September 29, 2020 • 32 mins
Serial killers are insane, prone to exaggeration and delusion, and often inveterate liars. Amid some of their wilder claims, several notable serial killers, such as David Berkowitz and Henry Lee Lucas, have stated that they were killing on the orders of a cult. Is there any way it could be true? Join Ben and Matt as they dive into the twisted stories of the Hand of Death, Four Pi and other alleged serial killer cults.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the show everyone. This is a classic
episode that blew us away honestly when we when we
first started working on it. Serial killers they are an
object of discussed and rightly so, but there are also
an object of fascination. In the Western world. Serial killers
(00:23):
are the very definition of an unreliable narrator. They're insane,
they're prone to exaggeration and delusion, and obviously they are
inveterate liars. If you look at any case of almost
any serial killer, you will see many, many claims that
(00:43):
simply do not bear up under scrutiny. But then you
will also see some things that sound so outrageous they
have to be works of fiction. And then later, maybe months, years,
in some cases decades later, we learned that a few
of those claims were true. Today's classic episode dives into
(01:08):
a controversial and disturbing topic, the idea of serial killers
working in concert, more than one serial murderer working together.
But it goes further than that. We also examine the
claims of people like David Berkowitz and Henry Lee Lucas,
(01:31):
who told law enforcement multiple times that they were not
committing these crimes on their own, that they were not
lone creditors and criminals. Instead, they and several other serial
murderers have sworn that they were part of something else,
(01:52):
large organization, a shadowy institution, a serial killer cult. What
are we talking about? We'll find out in this episode
from UFOs two Ghosts and Government cover Ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
(02:17):
welcome back. We'll welcome for the first time to stuff
they don't want you to know. I'm bend and I'm
at and today we're going to start the podcast with
a a little bit of a of a dark thing,
a little bit of a weird thing. All right, I
like it, Let's do it. Okay. So this is a
(02:38):
question that I want to throw out to you and
then we'll answer it at the end of the episode.
Sound cool, Yeah, alright, I'm excited. Okay. How many serial
killers do you think are active right now? By which
I mean uncaught, maybe there in the hibernation phase after
they've done them, of order of some sort. Um, how
(03:01):
many do you think there are? I would estimate worldwide. Um,
you know what, let's keep it in the US, just
in the US twenty Okay, and that's you know that
numbers sounds scary at first, but there three hundreds something
million people here, and of those twenty there are twenty.
(03:25):
Then a lot of them won't be active for a
while right at the turns there. Yeah, I'll be like
the B T K killer Dennis Radar, who um was
out of it was not murdering people for what a
decade more um, and then finally got caught when he
came back, which is a story for different day. So
(03:49):
as we begin met, I have to ask, um, what
is a serial killer? Most basic level, UM, it's someone
who kills for a reason was for they feel, Um,
they feel that they need to kill for some reason
or another. They're compelled to do so. It's a compulsion. Um.
(04:12):
There are various number of reasons. Because they get sexual
pleasure out of doing so. Because they feel that they
are called to to kill a certain type of person
for pseudo religious reason maybe yeah, that happens quite often, UM.
Or because they feel like they're gaining something from it,
(04:35):
that they're gaining some kind of power by taking the
life of somebody else. And there there are several other reasons. There.
There's A. We have a great article on how stuff works.
If you want to read that how serial killers work.
It goes over some of that basic level serial killer stuff. Yeah,
that's a that's a Actually, that's a great primer for
serial killers. No. One. Thing that we should also mention
(04:56):
is that serial killer is sort of an umbrella term
in a lot of ways. For instance, the ice man
of famous mob Hitman killed quite a few people the
monetary gain because it was kind of his job or
his career path. And then on the other side, we
have people, um who have received heavy physiological trauma early
(05:21):
in their life and they don't process emotions the same
way that a person with all the cylinders firing does.
And this is not to say that neurological damage automatically
makes somebody a monstrous human being, um, but it can
impair what we would consider to be the essential functioning
(05:45):
of of of a human Oh yeah, and one last caveat.
The people were speaking about are not spree killers, and
they're also not um like mass murderers generally, people who
would just go in and kill a whole bunch of
people at one time and then either get caught killingmselves
or be done with it. These are people who kill
(06:07):
generally and then they will it's very it's horrible to say,
but not kill for a period, then kill again, and
maybe they will also and they'll also typically uh cover
up their crime if possible. Just spree killer wouldn't do exactly.
So here is where we get to a disturbing and
(06:29):
fascinating idea that a long time ago. Now you and
I did an episode asking if serial killers are controlled
by a cult. This is one of the darker conspiracy
theories we've run into, and it's one that fascinates us both.
I think, oh yeah, well, because you have the people
(06:51):
the serial killers talking about certain groups like the four
Pie movement was mentioned. The hand of death. Again, this
is from their mouths. These uh, these organizations were mentioned, right, yeah,
and let's do a little bit of background tiers. So
let's start with a hand of death. So Henry Lee,
(07:13):
Lucas oddust tool, Um, they were something that rarely happens
in the acknowledged world of serial killers. They were a team,
they worked in pairs, and um, they were lovers for
a time. They also claimed to have killed. Eventually, they
claimed to have killed hundreds of people, especially Henry Lee Lucas,
(07:35):
and they said they did this at the orders of
an organization called the Hand of Death, that they were
trained to murder people um as part of a Satanic
ritual or some sort of dark magic thing. And they
claimed furthermore that the Hand of Death was not just
(07:56):
based in this training camp area. They claimed that it
was a now national, perhaps even worldwide organization that spanned
the height than depth of human society, all the way
down to low lifes like them, and all the way
up to the financial socio political elites of the US
(08:18):
and the world. Um so crazy man. Even David Burke
Awitz uh he he said that he had assistance that
were from the Four Pie cult Um. He claimed to
have insider knowledge of a murder that still is unsolved. Um,
it's the artist Perry Stanford Memorial Church murder of nineteen
seventy four. You can type that into a search bar
(08:41):
and you will find information about it. Yeah, and people
arguing both for and against Burke awits his knowledge of this.
Yeah absolutely, And um, now the Four Pie churches is
pretty interesting. We talked about those in the video. Can
you give us like a high level I can? I
might go down a bit of a rabbit hole here.
Just tell me when you're ready for me to stop, Okay, Okay.
(09:04):
So the four Pie movement was allegedly linked to this
thing called the Process Church of the Final judgment Um,
which was kind of a it was a cultish movement
um back in the nineteen sixties. And man, it's it's
pretty crazy, Okay. So it was it started off as
(09:26):
an offshoot from the Church of Scientology, the Process Church was,
and they they it's kind of weird. Man. I don't
want to get too deep into what they believe or anything,
but it kind of it has a link that I
think you'll be interested in. So they believe that their
(09:47):
personality traits in each one of us, uh, and they
marked they called called them there four of them Jehovah, Lucifer, Satan,
and Christ and and they essentially worship all four. And
they believe that you kind of have to worship each
one to really attain enlightenment. Well, what's a difference than
(10:07):
if I could ask between Satan and Lucifer. Lucifer is
more of the uh hedonistic kind of a person um
self aggrandizing, look for knowledge, that kind of thing, some
more Promethean kind of a light bringer, yeah, lucifer Um,
and then Satan is just more uh aggressive, kind of
(10:32):
an kind of yeah, but then there's some of that
in Jehovah as well. It's really interesting, it's passing, and
I recommend anyone who wants to learn more about this. Uh.
There are a couple of things you can do. The
first thing would be to read The Process by Gary
Lakshman L. A. C. H M. A n Um, which
is just a quick article from the forty in Times,
(10:52):
but it's really fascinating. Read um. And there's also there
are a couple of books that you can read. But
here's here's the thing. What's the link. The link to
me is the four pie also known as four P.
It's been mentioned as the four P movement. UM. So
if you look at the symbol that was used for
this group, the Process Church, it looks somewhat like a swastika,
(11:14):
kind of a little bit like a swastika, but it's
really four ps that are linked at the circular part
of the P, but it's in a square, but it's
four pas right in the Process Church. And I found
that really interesting, just as one of the you know,
the conspiracy theory kind of connection that really doesn't mean anything,
(11:36):
but it still makes you go just enough to be disturbing,
and we'll come back to those folks. We also have
side note for this met there's a very interesting story
here in the cult angle of the Man's murders. Now,
Manson already was leading a cult, and the question is
was this cult involved with some other larger network. This
(12:00):
is just a story that I wanted to get out
there because not a lot of people knew it. During
the period leading up to Helter Skelter, when Manson and
his group were on a darker, precipitous decline from their
otherwise utopian philosophy or or whatever thing mayd going on,
they went out to the desert right and uh, their
(12:23):
ideas got crazier and crazier. Of course, the ultimate stated
aim for the murders that the Manson family ultimately committed
where that they were trying to trigger a global race
war um that would be between black people and white people,
and the whole time the Manson family would hide out
(12:45):
in some magic cave where they would have all the
supplies they needed, and then after the black part of
the world's population killed all of the white people Manson,
who was cartoonishly racist right, thought that his family would
climb out of this magic cave and take over because,
(13:07):
of course, he assumed black people are incapable of making
of of making authoritative decisions, which just gives me, just
gives you, like a peek into how ugly this guy's
mind is. Right, Yeah, and just insane. It's so insane.
It is so insane. I don't know how you can
(13:27):
believe it. I guess it helps if you are yourself
a very racist person. But he um. But the reason
I bring up all this crazy stuff is at the
same time that this was happening, there was a minor
named Paul Crockett who lived nearby. And Paul Crockett is
a very mysterious character in the Helter Skelter story. He was,
(13:47):
remember this older retired miner, but he had knowledge somehow
of scientology and other similar practices. Now, when I say cultish,
you guys know what I'm talking about. I know that
people might say that we're saying something bad about scientology. No,
we're saying he had knowledge of this, and he had
(14:10):
knowledge of other things that helped him um rescue some
of the people in Charles Manson's family, and they had
these amazing psychological battles with each other where Manson was
trying to get in his head and Paul Crockett was.
It was very it was very Yoda uh, Emperor Palpatine
(14:31):
kind of kind of the forces of light and evil there.
And when when we talk about this, when we talked
about the manipulation uh, that Manson had, there's been a
lot of conspiratorial thoughts um or conspiratorial arguments that Manson
was somehow getting orders from somewhere else, not just influenced
(14:52):
by the dianetics and stuff he studied in prison, not
just influenced by his contact with counterculture cults in California,
which was a strangely difficult sentence to say, but that
he was also um working at the behest of this.
Now here we have these ideas, and each of these three,
(15:16):
these three examples have some sort a different level of credence.
So for me, UM, the most plausible one is David
Berkowitz Um, because another guy named Stanley Baker was caught
committee murders. He said he was recruited by four pie
(15:38):
in University of Wisconsin. And David burk Awitz, you know,
originally he copped to all the murders. He didn't change
his story until the nineties, but he was already in
jail forever. No way he was getting out. Um. Didn't
someone also attempt to murder him? Yes? And he changed
his story because of that. Yes, someone also attempted to
(16:00):
murder him imprison Uh. Some of the investigators in the
Berkowitz case think that there's credence to the idea that
his people who lived nearby, the car brothers C. A. R. R.
Had a role in this um and they both died
in during parts of the investigation. Um. So I would
(16:22):
say that as the most credents, and then the Manson stuff.
It's it's difficult to tell because it's a question of
how much weight are we putting on people hanging out
together in California? You know what I mean? Just because
you and I go to a party with it happened
to be in the same room with someone, doesn't mean
that we're planning an international Satanic panic. Yeah. And just
(16:46):
because a couple of members of the Processed Church went
and visited Manson one time doesn't necessarily mean anything, right, Yeah,
Just like just because the process Church was an offshoot
of people made by people who met via scientology. Doesn't
mean that it's in any way condoned by or related
(17:07):
to the actual church or No, No, not at all.
And gosh, I hope nobody got that from what I
was saying. No, I don't think, Okay, I don't think.
Just just to clarify, the processed Church used the idea
of using the E meter, and they just kind of
changed that around a little bit into their own thing
and used it to to measure emotion rather than uh
(17:33):
whatever it is that E meter, which is uh, well,
I just have to say that this is also in
the Church of Scientology. It's a hugely bad heretical thing
to do, to to mess with in any way these
ideas or to have your own ideas inserted in there. Um.
(17:53):
I think one of the terms for it is squirreling,
and that makes you an sp or suppressive person, which
is very bad. Yeah, and now you don't want to
be that. No, it's anathema or shutting kind of. Uh So, anyway,
we're we're talking about all these different organizations, the and
these different stories. The least plausible story is, uh the
(18:15):
hand of death story with Henry Lee Lucas and oddest tool.
Now I think it's the least plausible because they're not
because there's not a conspiracy. I think this actually does
have a genuine conspiracy. But you know what I'm talking about.
You know why I don't think that Henry Lee Lucas
really killed over three people. Well, yeah, one of the
(18:39):
biggest things you look at with serial killers is their
level of intelligence in order to get away with a
huge number of murders like that. And let's face it,
if you look at Henry Lucas an honest tool, Um,
they're not the sharpest knives in the kitchen. Yeah, they're
(19:00):
not the brightest bulbs in the pack, right, Yeah, the
um for a number of reasons, especially in the case
of Lucas, who suffered some fairly horrific injuries in his childhood. Um,
these are not men's A level criminals. They're not as
intelligent as say Ted Bundy, for instance, So their claims
(19:25):
um don't really have the best credibility at all. Let's
even just not considering the fact the fact that serial
killers are prone to wild exaggeration because they are crazy. Um,
there's or you know, if you're a serial killer, you're
listening to this right now. You have a dysfunction. You
(19:48):
don't have superpowers, you really don't. But these, uh, some
of these problems can be exploited by the real conspiracy,
which I submit to you, was that law enforcement saw
in Henry Lee Lucas and artist Tool a way to
close a bunch of unsolved, unsolved, unresolved cases. And you
(20:11):
can see this because the crimes that they're agreeing to
committing at times were physically impossible for them to commit.
Now they would say that maybe with somebody else in
the cult, right in the hand of death, if you
push them towards that. But Lucas also said that he
was confessing to things because he would get better treatment
(20:32):
in the prison system, which is just way more plausible
to me. So well, I can see that that That's
one of the biggest things you have to do as
a law enforcement agency is to close cases. And you know,
sometimes if there's a scary thing, you have to you
have to find a way to make it stop. Even
(20:54):
if it doesn't actually stop the killings, it's gonna it's
gonna quell the fears. You're thinking of McNulty and the wire.
That's exactly what I'm thinking of. Yeah, uh so, the
the idea here is is frightening in its own way,
that there could be people who were waiting to hear
(21:16):
what happened to their missing parents, they're missing child, the
missing friends, and to be told a lie that there
was this guy who couldn't possibly done the murder, but
he says he's done it. And false confessions are distressing,
but it also really really throws a lot of the
(21:36):
credibility of this cult story to the wayside. Now we
do know that there are people who really have been
parts of cults. Uh This guy named Jeffrey Lundgren part
of a heretical offshoot of the Church of Latter day
Saints or the Mormon Church. Um. He killed people, killed
a family of five. Guy named Aldolfo constanzo Um was
(22:02):
a drug dealer and worked with Cartel's and practiced black magic,
where we would have a cauldron of people's bodies, they
would eat from it, they would use it the magical rituals.
It didn't prevent him from being caught at all. It's
almost as if that didn't work. I'm not going to
(22:24):
go ahead and say that what he was doing made
him a charlatan, but it certainly didn't keep him alive.
Fair point, fair point, fair point. But so with with
those cults. These were um like the Manson cult. They
were tight knit groups of people who had been psychologically
exploited right and had their egos slowly erased by a
(22:47):
charismatic leader of some of some sort, and then had
that enforced by intimidation and fear. Um. This is a
regrettably easy thing to do. Now been we've talked about
a lot of the past serial killers that we know about, um,
about what makes them a serial killer and about what
(23:10):
um strange circumstances they found themselves in. But here's where
it gets crazy. There are serial killers out there right now,
probably with all I mean. I say probably because I
can't prove it. But they're out there right now, sitting somewhere,
maybe in a van, maybe in their shock up on
(23:33):
the mountain, maybe in their mansion, maybe in the church,
maybe in a church. They're just hanging out plotting. Maybe
they're not plotting. Maybe today they're just having a sandwich
and reading the newspaper. Um, you know, maybe they're hugging
their children right now. But they're there, out there, right now. Yeah,
(23:55):
it is true. Uh, no one knows to answer our
original question, No one has any idea how many active
serial killers could exist. When I was UM, when I
was looking into some of this stuff earlier, it hit
me and I always remember this thought stayed with me,
(24:15):
which is, um, the serial killers that are caught, right,
are often caught because there they were in a decline,
a psychological decline of some sort. Right, So what if
we're just getting the dregs of the serial killer population.
What if we're just finding the people who were not
(24:38):
able to sustain their monstrous appetite or to maintain they're
terrifying addiction to death, or they just weren't that good
in the first place at being at playing that creepy role. Right, Yeah, exactly,
because there are for every um. For every person who
gets caught UM because they have done things that clearly
(25:05):
implicate them in a crime, there are other people who
are probably getting away with something right now. Now, not
very many, I don't. I don't think that it's a
common thing, but there I'm sure that a simple search
will show us cases of You know what, one one
type of serial killer that gets around a lot is
(25:27):
the medical practitioner. Every once in a while kills a patient. Yea,
not every day, not every year, but every Hey yeah,
maybe when you're in the hospital. But but we don't
want to be alarmist. This is very small thing. The
question is is there any sand to this conspiracy theory
(25:53):
that serial killers could be part of a cult. Well,
let's talk about the thing that you left us with
on and on our video that we made about this. Okay,
this conspiracy theory relies heavily how did you put it?
Relies heavily on the the information or the statements of
people who are insane. Oh. Yeah, that that's the little
(26:16):
caveat there, right. Yeah. That The main weakness of this
conspiracy theory is that relies heavily on the statements of
serial killers who are again nuts bonkers. Yeah. I mean,
you watch any interview with Charles Manson, any of them.
I don't care which one. Just watch it, check it out.
(26:37):
And people might say that he's a different case because
it's not because he didn't physically commit you know, the
Tate la Banca murders. But it's clear. But it's not
a healthy thing to want to do, to kill multiple
people for no reason. That is a nice way to
put it, and and um, I guess, I guess one
(26:57):
thing that we do need to talk about is that
a lot of these these cult theories originated during a
moral panic in the United States was called the Satanic Panic.
And the Satanic Panic was this idea that there were
numerous cases of child abductions, rapes, and murders um at
(27:18):
the behest of a secret Satanic network that ran the
the world as we know it went all the way
up the government's all over the world. And that gave
us one fascinating fact about the only pardon it was
ever received when George Bush was governor of Texas, which
(27:39):
we just have to mention, people will get mad if
we don't he he pardoned, Well, it was it was
George W. Bush as then governor. And then wasn't it
also Jeb Bush who also made Florida in Florida, who
made a bit of a strange pardon and who was
that foreben oddest tool was pardoned in Florida? And um,
(28:04):
George W. Bush pardoned Henry Lee Lucas in Texas. This
was the I believe, the only pardon on the execution board.
Or didn't they just they stayed their execution or what it?
What was it exactly then? But I mean both men
died in prison. Yeah, yeah, but they weren't executed because
because of the bushes um. Now, you know, we don't
(28:26):
know the story behind that. But that's one of the
facts that people will always point out to us when
we say, well, no, they probably weren't part of a cult.
They're probably making it up. To be honest, Matt, you
and I do not know the story about those uh
stays of execution. We don't know what I've been seen.
I haven't seen any literature on exactly why either of
(28:48):
those pardons occurred. Now, I do think that there might
be I'm gonna rate this one as wildly exaggerated, but
to a degree possible. I think it's completely possible that
there are groups of people who plan or execute murders
(29:10):
for ritualistic or ideological purposes. Um some of And we
know for a fact that there killers who remain uncaught.
There's a stretch of highway in what is it Canada
where uh an abnormal amount of people turn up missing.
Uh there is, I think it's in Canada. There's also
(29:31):
what's called the Train murders spelled t R a n
e U used to be called the Smiley Face Killer.
I don't know if that's real or if it's an
urban legend. Maybe people can tell us more about it.
But long story short, too late, ha ha uh. Is
there an international community of devil worshippers killing people? Most
(29:55):
likely there's no way it could happen and remain a secret.
Is there are there groups of small, small groups of
lunatics rather who are killing people. Absolutely, there's no way
around it. There's certainly small groups of lunatics consistently killing people,
and it is not unreasonable to say that some of
(30:18):
those groups have yet to be caught. Sure, it makes
me think of pulp fiction and the guys are on
the pawn shop. You just every once in a while
catch somebody in their trap and execute them. And that,
Oh man, that really creeps me out, and I enjoy that.
(30:38):
It makes my imagination run wild. But Ben, I think
we're gonna be giving people nightmares by talking about this.
Well also, yeah, well we are talking about our statistical anomalies.
It's there's statistical anomalies, but there are it's also just
kind of a reality. We a lot of times on
our show we talked about the human nature and the
(31:00):
nature of humanity and what the darker side of it,
what it leads to. And that's exactly what this is. Yeah,
it is. We would we would like to hear what
you think. Thank you guys for listening to our episode
on the serial killer cults conspiracy Matt, what what do
you want to have people tell us about? I'd like
to hear um some conspiracy theories about serial killers, especially
(31:25):
active serial killers. If you have any information, let us
know the stories you've heard, and then also let us
know whether you believe them. Yes, please don't cut out
letters from magazine and rearrange them into a letter and
send it to us, or do well, please God, don't
do that. Uh. If you rather not cut out pieces
(31:45):
of newspaper and send us those publications, you can be
our friends on Facebook. We would love it. Help us
keep our jobs. You can send us a tweet on Twitter.
We are conspiracy stuff at both of those and and
that's the end of the classic episode. If you have
any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get
(32:06):
into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three std w y
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(32:26):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
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your favorite shows.
Welcome back to the show everyone. This is a classic
episode that blew us away honestly when we when we
first started working on it. Serial killers they are an
object of discussed and rightly so, but there are also
an object of fascination. In the Western world. Serial killers
(00:23):
are the very definition of an unreliable narrator. They're insane,
they're prone to exaggeration and delusion, and obviously they are
inveterate liars. If you look at any case of almost
any serial killer, you will see many, many claims that
(00:43):
simply do not bear up under scrutiny. But then you
will also see some things that sound so outrageous they
have to be works of fiction. And then later, maybe months, years,
in some cases decades later, we learned that a few
of those claims were true. Today's classic episode dives into
(01:08):
a controversial and disturbing topic, the idea of serial killers
working in concert, more than one serial murderer working together.
But it goes further than that. We also examine the
claims of people like David Berkowitz and Henry Lee Lucas,
(01:31):
who told law enforcement multiple times that they were not
committing these crimes on their own, that they were not
lone creditors and criminals. Instead, they and several other serial
murderers have sworn that they were part of something else,
(01:52):
large organization, a shadowy institution, a serial killer cult. What
are we talking about? We'll find out in this episode
from UFOs two Ghosts and Government cover Ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
(02:17):
welcome back. We'll welcome for the first time to stuff
they don't want you to know. I'm bend and I'm
at and today we're going to start the podcast with
a a little bit of a of a dark thing,
a little bit of a weird thing. All right, I
like it, Let's do it. Okay. So this is a
(02:38):
question that I want to throw out to you and
then we'll answer it at the end of the episode.
Sound cool, Yeah, alright, I'm excited. Okay. How many serial
killers do you think are active right now? By which
I mean uncaught, maybe there in the hibernation phase after
they've done them, of order of some sort. Um, how
(03:01):
many do you think there are? I would estimate worldwide. Um,
you know what, let's keep it in the US, just
in the US twenty Okay, and that's you know that
numbers sounds scary at first, but there three hundreds something
million people here, and of those twenty there are twenty.
(03:25):
Then a lot of them won't be active for a
while right at the turns there. Yeah, I'll be like
the B T K killer Dennis Radar, who um was
out of it was not murdering people for what a
decade more um, and then finally got caught when he
came back, which is a story for different day. So
(03:49):
as we begin met, I have to ask, um, what
is a serial killer? Most basic level, UM, it's someone
who kills for a reason was for they feel, Um,
they feel that they need to kill for some reason
or another. They're compelled to do so. It's a compulsion. Um.
(04:12):
There are various number of reasons. Because they get sexual
pleasure out of doing so. Because they feel that they
are called to to kill a certain type of person
for pseudo religious reason maybe yeah, that happens quite often, UM.
Or because they feel like they're gaining something from it,
(04:35):
that they're gaining some kind of power by taking the
life of somebody else. And there there are several other reasons. There.
There's A. We have a great article on how stuff works.
If you want to read that how serial killers work.
It goes over some of that basic level serial killer stuff. Yeah,
that's a that's a Actually, that's a great primer for
serial killers. No. One. Thing that we should also mention
(04:56):
is that serial killer is sort of an umbrella term
in a lot of ways. For instance, the ice man
of famous mob Hitman killed quite a few people the
monetary gain because it was kind of his job or
his career path. And then on the other side, we
have people, um who have received heavy physiological trauma early
(05:21):
in their life and they don't process emotions the same
way that a person with all the cylinders firing does.
And this is not to say that neurological damage automatically
makes somebody a monstrous human being, um, but it can
impair what we would consider to be the essential functioning
(05:45):
of of of a human Oh yeah, and one last caveat.
The people were speaking about are not spree killers, and
they're also not um like mass murderers generally, people who
would just go in and kill a whole bunch of
people at one time and then either get caught killingmselves
or be done with it. These are people who kill
(06:07):
generally and then they will it's very it's horrible to say,
but not kill for a period, then kill again, and
maybe they will also and they'll also typically uh cover
up their crime if possible. Just spree killer wouldn't do exactly.
So here is where we get to a disturbing and
(06:29):
fascinating idea that a long time ago. Now you and
I did an episode asking if serial killers are controlled
by a cult. This is one of the darker conspiracy
theories we've run into, and it's one that fascinates us both.
I think, oh yeah, well, because you have the people
(06:51):
the serial killers talking about certain groups like the four
Pie movement was mentioned. The hand of death. Again, this
is from their mouths. These uh, these organizations were mentioned, right, yeah,
and let's do a little bit of background tiers. So
let's start with a hand of death. So Henry Lee,
(07:13):
Lucas oddust tool, Um, they were something that rarely happens
in the acknowledged world of serial killers. They were a team,
they worked in pairs, and um, they were lovers for
a time. They also claimed to have killed. Eventually, they
claimed to have killed hundreds of people, especially Henry Lee Lucas,
(07:35):
and they said they did this at the orders of
an organization called the Hand of Death, that they were
trained to murder people um as part of a Satanic
ritual or some sort of dark magic thing. And they
claimed furthermore that the Hand of Death was not just
(07:56):
based in this training camp area. They claimed that it
was a now national, perhaps even worldwide organization that spanned
the height than depth of human society, all the way
down to low lifes like them, and all the way
up to the financial socio political elites of the US
(08:18):
and the world. Um so crazy man. Even David Burke
Awitz uh he he said that he had assistance that
were from the Four Pie cult Um. He claimed to
have insider knowledge of a murder that still is unsolved. Um,
it's the artist Perry Stanford Memorial Church murder of nineteen
seventy four. You can type that into a search bar
(08:41):
and you will find information about it. Yeah, and people
arguing both for and against Burke awits his knowledge of this.
Yeah absolutely, And um, now the Four Pie churches is
pretty interesting. We talked about those in the video. Can
you give us like a high level I can? I
might go down a bit of a rabbit hole here.
Just tell me when you're ready for me to stop, Okay, Okay.
(09:04):
So the four Pie movement was allegedly linked to this
thing called the Process Church of the Final judgment Um,
which was kind of a it was a cultish movement
um back in the nineteen sixties. And man, it's it's
pretty crazy, Okay. So it was it started off as
(09:26):
an offshoot from the Church of Scientology, the Process Church was,
and they they it's kind of weird. Man. I don't
want to get too deep into what they believe or anything,
but it kind of it has a link that I
think you'll be interested in. So they believe that their
(09:47):
personality traits in each one of us, uh, and they
marked they called called them there four of them Jehovah, Lucifer, Satan,
and Christ and and they essentially worship all four. And
they believe that you kind of have to worship each
one to really attain enlightenment. Well, what's a difference than
(10:07):
if I could ask between Satan and Lucifer. Lucifer is
more of the uh hedonistic kind of a person um
self aggrandizing, look for knowledge, that kind of thing, some
more Promethean kind of a light bringer, yeah, lucifer Um,
and then Satan is just more uh aggressive, kind of
(10:32):
an kind of yeah, but then there's some of that
in Jehovah as well. It's really interesting, it's passing, and
I recommend anyone who wants to learn more about this. Uh.
There are a couple of things you can do. The
first thing would be to read The Process by Gary
Lakshman L. A. C. H M. A n Um, which
is just a quick article from the forty in Times,
(10:52):
but it's really fascinating. Read um. And there's also there
are a couple of books that you can read. But
here's here's the thing. What's the link. The link to
me is the four pie also known as four P.
It's been mentioned as the four P movement. UM. So
if you look at the symbol that was used for
this group, the Process Church, it looks somewhat like a swastika,
(11:14):
kind of a little bit like a swastika, but it's
really four ps that are linked at the circular part
of the P, but it's in a square, but it's
four pas right in the Process Church. And I found
that really interesting, just as one of the you know,
the conspiracy theory kind of connection that really doesn't mean anything,
(11:36):
but it still makes you go just enough to be disturbing,
and we'll come back to those folks. We also have
side note for this met there's a very interesting story
here in the cult angle of the Man's murders. Now,
Manson already was leading a cult, and the question is
was this cult involved with some other larger network. This
(12:00):
is just a story that I wanted to get out
there because not a lot of people knew it. During
the period leading up to Helter Skelter, when Manson and
his group were on a darker, precipitous decline from their
otherwise utopian philosophy or or whatever thing mayd going on,
they went out to the desert right and uh, their
(12:23):
ideas got crazier and crazier. Of course, the ultimate stated
aim for the murders that the Manson family ultimately committed
where that they were trying to trigger a global race
war um that would be between black people and white people,
and the whole time the Manson family would hide out
(12:45):
in some magic cave where they would have all the
supplies they needed, and then after the black part of
the world's population killed all of the white people Manson,
who was cartoonishly racist right, thought that his family would
climb out of this magic cave and take over because,
(13:07):
of course, he assumed black people are incapable of making
of of making authoritative decisions, which just gives me, just
gives you, like a peek into how ugly this guy's
mind is. Right, Yeah, and just insane. It's so insane.
It is so insane. I don't know how you can
(13:27):
believe it. I guess it helps if you are yourself
a very racist person. But he um. But the reason
I bring up all this crazy stuff is at the
same time that this was happening, there was a minor
named Paul Crockett who lived nearby. And Paul Crockett is
a very mysterious character in the Helter Skelter story. He was,
(13:47):
remember this older retired miner, but he had knowledge somehow
of scientology and other similar practices. Now, when I say cultish,
you guys know what I'm talking about. I know that
people might say that we're saying something bad about scientology. No,
we're saying he had knowledge of this, and he had
(14:10):
knowledge of other things that helped him um rescue some
of the people in Charles Manson's family, and they had
these amazing psychological battles with each other where Manson was
trying to get in his head and Paul Crockett was.
It was very it was very Yoda uh, Emperor Palpatine
(14:31):
kind of kind of the forces of light and evil there.
And when when we talk about this, when we talked
about the manipulation uh, that Manson had, there's been a
lot of conspiratorial thoughts um or conspiratorial arguments that Manson
was somehow getting orders from somewhere else, not just influenced
(14:52):
by the dianetics and stuff he studied in prison, not
just influenced by his contact with counterculture cults in California,
which was a strangely difficult sentence to say, but that
he was also um working at the behest of this.
Now here we have these ideas, and each of these three,
(15:16):
these three examples have some sort a different level of credence.
So for me, UM, the most plausible one is David
Berkowitz Um, because another guy named Stanley Baker was caught
committee murders. He said he was recruited by four pie
(15:38):
in University of Wisconsin. And David burk Awitz, you know,
originally he copped to all the murders. He didn't change
his story until the nineties, but he was already in
jail forever. No way he was getting out. Um. Didn't
someone also attempt to murder him? Yes? And he changed
his story because of that. Yes, someone also attempted to
(16:00):
murder him imprison Uh. Some of the investigators in the
Berkowitz case think that there's credence to the idea that
his people who lived nearby, the car brothers C. A. R. R.
Had a role in this um and they both died
in during parts of the investigation. Um. So I would
(16:22):
say that as the most credents, and then the Manson stuff.
It's it's difficult to tell because it's a question of
how much weight are we putting on people hanging out
together in California? You know what I mean? Just because
you and I go to a party with it happened
to be in the same room with someone, doesn't mean
that we're planning an international Satanic panic. Yeah. And just
(16:46):
because a couple of members of the Processed Church went
and visited Manson one time doesn't necessarily mean anything, right, Yeah,
Just like just because the process Church was an offshoot
of people made by people who met via scientology. Doesn't
mean that it's in any way condoned by or related
(17:07):
to the actual church or No, No, not at all.
And gosh, I hope nobody got that from what I
was saying. No, I don't think, Okay, I don't think.
Just just to clarify, the processed Church used the idea
of using the E meter, and they just kind of
changed that around a little bit into their own thing
and used it to to measure emotion rather than uh
(17:33):
whatever it is that E meter, which is uh, well,
I just have to say that this is also in
the Church of Scientology. It's a hugely bad heretical thing
to do, to to mess with in any way these
ideas or to have your own ideas inserted in there. Um.
(17:53):
I think one of the terms for it is squirreling,
and that makes you an sp or suppressive person, which
is very bad. Yeah, and now you don't want to
be that. No, it's anathema or shutting kind of. Uh So, anyway,
we're we're talking about all these different organizations, the and
these different stories. The least plausible story is, uh the
(18:15):
hand of death story with Henry Lee Lucas and oddest tool.
Now I think it's the least plausible because they're not
because there's not a conspiracy. I think this actually does
have a genuine conspiracy. But you know what I'm talking about.
You know why I don't think that Henry Lee Lucas
really killed over three people. Well, yeah, one of the
(18:39):
biggest things you look at with serial killers is their
level of intelligence in order to get away with a
huge number of murders like that. And let's face it,
if you look at Henry Lucas an honest tool, Um,
they're not the sharpest knives in the kitchen. Yeah, they're
(19:00):
not the brightest bulbs in the pack, right, Yeah, the
um for a number of reasons, especially in the case
of Lucas, who suffered some fairly horrific injuries in his childhood. Um,
these are not men's A level criminals. They're not as
intelligent as say Ted Bundy, for instance, So their claims
(19:25):
um don't really have the best credibility at all. Let's
even just not considering the fact the fact that serial
killers are prone to wild exaggeration because they are crazy. Um,
there's or you know, if you're a serial killer, you're
listening to this right now. You have a dysfunction. You
(19:48):
don't have superpowers, you really don't. But these, uh, some
of these problems can be exploited by the real conspiracy,
which I submit to you, was that law enforcement saw
in Henry Lee Lucas and artist Tool a way to
close a bunch of unsolved, unsolved, unresolved cases. And you
(20:11):
can see this because the crimes that they're agreeing to
committing at times were physically impossible for them to commit.
Now they would say that maybe with somebody else in
the cult, right in the hand of death, if you
push them towards that. But Lucas also said that he
was confessing to things because he would get better treatment
(20:32):
in the prison system, which is just way more plausible
to me. So well, I can see that that That's
one of the biggest things you have to do as
a law enforcement agency is to close cases. And you know,
sometimes if there's a scary thing, you have to you
have to find a way to make it stop. Even
(20:54):
if it doesn't actually stop the killings, it's gonna it's
gonna quell the fears. You're thinking of McNulty and the wire.
That's exactly what I'm thinking of. Yeah, uh so, the
the idea here is is frightening in its own way,
that there could be people who were waiting to hear
(21:16):
what happened to their missing parents, they're missing child, the
missing friends, and to be told a lie that there
was this guy who couldn't possibly done the murder, but
he says he's done it. And false confessions are distressing,
but it also really really throws a lot of the
(21:36):
credibility of this cult story to the wayside. Now we
do know that there are people who really have been
parts of cults. Uh This guy named Jeffrey Lundgren part
of a heretical offshoot of the Church of Latter day
Saints or the Mormon Church. Um. He killed people, killed
a family of five. Guy named Aldolfo constanzo Um was
(22:02):
a drug dealer and worked with Cartel's and practiced black magic,
where we would have a cauldron of people's bodies, they
would eat from it, they would use it the magical rituals.
It didn't prevent him from being caught at all. It's
almost as if that didn't work. I'm not going to
(22:24):
go ahead and say that what he was doing made
him a charlatan, but it certainly didn't keep him alive.
Fair point, fair point, fair point. But so with with
those cults. These were um like the Manson cult. They
were tight knit groups of people who had been psychologically
exploited right and had their egos slowly erased by a
(22:47):
charismatic leader of some of some sort, and then had
that enforced by intimidation and fear. Um. This is a
regrettably easy thing to do. Now been we've talked about
a lot of the past serial killers that we know about, um,
about what makes them a serial killer and about what
(23:10):
um strange circumstances they found themselves in. But here's where
it gets crazy. There are serial killers out there right now,
probably with all I mean. I say probably because I
can't prove it. But they're out there right now, sitting somewhere,
maybe in a van, maybe in their shock up on
(23:33):
the mountain, maybe in their mansion, maybe in the church,
maybe in a church. They're just hanging out plotting. Maybe
they're not plotting. Maybe today they're just having a sandwich
and reading the newspaper. Um, you know, maybe they're hugging
their children right now. But they're there, out there, right now. Yeah,
(23:55):
it is true. Uh, no one knows to answer our
original question, No one has any idea how many active
serial killers could exist. When I was UM, when I
was looking into some of this stuff earlier, it hit
me and I always remember this thought stayed with me,
(24:15):
which is, um, the serial killers that are caught, right,
are often caught because there they were in a decline,
a psychological decline of some sort. Right, So what if
we're just getting the dregs of the serial killer population.
What if we're just finding the people who were not
(24:38):
able to sustain their monstrous appetite or to maintain they're
terrifying addiction to death, or they just weren't that good
in the first place at being at playing that creepy role. Right, Yeah, exactly,
because there are for every um. For every person who
gets caught UM because they have done things that clearly
(25:05):
implicate them in a crime, there are other people who
are probably getting away with something right now. Now, not
very many, I don't. I don't think that it's a
common thing, but there I'm sure that a simple search
will show us cases of You know what, one one
type of serial killer that gets around a lot is
(25:27):
the medical practitioner. Every once in a while kills a patient. Yea,
not every day, not every year, but every Hey yeah,
maybe when you're in the hospital. But but we don't
want to be alarmist. This is very small thing. The
question is is there any sand to this conspiracy theory
(25:53):
that serial killers could be part of a cult. Well,
let's talk about the thing that you left us with
on and on our video that we made about this. Okay,
this conspiracy theory relies heavily how did you put it?
Relies heavily on the the information or the statements of
people who are insane. Oh. Yeah, that that's the little
(26:16):
caveat there, right. Yeah. That The main weakness of this
conspiracy theory is that relies heavily on the statements of
serial killers who are again nuts bonkers. Yeah. I mean,
you watch any interview with Charles Manson, any of them.
I don't care which one. Just watch it, check it out.
(26:37):
And people might say that he's a different case because
it's not because he didn't physically commit you know, the
Tate la Banca murders. But it's clear. But it's not
a healthy thing to want to do, to kill multiple
people for no reason. That is a nice way to
put it, and and um, I guess, I guess one
(26:57):
thing that we do need to talk about is that
a lot of these these cult theories originated during a
moral panic in the United States was called the Satanic Panic.
And the Satanic Panic was this idea that there were
numerous cases of child abductions, rapes, and murders um at
(27:18):
the behest of a secret Satanic network that ran the
the world as we know it went all the way
up the government's all over the world. And that gave
us one fascinating fact about the only pardon it was
ever received when George Bush was governor of Texas, which
(27:39):
we just have to mention, people will get mad if
we don't he he pardoned, Well, it was it was
George W. Bush as then governor. And then wasn't it
also Jeb Bush who also made Florida in Florida, who
made a bit of a strange pardon and who was
that foreben oddest tool was pardoned in Florida? And um,
(28:04):
George W. Bush pardoned Henry Lee Lucas in Texas. This
was the I believe, the only pardon on the execution board.
Or didn't they just they stayed their execution or what it?
What was it exactly then? But I mean both men
died in prison. Yeah, yeah, but they weren't executed because
because of the bushes um. Now, you know, we don't
(28:26):
know the story behind that. But that's one of the
facts that people will always point out to us when
we say, well, no, they probably weren't part of a cult.
They're probably making it up. To be honest, Matt, you
and I do not know the story about those uh
stays of execution. We don't know what I've been seen.
I haven't seen any literature on exactly why either of
(28:48):
those pardons occurred. Now, I do think that there might
be I'm gonna rate this one as wildly exaggerated, but
to a degree possible. I think it's completely possible that
there are groups of people who plan or execute murders
(29:10):
for ritualistic or ideological purposes. Um some of And we
know for a fact that there killers who remain uncaught.
There's a stretch of highway in what is it Canada
where uh an abnormal amount of people turn up missing.
Uh there is, I think it's in Canada. There's also
(29:31):
what's called the Train murders spelled t R a n
e U used to be called the Smiley Face Killer.
I don't know if that's real or if it's an
urban legend. Maybe people can tell us more about it.
But long story short, too late, ha ha uh. Is
there an international community of devil worshippers killing people? Most
(29:55):
likely there's no way it could happen and remain a secret.
Is there are there groups of small, small groups of
lunatics rather who are killing people. Absolutely, there's no way
around it. There's certainly small groups of lunatics consistently killing people,
and it is not unreasonable to say that some of
(30:18):
those groups have yet to be caught. Sure, it makes
me think of pulp fiction and the guys are on
the pawn shop. You just every once in a while
catch somebody in their trap and execute them. And that,
Oh man, that really creeps me out, and I enjoy that.
(30:38):
It makes my imagination run wild. But Ben, I think
we're gonna be giving people nightmares by talking about this.
Well also, yeah, well we are talking about our statistical anomalies.
It's there's statistical anomalies, but there are it's also just
kind of a reality. We a lot of times on
our show we talked about the human nature and the
(31:00):
nature of humanity and what the darker side of it,
what it leads to. And that's exactly what this is. Yeah,
it is. We would we would like to hear what
you think. Thank you guys for listening to our episode
on the serial killer cults conspiracy Matt, what what do
you want to have people tell us about? I'd like
to hear um some conspiracy theories about serial killers, especially
(31:25):
active serial killers. If you have any information, let us
know the stories you've heard, and then also let us
know whether you believe them. Yes, please don't cut out
letters from magazine and rearrange them into a letter and
send it to us, or do well, please God, don't
do that. Uh. If you rather not cut out pieces
(31:45):
of newspaper and send us those publications, you can be
our friends on Facebook. We would love it. Help us
keep our jobs. You can send us a tweet on Twitter.
We are conspiracy stuff at both of those and and
that's the end of the classic episode. If you have
any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get
(32:06):
into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three std w y
t K. If you don't want to do that, you
can send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't
want you to know is a production of I heart Radio.
(32:26):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
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