Hidden True Crime - What Kind of Person Does THIS? | Profiling Evil’s Mike King Analyzes the Nancy Guthrie Case

Episode Date: February 14, 2026

Mike King is here to discuss the ongoing case of Nancy Guthrie. Mike's new podcast Gardens of Evil: Inside the Zion Society Cult, can be found on Apple, Spotify or anywhere you get your podcasts. Sponsors: Mint Mobile: Switch to Mint Mobile and get unlimited premium wireless for just $15/month for a limited time at mintmobile.com/HIDDEN. Avocado Green Mattress: Go to https://AvocadoGreenMattress.com/HIDDEN to check out their mattress and bedding sale. About Hidden True Crime What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just let it run. And it's great. Over one million clients trust Wealthfront. Get started at Wealthfront. com. Client was paid $1,000 for their testimonial, creating a conflict of interest. Outcomes vary. Investment management and advisory services provided by Wealthfront Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. Investing involves risk to principle regardless of the strategy used. Task performance does not guarantee future results. Hello, Hidden gems. I am with the Mike King. Yes, the Mike King host of profiling evil. He was actually also in law enforcement for over 40 years. He received both his BA and MA in criminal justice,

and he began his career in Utah, and then he actually became an investigator at the county attorney's office there in the Utah Attorney General's office, where he also served as chief of staff. He is trained in criminal prison. profiling under FBI Special Agent Gregory Cooper. And he has done a lot of television work. You would recognize him from his YouTube channel or many of his appearances,

as well as the Discovery Channel's Emmy Award-winning investigative documentaries. He is also an author of several books. And you recently just launched a new seven-part podcast series, The Gardens of Evil Inside the Zion Society cult, which you broke that case, really. helping to save several people from abuse, children and women. And I heard, by the way, that you are at the top of the podcast charts these days. You just launched your new seven-part podcast series.

Great. Yeah. Yeah. We hit number one in day two of Gardens of Evil launching at Apple Podcasts. And I got a note today saying that we've been six days straight as number one, spot, which is just unbelievable. That is unbelievable. And that's, you know, incredible.

Thank you, Mike, for all the work you do. That is incredible. And I wanted to start with all that. Usually we end with that because we're about to get into a difficult topic. And so I just, you know, today, of course, it's on everybody's minds. And I have so many questions for you as someone that has profiled people and investigated crimes. this Nancy Guthrie disappearance is really affecting me and many of us trying to cover it and trying to understand what's happening, understanding what we can't know right now.

So much happened yesterday in the case we had a suspect scene. We don't know this person's name. We know what they look like on a nest cam. with a loaded full backpack, you know, covering a doorbell with what foilage plants, weeds. You know, we have alleged ransom notes. We have somebody that was detained, that was released, that was never named a suspect while being detained and released, named Carlos. You know, I have so many questions for you.

but I think overall I just want to ask you maybe what are your thoughts what is this right what is this disappearance of beloved anchor savanna guthrie her mother you know it's just so it's heart-wrenching it's bizarre it's so confusing you know when when we look at cases like this we we we want to have the who done it solved. And that seems to be, and especially in the true crime community, we are so impatient because we think it can be resolved. And sometimes emotionally, we have solved it, but those emotions would never stand up in court. And it's frustrating because people know doggone well what happened here or there, and they can't understand why law enforcement's moving so slowly. But one of the things I remember just being drilled into my head as I was learning this interesting science and art of profiling was that I remember Greg drawing out on a board one day a chart.

And he said, let's just talk about risk for a moment when we look at a crime. And if you could imagine drawing a line and on the left hand side of the line, we're going to just write low risk. On the right hand side, we're going to write high risk. And we're going to talk about lifestyles that are high or low risk. And if we were to think about a high risk person, we might think about somebody involved in the drug trade or a sex trade worker or someone like that. On the low end of the risk, we would very likely think of a Nancy Guthrie or a stay-at-home mom who goes to the school on Thursdays and plays the piano and she goes to the PTA meetings. And on Saturday morning at 8.45, she goes to the grocery store and on Sunday she's sitting in church that her lifestyle is different. And what we've found after studying just hundreds, if not thousands of violent crime cases is that high-risk victims, when they are victimized, are statistically going to be victimized by someone who's unknown to them.

And it's an opportunistic thing, like the truck driver who picks up a trade worker at a truck stop like Robert Ben Rhodes would do and takes. and takes them out and assaults them and murders them. Again, it's high-risk individual, and it's an unknown person, and it's a crime of opportunity. But when you get to a low-risk person, it's much different because statistically, a low-risk victim is going to be victimized by someone who's known to them or at least knows them.

And you living in Salt Lake and working at four, if you think back to when Elizabeth Smart was abducted, all the eyes immediately, because of that baseline theory, went to Ed Smart and others and started demanding that, you know, here's a guy that should be arrested because he's responsible, he's close, there's something I don't like about him, whatever the case may be.

But what it does is it taught us a really important principle that's been proven over and over again, and that is that a low-risk individual well, they may not know the person, but the person that's offending them knows them. They've been peeking through their window or something else. So there's all of a sudden this connection that's more personal in nature, and it's no longer opportunistic. It's targeted.

And so when you start thinking about Nancy Guthrie, the easy thing to do is to put her into that low-risk category. So that means that it's got to be family or it's got to be the guard. gardener or someone else like that. But there's one thing that will change risk for an individual. Well, actually, it's three things that will change it. Circumstances, situation, and environment. And stop me if I'm rambling on too long.

No, I am listening to everything you're discussing. Just keep going. Yeah. So now let's, and I like to use the example of my wife when we were much younger. in our 30s. And my wife, I would say, was a low-risk individual. Very tight center of friends, went to church on Sunday, did shopping on a certain day. Everything was very controlled. But one particular night, let's assume that she receives a phone call from her mother saying, Dad and I are in St. George, Utah, 300 miles away from you. Dad's had a heart attack,

and he's not going to make it through the night. If you want to see him, you've got to get down here and see him now. So all of a sudden, this low-risk individual at 10 o'clock at night hangs up the phone and jumps in our old 19-whatever-year Dodge Caravan that we had to haul a family full of kids around. And she starts to St. George, 300 miles away. The cell structure back then wasn't as good as it is today. So you remember there used to be a lot of dead pockets as we drove between Salt Lake City and southwest Utah.

But as she got in that car and started driving, not remembering that it was almost out of gas, her risk level is slowly going up because the situation or the circumstances are changing this low risk individual. and she's glumping down the highway somewhere around Fillmore where there's no cell phone coverage, all of a sudden the car breaks down and she's out on a road all alone and a friendly truck driver pulls up and says, I'll give you a ride to town. Well, all of a sudden, her risk has gone up dramatically. So as we think about Nancy Guthrie and the reason I went through that long scenario is that What we don't know are the situation, the circumstance, or the environment. For instance, we don't know if there was some identifying moment,

a moment in time when the predator and Nancy came together in space and time. Could have been because they're spending so much time at the daughter's house that it could have been someone peeking through a window there. It could have been somebody who knows her from her neighborhood. or it could have been somebody that just happened to be in that perfect spot at the very worst time for Nancy Guthrie. So we don't know if that's the case or if she becomes a target because of her daughter who happens to be in celebrity status. Which I've found very interesting because one of the things that I was intrigued by early on in this case was the fact that when the ransom notes came out, two went to legitimate, media outlets.

And then a third went to a legitimate entertainment outfit, TMZ. And I hope I'm not being critical of TMZ because they've done amazing stuff in some of these cases. They have, but I think they'd agree that they cover a lot of celebrity news. Yeah. There you go. And so the very first thing I did is I started thinking, why on earth two legitimate news stations, and then one station like TMZ. And so I started digging into the history of TMZ

and the demographic of TMZ and looking at the kind of people and the things that they're intrigued with. Then you start seeing these little tentacles that tie into maybe a Savannah, Guthrie, and celebrity status. Or you see an age range of a possible suspect pool of possibilities. So when I look at these criminal cases, I just go off on these goofy little tangents where I start to grab at threads and see what's going on with them.

So that was a really long, tedious response. No, it was it? Look, I'm listening to everything you're telling me. I'm like, really? Tell me what I'm so grateful for you, Mike. You know, and you make a good point about celebrity news. I was saying that the one reason that I thought they had reached out to TMZ is they were thinking, well, gosh, the local Tucson stations aren't released.

the ransom know, who can we go to that will maybe, you know, share this. But I think you have a good point there that it's celebrity news, you know, that would that would sort of point to the Savannah Guthrie connection, you know. I am so excited to tell you about our sponsor, avocado green mattress. They're certified organic mattresses, pillows, and solid wood furniture are made without harmful chemicals with thoughtfully chosen materials designed to support healthier living and more restorative sleep. When you think about wellness, I think about everyday choices that actually add up. And sleep is a huge one.

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what you sleep on, real wins. Real is better. Go to avocadogreenmatress.com slash hidden to check out their mattress embedding sale. That's avocadogreenmatress.com slash hidden. Avocado green mattress.com slash hidden. You know, you've gone a lot. We mentioned who done it, but there's also the why done it, which is something we talk a lot about it, hidden true crime is the why, right? The why done it? What would a motive be behind somebody targeting an 84-year-old woman who lives alone? Vulnerable, yes. I mean, that is, is that of reason? I mean, I've thought of my reasons. Vulnerable. They're related to a celebrity. But any thoughts about why someone would abduct a 84-year-old? And yes, you know, we don't know if

the ransom emails are real. I understand that. We don't, we don't know a lot about this crime. We don't know if Nancy is alive. We hope she is. But the one thing that law enforcement has stated is an abduction. So that's why I'm stating. abduction. But, I mean, any thoughts? Any thoughts? Any thoughts? As someone Lauren, I think of a lot as I'm sure you have. And again, the bottom, the bottom line for me always is, I always think of something else I learned very early in my career. And that was to always remember what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would preach in the Sherlock Holmes novels. And he would say it is a capital mistake to theorize before you have data.

Because insensibly, you'll spend all of your time twisting the facts to meet your theory rather than allowing the facts to drive you to a theory. And so when I feel compelled to say, here's why they're doing it, I have to remind myself, don't be that guy. Don't go lump along and think you somehow know. things that you don't know. Number one, folks like you and me are stuck with this thing called the release of data from authoritative sources or from the conspirator theorists and which one do we want to follow. And I personally have made, I think, a pretty clear line in the sand of

who I follow on those kinds of things. But it goes back to just some simple profiling principles that say, again, instead of the who done it, let's spend a little more time thinking about the victim, who is the victim, and why did they become a victim? So as we look at Nancy, we have to think, number one, I thought a great example today that should have been a lesson to a lot of people that wasn't, was the detention of Carlos, the car driver, the delivery driver, who had his home searched, has been being followed most likely if you were to believe some of the things that have come out that the search warrant had a date several days. ago and then align through it with a new date to serve the search warrant.

They've been following and looking and focusing on this individual for some time as a person of interest, whether they want to call it that or not. They had to either exclude him or continue to look more tightly at him. But the thing that came out of his mouth and the mouth of his mother-in-law and his wife, I thought was so telling that we sometimes forget. And we find in the true crime community, unbelievable. when someone says it, but he says, I don't even know who this lady is you're talking about from Tucson.

I haven't watched the news. I don't care about the news. They don't know. He's a guy that's just trying to put bread on the table. And yet, in the true crime community, we're thinking, how on earth could you say that? The same feeling we had when they were trying to find a jury for Lori Daybell or any other individual who's been in this process,

we think, how can they find a jury? And yet they find people that say, all the time. I've never heard of that. And so we have to think there may be people in that neighborhood that don't even know who Nancy Guthrie is, that there may be gardeners who have no idea other than the old lady across the street

that hires me once in a while to pull weeds. So we have to think, is it possible that somebody could have gone in there with no intention of taking her, but all of a sudden they had a problem on their hands because they thought maybe they scouted that place out while she was at lunch or dinner with her family and thought, there's nobody home. I'm going to bust into this house tonight. It's like all the other vacation homes. And I live in a community right now in southern Utah that 90% of the people are from California. They don't live here. They come in on, you know, President's Day weekend.

Right. So we have to keep in mind that a predator could be looking at that and saying, man, I'm going to go into that house and burglarize it. But all of a sudden, they have an eyewitness who can identify them for some reason or another. And now they've got a problem on their hands. And could that be a reason for them to abduct? Well, you know, I've seen a lot of criminals do some stupid things. And, you know, maybe they at first said, there's no way I'd kill somebody, but I'm going to kidnap them until I figure out what to do with them. And then that starts the snowball. Or we have to go to the completely other end of the spectrum. It's an absolute conspiracy that planned out and went in and it happened. And I like to fall kind of in

the middle that I believe that it probably was a situation where there was a lot of plans. a lot of fantasy involved, but based on all of, especially the last couple of days, the nonverbal communication through the videos we're watching, that these were people that weren't experienced at committing this kind of a crime. Thank you for saying that because I actually was sort of shocked seeing the surveillance from the NEST cam, the NESTCAM video as well, the images. and mostly the video because, again, I was thinking some organized, you know, group of people, and maybe it is.

Again, this is where, I don't know. But taking plants, foliage from the yard to cover a nest cam, you know, picking it right there, doesn't tell me they came super prepared or they've been preparing this for a week. it certainly wasn't, you know, a movie. I've never actually seen someone do that. That was interesting to me. So you felt the same thing, though, and I don't know if it was that specific part that you felt that,

but you didn't feel that this was somebody that was really well-versed and knew exactly what they were going to do when they went up to the door. I don't believe the behavior supports an organized, experienced offender, but I do believe they probably fantasized about how this was all going to come about, how it was going to work perfectly. And, you know, the really bad thing about fantasy is reality is never as cool as our fantasies. And so we always fall short when we dream up how something is going to be, whether it's a special date with our close friend or it's somebody thinking they're going to go in

and kidnap someone and get a $6 million paycheck two days later, the fantasies seem to always fall short. And there were a number of things just about the way in which he approaches the house, the clothing that he's wearing, the fact that he could have surveilled from the street even and seen there was a doorbell camera if he had put any effort in at all. And the reason I can say that with confidence is because I watched the news media for three days filming on the street and zooming in on the front porch and taking pictures. All of that aside from our friend, the reporter, who made it up on the steps and took actual imagery. But they were able to get that with a zoom camera.

And so it tells you that while they may have surveilled, it probably was a drive-by based on the low light in. and the light pollution ordinances in the city, the fact that it was also very dark, made it really difficult for that person as they were approaching. One reporter said that she couldn't see her hand in front of her face when all the lights were out on the street in front of that house. Now, it might have been a little bit dramatic, but what she clearly was sending a message to me about was that it's really dark out here. And so when you see that suspect walking up and he just turns his flashlight on for a fraction of a second before he reaches the threshold, it makes perfect sense.

He's having a hard time seeing. It's pitch black. And he doesn't want to stumble. He also wants to know if he's got any kind of conflict in front of him. But then he gets up there. And like you said, when he sees that there's a doorbell there, all of a sudden, all the gear. are starting to grind together and he's thinking, holy cow, what am I going to do now? And you see him bumbling around, looking to his left in the little garden on the porch and working his way out

to the wildflowers in front of the approach. Yeah. You know, I have wondered, well, let me get back to that. Let me ask you this. Point of entry. We don't see where this person enters. We know because of Brian Enton's footage on the front porch that looked like blood spatter and law enforcement has later confirmed that it did belong or does belong to Nancy, but no one has clarified where someone entered and where someone left.

Thoughts on point of entry or any ideas there? No. I mean, you can build some theories around the fact that today, Newsmax released some portions of what was in that ransom note. And one note was that they left her watch at the base of her or the foot of her bed. They described the Apple Watch. And then they said that they also dismantled or broke the light in the back of the house. So you could say, well, it makes good sense.

they probably broke that so that they could get in and out undetected in the backyard. So what time did that happen? The FBI was pretty good at keeping the timestamps out of those images. So we're having to guess. But we can tell by one of the images that this suspect made at least two approaches to the front, one without the backpack and gun, the second time with that. So the first one was probably a drill, a little bit of, of a practice run and a way to check and see if lights came on or other things, where if he was

stopped, he could say, hey, does Bob live here and, oh, I must have the wrong house and walk away. But when he's covered with a mask and a backpack and gloves, which, you know, he had the mask on when he came the first time, but it makes it a little more difficult to do that. So we can theorize the back door. We could also say it's very possible because of all the cover and concealment around the house, that they waited until the garage door came up and they slipped in. That's more risky if the son-in-law is sitting with his light shining in the garage as she goes into the house and probably less likely. But there are a number of ways that he potentially could have got into the house. And we still don't know if it's possible that there was

some kind of a con at the front door, too, knocking on the door and saying, hey, just like in Minnesota with that senator last year, hey, police, I need you to open the door and let me just make sure everything's safe and then has control of the victim. So while we want to jump to a conclusion, really what we're doing is just kind of at least responsibly, I think, saying there are possibilities that we need to consider. Right. We're bringing up evidence that has but confirmed to question what hasn't, but we both know that we don't simply know. Every group has someone who insists on doing things the hard way. Still paying for things they don't need, still overpaying because that's how it's always been. When it comes to wireless, Mint Mobile exists

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$90 for six months, or $180 for a 12-month plan required. That's a $15 month equivalent, taxes and fees extra, initial plan term only, over 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Capable device required, availability, speed, and coverage varies. Additional terms apply. See mintmobile.com. You know, I thought it could be, you brought up that she could simply be evidence that they took her out of the house because this is somebody, the Nancy became evidence when something didn't go right and that she saw something she shouldn't have seen. But, you know, I thought that maybe this could be that, but that full backpack, I have to be honest, that really, that really affected me that upset me to see a full backpack because I don't know what's in it. And they're armed, clearly.

we know that so that's not in the backpack if you were wanting to take things from a house you would have an empty backpack not a full one and I don't know any thoughts on that as law enforcement what is in the backpack

what are they going in there for? Yeah who knows other than the theories that are out there would be that it included a kit to maintain control or to have pry tools to open doorways or break things out. We don't even know about that weapon that was carried. I'd like to know how the light in the backyard was dismantled. Maybe all it is is a pellet gun.

And it's used to do something like break a light so that you have cover and concealment. So we're doing a whole lot of theorizing without the facts, which always takes me back to that quote. And so I love the theories, though, because they give us a way to corroborate evidence and either exclude or continue to focus on a pathway that we're pursuing. And, you know, there were a couple of things that were really important that happened with the release of those videos, too, that not many people seem to be talking about. I actually talked about it on Fox today, and that is the fact that what it did is that they answered the question of, whether there was blood on the porch when that predator came the first time or the second time and broke that doorbell camera off of the door.

We now know that that blood was an artifact that had to do with the abduction because it wasn't there when the predator was trying to get in the house. And that was so, so important to see that. Another thing that kind of troubled me that I kept asking about and nobody seemed to think it was that big a deal is the debris field that was in front of the porch, the dried plants and things. And I was theorizing that they had come from a struggle in that doorway that caused the bleeding on the porch and that those plants came out of that pot to the right of the door or something like that. So seeing now, it solved those questions for me. And it also then told me of the disorganized nature of this predator. And yet how comfortable they were that they didn't freak out when they saw a doorbell.

They just figured out, albeit taking a little time and doing it in a goofy way, they figured out how to solve the problem. So they're problem solvers along the way. And somebody brand new at something like that. would probably have used that as a good reason to run off in the night. Well, yeah, problem solving. And then I guess, you know, a hidden true crime, we look at psychology, right? I see someone very not afraid.

Like, you know, what type of person walks up there and thinks, oh, a doorbell cam I didn't know about, oh, well, I'll just grab a bunch of stuff from the yard to cover it. No big deal here. I guess just the lack of fear is fearful to me. someone with such a lack of maybe nervousness, I guess you could say. And so you're saying that it's likely someone unexperienced or not some organized crime. We don't know, again. I see someone just like this complete lack of fear as they're walking up to the doorway.

That sort of concerns me too. You know, what type of person is this that isn't even seemingly nervous as far as we can tell? You know, I don't know. I think of a lot of the conflicts right now with ICE officers, and I don't want this to be a political discussion other than the mental philosophy behind it, that people wearing masks feel more confident doing things that they would never do if their identity was visual. So when you see someone approach with a mask, they can afford to have a few mistakes happen because they believe that they somehow are insulated from identity. identification through that process. And so it really makes it, it makes it really challenging because, again, you think to yourself, well, wait a minute, I'd never do this or I'd never do that, but a predator might.

Yeah, that's true. Going back to the foliage, flowers, shrubbery on the ground, by the way, I say multiple vocabulary words for them because each time I've said something, people said, that's not what they are, you know, so the, from her front yard, they were on her front porch. And there's, there's the blood too. You know, as an investigator, I have a question. Once we learned what these were, my first thought was, ah, they didn't, they didn't take them, you know, in an evidence bag. Could they have DNA on them? You know, he had that light. It seemed like in his mouth.

Correct me if you think it was in his mouth, I thought it was. And so even if his hands had gloves on, he's putting something in his mouth, he's grabbing these plants. I mean, I know it's not so simple. You know, I sat through the Delphi Indiana trial. There was days of arguing about the sticks and whether those should have been in evidence and whether they could have, you know, had more DNA on them. And when they did bring them in, they couldn't find DNA. but, you know, it reminded me of that case, but, ah, should they have bagged up that shrubbery and

taken that in and tested it for possible DNA? Well, the answer based on my experience is that every time I learned something new, I wished I would have done something originally with it. So, you know, it's pretty difficult to know. the thing that was interesting about that and the reason why I was so troubled by it is it didn't appear to be like we have a porch at our house that the wind always swirls a certain way and collects all kinds of debris and shoves it in the corner. It wasn't something like that. It was debris that was an artifact of something entirely different than a natural event.

So that becomes troubling. And, you know, again, it's a hindsight issue. but for me it was something that just was stuck in my craw and nobody seemed to want to talk about it. But I kept saying, this is important. Well, it really isn't important other than we now have the answer to it. But we didn't know. Dr. Kenny Kinsey, if you remember from the Murdoch trials, Alec Murdoch, Kenny and I were talking a few days ago and I was asking him,

luminal wouldn't work, but I was concerned that the blood trail wasn't pursued because if you look at anyone who's bleeding, unless she had a towel or something put up against her face or wherever that wound was that was causing the passive bleeding, the blood trail didn't just dry up on that porch. The blood kept coming, so it was contained somewhere or there or drips further down. And so I was inquiring with Kenny if there were chemicals because I had remembered something to that effect. And there are chemicals that you could have tried to discover if there was a blood

trail that went. To me, it would make sense that a vehicle was waiting or something else because, again, if anyone out there has moved an elderly parent and she was not ambulatory, did I get that right, ambulatory? I think so. Anyway, she had a hard time moving without a walker or assistance. That guy

that was at the front porch, especially if she wasn't cooperating, would have had a difficult time getting her somewhere. And there were no drag marks. There were nothing else to indicate that there was something scuffing or dragging that anyone's talked about.

Those are the things I'd be digging with a fine-tooth comb and have been crawling on my hands and knees the next morning. So there are a lot of things we could say, well, why didn't you do that? But I'll tell you, I had so many of those that I'd sit in court and think, oh, why didn't I do this or that? Sure, right. Hindsight is always 2020.

It is true. And we have hindsight bias when we think, shoulda, coulda, what, you know, who knows what they collected in that house. And that's a question I have for you. Do you think there is just so much that the public does not know, You know, we're all a bunch of really good sleuth, and we are curious, and we feel like we can find so much out sometimes online, right? We feel like we can just figure something out without being there. But is there so much that we don't know?

Yeah, and like Dr. Kinsey says oftentimes, when you come into an area, you're bringing in debris. when you leave, you're taking out debris. And that is evidence. And so it's just a matter of whether somebody saw it or collected it. And we just don't know the answer to so many of those questions. Yeah. Yeah. Mike, we really appreciate you being here and answering some of our questions.

We're just talking. Talking to me about this. You know, I'm so grateful with your law enforcement background. Thank you for taking my questions. I do want to share that on February 3rd, again, you launched a new seven-part podcast series, Gardens of Evil, inside the Zion Society cult. It's based upon your book, Deceived, an investigative memoir of the Zion Society cult by Mike King, and this is doing incredibly well on the podcast charts.

So cool because when we did Gardens of Evil, it's based on my book deceived, but I really didn't want it to be my voice. And so we worked with a production company. We got a great guy out of Seattle who's actually doing most of the narration, although I talk ad nauseum through it, so I apologized to everyone for that. Other than we brought in many of the survivors. So we rescued 32 children in this cult when this thing broke.

And 30 years later, a couple of them reached out and as we started meeting and talking and we eventually got a big group of them together and chatted, they said we basically felled them in three areas. But one was that they were raised in a cult, so they were homeschooled, and they were raised in a religious cult, so when they matriculated into public education after the raid and breaking up the cult, they just didn't fit in. In fact, every one of them basically dropped out of school. Only a few ever got an education beyond that.

So they ended up working hourly wage jobs throughout their life. So we kind of failed them in that way because that was the early days of the victim's rights, councils starting to develop and understand the impact that criminal cases had on children, especially when they had to testify over and again. Oh, yeah. The other area we felt was that they didn't get the mental health counseling that the state promised them because the courts sent them back to the very parents who were putting them in a cult environment. And they were saying, there's nothing wrong.

This isn't anything as bad as you think it is and just get over it. And so they went without that. And then they said, we never had a voice. We never had a chance to tell our story. And they asked me to tell that story. And that's why we wrote the book. But we kept thinking, but we've got to give them a way to tell the story. So many of the kids are kids who are now 45 and 55 year old women are in the podcast

talking about their experiences as children, talking about their life. And this, we acknowledge the fact that sexual abuse happened. And there were more than 4,000 counts of rape of children in this thing. But what we do is we focus on the cult dynamics, the things that the cult leaders use to recruit people, to maintain control, to groom them once they were inside of the cult, and then take these normally normal people and turn them into people who would commit crime all in the name of whatever God it was that they believed in.

And so we decided with Gardens of Evil that we could accomplish a few of those things, give them a voice, give them an opportunity. We brought in police officers who were there for the raid. We brought in investigators who helped me on the case. We brought in prosecutors. So the podcast is really cool because it's not just me yammering on like I am right now. It's the people that were really impacted by this thing.

One of the things that we also did is we went to the governor's office and we said these kids need to have counseling for 35 years later. And the state of Utah stepped up and provided counseling as part of the Victims' Reparations Act for these kids who were doing going through this. And then finally I went to the president of Weber State University, Brad Mortensen, and I told him the story, and he met with the kids, and he said, listen, whether you want a GED or a Ph.D.,

the university will help you. So we've just tried to do everything we can 35 years later to fix things that we didn't do then, but they really weren't our responsibility to do, but I just couldn't get past it. So that's why we're doing it at all. Thank you. Yeah, and the Gardens of Evil inside the Zion Society

Colt, it's based on your book, deceived, an investigative memoir of the Zion Society Cold. All of the proceeds to this podcast, or proceeds are going to support children's advocacy and the criminal justice

scholarship that you have at Weaver State University? Yeah, all of my proceeds. Now, the production company obviously has to cover their costs, but everything that I will receive and everything that we've received going into the book sales over the last couple of years. In fact, the book sales, we actually pushed toward paying for some site survey plans and other things to dig ground and build a new children's justice center or across the country they're called children advocacy centers. in our particular area of northern Utah, in 1990, when this thing happened, 1991, we at the county attorney's office had just opened the second Children's Justice Center in the United States, recognizing that children needed to be treated a little differently in the criminal justice process.

And so it's always been a soft spot in my heart, but it was so exciting because when the the director said he wanted to build a new building, but he didn't have the money to do some things. We committed the sales from Deceived to help cover those initial jumpstart costs. Now, this is a multi-million dollar building that the taxpayers are now taking care of, but we provided all the seed money to get those surveys done, the plans built and everything else, which was really, for me it was a substantial amount, and it was just so cool to be able to to push the proceeds there. But on the opening day, which was May of this year,

we had a huge group of the survivors of the Zion Society come and be in attendance to spoke alongside the Attorney General and some others as they dedicated that new building. And so it was just really exciting to see them being acknowledged. And they put this beautiful plaque in the front lobby of the Children's Justice Center that says dedicated the survivors of the Zion Society cult, which is really cool.

That's incredible. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. I would love to have you on again, too, just to talk about that and the survivors. And the proceeds that you receive will support children's advocacy, as well as a criminal justice scholarship at Weber State University. So please, again, share. Where can we hear your incredible new podcast series?

Hey, you can go to any podcast platform that you like. So wherever you like listening, thankfully Apple has made us number one, which is pretty darn exciting. But anywhere you get your podcasts, you could get Gardens of Evil. It's actually season five of the wildly popular American Nightmare series by Gamut Podcast Network. And Profiling Evil has actually come under the fold now of Gamut Podcast Network. So our audio podcasts are all now pushed out through Gamma, which is really exciting for me.

That is so exciting. That's so incredible. And I love that you are supporting education too at Weaver State University, where you received your, is that where you received your BA and M.A. in criminal justice? I got my BA and my AA there. And then I got my master's at Hawthorne. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you've had incredible. Weaver, Weber. Yeah, you've had an incredible, you've had an incredible career, and, you know, you also served as chief of staff at the Utah Attorney General's office. So, so thank you for taking time out, and we can catch you over on your YouTube channel profiling evil as well, where I often tune in. So thank you so much. Oh, thank you. I sure appreciate being on with you. That's so kind that you would invite me. Yeah, no, thank you. This is a case that's really affecting a lot of people, and so thank you for. for just being a voice of reason for us as we hope to bring Nancy home.

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