October 31, 2024 • 22 mins
McKamey Manor, an extreme haunted house attraction that features survival horror-style events was founded by Russell McKamey and ran on his property in San Diego until it was moved to Tennessee in 2017. McKamey Manor has been the center of much controversy over the years due to how extreme the tours are for participants which often involves various styles of torture such as waterboarding, binding and gagging, force feeding them various unknown substances, and much much more. Participants have to sign a 40-page waiver, be 21 years old (or 18-20 with a parent's signature), and be physically and mentally cleared by a doctor before they can participate. The only entry fee for the tour is four cans of dog food or a large bag of dog food for Russ' dogs. Not only has the manor garnered negative attention, but Russ himself has for his recently dropped charges filed by his girlfriend and his video posts on YouTube and Tik Tok.
SourcesMonster Inside: America's Most Extreme Haunted House (Hulu Documentary)
The Tennessean (2024)The Guardian (2015)WKRN (2024)Wikipedia USA Today (2019)People (2024)
Audio:Son Son Genovese (YouTube)- Russ McKamey admits he tortures poeple and 3 deaths at McKamey Manor
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/dark-deeds--6216218/support.
SourcesMonster Inside: America's Most Extreme Haunted House (Hulu Documentary)
The Tennessean (2024)The Guardian (2015)WKRN (2024)Wikipedia USA Today (2019)People (2024)
Audio:Son Son Genovese (YouTube)- Russ McKamey admits he tortures poeple and 3 deaths at McKamey Manor
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/dark-deeds--6216218/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello listeners, and welcome back to another episode of its
Crime Time. This is season three. I know that it
has been a very long time and this season should
have come out years ago, but today I chose to
discuss something entirely different from my usual It's been viral
on TikTok. There's a lot of videos about it online
(00:22):
and I've never heard of it before, and my husband
suggests that I do a podcast episode about this. Now
it is a lot different. I will be diving into
mcamie Manor. All right, everyone, it's crime Time. Not much
(01:04):
is really out there about Russ mccamee, the owner and
mastermind behind this twisted haunted house attraction known as mccamie Manor.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
But I'm going to kind of go into a.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Little bit of detail about the person that he is
and kind of where he came from and things of
that nature, just to better understand him. His full name
is Russell Allen mccamee, and he was born on January
twenty eighth, nineteen fifty nine to Joan m and Ross
Allen mccamee in Fullerton, California. Joan and Ross were from Nebraska,
(01:38):
but they moved to California after Ross retired from the
Marine Corps. In November of nineteen seventy one, after seventeen
years of being married, Joan and Ross were divorced.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Russ chose to live with his mother, but he was
still very close with his father.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
At this time. They did absolutely everything together. They both
shared a love of Halloween and all things spooky.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Rusk graduated from Sunny.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Hills High School and chose to follow in the footsteps
of his father by joining the military. He joined the
Navy in nineteen seventy nine, but before joining the Navy,
he majored in theater studies. In nineteen eighty three, Russ
became part of the Edmund Department on the USS Jason.
In nineteen ninety, he was part of the Counseling and
Assistance Center SLASH, Drug and Alcohol Advisor Office on the
(02:24):
USS Independence. While on board the ship, he would attempt
to entertain his colleagues by organizing haunts on the naval ship.
Mcamee served in the Navy for twenty two twenty three years.
Mcamee often describes himself as a straight laced, conservative guy
who does not curse, smoke, us, alcohol, or any illegal substances.
(02:45):
His favorite movies are Alfred Hitchcock horror movies and mystery thrillers.
In two thousand, Russ founded a survival style haunted house
on his property, and I'm not exactly assured that it
was known as mcami Manor at this time, but he
did have this haunted house on his property, and it
(03:09):
wasn't quite obviously what it is today or what it
became at first. The manner is considered a pioneer of
extreme haunted attractions. It was originally located on this property
until it was relocated to Gennesee in twenty seventeen. The
tours of mckamie Manor are so brutal they almost seem
(03:29):
like a movie when you watch them. So every tour
is under percent real, but if you look up the
videos and the way that they do the recording, and
the torture that they put people through, it literally they.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
It looks like you're watching a horror movie.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
There's a very extensive list of rules and descriptions regarding
what tourists will or can experience during their tours. Tourists
must be twenty one years old or older, or they
can be eighteen to twenty, but they have to have
a parent's permission. Tourists must be mentally and physically cleared
by a doctor and sign a forty plus page waiver.
(04:08):
The tour lasts eight to ten hours, and anyone who
wins wins twenty thousand dollars. Each tour features two to
three tourists and each attraction is tailored to the individual participants. Now,
I have heard of a few tours being tailored to
only one person or one person taking a tour at
a time, and that seems to be the norm recently.
(04:30):
During recent years, one person will go through a tour
at a time. During the tour, participants are tortured in
any way the manner volunteers to fit. Waterboarding, being tased, drugging,
being forced to eat and drink unknown items including vomit, restraints,
and tons more are part of the attraction. People have
(04:52):
had their eyes covered with duct tape. The events submerged
in water, braided mud, and bound and placed in two
deep freezers. There is a lot of videos out there
that show tourists encounters at the manner. Russ records his
own videos of the tourists, and there's some backlash about this,
which we're going to get into a little later, but
(05:14):
basically he doesn't place all of the video clips into
his videos he posts, so there might be incidents of
torture that are really extreme that he kind of leaves out.
There's parts that he leaves out just to make it
look not as bad as it is, or maybe they
do something that is way over the top, way illegal,
(05:34):
and he doesn't place those in the videos. Russ says,
it's more of a mental game and you kind of
live out your own horror movie.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
But in a relatively safe way.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
The only requirement to enter other than the above listed requirements,
which is the age, the mental and physical evaluation by
a doctor, and of course the waiver is that you
pay them by giving them four cans of dog food
or a large bag of dog food.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Became said. The manner is safe, but it can be dangerous. Quote.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
It can be dangerous because of the type of activities
you have to do. There are some really big epic
stunts that are involved. And you're dealing with being buried alive,
you're dealing with fires, you're dealing with heights, there's a
lot of water, live critters. If you aren't paying attention,
they can be dangerous. Then in the evening the real
show begins, and I have to remember all the things
(06:25):
I taught them. It's safe as long as people going
through it use good common sense and understand this is
a game and not reality. This is not like any
other haunt you've ever seen. This one could actually kill
you if you do not pay attention.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
End quote.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
So online you could locate tons of articles, many videos
filmed by tourists themselves describing their experiences.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
People do.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Kind of little vlogs or you know, little documentaries describing
their experiences. And I will say that a lot of them,
the majority of them.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Speak negatively of became a manner.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
There's some people that handle the torture and they act
like they love it, and they've went.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Back multiple times.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
But for the most part, people say that the way
they were treated.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
In there, they'll never go back.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
And most of that stems from you have this waiver,
you have this safe word. But when you're telling these
volunteers to stop whatever they're doing during the torture because
it's bothering you, they don't stop.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
And they.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Have a very known reputation, I should say, for doing
that where they don't stop no matter you know what
the person is is screaming with the person's yelling. If
the person's just too scared or in too much pain
can handle it and they yell stop or whatever the
safe word is, they do not stop. They just the
(08:00):
person deal with the rest of the torture. So there
is a video made by Amy Milligan and she describes
what she went through during the haunt. She did give
mckamie Manner a positive review, so that mcamie released the
video of her experiences for evidence, but the video is
allegedly missing several pieces, so mcamie wouldn't release her video
(08:22):
of her torture and of her tour until she gave
mcamee Manner a positive review, even though she did not
have a positive experience, and when she finally got that video,
it was missing some of the.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Bigger chunks of the torture.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I guess she's shoved, she's dried by her hair, a blindfolded,
slapped soaked with water, Her and her fellow victim are
forced to make animal noises and are spun around until
they became dizzy. The victims are covered in fake blood
during other gross substances, and she's seen in the bottom
of a freezer full of dirty water, being repeatedly slapped as.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
The tormenters make her sing songs.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
She then lies down and has live roaches placed all
over her face and her hair. She said that one
of the worst parts of her experiences was when her
hands were tied and she was forced into a pull
of water with a cage over the top. Her head
was submerged several times and she thought she was going
to drown.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
I cry over every little thing if I hear about
Mcamie mannor I freak out.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
I'm so stressed. It gets so stressful.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
You give so much trust to them and they just
break it by waterboarding you and slapping you. I'm telling
them I can't breathe, and they're just laughing and doing
it more.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
End quote.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
When she has seen complaining in the video that she
can't breathe, Mcamei has started telling her that she only
made it through part of one of the four zones,
that they really didn't do anything to her, and that
she should be embarrassed. Becamey threatened to put her back
in the haunt unless she started crying, to which she
began sobbing. And then he tells us his accomplices to
get her out of there. Mcami Manor has now went
(09:52):
viral on type talk, and there's been a search for
the lost footage since Russ McCamey edits footage to place
on his YouTube, which does not show all of the
tortures that the tourists and door like had mentioned. A
YouTuber and TikToker named Reckless Ben has somehow claimed to
have a hard drive with hidden footage from the Manor,
which he has released online.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Also, Russ mccameee has his own YouTube.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
He has his own TikTok where he essentially talks about
the manner and how illegals some of the things they
do are.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
The worst of.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
It is that Russ mccamee is actually, in my opinion
and a lot of other opinion, a criminal who essentially
got away with what he had done.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
And I'm not even talking about what he did at
the Manor.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Russ mccamie was arrested at his home in Summertown, Tennessee,
on July nineteenth, twenty twenty four, after he allegedly assaulted
his girlfriend. Charges were brought against him for trying to
kill his girlfriend on more than one occasion. He strangled
her to the point where she lost consciousness during an
altercation and he raped and strangled her, causing her to
(10:57):
lose consciousness a second time.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I guess at the.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Point where she did report it, but unfortunately, the charges
were dropped against Russ. During a hearing on September twenty third,
District Attorney General Brent Cooper decided not to prosecute Russ.
He said he had spent two hours reviewing evidence and
he concluded that nothing in the case was prosecutable against Russ.
Russ's attorney released a statement quote, Brent Cooper, who has
(11:26):
been a prosecutor for his entire twenty four.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Year career and the elected district.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Attorney General for the twenty second Judicial District for the
last ten years, spent two hours personally reviewing the key
evidence from our investigation of this case before concluding that
nothing in this case was prosecutable against mister mccameey. General
Cooper met with mister mccamy's accuser in person and took
her claims and responses to our evidence in account into
account before.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Making this decision.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Mister mccamie is grateful for the diligence and professionalism of
both the Lawrence County Sheriff's Department and General cooper in
handling the case. Unfortunately, the fervorst surrounding these and other
allegations against mister mccamee is severely uninformed. There is also
a prominent trend in oral culture of exploiting victim's status
for attention and relevance, which makes dedicating resources to justice
(12:14):
for real victims more difficult than it should be. Most said,
of all, there remains a group of unined people who
have nothing better to do with their lives but harass
mister mcamee and obsess over his every move. Anyone evaluating
the merit of other allegations against mister mcamee should strongly
considered the outcome of this case and the credibility of
those who instigated it, which includes several individuals featured in
(12:36):
the twenty twenty three Hulu documentary about mister mccamee and
who are also sources for the ongoing Attorney General investigation.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
End quote. So that was a quote by.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Davis Griffin, and that was Russ mccamey's attorney. I do
put my opinion in here once in a blue moon,
and I'm going to say that that is one of
the most disgusting quotes that I've ever heard. I feel
like he is definitely victim blaming Russ his girlfriends or
his girlfriend who accused him of doing these things. He
(13:09):
did it on multiple occasions. And if you can, if
you see what he does to people, like for fun
in his haunted house, I really wouldn't put it past
him to kind of torture his girlfriends for his own enjoyment,
his own pleasure, because if you watch the videos, he's
enjoying every second of the torture in the haunted house.
(13:31):
He's getting a lot of pleasure out of it, and
you can see it in the video. So I am
disgusted that his lawyer would basically imply that Russ's girlfriend
was just kind of, you know, making it up, and
she's not a victim, she's pretending to be a victim,
and that makes other victims look bad. And he's essentially
(13:54):
saying that mcamee's character is great and he's amazing and
blah blah blah, and people should look at the type
of people that are accusing him and basically implying that
they're not good people either. And yeah, it's terrible, but
those charges were dropped so he was not charged for
(14:15):
any of the alleged crimes of abusing his girlfriend, raping her,
strangling her, things of that nature. He's clear on that
deputies have also been called to mccamee manor several times,
but the house remained open. A Hulu documentary was created
(14:35):
titled Monster Inside America's Most Extreme Haunted House. It featured
interviews with participants of the tours and one of Russ's
good friends and I guess the man that.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Recorded the tours for him.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
And after the documentary, thousands of people signed a petition
to have the manner shut down because this documentary revealed
a lot of what mccameey did to the these people,
how he treated these people, and how their lives have
been changed since they went through the manner. I do
recommend watching the documentary if you want to learn a
little bit more about this. It's a pretty good documentary.
(15:12):
It definitely discusses a lot more than what I've put
in here. And this controversy has now led to an
investigation being conducted by Attorney General Jonathan Scremetti. Scrimetti sent
a letter to mccameie requesting documents and information pertaining to
some of the claims of past participants at the manor,
Scremetti raised concerns about mckamie's business practices because there's no
(15:35):
way to stop the tour or win the twenty thousand
dollars prize, So you can't finish the tour. No one
ever has, No one's ever won the twenty thousand dollars.
People were saying it's because Russ doesn't even have the
twenty thousand dollars. He isn't rich by any means. He
does not make money off of the mannor remember the
donation is just all of food. And at one point
(15:58):
on the documentary, he's seen working at Walmart, and somebody
on the documentary visits the Walmart and they see him
working there. And by the way, I am absolutely not
shaming him for working there. I'm nothing special and I
do not judge where people work and things of that.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Natured is a job.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
But I'm just kind of explaining that that's what people
were doing on the documentary, and they were saying, he
does not have the twenty thousand. He lives, you know,
relatively modestly. He doesn't have a lot of money from
this manner. So they're saying that there's no way you
would ever get the twenty thousand, and he makes it
impossible to beat the manner so that he doesn't have
(16:38):
to give up the twenty thousand. Mcamee responded by filing
a thirty two page lawsuit against the Tennessee Attorney General.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
He claimed that the general's.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Request violates his first, fourth, fifth, and fourteenth Amendment rights.
He stated the investigation is to prevent him from engaging
in lawful conduct on his own private property.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
The lawsuit was dismissed.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Put Russ fout on another lawsuit against Hulu and a
past participant of the tour because of the documentary. The
lawsuit was dropped against Hulu, but continues against the person
interviewed in the documentary. There is also a guy. He's
known as Jeremy M. But apparently he just took the
(17:21):
tour to kind of expose what they do, and he
wanted his video released by McCamey, so he took the
tour and it was released on YouTube by mcamee. Of
Jeremy M's tour of the Manner. He went in to
expose them, as I said, and apparently they discovered what
he was out to do, so they titled the video
(17:44):
Jeremy EM's Tour Portrait of a Mole, so they called
him a mole. And you can see how they're treating
him in the video. When they found out he's only
there to expose them, they treat him extra bad.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
They do talk about that in the video.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
And this video, if you watch it, I will warn
you it's really graphic. I don't actually know how it
is allowed to be on YouTube, just based on YouTube's
you know, rules and things of that nature about posting,
and you know, in recent years they've changed a lot.
So it is a pretty bad video and it's been
known to be the worst of mcamie Manor. So if
(18:21):
you're interested in that, just looks that up. It's Jeremy
M's Tour Portrait of a Mole, and I will warn
you it's a little rough. And I guess that's kind
of what they do to punish people that try to
expose them or try to, you know, put what they
do out there. And apparently the worst of that video
(18:44):
isn't even on the video because remember they don't release
the worst parts.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
They cut them out.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Mccamie Manor is still operating today. I did see on
the documentary as well as a little bit online and
smarts that Russ operates it on his property alone, so
he doesn't really have a lot of volunteers working for him.
Apparently there have been people that say that he has
just met them at his house or met them on
(19:12):
his property and taken them through the entire tour himself.
He does all of the torturing, all of the stunts himself,
and he records it. He usually wears a camera on
his head and he records the whole tour. So apparently
the manner is not doing well just because of all
of the controversy and of course the petition to close
(19:34):
it down. The petition has two hundred thousand, two hundred
thousand signatures requested and there the last time it was
looked into, they were very close to the two hundred
thousand mark. So but you know how that works, these petitions,
I mean, they rarely ever work.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
People rarely ever agree.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
To do what's in the petition whoever they send it to.
So I do believe that Russ will just continue to
do it. I do believe that he just enjoys torturing people.
He enjoys, he gets pleasure out of it. He enjoys
treating people that way. And I know that he loves
haunted things and spooky stuff and he wants.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
To survival haunted house. And that's fine.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
He could definitely continue doing what he does if he
changed up the rules of the manner, changed up how
it how it goes. I mean, I think he would
have been in the clear. He would have been okay
had he stopped it when people say stop. Because when
people request that they want to leave the manner that
(20:43):
they're done, they quit, he doesn't stop his participants. You know,
they're screaming, they they're scared, they wanted to quit. They're
yelling the safe wort and the volunteers just laugh at them,
belittle them, smack them around, and.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Treat them even worse.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
You know, obviously call them nae, call them a chicken,
you know, things of that nature. So if he would
have went about it differently, I would say he probably
wouldn't have been in this mess because no one can
win it. They endure torture and then they don't stop
the doors when they're supposed to. But it is still
(21:18):
running today. Just go online and check out some of
the videos and the articles. Like I said, and check
the documentary out and you'll see a little bit about
what I'm talking about. And I truly just believe that
he gets pleasure out of torturing people and that's the
type of person he is. And a lot of people
have said it's because of his time in the military
(21:40):
and how they they do put you through those types
of torture, mental torture, and they claim that that messed
him up and that made him want to do it
to other people and made him enjoy it. No, obviously,
I'm not sure if that's the case, but that a
lot of people out there speculate that that is why,
because he had been through things like that in the military.
All Right, everyone, that concludes this episode of its Crime Time.
(22:04):
I hope you enjoy it, and until next time,
Hello listeners, and welcome back to another episode of its
Crime Time. This is season three. I know that it
has been a very long time and this season should
have come out years ago, but today I chose to
discuss something entirely different from my usual It's been viral
on TikTok. There's a lot of videos about it online
(00:22):
and I've never heard of it before, and my husband
suggests that I do a podcast episode about this. Now
it is a lot different. I will be diving into
mcamie Manor. All right, everyone, it's crime Time. Not much
(01:04):
is really out there about Russ mccamee, the owner and
mastermind behind this twisted haunted house attraction known as mccamie Manor.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
But I'm going to kind of go into a.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Little bit of detail about the person that he is
and kind of where he came from and things of
that nature, just to better understand him. His full name
is Russell Allen mccamee, and he was born on January
twenty eighth, nineteen fifty nine to Joan m and Ross
Allen mccamee in Fullerton, California. Joan and Ross were from Nebraska,
(01:38):
but they moved to California after Ross retired from the
Marine Corps. In November of nineteen seventy one, after seventeen
years of being married, Joan and Ross were divorced.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Russ chose to live with his mother, but he was
still very close with his father.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
At this time. They did absolutely everything together. They both
shared a love of Halloween and all things spooky.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Rusk graduated from Sunny.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Hills High School and chose to follow in the footsteps
of his father by joining the military. He joined the
Navy in nineteen seventy nine, but before joining the Navy,
he majored in theater studies. In nineteen eighty three, Russ
became part of the Edmund Department on the USS Jason.
In nineteen ninety, he was part of the Counseling and
Assistance Center SLASH, Drug and Alcohol Advisor Office on the
(02:24):
USS Independence. While on board the ship, he would attempt
to entertain his colleagues by organizing haunts on the naval ship.
Mcamee served in the Navy for twenty two twenty three years.
Mcamee often describes himself as a straight laced, conservative guy
who does not curse, smoke, us, alcohol, or any illegal substances.
(02:45):
His favorite movies are Alfred Hitchcock horror movies and mystery thrillers.
In two thousand, Russ founded a survival style haunted house
on his property, and I'm not exactly assured that it
was known as mcami Manor at this time, but he
did have this haunted house on his property, and it
(03:09):
wasn't quite obviously what it is today or what it
became at first. The manner is considered a pioneer of
extreme haunted attractions. It was originally located on this property
until it was relocated to Gennesee in twenty seventeen. The
tours of mckamie Manor are so brutal they almost seem
(03:29):
like a movie when you watch them. So every tour
is under percent real, but if you look up the
videos and the way that they do the recording, and
the torture that they put people through, it literally they.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
It looks like you're watching a horror movie.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
There's a very extensive list of rules and descriptions regarding
what tourists will or can experience during their tours. Tourists
must be twenty one years old or older, or they
can be eighteen to twenty, but they have to have
a parent's permission. Tourists must be mentally and physically cleared
by a doctor and sign a forty plus page waiver.
(04:08):
The tour lasts eight to ten hours, and anyone who
wins wins twenty thousand dollars. Each tour features two to
three tourists and each attraction is tailored to the individual participants. Now,
I have heard of a few tours being tailored to
only one person or one person taking a tour at
a time, and that seems to be the norm recently.
(04:30):
During recent years, one person will go through a tour
at a time. During the tour, participants are tortured in
any way the manner volunteers to fit. Waterboarding, being tased, drugging,
being forced to eat and drink unknown items including vomit, restraints,
and tons more are part of the attraction. People have
(04:52):
had their eyes covered with duct tape. The events submerged
in water, braided mud, and bound and placed in two
deep freezers. There is a lot of videos out there
that show tourists encounters at the manner. Russ records his
own videos of the tourists, and there's some backlash about this,
which we're going to get into a little later, but
(05:14):
basically he doesn't place all of the video clips into
his videos he posts, so there might be incidents of
torture that are really extreme that he kind of leaves out.
There's parts that he leaves out just to make it
look not as bad as it is, or maybe they
do something that is way over the top, way illegal,
(05:34):
and he doesn't place those in the videos. Russ says,
it's more of a mental game and you kind of
live out your own horror movie.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
But in a relatively safe way.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
The only requirement to enter other than the above listed requirements,
which is the age, the mental and physical evaluation by
a doctor, and of course the waiver is that you
pay them by giving them four cans of dog food
or a large bag of dog food.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Became said. The manner is safe, but it can be dangerous. Quote.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
It can be dangerous because of the type of activities
you have to do. There are some really big epic
stunts that are involved. And you're dealing with being buried alive,
you're dealing with fires, you're dealing with heights, there's a
lot of water, live critters. If you aren't paying attention,
they can be dangerous. Then in the evening the real
show begins, and I have to remember all the things
(06:25):
I taught them. It's safe as long as people going
through it use good common sense and understand this is
a game and not reality. This is not like any
other haunt you've ever seen. This one could actually kill
you if you do not pay attention.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
End quote.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
So online you could locate tons of articles, many videos
filmed by tourists themselves describing their experiences.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
People do.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Kind of little vlogs or you know, little documentaries describing
their experiences. And I will say that a lot of them,
the majority of them.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Speak negatively of became a manner.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
There's some people that handle the torture and they act
like they love it, and they've went.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Back multiple times.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
But for the most part, people say that the way
they were treated.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
In there, they'll never go back.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
And most of that stems from you have this waiver,
you have this safe word. But when you're telling these
volunteers to stop whatever they're doing during the torture because
it's bothering you, they don't stop.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
And they.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Have a very known reputation, I should say, for doing
that where they don't stop no matter you know what
the person is is screaming with the person's yelling. If
the person's just too scared or in too much pain
can handle it and they yell stop or whatever the
safe word is, they do not stop. They just the
(08:00):
person deal with the rest of the torture. So there
is a video made by Amy Milligan and she describes
what she went through during the haunt. She did give
mckamie Manner a positive review, so that mcamie released the
video of her experiences for evidence, but the video is
allegedly missing several pieces, so mcamie wouldn't release her video
(08:22):
of her torture and of her tour until she gave
mcamee Manner a positive review, even though she did not
have a positive experience, and when she finally got that video,
it was missing some of the.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Bigger chunks of the torture.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
I guess she's shoved, she's dried by her hair, a blindfolded,
slapped soaked with water, Her and her fellow victim are
forced to make animal noises and are spun around until
they became dizzy. The victims are covered in fake blood
during other gross substances, and she's seen in the bottom
of a freezer full of dirty water, being repeatedly slapped as.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
The tormenters make her sing songs.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
She then lies down and has live roaches placed all
over her face and her hair. She said that one
of the worst parts of her experiences was when her
hands were tied and she was forced into a pull
of water with a cage over the top. Her head
was submerged several times and she thought she was going
to drown.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
I cry over every little thing if I hear about
Mcamie mannor I freak out.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
I'm so stressed. It gets so stressful.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
You give so much trust to them and they just
break it by waterboarding you and slapping you. I'm telling
them I can't breathe, and they're just laughing and doing
it more.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
End quote.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
When she has seen complaining in the video that she
can't breathe, Mcamei has started telling her that she only
made it through part of one of the four zones,
that they really didn't do anything to her, and that
she should be embarrassed. Becamey threatened to put her back
in the haunt unless she started crying, to which she
began sobbing. And then he tells us his accomplices to
get her out of there. Mcami Manor has now went
(09:52):
viral on type talk, and there's been a search for
the lost footage since Russ McCamey edits footage to place
on his YouTube, which does not show all of the
tortures that the tourists and door like had mentioned. A
YouTuber and TikToker named Reckless Ben has somehow claimed to
have a hard drive with hidden footage from the Manor,
which he has released online.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Also, Russ mccameee has his own YouTube.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
He has his own TikTok where he essentially talks about
the manner and how illegals some of the things they
do are.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
The worst of.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
It is that Russ mccamee is actually, in my opinion
and a lot of other opinion, a criminal who essentially
got away with what he had done.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
And I'm not even talking about what he did at
the Manor.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Russ mccamie was arrested at his home in Summertown, Tennessee,
on July nineteenth, twenty twenty four, after he allegedly assaulted
his girlfriend. Charges were brought against him for trying to
kill his girlfriend on more than one occasion. He strangled
her to the point where she lost consciousness during an
altercation and he raped and strangled her, causing her to
(10:57):
lose consciousness a second time.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I guess at the.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
Point where she did report it, but unfortunately, the charges
were dropped against Russ. During a hearing on September twenty third,
District Attorney General Brent Cooper decided not to prosecute Russ.
He said he had spent two hours reviewing evidence and
he concluded that nothing in the case was prosecutable against Russ.
Russ's attorney released a statement quote, Brent Cooper, who has
(11:26):
been a prosecutor for his entire twenty four.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Year career and the elected district.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Attorney General for the twenty second Judicial District for the
last ten years, spent two hours personally reviewing the key
evidence from our investigation of this case before concluding that
nothing in this case was prosecutable against mister mccameey. General
Cooper met with mister mccamy's accuser in person and took
her claims and responses to our evidence in account into
account before.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Making this decision.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Mister mccamie is grateful for the diligence and professionalism of
both the Lawrence County Sheriff's Department and General cooper in
handling the case. Unfortunately, the fervorst surrounding these and other
allegations against mister mccamee is severely uninformed. There is also
a prominent trend in oral culture of exploiting victim's status
for attention and relevance, which makes dedicating resources to justice
(12:14):
for real victims more difficult than it should be. Most said,
of all, there remains a group of unined people who
have nothing better to do with their lives but harass
mister mcamee and obsess over his every move. Anyone evaluating
the merit of other allegations against mister mcamee should strongly
considered the outcome of this case and the credibility of
those who instigated it, which includes several individuals featured in
(12:36):
the twenty twenty three Hulu documentary about mister mccamee and
who are also sources for the ongoing Attorney General investigation.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
End quote. So that was a quote by.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Davis Griffin, and that was Russ mccamey's attorney. I do
put my opinion in here once in a blue moon,
and I'm going to say that that is one of
the most disgusting quotes that I've ever heard. I feel
like he is definitely victim blaming Russ his girlfriends or
his girlfriend who accused him of doing these things. He
(13:09):
did it on multiple occasions. And if you can, if
you see what he does to people, like for fun
in his haunted house, I really wouldn't put it past
him to kind of torture his girlfriends for his own enjoyment,
his own pleasure, because if you watch the videos, he's
enjoying every second of the torture in the haunted house.
(13:31):
He's getting a lot of pleasure out of it, and
you can see it in the video. So I am
disgusted that his lawyer would basically imply that Russ's girlfriend
was just kind of, you know, making it up, and
she's not a victim, she's pretending to be a victim,
and that makes other victims look bad. And he's essentially
(13:54):
saying that mcamee's character is great and he's amazing and
blah blah blah, and people should look at the type
of people that are accusing him and basically implying that
they're not good people either. And yeah, it's terrible, but
those charges were dropped so he was not charged for
(14:15):
any of the alleged crimes of abusing his girlfriend, raping her,
strangling her, things of that nature. He's clear on that
deputies have also been called to mccamee manor several times,
but the house remained open. A Hulu documentary was created
(14:35):
titled Monster Inside America's Most Extreme Haunted House. It featured
interviews with participants of the tours and one of Russ's
good friends and I guess the man that.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Recorded the tours for him.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
And after the documentary, thousands of people signed a petition
to have the manner shut down because this documentary revealed
a lot of what mccameey did to the these people,
how he treated these people, and how their lives have
been changed since they went through the manner. I do
recommend watching the documentary if you want to learn a
little bit more about this. It's a pretty good documentary.
(15:12):
It definitely discusses a lot more than what I've put
in here. And this controversy has now led to an
investigation being conducted by Attorney General Jonathan Scremetti. Scrimetti sent
a letter to mccameie requesting documents and information pertaining to
some of the claims of past participants at the manor,
Scremetti raised concerns about mckamie's business practices because there's no
(15:35):
way to stop the tour or win the twenty thousand
dollars prize, So you can't finish the tour. No one
ever has, No one's ever won the twenty thousand dollars.
People were saying it's because Russ doesn't even have the
twenty thousand dollars. He isn't rich by any means. He
does not make money off of the mannor remember the
donation is just all of food. And at one point
(15:58):
on the documentary, he's seen working at Walmart, and somebody
on the documentary visits the Walmart and they see him
working there. And by the way, I am absolutely not
shaming him for working there. I'm nothing special and I
do not judge where people work and things of that.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Natured is a job.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
But I'm just kind of explaining that that's what people
were doing on the documentary, and they were saying, he
does not have the twenty thousand. He lives, you know,
relatively modestly. He doesn't have a lot of money from
this manner. So they're saying that there's no way you
would ever get the twenty thousand, and he makes it
impossible to beat the manner so that he doesn't have
(16:38):
to give up the twenty thousand. Mcamee responded by filing
a thirty two page lawsuit against the Tennessee Attorney General.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
He claimed that the general's.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Request violates his first, fourth, fifth, and fourteenth Amendment rights.
He stated the investigation is to prevent him from engaging
in lawful conduct on his own private property.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
The lawsuit was dismissed.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Put Russ fout on another lawsuit against Hulu and a
past participant of the tour because of the documentary. The
lawsuit was dropped against Hulu, but continues against the person
interviewed in the documentary. There is also a guy. He's
known as Jeremy M. But apparently he just took the
(17:21):
tour to kind of expose what they do, and he
wanted his video released by McCamey, so he took the
tour and it was released on YouTube by mcamee. Of
Jeremy M's tour of the Manner. He went in to
expose them, as I said, and apparently they discovered what
he was out to do, so they titled the video
(17:44):
Jeremy EM's Tour Portrait of a Mole, so they called
him a mole. And you can see how they're treating
him in the video. When they found out he's only
there to expose them, they treat him extra bad.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
They do talk about that in the video.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
And this video, if you watch it, I will warn
you it's really graphic. I don't actually know how it
is allowed to be on YouTube, just based on YouTube's
you know, rules and things of that nature about posting,
and you know, in recent years they've changed a lot.
So it is a pretty bad video and it's been
known to be the worst of mcamie Manor. So if
(18:21):
you're interested in that, just looks that up. It's Jeremy
M's Tour Portrait of a Mole, and I will warn
you it's a little rough. And I guess that's kind
of what they do to punish people that try to
expose them or try to, you know, put what they
do out there. And apparently the worst of that video
(18:44):
isn't even on the video because remember they don't release
the worst parts.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
They cut them out.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Mccamie Manor is still operating today. I did see on
the documentary as well as a little bit online and
smarts that Russ operates it on his property alone, so
he doesn't really have a lot of volunteers working for him.
Apparently there have been people that say that he has
just met them at his house or met them on
(19:12):
his property and taken them through the entire tour himself.
He does all of the torturing, all of the stunts himself,
and he records it. He usually wears a camera on
his head and he records the whole tour. So apparently
the manner is not doing well just because of all
of the controversy and of course the petition to close
(19:34):
it down. The petition has two hundred thousand, two hundred
thousand signatures requested and there the last time it was
looked into, they were very close to the two hundred
thousand mark. So but you know how that works, these petitions,
I mean, they rarely ever work.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
People rarely ever agree.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
To do what's in the petition whoever they send it to.
So I do believe that Russ will just continue to
do it. I do believe that he just enjoys torturing people.
He enjoys, he gets pleasure out of it. He enjoys
treating people that way. And I know that he loves
haunted things and spooky stuff and he wants.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
To survival haunted house. And that's fine.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
He could definitely continue doing what he does if he
changed up the rules of the manner, changed up how
it how it goes. I mean, I think he would
have been in the clear. He would have been okay
had he stopped it when people say stop. Because when
people request that they want to leave the manner that
(20:43):
they're done, they quit, he doesn't stop his participants. You know,
they're screaming, they they're scared, they wanted to quit. They're
yelling the safe wort and the volunteers just laugh at them,
belittle them, smack them around, and.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Treat them even worse.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
You know, obviously call them nae, call them a chicken,
you know, things of that nature. So if he would
have went about it differently, I would say he probably
wouldn't have been in this mess because no one can
win it. They endure torture and then they don't stop
the doors when they're supposed to. But it is still
(21:18):
running today. Just go online and check out some of
the videos and the articles. Like I said, and check
the documentary out and you'll see a little bit about
what I'm talking about. And I truly just believe that
he gets pleasure out of torturing people and that's the
type of person he is. And a lot of people
have said it's because of his time in the military
(21:40):
and how they they do put you through those types
of torture, mental torture, and they claim that that messed
him up and that made him want to do it
to other people and made him enjoy it. No, obviously,
I'm not sure if that's the case, but that a
lot of people out there speculate that that is why,
because he had been through things like that in the military.
All Right, everyone, that concludes this episode of its Crime Time.
(22:04):
I hope you enjoy it, and until next time,
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