, she would demand that she'd
be allowed to eat alone. Other female Holy Rollers were
similarly recalcitrant. Newspapers complained that these women in the colt would,
even now that Crafield was gone, we're still parading around
in public quote, with hair unbraided and unkempt, flowing entangled masses.
This was seen as evidence of mental illness. The Albany

(39:23):
Harold wrote, sane people don't go bare headed?

Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, I love that. I love that. There was a
time where that was the hottest thing ever. Was just
like your hair show.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
And not godless women. Yeah. Now for the kind of
sane people don't go bare headed line, Sophie Coe provides
some valuable context here. In her paper, Minerva Hyjer Reynolds
explained that one day her and her family were shocked
when we saw the women pass our house their hair
hanging down their backs, barefooted. Because of how confined women
were to their social roles, if they did not keep

(39:56):
up their image, even to the smallest detail of tying
up their hair, the public might believe they were crazy. Some,
including Esther Mitchell were taken to other places by their
families or partners to separate them from the lifestyle of
the Holy Rollers and Edmund Craffield. So you know, bad
not great. Mad Hurt gets institutionalized as a result of

(40:18):
this behavior she has admitted. About a month after Crefield disappears,
she is admitted to the Insane Asylum. The intake paperwork
declares that this is because she refused to wear quote
any covering for the head, and in fact, when she
was given bonnets and stuff, she would destroy them. May
Hurt was also committed to the asylum, so was Sophie Hartley,
and eventually basically all of the Holy Roller cult are

(40:41):
admitted to insane asylums.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
And at least one.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
I mean, like, the thing is is like some of
the behavior feels like psych like maybe psych word adjacent,
Like I would be like, yeah, maybe you know, I'll
get on a little bit of that Gaba Pensen, some
of that Sarah well Dog like that. I think that
that would help. But it sounds like they the reason

(41:05):
they chose was just of the time.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
Yeah, you know, not wearing a hat.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
Not wearing a hat, you know what else has hair?
The pussy put her and jail.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
No, they're actually all very lucky that this was when
it was, because if it was a little bit later,
they'd have had their fucking brains scrambled by a mootomist.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
That's a very good point.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
That's she's going around hatless. Break her brain.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah, break the nose. She's making me horny.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
I should say, just to give you some context, they
are they have institutionalized basically the whole cult at this point,
which is fucked up. It is worth noting that in
this period of time, one out of every two hundred
Oregonians is institutionalized.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
God damn.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Like they a lot of people get thrown in crazy
people jail, and basically all of them for no good reason.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
Yeah, and like, but is it weird that I'm like,
low key jealous of their robustal services budget.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
I think you might want to google a little bit
about how institutions were in this period of time before
you get jealous.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
You mean they didn't have jello putting pops and TV
in every room.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
I'll have to google when jello was invented.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Okay, well we know TV was like steen hundreds.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
Yeah, seventeen hundreds, So like, yeah, I think all in
the family is really big in this point.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I mean that's good enough,
that's not bad. Yeah. So jello invented in eighteen ninety seven.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
Mother, Oh yeah, they got jello.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Baby, they got jello. They got Jello. I take it back,
how this is good?

Speaker 1 (42:38):
This is fine? Yeah, this is fine. So, as the
months after Joshua's disappearance ruled on, the scale of commitments
expanded as cult members refused to turn away from their
beliefs and reintegrate with society. The last of the cult
to be institutionalized was Sarah hurt Ovi's wife, after he
announced that she had been willing to sacrifice their adopted baby.

(43:01):
He's like, hey, actually, you know, and I said, we
were never going to kill that baby. I actually had
to stop my wife from killing that baby. And when
he wouldn't let them do it, Joshuas was like, all right, well,
we're not going to burn the baby alive, but you're
not allowed to feed it or wash it.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Yeah, he hurt later said, quote, my wife and daughters
came to believe that I was defiled and that this
little one was defiled. At the suggestion of that viper.
They talked of making the sacrifice of the child. They
would have burned her, along with their clothing, their furniture,
and the cats and dogs which they declared to be
of this world and unfit to live. They were all crazy, yes, crazy.
I was pleading, threatening and trying with all my power

(43:40):
to bring my wife and daughters back to sanity, but
without avail. And again this dude, who's generally considered to
be like the nicest guy in town is then like
I would, I would like to hurt Creyfield with a
bullet if I could. It's just such like such a
childish way of saying I want to shoot a guy. Yeah,
I want to kill him, but I woant to wound

(44:00):
him with a guy.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
I just want to wound him, like in the knee.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Yeah, yeah, get him right in the knee.

Speaker 3 (44:04):
Fleshy part of the thigh or something. But like, you know,
I want him to be okay.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, yeah, I don't want him to die. I'll take
care of him after.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can be friends. I just think
he deserves a little bullet. Bullet, It's just a little bullet.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
But yeah, now after July or like so, Crayfield stays missing,
everyone's fucking locked up. And then on July twenty ninth,
when he's been missing, like four months something like.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
That, he bursts out of the center of the earth
with the loveest man you've ever seen.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
That you literally called it. That is exactly what happens. Yes,
so this is that's that's so funny.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
So I feel like I've called multiple different like acts.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
This is like, this one is weirdly exact because what
happens is the Hurts adopted son, Roy is like looking
for worms because he wants to go fishing, and the
best way to do him he like goes under the
foundation of the house to like dig for worms, and
he like as he gets under there, he like looks
up and he sees a naked, emaciated man with a
wild beard like staring at him with crazy eyes. And eventually,

(45:12):
because you know Roy's family was in the cult, He's like,
oh my god, that's Joshuama Crefield. He's naked and under
he's been living under our house, not eating for three
or four months.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Just quietly whispering.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
That's almost exist. So it turns out that Maud and
May had been feeding him. That's why they were like
they would starve themselves, and they like, all eat, but
only if you don't watch. They've been giving him their food, right,
and then when they get institutionalized, he had started to starve.
So Roy, obviously having a good head on his shoulders,

(45:49):
calls the cops and is like, there's a cult leader
living under my house. And the cops show up and
they grab him and they're like, were you just gonna
like stay there until you starve to death? And Crayfield
was like, I went under the house because I was
told to hide away by the Lord. I was crucified
while I was there. God came to me. I was

(46:09):
to suffer from my people. I was to die from
hunger and from the cold.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
Soone's patting him on the back, all right, buddy, sure, yeah, yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Let's get you somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
Are you hungry, you're hungry, let's go.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Well, they do feed him next, so he gets he
gets this is where I said, you were exactly right.
They pull him out of this hole in the ground,
naked and in broad daylight. The men of Corvallis, who
have assembled to watch this, get to see why he's
so popular, Because this dude is a hung leg of
fucking stallion. Like the sheriff step you describes it as

(46:45):
wonderfully endowed by Mona natcha.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
Oh I love it.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Yeah, everyone just just like collectively went, oh, okay, this
all makes a lot more sense.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
We should get my wife out of the insane side.
Oh fuck, they didn't say it was massive. Yeah, oh
my god.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
So he gets taken to Portland. He's put in jail
and like they feed him and stuff. He's given some
time to regain his strength before they put him on trial,
Sophie co writes quote. Appearing for Judge Alfred F. Sears,
Crefield continued to speak as Joshua in court. He claimed
that he did not need a lawyer and that God
would will whatever was meant to happen. If he were

(47:32):
found guilty, he would he would receive it joyfully. Donnas
Starr admitted to the actions that Creffield was accused of,
claiming that she was inspired by God and truly believed
that relations with Creffield allowed her to purify herself. Four
other witnesses testified against Creffield, claiming that not only had
he committed adultery with many women, but also that was
the reason that their mother's daughters and sisters were going

(47:53):
insane was because he had made them brides of Christ.
The evening Telegram described the courtroom as being crowded to
all doors in all forenoon by staring morbid crowd bent
on catching a glimpse of the religious rank.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
Now just the whole jury and judge while he's talking,
are just staring at his pants, going, come on, I want.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
To see it.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
I want to see it, want to see in twitch
like a cat's tale. So he acting as his own
lawyer and justifying his crimes by saying he had to
make brides of Christ. Doesn't in a winning strategy, doesn't
work out, No, no, no. Crefield also refuses to call
any witnesses in his defense, and instead he quotes the

(48:37):
Bible repeatedly and describes as sex with Donna as a
purification right. He is found guilty and sentenced to a
bit less than two years in prison. He serves seventeen
months and is let out early on good behavior and
as thanks for performing community service. While inside, he moderates
his behavior slightly and some people start to think like, oh,

(48:58):
maybe he's turning over a new leaf. But then as
soon as he's let out, he gets right back together
with his followers and the Hurt family. They've all been
let out of the institution now, and he's like, hey, guys,
let's all get back together, right God, I'm back. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
So he had, you know, he had married Maud since
he couldn't marry Esther, but they got divorced while he
was in jail, so he remarries her as soon as
they're out. She seems to be down with this. Maud
is definitely one of the women who is all on
board with this cult. So is Esther Mitchell. You know,
she had been moved to Illinois to live with her
absent and uncaring father, and as soon as she hears

(49:36):
that Crefiel's out of jail, she moves right back to Oregon.
So she has become even more devoted in her time
away and would now tell anyone who would listen that
Joshua is not just a prophet but God himself. Now
it's kind of unclear exactly how this all times out,
but soon after this point, Joshua starts stops referring to
himself as an apostle searching for the bride of Christ,

(49:58):
and starts declaring himself to just be Jesus. Right, that's
that's where we are now, right. I am the second
Coming all that good stuff. Yeah, it's a third act.
You know, he's uh, he's got to go there, he's
got to go. There's nowhere else to go.

Speaker 2 (50:13):
But I am God.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
And you know what else signifies that we're in the
third act? What our second dad break?

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Yeah? I love ads, man, so do I. I love
when they tell me what to buy. Oh that's my
favorite because I don't know what to buy most of
the time.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
Well that's like I guess I'll just buy drugs and
they're like, no, have you ever thought of buying a lawnmower.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
Yeah, a meal box, a bed, a mattress.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Exactly, or an online therapy.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
Yeah. Sure, check it all out, all of it. Buy everything.
We're back back way, baby. So we're talking Jay Crizzy
Joshua Craffield. So yeah, he's back. He's walking around and

(51:08):
basically all of his cult members are like, life Share
has sucked without you because it's Oregon in nineteen oh six.
Can we join up again?

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (51:16):
Nobody else here has as good dick game. Let's get
back into it, right, Sophie co writes quote as men
were experiencing their wives and daughters, abandoning them to follow
Craffield for a second time. Anger rose again among those
in Corvallis. Many were plotting against Craffield, some half heartedly
and some very seriously. Lewis Hartley, a father of one
of the brides, attempted to shoot Craffield five times, but

(51:37):
each time the gun failed to shoot a bullet. Now,
there was a belief within the cult that Craffield being Joshua,
could not be killed.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
So like, that's uh, that's not going to work out. Well,
I can feel that. No, nope.

Speaker 1 (51:51):
And this is, by the way, the fact that this
guy fails to shoot him six times is less miraculous
than it may sound, because Hartley does not know anything
about So he buys a thirty two caliber revolver, and
then he buys thirty two caliber AMMO. But his revolver
is a center fire revolver, and he buys rim fire
thirty two caliber AMMO. And the difference between the two.

(52:13):
So bullets have a thing called a primer in them, right,
and the hammer strikes the primer, the primer ignites the
gunpowder that makes bullet go right. Sure, most modern bullets
are centerfire. So there's a little primer. If you look
at the back of a bullet, there's this little silver
thing that's the primer in the back of the bullet.
Rim fire, it's on the rim. So if you're if
you're shooting a rim fire bullet out of a center

(52:34):
fire gun, the hammer, the firing pin is not going
to hit the fucking primer, right, It.

Speaker 2 (52:40):
Just totally yeah, no, I get it now. Yeah, I'm
the wrong bullet. I know about guns.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Yeah, this is this is it. I just want to
note it's not inexplicable, right, this guy bought the wrong bullet.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
You're saying, you're saying he's not God Robert because his hog. Yeah,
he's got a god size houll.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
He does have a god sized hog. And fortunately the
men of corvalis not arms experts, which really gonna work
out for him.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
One god sized hog or a hundred hog sized gods?
Oh man, keep going.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
I mean, if they're havevelina sized I bet repeatedly killing
like God in havevelina form would be delicious.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Yeah, yeah, I agree, yeah, yummers, yummers.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
So anyway, Crefield himself veers in this story between like
again being this monster abusive monster and also being like
kind of you have to you have to accept Again,
all of these women were freed and spent two years
not under his influence, and as soon as he came back,
we're like, yes, this is much better than our lives.

(53:49):
Let's go back, right. That's that's an undeniable aspect of
this story. He is, of course, also a giant asshole.
And one of the things that happens is they're all
getting out of town together. The city of San Francisco
burns to the ground after the nineteen oh six were earthquake,
killing a shitload of people, and Joshua is like, I
did that. I was angry at San Francisco, so I

(54:11):
killed them all. I'll do it to Portland and Seattle
if you fuck with us, I'll burn your cities down.
San Francisco is a warning shot, motherfuckers.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
Yeah, he here's about a big fire and he goes like, hey, guys,
remember when I made fire?

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Yeah, yeah, that was me. Yeah, it's very funny. So again,
it remains up for debate how much Creffield really believed,
but he seems to have been aware that this was
a bluff because immediately after making this threat, he leads
his cult on a star fation march out of town
and towards the location on the Oregon coast along the
Yatchetts River. Now along the way, Creffield's preferences for nudity increased,

(54:50):
and so his followers basically don't bring any clothes with them.
They have like one blanket for the whole group. And
I don't know if you've ever been to the coast
of Oregon, but the dead in the dead of summer,
it's not warm, right, Like it's a cold coaches. Yes, yes,
it's not a warm place. No, And it's it's warmer
today than it would have been in nineteen oh six.

(55:11):
So you have to think pretty cult miserable to be
a naked person on the Oregon coast in nineteen oh six.
So he leads them all to like literally the middle
of nowhere they have nothing, and then is like, all right,
you guys stay here, I'm gonna go to Seattle with
Maud and we're gonna like we're gonna figure some shit
out right, We're gonna.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Like start a band. Yeah, it's just chill here for
a bit.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
I'm gonna find you guys a new home. No, worry.
So by this point the men of corp Vallis are
shitting themselves with rage. Two men who had family in
the cult, George Mitchell and Edwin Baldwin, armed themselves and
set off on separate vengeance quests to kill Joshua. Mitchell
is the one who proves most adept at the task,
tracking maud Heart to Seattle and Hurt to Seattle and

(55:57):
sneaking around until he he spots the Messiah and his
wife outside of a convenience store. So he they're like
milling around outside of the fucking well. It's uh, it's
the Northwest. That's side of the plaid pantry, and so
I don't know if they have those in Washington whatever.
Maybe is seven to eleven, he pulls out a revolver
and he shoots it. Edmund Joshua Creffield fucking dead.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Like, oh no, yeah, he gets to eat those Halapano
cream trees.

Speaker 1 (56:22):
Rollers, Yeah nah, he sure doesn't. He shared does.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
Comes out and there were two for three point thirty three.
They're really good.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
So he is not a good dude. I should say
this right now, Mitchell, because his primary complaint with Creffield
is that by sleeping with his sisters, Joshua had ruined them, right, Yeah, yeah,
so again, nobody's not no clear good guy here, sure,
Sophie worse, Yeah, yeah, one is worse. One is worse.

(56:50):
Sophie co analyzes this further. The fact that women were
still considered the lesser sex created a role that helped
make an enemy out of Creffield while withholding any power
given to his female followers for straying from their social role.
Arguments of the time included that by leaving their home
and husband overtaxed their brains and their mental agitation caused
wounds that would never heal. Women were not blamed, however,

(57:11):
for leaving their families in previous lives. There was a
general agreement throughout the public, impressed that these brides of
Christ were not to blame for their misguided devotion to
him because by nature they were weak creatures easily led astray.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
I mean, you know, yeah, there's a lie.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
You know, Wow, Sophie's giving you quite a lok. Just kiddy,
I'm going to keep my mouth shut.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
So Mitchell so easily digmatized role fucking clearly.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
So No, that's Mitchell ghost on Mitchell Ghosts on trial
at Seattle and officials in Portland try to extrad dite him.
They're like, we should try him here because his crimes
were mostly here except for the murder part. But like,
you know, so they were like, yeah, they try to
extradite him, but everyone in Washington is like, no, you
can't let them hold the trial in Oregon. They'll just

(58:08):
murder the man. Everyone in Oregon is too lawless and
anarchic for a real trial. And in fact, there's a
quote from some Washington prosecutors that in Oregon, lynch, mobs
and anarchy rule. So again, nothing has changed. Yeah, nothing
at all has changed. Yeah, it's all exactly the same.
So they have the trial here, and despite the fact

(58:30):
that Mitchell had absolutely committed the crime, he was declared
not guilty basically because everyone of the jury was like, well,
I would have done the same thing in his shoes.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
Yeah. This winds up not being a good thing for
George Mitchell, though, because the jury had been debating not
guilty by reason of insanity, insanity, or guilty right. If
it had been not guilty by reason of insanity, he
would have been remanded to state custody. As it was,
he walks out of court a free man, right, this
is going to be a problem for him because his

(59:00):
sister is Esther, right yeah, and Esther. So Esther's like, hey, brother,
let's meet up at the trade station to talk about
you killing my cult leader.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
And so he had to know this, he had to know.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
So he shows up and Esther shoots him in the
back of the head with the pocket pistol, just fucking
guns her brother down. Now, you won't be surprised to
hear this becomes quite a story in the media.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Yeah, in the newspapers.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
Yeah, they're they're finally, they're like, finally, we don't have
to write about a fucking bicyclist.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it was you know, the newspaper
wants the news, like keeps interviewing her. They want her
to say God told me to do it or whatever,
or I was in a religious frenzy. But all she'll
say is like, I did the same thing my brother did. Right,
the law is inadequate to the task of punishing a
murderer because he was acquitted. So I did the same
thing to him that he did to Crayfield. And she

(59:59):
uses kind of the same justification your brother has done. Yeah, yeah,
she'd also pointed out that like my brother did what
Like my brother accused Jeff like Craffield of making me
into a fornicator, but by claiming that that he did
the same thing that he was saying, Craffield died to me.
He got me branded a fornicator in society and ruined
my reputation. She insisted that Craffield never had sex with her,

(01:00:22):
and yeah, this is uh, she kind of has a
point that, like.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
She does kind of a point here, Yeah, Like she
is not wrong about this, right, Yeah. I mean it's
a hell of a way to make a point with it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
It's quite a point. Yeah, but she's not incorrect here.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
I mean, listen, people you know have gone through yeah,
far less to make an argument. Yes, I'm glad that
she uh went all the way there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
I guess I guess what we're saying is, we're proud
of you, esther.

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Yeah, we're proud of you. Yeah. Stuck up for your man, yeah,
stuck up for yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Yeah. I mean, bad pick on the man, but good
and you for sticking up for yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
Yeah yeah, And honestly, good for you for pointing out hypocrisy,
which I think is always that's.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
The most important part. So esther refuses to claim insanity,
the state forces it on her anyway, because we don't
care what a woman says.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Of course, she's not going to say she's crazy. We're
the state, yep.

Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
So she gets committed to an asylum and yeah, eventually
she gets out after a couple of years, and she's,
you know, living at a family friend's place after getting
out of the asylum and takes a massive dose of
strychnine and commits suicide. Oh geez, Maud Hurt does the
same thing right right after the trial. So like, the

(01:01:42):
two women who are closest to Craffield killed themselves as
soon as they possibly can. And that's the end of
the story.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
And that is the story of Pete Davidson. Yeah, the
man with the magic cock.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
He would Pete Davidson would have been murdered by a
small town in Oregon if like, if he was had
been alive in nineteen oh six. There's no other way,
there's no other way. Probably would have been corn alice.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Yeah, he's not even that funny. Kate beckl say, what
the fuck?

Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
No, people are reacting to him throughout the story exactly
like I react. That's a new girlfriend. Yeah, I'm just
like that motherfucker better have ten dicks. That is like,
that is such a wild story because of the fact that,

(01:02:40):
like the dick reveal.

Speaker 1 (01:02:43):
Pos's all in a perspective, Yeah, this mysterious man. Is
he a hypnotist? I don't know. And then you see
his huge Oh okay.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Oh it's like I love that they pulled out a
really skinny guy in his massive hog and they were
just like, ah, he's the same thing.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):
Like the whole crowd is silent, and then suddenly like
the town and it's like, oh, because we all got
tiny dicks, I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Oh yeah, fuck, good piece of ship. But everyone's bad
in some way.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Yeah, everyone's bad in some way, not all in this way,
most not in this.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Way, most not in that way. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:27):
I just like I've yet to hear the story of
the perfect sex cult. Like so far, the closest is
like being in like theater crew. That's the closest to
a sex cult that exists. Yeah, all the you know,
just like you know, join the theater program at your
high school or.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
Oh no, don't do not be telling our listeners to
do that. Man.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Well, if you're in I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
Just if you're in high school.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
You're in high school. Well, I thought that that was implied.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
No, I think the whole history of sex cults means
that shouldn't be implied.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
You're right, you make a good point. You make a
great point.

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
You know. I'm saying, join your local theater company and
you don't even have to act.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
You just run the lights and you'll that's like a
sex cult. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
Please do not just go to a high school and say,
Matt Leib sent me here to join the cult.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Oh, speaking of which, folks, you can buy our official
behind the Bastards laminated. Matt Leib sent me here cards
for whatever you want to do. Use them for anything, anything,
anything you want. Just pop them on top of you
know anything. Yeah, oh fuck anything else you want to
plug Matt.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
Yeah, other than Matt Leib's tips for how to join
sex cults that are non problematic, listen to my podcast
Bought Yourself a Gun, a TV rewatch podcast. Uh and
it's it's you know, wherever you get your podcasts and
once again. Tickets will go on sale soon for Sunday,
March seventeenth, in Sacramento at the Sacramento Punchline. I'll be

(01:05:11):
headlining with my wife, my wife Franjessica. If you're in
teeny and finally follow me on Instagram.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
You know, there's a lot of things going on in
the whole gaza shrip and Israel and mostly bad things,
a lot of bad things.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
And as an anti Zionist jew, Uh did I say, zu?

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
Yeah you did?

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
You did?

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
As an anti zionist Jou, I have some thoughts on it,
and I've been making some videos. Uh and uh if
you want to check those out, you can go to
uh Instagram at matt leib jokes.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
That's my account, gram.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Him folks, and.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Yeah exactly, yeah, oh Zu.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Speaking of sauce, if you want to provide the special
sauce to children in portlandildren's okay, okay, okay, let's take
that you're speaking not at all speaking of sauce. The
Portland Children's Museum, the Flip Museum, is raising money. They

(01:06:18):
it's a traveling museum. They provide mobile exhibits throughout the
port from Portland metro area for kids. It's a good
good cause to donate Text bastards to five oh one
five that's Bastards to five oh one. All Right, we're done,
go home. I Love you, guys or you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
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.