The Cult of David : Immanuel David AKA Charles Longo

Season 22 : Family Annihilators Part 2

Charles Longo changed his name to Immanuel David and began telling people that he was God. He was so convincing that his own family would not only believe him, but would jump to their deaths after he died.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
When a mother and her seven children fell to their
deaths from the eleventh floor balcony of a hotel in
Salt Lake City, anybody would immediately assume it was a
tragic accident. Unfortunately, that wasn't true, and people outside watched
in horror as a mother forced her children off the
balcony before jumping to her own death. This is monsters.

(00:49):
Charles Bruce Longo was born in nineteen thirty eight in Yonkers,
New York, the elder of two boys. His parents were
said to not be overly religious. He was raised Episcopalian,
and he was an altar boy in his youth, seen
as a window into his later role in life. He
was a prolific liar. He usually used that skill to

(01:12):
make excuses for why he was late to school, but
it said that he once convinced a police officer to
give him money so he could run away from his
abusive mother. There's no evidence that Charles had ever been abused,
and used the money to take a cab to his
uncle's house. After graduating from high school, Charles joined the
United States Army, and after basic training, he was sent

(01:34):
to Korea. He eventually returned to the States and began
training as a paratrooper at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
He was there that Charles met some other soldiers who
were Mormon and began attending church services with them. He
read the Book of Mormon, and by the time he
was discharged from the army in nineteen fifty nine, his

(01:55):
parents said he was fanatical. His mother said that he
told her quote it was the right answer to everything.
Of course, there was some positive influence by his dedication
to the church. He quit smoking and drinking, which went
against the religion's tenets. Unfortunately, the positives came with even

(02:15):
more negatives. He told his entire family that they were
doomed to hell because they didn't accept the teachings of
the LDS Church. He eventually told his godmother that he
was no longer her godson because she wouldn't convert to Mormonism.
He moved to Salt Lake City and enrolled at Brigham
Young University, majoring in Spanish. There he met a young

(02:37):
woman named Margaret Erickson, who had been baptized into the
Mormon Church in her home country of Sweden, and then
traveled to the US to attend the LDS run University.
Margaret's roommate would later say that Charles had a revelation
and declared that Margaret was to be his wife. Gordon Riddle,
the man who had baptized Margat in Sweden, said she

(03:00):
was soft spoken and had a quick, non skeptical acceptance
of the LDS Church. He said she was not the
type to challenge anything, and that was something that someone
like Charles would have gravitated to. People who become cult
leaders are looking for people who are timid, self conscious, depressed,
or any number of personality traits or mental health conditions

(03:23):
that will make them more easily follow them. Of course,
Morget dropped out of school so she could marry Charles
and be a quote good Mormon wife. It doesn't help
that the Mormon Church believes a woman's value mainly lies
in her marrying and dedicating herself to her husband's needs,
popping out as many babies as possible. Go off and

(03:45):
leave your angry comments. You know it's the truth. Charles
spent time in Uruguay in the early nineteen sixties on
a mission to spread Mormonism to the natives in the area.
Skip Danes, who was another person on the mission, said
that Charles had memorized the entire Book of Mormon and
was so zealous about converting people to Mormonism that he

(04:06):
would forget to eat. He eventually contracted hepatitis and became
jaundiced and had to be sent home. While in the
hospital in Montevideo, he baptized his doctor and two nurses
before leaving the country. Once back in the sal Lake
City area, Skip's parents let him stay with them while
he was recovering, but they eventually had to ask him

(04:28):
to leave because they were not Mormon and he would
not stop trying to convert them in true Mormon fashion.
The Longos began having children right away. Elizabeth was born
in nineteen sixty three and Rachel was born the following year.
They had Frank Anthony in nineteen sixty five, and he
would go on to be called Joshua after nineteen seventy.

(04:52):
Then Deborah was born in nineteen sixty six, Joseph was
born in nineteen sixty eight, and then Bruce was born
in nineteen seventy, but he would end up being called David,
which would only turn out to be strange because that
was the same year Charles changed his name to a
manual David, changing his entire family's last name, essentially making

(05:14):
his newest son David David. Margaret changed her name to
Rachel David, making both her and her second oldest daughter
both Rachel David. The name David has played a significant
role in many colts, as the leaders claim they are
a descendant of King David from the Bible. The New
Messiah is supposedly going to be a descendant of King David.

(05:36):
But I'm not sure that just changing your name makes
you anyone's descendant. I could change my name to Giles George,
but that won't make me related to the king. The
same thing was true about David Koresh as that was
not his birth name. He was born Vernon Wayne Howell.
And there's no way the New Messiah is going to
be a Vernon. No offense to any Vernon's out there.

(05:59):
The family's knew name was set by the time they
had their seventh and final child in nineteen seventy two,
a daughter named Rebecca. By the time he had changed
his name, a Manuel had been telling people that he
had a vision where God had appeared and told him
he would be a prominent figure in the LDS Church.
He continued having visions where God made proclamations that would

(06:21):
conveniently benefit a manual shocking. Eventually, he started telling other
church members that they should give their regular tithing to
him instead of the church. That was too much for
the LDS Church, and he was excommunicated from the religion.
That's when a Manuel, who was by then telling people

(06:42):
he was God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost, and his
small group of followers moved to a compound in a
town in the middle of Utah called Manty. Now, if
you ever want to be in the dead center of
the state of Utah, Manti is where you want to go.
There are about three thousand people there now, but in
nineteen seventy there were only about eighteen hundred. It was

(07:05):
the perfect spot to locate a cult, so it wasn't
constantly being scrutinized. Of course, no matter how small the population,
people notice a group of outsiders coming into their community
and doing strange things. There were about two dozen people
living at a house, and people in the community quickly
noticed that they were not your average religious folks. People

(07:26):
said that a manual started carrying a three and a
half foot or just over one meter long sword one
witness said he claimed quote a time would come when
it would be used to lop off thousands of heads.
Life in the commune was not all peace and love.
The people who lived there called themselves the David family,

(07:46):
and some of them even changed their last name to David,
taking on biblical first names. His three closest followers were
declared to be archangels, and they changed their names to Michael, Raphael,
and Gabriel. There was an abundance of child abuse happening
within the family. An anonymous person who had lived there
as a child said that once a Manuel became so

(08:09):
angry at her for laughing while playing that he held
her down and shoved his bare foot in her mouth.
There was another account of cult members punishing children by
pulling their arms in opposite directions until they cried out
in pain. The people at the commune made money by
making and selling knives. Of course, like most colts, many

(08:32):
members gave all their money to the leader. Not only
their savings, but they sold homes and even businesses and
handed it all over to Immanuel. Emmanuel and his family
were only at the commune in Manty for a few
years before they moved into a series of hotels as
they traveled between Salt Lake City and his hometown in
New York. The Davids would stay in an upscale hotel,

(08:55):
paying cash for everything at first, but once the hotel
began truy them, they would rack up huge bills in
the tens of thousands and then leave the hotel without paying.
Their activities during the years between nineteen seventy three and
nineteen seventy eight are fairly vague. They spent their time
moving around and staying in nice hotels, eating expensive meals,

(09:18):
and living in luxury, all provided by money the followers
were giving to a manual. This is a very common
tale when it comes to colts. When everything is fully uncovered,
it all boils down to a cult leader getting whatever
they want without having to work for it. Charles longo
Ak Emmanuel David was not special. He was a greedy,

(09:40):
lazy man who figured out that he could convince people
to give him money. In nineteen seventy seven, some of
Emmanuel's followers were being investigated by the FBI for fraud.
They had claimed that they were fundraising for a nine
year old girl who was paralyzed and in the hospital.
Now the girl did exist, but the men had no

(10:01):
connection to her or her family, and the family never
received any money. Two men were convicted of wire fraud
and sent to federal prison. It seems that the men
said that they had concocted the scam as a means
of raising money for a manual, So the FED started
looking into him with regards to not only where his
money was coming from, but the welfare of his children.

(10:23):
The David children had never been to school, and there
were many concerns about their safety. Despite the authority's suspicions
about Emmanuel, at the time, they didn't have any evidence
for an arrest, so they continued looking into his activities.
It's not entirely clear what specifically caused em Manuel to
decide his life here on earth was no longer viable,

(10:45):
but it's likely that the Feds were getting closer to
obtaining incriminating evidence and he chose the selfish way out.
Not only would the cult leader go on to take
his own life, but he convinced his wife and children
that they needed to do the same. In July of
nineteen seventy eight, Emmanuel and his family were living in
the International Dune Hotel in Salt Lake city. He had

(11:08):
been working with Skip Danes, the fellow missionary from fifteen
years earlier, on importing two pianos with a price tag
of forty seven thousand dollars apiece. He claimed he was
about to settle in a state that would provide him
with enormous wealth, and he was going to buy a big,
expensive house. He told Skip that his wife, Rachel, played

(11:28):
the piano and he wanted his kids to play as well,
and he only wanted the best for them. One day,
he approached Skip and asked to borrow his jeep so
he could take his family to see the new house
they were planning to buy. He returned later that day
looking disappointed, and claimed that his kids wanted to stay
in the hotel. A few days later, on July thirtieth,

(11:50):
he returned to Skip's property and asked to borrow his truck.
Skip said the keys were in it, and Emmanuel quickly
took off. He never returned. The truck was found in
the desert the following day with Emmanuel's body inside. He
had connected a host to the tailpipe and ran it
into the cab. His cause of death was self inflicted

(12:12):
carbon monoxide poisoning on the morning of August third, nineteen
seventy eight, while living on the eleventh floor of the
International Dunes Hotel, Rachel brought all of her children out
onto the balcony. The three oldest children, fifteen year old Elizabeth,
fourteen year old Rachel, and thirteen year old Joshua, willingly

(12:33):
climbed onto the rail and jumped. That had to be
due to their father convincing them that they would be
better off dead. Witnesses said that those children were not pushed.
He was after the three oldest jumped that Rachel threw
the remaining children, twelve year old Deborah, nine year old Joseph,
eight year old David, and six year old Rebecca, over

(12:56):
the rail. Some of the children struggled and grasped the rail,
but witnesses said Rachel pried their hands away, allowing them
to fall to their deaths. Last, Rachel herself climbed onto
the rail and jumped. Most of the victims died on impact,
but three survived the initial fall. Two of them died

(13:17):
at the hospital the following morning, but Rachel, the daughter,
managed to survive. She had both broken legs, a broken pelvis,
broken arms, a broken jaw, damaged teeth, tongue, shoulder, and spleen.
She would be left with permanent brain damage. The police

(13:37):
would go on to make it clear that they were
classifying the cause of death for the children as six
homicides and one attempted homicide, while both parents' deaths were
listed as suicide. After her long recovery, she moved in
with her uncle, who was also part of the cult.
She continued believing in her father's teaching, stating multiple times
that she believed her father would return. She her uncle

(14:02):
Anna a small collection of followers. If remained true believers
in the idea that Charles Longo aka Emmanuel David is
in fact God and he will eventually return to Earth.
This should be seen as a form of child abuse.
We don't allow children to do a number of things
before a certain age because we've learned they aren't mentally
developed enough to make those decisions. Clearly, due to that

(14:25):
underdeveloped brain, you can easily convince a child that anything
is real. Indoctrinating a child into a cult, especially to
the point of them believing they should kill themselves, should
be a criminal offense with a steep punishment should be
a criminal offense with a steep punishment. I understand that
there would be nobody to punish in this case, but

(14:46):
there are many other cults warping young minds that could
be stopped. And maybe if someone had taken the Longos
or David's or whatever the fuck they wanted to call
themselves as kids away early on, all seven of them
wouldn't have been splattered on the pavement outside of a
hope tell. Most people talk about this tragedy with a
focus on Rachel as the killer, but if she had

(15:06):
never met Charles Longo when she was twenty one years old,
she would likely not have gone on to kill her
own children and then herself. I treat this like any
other cult leader who brainwashes their followers into believing they
need to take their own life. The cult leader is
the killer. Should people have the strength and mental fortitude
to not become convinced to kill themselves, of course, but

(15:28):
believing that's possible for everyone is just naivity. People are fragile,
people are vulnerable. From what we know about psychology and
human behavior, there will always be people who are in
a place that makes them more open to manipulation by
narcissistic cult leaders. When they abuse that vulnerability and cause
someone else to take their own or someone else's life.

(15:50):
The cult leader is the main killer, like a person
who hires a hitman to kill someone. They didn't pull
the trigger, but they're the primary person who made the
death happen. There are too many people who use the
name of God to convince other people to do bad things,
steal money, kill someone else, kill themselves. Someone claiming they

(16:11):
are being told by God to do anything or worse
that they are God should immediately be red flagged as
a potential monster and placed in psychiatric care. If you're
the victim of domestic abuse, please reach out to someone
for help. Please talk to your local shelter, Call the
National Domestic Abuse Hotline at one eight hundred seven nine

(16:32):
nine safe that's one eight hundred seven ninety nine seven
two three three, or you can go to the hotline
dot org to chat with someone online. If you're having
feelings of harming yourself or someone else, or even just
need someone to talk to, please contact your local mental
health facility call nine one one, or call the National
Suicide Prevention Hotline by simply dialing nine eight eight In

(16:53):
the United States, they're available twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week, and we'll talk to you about
any mental healthish you might be facing. If you're a
member of the LGBTQ plus community and suffering from discrimination, depression,
or are in need of any support, please contact the
lgbt National Hotline at one eight eight eight eight four
three four five six four, or go to LGBT hootline

(17:17):
dot org. Thanks so much for letting me tell you
this story. If you're a fan of true crime, you
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crime adjacent. It's available anywhere that you listen to podcasts.

(17:39):
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Thanks again, and be safe.