RedHanded - Episode 122 - Paul Ingram: Satanic Ritual Abuse & Repressed Memory

Episode Date: November 21, 2019

MERCH STORE: RedHandedShop.com In 1988 sisters Ericka and Julie Ingram were at Bible Camp when they were hit with a sudden memory. It was a memory of being sexually abused by their father, Paul Ingram - the Deputy Sheriff of Thurston County in Washington. As time passed their stories became more and more terrifying; they were remembering robed men attacking them, sacrificing babies and drinking blood. Were these memories real? What had really happened?  References:  http://justicedenied.org/paul.htm https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/29/books/books-of-the-times-a-family-is-destroyed-by-a-sexual-chimera.html https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=elFTClWDOs0C&pg=PA39&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=elFTClWDOs0C&pg=PA39&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false https://www.kspope.com/memory/facade.php https://www.newsweek.com/speaking-devil-186852 https://ordinaryevil.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/healthy-skepticism-or-convenient-denial-the-case-of-paul-ingram/ https://culteducation.com/group/1255-false-memories/6514-man-in-notorious-sex-case-finishes-term.html https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2015/11/09/the-craziness-didnt-end-with-salem https://web.archive.org/web/20041130234035/http://members.aol.com/ingramorg/#release https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/it-didnt-happen-but-he-remembered-it-an-american-professor-claims-to-have-concrete-evidence-that-1441790.html https://www.people.vcu.edu/~dbromley/undergraduate/spiritualCommunity/SatanicCults.html https://www.kspope.com/memory/repweb2a.php https://web.archive.org/web/20040321201647/http://members.aol.com/IngramOrg/ofsherep.htm See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who? I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here.

She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive. Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made.

A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed. Should we do an explanation of how Patreon works? Because a lot of people have been getting in touch with us recently being like, what does it mean? Patreon is, what is Patreon? Patreon.com slash Red Handed is where our patreon lives and it is essentially a platform via which creators can generate money or generate income and this is completely through what they call pledges from you guys who are our listeners and our supporters essentially pledges just like a fancy word for a subscription i guess though it's totally up to you. You're not sort of trapped for months and months and months. You can give a one-off one-month pledge. You can keep it rolling. You can put a limit on when it stops. You can choose the amount. It's completely up to you. So it's essentially, now that Hannah and I are full-time, it is essentially one of our biggest revenue

streams for us to be able to keep the lights on, keep the show going. Yeah, and it's the only one that no one takes a cut of. So it's completely up to you guys if you want to do it if you do want to do it we appreciate it massively if you've ever been wondering where all those names are coming from at the end of every episode those are all the lovely people who have been making patreon pledges to us exactly and you get different levels of stuff for the amount of money if you are a two dollar patron that's when you get a shout out on the show. And you also get episodes a day early and ad free. If you are a $5 patron, you get all of the above things and some stickers that we send to you in the post. If you are a $10 patron, you get ad free day early episodes and you get an extra episode every month. On the first

Monday of the month, we do a bonus episode. And if you are a $20 patron, you get all of the other things and a very exclusive badge, which you cannot get anywhere else. It's an enamel pin, actually, not just like a little party badge. It's like an enamel pin badge. Party badge. And also, I would say, with receiving of physical rewards, so the monthly episode is out the first Monday of every month, you can add in the RSS link directly into your podcast player. So wherever you're listening, it will automatically upload into your feed for Red

Handed. Also with the physical rewards, as I was saying, we send them out. So once you've been a pledger, a patron, whatever we want to call it, for three months, you will receive the stickers, you'll receive the pin, etc. from us. Also, we are as on top of it as we possibly can be we are fingers crossed going to get some help very soon to be able to help us get those out to you guys um hopefully even more quickly yeah you guys it's not amazon you don't put your card details it's not it's not automated it is literally us arrives the next day like we physically have to write out your address so like i know it's stressful that it doesn't arrive immediately but we're really really trying I think when you become a pledge just remember you're not placing an order for stickers or for enamel pins we process

it it comes through to us we love doing it don't get me wrong but like I said we're going to do it every three months so once you've been a patron for three months you'll receive those things but at the moment it is just me and Hannah Sometimes people email us and they're like, oh, can I speak to the team or whoever's responsible for this? And we're like, guys, there's no one else. It's just us. There is no team. It's literally just us.

It's just us. And even though we've obviously been doing this for a long time and things like the sound has come so far, we're in our little studio ISO boxes now and everything, but everything else is still totally fucking DIY. Like there's nobody else here. It's just the two of us. We were actually speaking to somebody recently who was in the podcast industry and we told him, not really realising that this was weird, that we do all of our own research, every single word.

We do all of our own editing, every single second of it. And we do all of our own. He was even surprised that we do all of our own social media, apart from our wonderful Facebook moderators, of course. It's just us. Thank you so much for all your Patreon pledges. It makes an enormous difference to Red Handed and to keeping us going and keeping the lights on here. So thank you massively for that. Okay, so I hope you all brought your best brain understanding heads

to wherever you're listening to this. I don't think I have. I think I'm already confused. I have spent almost a week with this case and I still have no fucking idea. Like, I genuinely have no idea. Maybe you guys will do better than us with this. I don't know.

We're going to be doing a lot of unravelling of our very own neurons. We're basically just putting our hands in our own brains and just rummaging around a bit and figuring it out. We're looking at repressed and recovered memories today and whether they even exist. The question we're asking is, can someone experience a traumatic event, totally forget about it for years, and then recover it during therapy. Freudian psychoanalysts will say that you absolutely can. That's absolutely something that a person can do. But like a lot of stuff that Freud claimed, it might not really be that simple. And don't worry, we've also got some Satanism in here as well, just to make sure that you're paying attention. In the autumn of

1988, Erica and Julie Ingram left home all of a sudden. They were 22 and 18, respectively. Up until that point, they'd been living with their parents, Paul and Sandy Ingram, in Olympia, Washington. They left home to live with friends, and that might seem like a normal thing to do at that age, but they didn't tell their parents why or where they were going. They just left. And this was not the first time this had happened to the Ingram family.

Their eldest son, whose name is Paul Ross, left in a very similar fashion at a very similar age and totally lost touch with the rest of the family. Which, people make a massive deal about this, but I'm like, leaving your parents' house at 18 and 22 is not weird. Especially not in the 80s. Exactly.

Like, you know, they're going to uni. They're like doing all of this stuff. Like, I really don't think it's that weird an age to want to not live with your mum and dad anymore. I don't think it's the fact that they leave that's weird. I think it's quite strange that you just leave and all of them just leave. Don't tell them where they're going. And then Paul has already lost touch with them.

And the two daughters just piss off and just don't even tell their parents where they're going or why they're going. And then Paul has already lost touch with them. And the two daughters just piss off and just don't even tell their parents where they're going or why they're leaving. Good point. To the outside world, the Ingrams seemed pretty normal. They were strict and somewhat distant with their children. But Sandy and Paul were very affectionate with each other. And apparently they had sex at least every other day and slept naked together on a waterbed.

Don't know why that's relevant, but it was in quite a few articles I read. Wow. Well, good for them. Even after three kids and middle age. More than five. Rocking it on a waterbed. Oh, gosh. So the Ingrams owned acres of land and had goats, cows, chickens, and even a vegetable patch, all in the name of self-sufficiency.

Paul Ingram was a deputy in the Thurston County Sheriff's Department. His personal record was spotless. But he did have a reputation for being a bit of a jobsworth. And I read that he loved giving speeding tickets for people who were going, like, five miles above the speed limit and stuff. Which, like, I read that. That is still speeding, though. Anyone I know who's got a speeding ticket is like, oh, well, it was a stupid place to have a speed camera anyway.

And I'm like, no, but you were driving too fast. Like that is the rule. Let's all take some responsibility. And you broke it, therefore you deserve the ticket. Go to your day of shame. But I've never ever met anyone who was like, yeah, fair cop, actually, like I did deserve that. They're just like, oh, it was actually because of this reason and this reason and this reason.

And it actually wasn't my fault. And I'm like, no, you were driving too fast and you got caught own up to it i'm fully on your side like but i guess somebody who wrote this has clearly been ticketed by paul ingram potentially right exactly like and five miles is not insignificant that could be the difference between killing someone and not killing someone and maybe his whole jobs worth reputation comes from potentially the way he did it maybe Maybe he was quite arsey about it. Don't know. Don't want to besmirch his name.

Who knows? But I think his name has been well and truly besmirched. I don't think he's gone from being Jobsworth to being child rapist. We'll deal with that later. I know what I would rather be called, honestly. The Ingrams were Catholic initially, but they converted to the Pentecostal church when Julie and Erica were still kids. And they hopped around various Pentecostal congregations until they settled on the Church of Living Water. I just love all these names. I love all these names for these Pentecostal churches.

There's just some great ones out there. That one's great. This church was pretty heavy on speaking in tongues and the whole laying on of hands things and the Ingrams felt pretty at home in this church and they were very active within it. The Church of Living Water held annual retreats for the girls and the young women of the parish. It was called the Heart to Heart Camp and Erica and Julie went every year. Even when Erica was aged out she returned to the camp as a counselor and she was proficient in American Sign Language. So she interpreted for deaf girls who attended the retreat.

I worry about that though. Like my friend is a sign language interpreter and he says that because there are so few accredited sign language interpreters, because it takes a long time, it's seven years to train to be an interpreter. He was like, but because there's so few of us and because we're expensive deaf people are getting told by people who aren't actually qualified to translate that they're dying when they're in hospital i i worry about it are you actually qualified to be doing that like should you be interpreting like i don't know it's hard to say but i guess like at least they were offering the option for deaf girls who attended this retreat so they could have somebody there.

Yeah, yeah, no, I get that. But also, just pay for a fucking interpreter. Don't get a teenager to do it who doesn't know. This was also the 80s, and if it's still happening now, I'm not at all shocked that this was happening then. So Erica was not only the older sister, she was much more outgoing than Julie was. She had travelled to Europe and even to South Korea for the Olympics, which in the 80s is pretty bold, I think. Oh, yeah, for sure. Julie is the younger one. She's much quieter. She never traveled. But she was the state champion in the Future Homemakers of America contest twice. And no shade. I mean, you know, someone's got to do it. Someone's got to be making all those homes. No, fucking full shade. I have full shade. Why does that thing exist i hate it well i don't know it's like baby wi it's like pre-wi here you go learn all these things i think the wi do great

work they're doing a lot of campaigns for sex workers i don't think it's all like jam and jerusalem like i think it's they are they do maybe the future homemakers of america we're gonna get around to it who knows so the girls may have been chalk and cheese but they did have one thing in common they were very shy around boys and promised their mum, whose name was Sandy, that they would remain virgins until they got married. Sandy didn't really have a leg to stand on here. Not that she should have to.

But the fact is, she and Paul had met in college in 1965 and they had a shotgun wedding less than five months later. So I don't know whether you can really be telling your daughters to stay virgins until they're married, Sandy. Yeah. She needs a leg to stand on here, in my opinion. You're having a shotgun wedding and then you're popping out a baby like a few months later. Someone wasn't holding on to their chastity.

If you're enforcing it on your kids, like, chill out. Chill out, Sandy. So the shotgun baby was Paul Ross, the eldest, and Erica was born a few years later. And she also had a twin sister whose name was Andrea. We haven't met her yet, and we won't. Andrea was born with spinal meningitis, and the doctors were all convinced that she wouldn't survive. But against all the odds, she did. However, the swelling to her brain caused by the meningitis generated catastrophic brain damage. So the Ingrams decided to give Andrea away and she ended up a ward of the state and she died in a home.

And perhaps the separation from her twin sister was one of the things that made Erica feel quite a lot of hatred towards her parents. In 1988, the summer before Erica and Julie left home, they dutifully attended the heart-to-heart retreat as usual. It was just two days. Erica was a counselor and Julie went as an attendee. Now, from what we can gather, the heart-to-heart retreat focused on all of the things that can turn a young woman from the righteous path of God. So naturally, sex was discussed a lot and so was sexual abuse. And that year was a little bit different because the camp was visited by charismatic christian carla franco i have never seen the words charismatic christian before in my life but this week doing the reading for this i saw it approximately 18 times and not

just talking about carla franco either what a strange terminology but then i guess you feel i feel like you know with all the cult leaders religious leaders like you've got a someone's got to be charismatic in there for them to be pulling all these other people in so maybe we just don't say it because maybe it's immodest and not very christiany in any religion in any whatever someone's got to be charismatic otherwise what the hell are all these people doing going to this camp and so this particular charismatic christian was a woman named carla franco and we believe that she's now rebranded herself not particularly by a lot because now she seems to go by carla j franco but she has got a website i'm worried that it's not actually her so i found this website of this

woman called carla j franco and she doesn't say anything about our story today which I'm not surprised that's the rebranding exactly so like I'm not you can google her like she's obviously she's just gonna be like oh my god so many hits I wonder why I'm pretty sure it's her I'm not 100% that the person who's like presenting on the internet as Carla J Franco is the same person but I wasn't able to find another one okay so potentially this new Carla J Franco is old charismatic Christian Carla Franco from this story yeah I mean she's about the right kind of age she's definitely very Christian I think it's probably her but I'm not okay we'll leave her we'll leave her where she is potentially Carla J Franco is this woman but going back Miss Carla Franco of 1980 fame because Carla was a musical theater performer and a comedian and it would appear at this particular stage of her

career she was also dropping in on Christian camps and offering her words of advice on the Holy Spirit coupled with her powers of healing and seeing and her holy sight was in full swing at the Heart to Heart camp in 1988, because there Carla Franco told a room full of 60 girls and young women that she was having visions. One of these visions included a little girl hiding in a cupboard, being approached by footsteps, and then a key turning in the cupboard door. As Carla Franco was describing her vision, a girl in the congregation jumped up and shouted that she was the little girl in the cupboard door. As Carla Franco was describing her vision, a girl in the congregation jumped up and shouted that she was the little girl in the cupboard. Then Carla moved on to a second vision. This time she said that she was sure that someone at the camp had been molested

as a child by a relative. As soon as Carla had finished her sentence, a young girl ran out of the room into the toilets where she tried to drown herself in the toilet bowl you're being incredibly irresponsible carla it screams of like you know when you watch like um those people go to not seances what would you call them when you go to like watch a person on stage who's like i'm getting a d i'm getting a d oh yeah like derrick akora yeah it feels like that yeah are you are you getting a d Oh yeah Like Derek Acora Yeah It feels like that Yeah Are you? Are you getting a D? Is that something

That you just said? I think it's D for dad Are you feeling a D In the room? I've got a dad Who's trying to reach me He's a man He's an older man

Fuck you I suppose Like you just You'd go and see They're just mediums Aren't they? You're just going to Like a medium show

But it's that sort of Cold calling That cold reading thing Almost that I feel like If you stand in front of A room full of like 60 young girls And women like a medium show but it's that sort of cold calling that cold reading thing almost that i feel like if you stand in front of a room full of like 60 young girls and women sadly speaking if you start talking about molestation and things like that someone in that room is gonna have happened to them statistically speaking and also they've been talking about sexual abuse all weekend they've gone on this like god camper tree and it's all about it's all about sex the whole thing's

about sex and like obviously if you are a teenage girl and you have been thinking about sex all weekend and then someone starts talking about sexual abuse i think it's reasonably likely that you're going to feel quite connected to it yeah so this girl runs off she tries to drown herself in the toilet bowl so the the camp counselors are quite busy and there are two versions of what happens next the first one that you'll hear from us is the one that made it into the law enforcement records about this case. And this story goes like this. On the last day of the heart-to-heart retreat, Erica Ingram sat in the middle of the stage after all of the attendees had left and started to cry hysterically. She refused to tell any of her fellow councillors what was going on for ages

until finally she said, quote, I have been sexually abused by my father. Carla Franco tells an entirely different story. Carla claims that she was invited to pray over Erica and as she did so, the word molestation came to her from God. Carla then told Erica that she had been sexually abused and suggested that she seek counseling. Her exact words were these, you have been abused as a child, sexually abused. Then she added that Erica's father was the culprit and that it had been going on for years. And this is by no means an insignificant detail. Either Erica shared her trauma with her fellow counselors under her own steam, or she was told that it

happened by Carla Franco who is a special guest at this camp and has held a very high status in Erica's perception I don't I obviously we don't know which of these two things happened but I feel like if you look at the agendas of the people involved it is much more interesting it is much more like revelatory if Carla Franco can say that she just held her hands over this girl and suddenly the word molestation came to her. And then she told her like this savior that you've been sexually abused. You need help. Like, I don't know. And I also think like, would you be bold enough if you were Carla to like, just go pick a girl and start saying it? I it's the former that erica just connected with this story

and start saying that it's happened to her rather than carla telling yeah but also if carla is she's just trying to book her next gig man like i think she you're right she could have also just been watching the crowd when she's telling the story and seen the one who was reacting and gone over and told her like i wouldn't put it past her, honestly. No, you're right, you're right. It could be either. We have no idea which of those two stories is how it actually went down. So after whichever one happened, the Ingrid sisters went home and a few weeks later left their parents' house.

They left in September. I believe the first week of September is when they left home. And they remained in touch with both of their parents, but they didn't physically see them until the weekend before Thanksgiving. So that's a good two months later. Oh, and this is almost like the weekend before Thanksgiving. Cool. Coincidence. Erica met her mum in a Denny's and told her that when she was a child, she and Julie had been molested by Paul and his friends at the poker parties that Paul used to

hold at their house. She said that the last instance of it was in 1975 and that the molestation had stopped when the family had joined the congregation at the Church of Living Water. Julie confirmed that she too had been molested by her father when she was 13. After she heard this, Sandy rushed home to confront her husband, Paul, who said that he had never touched his daughters and that he found it difficult to even hug them and that he had never acted in a way that could be construed as sexually inappropriate. Erica gave a much more detailed version of events to her father's colleagues at the sheriff's department in the rape crisis team

while her parents were on holiday the next week. Erica told the officers present that she was in the fifth grade, so like she would have been like 10 or 11, so it's like year six UK version, and that at this time her father would sneak into her and Julie's room and rape them anally and vaginally. Erica also claimed that both her and her sister had tried to tell their mum

what was happening, but that she wouldn't listen. Erica added that she'd even caught a disease from her dad that a local doctor in Olympia had treated her for. She claimed a doctor in California had helped her too. And we have no idea whether these leads that she gave were ever followed up on. It seems like an obvious thing to do. if there's a doctor in town in olympia washington that apparently cured this young girl of a fucking std you might want to go have a chat with them like why it's not mentioned again is quite bizarre so in this second interview erica told officers that the last incident of sexual abuse had occurred three years before so in 1985 which is not what she told her mum and it's significantly not because it's 10 years different so after this statement statement number

two erica returned again a few days later to the thurston county sheriff's department and changed her story one more time she claimed that the last incident of sexual abuse by her father had actually been just the september just. So she initially says it hasn't happened for ages. Then she says it happened three years ago. And then she says it was actually last week. And there are a lot of reasons why an abuse victim might change their story. So many reasons. I'm not discounting her testimony. I'm just saying that we need to be aware that her story changes a lot. I think that is the key thing with this. We are not saying like, oh, well, look at all these holes. Look at all these inconsistencies. It's because if that's how it's like sounding

right now, it's because we obviously know the whole story. So wait until you've heard the whole thing, put all the pieces together, and then you can see just how often none of this adds up. So Erica's story in particular moves and shifts. She's very difficult to keep up with. And we are going to come into quite serious whether to always believe the victim territory on this episode. So please be prepared. And of course, the tendency is and should be always to believe someone when an allegation is made.

You should always believe the victim. But there is no denying that this case challenges that quite a lot. But as usual, you can make your own minds up. But you do have to wonder, having said that, you would have to wonder why anyone would make this sort of thing up, particularly when their dad is the deputy sheriff. Yeah, I don't know. It's a big running theme of this entire show.

And we do have our theories, but we'll get to those once we've told you the long and confusing narrative that we need to before we get to that point. So on the 28th of November, after he came back home from his holiday with Sandy, Paul Ingram went into work as normal. At 8am, he was arrested by his boss, Sheriff Gary Edwards, on suspicion of sexually abusing his two daughters. After he was relieved of his badge and his gun, Paul was taken into an interrogation room, an interrogation room that he had sat in many times before,

and he was questioned by two men who used to be his subordinates, Joe Vukic and Brian Schoening, who handled all of the sexual offences in the county. Isn't that strange to be interviewed by people lower rank than you? Yeah. Well, I guess Gary was busy. Yeah. Had other fucking shit to do. I only learned this embarrassingly this week,

but I literally just learned the difference between the police and sheriffs. I mean, I didn't know this at all, so I don't think you need to be embarrassed about that because we don't have sheriffs here. Who knew? No. Well, we do.

You have to be a sheriff of London before you can be the mayor of London. Oh. But it's like a token position. They don't actually do anything. But it's like being given the key to the city. I'm not convinced sheriffs of London actually do very much at all. I don't think mayors outside London do anything.

No. I think the only mayor that matters is the mayor of London. What is the mayor of London something separate to? There's another type of mayor. What was that parade that was on last weekend in London? There was something, mayor something. And I was like, what? Because it just seems to be like an inherited thing.

Anyway, I'll find it. I've forgotten what it was. Never mind. Right, so apparently the difference between sheriffs and the police. So the police are responsible for law enforcement in a city or a town, a very isolated, specific place. A sheriff's department is responsible for an entire county. What else don't I know? How many times have we talked about sheriff's departments?

And I didn't know that that was the difference. I mean, I didn't know that. All of the Americas listening are going to be like, you are a moron. Yeah, but like you said, we don't have them here in the same sense. So it's just an interesting factette. It's good to know. It's good to know.

It's good to know. So if a sheriff's department is responsible for the entire county and a police department is only responsible for a city or a town, did the sheriff's department take precedent over a police department? I think that happens quite often. It's like when the FBI show up and they're like, this is our case actually, and the local police are like, no, I needed it. Yeah, I mean, i mean that with like

with like federal law enforcement i don't know maybe it's just my prejudice because they're like from the wild wild west but i was just thought sheriffs were kind of like in a like really small town or something clearly i'm wrong never mind anyway and so back to paul and as he sat in this very familiar interrogation room but on a very unfamiliar side of the table, he was presented with the allegations that his daughters had made against him. And he told the officers that were interviewing him that he had no memory of ever touching his daughters inappropriately. but he went on to say if this did happen we need to take care of it i can't see myself doing this there may be dark sides of me that i don't know about what are you fucking saying paul what a weird way to confess someone get that man a Literally. And it's never I didn't do it. It's I don't remember. If this did happen, he sounds fucking guilty. Exactly. And he goes on to insist that he didn't raise liars. So he seems convinced that if Erica and Julie were saying that this happened, then it must have happened. Which to me is just totally fucking bizarre. Like what

an odd response. Do they live in the world of that Ricky Gervais film, The Invention of Lying? Do they really just, oh, well, if someone said it, it must be true. I've been sending them to heart to heart Pentecostal camp every single year. They couldn't possibly be lying. They're so good Christian girls. They can't be lying. We're only saying that because we know what happens.

Obviously, we're not saying that if if someone reports sexually abuse you shouldn't believe them just because they went to a jesus camp i'm saying that we do know what happens if you are being interrogated by the police and you're trying to pretend like you didn't it's a weird response to say if they're saying that this happened then it must have happened if it happened i can't see myself i don't remember doing it because that's the point of what he's saying. He's not admitting it. He's not saying I did this. He's saying, I don't think I did this. I found it even difficult to hug my teenage daughters. I didn't sexually touch them. But if they're saying that I did, then maybe I did. That's the weirdness of this whole story. And also Paul was very keen to get to the bottom of the issue,

as you would be. And he insisted, therefore, on a polygraph. But we don't need to tell you that polygraphs are obviously about as useful at discerning the truth as tea leaves are. We've obviously talked about this many, many times. Yeah, we won't bore you with it again. Go and listen to every other single episode of the show. All we have as evidence of this first interview with Paul Ingram are the notes made by Vukic and Schoening. After hours of questioning, the tape recorder was switched on and Paul said, And he continued to hammer home that his children would not lie and that he had actually noticed quite a strange feeling in himself over the past few years. He couldn't remember any specific incident of molestation he just said that he could see himself doing it.

And during this session Vukic and Schoening claimed that Paul Ingram entered a trance-like state and described a time where he had gone into his daughter's room and undressed them as they slept he then described touching erica's breasts and vagina and what is interesting in this description is he uses words like would have repeatedly and then when he's questioned by the officers he changes his phraseology and says that he did carry out certain acts and this happens repeatedly so basically he's telling the story and he's like oh i would have gone into her room i would have taken off my dressing gown i would have touched her like this and then the sheriff's department say would have or did and then he goes oh did it's literally you can read the transcripts it's all out there and it's repeated this dance that

they do where he says things like would have and they correct him and then he corrects himself it's very strange but you can understand that if a man his daughters have come forward accused him of molestation and then he's in the interrogation room saying things i would have he's saying all those weird things like i didn't raise liars like maybe it did happen if it did happen like i can understand why these police officers just like okay let's just get to the point just say that you did and stop saying you would have because it's so bizarre yeah but you can't lead the witness like that surely i know i know i'm not agreeing that it's okay but it's different and again i'm not sort of putting shades of like

this is acceptable and that's not but it's not like he's saying i absolutely didn't do this i absolutely didn't do this and they're like yes you this. And they're like, yes, you did. We found the DNA. You did this, blah, blah, blah. He's like, I would have. If I saw an interrogation tape of a man saying that, I'd be like, he fucking did it. He makes himself seem unbelievably guilty. But the weirdest thing is that he never just, he's saying it based around the fact that he totally believes these victims who are making these allegations against him. He's like, well, if they said it, then it must be true.

I don't think I did. But if they said it, it's just so strange. Also, I just sneakily did a little Google and the parade was for the Lord Mayor of London, which I still don't know what the difference with that is. Oh, so that's not Sadiq? That's not Sadiq. That's like an inherited title. Because I remember watching the first 10 minutes of the mayor's parade on the BBC because I couldn't find the remote.

And it was like, as his father had been before him. So I feel like it's like a weird inherited thing. Anyway. I think it must be if it's Lords. It's probably a member of the House of Lords that has like a special title. They got a fucking parade last weekend. What the fuck? Why don't I have a parade?

Also, guys, please be smart in the next election. Just go and vote. If you don't vote, stop listening to the show. Sorry. Go vote. At least go and vote. For the love of God, at least go vote. So by the end of this session, Paul Ingram had admitted to raping both Erica and Julie multiple times and even admitted to impregnating Julie and taking her to have an abortion when she was just 15 years old. Again, where did he take her? Which doctor did this abortion? Who did this abortion? Did they follow up on it? Probably should have done. So later on, Ingram claimed that Vukic had convinced him that if he confessed to the crimes, that the memories of what he had done, because remember he's saying he can't remember actually doing it,

would all come flooding back to him. That seems a bit backwards. Just tell us you did it, and then you'll remember having done it. Don't worry about remembering having done it before you tell us that you did it. Just confess it on record in front of two members of the sheriff's department, and then you'll remember everything. And it's not like Paul Ingram was new to this whole business. He was a deputy sheriff himself.

He would have known all of the techniques that these interrogators were using. Could he really have been so susceptible to suggestion? It's difficult to know. No one else was in the room where it happened, and the tape player was not recording for hours during the interview. I just found it so difficult to believe that this man is a deputy sheriff and he goes into an interview room where he will have been himself many times and he will have asked the same questions.

He knows how the process works and he just gets in there and loses it. It's so bizarre. It really is. So when word reached Sandy that her husband Paul had confessed to what his daughters had accused him of, she collapsed. While in custody, Paul was introduced to court-appointed psychologist Richard Peterson, whose job it was to help Paul Ingram to remember. Because despite his confession to molesting his daughters, he still didn't remember actually doing it. According to psychologist Peterson,

it is quite common for abuse suspects to not have any memory of their crimes because they exist in a state of denial. Peterson started off by asking Paul Ingram if he had ever been sexually molested himself. Paul said that the only thing that he could remember was his mother telling him not to scratch his crotch in public. And that was the closest that he had.

I mean, that's almost quite sweet, isn't it? That he thinks that that's the closest thing to sexual abuse that's ever happened to him. Sweet or absolutely fucking terrifying. I mean, is it just like he said, you know, I had a hard time even hugging my daughters and all of this. Did he just fucking hug him once and then he thinks that he's sexually molested? I like, honestly, what is this man's frame of reference? Well, I think it's fundamentalist Christianity is what it is. That's his frame of reference.

It's just the fact that a person would go in and say, yep. All right, then. Okay, I guess I must have done. And I think one of the reasons that he sort of gives it up so easily is that repressed memory therapy was very en vogue during this time, alarmingly so. And essentially the way that psychologist Peterson practiced repressed memory therapy was by administering a relaxation technique, kind of like hypnosis. It basically is hypnosis, really. And then he asks his client, patient, whatever, by administering a relaxation technique, kind of like hypnosis. It basically is hypnosis, really.

And then he asks his client, patient, whatever, he asks them to imagine an abuse scenario. And that is not him going rogue. That's what the therapy is. And I have a big issue with if someone comes into your psychoanalyst, psychotherapist office and is like, i'm just a bit sad and you go okay but are you sure you weren't sexually abused that's my problem with this and the academic community's problem with recovered memory therapy exactly they're just like oh well you're sad so therefore it must have been that you were sexually abused let's

hypnotize you and then i'll poke around in your brain until we find something that sounds about right. How about that? Exactly. And this therapy, for good reason, has come under savage fire in recent years and we're going to save the meat of that for a bit later. But the key thing is to remember at this stage that during this relaxation period administered by psychologist Peterson,

Paul Ingram and many other people become highly suggestible. So meanwhile, in the outside world, more evidence against Paul Ingram was being collected. Teachers at Julie's college had noticed a huge change in her behavior in 1988. She had always been quiet, but that autumn, she was silent, lank and gaunt like a ghost, and she started to break rules which she'd never done before. They say that the, she was silent, lank and gaunt like a ghost. And she started to break rules, which she'd never done before. They say that the rule she broke was making a long distance telephone call. She's not setting things on fire. No.

But still out of character for her. Out of character. And this has happened after they've all made the accusations and after he's been arrested? No. So her teachers are saying in the run-up to her leaving home we did notice that something was different julie also wrote a letter to one of her teachers that said i don't sleep i just wait in my room for my dad i hate it i will never enjoy sex it hurts so bad and it makes me feel very dirty being a christian i suppose i forgive him

for what he did and still does to me, but it's very hard. So that letter implies that the abuse was still occurring right up until Julie left home, but that, if you'll remember, is not what Erica told the sheriff's department. Julie went on to explain that her father and his friends would rape her, but never Erica, because they were in bunk beds, and Erica was on the top bunk, and the men were afraid that they would break the bed.

And apparently, according to Julie, this happened at poker parties, which her dad held in their house. And these poker parties were populated almost entirely by employees of the sheriff's department. And Julie added in her letters to the teacher that she was worried that her father would lose his job and she wondered whether the whole situation would just blow over it never seems to occur to her that paul ingram would end up in prison and it does sort of give you a sense that like i'm not sure julie and erica knew how serious this was i agree it's almost like none of them realize how serious this was like when paul ingram's asked have you been sexually abused and he says the thing about

his mom telling him not to scratch his crotch in public. It's like none of them understand what these accusations or what molestation actually means. It's very strange, very strange. So after these letters were discovered, Paul was interrogated yet again. And thanks to the repressed memory therapy that he had received from psychologist Peterson, he produced a memory of being molested by an uncle of his when he was a child. Bear in mind, this was a man who had previously said that the closest thing that had ever happened was him scratching his crotch in public and being told off by his mother. So the officers recounted Julie's claims about his poker parties that he had held at his house and pointed out that Paul was not the only one involved.

The other men had been raping his daughter. And if that was the case, Paul needed to help the sheriff's department put those men behind bars too. Paul was asked if he could picture any other men who were with him at a poker party molesting his children. And eventually Paul came up with the name of a man that he could see. That man's name was Jim Raby, and he too was a member of the sheriff's department. Paul was asked if he had ever been in a sexual relationship with Jim Raby. And Paul replied, I don't think so. I just hate to think of myself as a homosexual. Again, he doesn't say yes or no. He says, I don't think so. I'd hate to think of

myself doing that. Like what? And also, it's just the way in which he's even being questioned by Peterson. Like, could you see, can you visualize, can you imagine any other men who were there with you? Why, yes, I can. Let me imagine that. The whole thing is so problematic. It's literally like he walks into a painting. It's like he walks into a painting of this suggested situation and he can walk around in it and everyone else is just in like a freeze frame. But he can just sort of like walk around and look at people and like move people's arms around and like pull their trousers

down all of that sort of stuff it's bonkers it really is it's like some weird world building that's happening in this interrogation room and paul ingram just pops in every now and again and sees who else was involved and then comes out and points the finger at that person. It is truly bizarre. So eventually, after some coaxing from both the officers and the psychologist present, Paul says that he could see Jim Raby touching his daughter Julie as she was tied to the floor. He said that he could see Jim's penis sticking up in the air. Jim Raby wasn't the only one implicated. Paul also told his interrogators that he could see

local mechanic Ray Reich taking pictures of the same scene in his head. He did not offer up this information without the usual suggestion, though, of the sheriff's department. Psychologist Peterson, then in a strange change of tack asked paul ingram if he'd ever been involved in black magic paul said that he went through a phase of reading his horoscope in the paper but that was about it you aren't really supposed to read your horoscope it's all a bit bit too pagan for him oh is it so maybe he felt like he was doing something quite taboo by reading his horoscope

every day. Yeah, for him that was a big deal. Like, there's a shop in Chesham called Crystal Goddess and my Catholic friends weren't allowed to go there

and it was just like a crystal and like tarot card reading shop. Yeah, ours was Harvest Moon. The Catholics were not allowed in there because it was black magic. Yeah, ours was Harvest Moon.

Yeah, I didn't have any really religious Catholic friends we used to go in there and buy incense and buy bandanas with like skulls on

yeah I mean it's essentially every town has a shop like that for sure Chesham's is Crystal Goddess I don't know if it's still there actually Harvest Moon is still 100% there I think in Hitchin so yeah go check it out

if you're in the area also reading horoscopes I was on the tube like a few months ago and there was a man with just a plastic bag full of loads and loads and loads and loads of newspapers. And I thought he'd been like collecting them and he was like going to take them to recycling or whatever. And then as he stood next to me on the tube and he pulled one paper out after the other, flipped it to the horoscope page, read something and then looked really annoyed, folded it out,

put it back in the bag and then pulled out another paper and did the same thing he was like reading his horoscope in every single one of those newspapers i was like mate what are you even looking that's hilarious maybe he's doing a scientific study of consistency you don't know maybe maybe i should have asked he was hip-hop's biggest mogul the man who redefined fame fortune and, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down.

Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery+. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding,

I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance but it instantly moved me and it's taken

me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made,

a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Laney Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing.

From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Schoening then asked Paul after the horoscope debacle, he just says completely out of the blue. He asked Paul whether he knew anything about satanic cults. And Paul said that when he was a kid, one Halloween, he had put a cat in a bag and tied it to a telephone pole. That's his equivalent of satanic cult, apparently.

Yeah, because his equivalent of being sexually molested is mum telling him off for touching himself in public. Like, for fuck's sake. This whole thing is outrageous and peterson he's just like all right let's let's go with this let's go with satanic are you into black magic are you into satanism like what uh this satanic curveball was not exactly as out of the blue as we might think it is. In the late 80s, the entirety of the United States was totally obsessed with the idea of bloodthirsty, baby-killing, robe-wearing child snatchers living all over the place in plain sight. And we have thought about this before in our Fall River episode. The satanic panic was no joke.

Everyone was talking about it. And the Thurston County Sheriff's Department were pretty sure that they were going to be the first to prove it. On the 1st of December, Jim Raby and Ray Reich were questioned by the Thurston Sheriff's Department. Raby was told by his colleagues that it had been separately corroborated by two people that he had masturbated in front of and on Julie Ingram. By these two people, they of course mean Paul and Julie, even though Julie has yet to even mention Raby by name. Schoening told Raby that there was photographic evidence of his crime, which of course there was not. And we do know from previous episodes that in the US,

it is not illegal for the police to tell people that they're interviewing or interrogating that they have evidence that they don't have. So shockingly, Jim Raby handled this information much in the same way that Paul Ingram did. He said that he had absolutely no recollection of these actions, and he said that, I do not believe that I could have done it and blocked it out. I feel scared. Any cop is guilty until proven otherwise. Vukic then told Jim Raby that he was part of a dangerous cult. And Jim Raby responded, If I have blocked it out, it must be a dangerous one. If I can't remember this, then I am so damn dangerous that I do not deserve to be loose.

Ray Reich was much the same when he was called in. He said that he didn't do it that he knew of. And if he did do it, then he didn't remember. What is in the water in this town? What are they drinking? What are they smoking? I don't understand. That's three men independently being like,

I don't think so, but possibly maybe I've just repressed it. Is this like some MKUltra shit? Like, what? That's what it feels like and the only thing i can think of is that repressed memory therapy was everywhere everyone was talking about it so this idea that you can just forget things you've done things that have happened to you was very much just in everyone's mind i think it's still completely remarkable because these men are also police officers they're part of the sheriff's department.

And it's not like they're being accused of something quite minor that maybe just slipped their mind, like sexual abuse. And I get that that was the flavour of the time, but it's a remarkable response to being accused of incredible sexual abuse. Yeah, and it's not even like, oh, your career is over. Your family will probably disown you. You'll go to prison. and psychology it's absolutely fascinating that people can just be told that they've done something in a climate where their repressed memory is like you know as you said very much like in vogue and people

just fucking believe it and be like yeah maybe i did do it what yeah and this wouldn't be a satanism episode without a good old-fashioned exorcism and Pastor John Broughton from the Church of Living Water was all too happy to oblige he came to visit the jail that Paul Ingram was being held in Paul was convinced that there was a demon inside him that was stopping him from remembering and Pastor Broughton told Paul that he was not a demon but rather several spirits

including those of sexual immorality and gluttony the pastor drew out the spirits and Paul made himself sick into a little bin and then went straight back into the interrogation room where he produced another story in which Jim Raby pushed him down the stairs and anally raped his son, Chad. Chad is the younger brother. He'd never been involved in the poker party stories before. But Pastor Broughton assured Paul Ingram

that God would not allow false thoughts to enter his head so paul ingram kept on confessing that's bananas that he's just been like god like if you're thinking about it if you can see the image god wouldn't let you think it if it wasn't true yep there's no such thing as an imagination and no such thing as you just visualizing random things because you're being told to if you're thinking it then god put it there because it's real like this is fucking scary honestly i'm scared and this confession got quite satanic the molestation was no longer happening at the poker parties, but rather by robed figures standing around a fire in a wood. Ingram claimed to have seen the devil, a corpse, a beating heart, and he said that he saw himself sacrificing a black cat, but he wasn't really sure whether it was a black

cat or whether it was a doll. Pick your team, Paul. And yet again, he never says, I did or I was. He only says, I feel, I see, I hear, like he's just walking into a photograph. He also came up with a story about him and Jim Raby going to Seattle and killing a sex worker in 1983. And this would, of course, have made him a suspect in the Green River case. But this story was confirmed by the Seattle police to be total bollocks. The sheriff's department did their best to keep the satanic development out of the ears of Erica and Julie. So the whole idea of like, now that Satanism is involved, they try to keep this a secret. But obviously word travels fast in the fundamentalist Christian

community. And while Julie maintained that her father was just dredging up things that she didn't want to hear, know about or remember. Erica was now saying that her father had raped her almost every day. It would seem that the more Erica was speaking to law enforcement, the more abuse she remembered. And this was not the first time that Julie and Erica had reported a sexual abuse incident. Sexual assault, abuse and rape had all been reported by the Ingrid systems to the sheriff's department before they had made allegations in 1983, 1985 and 1987, all against different men not in their family. In each of these instances, there was not enough evidence

to follow through. So the allegations were dropped and nothing happened to these cases. These cases were never progressed. No one ever was charged. So could that be the reason that Julie and Erica's stories keep becoming more dramatic? Were they tired of being ignored? I also think it's quite possible that I do definitely think that something happened. I think we both definitely think that something happened to these girls. And if you take into fact that they've made these allegations in the past three times like from 1983 to 1987 against different men who

weren't in their family think of who their father is he's not only their father who should have protected them from things like that but uh you know as far as they would have thought but he's also a police officer well you know deputy sheriff could this be like a weird not on purpose but a like psychological knee-kick reflex to like none of you paid attention none of you did anything when we were actually raped and sexually abused and now maybe that hatred and that feeling of violation got projected onto other men who happen to be not only fathers but also authority figures like the fucking sheriff's department in terms of who they're now making accusations against it's a good theory but that's all it is it's just a

theory guys like we don't know we don't know so yeah the question of were their stories getting more dramatic because they were tired of being ignored having made past allegations of assault to the sheriff's department and that is a question that Sandy Ingram faced every day. The investigation also uncovered that Paul had had an affair 13 years before that Sandy had had no idea about. So she started to wonder if she ever really knew her husband at all. If he was capable of keeping a secret affair, surely he was capable of keeping sexual abuse of his children a secret. I think they're slightly different things, I will say, but I see the shock that Sandy is obviously going through. Now, Sandy wondered if she too had been brainwashed. On top of that, Erica started to

tell the Sheriff's Department investigators that her mother had also been involved in the abuse. She stated that when she was nine or ten years old, her mum Sandy, Jim Raby, Ray Reich and her father Paul Ingram had come into her room and she was forced to pose for pictures while Reich held a gun to her. Julie, on the other hand, said that her mother had never been involved in the abuse. Again, why do their stories not match? And I'm not sure how Erica got hold of the names Jim Raby and Ray Reich. You would like to think that the investigation was being kept under tight control, but given the level of suggestion in the interviews of Paul Ingram,

I wouldn't be surprised if the Ingram sisters received the same treatment. I mean, maybe they named them because it happened and they were there and it was like, it's these men. But then also, maybe the sheriff's department is just like your dad has named these men do you remember them i mean given everything else i think it's the latter probably erica and julie's two brothers were questioned as well chad who's the youngest claimed that he had never been abused as a child and the only bad thing he could remember was a bad dream about a witch who used to sit on his chest

and that may sound like standard sleep paralysis to you and me but the Thurston County Sheriff's Department with the help of psychologist Peterson convinced Chad that that was no dream but rather a veiled memory of abuse. This is absolutely horrendous. Psychologist Peterson also told Chad

that if he was abused by Jim Raby and Ray Reich that he could sue them and buy himself a really nice car and Chad says I've got a nice car and the psychologist says but do you have a BMW wow strike this man off yeah unbelievable I mean put him in jail put him in jail like this is unbelievable so the Ingram's firstborn son, remember Paul Ross, he was the one who had also moved out and like basically lost touch with his family. Well, he was next on the hit list for a statement. Obviously, because he had fallen off the grid, he was a little bit hard to track down, but they got to him eventually. And they caught up with him on the 18th of December. And he guessed that his father was being held for a sexual offence,

probably against his sisters. Now Paul Ross lived very far away so I'm more inclined to believe that he knew nothing about the case than I am when it comes to Erica and Julie. And Paul Ross insisted that he hated his father. And after going into a trance-like state induced by psychologist Peterson, he produced a memory of watching his mother having a threesome with his father and Jim Raby as she was tied down. After this revelation, Paul Ross asked for a break and when he walked out, he was never seen again.

I do think that is weird. Why does Paul Ross, when he's sort of found, immediately think that is weird why does paul ross when he sort of found immediately think that his dad's being held in connection with a sexual offense yeah this is what makes me think that something did happen something did happen to those girls i don't know what it is i don't know when it happened i'm not sure who did it but i think something happened no one just walks around saying this shit for no reason no No, I agree with you. I mean, all the stuff about the poker game, like all those men being in the house,

like two young girls, like anything could have happened. It well could have been Paul Ingram himself. It could have been any of his buddies from the sheriff's department that he had over, or it could have been at the church, like where this all kicks off. Anything could have happened

and it could have been that he was involved. It could have been that he just failed to stop it as a father and as a fucking sheriff's deputy. and that's why the girls were so angry at him or he could have just yeah absolutely fucking done it like i i don't know it's so bizarre it's his reactions to it that are so strange christmas came and went and ingram was transferred to a different jail where he underwent a standard sexual deviation test. He insisted on taking it three times to reflect what he called his three states of mind. One of these states of mind was the one he was in before he was arrested and one for after his exorcism and then the one,

the state of mind that he currently held. And the first test came back totally normal. The other two indicated serious sexual deviations literally how is he being allowed to call the shots here how is he like oh i just i need to take it three times actually because i'm actually three different people how is he just skipping between these states of mind like how can he just drop in on the state of mind he had before his arrest that's bullshit i honestly i feel like it's because he is allowing this narrative of the sexual satanic abuse blah blah, blah, blah. So they're just like, yeah, let's go with it. Let's see what happens when we give him these three different things. Maybe it'll be really interesting because he's never pushing back on it. I think there's just

almost like this weird curiosity from law enforcement and psychologists that they're letting him do whatever he wants because they want to see where it goes. So by this stage, Jim Raby and Ray Reich were both being held in solitary confinement. On the 30th of December, Erica gave yet another interview to the sheriff's department. This time she recalled being carried outside of her house to a high priestess and a group of people in robes chanting and wearing Viking hats with horns. Then she detailed that she'd seen this congregation many times and that they sacrificed babies, sometimes unborn babies,

cut them up and drank their blood. She said that she'd fallen pregnant many times and had undergone painful coat hanger abortions performed by these robed people. She drew a map to where the bones of all of the babies she claimed to have seen murdered over 25 times lay. After these babies were sacrificed to Satan, they were buried in the woods behind the Ingram home, apparently.

The site that she had pointed out was investigated by a local anthropologist, and he found one animal bone. Some people say it was a cow's jawbone, some people say it was a deer's jawbone, but he found absolutely no evidence of human sacrifice or even human burial. Julie confirmed that Erica had called her and filled her in on the new satanic memories, but that Julie herself didn't really remember anything like that. She only remembered burying cows, chickens and goats, which we know that the family kept on their land. Both Erica and Julie claimed to be physically scarred from the abuse that they sustained at the hand of their father,

his friends and their satanic followers. Both women were examined by female doctors, and these doctors found no scarring, no physical signs of abuse, and no signs that either woman had undergone an abortion. That doesn't mean they didn't have abortions. There is rarely scarring in young women after abortions. But if Erica's coat hanger story is true, you would expect to see some residual damage.

Erica also claimed that she'd never been sexually active during this examination, which seems like an odd thing to say if you're in the midst of a sexual abuse case. And you're being examined for having potentially had multiple abortions. So on the 23rd of January, Erica gave another interview where she added that her father had forced her to perform oral sex on goats and dogs, and her mother had joined in, and that there were pictures taken of all of these acts.

In the run-up to the trial, the sheriff's department called in Pulitzer Prize-winning cult mind control expert Dr. Richard Offshay to see what he made of the interviews that they had collected from Julie, Erica, and Paul Ingram, and to test whether he thought they were reliable witnesses. Dr. Offshay's answers to the reliable witness question was a resounding no on all counts. He proved that Paul Ingram was unbelievably suggestible by implanting a false memory in him and coaching Paul until he produced a detailed account of it. Dr. Offshay told Paul Ingram that his sons had raped his daughters, but Offshay had not interviewed Erica or Julia at this stage, so this information was totally fabricated. But nevertheless, days later,

Paul Ingram produced a written testimony in which he described the incident in detail. So Dr. Offshay is only doing what the police have already done? Yeah. Like he just copies them exactly? He uses the same method, plants something he knows is not true because he just made it up and Paul Ingram recites it days later. So Dr. Offshay used this as evidence to suggest that you could tell Paul Ingram anything and that he would confess to it. When it came to Julie and Erica, Dr. Offshay pronounced them both extraordinarily unreliable witnesses as they were unable to

corroborate any details of the other story. When it came to Erica's recollections of the satanic cult episodes, she was unable to disclose specific details of the rituals, whether the congregation were seated or standing, for example. She's really good at the, oh, all of these things happened to me and all of the baby eating and all of that, but she can't really remember very basic details like which way were you standing or like what shoes did you have on? Stuff like that she can't reproduce. And Julie, the other sister, completely refused to speak to Dr. Offshay at all, claiming that it was all too traumatic to talk about. Yeah, she also just sort of regresses like she's cuddling a teddy bear. She like hides under the table. It's all very odd. So Dr. Offshay

concluded his report by saying, quote, it is my opinion that Erica Ingram is not a credible witness. It's my opinion that many of her accusations are false. Erica had claimed that she had not given all of her information at once because she had repressed the memories. Offshay was convinced that Erica used this as a shield when she was being pressured by her interrogators with demands for specific information. And I do think,

like, after all the things we've seen, the Sheriff's Department have completely proved, like, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I think, that they are leading witnesses. And I completely believe

that they would have been sat opposite Erica then being like, well, you need to give us more, we don't have enough. Absolutely. Dr. Offshay also concluded that the confessions

of Paul Ingram were highly suspect and the memories that he produced of the abuse did not correlate in any way with how memory

actually works. And when Dr. Oshay was asked his opinion on whether mind control was at play in the case Dr. Oshay responded I thought this was

fucking hilarious. He said I suggest that you read In Search of the Manchurian Candidate by John Marks for an account of the CIA's pathetic attempts to develop such a technology

because it was believed that the Russians and the Chinese had it. If Ingram, Raby and Reich had discovered how to do this, I feel confident that a presidential pardon

could be arranged if they would share their secret. Such sass from Dr. Offshay. I love it. Operation Paperclip Part 2. Doesn't matter about all the sexual abuse and all the child abuse. Just tell us how you did it because we don't fucking know and we're the CIA. I think that's a very poignant point. A very pointy point made by him. A very pointy point.

But having said that, and it is a very pointy point, but Dr. Offshay's reports is not without its critics. The main criticism is that the memory of abuse that Dr. Ofshay implanted in Paul Riggum was not alien enough. It was essentially just another abuse story. And I kind of see where they're coming from. Everyone's talking about abuse. How far of a stretch is it for him to remember one more instance?

And how far-fetched is it that that could have happened if everything else is happening it's not unreasonable to think that his sons were at it as well this is true and i do understand that point that people are making but i also would say like if he were just able to convince him of something else much more minor then maybe it wouldn't suggest that he was uh suggestible enough to admit to doing something so heinous so it needed to be something equally vile i don't know but i do get what they're saying that it is just another abuse story he should have planted a memory or not planted a memory god what am i saying he should have planted an idea in his head of something much far further removed but i still think it's not

something that can be totally ignored no i don't think't think so. So now we have Erica and Paul Ingram claiming that they had repressed memories that they had then recently discovered. But repressed memory therapy was all the rage in the 80s and 90s, but it has now almost been entirely debunked. According to the new scientist, quote, recovery of suppressed memories has been almost completely discredited as a therapeutic tool. That is not to say, of course, that people cannot minimize trauma and then rediscover it later in life. But even normal memory is notoriously unreliable and recovered ones are even worse. Recovering memories entails a kind of hypnosis, not dissimilar to the kind that psychologist Peterson practiced on Paul Ingram. And when a person is in that state, they can be highly susceptible and even fabricate memories.

The very word repressed memory is problematic because it indicates that the memory existed in the first place. In 2000, a paper was published in Psychological Science in which 57 women, some who had always remembered abuse in their lives and some who had supposed recovered memories of abuse. This group and a control group took a memory test where they had to remember words on a list. And the result showed that the women who had always had the memories of their abuse were about as likely as the control group to fabricate words on the list. The women who had recovered memories were 20% more likely to have false memories about the words on the list. And we obviously can't say that all recovered memories are false. The only way to prove that would be put a group of people through abuse and then monitor how they remembered it for

the rest of their lives, which is very unethical. But I think we can safely say there is enough statistical evidence to suggest that recovered memories are unreliable. Some members of the academic community are convinced, however, that repressed memories do not exist at all. Dr. Richard J. McNally, who's a professor and director of clinical training in the Department of Psychology at Harvard, and he's a leader in the field of memory, he says that the notion that traumatic events can

be repressed and later recovered is the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry. It has provided the theoretical basis for recovered memory therapy, the worst catastrophe to befall the mental health field since the lobotomy era. And Dr. James McGough from the University of California, Irvinevine also agrees and he says i do not believe there is such a thing as repressed memory i haven't seen a single instance in which a memory was completely repressed and pop up again i go on science not fads there is absolutely zero proof that it can happen zero non niente nada all of my research says that strong emotional experiences leave emotionally strong memories.

Being sexually molested would certainly qualify. He sort of goes on to say people who go through these type of things, they can't stop thinking about it. They wish they could forget. That's the issue. And I can obviously, as we said before, sort of understand the idea that trauma can impact memories. But the idea of like a strong emotional memory

or a strong emotional connection to what happened to you that must surely exist and that's exactly what this professor is saying i don't think anybody understands memory enough but i do think the idea of repressed memories has been roundly rejected by the academic and scientific community by this point which is so interesting because like everyone i've spoken to about this case this week has been like, no, repressed memory is a thing. And I think it's just we're so used to seeing it. The danger of this and why they're saying this was such a horrific thing to infect the field of psychiatry and psychology is the idea that if they did implant these memories

or sort of have these memories come up in people who this had never actually happened to, the impact on it would be similar to somebody who had been abused because this person is now convinced that they were abused they're having them thoughts about it they're they're seeing it happen they're fucking going through the trauma of something that never actually happened but not having to deal with the trauma of something horrific that didn't even happen and it's because of this fucking weird hypnosis and shit that these quacks did to them, which I think is terrifying. Right, but they're not quacks. They're legitimate psychologists, you know. But also the problem I have with it is, what's the point of recovering these memories? It doesn't fix them. It doesn't make you better. And I think

that's why the therapy has been so roundly rejected, because it doesn't work. It doesn't make people feel better. It makes them feel worse. Yeah, I guess it's like they're saying, oh, it's to get the memories to the surface so we can uncover the trauma and then we'll deal with dealing with it. But you're not because you're almost fabricating trauma in somebody that that's not what happened to them. Wow. Wow. My head hurts.

So Paul and Erica Ingram's memories of satanic ritual abuse certainly obviously do seem very outlandish, but they were very much a sign of the times. In 1980, a book came out called Michelle Remembers. It was written by a woman named Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist, Laurence Pazda, who, by the way, she went on to marry later on, so that's quite interesting. Now, this book is full of memories of black magic and satanic sacrifice that Michelle accessed in a trance during therapy. In 1988, a survey of psychiatrists in the Seattle Tacoma area was conducted and a quarter of the psychiatrists who participated

said that they had treated victims of satanic ritual abuse and that these cases all bore a striking similarity to Michelle Remembers. That is absolutely bonkers. A quarter, a quarter of the psychiatrists in that area, which is not a small area, are saying that they've dealt with satanic ritual abuse. And that all of these cases were incredibly similar to this very popular book that had come out eight years before. Do you know what? I'm going to write a book about satanic ritual abuse with my future husband. It's a fucking racket. And then in 10 years time, we'll do a study of all of the psychiatrists in North London and we'll test how

many of them all dealt with cases that bore a striking similarity to Hannah's book. And then we'll win the Nobel Prize and be happily ever after. Oh, God. And then we can stop asking you guys for Patreon money because we'll be rich. So Michelle remembers this book that we are talking about is a book that was full of baby eating and blood drinking. And it was passed around the fundamentalist Christian groups like communion wine. And guess what? Erica Ingram read it in the months before she reported her father on top of that just before julie and erica reported their father the ingram family had also

watched the nbc special devil worship exposing satan's underground which actually remains one of the most widely watched documentaries in television history so there you go fun fact another fun fact which i hadn't thought about until we did the reading this week. I just not connected these dots before. But if you think about it, the satanic panic happened right around the time that international communism collapsed. So the external international communist enemy of the United States was replaced by a much more insidious foe. One who didn't even have an accent. And could just be living next door.

How do you spot them? Easy to spot the Russians. So easy to spot the commies. Now you've got the devil to deal with. By the mid-80s, the alleged number of satanic murders was in the hundreds of thousands. And it was estimated that satanic cults were sacrificing 50 to 60,000 people every year in the US. Bloody hell, it's quite the epidemic. It's quite the epidemic. But unlike every other epidemic in literal history there were absolutely no bodies ever found but that's explained by explained away by believers as being evidence that satanic cults eat their victims even their bones do you know what it reminds me of like you know um anti-evolutionary

christians who are like the world is 600 years old. And everyone's like, yeah, but what about dinosaur fossils? And they're like, oh, no, devil put it there as a trick. That's what it makes me think of. Like anything you say, they're just like, no, well, actually, it's this. Well, you know, if you believe hard enough, you can be as stupid as you like. There you go. And of course, there are killers who hear the voice of Satan.

But there are just as many killers, maybe even more, I would argue, that hear the voice of Jesus. But that doesn't mean that either one of them is necessarily in a cult. In February 1989, the trial was looming. Chad recounted his testimony. Julie, Paul, Ross and Erica were all reluctant to testify. The sheriff's department were worried, but they needn't have been, because Paul Ingram pled guilty to nine counts of third-degree rape.

So in Washington, just to clarify, first-degree rape involves forcible compulsion and may occur with the use or threatened use of a deadly weapon, kidnapping, infliction of serious bodily injury to the alleged victim or burglary. Second-degree rape occurs in a case that involves forcible compulsion but do not rise to the level of a first-degree offence. It may also occur when an alleged victim is mentally incapacitated or physically helpless or when the defendant is in a position of authority over the alleged victim such as in a healthcare or eldercare facility.

Rape in the third degree is defined as an alleged offence that does not meet the definition of first or second degree rape, but still involves clearly expressed lack of consent or threat of harm to the alleged victim's property. It does seem like a bit of a light sentence, like a light charge, doesn't it, third degree rape? Yeah, it was saying this clearly expressed lack of consent and threat of harm to the alleged victim. But you're like, oh, it just doesn't meet the definition of first and second

degree so you can get away with just five years. Yeah, it's a weird one. But the charges against Jim Raby and Ray Reich were dropped after they spent 158 days in jail. By the sentencing hearing in July 1989, Paul Ingram had changed his mind and he attempted to redact his guilty plea. He now claimed that his recovered memories were nothing but fantasies, but the judge wasn't having any of it

and he was not allowed to change his plea and Paul Ingram was sentenced to 20 years in prison with the possibility of parole after 12. The Ingram investigation was the most expensive in Thurston County history. They used night vision helicopters to look for the Satanists in the woods. And it cost almost $1 million. And I think that tells you, like, this was serious. People genuinely thought this was happening.

And in 1993, Julie and Paul Ingram reconciled. Julie wrote Paul a letter while he was still in prison, and she wrote, I didn't want you to be there. I wish I could come and take you away. I'd love to be held by you. I wish Jesus could reunite our family again. Paul was released in 2003,

but his family were never reunited. Some are still in Olympia, under assumed names, and others are much further afield. I couldn't find what Paul's doing. Absolutely no information on it at all, so he could be anywhere be anywhere yeah i feel like he very much just wants to like be not a part of this family or anything to do with it so what is the truth and does it matter we have found very few people who seem to believe erica and julie the ones that do use quite unsound reasoning it feels like like how could a loving father possibly detail abuse of his children?

But we know that false confessions happen all the time. I found this really interesting. Like basically everything you read, the undertone of it is Julie and Eric are alive. So it's very difficult to find someone who doesn't think that. Literally the only article I could find, it wasn't even an article, it was like a blog. And they were just like, but how could he's not acting like an innocent man and I was like, if that's all you've got

I don't know if I can side with you It's really complicated this entire thing because there are things that make it very much feel like something absolutely happened to Erica and Julie and I do believe that, I do think something happened to them, whether it was Paul Ingram whether it was other people that he knew, whether it was the other poker players that he had over, whether it was at the church.

I don't know, but something happened to these girls. And some people do point at the fact that Julie, you know, writes a letter to Paul and sort of tries to reconcile with him as her having all lied about it. But I don't think that's true. I think abuse victims have very complicated relationships with their abusers, especially when they're familial. And that doesn't indicate anything anyway for me. Something happened to them, but it's a whole family that's been torn apart by abuse that may or may not have been pulled. And they've also been trapped and caught up in the web of people working to their own agenda because they believed in satanic abuse,

etc, etc. And we do also know that apart from just false confessions happening all the time, the traumatic pseudo memories can be induced in people. That psychiatrist, Dr. Offshade, did it with Paul. We know that he did it with Paul. And was Paul Ingram fantasizing his own guilt because of the pressure he was put under by his former colleagues at the Sheriff's Department? We know that they were interrogating him by telling him that they had evidence that this had all happened was he an innocent man sent to prison because of hysteria don't know but i think we're with the judge on this one we do think that the claims of the ingram sisters were probably exaggerated but i definitely can't shake the feeling that something was going

on in that house because why else would they have left so suddenly and why else would their eldest brother have immediately assumed that their father was in trouble for molestation when he lived hundreds of miles away and had absolutely no contact with his family? Yeah. I think that's one of the strongest bits of,

like, one of the strongest things that makes me question this is Paul Ross, like, immediately questioning his dad when he's sort of found by the sheriff's department. We really are not trying to minimise traumatic memories with this episode, but they definitely should be handled with care. Dr Paul McHugh, who's the chairman for the psychiatry department at Johns Hopkins, warns, quote, if penis envy made us look dumb, this will make us look totally gullible.

And he's talking about repressed memories, right? Yeah. Wow. Well, there you go. That was actually a listener recommendation. I can't remember who recommended it, but you know who you are. Thank you very much. You can get your Spooky Bitch merch for like a week or so still. So go to redhandedshop.com and get on with that because then it will be gone forever.

Probably not forever, but for quite a long time. So get on that. And you can also follow us on social media at red handed the pod and you can donate to our patreon page which we diligently explained to you at the top of the show which feels like 700 years ago here are some people who have already given us some money we've got elissa lentz glenn jones laura rose katie b jocelyn saldana elias serhan please enter name very smart of you uh stephanie lorrainearnon-Hughes, Daisy Blue Tin, Katie Eskdale, Rachel, Christian, Terry, Catherine and Daniel Knott, Nidhi Arkaya, Kelly Green,

Fiona Manning, Sophie Damos, Triona Hayes, Jalissa, Maria Rage, Charlotte Redwell, Fiorella Violoni, Shannon Kimberley, Angelica Ruiz, Jenny Lopez. Is it you, J-Lo? Is it you? Kenyala, and you can go. Leonie Player, Hannah Cooper, Stevie, Erin Crook, Mary Kinison, Carrie Mockler, Hannah Lee Smith, Karina Schmidt, Claire Ogden, Sailor Sadist, Tara, Mindy, Katie Reynolds, Carly Cash, Lisa Dole, Andrea Stoner, Caitlin Rookery, Rookery? Rookie.

Caitlin Rookie, Mary Alice Caffiro, Kristen Lynch, Rachel Balcarek, Lindsay Pittman, Melissa Fletcher, Katie Phillips, Annie Matthews, Cassidy Luknik, Benny Davis-Eyes, Annie Campbell, Anna Harville, Maya Holcomb, Lisa Kerr, Chrissy Van Mierlo, Jessica Ducasse, Sandy Boo Boo, Anna Murphy, Ashley Edwards, Rowan Lowell, Lauren... Oh, what? Yin-Hee Truong, Lily, Sinead Simmons, Catherine, Caroline Kishan, Kelly O'Connor, Nicole Emanuel, John, Samantha, Alex Sutherland, Maggie Greenleaf, Jason Espinosa, Holly Jones, Hannah Wright, Ruby Fletcher, Rhiannon Cooper, Isabel Smith, Katie Kay, Luca, Samantha, Ethin, Ethin, Tobin, Adele Holliday, Joe Sullivan, Megan Garrett helena van horn abby hayhurst rachel tennerswood marista ashgari roisin stephanie mitchell samantha vega michelle penner marianne and jess kidd i did a very funny

conversation my friend the other day who her and her um boyfriend listened to the show and he didn't realize that this was a different list we read out every day. He just thought we just named the same people every week. And he was like, so those are your patrons? I was like, no. There's new patrons every week. He was like, fucking hell. That's hilarious.

It was Stephanie Michelle, not Stephanie Mitchell and I think there's a Rachel Latofsky as well. Thank you ever so much, guys, for your money. Thank you. My landlord really enjoys it. So do we. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the

tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today.

You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either. Until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my

podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.