March 7, 2022 • 48 mins
Melanie and Paula look back on their conversation at the monastery and, as new theories emerge, they try to piece together the truth about what happened at Holy Cross.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
Do you think he's gonna pick up? I don't know,
I hope. So after leaving Ukraine, we felt like there
was one last person we still had to talk to,
Father Damien. We kept texting back and forth with Petro
after our interview with him and Father went and thought
(00:33):
maybe he could get us in touch with the priest
in North Carolina. But once we asked if he could
connect us, Petro stopped applying to our messages. So not
long after we found a phone number for Father Damien,
or at least when we thought was his. Your call
has been forwarded to an automated messaging system with no answer,
(00:54):
we decided to try sending him a message, well, Father Damien,
my name is. We hoped knowing that talked to Father
Went and Petro would make him comfortable speaking with us.
We feel they would be unfair to finalize the theories
without your voice and your perspective and everything that happened. Okay,
So we just sent him the message, um, okay, oh
(01:18):
my god, and I have two blue checkmarks, so that
means that means you read it. He's reading it right now.
It says online, oh my god, I'm dying. Okay. Almost
a full day later, we got a response, thank you
for your offer, but I do not wish to participate
in your podcast. We sent a follow up, but as
(01:40):
of right now we still have not heard back. I'm
Paula Burrows and I'm Melanie Bartley, and this is sacred scandal.
He's in a difficult position. He's fairly intelligent, he can
(02:01):
somewhat manipulative. That's why I hesitate because I just didn't
see the level of detail. It just reeks power corrupts,
and I sensed that there was some corruption. I don't
know what the story is. I don't think anybody ever will.
(02:43):
When we got back from Ukraine, it felt like we
didn't get the definitive answers we were looking for. Our
conversation with Father went was strange, and at times he
felt so evasive, like when we asked if he thought
father Damien may have been abusing Mike, and his was
bonds was that he asked Mike, a teenager and the
potential victim, if his relationship with Damien was okay, but
(03:07):
Mike didn't bring up that he was being abused, or
how he asked Petro if he was the subject of
pedophile activity rather than just outright saying he never harmed anyone.
It was strange. In the end, we got answers but
not clear ones. Maybe he was doing his best to
(03:27):
both break the two decades of silence but still not
incriminate anyone, and were worried that maybe we didn't push
hard enough on those questions about sex abuse. When we
asked went about them sharing a bed, that was the
only moment of the night where I felt him getting
really upset. Yeah, when he basically said, let me ask
(03:51):
the question that you're trying to ask, and let me
ask him directly, were you ever a subject of pedophile activity?
And he says no, definitely, law his patience. Yeah, why though,
Like why why why was that so triggered? Like because
he's tired of being asked that question. You know, I'm
(04:12):
playing devil's advocate on both sides, babe, Like we have
to do that, and I think we have this entire time,
we have been more than generous. We've been so generated
totally have I'm concerned that people are gonna be mad
at us for being too nice to them. I'm terrified
that I'm going to sound like, you know, um, too agreeable. Yeah. Yeah,
(04:35):
but we've we've done that, We've definitely given the benefit
of the doubt. And did I ever expect that Father,
I was gonna say yes, no, no, no. Part of
(04:57):
what got us started on this project was feeling like
those abuse allegations were true, that there could be no
other way that Mike would have exploded in the way
that he did and murdered sister Michelle so brutally had
nothing else gone on. And we felt supported in feeling
that way. He passed a polygraph, and all the experts
and police and lawyers who we interviewed more than ten
(05:19):
years ago told us that they believed Mike was abused too.
But this year something really rocked us when we went
back and talked to some of those same investigators again.
Assistant State Attorney gil Vine, who sided with the defense
on this issue and who Father went and Petro said
made their lives help by chasing those allegations, told us
(05:41):
she now doubted Mike's claims. I will also tell you
this that I think his statements, all of them black detail.
When somebody's really a victim of a crime, they can
recount it with the detail that only they would know.
I would have been more convinced if the detail of
(06:02):
the sexual relationship was more explicit, a discussion of what
happened during the anal sex. I think that people will
actually sometimes not all the time. But if there was
no other physical evidence, if there was nothing, if there
(06:23):
was a level of detail lying on top of one another,
there's no discussion of anything graphic. That may be uncomfortable
for us to talk about. That's why I hesitate, because
I just didn't see the level of detail when I
walked out of that room. When I interviewed him with
(06:44):
the sexual batteries detectives there, I was like, there's no
level of detail, and there's like Gal, there's no level
of detail. We asked her what she meant by this,
and she said that basically, Mike described his own abuse
less clearly than victim's younger than him. She said that
he talked about sex almost like someone who had no
idea how it actually worked. If one of his biggest
(07:08):
supporters was doubting Mike, we now had no idea what
to believe. But our perspective changed again when we talked
to Melanie Dakota of the Survivor's Network of those abused
by priests. We heard from her in our episode about
the Orthodox Church in America. We told her about our
new doubts, and she gave us her own opinion of
(07:29):
Mike's allegations. I wanted to ask you, just from your
experience dealing with so many abuse survivors, what was your
um impression of k Fell and his experiences. We always
believed him. Yeah, they deposed him or whatever after he
(07:49):
had pled guilty, and he told as much as he
could remember about the abuse. I think if any of
those other boys had said, yes, this happened to me too,
I think we would have had a whole different situation.
Is it common in your experience for the people surrounding
the victim know something or they have experienced the same thing,
(08:12):
but just deny it. Yes. I mean there's a couple
of reasons why that happens. There's something called trauma bonding,
where they feel obligated to protect their abuser. And not
all survivors remember their abuse. You know, some put it
into a little if you will, bull box at the
(08:33):
back of their head. And these guys are still, um,
what is cowful? Must be? What forty? I mean? You
know the average age for a survivor to come forward
is fifty two. So you may have that these guys
just haven't come forward yet. You also have sometimes you
have people who begin to identify with their abuser. As
(08:56):
a matter of fact, I think there's a study that's
us that one third of survivors will take their secret
to their grave. They will never tell another soul what
happened to them. So it is not unusual for people
to deny that they were abused, whether they either don't
remember they can't handle it, or whether they are bonded
to their abuser, or whether they identify with their abusers.
(09:24):
We started to wonder if this was the case for
Mike too, and that sent us on a mission. Last year.
We started having more serious conversations about his abuse. We
wanted to see if he was able to talk about
what happened in more detail than he did twenty years ago.
As he got more comfortable talking about it, he gave
us some very vivid descriptions of how he claimed to
(09:45):
be raped, and in more detailed than we read in
any of the police reports. But as we talked to him,
it also sounded like he started to remember other things
for the first time, too, like the names of porn
movies that he says he was made to watch on TV.
(10:06):
There was a form. We also wondered if maybe any
of the former monastic candidates would be able to recall
anything differently as adults. We thought maybe now if they
were victims too, they might be willing to come forward.
We tracked down a few of the former monastic candidates,
(10:28):
and though we never heard back from most of them,
others said they wanted to remain private about their time
at Holy Cross. Only Elia Hertzock was willing to speak
with us, And though he said he was never abused
and never saw anything with his own eyes, he said
his adult perspective now allows him to see some of
his own experiences at the monastery differently in hindsight. He
(10:52):
told us how Mike's behavior after spending time alone with
Father Damien now felt strange. But there were other things
too well. The only weird thing that I remember about
me it was when I came there before going to school,
I had to do some medical check. But the doctor
(11:18):
I was checking everything like I was making then, and
and Fatherland stayed in that room. He said that it's
normal for a priest for him for our to stay
when I was with a doctor it was weird. I
didn't like it, but I didn't have the choice. I don't.
(11:52):
I don't know how to conclude something that is just
so yh inconclusive, all the shades of gray. Yeah, you
believe what you believe, and I believe what I believe. Yeah,
And I guess We'll let people believe what they believe,
and hopefully one day we'll get someone come on and say, hey,
(12:18):
this happened to me too, or or they're lying because
this is the evidence that Mike was lying, or or
something like that that will give us closure. But it's
been twenty years and that hasn't happened yet. So coming
(12:48):
up after a break, we get a new perspective on
why Mike may have gone after sister Michelle and not
his alleged abusers. Stay with us, Welcome back to Sacred Scandal. Yeah.
(13:20):
I just think about it, and I'm not a killer.
I'm not. No ways, it's not me what happened. I
just can't I don't even remember. One of the questions
(13:41):
that has lingered long in our minds is this, If
Mike was being abused by the priests and most of
his trauma was coming from them, then why did he
murder sister Michelle Lewis, And of course we put this
question to him loads of times and his answer is
always the same. He's consistent, Just this rage feel like different,
(14:06):
Like I feel like I'm just I just snapped that,
I just I just met I snapped, he tells us.
He always says he just lost control and had no
idea what he was doing. But we wanted to know
if that's really a legitimate reason, like a certified clinical justification.
(14:28):
So we reached out to Dr Carol Clark, a known
trauma therapist in Miami whose books I've seen around the city.
After reviewing the case with her, we got Dr Clark's thoughts.
The question that, like plagues everyone in this case is
why did he kill a sister, Michelle and not the
person who was allegedly abusing him. How common is it
(14:50):
for the abuse to take out their rage on someone else.
So I'm gonna speak strictly in generalities, and what's typical
of course, Okay, So we have the person in power
would be the priest. The priest is the one that
has taken care of the boys, taking care of the hello,
(15:13):
and so that's the one that he's depending on. For survival.
So you can't piss off the person on whom your
survival depends. You can't attack them, you can't do anything,
because then what happens, you know, once that person is
gone or that person turns against you. It does not
surprise me to hear a story where we have these
(15:38):
priests who are in control to have the power, are
doing the abuse. But then we have the victim looks
and says, who is supposed to be taking care of me?
And not who can I safely put my anger on?
And it would be you know, this woman, So that
(15:59):
would be my guess. We also reached out to the
psychologist who first worked with Mike after the murder to
get his perspective. Okay, my name's John Quintana. I have
a pH d in psychology from Brynmar College, is UM
(16:22):
their Department of Human Development. Dr Quintana was brought into
the case by Mike's defense attorney, Edith Georgie. I mean
my background is with criminal cases, I mean with the
federal buer prisons and all that, and also in the
background in sexual viximization and sexual predators or sexual offenders.
(16:45):
I guess given that background, Edith felt that it would
be good for me to evaluate him and get a
sense of what was going on. He and I spoke
not long ago, and he said he did about four
days of psychology p testing with Mike after his confession.
He also interviewed him about his personal history. Dr Quintana
(17:07):
said Mike opened up to him about his father's drinking
and how his mom mostly accepted the abuse by her husband.
We also talked about Mike's allegations of sexual abuse. It
was your sense that he was being truthful and that
he had in fact been a victim of sexual abuse
on the face. Yes, in your experience, did you feel
(17:30):
like Mihilo's the way he described the abuse that he experienced,
did it check out? I mean, it wasn't detailed enough.
Did it seemed like he would be lying to kind
of justify what what he did? Well, Initially when I
interviewed him, the details weren't very specific, and I think
(17:53):
that that's where the point that he was at and
maybe comfort level of of being able to reveal things
that may have been difficult for him. So I got
a certain level of description of abuse, and so I
can understand if I don't get a full description or
(18:18):
full details initially in an evaluation, because that may not
always be forthcoming. But he seemed uh sincere in his presentation.
Of course, as you look at the history of it
and you understand a little bit more of the case
and the detectives descriptions of him were that he could
(18:40):
look you in the eye and tell you he didn't
do it, because initially denied the allegations. He denied that
he killed just Michelle, but he did it in a
very convincing way. But in reading that cryptions of the detectives,
(19:01):
it seemed that they weren't sure even though he had
scratches and other features, because he initially was very convincing.
So he may be convincing both ways. Okay, that's a
good point. He's in a difficult position. He's fairly intelligent,
(19:22):
he can be somewhat manipulative. After talking with Mike, Dr
Quintana was unclear about his motivation to murder sister Michelle,
But in looking at more of the evidence from that night,
the psychologist had a theory. He was angry and his
(19:43):
intent was initially because he did bring implements of violence
with him. He brought a knife, he brought a rod,
metal rod, but he also brought tape, and it was
one of those factors that somehow I didn't get checked
(20:04):
off clearly for me, what was the tape for in
his imagination or his fantasy of what he was about
to do. So that was something that's always been a
little disturbing to me. It's the whole issue of the tape. Yeah.
(20:25):
I think we've asked him that a couple of times
and he can't really explain it. He always goes back
to me, I was drunk. I wasn't making any sense.
I grabbed a glove and tape and everything, and I
don't know, I guess that's how that's how he justifies it. Yes,
but it's pretty specific. It's a tape. If I was
(20:49):
going to I guess in my my approach to attack somebody,
I'm not sure would bring tape if my intent was
to just hurt them and make them feel the pain
that I felt. And he may justify it or in
his own mind, well, it's I was drunk, So you know,
(21:10):
that's how he explains it. But that's, you know, to me,
from my point of view, it's not good enough. Yeah,
I mean to me, it sounds like you hear that
all the time, like crime shows, like people are saying
I snapped. That's just to me, it seems like a
cop out and such a unsatisfying answer. And maybe he
(21:35):
means that he became enraged and lost control. Maybe that's
what he means, but he needs to specify, he needs
to understand what it is that's going on in a
more detailed way than just I snapped. It's too easy,
too easy to explain it. Often it's unsatisfying. So I
think it's more defensive on his part and maybe a
(21:58):
sign that he may not be aching for responsibility as
someone who's also worked with perpetrators of sexual abuse. I
know you didn't interview the priests, but what's your overall
impression of them? So, um, there were seemed to me
(22:20):
unethical things going on. If what's being described as sleeping
in the same bed where whether or not there was
any sexual contact, that that's unethical. I mean, that's for
whatever reason, to save money or not save money, and
that's certainly not not unethical thing to do. The fact
(22:43):
that they went from one religion or one Catholic religion
to another Catholic religion and then now no Catholic religion
where is their moral and ethical center? But they lacked supervision.
That's one of the reasons they had problems with the
(23:03):
bishops because they didn't want to be have oversight, and
they needed oversight. They need something to tell him no, no,
that that's wrong, you know. But he refused to have
anybody oversee him, and I think that was part of
his downfall. He has to take a look at the
decisions he made and how it led to where he's
(23:24):
at too. This is the biggest question of all and
for everybody. Why do you think he killed sister Michelle
and not his alleged abusers. Well, that is a big question.
I mean, so whatever I'm saying, it's all speculation. So
(23:49):
there are factors that if he was sexually molested, there
is a large proportion of males that are victimized actually
that then become offenders themselves. So that the other issues
that kind of pop up in my imagination are issues
(24:10):
that have to do with he was And I remember
him telling me that he wanted to fit in. He
wanted to be a normal kid like the other people,
the other teenagers at the school. He wanted to have relationships,
he wanted to go to parties. He wanted to probably
engage in a sexual relationship. I mean, I know that
(24:32):
he tried to get girls numbers and that kind of stuff.
So it is possible that one of the underlying motivations
that he had was to have a sexual encounter. Now,
given the fact that his father was dominating to the
(24:53):
mother and the mother acquiesced, or at least seemed to acquiesce,
according to him, to the abuse, he's getting a message
that one possibility is to dominate a female because he's
seen it happen. Whether or not that's something that played
(25:14):
in his mind, I don't know. But you have a
person who says he was sexually victimized, who then has
all these sexually as a teenager, he has all these hormones,
all these sexual needs going on, he can't relieve any
he can meet or satisfy any of the needs. And
(25:34):
then you add on top what he said that he
was being sexually molested. Um, so that certainly creates a
pressure cooker. But where does he get relief. Sister Michelle
is the female, and apparently from what I read, she
wasn't She may not have seemed attractive, but she was
(25:55):
an attractive lady. At some levels, and that may have
something that he noticed. So that's where the tape, in
my mind could come in speculation, but mind mind could
come in that it was a way to try to
immobilize her, and who knows, maybe having some kind of
(26:16):
sexual relation with her. The difference of where the violence
comes in is that sister Michelle was not his mother,
and she was apparently relentless in warding him off and
stopping him, and that every time that she fought him,
apparently he heard her. He stabbed her, he hit her
(26:40):
to try to immobilize her, but he never was able
to until she died. So that's a scenario that is
possible given some of the factors given. But who knows.
He would never admit to that. I mean, I've asked
him before and would be very hard for him in
(27:02):
his mind that would make it even harder to accept
and live with. I also feel like it's I also
late a lot between like believing him and not believing him,
because he does seem like a little manipulative at times.
(27:25):
And my partner and I have been working on this
for fifteen years and and we talked to him a lot,
and we've visited him and We're the only people who
visited him ever in prison, and so we're like, what
if he's just been lying to us this whole time?
And at first we just totally believed him. We never
(27:45):
even doubted it. And then when we started talking to
more people and having interviews like the one we're having
now and with the prosecutor and people who have very
different opinions, We're like, what what if this whole time
at least just been manipulating us into telling his story
a certain way when it's it's not true, but once
(28:06):
again and made not just manipulating but also convincing himself,
because I think that if he had to face a
different reality that would be could be pretty devastating to him,
especially without support, without therapy. In other words, I wouldn't
take it totally personally because he I think he needs
(28:30):
the story he's telling you. He needs it for himself.
I mean, that is a crazy, crazy theory. Um. I
honestly didn't even consider that theory until John Quintana said
(28:53):
it that way. To me. I was like, wait, it
makes more sense than him just snapping, And it's the
only thing that he would be embarrassed to admit that
he would take to the grave. Yeah, and just me
thinking just from like the sort of closeness that we
have of all these years with Mike, and the trust
and how much trust he's put in us to do
this project. The enormous guilt that I feel even saying
(29:17):
that theory for me, I think for you, because we've
talked about it, We've cried about it. Guilt about all
of this, guilt, doubting me, Halo guilt, believing the priest,
doubting the priest, like, you know me, seriously, if I
put out this theory out here like that he might
have wanted to rape sister Michelle, like and me thinking
(29:39):
Mike might hear this one day that I think this
might be a possibility that destroys me you know me too.
This kind of goes back to what we always say
is that we have become really good at compartmentalizing Mike,
our friend, and then Mike the killer. Yeah, two different people. Mike,
(30:02):
Mike the guy who calls us every other day, who
we joke with, who we met his parents and we
were worry about his safety with everything he needs he
writes joke, I don't know, like that guy and the
guy who we remember did what he did when we
look at the photos, and that's the only time that
(30:23):
it kind of like blends together and we like stop.
When I look at the cram scene photos, I can't
even pick up his phone calls for a few days.
I can't just know. I mean, I wish I had
a beautiful package dancer at the end of this. They're
beautifully for me. And you know, even after talking I
(30:47):
went for three hours, we still don't know. I have
to come to terms with the fact that this podcast
might rap, and we believe our listeners feeling exactly the
same way that we you have been feeling, because we're
not going to get that confirmation, right. So unless someone
comes out and says I was abused by these people
(31:10):
or I saw it happen, that we're never going to
get corroboration and we're never going to get our nice
little bow at the end of the story. Yeah, or
unless Mike says, hey, guys, like I was lying. It's
how I justified dabbing sister Rochelle. I had to justify
(31:30):
it somehow. Maybe what Mike is saying isn't true. Let's
put ourselves in that situation that Mike is totally lying
to us about the sex abuse. Right, how do you
justify a fifty something, you old man sharing a bed
with a teenage boy? Why would this older man share
a bed with a boy. And there's no way in
(31:53):
my mind that I can justify that. After a break
an old friend has a different take on Sister Michelle's murder.
We'll be right back, Welcome back to Sacred Scandal. I'm
(32:21):
Paula Barrows and I'm Melanie Bartley. Aside from the guilt
we felt over believing Mike, there's another aspect of telling
this story that's weighed on us all these years. I
also feel guilty towards Sister Michelle and like us befriending
(32:44):
this guy who did this to her. Absolutely, this woman,
this poor thing on your old woman who's just a
an innocent person who has brutally stobbed multiple times, Just
like can you imagine I imagine the fear. This is
gonna sound really stupid. But the other day I cut
(33:05):
my finger and I was bleeding and it really hurt.
And then I thought of Sister Michelle, and I was like,
can you imagine being cut like that? Stopped deeply? Like
nineties something times? You look this person in the eye,
who you know, who you've known for years, and they're
(33:25):
the ones who are killing you. Can you imagine that
horrible way to die? I just I can't. I I
feel tremendous gilled for even helping this guy out or
talk of picking up his phone calls. Sister Michelle's death
(33:46):
sometimes felt overshadowed by everything else that started to come
out of Holy Cross almost immediately after she died. Unlike
the priest from Holy Cross, her silence all these years
was not a choice. We wanted to know more about
her than what Mike told us, and also more about
what she was like before she came to Holy Cross.
(34:08):
We reached out to her family, but they didn't get
back to us, and we get why they may not
want to be involved. But Melanie and I were able
to get in touch with one of Sister Michelle's oldest friends.
My name is Beverly Fraser, and I grew up down
the street from Shelly and her family. I would have
considered her my best friend growing up, and Shelly, that's
(34:31):
what you guys would call her, Shelly. I would call
her Shelly. Yes, you call her sister Michelle. I always
knew her as Shelly. Beverly and Shelly grew up together
in Ohio. They were a year or two a part
in age, but close. Beverly says she hung around the
Lewis's house enough that growing up she felt like Shelly's
(34:51):
mom was her own. She and Shelly would sit around
and listen to baseball games together on the radio and
talked about life and religio. And Shelley was talented. She
loved ice skating. Ice skating was her winter Olympic sport,
but gymnastic was her summer Olympic sport. So we would
watch gymnastics and ice skating and we would talk and walk.
(35:14):
And she had beautiful fingers, she had long eyelashes. She
took care of herself. She was a thinker. She was
probably the most intelligent person that I knew, I have
ever known. She was the valedictorian of her class. When
Michelle got married, Beverly was in the wedding. They chose
the fabric and sold all the bright smaid's dresses together.
(35:38):
She liked silver, she liked bright colors. And there was
fat and there was purple, and I mean, you know
that all mattered. And when the marriage started to come
and done. After Michelle moved to Miami, Beverly says the
two of them talked through the divorce together. They came
from different religions, Michelle Catholic and Beverly Protestant, but both
(36:02):
shared a strong commitment to their faith. So were you
surprised when she said, Beverly, I want to become a nun.
To be honest with your note, she was very grounded.
That's where she found hope. Again. I understand I'm Protestant.
That's not something that I would necessarily choose, but there
(36:23):
is a rhythm to that life that I could understand,
Shelly desiring. After Shelley became sister, Michelle, Beverly says, the
pair saw even less of one another after joining Holy Cross.
She told us the nun only came back to Ohio
(36:43):
maybe twice in a handful of years, and when she
did return, it was Michelle's appearance that struck her the most.
I remember the thick leather belt and the heavy habit,
and um, she was wearing her glasses at the time,
and Shelley work on text. I mean from sometime just
after high school through most of her adult life that
(37:06):
I knew her. She wore contexts and do you remember
how she would describe her life? There? Was she happy?
That she sound happy to you. I think she had
found some sort of contentment, which is what you want
for your friends. I mean, you don't get to choose
(37:27):
the road that they travel, right, you walk alongside of them.
And I think she had found again I'm going to
use the word rhythm, but I think she had found
a place where she where she was. I don't think
(37:50):
it was everything she wanted it to be. It was
her path. She was serving in a manner in which
she felt she was called to serve. I do believe
that I'm gonna ask you a question because it's something
that it just repeats over and over in my head
and it doesn't really fit. But Misha says that sister
(38:11):
Michelle would call the candidates names and one time, you know,
a couple of times called him Ukrainian trash for example.
I want to know if you find that that that's
something that would be characteristic of her or not that
is totally out of character for her. I can't imagine.
I can't imagine her saying that Shell went to an
(38:31):
inner city school. She was probably for the eighties the
late seventies and early eighties. She was extremely progressive, extremely progressive.
She didn't stay in a safe space to get her education.
So for that to be said, I it just doesn't
(38:53):
sound like her to be. That's not who I knew.
So I want to know, Oh, if you have any feelings,
particularly towards Father went or anyone from Holy Cross. I
had varios dumb feelings about them. I I don't know,
and I find it very disturbing. Again, this is something
(39:14):
that was done. It just reeks. It just reeks. Power corrupts,
and I sensed that there was some corruption. I believe
that Shelley was a sacrifice and they let her be.
They allowed her, if you can imagine, they allowed her
(39:35):
to be the scapegoat for what their dreams were, and
they did nothing to protect her. When you say that
she was a scapegoat, what do you mean. I think
that hurting individual needed to hurt somebody else. He couldn't
hurt those that were hurting him, and he thought the
(39:58):
next best thing. And that's really what a scapegoat was.
A scapegoat was Biblically, what happened was a goat was
brought in and all of the sins of the people
were laid upon that goat, and that goat was sacrificed
and removed from the community and taken out so that
(40:22):
the people could be washed clean. That's what a scapegoat is.
And for me, in my humble opinion, Shelley was the
scapegoat for me, he needed to be cleansed in some way,
(40:45):
and all of the circumstances led him to her. Do you,
in your heart believe that may have been abused sexually
by priest? Of course I do. I don't know what
(41:05):
the truth is. But I'm also looking at it with
a set of eyes that says that these men have
not necessarily come out and given their side of the
story either. And I see a lot of secrecy, a
lot of I mean again, I see it as a
(41:27):
power thing. I don't it. I don't know, I don't
understand that. I find no justice in it. What if
I said that I left it at that, You know,
(41:54):
I wish I could say my life for hers, and
I still feel die over day, And of course I
wish the priest was admit what he did. I was
to say what it did to me to us in
about five years, depending on good behavior, Mehilakfel will be
(42:17):
released from prison after serving about of his sentence. From there,
the forty something year old will go into ice custody
and then we put on a plane and never allowed
to enter the US again. Most likely he'll fly to Kiev,
Ukraine's capital. After that he'll make his way about three
(42:41):
and fifty miles to his parents village and pick up
his life as he left it when he was fourteen
years old. We worry about Mike adapting to life outside
of prison. He has never really had to take care
of himself at all. He went sharing a bed with
(43:01):
his parents, to living in a monastery, to prison, and
we wonder what his expectations are once he gets back
to Ukraine. What are your fantasies like, what do you
fantasize about life after prison? Yeah? Of course, just just
(43:22):
having regular normal life, you know, just because having a
girlfriends it was just a general thing, a lot of things.
It's gonna be so damn quiet, especially my talent in
your house, in your own room, just really quiet. It's
something really Hillians because it's especially right now, you know,
(43:42):
in open day, which is just you have no privas whatsoever.
It's always loud in prison, yes, yeah, privacy and just
being on room is like man, yes, so yeah, of
course it's ably weird. Just you know, of course just
walking outside. Man, that's it's the sense I hate thinking
about it. I was alex up and right now, I've
(44:07):
been led tough for over twenty years, so I spent
more time in prison than being free. And it's true,
it's gonna be tough. Yeah, it's gonna be tough. After
Melanie and I left Ukraine a few weeks ago, we
(44:28):
thought the country felt so far from those days after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, and nothing like that place.
The investigators described. The city's felt modern. There were nice
shops and restaurants. People were out enjoying the dry winter nights.
They seemed happy. We even said we could see ourselves
(44:48):
living there. But now, in the wake of the war
in Ukraine, who knows what the future holds for Mike,
And the same goes for the priests of Holy Cross.
It seems like they were just figuring out how to
get themselves settled after the failure of their medical center,
(45:09):
but maybe the invasion made their plans uncertain. When we
started on this project, we were looking for closure. We
wanted to feel like we knew definitively what happened, But
it has me thinking about what doctor Quintana said about Mike,
that he needs his version of the story in order
to survive, and maybe that goes for everyone, the priests,
(45:33):
the students, the lawyers us at the start of this
there are so many things we never thought could have happened.
We never thought we would talk to Father, went, that
Mike would maybe return to a country at war, or
that Gail Levin would change her side of the story.
But that gives us hope that someday other stories might
(45:56):
change and we'll finally know everything that really happened at
Holy Cross. Next week, we'll be back with a bonus
(46:20):
episode of the show. We'll be answering some of the
questions you emailed us through the weeks and sharing some
moments that didn't quite make it into other episodes, so
be sure to look out for that. Sacred Scandal is
a production of Exile Content Studio and partnership with I
Heart Radios Michael Dura Podcast Network. Sacred Scandal was created
(46:44):
and produced by Melanie Bartley and me Paula Burrows, our
senior producer is Dennis funk of Written in Air. The
executive producers are Rose Red and Nando Villa. Production mixing
and sound design in by Helena de grut Our. Production
assistant is Imani Leonard. The show is fact checked by
(47:08):
Kimberly Winston. Original music and final audio mixing comes from
Patrick Hart. If you like the music from this show,
check out the episode notes for a link to listen
to it. This show was made with the help of
a lot of other people too, Julia Tera, suk Dr
Marianna Talks, Korshinska, Nancy Manno, Alex Dumas, Pierre Jr, Ariel Stevenson,
(47:33):
Corey Chaikowski, Patrie Kin, Jonez, Rachel Ward, Brian Robertson, George Drake, JR. Brett,
Ashley Bridges, Alissa Martini, Michael Haziza, Gretta Weber, Andres Bellygoi,
Javier Puga, and Travis Roy. If you'd like to reach out,
(47:53):
email us at hello at Sacred Scandal podcast dot com,
and you can follow us on Instagram. I'm at Sacred Scandal.
Thank you for listening. M
Do you think he's gonna pick up? I don't know,
I hope. So after leaving Ukraine, we felt like there
was one last person we still had to talk to,
Father Damien. We kept texting back and forth with Petro
after our interview with him and Father went and thought
(00:33):
maybe he could get us in touch with the priest
in North Carolina. But once we asked if he could
connect us, Petro stopped applying to our messages. So not
long after we found a phone number for Father Damien,
or at least when we thought was his. Your call
has been forwarded to an automated messaging system with no answer,
(00:54):
we decided to try sending him a message, well, Father Damien,
my name is. We hoped knowing that talked to Father
Went and Petro would make him comfortable speaking with us.
We feel they would be unfair to finalize the theories
without your voice and your perspective and everything that happened. Okay,
So we just sent him the message, um, okay, oh
(01:18):
my god, and I have two blue checkmarks, so that
means that means you read it. He's reading it right now.
It says online, oh my god, I'm dying. Okay. Almost
a full day later, we got a response, thank you
for your offer, but I do not wish to participate
in your podcast. We sent a follow up, but as
(01:40):
of right now we still have not heard back. I'm
Paula Burrows and I'm Melanie Bartley, and this is sacred scandal.
He's in a difficult position. He's fairly intelligent, he can
(02:01):
somewhat manipulative. That's why I hesitate because I just didn't
see the level of detail. It just reeks power corrupts,
and I sensed that there was some corruption. I don't
know what the story is. I don't think anybody ever will.
(02:43):
When we got back from Ukraine, it felt like we
didn't get the definitive answers we were looking for. Our
conversation with Father went was strange, and at times he
felt so evasive, like when we asked if he thought
father Damien may have been abusing Mike, and his was
bonds was that he asked Mike, a teenager and the
potential victim, if his relationship with Damien was okay, but
(03:07):
Mike didn't bring up that he was being abused, or
how he asked Petro if he was the subject of
pedophile activity rather than just outright saying he never harmed anyone.
It was strange. In the end, we got answers but
not clear ones. Maybe he was doing his best to
(03:27):
both break the two decades of silence but still not
incriminate anyone, and were worried that maybe we didn't push
hard enough on those questions about sex abuse. When we
asked went about them sharing a bed, that was the
only moment of the night where I felt him getting
really upset. Yeah, when he basically said, let me ask
(03:51):
the question that you're trying to ask, and let me
ask him directly, were you ever a subject of pedophile activity?
And he says no, definitely, law his patience. Yeah, why though,
Like why why why was that so triggered? Like because
he's tired of being asked that question. You know, I'm
(04:12):
playing devil's advocate on both sides, babe, Like we have
to do that, and I think we have this entire time,
we have been more than generous. We've been so generated
totally have I'm concerned that people are gonna be mad
at us for being too nice to them. I'm terrified
that I'm going to sound like, you know, um, too agreeable. Yeah. Yeah,
(04:35):
but we've we've done that, We've definitely given the benefit
of the doubt. And did I ever expect that Father,
I was gonna say yes, no, no, no. Part of
(04:57):
what got us started on this project was feeling like
those abuse allegations were true, that there could be no
other way that Mike would have exploded in the way
that he did and murdered sister Michelle so brutally had
nothing else gone on. And we felt supported in feeling
that way. He passed a polygraph, and all the experts
and police and lawyers who we interviewed more than ten
(05:19):
years ago told us that they believed Mike was abused too.
But this year something really rocked us when we went
back and talked to some of those same investigators again.
Assistant State Attorney gil Vine, who sided with the defense
on this issue and who Father went and Petro said
made their lives help by chasing those allegations, told us
(05:41):
she now doubted Mike's claims. I will also tell you
this that I think his statements, all of them black detail.
When somebody's really a victim of a crime, they can
recount it with the detail that only they would know.
I would have been more convinced if the detail of
(06:02):
the sexual relationship was more explicit, a discussion of what
happened during the anal sex. I think that people will
actually sometimes not all the time. But if there was
no other physical evidence, if there was nothing, if there
(06:23):
was a level of detail lying on top of one another,
there's no discussion of anything graphic. That may be uncomfortable
for us to talk about. That's why I hesitate, because
I just didn't see the level of detail when I
walked out of that room. When I interviewed him with
(06:44):
the sexual batteries detectives there, I was like, there's no
level of detail, and there's like Gal, there's no level
of detail. We asked her what she meant by this,
and she said that basically, Mike described his own abuse
less clearly than victim's younger than him. She said that
he talked about sex almost like someone who had no
idea how it actually worked. If one of his biggest
(07:08):
supporters was doubting Mike, we now had no idea what
to believe. But our perspective changed again when we talked
to Melanie Dakota of the Survivor's Network of those abused
by priests. We heard from her in our episode about
the Orthodox Church in America. We told her about our
new doubts, and she gave us her own opinion of
(07:29):
Mike's allegations. I wanted to ask you, just from your
experience dealing with so many abuse survivors, what was your
um impression of k Fell and his experiences. We always
believed him. Yeah, they deposed him or whatever after he
(07:49):
had pled guilty, and he told as much as he
could remember about the abuse. I think if any of
those other boys had said, yes, this happened to me too,
I think we would have had a whole different situation.
Is it common in your experience for the people surrounding
the victim know something or they have experienced the same thing,
(08:12):
but just deny it. Yes. I mean there's a couple
of reasons why that happens. There's something called trauma bonding,
where they feel obligated to protect their abuser. And not
all survivors remember their abuse. You know, some put it
into a little if you will, bull box at the
(08:33):
back of their head. And these guys are still, um,
what is cowful? Must be? What forty? I mean? You
know the average age for a survivor to come forward
is fifty two. So you may have that these guys
just haven't come forward yet. You also have sometimes you
have people who begin to identify with their abuser. As
(08:56):
a matter of fact, I think there's a study that's
us that one third of survivors will take their secret
to their grave. They will never tell another soul what
happened to them. So it is not unusual for people
to deny that they were abused, whether they either don't
remember they can't handle it, or whether they are bonded
to their abuser, or whether they identify with their abusers.
(09:24):
We started to wonder if this was the case for
Mike too, and that sent us on a mission. Last year.
We started having more serious conversations about his abuse. We
wanted to see if he was able to talk about
what happened in more detail than he did twenty years ago.
As he got more comfortable talking about it, he gave
us some very vivid descriptions of how he claimed to
(09:45):
be raped, and in more detailed than we read in
any of the police reports. But as we talked to him,
it also sounded like he started to remember other things
for the first time, too, like the names of porn
movies that he says he was made to watch on TV.
(10:06):
There was a form. We also wondered if maybe any
of the former monastic candidates would be able to recall
anything differently as adults. We thought maybe now if they
were victims too, they might be willing to come forward.
We tracked down a few of the former monastic candidates,
(10:28):
and though we never heard back from most of them,
others said they wanted to remain private about their time
at Holy Cross. Only Elia Hertzock was willing to speak
with us, And though he said he was never abused
and never saw anything with his own eyes, he said
his adult perspective now allows him to see some of
his own experiences at the monastery differently in hindsight. He
(10:52):
told us how Mike's behavior after spending time alone with
Father Damien now felt strange. But there were other things
too well. The only weird thing that I remember about
me it was when I came there before going to school,
I had to do some medical check. But the doctor
(11:18):
I was checking everything like I was making then, and
and Fatherland stayed in that room. He said that it's
normal for a priest for him for our to stay
when I was with a doctor it was weird. I
didn't like it, but I didn't have the choice. I don't.
(11:52):
I don't know how to conclude something that is just
so yh inconclusive, all the shades of gray. Yeah, you
believe what you believe, and I believe what I believe. Yeah,
And I guess We'll let people believe what they believe,
and hopefully one day we'll get someone come on and say, hey,
(12:18):
this happened to me too, or or they're lying because
this is the evidence that Mike was lying, or or
something like that that will give us closure. But it's
been twenty years and that hasn't happened yet. So coming
(12:48):
up after a break, we get a new perspective on
why Mike may have gone after sister Michelle and not
his alleged abusers. Stay with us, Welcome back to Sacred Scandal. Yeah.
(13:20):
I just think about it, and I'm not a killer.
I'm not. No ways, it's not me what happened. I
just can't I don't even remember. One of the questions
(13:41):
that has lingered long in our minds is this, If
Mike was being abused by the priests and most of
his trauma was coming from them, then why did he
murder sister Michelle Lewis, And of course we put this
question to him loads of times and his answer is
always the same. He's consistent, Just this rage feel like different,
(14:06):
Like I feel like I'm just I just snapped that,
I just I just met I snapped, he tells us.
He always says he just lost control and had no
idea what he was doing. But we wanted to know
if that's really a legitimate reason, like a certified clinical justification.
(14:28):
So we reached out to Dr Carol Clark, a known
trauma therapist in Miami whose books I've seen around the city.
After reviewing the case with her, we got Dr Clark's thoughts.
The question that, like plagues everyone in this case is
why did he kill a sister, Michelle and not the
person who was allegedly abusing him. How common is it
(14:50):
for the abuse to take out their rage on someone else.
So I'm gonna speak strictly in generalities, and what's typical
of course, Okay, So we have the person in power
would be the priest. The priest is the one that
has taken care of the boys, taking care of the hello,
(15:13):
and so that's the one that he's depending on. For survival.
So you can't piss off the person on whom your
survival depends. You can't attack them, you can't do anything,
because then what happens, you know, once that person is
gone or that person turns against you. It does not
surprise me to hear a story where we have these
(15:38):
priests who are in control to have the power, are
doing the abuse. But then we have the victim looks
and says, who is supposed to be taking care of me?
And not who can I safely put my anger on?
And it would be you know, this woman, So that
(15:59):
would be my guess. We also reached out to the
psychologist who first worked with Mike after the murder to
get his perspective. Okay, my name's John Quintana. I have
a pH d in psychology from Brynmar College, is UM
(16:22):
their Department of Human Development. Dr Quintana was brought into
the case by Mike's defense attorney, Edith Georgie. I mean
my background is with criminal cases, I mean with the
federal buer prisons and all that, and also in the
background in sexual viximization and sexual predators or sexual offenders.
(16:45):
I guess given that background, Edith felt that it would
be good for me to evaluate him and get a
sense of what was going on. He and I spoke
not long ago, and he said he did about four
days of psychology p testing with Mike after his confession.
He also interviewed him about his personal history. Dr Quintana
(17:07):
said Mike opened up to him about his father's drinking
and how his mom mostly accepted the abuse by her husband.
We also talked about Mike's allegations of sexual abuse. It
was your sense that he was being truthful and that
he had in fact been a victim of sexual abuse
on the face. Yes, in your experience, did you feel
(17:30):
like Mihilo's the way he described the abuse that he experienced,
did it check out? I mean, it wasn't detailed enough.
Did it seemed like he would be lying to kind
of justify what what he did? Well, Initially when I
interviewed him, the details weren't very specific, and I think
(17:53):
that that's where the point that he was at and
maybe comfort level of of being able to reveal things
that may have been difficult for him. So I got
a certain level of description of abuse, and so I
can understand if I don't get a full description or
(18:18):
full details initially in an evaluation, because that may not
always be forthcoming. But he seemed uh sincere in his presentation.
Of course, as you look at the history of it
and you understand a little bit more of the case
and the detectives descriptions of him were that he could
(18:40):
look you in the eye and tell you he didn't
do it, because initially denied the allegations. He denied that
he killed just Michelle, but he did it in a
very convincing way. But in reading that cryptions of the detectives,
(19:01):
it seemed that they weren't sure even though he had
scratches and other features, because he initially was very convincing.
So he may be convincing both ways. Okay, that's a
good point. He's in a difficult position. He's fairly intelligent,
(19:22):
he can be somewhat manipulative. After talking with Mike, Dr
Quintana was unclear about his motivation to murder sister Michelle,
But in looking at more of the evidence from that night,
the psychologist had a theory. He was angry and his
(19:43):
intent was initially because he did bring implements of violence
with him. He brought a knife, he brought a rod,
metal rod, but he also brought tape, and it was
one of those factors that somehow I didn't get checked
(20:04):
off clearly for me, what was the tape for in
his imagination or his fantasy of what he was about
to do. So that was something that's always been a
little disturbing to me. It's the whole issue of the tape. Yeah.
(20:25):
I think we've asked him that a couple of times
and he can't really explain it. He always goes back
to me, I was drunk. I wasn't making any sense.
I grabbed a glove and tape and everything, and I
don't know, I guess that's how that's how he justifies it. Yes,
but it's pretty specific. It's a tape. If I was
(20:49):
going to I guess in my my approach to attack somebody,
I'm not sure would bring tape if my intent was
to just hurt them and make them feel the pain
that I felt. And he may justify it or in
his own mind, well, it's I was drunk, So you know,
(21:10):
that's how he explains it. But that's, you know, to me,
from my point of view, it's not good enough. Yeah,
I mean to me, it sounds like you hear that
all the time, like crime shows, like people are saying
I snapped. That's just to me, it seems like a
cop out and such a unsatisfying answer. And maybe he
(21:35):
means that he became enraged and lost control. Maybe that's
what he means, but he needs to specify, he needs
to understand what it is that's going on in a
more detailed way than just I snapped. It's too easy,
too easy to explain it. Often it's unsatisfying. So I
think it's more defensive on his part and maybe a
(21:58):
sign that he may not be aching for responsibility as
someone who's also worked with perpetrators of sexual abuse. I
know you didn't interview the priests, but what's your overall
impression of them? So, um, there were seemed to me
(22:20):
unethical things going on. If what's being described as sleeping
in the same bed where whether or not there was
any sexual contact, that that's unethical. I mean, that's for
whatever reason, to save money or not save money, and
that's certainly not not unethical thing to do. The fact
(22:43):
that they went from one religion or one Catholic religion
to another Catholic religion and then now no Catholic religion
where is their moral and ethical center? But they lacked supervision.
That's one of the reasons they had problems with the
(23:03):
bishops because they didn't want to be have oversight, and
they needed oversight. They need something to tell him no, no,
that that's wrong, you know. But he refused to have
anybody oversee him, and I think that was part of
his downfall. He has to take a look at the
decisions he made and how it led to where he's
(23:24):
at too. This is the biggest question of all and
for everybody. Why do you think he killed sister Michelle
and not his alleged abusers. Well, that is a big question.
I mean, so whatever I'm saying, it's all speculation. So
(23:49):
there are factors that if he was sexually molested, there
is a large proportion of males that are victimized actually
that then become offenders themselves. So that the other issues
that kind of pop up in my imagination are issues
(24:10):
that have to do with he was And I remember
him telling me that he wanted to fit in. He
wanted to be a normal kid like the other people,
the other teenagers at the school. He wanted to have relationships,
he wanted to go to parties. He wanted to probably
engage in a sexual relationship. I mean, I know that
(24:32):
he tried to get girls numbers and that kind of stuff.
So it is possible that one of the underlying motivations
that he had was to have a sexual encounter. Now,
given the fact that his father was dominating to the
(24:53):
mother and the mother acquiesced, or at least seemed to acquiesce,
according to him, to the abuse, he's getting a message
that one possibility is to dominate a female because he's
seen it happen. Whether or not that's something that played
(25:14):
in his mind, I don't know. But you have a
person who says he was sexually victimized, who then has
all these sexually as a teenager, he has all these hormones,
all these sexual needs going on, he can't relieve any
he can meet or satisfy any of the needs. And
(25:34):
then you add on top what he said that he
was being sexually molested. Um, so that certainly creates a
pressure cooker. But where does he get relief. Sister Michelle
is the female, and apparently from what I read, she
wasn't She may not have seemed attractive, but she was
(25:55):
an attractive lady. At some levels, and that may have
something that he noticed. So that's where the tape, in
my mind could come in speculation, but mind mind could
come in that it was a way to try to
immobilize her, and who knows, maybe having some kind of
(26:16):
sexual relation with her. The difference of where the violence
comes in is that sister Michelle was not his mother,
and she was apparently relentless in warding him off and
stopping him, and that every time that she fought him,
apparently he heard her. He stabbed her, he hit her
(26:40):
to try to immobilize her, but he never was able
to until she died. So that's a scenario that is
possible given some of the factors given. But who knows.
He would never admit to that. I mean, I've asked
him before and would be very hard for him in
(27:02):
his mind that would make it even harder to accept
and live with. I also feel like it's I also
late a lot between like believing him and not believing him,
because he does seem like a little manipulative at times.
(27:25):
And my partner and I have been working on this
for fifteen years and and we talked to him a lot,
and we've visited him and We're the only people who
visited him ever in prison, and so we're like, what
if he's just been lying to us this whole time?
And at first we just totally believed him. We never
(27:45):
even doubted it. And then when we started talking to
more people and having interviews like the one we're having
now and with the prosecutor and people who have very
different opinions, We're like, what what if this whole time
at least just been manipulating us into telling his story
a certain way when it's it's not true, but once
(28:06):
again and made not just manipulating but also convincing himself,
because I think that if he had to face a
different reality that would be could be pretty devastating to him,
especially without support, without therapy. In other words, I wouldn't
take it totally personally because he I think he needs
(28:30):
the story he's telling you. He needs it for himself.
I mean, that is a crazy, crazy theory. Um. I
honestly didn't even consider that theory until John Quintana said
(28:53):
it that way. To me. I was like, wait, it
makes more sense than him just snapping, And it's the
only thing that he would be embarrassed to admit that
he would take to the grave. Yeah, and just me
thinking just from like the sort of closeness that we
have of all these years with Mike, and the trust
and how much trust he's put in us to do
this project. The enormous guilt that I feel even saying
(29:17):
that theory for me, I think for you, because we've
talked about it, We've cried about it. Guilt about all
of this, guilt, doubting me, Halo guilt, believing the priest,
doubting the priest, like, you know me, seriously, if I
put out this theory out here like that he might
have wanted to rape sister Michelle, like and me thinking
(29:39):
Mike might hear this one day that I think this
might be a possibility that destroys me you know me too.
This kind of goes back to what we always say
is that we have become really good at compartmentalizing Mike,
our friend, and then Mike the killer. Yeah, two different people. Mike,
(30:02):
Mike the guy who calls us every other day, who
we joke with, who we met his parents and we
were worry about his safety with everything he needs he
writes joke, I don't know, like that guy and the
guy who we remember did what he did when we
look at the photos, and that's the only time that
(30:23):
it kind of like blends together and we like stop.
When I look at the cram scene photos, I can't
even pick up his phone calls for a few days.
I can't just know. I mean, I wish I had
a beautiful package dancer at the end of this. They're
beautifully for me. And you know, even after talking I
(30:47):
went for three hours, we still don't know. I have
to come to terms with the fact that this podcast
might rap, and we believe our listeners feeling exactly the
same way that we you have been feeling, because we're
not going to get that confirmation, right. So unless someone
comes out and says I was abused by these people
(31:10):
or I saw it happen, that we're never going to
get corroboration and we're never going to get our nice
little bow at the end of the story. Yeah, or
unless Mike says, hey, guys, like I was lying. It's
how I justified dabbing sister Rochelle. I had to justify
(31:30):
it somehow. Maybe what Mike is saying isn't true. Let's
put ourselves in that situation that Mike is totally lying
to us about the sex abuse. Right, how do you
justify a fifty something, you old man sharing a bed
with a teenage boy? Why would this older man share
a bed with a boy. And there's no way in
(31:53):
my mind that I can justify that. After a break
an old friend has a different take on Sister Michelle's murder.
We'll be right back, Welcome back to Sacred Scandal. I'm
(32:21):
Paula Barrows and I'm Melanie Bartley. Aside from the guilt
we felt over believing Mike, there's another aspect of telling
this story that's weighed on us all these years. I
also feel guilty towards Sister Michelle and like us befriending
(32:44):
this guy who did this to her. Absolutely, this woman,
this poor thing on your old woman who's just a
an innocent person who has brutally stobbed multiple times, Just
like can you imagine I imagine the fear. This is
gonna sound really stupid. But the other day I cut
(33:05):
my finger and I was bleeding and it really hurt.
And then I thought of Sister Michelle, and I was like,
can you imagine being cut like that? Stopped deeply? Like
nineties something times? You look this person in the eye,
who you know, who you've known for years, and they're
(33:25):
the ones who are killing you. Can you imagine that
horrible way to die? I just I can't. I I
feel tremendous gilled for even helping this guy out or
talk of picking up his phone calls. Sister Michelle's death
(33:46):
sometimes felt overshadowed by everything else that started to come
out of Holy Cross almost immediately after she died. Unlike
the priest from Holy Cross, her silence all these years
was not a choice. We wanted to know more about
her than what Mike told us, and also more about
what she was like before she came to Holy Cross.
(34:08):
We reached out to her family, but they didn't get
back to us, and we get why they may not
want to be involved. But Melanie and I were able
to get in touch with one of Sister Michelle's oldest friends.
My name is Beverly Fraser, and I grew up down
the street from Shelly and her family. I would have
considered her my best friend growing up, and Shelly, that's
(34:31):
what you guys would call her, Shelly. I would call
her Shelly. Yes, you call her sister Michelle. I always
knew her as Shelly. Beverly and Shelly grew up together
in Ohio. They were a year or two a part
in age, but close. Beverly says she hung around the
Lewis's house enough that growing up she felt like Shelly's
(34:51):
mom was her own. She and Shelly would sit around
and listen to baseball games together on the radio and
talked about life and religio. And Shelley was talented. She
loved ice skating. Ice skating was her winter Olympic sport,
but gymnastic was her summer Olympic sport. So we would
watch gymnastics and ice skating and we would talk and walk.
(35:14):
And she had beautiful fingers, she had long eyelashes. She
took care of herself. She was a thinker. She was
probably the most intelligent person that I knew, I have
ever known. She was the valedictorian of her class. When
Michelle got married, Beverly was in the wedding. They chose
the fabric and sold all the bright smaid's dresses together.
(35:38):
She liked silver, she liked bright colors. And there was
fat and there was purple, and I mean, you know
that all mattered. And when the marriage started to come
and done. After Michelle moved to Miami, Beverly says the
two of them talked through the divorce together. They came
from different religions, Michelle Catholic and Beverly Protestant, but both
(36:02):
shared a strong commitment to their faith. So were you
surprised when she said, Beverly, I want to become a nun.
To be honest with your note, she was very grounded.
That's where she found hope. Again. I understand I'm Protestant.
That's not something that I would necessarily choose, but there
(36:23):
is a rhythm to that life that I could understand,
Shelly desiring. After Shelley became sister, Michelle, Beverly says, the
pair saw even less of one another after joining Holy Cross.
She told us the nun only came back to Ohio
(36:43):
maybe twice in a handful of years, and when she
did return, it was Michelle's appearance that struck her the most.
I remember the thick leather belt and the heavy habit,
and um, she was wearing her glasses at the time,
and Shelley work on text. I mean from sometime just
after high school through most of her adult life that
(37:06):
I knew her. She wore contexts and do you remember
how she would describe her life? There? Was she happy?
That she sound happy to you. I think she had
found some sort of contentment, which is what you want
for your friends. I mean, you don't get to choose
(37:27):
the road that they travel, right, you walk alongside of them.
And I think she had found again I'm going to
use the word rhythm, but I think she had found
a place where she where she was. I don't think
(37:50):
it was everything she wanted it to be. It was
her path. She was serving in a manner in which
she felt she was called to serve. I do believe
that I'm gonna ask you a question because it's something
that it just repeats over and over in my head
and it doesn't really fit. But Misha says that sister
(38:11):
Michelle would call the candidates names and one time, you know,
a couple of times called him Ukrainian trash for example.
I want to know if you find that that that's
something that would be characteristic of her or not that
is totally out of character for her. I can't imagine.
I can't imagine her saying that Shell went to an
(38:31):
inner city school. She was probably for the eighties the
late seventies and early eighties. She was extremely progressive, extremely progressive.
She didn't stay in a safe space to get her education.
So for that to be said, I it just doesn't
(38:53):
sound like her to be. That's not who I knew.
So I want to know, Oh, if you have any feelings,
particularly towards Father went or anyone from Holy Cross. I
had varios dumb feelings about them. I I don't know,
and I find it very disturbing. Again, this is something
(39:14):
that was done. It just reeks. It just reeks. Power corrupts,
and I sensed that there was some corruption. I believe
that Shelley was a sacrifice and they let her be.
They allowed her, if you can imagine, they allowed her
(39:35):
to be the scapegoat for what their dreams were, and
they did nothing to protect her. When you say that
she was a scapegoat, what do you mean. I think
that hurting individual needed to hurt somebody else. He couldn't
hurt those that were hurting him, and he thought the
(39:58):
next best thing. And that's really what a scapegoat was.
A scapegoat was Biblically, what happened was a goat was
brought in and all of the sins of the people
were laid upon that goat, and that goat was sacrificed
and removed from the community and taken out so that
(40:22):
the people could be washed clean. That's what a scapegoat is.
And for me, in my humble opinion, Shelley was the
scapegoat for me, he needed to be cleansed in some way,
(40:45):
and all of the circumstances led him to her. Do you,
in your heart believe that may have been abused sexually
by priest? Of course I do. I don't know what
(41:05):
the truth is. But I'm also looking at it with
a set of eyes that says that these men have
not necessarily come out and given their side of the
story either. And I see a lot of secrecy, a
lot of I mean again, I see it as a
(41:27):
power thing. I don't it. I don't know, I don't
understand that. I find no justice in it. What if
I said that I left it at that, You know,
(41:54):
I wish I could say my life for hers, and
I still feel die over day, And of course I
wish the priest was admit what he did. I was
to say what it did to me to us in
about five years, depending on good behavior, Mehilakfel will be
(42:17):
released from prison after serving about of his sentence. From there,
the forty something year old will go into ice custody
and then we put on a plane and never allowed
to enter the US again. Most likely he'll fly to Kiev,
Ukraine's capital. After that he'll make his way about three
(42:41):
and fifty miles to his parents village and pick up
his life as he left it when he was fourteen
years old. We worry about Mike adapting to life outside
of prison. He has never really had to take care
of himself at all. He went sharing a bed with
(43:01):
his parents, to living in a monastery, to prison, and
we wonder what his expectations are once he gets back
to Ukraine. What are your fantasies like, what do you
fantasize about life after prison? Yeah? Of course, just just
(43:22):
having regular normal life, you know, just because having a
girlfriends it was just a general thing, a lot of things.
It's gonna be so damn quiet, especially my talent in
your house, in your own room, just really quiet. It's
something really Hillians because it's especially right now, you know,
(43:42):
in open day, which is just you have no privas whatsoever.
It's always loud in prison, yes, yeah, privacy and just
being on room is like man, yes, so yeah, of
course it's ably weird. Just you know, of course just
walking outside. Man, that's it's the sense I hate thinking
about it. I was alex up and right now, I've
(44:07):
been led tough for over twenty years, so I spent
more time in prison than being free. And it's true,
it's gonna be tough. Yeah, it's gonna be tough. After
Melanie and I left Ukraine a few weeks ago, we
(44:28):
thought the country felt so far from those days after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, and nothing like that place.
The investigators described. The city's felt modern. There were nice
shops and restaurants. People were out enjoying the dry winter nights.
They seemed happy. We even said we could see ourselves
(44:48):
living there. But now, in the wake of the war
in Ukraine, who knows what the future holds for Mike,
And the same goes for the priests of Holy Cross.
It seems like they were just figuring out how to
get themselves settled after the failure of their medical center,
(45:09):
but maybe the invasion made their plans uncertain. When we
started on this project, we were looking for closure. We
wanted to feel like we knew definitively what happened, But
it has me thinking about what doctor Quintana said about Mike,
that he needs his version of the story in order
to survive, and maybe that goes for everyone, the priests,
(45:33):
the students, the lawyers us at the start of this
there are so many things we never thought could have happened.
We never thought we would talk to Father, went, that
Mike would maybe return to a country at war, or
that Gail Levin would change her side of the story.
But that gives us hope that someday other stories might
(45:56):
change and we'll finally know everything that really happened at
Holy Cross. Next week, we'll be back with a bonus
(46:20):
episode of the show. We'll be answering some of the
questions you emailed us through the weeks and sharing some
moments that didn't quite make it into other episodes, so
be sure to look out for that. Sacred Scandal is
a production of Exile Content Studio and partnership with I
Heart Radios Michael Dura Podcast Network. Sacred Scandal was created
(46:44):
and produced by Melanie Bartley and me Paula Burrows, our
senior producer is Dennis funk of Written in Air. The
executive producers are Rose Red and Nando Villa. Production mixing
and sound design in by Helena de grut Our. Production
assistant is Imani Leonard. The show is fact checked by
(47:08):
Kimberly Winston. Original music and final audio mixing comes from
Patrick Hart. If you like the music from this show,
check out the episode notes for a link to listen
to it. This show was made with the help of
a lot of other people too, Julia Tera, suk Dr
Marianna Talks, Korshinska, Nancy Manno, Alex Dumas, Pierre Jr, Ariel Stevenson,
(47:33):
Corey Chaikowski, Patrie Kin, Jonez, Rachel Ward, Brian Robertson, George Drake, JR. Brett,
Ashley Bridges, Alissa Martini, Michael Haziza, Gretta Weber, Andres Bellygoi,
Javier Puga, and Travis Roy. If you'd like to reach out,
(47:53):
email us at hello at Sacred Scandal podcast dot com,
and you can follow us on Instagram. I'm at Sacred Scandal.
Thank you for listening. M
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