September 7, 2024 • 39 mins
In our classic wrap-up look at women cult leaders, we examine even more examples of women founding, leading and maintaining cults.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stephone
Never Told You production of iHeart Radio. And we're back
with part two of our two partner on women cult leaders.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
We have been through no real.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Design, been talking a lot about cults lately and a.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Part of natural conversation Annie, who doesn't talk about cults.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Of course, obviously we do.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
We add enough for a two parter, and I think
we could come back and revisit it at a third,
but in the meantime, please enjoy this classic episode.
Speaker 5 (00:54):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I welcome to Stephan Never Told Your production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
How often do we do two parts? Is it an
often thing?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
It is less often as of recent m I think
the last big two parter was Women who Loved Serial Killers?
Speaker 6 (01:18):
Did that?
Speaker 5 (01:19):
Was that a two parter?
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I know that one wasn't, but the Women's Serial Killers was?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
For sure?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
There's something else we did not too long ago. Oh,
Women Who Organized? That was a two parter?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I think yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
And then Star Wars obviously obviously those were those two
were two partners.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I used to be really hesitant about two partners, and
I would try really hard to condense but there's a
certain point. I believe it was yesterday where I contacted
you and I think, I think this women, so it's
gonna have to be a two parter.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Right, I think we both like there's moments that we
think it's not going to be big.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
And then we're like, oh, oh okay.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Because the women who organized I did not anticipate doing,
but it felt so sad to cut it off, right,
so we wanted to add as much as we could,
and sometimes it it means two parters.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yay, Yes, And here is a second part of a
two part series we had on women leading cults. So
highly recommend you go listen to part one first because
we do a lot of baseline what are cults? What
are all the arguments about cults? Which is really key
to this conversation. There is so much we could unpack
(02:26):
in all of this, right, all of it. So if
that's something that you listeners would like to hear, please
let us know. But just we're kind of doing I
won't say superficial, but we're not going into the depths
we could on all of these cults and all of
these women and whether or not there cults.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
We're talking more about examples rather than the psyche and
or trauma behind it, so that might be later though.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I don't know why I got so weirdly excited, but
it's just that site aspect is interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
When you always look deeper about the why, it's always
more fascinating to know.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
It is it is.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So before we get into these examples, quick trigger warning,
there will be discussion of suicide, sexual abuse, violence, death, murder,
general abuse. We're not going to go too deep into
any of that, but when you're talking about cults, it
can get pretty grisly and disturbing. And yes, as we
said in part one, there's a lot of argument going
(03:25):
on in debate around what constitutes a cult, and there
are lots of layers of sexism, racism, and anti any
religion that's not Christianity involved in these discussions. But yeah,
just to acknowledge that that's going on, and with the
women we're talking about and the organizations we're talking about,
not everyone agree these women were cult leaders, and I
think those conversations are well worth having. Some of these
(03:49):
organizations might not be considered cults at all points in history,
but with the right person, they can become cults or
at the very least run by someone who fits the
cult leader stereotype. Who yeah, we talked about that in
part one as well, but like charismatic is one of
the very key things there, and controlling and like just
demanding all this adoration and complete submission. That being said,
(04:12):
these are some of the women that frequently come up
when you're digging around the internet for women cult leaders.
And another disclaimer, the histories of these can be a
bit murkier fantastical. As we said in our serial Killers episode,
it just can get a little real difficult because even
reputable newspaper sources sometimes like to really lean into that morbid,
(04:35):
ghastly side of all of this. So it's hard to
say for sure, right right, definitely level of shock factor
for sure. And speaking of let's start this one with
a Clementine Barnabette, sometimes called the first black female serial
killer in the United States, and in nineteen eleven, a
Louisiana police department got a frantic call about a suspected incident.
(04:58):
Sure enough, when police arrived on the scene, they discovered
the bodies of a man, woman, and child with their
skulls split open. A bloody axe at the head of
the bed, a bucket of blood in the corner, bloody
footprints throughout the room. They deduced the killer must have
come through the windows since the doors were locked at
the time. A local newspaper called it quote the most
brutal murder in the history of this section. It was
(05:19):
not the only acts murder to take place in nearby
areas of Louisiana and Texas. These murders were believed to
be the work of a cult by the name of
the Church of Sacrifice that required human sacrifices for their
religious rights, rumored to be led by a voodoo priestess.
Even so, all of the initial suspects were men. One
(05:39):
source described the murders as rained with acts, and after
other similar murders took place, usually of families, the authorities
began to suspect that they were quote the work of
the same terrible monster. Sources indicate most, if not all,
of these families were black families.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
So the police eventually turned their sights on a sharecropper
on the wrong side of town named Raymond Barnabet. Both
his children, Zephyr and Clementine, testified against them, claiming they
were scared for their lives, he was abusive to his
whole family. According to records. However, more murders took place
while Raymond was in jail. Both of the children were arrested,
in part because their neighbors described them as degenerous, and
(06:19):
in part because Clementine had blood from one of the
murders on her shirt. A local newspaper reported in nineteen
eleven that when the police searched the Barnabut household, they
found a complete set of women's clothes in her room,
saturated with blood and covered with human brains. With no alibi,
Clementine went to jail. The murders did not let up.
(06:40):
Three families were murdered in January of nineteen twelve. The
dead's hands were splayed apart with wood, and messages like
this one were left on the walls. When he make
a the inquisition for blood, he forgeteth not the cry
of the humble A bit of a twist on a
Bible verse, by the way. These messages were written by
hand and signed Human five. And the press began attributing
(07:02):
these murders to the Human five gang, and they really
went all in on this voodoo aspect. Justice more and
more people were talking about Clementine's possible connection to the
mysterious Church of Sacrifice. Reverend King Harris was sought to
be the leader of this church, but upon questioning police
dismissed them as a suspect.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Lementine confessed to killing seventeen people in April of nineteen twelve.
She further explained that she wore a voodoo charm for
protection while she killed. In her words, it was gifted
to her by a voodoo priest, a man who did
not claim himself as a voodoo priest when question so
it was somebody that they followed up with and he
was like, whoa what?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
And straws were.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Drawn, according to her, between her and her accomplices to
see who would commit the murders. She went on to
say she dressed as a man to be left relatively
alone and unnoticed. On night she was planning on killing someone,
and a local paper reported that she said she killed
the kids so as not to leave them an orphan
in this world. She said that she would quote caress
the corpses, and one district attorney called her a moral
(08:00):
pervert because of what she said in her testimony against
her father. People were still confused about the veracity of
her claims. When she gave the names of her accomplices,
all that was turned up. They were all dead ends.
She said she believed that sacrifices were the way to
achieve immortality. A nineteen twelve article headline read.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
The X man is a woman. What's the exclamation point?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
So later examination found there was no charge of sacrifice,
and that perhaps it was confused with Harris's sanctified church,
especially with the swirling rumors of voodoo. And none of
this was held by the fact that during her time
in jail, Clementine constantly modified her story and ended up
confessing to thirty five.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
Murders who her.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Attorneys argued that she was insane, but this did not
prevent a judge from sansing her two lives at nineteen
years old. She tried and fell to escape early on,
but other than that didn't really cause much trouble. In fact,
one report about her imprisonment claim that a procedure returned
to her normal condition and she was released on good
behavior after a decade had passed.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
So that's all pretty murky.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
People who have delved into this belief that Clementine did
commit some of the murders, but maybe not all of them. However,
they think someone in that household was the primary murderer.
Over at True Crime Daily, James Horror wrote, she scandalized
the press, stirring up a gumbo of moral panic in
a state where civil war and slavery remained a living memory.
Everything about Clementine Barnabet represented a collision, even a perversion
(09:32):
of cultures in the eyes of white Louisiana, from her
mangled Creole French to her mangled beliefs, a tabloid baiting
blend of voodoo itself, a blend of Catholicism and West
African tribal rights and Evangelical Christianity. So I want to
include that because for this one, like her name came
up a lot, but there's just clearly to me, like
even in the language of the newspapers like degenerates, the
(09:54):
wrong side of town and this whole like voodoo thing
that the press was really pushing that there's just like
a layer of racism over the whole thing. And it
doesn't feel because this was kind of debunked right that
they found no proof of this church's sacrifice, but it's still.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
She comes up as a woman leading a cult. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
So.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
In nineteen eighty nine, in an Amazonian town in Brazil,
there were several reports of missing children. The authorities looked
into it but couldn't find any leaves, and the cases
jumped to nineteen missing children between the ages of eight
and thirteen. Five other children had been found dead castrated
with signs of torture. Officials believe that the murders and
disappearance were related to a medical guild due to precise
(10:39):
nature of castrations. These bodies were identified as homeless boys,
but the boys who had been reported missing had been
done so by their families, and depending on the source,
one or two boys managed to escape after castration and
found some officials. Whatever the case, only one ended up testifying,
and the story he told was horrific torture, rape, mutilate
(11:00):
like eyes, gouged out, and castration. He testified that other
children were stabbed and killed, their organs sold on the
black market or they ate them, but again this has
not been confirmed, and in his testimony he named a
handful of people doctor it's a police officer, wealthy businessman
and Valentina de Andrade, the leader of the religious cult.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
The cult question was called Superior Universal Alignment, a UFO
cult led by Valentina whose members believe the world was
ending and the only way to be saved was by
following the commands of their leader. She claimed she'd been
contacted by extraterrestrial beings and that they claimed the apocalypse
was nigh, but that if she passed along the message,
(11:41):
they would send a ship to collect her and other
believers to spare them. She believed that God wasn't real
and that Jesus was an alien. Perhaps the most shocking
thing she said, though, was that boys born after nineteen
eighty one, which is when she claimed to have received
her message, were evil and needed to be killed, both
because they were evil but also to serve as payment
(12:02):
to their extraterrestrial saviors. Five children were never found of
the nineteen reported missing, and four of the perpetrators were captured. However,
Valentina managed to escape the country and evaded capture for
several years. Even when authorities did locate her, she provided
an alibi for the murders and was released. Apparently she
(12:22):
fainted at this verdict. Yeah, so we have some more
examples for you, But first we have a quick break
for word from our sponsor, Eric Beck, Thank you sponsor.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Along with Marshall Applewhite, Bonnie Lou Needles co founded the
UFO cult Heaven's Gate in the nineteen seventies, and she
believed herself to have a divine purpose. She was known
as Tea. She also went by Peep while he went
by Bo, and the two of them went by the
two went together. She was a registered nurse and raised
in Texas. She got married, had four children, but then
(13:08):
reportedly started doing seances in the early nineteen seventies. According
to some sources, she thought a monk nate brother Francis
from the nineteenth century was communicating with her and giving
her instructions. She was big into astrology and the occult,
and she visited several fortune tellers, at least one of
whom told her she was soon meet someone matching apple
(13:29):
White's description, and the stories of how they met very
from inside hospital to a theater after an accident something
like that. Allegedly, Nettles was asked to perform a reading
on apple White and agreed.
Speaker 6 (13:41):
She determined they were spiritual matches. Apple White was gay,
though he did marry and have two children. His family
was very religious and conservative, and despite his best efforts,
he did engage in a few homosexual relationships.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Nettles and apple White had a non sexual relationship. He
later wrote of it, quote, the only relationship they shared,
certainly having no physical attraction toward each other, was the
compulsion to discover what had brought them together. James Lewis,
author on a book of UFFO cults and a professor
at the Institute for the Study of American Religion, said quote,
apple White was so alienated from his homosexuality that he
(14:16):
was teaching people not to have sex. He would put
people of opposite sexes together and force them to learn
to become neutral, non sexual. Apparently apple White had himself castrated,
and that perhaps others in the group were castrated as well.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
And in nineteen seventy three, Nettles told her daughter and
son she was leaving and that was the last they
ever saw of her with apple White. She said that
God was leading them in a certain, big direction. She
said a cryptic religious message to her daughter several months later,
claiming that she and apple White were witnesses. Members were
required to dress alike and cut their hair, which I
(14:52):
think people know about. Together, they formed Heaven's gates. Nettles
said she'd communicated with aliens about the next level, and
apple White to Deca Claire she was higher rank than
him in nineteen seventy six. Her eye had to be
removed in nineteen eighty three due to cancer spreading throughout
her body, and according to her daughter, the letters changed
in the eighties and that she got a sense her
(15:13):
mother wanted out, but there wasn't a graceful way to leave,
as she said.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yes. So.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Nettles died of cancer twelve years before apple White and
thirty eight others killed themselves in a mass suicide event,
believing that it would allow them to access a UFO
following in the wake of the Hailey Bop commet, believing
that it would grant them passage to the quote yes
next Kingdom or Right before this event was carried out,
the website was updated with a message that they were
happy to leave this world and join quote tease Crew.
(15:40):
Experts believe her death was a significant touchstone in terms
of beliefs around the body being quote just a vehicle,
which is what apple White said about Nettle's making space
for the tragic event that was about to occur. Nettle's
daughter tried to contact her to get her out, but
was told her messages wouldn't be passed along unless she
told them what she planned to say. When the daughter
(16:01):
said it's personal, they hung up so sad.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
So next, we want to talk about Amy Simple macpherson,
who was a faith healer, evangelist and a founder of
Four Square Gospel Church and builder of the Angelust Temple.
She was born into a religious family in eighteen ninety,
but she soon had questions about their faith, and at
the same time she was a vocal opponent of evolution.
At eighteen, she married and got pregnant, and on their honeymoon,
(16:28):
her husband died. When she returned to the US, she
remarried and had another child, but soon grew restless and
absconded with both the children, leaving her husband for a
religious calling.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
She traveled the country in a touring car, the gospel
car that had the message Jesus is coming soon and
get ready, stopping to speak at churches along the way,
and she really knew her way around a crowd. She
would speak in tongue. She would perform faith healing demonstrations
in which she appeared to have cured people. She was
breaking attendance records to other evangelical leaders. As a woman,
(17:02):
she was a rarity in that space. At a San
Diego event, over thirty thousand people showed up to see her,
and the Marines had to be called.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
It was described as the best show in town.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And just for example, she would ride motorcycles into these events.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Sometimes they had lights and special effects.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
She was one of the first women in the US
to travel across the country in a car without a
male chaperone, and she frequently argued, who says the woman
can't preach gospel? Charlie Chaplin was a secret friend of
hers and helped her with her sermons.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Wow, I can't believe I've never heard of her before this,
because yeah, it's so rare to see traveling preachers and
halos that aren't men.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I know.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
I shocked I hadn't heard of her either, because it
sounds like she had a pretty big pull during.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Her thirty thousand That was a huge number for sure.
So eventually she decided to retire from the crowds and travel,
settling in la where she raised fund for the Angelius
Church one point five million Wow, where she gave sermons
seven days a week. In nineteen twenty four, she launched
her own radio station called KFQG four Square Gospel, and
(18:10):
she also hosted successful radio broadcast, making her one of
the first women to receive a broadcast license in the US.
Around this time, she formed her own church for Square
and the name comes from four facets of Jesus, Transformative Salvation,
divine healing, Baptism, and the return of Christ. Mini male
leaders in the space were vocal opponents, which not surprised.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Nope, not at all.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
In nineteen thirty six, she disappeared on a swim, an
event that captured national headlines, attention, and rampant speculation about
what happened to Sister Amy, as she was called a believer,
literally drowned themselves, it was said in sorrow, But I
believe they were just trying to swim out and help
with the effort. Members through dynamite in the water, hoping
(18:56):
to surface. Her Rumors spread like wildfire, that she disappeared
to have an abortion, that she had had an affair,
that she'd gotten plastic surgery, that maybe there'd be a
ransom or foul play was involved. The police received a
ransom note demanding five hundred thousand dollars for her release,
and it was signed by the Avengers. Oh I know,
getting up to no good. Amy showed up in Mexico
(19:19):
a month later. Her identity was proven by her knowledge
of her childhood pet pigeons name which I love, and
at the location of one of her scars. Amy claimed
she'd been kidnapped by three Americans who demanded a ransom,
but she was able to escape, by her account, sawing
out of the rope restraining her and walking twenty miles.
After a reporter questioned if this was possible, Amy said,
(19:43):
many have said that a woman could not have built
Angelus Temple and do these other seemingly impossible things, But
I did.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
She sure did so.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
When she returned home, over fifty thousand cheering spectators met
her at the train station with a parade. However, her
return was not without so expion, and officials looked into
her kidnapping. She voluntarily showed up at a grain jury
and the rumors swirling, particularly around an engineer of a
radio station owned by McPherson's church, who disappeared at the
(20:11):
same time she did. However, there wasn't enough evidence to
back this claim, so the judge dropped the case against her.
McPherson wrote a book about it in nineteen twenty seven
called In the Service of the King, The Story of
My Life. She died in nineteen forty four of what
was deemed as probable accidental overdose or Over forty five
(20:32):
thousand people came to see her lying in state, and
when she died, the four Square Church was worth nine
million dollars. In these days there are over nine million members.
There are over seventeen hundred Four Square churches in the
US and over sixty six thousand meeting places worldwide. She's
been credited with bringing modern air conservatism into the era
(20:54):
of modern media. It's a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, So she's been coming up a lot.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
When we were talking about the kind of these personality
based shows that do you know the opinion shows, especially
when it comes to conservatism and how religion often plays
into that. And this one too is when I've never
heard of this church, but I know that you could
(21:20):
foreshore argue whether or not qualifies as a cult. Right,
there's nothing outright that screams to meet cult about it, right?
It does come up on several lists, But I'm wondering
if that's more about her more of a cult of personality,
like she was just so charismatic and people have really
(21:41):
really adored her and would do anything for her.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
And again, like we could go, we could.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Do deep dives of all of these and maybe there's
just something I don't know about it about this church.
But right, that was just kind of my take on
it where I was sort of surprised is kept popping
up on other lists about and cult leaders.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
I mean, and again, yeah, there's a conversation of how
she's getting this money, where she's getting this money, which
also is kind of that political turning and conversation of
that as well. But it is also unprecedented that a
woman started a church and it still exists today to
the popularity that it's saying. I will say I've not
heard of the church either before this episode, but it
(22:22):
is interesting to see how it continues to pop up.
And again, yeah, you're right, cult it seems a little
more dark than what this is presenting. But we do
also know like when it comes to followings and especially
of the hell Fibrimstone era that she grew up in
with the traveling preachers, which has now formed into different
religions in itself. It also can be seemingly cultish, yeah,
(22:46):
because of the supernatural element to it.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, and that's another which we keep saying.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
But I just know that this is such a fine
line of some people would call this a cult and
other people wouldn't. And sometimes that line for some people
can be oh, that looks so different and weird in
heavy growths compared to what I am used.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
To, Right, so it must be a cult. It makes
me nervous.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
It makes me nervous. And again, this is also based
on old religion. And when I say old religion, you
don't see the practicing of tongues the healing in general.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I've seen it. I've
seen that it still exists, but you just don't see
it as much, and especially in popularity.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, I guess maybe that's maybe that's one of the
reasons it is classified as a cult to some people.
Is that kind of whole faith healing speaking in tongues aspects,
which you know, can be a lot of religions can
have people like that who are just like really bombastic
and entertaining or in that way, and not to dismiss
(23:49):
at all, like people's beliefs. But I'm just saying like
as part of somebody who can gather that sort of
passion and excitement, and that can be almost like an
entertainment or a role that you're right, people excited about
this thing.
Speaker 6 (24:01):
Right.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
And again though if we look at what she did
compared to some religions today, there's not that much difference,
So you have to question that.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yes, now, probably after this I'll look it up and
something super dark involved, but I feel I think that
would be on the top of like.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Right information, and you're right, like, we don't see that.
It's just more of her accomplishments that we see more
so than what the religion or the practice did.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, and definitely, like you said, kind of a big
impact of like having this first radio station as a
woman like license and being in this space and then
providing a jumping off platform for conservatism and modern media today.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
And it could be also the language back then if
competing I guess church or belief system, you learn to
call it something insidious and so therefore cult maybe the
automatic name given just because you don't like it, and
it is again done by someone who's not given according
to them authority which is a woman, right, which is
a whole different conversation.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
But once again, yeah, no that I I had that
top thought too. I don't feel I have enough knowledge
of this particular event, but I do wonder if there
was a layer, if there's a woman doing this thing
that's seen as a man's face.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Cult, it's weird.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Yes, these are just yes, these are like you and
I just hypoanalyzing.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
Yes, what this is happening.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yes, I mean I think certainly there's at least a
layer of that, and most of these there's a layer
of racism. And this isn't Christianity like I see it
in the United States specifically.
Speaker 5 (25:28):
And some of these are hanas too though just.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yes, yes, I don't want to dismiss.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yes, both of those things exist in these two episodes.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yes, absolutely, absolutely good point to make this. We do
have one more woman cult leader we want to share
with you, but first we have one more quick break
or work from a response there.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
And we're back. Thank you sponsor.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
We thought we would finish out this two part series
about women leading cults with Anne Hamilton Burne, the charismatic
leader of the Australian Doomsday cult. The Family Hamilton Burne
was a woman of many talents. She could sing and
play the harp. She was put together, as they say,
with style, blonde hair and pearls and Chanel perfume. One
(26:27):
of her ex followers said of her, in ancient times
we hear about enchantresses who could enslave people with one glance.
She had eyes that looked through your soul. After her
mother set her hair on fire, she was diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia and ended up spending twenty seven years in
a psychiatric asylum before she died. Anne spent some time
in orphanages, and her first husband died in a car
(26:49):
accident when she was twenty. She'd given birth to one daughter,
and as rumors go, had suffered many miscarriages by.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
Then, and in the nineteen sixties Hamilton Barne found the
family and claimed that she was Jesus reborn as a woman.
She was reportedly inspired by a Russian born medium by
the name of Helena Bolovotsky, who founded the Theosophical Society
in New York in eighteen seventy five. Bolovotsky introduced many
to Hinduism and Buddhism. When Hamilton Byrne took up yoga
(27:18):
in the nineteen fifties as a bomb to her grief.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
She pretty quickly.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Fell in love with the ideas of Eastern mysticism. She
started teaching it in the nineteen sixties and by all accounts,
was a pretty good teacher. She was really good at
getting a read on people's vulnerabilities. She allowed gay men
in the face of the anti homosexuality laws in plays
in Australia at the time. She also managed to recruit
a physicist and a master at Queen's College at Melbourne University,
(27:46):
doctor Rayner Johnson. He was approaching retirement and curious to
explore new quote weird areas, and interest amongst the scientific
community about spiritualism was on the rise, and he just
became completely by Hamilton Byurne, even naming her the next Messiah.
For what he declared to be purely academic purposes. He
(28:07):
experimented with LSC and took notes about it, including this quote,
Her face became divinely beautiful, with sublime authority, unquestionably the wisest,
the serenest, and most gracious and generous soul I've ever met.
He and his wife bought a home near Hamilton Burne,
and together they birth the family.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
The family lived in obscurity in Melbourne and their motto
was Unseen, Unknown, Unheard. Hamilton Byurne targeted well off professionals,
telling them that she had quote been waiting for them
and that they were special. Doctor Johnson lent a scientific
and legitimate heir to her claims. Her teachings were a
combination of Christianity, Eastern mysticism, and a sort of apocalypticism,
(28:50):
and the initiation allegedly involved all members, even children, to
indulge in a potentially deadly amount of LSD and hallucinogens
for a.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Lengthy amount of time.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
After that, she controlled practically all aspects of their lives,
and one survivor's words quote, there was only one rule.
Do absolutely everything she said. That included what to think,
what to wear, what to eat, who to marry, who
not to marry, total obedience. She gave sermons or discourses
as they were called, from a purple throne and a
lodge funded by members money. Many members of the cult
(29:23):
tried to take their own lives, either during their time
there or after, and a few did upsettingly. To keep
members in line, she'd beat them, sometimes with the stiletto shoe,
but she often left this test to the anties, who
were middle aged women afraid of their own punishment if
they didn't enact it on others. She would starve members, emotionally,
(29:43):
abuse and manipulate them. The children might also get a
daily dose of valium or mogdon to keep them from
fighting back or to just kind of keep them calm.
At age fourteen, this switched over to huge continuous doses
of LSD, and for many this was the z as,
resulting in du pressia, trauma, nightmares, social withdrawal, and personality changes.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
So after two children escaped in nineteen eighty seven, police
raided the family. Over the past few decades, Hamilton Burne
had a mass of twenty eight children. The first had
arrived in the nineteen seventies, and some of them as
gifts and some of them sham adoptions. At the time,
Australia's regulation around adoptions were lacking, and the stigma around
unmarried motherhood was.
Speaker 5 (30:26):
Pretty quite powerful.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
According to a detective that tried to bring charges against
Hamilton Burne, quote, you had babies born in a cult hospitals,
delivered by cult midwives handed over to cult social workers,
hamilton Burn bleached the hair of all of them and
adorned them in matching clothes, telling them she was their
birth mother. She also told them she was royalty and
owned castles. She kept the children separate from the main
(30:49):
compound at a wooden lodge two hours away, where they
were homeschooled. She desired to be the perfect mother, but
had no real interest in actually putting any effort into that,
and thanks to property donations from followers in Land, hamilton
Burn collected one hundred and fifty million Australian dollars and
she was arrested for minor fraud charges in.
Speaker 5 (31:10):
Nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
She and our ex husband, who one follower described as
a handsome, rich, compliant handbag, got off with only five
thousand AU and fines, absolutely no jail time, and one
of the rescue teenagers after the nineteen eighty seven raid explained,
it's hard to say how devoted we are to her,
how we hung off her every look and every thought
(31:32):
she had about us. We wanted so much for her
to love us, but I don't think she ever really did.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Julian Massange, a founder of Wiki Leaks, admitted his mother's
boyfriend had been a member of this cult. Assange called
him a sinister presence and claimed that they ran from him.
Hamilton Byurne spent over a decade in a nursing home,
where she eventually died. The Family. If you want to
know more, there is a documentary on it, we said,
(32:00):
this podcast, documentary is Gilora and almost all of these,
so the information is out there for you. Yes, there's
a documentary and book called The Family by documentary filmmaker
Rosie Jones and journalist Chris Johnston. The creators were unable
to interview her due to her dementia and lack of
ability to consent, or they weren't able to film it
or write it down, but they did get to sit
(32:21):
down with her, and they described the power of their experience.
So yeah, I just feel like there's so many themes
we could unpack here because we've really run the gamut
of like, yes, sexism and racism and homophobia, and this
idea of the mother did come up a lot, and
just so much like misogyny and.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Toxic masculinity.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Yeah, yeah, we could really come back and dig into that.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
And I'm sure each of the podcasts and the documentaries
talk about the childhood and the background of the trauma
that kind of birthed these people to be who they are,
and that loosely because you never know, not to give
any excuse, there's not an excuse, but there's always a beginning, right,
And I think that's that's an interesting way to look
(33:09):
at how these are created and again with different personalities
that can bring about these perfectly placed disasters and or
perfectly placed timeframes. I guess that's the best way to say,
because we don't know the depth of what has happened
truly outside of those who were inside of it. So
there's a lot of things the question and to look at,
(33:32):
but yeah, just to see the background of what is happening,
because again we see so much of a sensationalization of
what has happened, because we know, you know Jonestown, we
know Waco, we know the big details, but we don't
know the small details of course, the aftermath for the.
Speaker 5 (33:49):
Members what has happened.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
I know there's been a lot more documentation, documentaries, conversations
from survivors because they do want to tell their stories
and important for them to tell these stories that we
have to pay attention to that. And yet these are
not just incidents, and though we are giving off, you know,
details of what may have happened of or it's just
a small picture of what may have happened.
Speaker 5 (34:11):
Rather these were people's lives that were affected.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
And we do see the lingering effects for different people
who have been affected by what we would call it
consider a cult that still exists that's not being recognized
because of people's opinions and or maybe politics that we
again as you talked about, they have some of these
cults had political figureheads behind them.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yep, yeah, Pip, yep.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
And that's one of the things for me, this whole
this is all very complicated, right because there is a
lot of trauma, and you don't want to absolve ever
anybody of blame, but there is that, there's trauma, and
there's brainwashing. So if that's complicated, but then you would
see like for example, when you're talking about Betty Lunette's
and I just noticed like people were really into, oh,
(34:57):
she did the seances and she did she was involved
in they cult.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
There's nothing like inherently wrong with any of that, right,
And I know what they were getting at.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
They were saying, she was looking for quote heavy quote
alternative like enlightenment enlightenment, and she was interested in those things.
But I do think that things like that can be
problematic when we're having these conversations because that doesn't necessarily
mean cult. I know, we keep coming back to that,
but I just think that it's really really important.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Right, So she us a prime example of someone who
looked at alternative what would be classified as New Waged
ideas during that time. And yeah, because it's abnormal, and
because we are in a country that is so inundated
into Western Christianity and I have to specify that as
a Western Christianity, and this very idea of notion that
(35:51):
almost takes to the point that, you know, the idea
that Jesus is white, you know, that kind of level
of what Christianity what is right and wrong. So there,
for that is cult and that is super, very super
dangerous when we talk about that, because we know, again
the New Age ideas and reading poems or you lo
(36:12):
can through tarot cards does not equate cult in the story.
You know, just because you look at astrology or you
trust in astrology does not again quit cult. But there's
this whole underlying, dark, sinister idea behind it. When you
raised up in again Western Christianity ideas and beliefs, which
again is dangerous, absolutely for sure, and the same idea
(36:35):
because I think me for me growing up, which is
why I was so fascinated by Eastern religion, is because
it was told me that it is forbidden in itself, you.
Speaker 5 (36:43):
Know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (36:44):
And then learning about it, I'm like, no, this makes sense,
and I'm not a religious person, but the ideas behind it,
some of the beautiful sentiment behind understanding Eastern religion, which
has existed longer than again Western Christianity, right.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
Like in itself is a.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Whole different conversation we could dig into because yeah, that
also is fear mongering in itself. And now again the
atrocities that we talked about, they are for real. We
need to talk about what has happened, how it has
traumatized others, and why we need to talk about it.
But yeah, there's definitely the balance of we have to
remember the biases that could be placed into these reports
(37:23):
as well.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Exactly, Yeah, because it's not.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
That we're seeing these aren't cults or that the terrible,
terrible things happened within them, because for a lot of them,
they did but I think it's just the language I
picked up on in it that I was kind of
it kind of made me a little anxious, like I
get that's true, and I get it, and this did
end up being bad, but that doesn't mean it always is.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Yeah, oo, very complex, a lot of nuances.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
So many things.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Glad we got into it, and I hope we Yeah, we'll
definitely look at the overall ideas of women and cults
in general, just the help being a member, because we
do see a lot of times it's heavily women.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yeah, we're definitely going to return to that. And uh,
I'm both excited and nervous.
Speaker 5 (38:16):
But I don't like anything.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yes, as most episodes on here.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, in the meantime, listeners, if you would like to
contact us, you can or email Stuff Medium mom Stuff
at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on Instagram
at Stuff I've Never Told You or on Twitter at
mom Stuff Podcast. Thanks as always to our super producer Christina,
Thank you, and thanks to you for listening Stuff I've
Never Told You his production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast
from iHeartRadio, it is a diheart radio app, Apple Podcasts
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stephone
Never Told You production of iHeart Radio. And we're back
with part two of our two partner on women cult leaders.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
We have been through no real.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Design, been talking a lot about cults lately and a.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Part of natural conversation Annie, who doesn't talk about cults.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Of course, obviously we do.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
We add enough for a two parter, and I think
we could come back and revisit it at a third,
but in the meantime, please enjoy this classic episode.
Speaker 5 (00:54):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I welcome to Stephan Never Told Your production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
How often do we do two parts? Is it an
often thing?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
It is less often as of recent m I think
the last big two parter was Women who Loved Serial Killers?
Speaker 6 (01:18):
Did that?
Speaker 5 (01:19):
Was that a two parter?
Speaker 1 (01:20):
I know that one wasn't, but the Women's Serial Killers was?
Speaker 2 (01:23):
For sure?
Speaker 3 (01:24):
There's something else we did not too long ago. Oh,
Women Who Organized? That was a two parter?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I think yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
And then Star Wars obviously obviously those were those two
were two partners.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I used to be really hesitant about two partners, and
I would try really hard to condense but there's a
certain point. I believe it was yesterday where I contacted
you and I think, I think this women, so it's
gonna have to be a two parter.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Right, I think we both like there's moments that we
think it's not going to be big.
Speaker 5 (01:51):
And then we're like, oh, oh okay.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Because the women who organized I did not anticipate doing,
but it felt so sad to cut it off, right,
so we wanted to add as much as we could,
and sometimes it it means two parters.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yay, Yes, And here is a second part of a
two part series we had on women leading cults. So
highly recommend you go listen to part one first because
we do a lot of baseline what are cults? What
are all the arguments about cults? Which is really key
to this conversation. There is so much we could unpack
(02:26):
in all of this, right, all of it. So if
that's something that you listeners would like to hear, please
let us know. But just we're kind of doing I
won't say superficial, but we're not going into the depths
we could on all of these cults and all of
these women and whether or not there cults.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
We're talking more about examples rather than the psyche and
or trauma behind it, so that might be later though.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
I don't know why I got so weirdly excited, but
it's just that site aspect is interesting.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
When you always look deeper about the why, it's always
more fascinating to know.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
It is it is.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So before we get into these examples, quick trigger warning,
there will be discussion of suicide, sexual abuse, violence, death, murder,
general abuse. We're not going to go too deep into
any of that, but when you're talking about cults, it
can get pretty grisly and disturbing. And yes, as we
said in part one, there's a lot of argument going
(03:25):
on in debate around what constitutes a cult, and there
are lots of layers of sexism, racism, and anti any
religion that's not Christianity involved in these discussions. But yeah,
just to acknowledge that that's going on, and with the
women we're talking about and the organizations we're talking about,
not everyone agree these women were cult leaders, and I
think those conversations are well worth having. Some of these
(03:49):
organizations might not be considered cults at all points in history,
but with the right person, they can become cults or
at the very least run by someone who fits the
cult leader stereotype. Who yeah, we talked about that in
part one as well, but like charismatic is one of
the very key things there, and controlling and like just
demanding all this adoration and complete submission. That being said,
(04:12):
these are some of the women that frequently come up
when you're digging around the internet for women cult leaders.
And another disclaimer, the histories of these can be a
bit murkier fantastical. As we said in our serial Killers episode,
it just can get a little real difficult because even
reputable newspaper sources sometimes like to really lean into that morbid,
(04:35):
ghastly side of all of this. So it's hard to
say for sure, right right, definitely level of shock factor
for sure. And speaking of let's start this one with
a Clementine Barnabette, sometimes called the first black female serial
killer in the United States, and in nineteen eleven, a
Louisiana police department got a frantic call about a suspected incident.
(04:58):
Sure enough, when police arrived on the scene, they discovered
the bodies of a man, woman, and child with their
skulls split open. A bloody axe at the head of
the bed, a bucket of blood in the corner, bloody
footprints throughout the room. They deduced the killer must have
come through the windows since the doors were locked at
the time. A local newspaper called it quote the most
brutal murder in the history of this section. It was
(05:19):
not the only acts murder to take place in nearby
areas of Louisiana and Texas. These murders were believed to
be the work of a cult by the name of
the Church of Sacrifice that required human sacrifices for their
religious rights, rumored to be led by a voodoo priestess.
Even so, all of the initial suspects were men. One
(05:39):
source described the murders as rained with acts, and after
other similar murders took place, usually of families, the authorities
began to suspect that they were quote the work of
the same terrible monster. Sources indicate most, if not all,
of these families were black families.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
So the police eventually turned their sights on a sharecropper
on the wrong side of town named Raymond Barnabet. Both
his children, Zephyr and Clementine, testified against them, claiming they
were scared for their lives, he was abusive to his
whole family. According to records. However, more murders took place
while Raymond was in jail. Both of the children were arrested,
in part because their neighbors described them as degenerous, and
(06:19):
in part because Clementine had blood from one of the
murders on her shirt. A local newspaper reported in nineteen
eleven that when the police searched the Barnabut household, they
found a complete set of women's clothes in her room,
saturated with blood and covered with human brains. With no alibi,
Clementine went to jail. The murders did not let up.
(06:40):
Three families were murdered in January of nineteen twelve. The
dead's hands were splayed apart with wood, and messages like
this one were left on the walls. When he make
a the inquisition for blood, he forgeteth not the cry
of the humble A bit of a twist on a
Bible verse, by the way. These messages were written by
hand and signed Human five. And the press began attributing
(07:02):
these murders to the Human five gang, and they really
went all in on this voodoo aspect. Justice more and
more people were talking about Clementine's possible connection to the
mysterious Church of Sacrifice. Reverend King Harris was sought to
be the leader of this church, but upon questioning police
dismissed them as a suspect.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Lementine confessed to killing seventeen people in April of nineteen twelve.
She further explained that she wore a voodoo charm for
protection while she killed. In her words, it was gifted
to her by a voodoo priest, a man who did
not claim himself as a voodoo priest when question so
it was somebody that they followed up with and he
was like, whoa what?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
And straws were.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Drawn, according to her, between her and her accomplices to
see who would commit the murders. She went on to
say she dressed as a man to be left relatively
alone and unnoticed. On night she was planning on killing someone,
and a local paper reported that she said she killed
the kids so as not to leave them an orphan
in this world. She said that she would quote caress
the corpses, and one district attorney called her a moral
(08:00):
pervert because of what she said in her testimony against
her father. People were still confused about the veracity of
her claims. When she gave the names of her accomplices,
all that was turned up. They were all dead ends.
She said she believed that sacrifices were the way to
achieve immortality. A nineteen twelve article headline read.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
The X man is a woman. What's the exclamation point?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
So later examination found there was no charge of sacrifice,
and that perhaps it was confused with Harris's sanctified church,
especially with the swirling rumors of voodoo. And none of
this was held by the fact that during her time
in jail, Clementine constantly modified her story and ended up
confessing to thirty five.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
Murders who her.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Attorneys argued that she was insane, but this did not
prevent a judge from sansing her two lives at nineteen
years old. She tried and fell to escape early on,
but other than that didn't really cause much trouble. In fact,
one report about her imprisonment claim that a procedure returned
to her normal condition and she was released on good
behavior after a decade had passed.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
So that's all pretty murky.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
People who have delved into this belief that Clementine did
commit some of the murders, but maybe not all of them. However,
they think someone in that household was the primary murderer.
Over at True Crime Daily, James Horror wrote, she scandalized
the press, stirring up a gumbo of moral panic in
a state where civil war and slavery remained a living memory.
Everything about Clementine Barnabet represented a collision, even a perversion
(09:32):
of cultures in the eyes of white Louisiana, from her
mangled Creole French to her mangled beliefs, a tabloid baiting
blend of voodoo itself, a blend of Catholicism and West
African tribal rights and Evangelical Christianity. So I want to
include that because for this one, like her name came
up a lot, but there's just clearly to me, like
even in the language of the newspapers like degenerates, the
(09:54):
wrong side of town and this whole like voodoo thing
that the press was really pushing that there's just like
a layer of racism over the whole thing. And it
doesn't feel because this was kind of debunked right that
they found no proof of this church's sacrifice, but it's still.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
She comes up as a woman leading a cult. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
So.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
In nineteen eighty nine, in an Amazonian town in Brazil,
there were several reports of missing children. The authorities looked
into it but couldn't find any leaves, and the cases
jumped to nineteen missing children between the ages of eight
and thirteen. Five other children had been found dead castrated
with signs of torture. Officials believe that the murders and
disappearance were related to a medical guild due to precise
(10:39):
nature of castrations. These bodies were identified as homeless boys,
but the boys who had been reported missing had been
done so by their families, and depending on the source,
one or two boys managed to escape after castration and
found some officials. Whatever the case, only one ended up testifying,
and the story he told was horrific torture, rape, mutilate
(11:00):
like eyes, gouged out, and castration. He testified that other
children were stabbed and killed, their organs sold on the
black market or they ate them, but again this has
not been confirmed, and in his testimony he named a
handful of people doctor it's a police officer, wealthy businessman
and Valentina de Andrade, the leader of the religious cult.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
The cult question was called Superior Universal Alignment, a UFO
cult led by Valentina whose members believe the world was
ending and the only way to be saved was by
following the commands of their leader. She claimed she'd been
contacted by extraterrestrial beings and that they claimed the apocalypse
was nigh, but that if she passed along the message,
(11:41):
they would send a ship to collect her and other
believers to spare them. She believed that God wasn't real
and that Jesus was an alien. Perhaps the most shocking
thing she said, though, was that boys born after nineteen
eighty one, which is when she claimed to have received
her message, were evil and needed to be killed, both
because they were evil but also to serve as payment
(12:02):
to their extraterrestrial saviors. Five children were never found of
the nineteen reported missing, and four of the perpetrators were captured. However,
Valentina managed to escape the country and evaded capture for
several years. Even when authorities did locate her, she provided
an alibi for the murders and was released. Apparently she
(12:22):
fainted at this verdict. Yeah, so we have some more
examples for you, But first we have a quick break
for word from our sponsor, Eric Beck, Thank you sponsor.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
Along with Marshall Applewhite, Bonnie Lou Needles co founded the
UFO cult Heaven's Gate in the nineteen seventies, and she
believed herself to have a divine purpose. She was known
as Tea. She also went by Peep while he went
by Bo, and the two of them went by the
two went together. She was a registered nurse and raised
in Texas. She got married, had four children, but then
(13:08):
reportedly started doing seances in the early nineteen seventies. According
to some sources, she thought a monk nate brother Francis
from the nineteenth century was communicating with her and giving
her instructions. She was big into astrology and the occult,
and she visited several fortune tellers, at least one of
whom told her she was soon meet someone matching apple
(13:29):
White's description, and the stories of how they met very
from inside hospital to a theater after an accident something
like that. Allegedly, Nettles was asked to perform a reading
on apple White and agreed.
Speaker 6 (13:41):
She determined they were spiritual matches. Apple White was gay,
though he did marry and have two children. His family
was very religious and conservative, and despite his best efforts,
he did engage in a few homosexual relationships.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Nettles and apple White had a non sexual relationship. He
later wrote of it, quote, the only relationship they shared,
certainly having no physical attraction toward each other, was the
compulsion to discover what had brought them together. James Lewis,
author on a book of UFFO cults and a professor
at the Institute for the Study of American Religion, said quote,
apple White was so alienated from his homosexuality that he
(14:16):
was teaching people not to have sex. He would put
people of opposite sexes together and force them to learn
to become neutral, non sexual. Apparently apple White had himself castrated,
and that perhaps others in the group were castrated as well.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
And in nineteen seventy three, Nettles told her daughter and
son she was leaving and that was the last they
ever saw of her with apple White. She said that
God was leading them in a certain, big direction. She
said a cryptic religious message to her daughter several months later,
claiming that she and apple White were witnesses. Members were
required to dress alike and cut their hair, which I
(14:52):
think people know about. Together, they formed Heaven's gates. Nettles
said she'd communicated with aliens about the next level, and
apple White to Deca Claire she was higher rank than
him in nineteen seventy six. Her eye had to be
removed in nineteen eighty three due to cancer spreading throughout
her body, and according to her daughter, the letters changed
in the eighties and that she got a sense her
(15:13):
mother wanted out, but there wasn't a graceful way to leave,
as she said.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yes. So.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Nettles died of cancer twelve years before apple White and
thirty eight others killed themselves in a mass suicide event,
believing that it would allow them to access a UFO
following in the wake of the Hailey Bop commet, believing
that it would grant them passage to the quote yes
next Kingdom or Right before this event was carried out,
the website was updated with a message that they were
happy to leave this world and join quote tease Crew.
(15:40):
Experts believe her death was a significant touchstone in terms
of beliefs around the body being quote just a vehicle,
which is what apple White said about Nettle's making space
for the tragic event that was about to occur. Nettle's
daughter tried to contact her to get her out, but
was told her messages wouldn't be passed along unless she
told them what she planned to say. When the daughter
(16:01):
said it's personal, they hung up so sad.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
So next, we want to talk about Amy Simple macpherson,
who was a faith healer, evangelist and a founder of
Four Square Gospel Church and builder of the Angelust Temple.
She was born into a religious family in eighteen ninety,
but she soon had questions about their faith, and at
the same time she was a vocal opponent of evolution.
At eighteen, she married and got pregnant, and on their honeymoon,
(16:28):
her husband died. When she returned to the US, she
remarried and had another child, but soon grew restless and
absconded with both the children, leaving her husband for a
religious calling.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
She traveled the country in a touring car, the gospel
car that had the message Jesus is coming soon and
get ready, stopping to speak at churches along the way,
and she really knew her way around a crowd. She
would speak in tongue. She would perform faith healing demonstrations
in which she appeared to have cured people. She was
breaking attendance records to other evangelical leaders. As a woman,
(17:02):
she was a rarity in that space. At a San
Diego event, over thirty thousand people showed up to see her,
and the Marines had to be called.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
It was described as the best show in town.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And just for example, she would ride motorcycles into these events.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Sometimes they had lights and special effects.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
She was one of the first women in the US
to travel across the country in a car without a
male chaperone, and she frequently argued, who says the woman
can't preach gospel? Charlie Chaplin was a secret friend of
hers and helped her with her sermons.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Wow, I can't believe I've never heard of her before this,
because yeah, it's so rare to see traveling preachers and
halos that aren't men.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
I know.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
I shocked I hadn't heard of her either, because it
sounds like she had a pretty big pull during.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Her thirty thousand That was a huge number for sure.
So eventually she decided to retire from the crowds and travel,
settling in la where she raised fund for the Angelius
Church one point five million Wow, where she gave sermons
seven days a week. In nineteen twenty four, she launched
her own radio station called KFQG four Square Gospel, and
(18:10):
she also hosted successful radio broadcast, making her one of
the first women to receive a broadcast license in the US.
Around this time, she formed her own church for Square
and the name comes from four facets of Jesus, Transformative Salvation,
divine healing, Baptism, and the return of Christ. Mini male
leaders in the space were vocal opponents, which not surprised.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Nope, not at all.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
In nineteen thirty six, she disappeared on a swim, an
event that captured national headlines, attention, and rampant speculation about
what happened to Sister Amy, as she was called a believer,
literally drowned themselves, it was said in sorrow, But I
believe they were just trying to swim out and help
with the effort. Members through dynamite in the water, hoping
(18:56):
to surface. Her Rumors spread like wildfire, that she disappeared
to have an abortion, that she had had an affair,
that she'd gotten plastic surgery, that maybe there'd be a
ransom or foul play was involved. The police received a
ransom note demanding five hundred thousand dollars for her release,
and it was signed by the Avengers. Oh I know,
getting up to no good. Amy showed up in Mexico
(19:19):
a month later. Her identity was proven by her knowledge
of her childhood pet pigeons name which I love, and
at the location of one of her scars. Amy claimed
she'd been kidnapped by three Americans who demanded a ransom,
but she was able to escape, by her account, sawing
out of the rope restraining her and walking twenty miles.
After a reporter questioned if this was possible, Amy said,
(19:43):
many have said that a woman could not have built
Angelus Temple and do these other seemingly impossible things, But
I did.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
She sure did so.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
When she returned home, over fifty thousand cheering spectators met
her at the train station with a parade. However, her
return was not without so expion, and officials looked into
her kidnapping. She voluntarily showed up at a grain jury
and the rumors swirling, particularly around an engineer of a
radio station owned by McPherson's church, who disappeared at the
(20:11):
same time she did. However, there wasn't enough evidence to
back this claim, so the judge dropped the case against her.
McPherson wrote a book about it in nineteen twenty seven
called In the Service of the King, The Story of
My Life. She died in nineteen forty four of what
was deemed as probable accidental overdose or Over forty five
(20:32):
thousand people came to see her lying in state, and
when she died, the four Square Church was worth nine
million dollars. In these days there are over nine million members.
There are over seventeen hundred Four Square churches in the
US and over sixty six thousand meeting places worldwide. She's
been credited with bringing modern air conservatism into the era
(20:54):
of modern media. It's a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, So she's been coming up a lot.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
When we were talking about the kind of these personality
based shows that do you know the opinion shows, especially
when it comes to conservatism and how religion often plays
into that. And this one too is when I've never
heard of this church, but I know that you could
(21:20):
foreshore argue whether or not qualifies as a cult. Right,
there's nothing outright that screams to meet cult about it, right?
It does come up on several lists, But I'm wondering
if that's more about her more of a cult of personality,
like she was just so charismatic and people have really
(21:41):
really adored her and would do anything for her.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
And again, like we could go, we could.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Do deep dives of all of these and maybe there's
just something I don't know about it about this church.
But right, that was just kind of my take on
it where I was sort of surprised is kept popping
up on other lists about and cult leaders.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
I mean, and again, yeah, there's a conversation of how
she's getting this money, where she's getting this money, which
also is kind of that political turning and conversation of
that as well. But it is also unprecedented that a
woman started a church and it still exists today to
the popularity that it's saying. I will say I've not
heard of the church either before this episode, but it
(22:22):
is interesting to see how it continues to pop up.
And again, yeah, you're right, cult it seems a little
more dark than what this is presenting. But we do
also know like when it comes to followings and especially
of the hell Fibrimstone era that she grew up in
with the traveling preachers, which has now formed into different
religions in itself. It also can be seemingly cultish, yeah,
(22:46):
because of the supernatural element to it.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, and that's another which we keep saying.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
But I just know that this is such a fine
line of some people would call this a cult and
other people wouldn't. And sometimes that line for some people
can be oh, that looks so different and weird in
heavy growths compared to what I am used.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
To, Right, so it must be a cult. It makes
me nervous.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
It makes me nervous. And again, this is also based
on old religion. And when I say old religion, you
don't see the practicing of tongues the healing in general.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I've seen it. I've
seen that it still exists, but you just don't see
it as much, and especially in popularity.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, I guess maybe that's maybe that's one of the
reasons it is classified as a cult to some people.
Is that kind of whole faith healing speaking in tongues aspects,
which you know, can be a lot of religions can
have people like that who are just like really bombastic
and entertaining or in that way, and not to dismiss
(23:49):
at all, like people's beliefs. But I'm just saying like
as part of somebody who can gather that sort of
passion and excitement, and that can be almost like an
entertainment or a role that you're right, people excited about
this thing.
Speaker 6 (24:01):
Right.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
And again though if we look at what she did
compared to some religions today, there's not that much difference,
So you have to question that.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yes, now, probably after this I'll look it up and
something super dark involved, but I feel I think that
would be on the top of like.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Right information, and you're right, like, we don't see that.
It's just more of her accomplishments that we see more
so than what the religion or the practice did.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, and definitely, like you said, kind of a big
impact of like having this first radio station as a
woman like license and being in this space and then
providing a jumping off platform for conservatism and modern media today.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
And it could be also the language back then if
competing I guess church or belief system, you learn to
call it something insidious and so therefore cult maybe the
automatic name given just because you don't like it, and
it is again done by someone who's not given according
to them authority which is a woman, right, which is
a whole different conversation.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
But once again, yeah, no that I I had that
top thought too. I don't feel I have enough knowledge
of this particular event, but I do wonder if there
was a layer, if there's a woman doing this thing
that's seen as a man's face.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Cult, it's weird.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Yes, these are just yes, these are like you and
I just hypoanalyzing.
Speaker 5 (25:16):
Yes, what this is happening.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yes, I mean I think certainly there's at least a
layer of that, and most of these there's a layer
of racism. And this isn't Christianity like I see it
in the United States specifically.
Speaker 5 (25:28):
And some of these are hanas too though just.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yes, yes, I don't want to dismiss.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yes, both of those things exist in these two episodes.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Yes, absolutely, absolutely good point to make this. We do
have one more woman cult leader we want to share
with you, but first we have one more quick break
or work from a response there.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
And we're back. Thank you sponsor.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
We thought we would finish out this two part series
about women leading cults with Anne Hamilton Burne, the charismatic
leader of the Australian Doomsday cult. The Family Hamilton Burne
was a woman of many talents. She could sing and
play the harp. She was put together, as they say,
with style, blonde hair and pearls and Chanel perfume. One
(26:27):
of her ex followers said of her, in ancient times
we hear about enchantresses who could enslave people with one glance.
She had eyes that looked through your soul. After her
mother set her hair on fire, she was diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia and ended up spending twenty seven years in
a psychiatric asylum before she died. Anne spent some time
in orphanages, and her first husband died in a car
(26:49):
accident when she was twenty. She'd given birth to one daughter,
and as rumors go, had suffered many miscarriages by.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
Then, and in the nineteen sixties Hamilton Barne found the
family and claimed that she was Jesus reborn as a woman.
She was reportedly inspired by a Russian born medium by
the name of Helena Bolovotsky, who founded the Theosophical Society
in New York in eighteen seventy five. Bolovotsky introduced many
to Hinduism and Buddhism. When Hamilton Byrne took up yoga
(27:18):
in the nineteen fifties as a bomb to her grief.
Speaker 5 (27:21):
She pretty quickly.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Fell in love with the ideas of Eastern mysticism. She
started teaching it in the nineteen sixties and by all accounts,
was a pretty good teacher. She was really good at
getting a read on people's vulnerabilities. She allowed gay men
in the face of the anti homosexuality laws in plays
in Australia at the time. She also managed to recruit
a physicist and a master at Queen's College at Melbourne University,
(27:46):
doctor Rayner Johnson. He was approaching retirement and curious to
explore new quote weird areas, and interest amongst the scientific
community about spiritualism was on the rise, and he just
became completely by Hamilton Byurne, even naming her the next Messiah.
For what he declared to be purely academic purposes. He
(28:07):
experimented with LSC and took notes about it, including this quote,
Her face became divinely beautiful, with sublime authority, unquestionably the wisest,
the serenest, and most gracious and generous soul I've ever met.
He and his wife bought a home near Hamilton Burne,
and together they birth the family.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
The family lived in obscurity in Melbourne and their motto
was Unseen, Unknown, Unheard. Hamilton Byurne targeted well off professionals,
telling them that she had quote been waiting for them
and that they were special. Doctor Johnson lent a scientific
and legitimate heir to her claims. Her teachings were a
combination of Christianity, Eastern mysticism, and a sort of apocalypticism,
(28:50):
and the initiation allegedly involved all members, even children, to
indulge in a potentially deadly amount of LSD and hallucinogens
for a.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Lengthy amount of time.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
After that, she controlled practically all aspects of their lives,
and one survivor's words quote, there was only one rule.
Do absolutely everything she said. That included what to think,
what to wear, what to eat, who to marry, who
not to marry, total obedience. She gave sermons or discourses
as they were called, from a purple throne and a
lodge funded by members money. Many members of the cult
(29:23):
tried to take their own lives, either during their time
there or after, and a few did upsettingly. To keep
members in line, she'd beat them, sometimes with the stiletto shoe,
but she often left this test to the anties, who
were middle aged women afraid of their own punishment if
they didn't enact it on others. She would starve members, emotionally,
(29:43):
abuse and manipulate them. The children might also get a
daily dose of valium or mogdon to keep them from
fighting back or to just kind of keep them calm.
At age fourteen, this switched over to huge continuous doses
of LSD, and for many this was the z as,
resulting in du pressia, trauma, nightmares, social withdrawal, and personality changes.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
So after two children escaped in nineteen eighty seven, police
raided the family. Over the past few decades, Hamilton Burne
had a mass of twenty eight children. The first had
arrived in the nineteen seventies, and some of them as
gifts and some of them sham adoptions. At the time,
Australia's regulation around adoptions were lacking, and the stigma around
unmarried motherhood was.
Speaker 5 (30:26):
Pretty quite powerful.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
According to a detective that tried to bring charges against
Hamilton Burne, quote, you had babies born in a cult hospitals,
delivered by cult midwives handed over to cult social workers,
hamilton Burn bleached the hair of all of them and
adorned them in matching clothes, telling them she was their
birth mother. She also told them she was royalty and
owned castles. She kept the children separate from the main
(30:49):
compound at a wooden lodge two hours away, where they
were homeschooled. She desired to be the perfect mother, but
had no real interest in actually putting any effort into that,
and thanks to property donations from followers in Land, hamilton
Burn collected one hundred and fifty million Australian dollars and
she was arrested for minor fraud charges in.
Speaker 5 (31:10):
Nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
She and our ex husband, who one follower described as
a handsome, rich, compliant handbag, got off with only five
thousand AU and fines, absolutely no jail time, and one
of the rescue teenagers after the nineteen eighty seven raid explained,
it's hard to say how devoted we are to her,
how we hung off her every look and every thought
(31:32):
she had about us. We wanted so much for her
to love us, but I don't think she ever really did.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Julian Massange, a founder of Wiki Leaks, admitted his mother's
boyfriend had been a member of this cult. Assange called
him a sinister presence and claimed that they ran from him.
Hamilton Byurne spent over a decade in a nursing home,
where she eventually died. The Family. If you want to
know more, there is a documentary on it, we said,
(32:00):
this podcast, documentary is Gilora and almost all of these,
so the information is out there for you. Yes, there's
a documentary and book called The Family by documentary filmmaker
Rosie Jones and journalist Chris Johnston. The creators were unable
to interview her due to her dementia and lack of
ability to consent, or they weren't able to film it
or write it down, but they did get to sit
(32:21):
down with her, and they described the power of their experience.
So yeah, I just feel like there's so many themes
we could unpack here because we've really run the gamut
of like, yes, sexism and racism and homophobia, and this
idea of the mother did come up a lot, and
just so much like misogyny and.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Toxic masculinity.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Yeah, yeah, we could really come back and dig into that.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
And I'm sure each of the podcasts and the documentaries
talk about the childhood and the background of the trauma
that kind of birthed these people to be who they are,
and that loosely because you never know, not to give
any excuse, there's not an excuse, but there's always a beginning, right,
And I think that's that's an interesting way to look
(33:09):
at how these are created and again with different personalities
that can bring about these perfectly placed disasters and or
perfectly placed timeframes. I guess that's the best way to say,
because we don't know the depth of what has happened
truly outside of those who were inside of it. So
there's a lot of things the question and to look at,
(33:32):
but yeah, just to see the background of what is happening,
because again we see so much of a sensationalization of
what has happened, because we know, you know Jonestown, we
know Waco, we know the big details, but we don't
know the small details of course, the aftermath for the.
Speaker 5 (33:49):
Members what has happened.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
I know there's been a lot more documentation, documentaries, conversations
from survivors because they do want to tell their stories
and important for them to tell these stories that we
have to pay attention to that. And yet these are
not just incidents, and though we are giving off, you know,
details of what may have happened of or it's just
a small picture of what may have happened.
Speaker 5 (34:11):
Rather these were people's lives that were affected.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
And we do see the lingering effects for different people
who have been affected by what we would call it
consider a cult that still exists that's not being recognized
because of people's opinions and or maybe politics that we
again as you talked about, they have some of these
cults had political figureheads behind them.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yep, yeah, Pip, yep.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
And that's one of the things for me, this whole
this is all very complicated, right because there is a
lot of trauma, and you don't want to absolve ever
anybody of blame, but there is that, there's trauma, and
there's brainwashing. So if that's complicated, but then you would
see like for example, when you're talking about Betty Lunette's
and I just noticed like people were really into, oh,
(34:57):
she did the seances and she did she was involved
in they cult.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
There's nothing like inherently wrong with any of that, right,
And I know what they were getting at.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
They were saying, she was looking for quote heavy quote
alternative like enlightenment enlightenment, and she was interested in those things.
But I do think that things like that can be
problematic when we're having these conversations because that doesn't necessarily
mean cult. I know, we keep coming back to that,
but I just think that it's really really important.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Right, So she us a prime example of someone who
looked at alternative what would be classified as New Waged
ideas during that time. And yeah, because it's abnormal, and
because we are in a country that is so inundated
into Western Christianity and I have to specify that as
a Western Christianity, and this very idea of notion that
(35:51):
almost takes to the point that, you know, the idea
that Jesus is white, you know, that kind of level
of what Christianity what is right and wrong. So there,
for that is cult and that is super, very super
dangerous when we talk about that, because we know, again
the New Age ideas and reading poems or you lo
(36:12):
can through tarot cards does not equate cult in the story.
You know, just because you look at astrology or you
trust in astrology does not again quit cult. But there's
this whole underlying, dark, sinister idea behind it. When you
raised up in again Western Christianity ideas and beliefs, which
again is dangerous, absolutely for sure, and the same idea
(36:35):
because I think me for me growing up, which is
why I was so fascinated by Eastern religion, is because
it was told me that it is forbidden in itself, you.
Speaker 5 (36:43):
Know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (36:44):
And then learning about it, I'm like, no, this makes sense,
and I'm not a religious person, but the ideas behind it,
some of the beautiful sentiment behind understanding Eastern religion, which
has existed longer than again Western Christianity, right.
Speaker 5 (37:00):
Like in itself is a.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Whole different conversation we could dig into because yeah, that
also is fear mongering in itself. And now again the
atrocities that we talked about, they are for real. We
need to talk about what has happened, how it has
traumatized others, and why we need to talk about it.
But yeah, there's definitely the balance of we have to
remember the biases that could be placed into these reports
(37:23):
as well.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
Exactly, Yeah, because it's not.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
That we're seeing these aren't cults or that the terrible,
terrible things happened within them, because for a lot of them,
they did but I think it's just the language I
picked up on in it that I was kind of
it kind of made me a little anxious, like I
get that's true, and I get it, and this did
end up being bad, but that doesn't mean it always is.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
Yeah, oo, very complex, a lot of nuances.
Speaker 5 (37:53):
So many things.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Glad we got into it, and I hope we Yeah, we'll
definitely look at the overall ideas of women and cults
in general, just the help being a member, because we
do see a lot of times it's heavily women.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yeah, we're definitely going to return to that. And uh,
I'm both excited and nervous.
Speaker 5 (38:16):
But I don't like anything.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yes, as most episodes on here.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, in the meantime, listeners, if you would like to
contact us, you can or email Stuff Medium mom Stuff
at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on Instagram
at Stuff I've Never Told You or on Twitter at
mom Stuff Podcast. Thanks as always to our super producer Christina,
Thank you, and thanks to you for listening Stuff I've
Never Told You his production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast
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