Part Two: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Robert builds to the thrilling conclusion of the other Kevin Smith's story: the mass slaughter of his own flock.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh we're back. Welcome back to the story of a
guy that I swear is going to end in unimaginable bloodshed,
but at this point he is a sex pest who
has fled Canada for Jamaica in order to start a
new evangelical church. Yeah, many such cases. We are back

(00:27):
with our guests for this week, Molly Lambert. Molly, welcome
to the show. Back to the show. Hello, Yeah, how
we feeling as we come back into part two.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
I'm ready to see what's gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Okay, you want to drop any plugs at the start
here for your new podcasts?

Speaker 4 (00:46):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
I will have a podcast out later this year called
Jenna World Jenna Jamison Vivid Video in the Valley about
the history of the porn industry in Los Angeles and
uh yeah check it out when it comes out.

Speaker 5 (01:00):
Excellent.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well that gets us back in to part two and
closes out our cold opening.

Speaker 5 (01:06):
He So we're back.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
As I noted last episode, the Bad Kevin Smith had
founded KOs Deliverance International around the year two thousand and
when he fled to Jamaica, violating the terms of his probation,
he brought it with him. Now that Canadian magazine The
Walrus reported that he'd been going back and forth from
Jamaica for a while at this point, so he had
some sort of an established presence there at different evangelical churches,

(01:35):
and once he was on the run, he established a
permanent base of operations in downtown Montego Bay. He reconnected
with a childhood friend there from Jamaica College named Charlton,
who had remained in the country when Smith went off
to Canada and had become a pastor himself in the area.
Charlton served as a useful early source of connections while
Kevin built up his flock, but he also had a

(01:57):
sizeable head start by the time he moved there full
time time, thanks to his years of international work. Charlton
later claimed that Smith told him early on he'd started
ministering to Porchase Simpson Miller, the Prime Minister, and he
would also sometimes add vaguely that he talked to with
other government officials. So he's from a very early state
claiming to be ministering personally to like high level politicians

(02:19):
in Jamaica and have a lot of connections in the
local government. And there's some evidence this is true, including
the fact that he really does not get investigated for
any of his criminal history to the degree that you
might expect of somebody who starts who kind of comes
into Jamaica out of Canada and immediately starts up a
large and influential church. His flock grew rapidly, and in

(02:42):
twenty twelve he began affiliating his church with a larger
Pentecostal organization in Jamaica called Pathways International Kingdom Restoration Ministries
or I think PICKRIM would be the acronym there. I
like that, Yeah, there you go. It sounds like a
pokem on. It was not like a Pokemon unless I've

(03:04):
really lost the plot on that game. Over the last
few years. One regular talking point in Kevin sermons while
he's in Jamaica is that he hadn't left Canada because
he had committed sex crimes and had to flee because
he didn't want to do probation. He had rejected Canada
and his comfortable first world life there to return home
to Jamaica because he was so loyal to the Jamaican people, Right.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
I like that. He's like, he's like, it's not it's
not you, it's me. Canada by Hiah.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Yeah, yeah, he's reframing it. You guys didn't get forced
out of Los Angeles, You just you chose to go
to Portland.

Speaker 2 (03:40):
Right right, right, And he's choosing to go to Jamaica
because he's so loyal to the Jamaican people, which is
just also a really fucked up way of pretending you
didn't sexually assaulted guy, Like there's no non fucked up
way to do that, exactly, but I guess this is
particularly fucked up. I'm going to play a clip from
a revival that he did six or seven years yars
ago where he talks about why he left Canada for Jamaica.

(04:03):
Both so you can again get an idea of like
the personal charisma like here the reaction of the crowd
when he talks about this stuff because they're buying it,
and also so you can hear like how he is
framing why he wound up in Jamaica. Now, in this
specific part of the sermon, he's discussing a conversation he
had during a brief trip back to Canada with one
of his pentecostal mentors in Canada. So this is like

(04:25):
a Canadian guy asking like, why are you going why'd
you leave? Why'd you go to Jamaica? Right, that's the
context of this part of the speech.

Speaker 6 (04:32):
Talk to me now, he said, what takes you all?
Is that jiy s? He said, the other people thing
they have to help God don't get polished. And that's
like the church always splits and divide for seven years.

Speaker 5 (04:53):
That's giving him scene. How do you have scene to remain?

Speaker 6 (04:57):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (04:57):
I see hopping to administering. Now he's got any more more.

Speaker 6 (05:03):
He's somebody to teach your Wait a second, let me
teach you, he said.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Don't you know?

Speaker 5 (05:10):
He said, you understanding? You see look at you.

Speaker 6 (05:14):
You are coming here and your mind all as coming
here to take back to Jamaica. Do you know what
you're doing? I said, no, tell me. He said, you
are watering the scene.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
I said, what for your me?

Speaker 6 (05:28):
He said, because you love your people. I look at
being away from more tree days. Because what is.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
The like music and like breathing, combo, very athletic.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
It's beautiful, man, But you gotta hear like the reaction
he gets people are that is you.

Speaker 5 (05:54):
You can't fake a crown down there.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
It's gonna up. Like Kevin's advocate for a minute, here Uh,
he's just doing some preaching. You know, he's talking in
a preacher style. Yeah, it sounds it's it's stylized.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, it's the you can really like, Yeah, you can
hear it. It's fast. It's fascinating to me how international
that like American Pentecostal preacher voices. I used to be,
you know, down in the depths of hell, but then
I got risen up by God.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
Like it's very like he's like doing a lot of
mouth breathing. And as a podcast producer, that's my worst time.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, well, I mean, Sophie, that's why you're never going
to make it as an evangelical minister.

Speaker 5 (06:36):
You know, I say this all the time. I'm like, Bishop,
I'm a fucking bishop. God damn. That's my back plan.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Part of the way I keep recommending the movie Marjoe
and I know, I talk about it all the time
because it's great, is because he really explains like why
that voice works and how you can like kind of
see it evolving. He was like one of the one
of the key figures in like making that be a thing,
and it's just fascinating to watch in real time. But
it's interesting how universal that is. At least among like

(07:07):
English speaking parts of the world, right, Like, even when
it's kind of a different dialect of English, the same
basic cadence a voice works really well.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
Oh Marjo looks fascinating.

Speaker 5 (07:17):
Oh it fucking rules.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
No, that movie rips, rips like a son of a bitch, Like, yeah,
you watch it, Yeah you'll love it.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
Yeah, sorry, I just didn't didn't really, I don't know
anything about Pentecostal preachers or yeah child, uh you know preacher.

Speaker 5 (07:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
What's interesting about Marjo is he kind of he started
out before the religious right was a thing, and then
he kind of breaks good, Like he decides that the
Pentecostal movement and its alliance with the religious right is
kind of evil and a grift, and he decides to
like leave and film undercover during like his last year
preaching within it. So it's it's just a fascinating picture

(07:57):
of the start of the movement that has really taken
over American politics right at its kind of like gestation period.

Speaker 5 (08:04):
You know.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Yeah, don't you think it goes back even further all
the way?

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Well that's just elements.

Speaker 5 (08:09):
Sure.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Yeah, we love a charismatic grifter. Oh, yes, like the
national character.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, all right, go on, yeah, yeah, tell me certainly
that part of it has existed for a long time. Yeah, simple, Yeah,
of course. The unstated truth here is that Kevin left
Canada when he was on probation for sexual assault, and
he is a registered sex offender at the time he's
giving the speech. There are allegations that his government connections

(08:36):
helped him smooth this over. It's unclear whether Pathways new
when they accepted him into the Broader Umbrella organization. He
was eventually disowned by the group after all the killings,
but initially the sheer amount of money he brought in
seems to have kept everybody quiet. The Reverend Adenair Jones
of the Church of God in Jamaica would later accuse

(08:56):
Pathways of exactly this, of basically ignoring the obvious evidence
that this guy was dangerous because there was money in him.

Speaker 5 (09:03):
And I'm going to quote from a.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
Artist, okay, and not to play Keaven's advocate again, but
that's my role on the show.

Speaker 5 (09:10):
I think, no, no, no, sure, But it also sounds.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
Like I haven't heard about the throat slittings yet, so
imagine you know, I'm coming from a place of innocence.

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, not knowing where he lands.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
It sounds like perhaps this child was brought into this
preacher thing without sort of his consent. You know, he
was told all this stuff about himself, about being special.

Speaker 5 (09:31):
Yeah, about being a prophet.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
And maybe there are some issues with his sexuality being
repressed coming out of a culture, both a Christian culture
and you know, growing up in Jamaica where there's just
a culture of homophobia. Maybe he's just a troubled a
troubled dude, you know. Yeah, And it's almost almost not
his fault he got forced into this line of work

(09:54):
because you know, I don't know, he was chosen sort
of without his his choice.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, there's always a degree with all of these guys
where you wonder, like where does the complicity start, right,
because there is often a case where like someone is
like a victim in this period of time, right, Well, it.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Sounds like he's a victim of his own circumstances, Like
don't you know. It's obviously it's not okay that he's
actually assaulted somebody, But it does sound like he could
have had a different life if he had been raised
under different circumstances. It sounds like he was really groomed
into this position of being a religious leader and also

(10:34):
in a religion where there's a lot of homophobia and
sounds like he might be queer. Yeah, so I'm feeling
bad for Kevin at this point. I feel like his
life sucks and he's trapped in it.

Speaker 5 (10:47):
I feel both. Let's see, ye, let's.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
See if I change my mind.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
I mean, he is a registered he's as exist.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
No, but I mean I'm saying, like coming out of
a super like he may have things may have happened
to him as well. This is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
And he alleges things happened to him. He was sexually
assaulted as a kid, He was abused as a kid.

Speaker 5 (11:11):
So like, there is it, and it excuses it.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
But there's a cycle in place, obviously, and.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
She's certainly part of a cycle, and he's part of
a cycle of like child abuse wherein young charismatic kids
are adopted into this movement.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah, the charismatic child preacher thing also just seems like
that's very exploitative. Yes, it would fuck you up no
matter what. No way to be well adjusted from that.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Which is a big part of like what the documentary
Marjo goes into is like him being like, I know
I'm robbing people, and I know that what I am
doing is bad and perpetuating this movement, and also because
of how I was raised, it's literally all I know
how to do, like it's my only marketable skill.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
But also, isn't it sort of like it's a little
bit consensual robbing? Right? Yeah, Like if somebody, if somebody
wants to give you money for some nonsense, you're not
stealing it from them, You're not forcing it out of them.
There's other things you could give people. Then I can't
to seem worse. Sorry, I'm really playing Cabin's advocate.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
No, well, we're Here's what gets me fucked up about
that is I can see that logic, and I can
make that argument, but I can also see that logic
leading you into gradually becoming a cult leader. Like it
starts at the little steps, like.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Do you take Patreon for your podcast?

Speaker 2 (12:25):
I don't, but I don't have a problem with it, right,
And like if.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Somebody wanted to pay you for like your charismatic ramblings
on a microphone, sure, well, don't see that as exploited
of You're like, they just want to give me money
because they appreciate me.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
I don't see it as inherently, but I do see
it as potentially right in that because I've watched this happen. Right,
there are some cults where it starts out as like, Okay,
this is just a person who is like a content
provider online, and then the level of like adoration and
fame and the weird parasocial relationships they get, they take
it in really abusive directions. But like we've all seen

(13:02):
plenty of cases of like white men in media who
wound up with like very aggressive, like aligned fan bases
and went increasingly insane. It's not a it's not detached
completely from this like we're talking about this kind of
psychological like this like wheel in the case of like

(13:22):
evangelical Christianity. But it also it's not detached from like
celebrity culture, right, Like it's it's it's not really great
for people, especially when they're really young. I think if this,
if this starts to happen to you when you're older,
you have you can have more of like a defense
against it. If you've got a family, if you've got friends,
if you've got a good number of people who know
you and have known you, I.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Think being famous makes everybody crazy. I don't know that
it matters when it happens. I think being a child
it's a form of abuse, and it is like making
a child do any kind of.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
Job, you know, Sure, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
Any kind of work is like, no, kids shouldn't be working. Yeah,
But it's kind of in the Michael Jackson family of things,
where it's like, oh, are we supposed to deny this
child's incredible abilities that you know the world should be
deprived of the greatest performer of all times?

Speaker 5 (14:15):
Do you stop them from playing? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (14:17):
I think about this the other day because there are
kids with podcasts now and I was.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Like, yeah, that's just a bad idea.

Speaker 5 (14:23):
But they're also But.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
I was also just like, oh, that's sad for them.
They're making content. They should be like in a laying yard. Yeah,
like playing.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
Yeah, it's messy, And I don't know what the actual
solution is here.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
What I'm saying is we're all complicit.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Yeah, let's let's agree on banning children from being advertised too.
Can we at least start there?

Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, we can start there.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Maybe that'll start fixing some of the problems for sure,
And I don't know, maybe have a government agency dedicated
entirely watching the parents of child actors.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
Okay, but if you got like a million dollar contract
to advertise Galaxy gas to eleven year olds.

Speaker 5 (15:05):
Sure, absolutely get them hooked, get them hooked. No no, no,
no, no no no.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
I think I think kids need to be doing way
more drugs. Look, I mean, look at what they're getting
up to. Have you seen this Minecraft movie shit like
it seems like if the kids were getting a high,
they'd be a lot healthier. No, don't do drugs, kids,
or do Okay, don't listen to me.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Back to the other Kevin's been.

Speaker 5 (15:32):
Back to the other Kevin Smith. So yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
The Reverend Adnair Jones of the Church of God in
Jamaica would later accuse Pathways of basically ignoring the other
Kevin Smith's criminal history and problematic history in order to
make money. The Jamaica Gleaner writes. Jones said that congregations
have been too accommodating of virtually anyone bearing a Bible
who could delivers soundbites using charisma and flare to flourish,
as did Smith and initially KOs fits in with the

(15:59):
rest of the Pentecostal churches in the country. Its website
claimed our divine mandate is to transform the people by
the power of Jesus Christ, and stated that the mission
of his church was to win souls to the Kingdom
of the Lord Jesus Christ and deliver the lives of
people from the snares of darkness. Pretty standard stuff, However,
while most pastors within Pathways affiliated churches went by the

(16:19):
title pastor, which is normal, Smith showed an early flare
for the extreme. His website listed him as the president
and founder of Chos Deliverance International, as well as Chief
Special Advisor of the King's Oracles, and he ordered his
followers to refer to him in person as excellency, his excellency,
or your grace. And I think we can see where

(16:40):
problems are starting here.

Speaker 5 (16:42):
Now, right.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah, So it's unclear to me, number one, who the
King's Oracles were. I have not come across that an
explanation of that title, so I don't know what that
is exactly supposed to mean. It's also unclear to me
win the Prosperity Gospel preachings got into Kevin's sermons, right,
Is this something that he's really talking about? Before he

(17:05):
lands in Jamaica, but during his first five or so
years on the island he becomes increasingly enmeshed in prosperity
Gospel preaching, which is a major part of kind of
the charismatic Christian evangelical movement. The prosperity gospel started out
in the United States. And the way this works it
basically you're preaching that God works like a high yield

(17:27):
savings account or a really good four oh one K, right,
if you put money into God, and by God I
mean the church that you go to and it's pastor
by tithing regularly giving up the church a percentage of
your income and then handing out additional seed offerings on
a weekly basis, and seed offerings kind of the key
is that it hurts. Right, every week, you're supposed to

(17:49):
give more money than you can afford to the church, right,
and the promise is that if you do this, if
you give all you can to the point where it
like damages your financial stability, God will reward you with
miraculous financial gifts. So again, it really is like a
four oh one K that works on a much faster
time period. If you give God more money than you

(18:10):
can afford. Now, God will give you back many times
that amount of money, you know, at some point in
the near future. That's like the literal premise upon which
prosperity Gospel is predicated. Now, it's probably worth taking another
asiet here to discuss prosperity Gospel and more detail, since
it is one of the root problems with American evangelical

(18:30):
Christianity as a whole. The gist of it is that
in the late eighteen hundreds in the US, there are
two different strands of revivalist christian thought that come together
and they cross pollinate. On one hand, you've got the
Holiness movement, who believes prayer works the same way the
force does in Star Wars. Right, it allows people with
sufficient faith to heal the sick and do magic because
all illness and discomfort come from sin. Right, So if

(18:53):
the Holy Spirit is in you, you can wipe sin
away from people and it makes them able to either
heal or even perform super human acts. Now, the Holiness
movement kind of opens the door to a really theatric
church going experience, which is a key aspect of revival culture.
You're not just telling people they're healed. You have people
play acting as healers and the sick, right, and this

(19:14):
provides kind of an emotional and social outlet. People can
come in barely able to move and then start jumping
around and dancing and they'll get this like huge surge
of applause and this kind of like it's a performance, right,
So there's this two way relationship between the performers and
the people reacting to it that has this kind of
catharsis in it, and there's a degree of forced cognitive

(19:36):
dissonance here. As Associate professor of religion Donathan Bahar writes
for nine marks dot org, the key was to believe,
pray and hold on to it, believe that it is yours,
and act out the healing even if lying symptoms persist. Right, So,
even if you know you're not cured, those symptoms because
you've been cured are a lie. Right, If you feel

(19:56):
like you still have cancer, you have to just ignore
that because that's the devil trying to trick you into
believing that you're still sick. So there's a lot of
like you know, there's a lot of victim blamey stuff
around illness in American culture period, but this is one
of the places in which it manifests. Right is in
this kind of movement. Now, there's still an This is
still the Holiness movement kind of an underlying pillar of

(20:19):
charismatic evangelism today, and it's why all of these churches
are such fertile hunting grounds for guys like the other
Kevin Smith. Now, the other movement that collides with the
Holiness movement in the late eighteen hundreds to create prosperity
gospel is the New Thought movement. And the New Thought
movement isn't an explicitly Christian movement. It's kind of a
precursor to the self help movement. It's related to scientology,

(20:42):
Dianetics is involved in this, and it's also the root
of stuff like the Secret Right. And the basis of
the New Thought movement is that you can radically alter
your mind, body, and situation through purging negative thoughts and
reinforcing positive ones. Right, And kind of the main semi
secular figure we get out of the New Thought move
is Norman Vincent Peel, who's booked The Power of Positive

(21:03):
Thinking in the fifties and sixties, is a big influence
on young Donald Trump. And all this stuff kind of
collides together and gives us the Prosperity Gospel, which is
based on a merger of the two and starts to
spread overseas in like the eighties and nineties right to
a lot of countries that have exploding evangelical movements in
the post colonial era. And Jamaica, which has a lot

(21:23):
of impoverished people who are desperate for hope that feels actionable,
is a particularly fertile breeding ground for Prosperity Gospel to
start taking over, right, And so it really does, and
that's kind of what provides what tills the soil for
the church that Kevin is going to start here in
the early two thousands, he begins hosting almost daily prayer sessions.

(21:44):
I think they're three or four times a week, and
those come with expected daily donations. So you're supposed to
give a tithe of your income and then you're supposed
to pay every day give a seed donation. And then
he has one on one courses. Right, he's still operating
as a psychotherapist, like you can pay him for therapy too. Basically,
the idea is all of your money goes to Kevin

(22:05):
and the church, right, like every dime that you get
goes here, and if you're spending money on anything else,
even spending money on like food or rent, you're kind
of not putting your faith in God. And that's a sin,
isn't it.

Speaker 5 (22:18):
Like it's a very.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Abusive way to look at the relationship between like a
pastor and his church. Speaking of abusive relationships advertising, Yeah, the.

Speaker 5 (22:35):
Shoe fits and we're back.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
So Kevin starts offering free and discounted services to the
odd male member of the flock that he wants to
get closer to. And this is there's allegations that he
basically starts kind of whenever a young man will come
into the church, he'll start by offering that guy's family
like benefits, free services or breaks on the money they're

(23:06):
already spending on the church in order to get that
young man closer to him, you know, to make him
his assistant, to have him work for the church. And
there are some allegations that he basically starts operating a
male harem through these kind of tactics, right, pulling in
young men this way. This is not something we have
a lot of detail about, in part because in Jamaica,

(23:26):
admitting that you were abused in this way, like there's
a lot of consequences to it, not that there's not
in the United States, but it's hard to get people
talking directly about this kind of relationship. Right It's not
clear how much of this is like just psychological and
how much of this is actual physical sexual violence, but
there are direct allegations that he used these kind of

(23:46):
relationships to engage in what was at least adjacent to
human trafficking. The Gleaner a Jamaican investigative news site with
very good reporting on Smith and maybe the worst coded
website I've ever used, which is not their fault. I
know what budgets are like right now, it's just rough.
They interviewed a former member of the church named Jivon.
At age seventeen, Jivon was taken that's his word, from

(24:09):
his parents by Smith and used as an errand boy
for the church. Now it's unclear to me. Does Kevin
force this guy's parents to give their kid up, or
does he bribe them in some way, or is it
a situation where they just feel like, well, this guy's
the prophet and we can't say no to him. Jievon
claims that at the start he sees Kevin as like
a foster father, and he feels chosen like he's maybe

(24:31):
the Prophet's adopted son. Right, But this quickly gets disabused
because Kevin takes advantage of this position of trust to
have Jivon handle intensive, time consuming tasks like counting the
money given it offerings every week and do them for free.
And this is not an easy or a small task
because a lot of money is coming in. Per Jivon.
There were four different types of offerings. You have the one

(24:52):
hundred dollars offering that starts the service, the thousand dollars
seed offering, and then the regular offering, and then another
offering where you make covenant with the word. So by
the mid aught some people are donating four times a
day with services three times a week Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.
There's also, you know again, these kind of one on
one sessions where he's making money sometimes up to like

(25:13):
three hundred and fifty dollars for what's called a deliverance
session where he has like a one on one spiritual
encounter with the person. And since Jievon's doing a lot
of the counting of money here, he's able to give
the gleaner an educated estimate for how much the church
is pulling in, and he claims that a single night
could bring in a quarter of a million US dollars
or more, which means Kevin's Church is pulling down three

(25:35):
quarters of a million a week just from services. But
he also offers up a bunch of side sessions as
noted earlier, which brings their estimated weekly income up to
around a million. And just what we know objectively about
the assets, the number of properties the church held, this
is a pretty credible estimate for what they're kind of
making bringing in at their.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Heights so much fucking money.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, this is they're making a ton of money, so crazy,
But they're also almost always He's expanding so rapidly. He's
buying so many new properties that the amount of money
it costs to keep the church operational is pretty close
to the income they're bringing in on a weekly basis.
So there's always this level of stress of like, we
really need to continue to squeeze our members for as

(26:18):
much as we possibly can, otherwise this house of cards
is going to fall apart.

Speaker 5 (26:23):
Now.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
The Jamaica Gleaner goes into more detail about the different
grifts that Smith built into the foundation of his church.

Speaker 5 (26:29):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Members of Pathways Christian Cathedral, as the church was sometimes called,
were charged a fee of five hundred dollars for adults
and one hundred for children for the monthly miracle Covenant
Seed for the church's ministerial upliftment. They also paid tithes
offering Covenant seed or other special contributions as requested by Smith.
Membership cards also came at a cost, with adults and
children paying five hundred dollars and one hundred dollars respectively,

(26:51):
while widows were charged two hundred dollars. The more one gives,
the more God gets happy, one church member told the
Sunday Gleaner in defense of the numerous payments they would
the leader would help a lot of people in need,
But nobody's talking about that. And that is an aspect
of this too, is like people are seeing there are
actual community services that are being operated now, not to

(27:12):
the extent of costing a million dollars a week, but
there's also enough that people can be like, well, the
money's clearly going to a good cause, right. Members were
expected to volunteer time to help, you know, staff these
different sort of community organizations, and also to show up
at regular festivals, for which they'd be expected to pay

(27:33):
like two hundred dollars or five hundred dollars for a ticket.
And while there is aid for parishioners, this is also
often a grift. For example, Smith offered loans to members
of the church at a fifteen percent interest rate, which
is not exactly charity, right, we can say that about that.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
What does he want with all this money? Though, Like
I don't understand it's so much money. What is he
doing with.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Well, he's got he's building his empire, right, he's operating
as we'll talk about it, like he's operating businesses in
the community. Now he's trying to start like other churches.
And he's like he's like building, getting into real estate.
You know there there's always places to spend this kind
of money.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
Because now he's got so much money that he can't
keep he's putting it into real estate like they do.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
And the other thing is that, like there's bribes that
have to be paid to local politicians. Like he talks
about it as if he's like ministering to these guys.
But there's always bribes to be paid, right, So you
know that's not a zero percent of the story. Here too,
Jievon describes his own role within the church in unsparing terms.
We were like slaves. I was not allowed to go

(28:38):
around my parents or any relatives or friends outside.

Speaker 5 (28:40):
Of the church.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
And he works for both the church and for Smith's
psychotherapist business, which is how a lot of these one
on one sessions were marketed. He had to get permission
if he wanted to do anything besides work, even to
go get a haircut. He describes it, yes, essentially like
he's in prison. KOs Ministries does open a food bank
with some of the money that Kevin makes, and they

(29:02):
establish a program to help poor students pay their school fees.
They pool donations to help fund medical care for small
children and elderly parishioners. And this is done in part
because it's like a really good recruitment tool, right, Like
this helps bring more people in, and he's also able
to He's able to take in donations for himself and
also take in donations to fund these different organizations, so

(29:25):
it's not cutting as much into his bottom line. The
primary appeal of the church is always Kevin's personal charisma.
Per reporting in The Walrus, one former attendee Charise happened
to pass by the church one day and heard Smith's voice.
That voice sounds powerful, she remembers, thinking she went inside.
Charis immediately felt that Smith wasn't a typical pastor. He

(29:45):
insisted on being referred to as his excellency. He spoke
eagerly about the gospel of prosperity. Charis and former members
say Smith regularly brought up the fact that he was
a Canadian citizen, a point of privilege. He leveraged to
suggest that he could help get others visas to work
or study in Canada for a fee. Smith charged for
consultations or prayers, attendance at workshops, and other events. One
event in twenty thirteen, a wealth Transfervation summit entitled money

(30:08):
Come to Me Now, promised explosive prophecies to help participants
break the cycle of poverty forever.

Speaker 5 (30:15):
Wow, you see, like the.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Yeah, there's just a no end to the grifting. Like
he's doing every playbook, every single playbook.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
Okay, it's getting depressing now I understand, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (30:27):
It's getting depressing.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
And there's so much of this that is like predicated
on Well, he got out to Canada, so he must
have some connections, he can get me out like that.
Just how much poverty provides the opportunity here, because there's
like no easy way out of poverty and people are
desperate to believe there's hope, you know. So it's it's
the bummer, Yeah, it's it's bleak as hell. Now, the

(30:52):
good news is that Scherise has the presence of mind
to evaluate the promise of Smith is making based on
their impact on her real life. So she's to see,
I've been given money to this guy, and I am
not getting it back in any way, right, And you're
not supposed to think this way. Remember, at the root
of all this is that you have to ignore your
lying symptoms if they tell you that handing over money

(31:14):
to the church hasn't made anything better, right, You're not
supposed to feel like that. You're supposed to think that way.
And Jeevon eventually comes to the same conclusion as Cherise,
But because he's not a normal congregant, but someone raised
in the church whose whole family buys into Kevin's bs,
the task of leaving is a lot harder for him.

(31:34):
He attempts to flee for the first time in November
of twenty fifteen, and this would prove to be the
first of ultimately six attempts to flee Kevin Smith's church
over the years. For The Gleaner, each time I ran away,
the church members blamed me for being disobedient, he stated,
adding that the last time he ran off, Smith placed
a death prophecy on his head, saying that his head
would return on a platter. Once you try to leave,

(31:55):
they instill fear within you. Jievon said. Many people refuse
to leave pathways in international out of fear for their lives,
and in fact, they believed he was a prophet, and
Kevin kind of cultivates this reputation for prophecy in the
same way any other grifter of this kind does. He
makes these constant, big predictions about like they're going to war,
a natural disaster are coming, right, but he doesn't say where.

(32:19):
And like if you say there's going to be a
war that breaks out soon or a natural disaster, you'll
always be right, you know, Like, yeah, I predict that
in the next six months a major natural disaster will
strike the United States. I'll guarantee you that prophecy is correct,
because you can say that at any point in time
and it will be true in the United States or
most other countries, right, Like that's just the way the

(32:42):
world is, you know. The most compelling prophecies that he
would lay out, though related to individual members of the church.
Jivon recalled one that stuck in his mind. When Kevin
told a female congregant about a vision he'd had for future.
He prophesied saying that he saw her son in a
pool of blood with the name baby Killer. And about
a week later, the same incident happened and was on

(33:03):
the pages of the Western Mirror. And I don't know
this specific case, but it's one of those things, especially
if you get to know you know your flock, if
you have members of your church who have like family
members in gangs, it's not such a big prediction to
be like, what if you is going to lose a
loved one soon, right, because, like you know, that's just

(33:25):
how it happens when people are involved in gangs. So
it may just have been a situation like that. But
this causes the fact that he seems to have this
ability and that people believe it. It makes people afraid
of Smith, right, you don't want him to prophesy negatively
about you. And your family because you believe that this
can have an impact on you. And it's also hard

(33:46):
to leave if you're someone like Jeevon who started to
question you know the actual power of this guy, because
everyone you know in love is still in the church, right,
and so you can be cut off from your whole
support network by leaving fairly normal cult thing. And this
is why Jevon keeps coming back time and time again.
He's going to leave like five times before it finally sticks,

(34:09):
and things only change when he falls in love with
a member of the congregation and tries to start a
relationship with them. This enrages Smith because again Jievon hadn't
asked for permission, and Smith, along with a number of
other very young men, kind of wants to keep this
kid chased and close to him. Jievon claims the prophet
told him, if you think I'm going to marry you

(34:30):
and her, you make a big mistake, right as in
perform the marriage right, Like I have the ability to
determine who in this church can get married, and I'm
not going to prove that. And you get the feeling
it's kind of out of like a sense of jealousy
on his part. That he really doesn't want this kid
escaping his orbit in any way. But that is what
gets Jievon.

Speaker 5 (34:49):
Out right so crazy.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah, I mean it's a pretty pretty normal deal. Gievon
ultimately leaves and stays gone, which may have saved his
life given what comes next, but in the immediate term
it causes him tremendous pain because Smith does command family
members to cut off their loved ones, and this is
not just a thing Jevon has reported. The Jamaica Gleamer
reports a young woman said she was kicked out of

(35:14):
the church after two years as a member because of
forn ocasion. They don't speak to me. I have two
uncles and aunt in law and three cousins still there.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
And yeah, he's doing and he's doing the scientology.

Speaker 5 (35:25):
He's doing the every cult, right.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
You know, he's doing the scientology.

Speaker 2 (35:29):
He's doing scientology. He's doing he's doing the l right,
you know, he's doing the l rod. He's not throwing
people off of boats making them search for gold, but
he's got a lot of that playbook to him.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
Right, I mean, he's doing the child labor.

Speaker 5 (35:43):
Definitely, that the.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Cutting off family members, the stealing. Everybody's hard or earned money. Yeah,
he's got the holy trifecta of yep, yep ye running.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Uh yeah, it's it's he's l running, he's hubbarding hard.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
It's bad now.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
One thing Hubbard would never have done that Smith does
that I don't fully understand is in twenty seventeen, he
returns to Canada and he hands himself over to the
Toronto Police. Why It's unclear, but reading between the lines,
I think he works out an arrangement with Canadian authorities
using his Jamaican government contacts as an intermediary right because

(36:22):
he doesn't go to prison, and he basically gets set
up in a situation where he pleads guilty on probation violations,
but he's allowed to return to Jamaica and then travel
internationally more easily. He's not like dealing with the fact
that he's wanted in Canada anymore over the next eighteen months,
as long as he finishes his probation Canada.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Why why Canada?

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Well, he does have to make the five hundred dollars
donation to a rape crisis center. Oh okay done, And
they also require that he engage in sexual behavioral counseling,
but only if he stays in Canada for longer than
a month, So as long as he leaves Canada never
stays more than like a week at a time, he
doesn't have to do any counseling.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
None of this math adds up.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
That's yeah, seriously, that's fucking.

Speaker 1 (37:12):
Despicably embarrassing Canada.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
What we're doing.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
We're missing a part of it. But again, it's definite
that like some of the money he brings in as
bribing local politicians, and my suspicion is that those local
politicians have connections in Canada and there's a less direct
kind of bribe going there.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
Sure, it's still fucking despicable.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
You know, there's ways to influence politicians and countries that
where that is looked at more that are still effectively
a bribe. Well, maybe you're getting invited to speak at
an event at like a resort in Jamaica or something
like that, or like a permit that you need because
you've got some sort of business over there, it gets
a little bit easier. I don't know exactly what's happening,
but clearly something sketchy happens here, right this kind of

(37:53):
sweetheart deal, It just seems unlikely that it would be
handed out otherwise. And yeah, but we don't exactactly know
why Canada agrees to let this guy off with just
the slappiest on the wrist of slaps on the wrist
for a multi year long probation violation after a sex crime.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
I mean again, he's hubbarding, he's hovering, he's blackmailing and
paying off the government.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yeah, although Hubbard would never have turned himself into the.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
Efforts comsoletely not, he would fucking.

Speaker 5 (38:25):
H Yeah, he would have set. He would have set
to C.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah that's but he So the understanding here is that
he's doing this so that he can travel easily.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yes, I think it's so that basically he gets like,
you know, there's holds and stuff, showing his documents. Yeah,
and now he's allowed to travel easily as long as
he periodically call, like contacts his probation officer back in Canada.

Speaker 1 (38:46):
Bad job Canada, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
Not great, not great work Canada. Bad job Canada, Bad
job Canada. Not the only time we've said that on
this podcast, and not the last time. But you know
who's not Canada.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Well we don't know that.

Speaker 5 (39:01):
Yeah, we don't know that.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
We don't know these sponsors may or may not be Canadian,
there's no way to say, and we're back. So in
April of twenty eighteen, Smith holds an elaborate public party
for his thirty sixth birthday, which I think also kind
of doubles as a celebration of the fact that he's

(39:24):
about to be done with his probation terms. Police escorted
hundreds of his followers as they marched through the streets
of Montego Bay, and he follows them in a silver
stretch limousine. He goes on a spending spree, buying a
large rural compound with stables in livestock, several luxury homes
on the coast, sports cars, and several businesses on the land.

(39:44):
He begins constructing a new church called the Arc, which
is meant to be self sufficient and able to survive
in the event of an apocalypse. Right, so he's built,
he's bought his compound, he's building a church called the Ark,
and they're like growing food to try to get ready
for the end of days. And so, you know, things
seem to be going well for the other Kevin Smith
until twenty twenty. Now, if anyone listening is old enough

(40:06):
to remember back then, a virus called COVID nineteen started
spreading through the global population. Governments around the world entered
panic lockdowns with very little understanding of what might actually
happened or how long any of this was going to last.
It is a you know, we all remember right now,
Given the severity of the disease, it made total sense

(40:26):
that you would lock down. But as you might recall,
about a third of the population lost their minds over this,
right like, people do not react well to this and
the other. Kevin Smith is one of them. He seems
to have fallen down a conspiracy rabbit hole himself first
by listening to and watching American COVID denialists online. So again,

(40:48):
we really we've got our part to play in this.
He starts spending way too much time on YouTube while
things are closed up, and that's not good for anybody.
And based on the reading I've done, he really starts
to go over the a once the vaccine becomes a
reality and governments around the world start talking about a
mass rollout. Since he's got this big platform, he starts
using both his church's social media and his actual pulpit

(41:11):
to howl to the masses that the COVID vaccines have
microchips in them, and per the Walrus, ingredients linked to
the Devil, which I love is a description of like.

Speaker 3 (41:21):
Vaccine ingredients link to the devil, link to the.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Devil, Like what like sulfur, like, like what is linked
to the devil?

Speaker 3 (41:27):
You put it in under a microscope and you see
little devil hats.

Speaker 5 (41:31):
Yeah, little little Satan faces.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
Little satan's like little pitchforks.

Speaker 5 (41:36):
Yeah. Yeah, I like that.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
I also just like the idea of like the Devil
was an international crime syndicate, and like you're like, yeah,
the Satan's fingerprints are all over this vaccine. We can
see bits of them in air well.

Speaker 3 (41:49):
Yeah, we got shooters everywhere.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Yeah, that is that is something the Devil's famous for famously.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
Yeah, the devil hosse shooters.

Speaker 5 (41:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Absolutely. Now he described wearing masks and getting vaccinated as
taking on the mark of the beast. And I think
we've all heard a lot of rhetoric like this since
COVID broke out, Right, Like I can remember when certain
and this is not this goes back before COVID, by
the way, right, The idea of describing certain things that
are just sort of like marks of modernity as taking

(42:19):
on the mark of the beast. I remember back in
the nineties when there were certain conspiratorial Christian pastors warning
people that like bar codes on products, which were new
at the time, were the mark of the beast. Like
bar codes are going to allow the government to track
everything that you do. You know, this is the devil
coming to like take this country down.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Now.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
I will say a barcode makes more eschatological sense than
a vaccine as a mark of the beast, because the
Book of Revelations does describe followers of the Antichrist as
having a mark and that quote no one can buy
or sell unless he has the mark that is the
name of the of the beast or the number of
its name. Yeah, of course, Yeah, No one's really stopped

(43:01):
from buying and selling goods based on vaccination status. Right,
that doesn't actually happen, But that's immaterial to guys like Smith. Right,
the fact that, well, but this doesn't like fuck man
and anti vax people are running the United States now,
Like maybe this is not the mark of the beast
in any way. That doesn't really like factor into these
people's thinking, as it is the fact that the beast

(43:24):
I like all of this, Like apocalypse narrative is very
funny to me, just given the actual text of the
Book of Revelation, right, because the beast is not at
all described as you know, anything like what you hear
in the kind of popular fiction that's often inspired by
the Book of Revelations. The beast in the actual Book

(43:45):
of Revelations has ten horns and six heads, with ten
crowns on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads.
It has it's like a leopard, but its feet are
like a bear's and its mouth was like a lion's mouth.
I don't know what that has to do with the
COVID nineteen vac scene. You can twist that, I'm sure
into making it, but it just sounds like it sounds cool.
Some guy was tripping and described a rad monster. You know,

(44:09):
I've seen something like that on enough acid, and I'm
sure it was someone on ergot poisoning who wrote the
Book of Revelations. You know, many such cases. Smith also
described the vaccine as a plan for population control, which
also doesn't really make sense with the mark of the
Beast thing, because the marked are followers of the beast,
and if the Mark kills them off. It's kind of

(44:30):
the Antichrist shooting himself in the foot, right, Like the Antichrist, like,
why would you want to kill these people?

Speaker 5 (44:36):
Right? He want them? He just as soldiers.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
None of his math adds up.

Speaker 5 (44:41):
None of this math ever adds up.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 5 (44:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Now The Walrus has like done a deep dive into
where a lot of Smith's but like where he is online,
what stuff he's sharing, and where his beliefs kind of
come from, and a lot of it traces back to
Glenn Beck, particularly his website The Blaze, which I is
just the least surprising thing in the world. But it's
so frustrating that that motherfucker continues to have the kind

(45:05):
of penetration that he has. One of the stories that
Smith shared that seems to have really radicalized him was
the arrest of Canadian pastor Arthur Pawlowski, who was fined
in December of twenty twenty for failing to wear a
mask while having an unpermitted anti mask protest. Now, I
wouldn't even call this a slap on the wrist, Right,

(45:26):
he gets fined for breaking COVID lockdowns and having a
protest at the early stages of the pandemic, barely a
slap on the wrist, and in fact, just getting charged
with this is a huge boon to this guy's career
because suddenly he's a victim of religious suppression. Right, this
guy goes from a nobody to one of the most
famous pastors in the world, and other religious leaders like

(45:48):
Kevin Smith start screaming that he's a victim of state repression.
Pawlowski kind of decides to let this shit ride, and
so he holds another rally in February of twenty twenty one,
during which he carries a tiki tourt despite it being daylight,
for reasons that have absolutely nothing with signaling his support
to the fascists who you said torches to beat people
in Charlottesville back in twenty seventeen. Right, it's clearly nothing

(46:10):
suspicious about the fact that this guy does a tiki
torch rally during daylight in February of twenty twenty one, nothing.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
To do with that loocking weirdos.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
Proving that he was the one trickiest of one trick ponies.
Archur has continued this grift up to the present day
and has been locked in basically constant litigation as a result.
You know, every time things will calm down, he'll try
to commit some other public crime in order to get
charges against him so that he can fund raised off
of that. He has never been locked away or you know,

(46:39):
disappeared by the state, which you might see as evidence
that he's not in any way being persecuted.

Speaker 5 (46:45):
Right.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Nonetheless, this con works perfectly on guys like Smith. It
either works on them or they see it as useful
to share themselves.

Speaker 5 (46:53):
Right.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
And when Smith first hears about Padlowski's first charges, which
result in nothing but a fine, he posts on Facebook,
this is abomination persecution of the church in Canada. The
world is watching and mouths are closed. We must know
what's coming to Jamaica now we had absolutely was not.
Jamaica is not gearing up for a crackdown on these people.
And in fact, thanks in large part to Kevin Smith

(47:16):
and Anti the Other Kevin Smith and other anti VAX's
religious leaders, less than half of Jamaican's have been vaccinated
against COVID nineteen at any point, a significantly lower rate
than most of their neighbors by summer of twenty twenty one.
Though Smith is totally pilled and COVID nineteen became the
sole focus of most of his sermons. From an article
in the Jamaica Gleaner. In one of the entries declaring

(47:38):
his mission, Smith, who appeared to be obsessed with titles,
declared himself his Excellency Doctor Kevin Osmith, Crown Bishop, an
end time nobby of him, conqueror, Lion of the Tribe
of Judah, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Yesos Christos,
the One and True Living God. Yahweh ninety ninety nine,
which is the opposite of sixty sixty six.

Speaker 6 (47:57):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah, it also hard to fit on a business card.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
Molly, you should totally take that title.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we need we need more. King of
Kings and Lord of Lords.

Speaker 4 (48:10):
Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Podcaster writer, I think
yeahweh nine nine nine. That's basically a fucking uh. You
could get that as like a license plate. Yeah, YHVH
nine nine nine sounds good. He makes posts like forced
vaccination in law is rape. A man forcing something into

(48:32):
another man is buggery. A man forcing himself into a
woman is rape. No Prime Minister can change common law
and common sense. We don't need to go into all
of the different things that are wrong about that. That's
the kind of rhetoric that he's he's putting out of
this period of time.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
Yeah, his math doesn't add.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
No, none of it adds up. In a post responding
to a recent statement by Prime Minister Andrew Holness in
which he stated that unvaccinated Jamaican should not expect the
government to prioritize them for bedspace, Smith prophesied, we will
be pushed out of the hospital and supermarket and the
airports and the businesses. Again, this doesn't happen. He began
preaching that the police and the military would soon corral

(49:11):
Jamaican citizens into camps and force them to take fatal vaccines.
Anyone who yielded to the state and took the vaccine
would be killed by God, not necessarily literally, but a
kind of spiritual death. Meanwhile, Smith promised, if you give
up your life for Christ Jesus, you will save it.
So he starts to insist that by October twenty second
of twenty twenty one, the Jamaican government will use fictitious

(49:34):
legislation to make the COVID vaccine mandatory. The end game
will be to try and deceive us or force us
into quarantine concentration camps. Prepare to stand your ground.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
And I'm just like, how are we going to get
to the throat cutting?

Speaker 2 (49:47):
I mean, you could see it starting to happen here.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
Yeah, I think I heard forced march to concentration camp.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
Right, I want want here we go right, like the
government is coming force on the specific date we need
to be ready, right, that's going to set up a confrontation.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
The Jim Jones situation.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
Ye to come, yes, exactly. He predicts a series of
natural disasters around the globe that will coincide with this,
which is all pretty standard in time stuff, but it's
married to a marked invisible degradation in Smith's mental health state.

Speaker 5 (50:17):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
Smith's behavior in person became noticeably stranger.

Speaker 5 (50:20):
Over time.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
He became more adamant that his congregants donate as much
money as possible, telling them that if those who had
money resisted giving, the member would crash and die, and
that Smith would send his wrath out to the members family.
So he's like, if you don't give me everything now
so that I can get ready for this, I will
make sure God kills your relatives in a car crash
ten days before his predicted date for Jamaica, making the

(50:42):
vaccine mandatory, Smith told his followers that anyone who gets
vaxed now would be exit communicated from the church. He
posted a video to Facebook two days later, insisting my
job is the apocalypse and that an unveiling is coming soon.
His followers were shortly thereafter ordered to prepare their photo
IDs and church membership cards and gather at the ARC
on October sixteenth. Never a good idea, Never a good idea.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
I'm really starting to wish this was about the mall
rats Kevin Smith.

Speaker 5 (51:09):
That malrats.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
Yes, oh if only it was the mall rats Kevin Smith.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
It's like and it culminates and like he made Jersey Girl,
and yeah it was bad for everyone's careers.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Yeah, I just go on like a fifteen minute rant
about Jersey Girls and Tusk can last.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
Yeah, they're like the view askew, Prophecy is coming.

Speaker 2 (51:28):
No very different. And for an idea of how Smith's
sermons leading up to October sixteenth, this day of prophecy sounded,
I'm gonna have Sophie play another clip.

Speaker 6 (51:38):
I have been sent to this nation to declare from America.
Canada up when the world for the last come.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Where got bad?

Speaker 6 (51:50):
Plot is we're been planned in the houses right a
streets where we filing red plot?

Speaker 3 (51:57):
Yes, I said, I.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
Come from the dead dead.

Speaker 6 (52:04):
Hi, I'm these it is a.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Sight Yeah okay sir.

Speaker 5 (52:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
So he's you know, really amping people up. You're not
getting people into a logical state of mind when you're
doing that shit.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
Yeah, he's he's committed to the to the to the
grift yea to the bit.

Speaker 5 (52:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:26):
And it's unclear to me how much of this is.
He has really started to spiral and his mental health
has declined as a result of getting caught in this
conspiratorial media loop.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
You know, also like look who was doing well mental
twenty two? Who was like functioning?

Speaker 2 (52:44):
Me?

Speaker 5 (52:44):
Now everybody?

Speaker 3 (52:46):
Yeah, I was doing good now?

Speaker 5 (52:48):
Right?

Speaker 2 (52:49):
So really, on the sixteenth, members of Smith's church start
showing up outside the arc wearing all white. There's a
sermon and service that follows that he's not conducting. He's
got like lieutenants who are conducting the sermon and service,
which goes on until around one am the next morning. Right,
so they're doing like a marathon session. Smith's lieutenants manage

(53:10):
the festivities up to this point, and he seems to
have spent these hours like where people are gathering and
like this is going on in a frenzy of social media, posting,
mostly to Facebook, where he ordered everyone to show up
at the ARC without their cell phones, wearing white saying
the arc is loading now, the flood is coming. Go
now run. He tells everybody that the ARC is going

(53:31):
to leave on the eighteenth, and in case there's any
doubt about what that means, he posts that in order
to be saved, everyone at the ARC has to participate
in what he called a quote Roman Catholic sacrifice that
will have no survivors. The cops don't get called as
a result of this. Nobody's like, well, this guy's telling
everyone to come and there's going to be a sacrifice

(53:53):
at this arc that no one lives through. Probably not
worth Karen about right, must just be some like religious bluss.
Dozens and dozens of his congregants take this seriously enough
that they spend more than a day in prayer. Smith
doesn't show up until the seventeenth, and his first command
is for everyone to throw out the canned goods that
they'd brought, expecting to need food. To survive the apocalypse. Then, confusingly,

(54:16):
he ordered them to empty soda bottles and fill the
soda bottles.

Speaker 5 (54:19):
Up with water.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
One member who shut up that day at the ARC
was Michael Brown, who had been hospitalized for severe kidney
issues and had forcibly discharged himself from the hospital after
Smith had ordered everyone to show up at the church.
We'll discuss Michael later, but this is a guy with
a life threatening kidney problem who like leaves his hospital
bed where he needs to be to stay alive in

(54:41):
order to be at this thing because he considers it
more important. Outside the church, Smith made congregants bowed down
on their knees before entering, giving them judgment and writing
their names in the Lamb's Book of Life, a biblical
register of those chosen for salvation. The Walrus reports as
congregants entered the church, Smith wrote name of each person
in a book. When Tanica Gardner walked through the doors,

(55:03):
Smith turned to her. Is your blood clean? He asked?
Do you believe that I am the resurrection in the life.
Gardner replied yes. Smith then said that her blood had
to be cleansed in order for her to be resurrected.
I will have to cut your throat, he told her.
She allegedly again replied yes.

Speaker 5 (55:19):
Oh again. I don't know. Does she believe this is literal?
Does he talk?

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Does he kind of explaining that this is actually like
or is it just metaphorical? Do they really think? I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
So much of his rhetoric is like talking in terms
that are apocalyptic and violent, but what you mean isn't literal?
Up to this point, maybe people are like, well, you
can't possibly mean he's kind of literally cut people's throats, right,
that'd be nuts.

Speaker 5 (55:44):
You know, it's a.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Spoiler that is exactly what he means. So at this point,
members are ordered to lay on the ground and throw
away any cleaning or sanitation supplies like antibacterial soap or
wipes that they had on them. Well, this was going on.
Someone throws a wine bottle onto the floor, and Smith
orders a follower to use one of the shards to
slit the throat of a congregant who happened to be

(56:07):
seated near where the bottle had landed. He told another
male follower that in order to be worthy of heaven,
he would have to let one of Smith's lieutenants cut
his throat with a knife. This guy got so far
as to lay down in front of a dude who
had like a knife when he realized like, oh my god,
this guy's gonna actually cut my throat, and he fucking runs,
He like bounces. He's like, oh shit, you meant this.

(56:29):
This isn't just some sort of a fucking thing we're doing.

Speaker 5 (56:31):
Oh no, no, no, no no.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
And Smith's follower with the knife, a guy named Plumber,
chases both of these guys, who like both of these
guys flee the ark at this point when they're like,
oh fuck, we're actually going to get right. No, no, no,
He chases both of them ounta and he stabs them
both in the back, wounding both of these men. Meanwhile,
back inside the arc, Smith finds Michael Brown, the man

(56:53):
with kidney failure who had left the hospital on his
orders and the pastor told him, you have to die,
but you will write because I am the resurrection and
the Light. Now, this guy is still wheelchair bound and
is still taking IVY medications, and Smith pulls the tubes
out of this man, causing him to bleed to death.
While this is happening, he turns his attention next to

(57:15):
Taneka Gardner, who had already agreed to have her throat
cut earlier for the Walrus. Smith then handed a knife
to a seventeen year old follower named Billy, who instructed
to cut Gardner's throat, but Billy hesitated, later saying that
he remembered that one of the ten commitment states thou
shalt not kill. Smith's right hand man, Andre Ruddick, stepped
forward and, at Smith's urging, allegedly cut Gardner's throat. She

(57:36):
died shortly.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Thereafter Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
So at this point, two people are dead inside the
church and two more have been stabbed outside. Some parishioners
have gotten the fuck out right. Other people flee when
it becomes clear he's actually going to be killing us all,
and they call the cops, right, although I should also
note one of the people here is a police officer,
one of the parishioners, and I don't think it's him

(58:00):
who calls the cops, because he might have been down.
It's unclear precisely who ordered what. But when the cops
show up, members of Smith's church open fire. Some of
them have guns, and the police start shooting back, and
we get a little bit of a Waco situation on
our hands here. Yeah, Plumber charges the cops with his
still bloody knife and is shot and killed by the police,

(58:22):
who themselves have to call for backup from the military
because they're just not prepared to deal with this whole situation.
The church crowd is fully split at this point. A
lot of people have fled in sheer terror, but a
number of them charge the police. Billy who'd cut Tanaka's
throat also gets shot in the chest trying to rush
the cops, but he ultimately survives. Smith is eventually arrested

(58:45):
along with one of his higher ranking lieutenants, and the
police begins searching his properties to try and figure out, like,
what the fuck happened to you? Right from the perspective
of cops, think of how wild this is. You know
about this church. It's a normal like evangelical church, and
then one day you show up and there's people with
their throat slit and like stabbed out in front. And
you show up and people start shooting at you and
charging you with machetes, and you're like, oh my god,

(59:08):
what the fuck is happening here? It's just like completely
disorienting to everybody, so less than two weeks after this
goes down. You know, Smith is in custody and incarcerated,
and while he's being driven to Kingston with police escorts,
the officers driving him take a detour that lengthens the drive,
and then his vehicle crashes into two oncoming vehicles. Smith

(59:32):
dies at the scene, along with a twenty six year
old officer in the car with him, and two other
officers are badly injured.

Speaker 5 (59:38):
There is a.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Lot of immediate speculation like, oh, okay, so he was murdered,
this is a setup because of what he knew or whatever,
like something shady has gone down here. A post mortem
revealed that Smith had basically taken off, like like grabbed
the driver's shoulder and pulling him to cause the accident. Yeah,
that's the official story. I don't know, it's there's some

(01:00:00):
weird stuff here. Although if the if the state orchestrated this,
they also got a cop killed with him. But you know,
I don't know. I don't know what happened. I don't
necessarily need to believe that anything sketchy happened. But this guy,
like probably a lot of people who don't want him testifying.
Also because of some of the shit that he's done.
So it's not like inherently weird to be like, well

(01:00:21):
maybe something went on here. I don't know, but yeah
that's the story if the other Kevin Smith fuck me,
oh wow, yeah that is related quickly huh.

Speaker 6 (01:00:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
I had to grab Truman at the end. I was
like this is bad.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
I needed Yeah, this is like fucked up, and then
like what right to throat cutting very quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
Making the guy in the wheelchair bleed out, and then
trying to get a seventeen year old to slit a
woman's throat. It's bad.

Speaker 6 (01:00:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
I really feel for like Juvon who has to be
thinking this whole.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Time, like, and all the fucking money is my question?

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Yeah, I mean, you know, that's an interesting question. Obviously
a lot of it gets bribed out. They do find
he has a property listed for like three hundred and
thirty grand. After he dies. There's a number of other properties,
like several million dollars in real estate that get auctioned off.
But it looks like, based on the cost of maintaining everything,

(01:01:24):
was not all that far from what was coming in,
So there may be a degree that like maybe as
he had gotten crazier and more focused on anti COVID shit, right,
It's possible that, like maybe there was a decline in
the number of members in the amount of money that
they had, and he was losing the ability to like
fund what he was doing, right, and so maybe after.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
The big drift, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Yeah, yeah, time for a swan song perhaps.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Oh wow, yeah, well yeah, that's ruined my day.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Thanks, yep, yeah, thanks great, have a wonderful weekend. I
guess have a.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
Great time everybody. Yeah. Maybe, I don't know, Like a
lot of all of this is so downstream from like
what happened to everyone during COVID, yeah, or a lot
of people during COVID, like the the fact that like
the lockdowns really supercharged the spread of a lot of
propaganda that really damaged a lot of people's like like

(01:02:24):
cause you see, like this guy is a significantly different
logical actor in a lot of ways after that happens,
you know, I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:02:33):
Uh it's bleak, Yeah, yep.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
All right, what's the name of your book? One more
time for our listeners, Double Axe and Pop Amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
Check it out and get at commercial type dot com
and some bookstores.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
Sweet Excellent.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Listen to a Wait Days podcast wherever you get your podcast.
That's by Jake Candrahan and uh touch grass after listening
to this one.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna go touch so much.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Yeah, you know, peda dog if they want you to, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Peta dog if they want you to touch some grass
if you think the grass wants you to, and check
out check out Molly's new podcast.

Speaker 5 (01:03:11):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
Yeah, when is it? When is the podcast coming.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
Coming out this fall?

Speaker 5 (01:03:17):
Hell yeah, stay tuned.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Super exciting.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
All right, guys, all right, everybody.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
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. Behind the
Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday
and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot com slash

(01:03:49):
at Behind the Bastards