Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined, as
always with our super producer Paul mission controlled decand in spirit.
Today we are joined in reality with our super producer
Maya Cole. So do say hello to her on the web.
Most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
makes this stuff they don't want you to know. This
(00:47):
is uh an episode that I don't know about. You guys,
It's been on my mind for a long time. For
a number of years. Yeah, five five years to be exact. Matt, right,
has it been that long? It has? Indeed. The first
season of True Detective premiered in fourteen. This series, written
by an author named Nick Pizolatto, seemed set to change
(01:09):
the face of television as we knew. It's one of
those prestige programs that's kind of like a very long
serialized film, like The Wire Right or Breaking Bad. Maybe
the Sopranos would be another one sure, and then of
course lost right, all these things that change the way
we look at formats and the way we look at storytelling.
(01:32):
True Detective made this enormous impact on the zeitgeist, the
spirit of our age, and a lot of people said,
where do these ideas come from? What possessed you, Nick
Nicholas to create something this dark and deranged and gritty
and horrifying? Can I do a shameless plug really quick?
(01:55):
Nick Pisolato actually wrote an episode for a series that's
coming out that I worked on called baron a Banjo.
He wrote the the ultimate episode, the finale. Really yeah,
they wrote the story. Yeah, well it's not horrifying at all.
It's a little bit of a ghost story, honestly, but
it's definitely lighter fair than when he wrote and True Detective.
But check it out in the first episode of the
(02:18):
show drops tomorrow, in fact, which is the the second
of October, so this will be in the past by then,
but check it out. That's fantastic. True Detective was really
one of those shows that had the tone somewhere between
a film noir and a weird fiction, right, And I
think that's why a lot of people latched onto it,
and it felt kind of like you're saying, Ben, it
(02:39):
felt so out there the main storyline where there was
corruption and terrible things happening to children. Um, at least
it didn't feel real, right, But as we found out,
maybe there's something else to it. That's that's correct that
we do want to issue this disclaimer at the top
(03:01):
of today's episode. Uh. This episode contains not only spoilers
for True Detective season one and probably a little bit
of trash talking about True Detective season two. For being honest,
this also contains discussion of graphic crimes of a sexual nature. UH.
The discussion of animal cruelty abuse very very heavy, disturbing,
(03:27):
potentially triggering things, so listener discretion is advised. Here are
the facts True Detective, the peak behind the Curtain. The
three of us really love this show when it came
out in it In a way, True Detective could be
described as an anthology. Each season their three seasons so
far takes place in this It's its own self contained
(03:52):
narrative that maybe exists in the same universe. Each season
will follow a different set of characters as the attempt
to unravel UH. The twisted story of a crime right
or as you noted in some cases, high that story.
True Detective Season one takes this just wonderful nonlinear approach.
(04:12):
It follows two homicide detectives in Louisiana from their initial
investigation of the murder of a sex worker in the
mid nineties to their very problematic reunion and their relaunch
of the investigation almost twenty years later. Here are the spoilers.
Spoiler alert if you do not want to be spoiled.
(04:34):
If you haven't seen True Detective and you're gonna get
angry about spoilers, fast forward past this part. It gets
It gets very strange, very quickly. Interestingly enough, True Detective
is actually a one of the very first true crime magazines.
Is kind of a pulpy, trashy true crime rag that published,
i think from the forties up until the seventies, and
(04:55):
it was all of these gritty, grizzly details about actual murders.
So in this series the first season, our detectives are heroes,
are sort of anti heroes in certain ways. It's interesting
that the dynamic there between them will get more into
They come across a very deep, uh running intergenerational conspiracy um,
(05:17):
a secret cult with members across Louisiana society UM that
ritualizes sexual assault and murder, and members of the cults
are prominent figures in the community, politicians, religious figures, pastors,
drug dealers, high level drug dealers, and more. Um there's
a absolutely insidious use of smoke screens, using thing places
(05:40):
like youth centers and churches and other spots that are
sort of unimpeachable in their sanctity right, trustworthy institutions used
to cover up these horrific crimes. And while the detectives
Marty and Rust do manage to eventually solve the immediate
cry which set them off on this this deranged journey,
(06:04):
they are not able to get complete justice. They are
not able to arrest the entire cult. And it's strongly
implied that this cult continues on in some form and
even worse, some of the members of the cult, the
prominent ones you mentioned earlier, all retain their positions in society.
They get away, nothing bad happens to them. Yeah, that's
the worst part of the thought that they that it's over.
(06:28):
It's over for those detectives because the case is over,
but they will never be able to bring the actual
or even no the like true extent of that operating conspiracy, right,
nor the history of it or how far back it goes.
This work draws inspiration from a lot of places. First
(06:50):
would be The King in Yellow, Delightful disturbing book by
Robert W. Chambers. It's an anthology of semi links stories,
and four of these stories reference a mysterious work, a
play called The King and Yellow that is about this
same figure, the supernatural character called the King and Yellow
(07:13):
or the Yellow King. And you never read the play
in full. You only see it alluded to because when
people read this play or when they see it performed,
drives them insane. You can see some excerpts in it. Uh,
there was in the story Casilda's Song. There's a line
(07:33):
from act one, scene two of the play, and I'll
just read this part song of my soul. My voice
is dead, die out, unsung as tears on shed, shall
dry and die in lost Carcosa, Carcosa ringing any bells? Right?
And this so this was like atmospheric tone, right, cosmic horror,
(07:54):
which is explored, you know, in in True Detective. But
it's not it's not a supernatural monster film, right, It's
not a supernatural monster story, there's this it feels like
it's teetering on the edge of it. It is always yeah,
never really gets there. I think that's one thing that
maybe was a little bit of a letdown for some
folks near the mirroring the end of the season is
(08:16):
I think there was an expectation there was gonna be
some supernatural qualities and that spoiler alert didn't really pan
out that way. There's some interesting fan theories which cannot
be cannot be proven or disproven without you know, talking
to Nick. But but if you want to lose an afternoon,
it's a great way to spend it. The one the
(08:37):
other literary influence that Pizolatto sites is called The Conspiracy
against the Human Race. It's nonfiction essays by a horror
writer named Thomas Logatti who was an amazing, very unhappy writer.
Bad things happened in his stories, so as we know.
In the in the story True Detective season one, there's
(08:59):
the detective Us Cole, played uh pitch perfectly by Matthew McConaughey,
and Rust Cole is just over the idea of people.
He has a pessimistic of philosophy that he expounds upon
apparently every time they're in a car kind of and
he is also what we would call an anti natalist,
(09:20):
someone who thinks that, uh, people are born and that's
a negative thing. And it gets worse from there. Absolutely,
I mean, it's definitely a philosophy that is much more
prominent in his grizzled older version of the character. The
younger one he sees definitely still got that vibe and
he's constantly pissing off his partner played by Woody Harrelson
for being a bit of a pill and and well
(09:42):
that's that happens later. But yeah, absolutely, But the uh,
the story is framed in like a past and future
kind of cross cutting, and the future Russ Cole is
in a not a deposition, but he's being interrogated by
police officers from I guess would be modern day and
he's clearly been through some oh yeah, and this is
(10:06):
where a lot of his his statements come out, you know,
not not a deposition, but that interview, right, and in
earlier interviews outside of the universe of the show, as
we said, Nick Pizolato said, well this did influence me.
This is an amazing piece of literature. But he was
initially accused of plagiarism because of the similarity between Cole's
(10:28):
dialogue and Legati's writing, And he does say there's an influence,
but he does deny that he was in any way
of plagiaris. But these are just two atmospheric philosophical things.
They are the side, They are the sauce. They are
not the main dish. The main dish, as you mentioned earlier,
Matt is the terrible, terrible unfolding of events in the
(10:50):
course of the plot. And that leads us to today's question,
what if there is more to the story. What if
True Detective doesn't just take inspiration from works of fiction.
What if there is a real story behind this television show.
What if there is, for lack of a better phrase,
a true true Detective. We'll learn more afterward from our sponsor.
(11:21):
Here's where it gets crazy. So all the you know,
the things that we see on screen, the overall characters,
and you know roughly the place and all of these things.
The details in True Detective are fictional, right, I mean
that we can all agree on that it's a fictional
show about a fictional thing. However, there appears to be
(11:45):
at least one particular occurrence that you know, really was
a decade that it really hits troublingly close to what
is explored, at least within the television show. Right right,
we'll travel to poncha Tula, Louisiana. Now off air. The
three of us were flexing our or Southern accent muscles.
(12:08):
We we love a good we love a good down
South voice. I'm gonna try not to fall into it
because this is serious stuff, but it might happen. There
is a place where there was a place in Ponchatoula,
Louisiana called Hosanna Church was founded by a pastor named
Louis Lamonica. And originally when they started, they had less
(12:29):
than twenty four people, less than twenty four congregates. It's
a very small church, but it's not unusual for churches
to start small, right, yes, true, And in the seventies
this church was attended regularly by around a thousand people.
I wonder what changed. The facilities of Hosanna Church had
a sanctuary and behind that there was eight children's school
and um Louis Lamonica, the founder and had pastor like
(12:53):
you mentioned men passed away in ninety four and the
church went through about a decade of various temporary leaders
until Louis Lemonica's son, Louis Lemonica Jr. Took the reins.
It should be noted here that the original Louis Lemonica Sr.
Was seen as kind of a paragon of the community.
(13:13):
He was beloved by both people that went to the
church and known by people who just lived in the parish.
At least that's the story. And he was kind of
a ned Flanders. You get the vibe when you read
people read people's accounts of meeting him and living with him.
Not so for junior uh Louis Lamonica Jr. When he
(13:33):
took the When he took leadership of the church began
circling the wagons, things started to look strange for people
on the outside of the church walls. He started excommunicating
church members for various perceived slights or sins or missteps.
It could be a disagreement over doctrine, sure, but if
they attended another church even once, they would be excommunicated.
(13:57):
One popular competitor was Harvest World Reach Ministries, started by
the former youth minister of Hasana Church. This is troubling.
A few years back we did um We did a
video in which we broke down the ways that cults
operate on the human mind. And one of the first,
(14:20):
one of the very first things a lot of cults
will do when they're moving from being, you know, a
religion to an actual cult of some sort is they
will isolate the members, They'll isolate the followers. This you
can see the video if you want, but this, this
isolation itself. It's important to note this is not a crime.
(14:40):
This is just people deciding to live together in a
like minded way, and there is not a law against it.
You can't really write a law against it, because you know,
if people want to do things that other people think
are weird, more power to them, so long as they're
not hurting anyone. Yeah, yeah, you're right. I just want
to point out here really quickly that I've been a
part of several church movements where um, my family and
(15:05):
I followed a pastor to a different church, and it
wasn't so much about the church itself. It was a
lot about the people that were there, the congregation, but
it was more about the experience you get when you're
you know, sitting in a pew listening to a pastor speak, right,
because it really is in a lot of ways of
performance and do I like this performance doesn't resonate with me.
(15:28):
That's how it goes. And that's not inherently insidious, right,
And it's just a personal preference where it's like, I
like this guy versus others, And why would I, you know,
why would I get something different at the dinner? You know,
I like my corn beef sandwich. Well, yeah, And it
hits in the nature of this and and just to
get into that background a little bit, having this this
person that you trust and have grown up with. Ostensibly
(15:49):
you probably had maybe had kids while this pastor was
the head of your church, and whatever occurred in your life,
you went through high school, whatever it is. Um then
he passes away. They you go through all these temporary
things and this new guy comes through. And I'm just
imagining being in the mindset of one of his congregation,
what you're what you're feeling as all of this stuff
(16:10):
starts to happen that you're describing then where he seems
to be either going off the rails or at least
uh handling the reins in a very different way. So
you think he was calling the members of the congregation
that would not be susceptible to this new regime that
he was trying to bring about, right, I think someone
was that's yeah, well there's a twist to that. Uh so, Lamonica. Also,
(16:37):
just like you said, I love that you put out culling.
That's a good way to describe it. He also fought
with the church's staff, other people who would be in
the power structure, and he ordered multiple staff members to
skedattle to leave the church and never returned, including the
church's secretary, who is his mother. He kicked his mom
out of the church. Yeah, and it really doesn't make
(16:59):
sense to me unless it is something a little off handed,
if they we're dealing with here, Because a church like that,
especially as smaller church, even if you've got a thousand members,
you you exist because every Sunday and whatever other fundraiser,
you're having people put money into a plate and that
goes into the church fund, right, and no matter how many,
(17:20):
no matter how small of a contribution. Let's say it's
just ten dollars every Sunday, maybe five dollars, maybe up
to twenty or more. Getting rid of that on a
monthly basis. If you think about it like a Netflix
subscription or something that, uh, that's going to ruin a
church really fast. Absolutely, And speaking of scandal, it was
(17:43):
during this time, by their own confession, it was during
this time that members of the Hosanna Church were routinely
ritualistically assaulting children and animals. The following information may not
be suitable for all listeners. This come from the New
York Times. We have an excerpt here and we're using
(18:03):
it to summarize some of the events, but also to
underline to emphasize that this was not something that was
reported in fringe sources. This was in papers of note.
This was huge news New York Times, says. Sheriff Daniel H.
Edwards of Tangitpota said that as many as twenty five children,
about evenly split between boys and girls, might have been
(18:25):
involved in sex acts at the youth center there in Hosanna,
in cars and in the homes of at least two
of those charged. The abuse, according to Edwards, seems to
have begun in and stopped occurring on church grounds after
two thousand and three. However, Edwards went on to say,
nobody really believes they just stopped abusing children. Yeah, it's true.
(18:46):
Edwards said that the group apparently had a pretty effective
formula for going under the radar. And that was, as
we mentioned the same in Tree Detective, using the church
um and that close knit relationship between the members and
victims who would very likely look the other way when
(19:07):
it came to reporting these abuses to authorities, for sure.
And he didn't actually say, hey, look guys, everybody, we've
got devil worshiping going on here and it's a cult
they never do well. You Yeah, that's a pretty heavy claim, right.
It almost feels you wouldn't be able to really print
that necessarily because that is such an accusation. But it's, uh,
(19:30):
what they were doing there? What what? At least some
of the defendants who were involved in some of the
cases that came out of this um, they told investigators
that quote devil worship was the reason for their participation
in doing these atrocities to children and animals. I guess
what I was getting at is like, it's a slippery
slope kind of situation when you're indoctrinated into a cult.
(19:52):
No one says, hey, I want to join my cult.
It's kind of like that mission creep, right, you know.
It happens a little over time and then before you
know it, it's like the boiling frog kind of situation.
You know, it takes a little while and then before
you know it. This is just the situation you find
yourself in and you don't know how to get out.
But in this case, they're saying like, yeah, we joined
(20:14):
this thing that I guess could be considered a cult
because we wanted to be a part of the devil worship, right,
And I'm just laughing a little bit because when you said,
nobody comes up and says, hey, we joined my cult
because we did a little bit of sketch comedy and
in that cult video, that's exactly what you said. And
(20:34):
that's exactly Yeah, with Matt as our as our dear leader,
our spiritual guru, still ready to you know, kick that
thing back up in action whenever you guys, are I
miss being a deity? So you know, I you had
a gift for it. Let's see, Chuck was on board,
we had a lot of Jonathan Strickland was on board. Yes. Yeah.
(20:56):
So in this case, at the point the events occurring
in the Hasannah Church community appeared to be a genuine
case of devil worship. La Monica and his inner circles
said that they murdered and defiled animals. They sacrificed cats,
They sexually assaulted at least one dog, while irreparably damaging
(21:18):
the lives and the minds of multiple child victims. The
criminals evolved apparently used pentagrams, they wore robes and other
props in the course of their crimes, and some of
their victims were their very own children, their own biological offspring.
There's no other way to say it. If this is true,
it's a genuine case of ritualized satanic abuse. And we've
(21:40):
talked about it before the outbreak of hysteria that is
now called the Satanic Panic, which gripped American waves throughout
the late eighties and the nineties. Most of the things,
most of the stories we heard about Satanic panic cases
later turned out to be groundless. We're not saying none
of them were true. We're saying that there was very
(22:01):
little actual proof, but the media didn't really care. This
was fantastic fodder for sixty minutes type investigations and grizzly
segments on the evening news. There just didn't seem to
be too much reality to many of these stories. This case, however,
at least at the at first appears to be an
(22:22):
exception and one that almost went undiscovered. Authorities didn't learn
about the crimes until two thousand and five, right, And
it started in the nineties. And that's when Nicole Bernard,
who was thirty six years old at the time, called
the Sheriff's office there in Louisiana from Black Lick, Ohio
to say she had fled town to save her child
(22:43):
from abuse. And then the authorities learned that members of
the town knew something was rotten much much earlier. So
the Telegraph actually reported the church had attempted to intimidate
some of the other residents of the area. They cited
Tim Norman, who was a property developer, retired property developer UM,
(23:03):
who was a resident who lived very close by to
the church. UM. He was quoted as saying that Lamonica
and his congregation UM had essentially waged war against him,
a war of intimidation, a campaign to try to force
him out of the community. Yeah. When he he made
(23:23):
a lot of accusations about what was going on. Some
of them were again a little more colorful than others. UM.
One thing he references is some kind of Native American
chanting or you know, vocalizations that he characterizes them a
little differently. Um, but like whooping noises perhaps, Yeah, that
(23:45):
that that would occur by the congregation in his garden
or you know, out near his property, or perhaps even
on his property, and that their behavior would just increasingly
get stranger and stranger. My favorite lines still from it
is just it's stuck out to me reading this guy's accounts.
I'm not going to do a voice out of respect.
(24:07):
But they wanted to baptize their children in my creek,
which isn't that crazy on the surface, Like we got
a body of water, we want to baptize somebody. Hey,
that's not too bad. But I said, you can't do
that here. There's gators in there. Yeah, which is also
probably true. Checks out, Probably it's true. But at the
same time, what does that imply like that wouldn't have
(24:27):
been part of the ritual? I mean, what the fact
that there are gators in there, like they don't want
to die? Oh no, he's just he's giving us a
contrast as the non member who lives in the area.
But did this guy not sound like a bit of
a kuku? Yeah, a little bit, certainly a little bit,
but he also is referencing and maybe he's just mischaracterizing
(24:49):
some of the noises that he's hearing because his his
property really was in in close proximity to the buildings
where things were allegedly occurring. Well, it reminds me of
the Georgia Guidestone story where we we did a little
film for Amazon about that, and we've talked about it
on the show. And when I did a senior thesis
film on that years ago, UM I interviewed a pastor
(25:12):
at a church that was nearby and just really quick
the Georgia guide stones just like stone Granite monument in
a rural part of Georgia that have been associated with
things like the New World Order in the Illuminati, and
occasionally Satanic rituals. And the pastor that I spoke to
swore up and down that he saw blood rituals being done.
They're absolutely no evidence of that ever having taken place.
(25:34):
Um Or maybe what he saw was perhaps some pagans
in robes doing some sort of solstice ritual, but I
feel as though in his mind, being a particularly god
fearing type of man, inserted some detail and that maybe
wasn't there. And it occurs to me, maybe some of
that's going on here. I don't know. We all see
through the lenses that we put up in front of Um.
(25:55):
That's right, that's right. And everybody's the protagonists of their
own story. So they very well may have just been
doing something in their community or in their movement and
he decided it was about him, you know what I mean,
it's possible or he felt left out, maybe it actually was,
or maybe it's just the truth exactly. Well, and that's
(26:17):
the way these kinds of stories, in particular, this one
feels like could all of this really have been happening? Right?
And there's so much more? Yeah? Yeah, So in two
thousand and three, that's when we see the first confession.
Law enforcement is not involved. Some members of the church
confess to other congregates, disclosing their crime and asking according
(26:39):
to authorities, and later investigation for forgiveness. This led to
a schism, a final mass departure from the church. Hosanna's
membership dwindled. And you can imagine why that would occur, Right,
some people go up in front of church, or you
hear about people going up and confessing to doing those things. Yeah,
it would be Yeah, the you know, God may forgive,
(27:02):
but it's it's a tall order for a lot of people,
especially given them just the perverse nature of these crimes.
Back to Nicole Bernard, she was the former spouse of
Hassanna's youth minister, a guy named Austin Tree Bernard the third.
He had sometimes been described as the mastermind or the
ringleader of this group. Bernard claimed that she had tapes
(27:25):
and videos that belonged to the church that substantiated what
she was saying, because she was saying, you know there's
an abuse cult out there children or in danger. I
have proof, and you just remind everybody she's the one
who called in from Ohio, yes to like begin reporting
(27:45):
on this or to begin telling people the story. And
she was later arrested along with some of the people
that she named, and along with her ex husband, the
youth pastor, Austin Bernard. That is just the first of
the confessions. So a law enforcement officer in the name
of Stan Carpenter and his colleagues were absolutely astonished when
(28:09):
Louis Lamonica Jr. Came by the station nearby Sheriff's office
in two thousand five and he said that he wanted
to talk about the dedication of a baby to Satan
that was held of the church upstairs, and what he
referred to as the youth room. Um, and he this
sounds like he's like turning himself in. This is bizarre.
(28:30):
He went on to describe a room where all the
windows were blacked out. He was quoted as same quote,
like black paper, keep it dark. Uh. There was a
pentagram in the middle of the floor, he said, and
a book of quote spells and temptations, which sounds like
the most Southern. It sounds like it's it's a thing
purposefully made to scare people who are participating in like
(28:55):
Christianity in the South. I saw a book of spells
and temptations exactly. Or did you guys ever, Matt at
your church, do they ever do those hell plays? I
have been to those at other tribulation trail, like the
Halloween stuff. I love it. Yeah. To me, it's like
an excuse for them to like while out and do
(29:16):
the most offensive, creepy, you know, satanic stuff. But it
was all with the purpose of like it was like
scared straight, like scaring you two into the arms of
the Lord. I'm probably going to one this month. This
is my favorite time. It's a good time of the year.
I remember the one they had in my church, your
church near bund my house. They had a a crashed
car that they would park outside and it was like
(29:37):
they had like a fake dead body in it who
would be presumably done drugs or something, you know, unholy.
See that sounds like my high school. The tribulation trail.
Things were squarely aimed at abortion where and then there's
like the final act where someone saying, well you could
(29:57):
have repented, And then there's the crew of people at
the end of the thing. That's my least favorite part.
I tried to skip the talk after I'm there for
the show. Oh yeah, give me the action. Um so
a little little bit of lighthearted in their heartedness there
for everybody. Lightheartedness. Now, we do want to say before
we continue that Lamonica here is speaking in a very casual,
(30:20):
disaffected and calm way. He doesn't he's not you know,
like on the edge of death or well, and he's
not necessarily worried that he's about to get arrested. Well like,
at least that's what what the reporting says reminds me
of the character from seven No spoilers for seven when
he turns himself in a very matter of factly speaks
(30:42):
to the authorities in a way where it's like this
guy doesn't care what happens to him, he says, detective detector.
I guess he does get a little upset. He's just emphatic, right,
he had a plan he was working on, you know
what I mean. But Lamonica apparently had some kind of
in because he confesses this and more without any prompting, right,
(31:04):
and he goes into detail. Yeah, he says he's been
having sex with at least two young boys from the
time they were four years old until they were twelve
or thirteen. Um. He named names, including Christopher Lobat, who
was twenty four, a deputy sheriff of give it to me, Matt,
I call it Tangerboho Tanjeboe. But but we've been calling
(31:24):
it Tanga tan. Look, we don't write us right in.
Let us know if you're from t T Town, t parish,
let us know how to pronounce it. He implicated. This person,
Christopher Labat, who was a law enforcement official who apparently
for a while lived on the church grounds and was
a co conspirator. According to La Monica's very early even
(31:48):
handed testimony. Yeah. He said that they had abused boys
and girls between the age of one and sixteen, taught
them to have sexual relations with each other as well
as with the canine. He said to your drunk cat's blood.
They poured it over the bodies of victims, some of
them were his biological children, and it goes into very
(32:11):
very disturbing graphic detail. We found an excerpt from the
Daily Mail reporting on this. This is the kind of
stuff the Daily Mail likes to report on, and they
are rightly not seen as the best of all possible sources.
This is mainly to give give everyone a sense of
(32:31):
what kind of stuff was being reported here. Lamonica describes
one of the rituals that allegedly occurs. He says, they
would start off like a church service, but it was
Satanic music. There were candles burning, dark red candle holders
and the dedication of baby A. That's probably because the
kid's name is is you know, kept out of public records.
(32:53):
The dedication of baby A into Satan with his pentagram.
She was put in the middle in a black dress.
He describes chanting around the child, who is barely one
years old at the time, before killing a cat, draining
its blood, drinking it. Uh. They said they didn't make
the child drink the cat blood because she was too young,
so instead they sprinkled the blood over her. And Lamonica
(33:14):
said these meetings took place once every two or three months,
and we we should stayed here that according to the
Daily Mail, that child that is being described there is
the baby of Nicole Bernard, the person that we heard
about again who kind of blew the whistle on this
whole thing, and then he goes into detail about how
(33:37):
they would pursue the sexual abuse. Let's just call back
real quick to our Black Metal episode. This is what
you would consider theistic Satanism, right where it's like worshiping
Satan Lucifer as a deity in the way you would
worship any other god. And I think I had a
boo boo in the and the Death Metal episode Black
(33:58):
met episode RRI I said something about, how you know,
I equated paganism to Satanism, and I know that's not
the case. But there is something called dark paganism or
the left hand path, or the idea of black magic
rituals or occultism that is can be folded into the
idea of theistic Satanism. So back to the description of
(34:18):
these um what La Monica UH describes as these sexual
abuse rituals and how they carried her round. You can
find the details online if if you must, if you
need to know, but it is disturbing, it is I
would I do not use this word lightly. It is unclean, uh,
(34:43):
and it is not something that we we off off air.
Decided not to present this in graphic detail on air,
both out of respect for the victims, respect for everyone's sanity,
and the fact that if you want to know, you
could find it. But he walked into the sheriff's office
and he laid this out. You know, he had a disgusting,
(35:09):
evil ted talk of sorts. He claimed that they laid
feces and urine around while this stuff was happening. And
then he said, during these Satanic rituals, who would become
quote distorted by the devil demons would change him into
an animal, a snake, a fox, wolf, spiders and like
you said, no, he named all of his accomplices and
(35:30):
it was men and women involved at yes, absolutely men
and women, And later interviews with victims appeared to confirm
the veracity of his account, and Lamonica said the abuse
started in stopped in two thousand three, but law enforcement
officials like Edwards believe it probably continue to members homes
(35:50):
for some unknown period of time after the church shuddered
its doors. Astute listeners, you'll notice that we've been using
the word claim or a allegedly pretty often. Here there
are a single person stated this in Um. What we're
gonna do after this short break is look at the
evidence of what could be proven. So if this was
(36:12):
going to go to court and you had to have
some kind of material evidence, what would it be, um?
And it may be surprising to you. So we'll see
you right after this we're back. So how much of
it is true? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's it's
(36:35):
all hearsay, honestly at this point. I mean, there's some corroboration,
there's some similaritias between these stories. But inside the closed
youth haul behind the sanctuary that we've been talking about,
the cops did find a faint imprint of some pentagrams
drawn on the floor that someone had tried to scrub um.
They seized computers, as well as dozens of videotapes and
(36:57):
hundreds of computer disks and eight back says of documents
and photographs. Um I Deputy Shriff of Name with Charles Reid,
said that included videos of morality plays performed to confuse
the victims and in some cases, uh, there under educated parents. Now,
so there's a lot of playing on people's um fears
(37:20):
and perhaps ignorance. Yeah. Well, it's it's a problem of authority, right.
We trust certain people who wear certain clothes because they're
in certain roles. Right. We've talked about that a lot
before on this show. And if you've got someone of
authority explaining to you why this is right and this
(37:43):
is good. Um, unless you have the ammunition to back up,
you know, either philosophically or morally or whatever, that this
is wrong, then you may be easily manipulated. Yeah, yeah,
it's it's true. And we want to emphasize again that
these were initial reports. The initial reports seemed to change
(38:05):
and the immediate aftermath, nine people are arrested on charges
of sexual abuse, cruelty to animals, these related things, including
the original person who called from Ohio, Nicole Bernard, so
Louis Lamonica Jr. Austin Tree Bernard, the third, Alan R. Pearson,
his wife, Patricia Pearson, Robin Lamonica, Paul Fontineaux, uh, and
(38:27):
then Louis Mowbray, who will become more important as the
story continues. It's interesting that Charles read that that investigator,
that deputy sheriff said that based on the interrogations of
some of these folks, it wasn't super clear whether they
truly believed they were worshiping the devil or whether this
was just kind of an excuse to participate in pedophilia.
(38:48):
Rampant pedophilia right exactly. And this is where we run
into some uh contradicting narratives or different takes. So, writing
for an outfit called Theistic Satanism dot Com in two
thousand six, Diana Vera notes the initial accusations seemed to
quickly narrow and scope over the course of the investigation.
(39:11):
So he said that there were allegedly more than twenty
children who were victimized by the circle, but by the
end of July two thousand five, the number of alleged
victims have been whittled down to three per Vera's writing,
and the prosecutors decided eventually after a certain hearing, to
drop any claims involving satanism or occultism, and this was
(39:33):
victims of abuse, child abuse, right, not they don't have
bodies there. There's no evidence of DNA of murdering, right
right right. That's another that's another thing that Diana Vera
brings up, and she says, there's not physical evidence that
the children endure or that all these children endured. Uh discusion. Abuse, Yeah, yeah,
(39:56):
Torture is a good word, especially when you're considering something
like an infant, you know what I mean. So these
charges still included the abuse, but other theories alleged this
was a different sort of conspiracy, less a case of
satanic abuse and more a case of brainwashing. That it
was Louis Mowbray, not Trey Bernard, who was the ringleader.
(40:20):
And this is where we found an interesting tale from
Religion News blog. Yes, and it states that back in
two thousand eight, Lamonica Jr. That's the again, the pastor
we've been talking about this whole time is Lamonica Jr. Um.
He told a jury there in the parish where where
the church was, that his confession was in fact false
(40:41):
and for everything that he was confessing, um, including the
abuse of children, because in his mind it was the
only way listen to this to get his wife back
and to get his children back. Now that sounds insane.
It sounds insane, but it only gets stranger because then
(41:07):
his attorney comes through, a guy named Michael Field or
tile feel Um. He He maintains that this guy, Lamonica Jr.
Actually did falsely confess to this rape because in his mind,
or at least in his what his belief is his attorney,
is that this guy was being controlled by someone, by
(41:29):
a woman who was who believed herself to be a
prophet of God, and that Lamonica Jr. Then believed that
she was also the prophet or a prophet of God.
So it was it was a cult just operating on
a different level than maybe we fought, or at least
accorney of this religion news blog. Wait, so it was.
(41:52):
It was. It was not a Satanic cult at all.
It was worshiping some sort of false prophet godlike deity
wheels with and wheels. The idea here is essentially that
Lois Malbury, the prophet, had created this satanic abuse narrative
as a way of controlling the congregants. So she took
(42:15):
control of the church around two thousand and three, apparently,
but I've been in charge in all of the name
for a while. Beforehand. It was like and it started.
One of the people that this prophet Malbury or Malbory
to control over was was um, the wife of the
pastor right right, that's correct, and I mean so like
(42:38):
it started in his own home basically, at least according
to this story, Yeah, for a while, La Monica said
he had to wear a dress and to rubber snakes
representing his mother and his aunts because they were quote pharaohs.
This is a testimony in court. He said church members
weren't shaved his head and called him pharaoh as well. Uh.
He said that. Referring to Lois malbrid he said she
(43:02):
convinced herself she was like Moses and Tangipahoa was coming
out of Egypt. La Monica said, referring to the biblical
story about Moses leading people away from slavery in Egypt
and that pharaoh was blocking the way. Thus he was
Pharaoh with a little bit of performance art, and they
had to get him out of there. And in this environment,
the wives of La Monica and Bernard, according to this theory,
(43:24):
realized that they needed to take custody of their children
and free the way from Malbride to lead Tanjapehoa to
spiritual fulfillment by making up a story of satanic ritual
abuse perpetrated by their husbands. And then Lamonica said he
was told that he had to write down all these
(43:45):
dirty thoughts. He was forced to do this by the
church leadership, and this was a fictional diary of abuse.
But then he was told that having a sinful thought
is as bad as committing a sinful act. Uh, the
only way that he would be able to see his
kids again is if he got back on the right path.
(44:05):
The only way he could get back on the right
path was going to the police station and confessing two
things that never happened. That is, that is one of
the theories. I mean, it adds up in the most
Bonker's way possible. And both of the Monica's sons later
recanted their claims of abuse because they said, remember he
(44:25):
specifically said that he would he had been abusing them. Well,
I mean, I guess we we do have the evidence
that it had been scrubbed the crime scene, you know,
And yeah, I'm just saying, like, you know, maybe that
could account for any lack of physical evidence, but it
didn't seem like it was the most uh, let's say
methodical outfit, the most kind of you know what I mean,
(44:48):
like like not a super air tight case. That's what
I mean in terms of like, I don't know that
they would have been able to like strike every possible
scrap of physical evidence from the scene. You know, it
seems like it maybe would have acted in a panic
or in some out of desperation, but it doesn't seem
like it was the most organized or evil genius kind
of situation. Right, Like, I don't know if I buy that. Well,
(45:10):
you've also got the pastor the guy who is you know,
in the beginning of the story allegedly walking in or
we have an account of him walking into the police
station and confessing to all this stuff. If he knew
he was going to do that, then ostensibly you could
get rid of all of the evidence prior to walking
into that sheriff's office. Right. Um, there's so many weird
(45:33):
things going on here. Um, so let's talk about how
maybe this actually connects up to the show we mentioned
at the top of True Detective, Like where where what
are the similarities here? So pits Alto has not come
out and said, like, this is my inspiration for writing this.
He has said in interviews he said, you know, you
can google church crime Louisiana. You'll be surprised what you find.
(45:56):
So he is aware and too to some degree. And
this of course doesn't follow the plot of the True
Detective cult one to one. Uh. This it does seem
clear though, as you said, Matt, True Detective Season one
was inspired in part by events alleged to have taken
place at the Hosannah Church, and we know in real
(46:17):
life at the Hosannah Church something definitely happened. And now
the question remains how much of the actual real life
story is true. From what we can tell, the current
evidence indicates three possibilities. One, there genuinely was a theistic
satanic abuse ring in play, and maybe not everybody believed it.
(46:37):
Maybe there were just some, as you said, predators who
were taking the trappings and finding an easy way to
get what they actually wanted to The abuse narrative was
created by Mowbray as a way to threaten and control
members of the Hosannah community. And then three, some fuzzy
version of events did occur but then later became exaggerated
(46:57):
and then people, uh, several people involved had their self
defense mechanisms turned on, where then the story just becomes
muddled because people are trying to save themselves and the
thing is here too. We say brainwashing, We throw the
term around, but we know memory is treacherous and that's
why things like hypnotic regression don't bear out in a
(47:20):
lot of a lot of scientifically controlled studies. So people's
memories of things started to change, and then the opinion
of law enforcement started change. According to a detective for
the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's that was a tough one, Mike
the Phillips. There was no physical evidence of the occult
such as pentagram's drawn on the floor or spell books
(47:42):
that were never found, which is strange because initial reporting
said they were. After the hearing where the Phillips relay
this information, that's when prosecutors said, Okay, we're gonna drop
mentions of the occult from this case. And then going
back to Religion News blog, the cases mostly based on
statements made by three children, one girl and two boys,
(48:03):
who repeatedly were assaulted or forced to engage in sex
acts of at least twice a week from two thousand
to two thousand one at Hassanna Church and at a
home of three of its members. That's according to the Phillips.
He says there's at least one other victim who was
not mentioned in court. He also noted detectives found no
physical evidence of abuse except for some fluids on betting,
(48:27):
and that there were no actual videotapes ever found. So
in this one statement, in this interchange, he is denying
all the other stuff that initially came out. We listed
all those items that they found, boxes of docs and
tapes with morality plays on them. He's recanting that what
do you say, like that said it didn't happen, It
doesn't exist. That's according to him. Well, and so here's
(48:52):
where we kind of tie it back. Right, So if
you think about the True Detective series, you do have
that old dilapidated church right that's broken down. You've got
that school that's separate in this case rather than being
attached to the church facility. Then you've got that larger
conspiracy here right where for some people hearing this would think, well,
(49:13):
maybe to Phillips, and again, this is not a true statement.
This is a statement of opinion. Some people listening may think, well,
maybe it's being covered up right when you're hearing there's no, no,
those videotapes don't exist, those ones that allegedly had the
stuff on there for brainwashing, right, or maybe they just
found videos that were mundane that didn't have anything. Maybe
(49:34):
they did. But you know, people hear that statement there
are no videos, don't worry about it. Well, even the
idea of morality plays. I mean, that's more along the
lines of the stuff we were talking about earlier, right,
the scared straight kind of stuff like the you know,
it's not Satanic ritual sacrifice. Well yeah, and the big
so far stretch from that. So for for me personally,
(49:56):
it's less about is this is this in some way
occult are involved with Satanic rituals? Or is this a
child sex exploitation ring? Right of people that are involved
beyond just the ones who were accused, Right, Well, maybe
I'm sorry if I'm if I'm being redundant, but that
is a big part of true detective is a lot
of the Satanic trappings were just that it was sort
(50:18):
of a smoke screen. It was like a subterfuge to
draw attention away from the fact that it was Actually
it was almost a red herring, right, I mean, you
know it was. It was. It was part of the
ritualized sex abuse, but it didn't really seem like these
members were in it for much more than flexing some
weird power thing, you know, and and getting what they want,
(50:38):
which in this case was young children. You know. I
mean it's you know I mean in the show, is
what I'm saying. Yeah, Well, in any case, in this
real life example, there were ostensibly real children affected by this,
um perhaps more than we know, UM, or that officially
got to have their day in court or at least
(51:00):
be represented in some way. And UM, it's really horrible
and we're just putting this out here because we have
had we've done several episodes now at this point where
young people, including children, have been abused by adults. I
can't even count the number actually of specific cases that
we have discussed this on at least four. I want
(51:23):
to say, UM, I think objectively it's one of the
most abhorrant things that can occur in reality. And we're
just we're putting this out there that, UM, if you
know of anything like this occurring, do not be afraid
to speak out and do not be afraid to seek
(51:44):
help because there are people that can help. You. Make
sure to talk to your kids about always being honest
with you about if they're putting any kind of uncomfortable situation,
whether it's at school or wherever. Not that we're trying
to launch a witch hunt or anything, but it's just
important to like have that dialogue because that's uslate. How
these things fall between the cracks is when there's no communication.
(52:04):
If you know of or suspect that a child may
be in danger of abuse, do not hesitate to take action.
You can visit sites like child Welfare dot gov here
in the States, where you can find a state by
state list of resources and twenty four seven abuse reporting hotlines.
You can also report anonymously, so do not We cannot
(52:28):
emphasize this enough. Do not hesitate if you are capable
of helping someone, or capable of getting the authorities involved
and preventing further crimes of this nature. We also want
to know what other stories are out there, Matt. You
(52:48):
you mentioned that True Detectives seem to be teetering on
the edge of cosmic horror for so long. Uh, we
want to know what else is out there? Just a
little bit past the light. What are the strange stories
in your neck of the woods. What are the bizarre
things that happened that were maybe reported for a weekend
and then disappeared. You can tell us about these on Facebook.
(53:12):
You can tell us on Instagram. You can tell us
on Twitter. We particularly recommend our community page. Here's where
it gets crazy on Facebook. If you want to give
us a call, your voice made gun on the air,
but your voice will at least be heard by us.
That number is one eight three three S d w
(53:32):
y t K and really quickly back to the Here's
where it gets crazy. If you want to join UM,
it'll ask you a question and all the question is
his name, one of the hosts of the show. But
folks often go the extra mile, and our fantastic mods
send us some of these screenshots. And this one says
Matt the nice guy who loves phone calls Noel, who
gets irritated as hell if you call him, and it
(53:53):
could have been taken care of through text. And then
there's been who really really hates phone calls. Heaven forbid
anyone us to talk to him. L O L. People
who just want to talk to you, Ben, They really
do have no regrets, but though it is seriously a
great way to get in touch with us. We when
I say we, I mean Matt compiles these fantastic recordings
(54:16):
and we learn a lot. So please feel free always
to give us a call. Yeah, no pressure, All right,
here we go. Guys. If you don't want to do
any of that, you can still get in touch with
us with a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy
at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't Want
(54:50):
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