RedHanded - Episode 125 - “The Family” & Anne Hamilton-Byrne

Episode Date: December 12, 2019

For “The Family” or “The Great White Brotherhood”; Anne Hamilton-Byrne was the female reincarnation of Jesus Christ, and her word was final.  Unfortunately her word mainly consisted of stealing babies, beating, abusing and injecting terrified children with LSD and poisoning unsuspecting people in order to carry out her “miracles”... Documentaries: The Cult That Stole Children: https://youtu.be/6pmapR9oULc 60 Mins Australia - Interview with Anne Hamilton-Byrne: https://youtu.be/NFFAJkTRmWc Other sources: https://steemit.com/wikileaks/@steemtruth/deconstructing-julian-assange-and-wikileaks-his-childhood-in-a-cult https://nowhere.news/index.php/2019/04/14/reasons-not-to-take-the-julian-assange-story-at-face-value/ https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/death-of-sick-victorian-cult-leader-does-not-end-suffering-for-victims/news-story/a7e5df99f30b05414acec766293439aa https://www.mamamia.com.au/the-family-cult-anne-hamilton-byrne/ https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anne-hamilton-byrne-obituary-dg9fxbhdq   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.

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That does sound weird, but let's go with it. If you do, head on over to Parkast, Today in True Crime podcast. I had the pleasure of guest hosting yesterday's episode, so that would have been Wednesday, the 11th of December's episode. It's on the Lufthansa heist. Go check it out. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. So these days, it's a question women often have to ponder. Can we have it all? I'm Hannah and welcome to Red Handed. out of nothing, amassed millions from her brainwashed followers, and stole 28 kids in 21 years to raise and abuse for her dream perfect little family. It's quite a large family, 28. It is. It's not a little like a white picket fence, 2.5 kids. She got a lot. So yes, that is right. We are heading into the sinister world of female cult leader Anne Hamilton Byrne. Anne, there's no two ways about it. Anne was fucking crazy town.

She was a yoga teaching, LSD popping, money stealing, baby thieving, Botox loving, manipulative, narcissistic, abusive nightmare of a woman. The detective who pursued her for years, who has, I think, maybe the best name that we've ever come across. His name is Lex Derman. I still quite like Christmas Humphreys. I think that's still my favourite. QC, no less. I also still enjoy Brad Bradley. Brad Bradley will have a special place in my heart forever. So Anne Hamilton Byrne, to give her her full name, was the founder of the Great White Brotherhood of Initiates and Leaders, or simply known as the Family. And this is not to be confused, of course, with the Family International, the now rebranded branch of the Children of God cult, which is a whole other episode, whole other story for a whole other day. We can't even get into that right now. There's the Source family as well. That's another standard la-based beardy cult absolutely there is the source family

and of course the manson family but um family international that is very much like a new thing i think they're not too bad but if i was a member of it i would have some serious misgivings because the children of god cult is uh it's probably one of the worst things I've ever heard about. So, yeah. Yeah, I would say keep away from the Children of God. I think that would be my number one rule before leaving the house. Keys, wallet, phone, stay away from the Children of God. Yeah, stay away from the Children of God. Reminder, note to self, to do, stay away from the Children of God.

But the story that we're covering today is no less interesting. In fact, the family, I think, is a particularly interesting cult. Firstly, because Anne was, of course, a woman. And there really aren't that many cults out there that have been led by women. And it's not just interesting because she's a woman. It's because this dynamic certainly creates many differences in terms of what went down within the cult. But also something I found quite interesting was that the followers of the family weren't a bunch of like misfits or marginalized people living on the fringes of society like many cults are usually based around. Oh no, this was a

very middle-class doomsday cult. And we even have a little alleged celebrity cameo for you at the very end. Scientology, anybody? Place your bets now. Australia's your biggest clue. I'm going to give you that for nothing. Yeah. So to really understand Anne and what would become later on her The Family, in inverted commas, we, of course, need to start at the very beginning. Anne was born Evelyn Grace Victoria Edwards in 1921 in a tiny town

of Sale, Victoria in Australia. She was first born to parents called Ralph and Florence Edwards. There would be six more Edward kids to come, but they were not a happy family. Ralph was a railway worker who'd fought in World War One and he wasn't a natural father. He basically abandoned his wife after Evelyn or as she would later become known Anne. So Evelyn was born and he hits it and quits it. He just popped in periodically every now and then seemingly to impregnate his wife and then piss off again. Evelyn's mum Florence was actually British and she was from South London. She was a self-proclaimed medium who could speak with the dead. Very popular in wartime Britain, mediums and spiritualism and all that sort of thing. And she would often incorporate a lot of Eastern religious practices into her work.

But unfortunately, on top of having seven kids to feed and a husband who couldn't be asked, Florence was also coping with undiagnosed, untreated paranoid schizophrenia. Florence was sadly really, really unwell. There was one time where she actually set her hair on fire in the street in front of all of the neighbours. And so, unsurprisingly, given the lack of stability at home, many of the kids spent most of their childhoods in orphanages. And we are in the first half of the 20th century. I think saying orphanage is fine. They weren't foster homes, were they? Like, it's definitely a, like, Miss Hannigan run orphanage.

Oh, yeah. She is like fucking Paul Elani. Like, that's definitely it. And much of Evelyn's childhood was specifically shrouded in mystery, even today. But we do know that she spent a lot of time in the Old Melbourne Orphanage and that she was enrolled at the Sunshine Primary School in Melbourne in 1929. And when she was in the Old Melbourne Orphanage, it's near a particularly wealthy area. And so from the ground, she could see the rich kids walking past. In young Evelyn's eyes, they were perfect. The girls in their dresses and the boys in their little pressed suits.

It was a world that she longed to be a part of. And although it probably wasn't that uncommon that children of parents who couldn't look after them during this time ended up in orphanages, I think we cannot ignore the feeling of neglect and the level of abandonment that Evelyn would have been dealing with at this stage of her life would have undoubtedly been immense. I think this fear of being left, of being abandoned,

being essentially nothing as Evelyn saw it, became deeply enmeshed into her psyche. After records showing her enrollment in primary school, Evelyn basically fell off the radar for a really long time. She finally re-emerged in 1941 at the age of 20. So imagine, from the age of like 10 to the age of 20, so like her formative years, her teenage years, we have no idea where she was, what she was doing. There's just no records of it at all. Yeah, just a ghost.

Yeah, genuinely. I guess at that time it probably would have been easier to fly under the radar, but... I do find it fascinating though when you just can't track people for decades. Yeah. But I suppose, you know, we're in the whatever we are in the 40s by the time she shows up again. So I suppose record keeping probably left much to be desired.

And quite a lot of people didn't have passports back then. People weren't on top of their inoculations like they are now. It's like there's so many ways to lose track of someone. So, yeah, as we said, she sort of reemerges into the world at the age of 20. And it was also in 1941, when she re-emerges, that Florence, her mum, was finally hospitalised and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. So imagine her mum, and she does spend a lot of time at home as well, she spends a lot of time in orphanages, she's sort of back and forth bouncing between the two. Her mum, her entire childhood was undiagnosed and untreated. She doesn't even

go into her first hospital until Evelyn slash Anne is already 20 years old. So all that instability has already happened now. That's done. It's a tick. And poor Florence, Anne's mum, went on to spend the rest of her life in and out of psychiatric hospitals. But it doesn't seem that anywhere was really able to help her. I guess the treatment of if she even had paranoid schizophrenia, obviously, we don't know. And we do know that in the past, it was a bit of a catch-all term for we're not really sure what's wrong with her. No one really was able to help her. And she unfortunately did die in hospital a number of years later. But Anne, by the time that she resurfaced at the age of 20, she was done. No more poor orphan Annie. She had a new name and a new persona, and she was ready to start a new life.

So in that same year, she met and married a young man named Lionel Harris. Finally, Anne could start the family that she'd always wanted. Her and Lionel had a baby girl named Judith, and they were set to adopt a baby boy from a local children's home. Everything was falling into place, but then tragedy struck. Lionel was killed in a car crash in 1955, and the adoption fell through. And once again, Anne felt abandoned. By the time that Lionel died, Anne had already been involved with learning yoga.

Being involved with it sounds like she's involved with a street gang. As I was writing it, I was like, I don't know how to write this what do i mean i mean that she'd already been doing yoga for a number of years right right right right so she's uh she's been picked up by the local yoga gang at her time of desperation she's in she's involved in hard yoga. Hard, hard yoga. Hard, hot yoga. Hard yoga. Fucking speaking of hot yoga, go and watch the Bikram documentary on Netflix. My God.

I used to do Bikram yoga when I was at uni and it was, I cried several times. I cry in normal yoga, but like that one, like every single one, definite crying. It happened to me the other day when I just went to normal gym yoga on a Saturday morning

and everything was hurting. Child pose was hurting. I couldn't do anything. And then we went into pigeon which is usually my absolute fucking jam smashed that one and I couldn't do it so I had to come out when the teacher came over to me she's like are you all right I just burst into tears and then couldn't not be crying anymore and then she like came up to me at the end she was like we hold all of our emotions in our hips so it makes sense that it happened in pigeon like blah blah blah and she tried to hug me and I was like you're just gonna make it worse it's like we just need to leave just get me out of here

right now wow well as traumatizing as that yoga experience sounds at least all the things that happened in that bickering yoga documentary didn't happen to you slash all the things that are about to happen today so she's in hard yoga she's fallen into the trap of hard yoga and after her devastating loss which is obviously lionel she threw herself full force into the practice, claiming that it was helping to heal her spiritually. Not the worst coping mechanism, I would say. No, not at all. Better hard yoga than hard crack, I suppose.

Exactly. The only other option. Yeah, literally. But I know what you mean. I do think that up until this point, I do have a lot of sympathy for Anne. Nothing that happened to her in her childhood was in her control. She comes back. She tries to start a new life.

She gets married to this guy. And they are, by all accounts, they were genuinely really happy. And then he fucking dies. Like, but obviously my sympathies for her are pretty much limited to this point. Yeah, no, yeah. Because you think you're going to spend the rest of your life with someone and then one day they're just not there anymore. And she wanted that baby boy that they had gone and found at the Bernardo's children's

home. But I guess at that point in time, they weren't just going to give this single woman whose husband is now dead an adopted baby. It's still quite difficult for single parents to adopt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So in Australia, and actually much of the West during this particular time that we're bopping around in, so we're talking about post-World War II, during the Cold War, the spiritual movement was in its heyday. And so yoga, Eastern philosophy, influences from Hinduism and Buddhism were all the rage. The people of this time had just been traumatised by World War II.

And then there's the feeling of certain destruction that came with the almost constant threat of nuclear warfare. And this led many people to look for a higher purpose. And perhaps it was some of the tenets of Eastern religions and philosophies that sat well alongside the climate at the time that made them so popular. For example, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, they all teach that creation and destruction are the same. They're just two sides of the same coin. It's kind of like the idea that matter cannot be created or destroyed.

Everything has always been here. But only the enlightened in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism can truly understand how the two connect. Many Hindu texts, like the Bhagavad Gita, talk about the cycle of creation and destruction. For example, there are three main Hindu deities and each represents a part of this particular cycle. Brahma is the creator, Vishnu is the preserver and Shiva is the destroyer. Upon destruction, Hindus believe that the cycle of creation, preservation and destruction simply begins again. And this was a connection that was not lost on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.

Many of you may recognize the famous quote that he gave in 1945, referring to his creation, I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. And this is actually a line from the Bhagavad Gita, and it refers to Shiva. Oppenheimer's interest in Hinduism, though, was more than just like a super metal quote pulled from a millennia old set of Hindu verses. He was actually deeply drawn to the philosophy. And actually, and I didn't know this before we did this research for this case, he actually fully like structured his life around the teachings of Hinduism. I didn't know that at all. No, I had no idea. And yeah, I do love that he just like casually throws that quote in when he realized what he had given the world. Can't be a Hindu though, can he? No, he can't. And I think that is actually one of the interesting points

of this is that there is no official conversion into Hinduism. You can't just become a Hindu because of like the caste system, all of that kind of stuff. There isn't a conversion into Hinduism. You can't just become a Hindu because of like the caste system, all of that kind of stuff. There isn't a conversion into it. But what you can do is you can structure your life and live your life in a Hindu way, which is what I found when I tried to Google converting to Hinduism. That's the best that they can give you is you can just become a vegetarian, become a vegan, do yoga, do all those things that they just want you to know about. And yeah, you don't need to worry about the rest of it. I don't know if this is true. It might be a myth. But I have read that during the Manhattan Project, I don't know whether it was Oppenheimer himself, but someone when they're coming up with the atomic bomb came up with the

idea of putting the code to detonate the atomic bomb inside a living person's heart so that the President of the United States would have to kill one person in order to kill millions. Wow. Yeah, obviously they did not do that. As I said, I'm not 100% sure it's true, but it's definitely kicking around. Yeah. I think it should have been because it enforces you to take that level of proactive action if you're really going to do it, not just press a button and enter a code. I'm sure we will know within 30 seconds whether it's true or not. And hold on to it because you'll be going to do it, not just press a button and enter a code. I'm sure we will know within 30 seconds whether it's true or not. And hold on to it because you'll be interested to know that Robert Oppenheimer is not the only physicist in today's story who is living his life in an Eastern philosophical, etc. kind of way.

And in many Eastern religions, the important thing to note is that there is often no single story of creation. The universe in these religions is often dynamic, constantly being destroyed and remade. So maybe when you think about that being the philosophy and the climate that these people were living in at the time, where during the Cold War I think people genuinely thought, we're gonna fucking die, like any day, this could be it. So maybe the fears of nuclear warfare are somewhat easier to manage if you believe that the destruction of the world would lead to the creation of a new world

rather than just the end of everything. That does somewhat explain the rise of this type of movement, sort of a spiritualism, eastern religion, creation and destruction being the same sort of thing, during this particular time in the West. And Anne was going to lead the way. In 1960, at 49 years old, she became a tantric yoga instructor and she started teaching wealthy, middle-aged, middle-class women.

And I think Anne saw that these women were hanging off her every word. A lot of the women that she was teaching were in unhappy marriages and in the 60s divorce was not the best choice if you didn't want to be ostracized from all of your family and all of society but Anne convinced some of these women to leave their husbands and join her. So she starts like a yoga cult. That's what she's doing. Like so many people. She was the first. She was the first in the west. Yeah. She's the first white girl at a festival with a bindi and loads of bangles talking to everyone about yoga. Take note, white people.

Wearing bindis is not fine. I mean, do what you want. It honestly doesn't offend me. Maybe there are other people out there who have more of a right to be offended. I don't know. I'm like, whatever. I just think it's funny. But what I would say at this point about Anne is if you're thinking,

God, she just starts this yoga class. She's converting all these women she's a very like striking looking woman and even at 49 she had a lot of plastic surgery people always placed her age at about 10 years younger than she actually was so I think in one way she was wise enough and old enough to engage with these middle-aged women but she looked like she was about 10 years younger than them still so I think there's something quite magnetic about her in that sense. And by this point, she only had the one child, Judith, who we met before. Maybe it was now that she realised that she had left it a little bit late for the big family dream.

And so she decided to grab whatever she could and run with it. But Anne still had that fear of abandonment. These new followers could still leave her at any point. So she needed to legitimize things and quickly. And she very soon found a way. In late 1961, Anne met Dr. Rainer Johnson. He was master of Queen's College at the University of Melbourne. And he's an interesting guy in our story today. He was an incredibly well-regarded physicist. And due to his particular interest in metaphysics, he was also a renowned authority on mysticism. Metaphysics is now a branch of philosophy that centers around abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time, and space. But back then,

it was still considered to be a scientific subject rather than a philosophical one. And so, of course, this is our second physicist of the day who is drawn into this idea of sort of mysticism, etc. So when Anne learned of Dr. Rainer Johnson, I think that she saw past all his credentials and his shiny academic accolades, of which he had many, and saw him for what he was, which is, frankly, an incredibly gullible man.

Anne had friends at Queen's College Melbourne, and she used them to spy on Raina and feed her back information. And when this wasn't getting things moving quickly enough, she slept with Raina Johnson's gardener. And I've written, pumped him for information, but I feel quite unwell saying that now. She finds out who his gardener is and sleeps with the guy and gets him to give her information on Raina and his wife Mary. And in December 1962, one evening, Anne just randomly turned up on Rainer's door and told him,

you don't know me, but I know you. And although she was a stranger to him, she started to tell him things that Rainer thought would be impossible for her to know. Anne told Rainer that she knew that he and his wife would be going to India together and that his wife would get sick out there. And in the next few months, the pair did indeed go to India. And just as Anne had predicted, Rainer Johnson's wife, Mary, did get sick out there with dysentery. That's a pretty safe bet. Yeah, I was going to be like, mate, really? That's a pretty safe bet. I mean, I could be a fucking psychic. I could go get a job at SDA Travel and every time anyone books a trip to India, be like, oh, I could be a fucking psychic. I could go get a job at SDA travel and every time anyone books a trip to India be like, oh, I'm getting a feeling that you're going to get sick out there.

Are you fucking serious? Like, that's literally all she says to him. She wasn't even like specific enough to be like she's going to get dysentery, which is incredibly dangerous. No, she's just going to go hang out in India in the 60s. What else was going to happen? Yeah. You're going to get sunburned and you're going to get dysent dysentery yeah make sure she drinks quite a lot of water from a tap it's so weird and also I love that she's like really channeling her mum at this point she's like picked up all of that mysticism that like medium shit from her mum and she's like fully using it now like long live the legacy and whatever we think

of this piece of information and how fucking obvious it seems apparently it was all dr reyna johnson needed so anne and he started spending more and more time together and she told him that there was a divine plan and that he little old dr re Rainer Johnson, was a part of it. So together in 1962, Rainer and Anne founded The Family, a religion based on a blend of Eastern mysticism and Christianity. And Rainer truly was the keystone, I think, of the cult's success. He was a very influential man in society at the time. Remember, although Anne is very alluring and magnetic to the people she meets, she is just a yoga teacher. But Dr. Rainer Johnson had a very high standing in society.

And so he started referring his high society friends to Anne for spiritual healing. And Anne started to perform miracles. Obviously, there were never any real miracles, but Anne was pretty good, far better than her mother had ever been. And I do think like if you're someone like Dr. Rainer Johnson, if you are an existential physicist, you're dealing with mind-blowing ideas all the time. So maybe it wasn't as off-piste for him to be like, oh, well, you know, maybe she is right. Maybe I'm the one that's going to change the way people see everything, because that happens in physics all

the time. Of course. And I think Anne is a very good profiler, like many cult leaders are. She understood what it was that Raina Johnson wanted to hear. She knew how to leverage someone like him, telling him that he's part of a divine plan. That's what a man like him has been waiting to hear yeah true and anne used hers and reina's connections more importantly and she managed to get many doctors into her growing cult and right into her pocket she got these doctors to essentially poison people or give them worse diagnoses than the thing that was actually wrong with them so they'd tell someone that they were dying when in fact there was barely anything wrong with them at all. So if you chuck in the poison, then this poor person thinks that they're at death's door. Then enter Anne. She'd visit the patient, they'd chant or whatever they were going to do, and then Anne would have the doctor stop

the poisoning of the person and then this person would recover thinking that they had been cured by Anne and it was a miracle. Anne let her own miracles absolutely go to her head. And she started to claim that she was the female reincarnation of Jesus Christ. And it's very interesting because when I was first reading about this, there were like first-hand accounts of people being like, I was told I had scoliosis. I was told I had this. I was told I had cancer, I had days to live, and then suddenly Anne came and visited me,

and then I was up and walking around, and I was fine within days. And I was like, how did she do that? Because these people had official diagnoses of those conditions. How did she manage to do that? Turns out those people never had those fucking things. They were just told by cult pocket doctors that they did. It is remarkable what went down. And to just

have so much influence over doctors, you'd be like, Hippocratic Oath, Schmippocratic Oath, just help me out here and then you'll get reincarnated as like a butterfly or something. I don't know. I don't know what she was selling. Yeah, because basically Anne's whole vibe with telling people she was the female reincarnation of Jesus Christ,

but she was mashing up Christianity with the kind of Eastern mysticism, like we said. Karma was a big thing that she used as leverage. So what she would do, she would get these people on board. And don't be tricked, just because they're intelligent people does not mean that they are not gullible or that they are street smart or that they are not gullible or that they are street smart or that

they are not incredibly naive because that's what rings true for all of these people. So what she would tell them was everybody is born with a certain amount of ill karma. Then you've gone through your life and you've created more of it. And then if you want to, I can do a purification on you. That will clear all of the things that you've done in this life and it will take you straight to nirvana. Because essentially with karma, with reincarnation, what you want to do is live a holy enough, pure enough life that you can stop being recycled and your soul stops coming back to this earthly plane. What you want to do is you want to ascend to heaven. And the only way to do that is if you clear the decks with your karma, essentially. And she's saying, I can do it for you, but you've got to do what I ask you to do,

which is poison this person. It's fascinating what she does. And she didn't stop there with the miracles and telling everyone that she is Jesus, but a lady. Because she was Jesus, Lady Jesus, her followers were reincarnations of the apostles. Dr. Raina Johnson must have been absolutely chuffed when she told him that he was the reincarnation of John the Baptist. If I had to pick an apostle, I don't think I would pick John the Baptist. He gets his head cut off. Like, I think I would, I don't know, I'd probably be Peter or Paul if I had to choose.

In 1964, Dr. Raina Johnson then started buying land in a place called Fernie Creek. And this is like a very nice suburb, very nice area in Victoria. They weren't going to go slumming it. Remember, this is a very middle class doomsday cult. And here is where the family built their HQ, Shanthi Nekatan Lodge. Now, Shanthantanekatan is actually now a university town in India, but it was originally an ashram built in the 1920s to educate students, they say, in a unique way. It was built by an Indian polymath and artist called Tagore. And Dr. Rainer had actually been visiting Shantanekatan in India. And that's where Mary had actually gotten sick that time that they'd gone. And so that's why they named the cults HQ after this place. And it was all built in a way and in a place that oozed credibility. The whole thing probably seemed at first just like an exclusive

networking club. I honestly think that it had allure. You had like all of these, you know, high society, very wealthy people joining this club. Imagine the FOMO. You've got to be there. Are you going down to Shantanakatan Lodge this weekend? Oh, you're not. Whatever. Like, I genuinely think that's how she started all of this and how she got it going. Because the majority of the members of the family were lawyers, doctors. I put murderers. Murderers. I think I meant nurses. Doctors and nurses, members of the judiciary and even politicians.

One in particular who stands out is Ambrose Pratt, the man who went on to form the modern Liberal Party in Australia. People love being in a club, man. They love it. People tell us that all the time when we're like thinking of the next thing. They're like, well, people love being an exclusive club that no one can get into. People love it. They lap it up. People love a gang. People love a cult. It's true. And that's why cults work. That's why Soho House works. They do.

They do. And Anne was very like particular about who she let join the club, or cult, whatever we want to call it, because everyone that Anne groomed to join, especially in those early days, was there to serve a purpose. Other than Rainer, the most important member was, in my opinion, arguably, a psychiatrist named Dr. Howard Whittaker. He ran a private psychiatric hospital in Kew called New Haven and there he had been experimenting with psychedelic drugs to treat mental illness. And the 60s was a time for

experimentation like this especially in Australia because unlike in other countries the use of drugs like LSD for medical professionals was still legal and this would go on to become a key component of the family's activities. But before we get there, we have to take a quick pit stop to talk about our favourite subject, which is, of course, baby stealing, because there was absolutely loads of that. In the 60s, Anne met an Englishman called Bill Byrne, and the two got married and both changed their last names to Hamilton-Byrne. Anne and Bill Hamilton-Byrne acquired 28 infants and young children between 1968 and 1975. I do think the double barrel may have been an attempt to make her look more elevated class-wise than she originally was.

Oh, of course. And I also think Anne is an equal rights whatever from day one to the end she is like i'm not taking your name we're both going to be hamilton burn that's it because he changes his name to bill hamilton burn as well i kind of rate that you know oh yeah yeah yeah yeah she's fucking ceo she's gonna have all these kids she's gonna change your name she's not fucking about so they get 28 kids and 14 of these children they acquired through illegal means anne claims to have had eight or nine by herself and she actually says i had eight or nine why can't you remember how many babies that you've physically given birth to that seems incredibly odd the truth is that her only biological child was judith and by

the time the cult started judith was already an adult so what anne was doing was making her cult members hand over their own children to her so she was going about it in two different ways she was stealing some of the cult members babies or not stealing but forcing them to hand them over, but she was also going about getting children through illegal adoptions. And so the reason she manages to get away with some of this is that in the 70s, adoption was poorly regulated. So Anne was able to get hold of babies through phony adoptions. And again, showing the power of the cults network, she had senior social workers and doctors as members

who were essentially stealing kids for her. So even if you can wrap your heads around that and believe that it happened, which it absolutely did, I can still hear you screaming, why? Why would these doctors and social workers willingly steal babies for Anne, even if they were in this cult. And you could say you could understand, well, not understand, but be like, okay, fine, these doctors were poisoning people, but they knew they were going to stop when Anne told them to. So, you know, no harm, no foul. Like, it's fine. We're just getting more people into the membership.

But now they're fucking stealing babies away from people. This isn't like we can just hit reset. That baby's gone now and it's gone to a cult. It's like what you see with cults all the time, which is a trading of one ethical code for another. Yeah, exactly. And the reason that they're doing this, if you're wondering, why the fuck are these doctors and nurses and social workers stealing babies?

It was because the family was a doomsday cult. At its peak in the mid-70s, the Great Brotherhood of Initiates and Leaders had over 500 members. Every Sunday and Thursday, they descended on Shantanakatan Lodge to hear Anne preach, and they worshipped her as Jesus. Anne had them all convinced that World War III or some other natural disaster was coming, and that the world and its people would die. So as the reincarnation of Jesus, she had to create a family to re-educate the survivors. She's almost like, what's the dude

with the boat? The big one. Noah? Noah's Ark. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the big one. The big one with the two of every animal. So she's kind of like, again, pulling that into it. There's going to be a big disaster. The world's going to end. We are going to be the survivors. And she tells them that she was choosing who was worthy of being saved. And that as long as they followed her one rule, they would all be saved. And the one rule was to do exactly as Anne commanded,

without question and always. That's basically religion 101. That's essentially just being the Catholic Church. It's the same rule book. Exactly. Exactly. No questioning, no talking back. Thanks very much. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America.

Yeah! Yeah! But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media.

To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Plus. 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. And if they did this, Anne promised them that the world would end in the mid-80s,

but that they would survive and rebuild the world, but in the right way. And you have to remember that by this point, the Cubanan missile crisis was well underway so i think in these people's minds total destruction never seemed too far away i completely agree i feel like total destruction is literally going to happen tomorrow all the time and this thing i don't want to like give them too easy a ride because like loads of other people were alive during that time and the cuban missile crisis was happening and they weren't all joining like fucking doomsday cults but this is how anne was able to manipulate them and basically the point of the whole baby stealing was this is a doomsday cult the world will end everything will be blown to pieces but we will survive but we need to get these children in early and they will be be the beginnings of us repopulating this planet and anne's smart because she doesn't do this all

at once. You have to give them a little breadcrumb trail of all of your ridiculous thoughts until they finally get to the gingerbread house of doom. So she does do it very gradually. Anne was glamorous and charismatic and entrancing and powerful. And this was not a hippie cult. You were surrounded by your successful middle class peers peers. And it was exclusive. Oh, and everyone was on LSD all the time. Sarah was one of the kids who grew up in the cult, and she was, in fact, the very first baby that Anne ever stole. Sarah's mum was tranquilised and had a pillow put over her head shortly after giving birth.

Then her baby Sarah was taken away, and she never saw her baby girl again. So this is the way Detective Lex Duman describes it. He says that as the baby is being delivered by a sect doctor and then it's handed to a sect nurse and then taken by a sect social worker and given to the cult, given to Anne. The other kids were cult members' kids. Anne would just make the women in the cult give her their babies

And in the cult, the children were told that they were all biological brothers and sisters And that Anne and Bill were their mum and dad Anne called the other women in the cult aunties And used them like sinister guards to manage all of the kids To convince the kids and the world that all the children were in fact hers biologically. Anne would wear maternity clothes and a fake baby bump. And she would dye the children's hair platinum blonde and cut all the boys' hair exactly the same

and make all the kids wear the same clothes. So the boys were all in these little matching smocks and the girls in matching dresses with ribbons. They honestly, like when you look at the pictures, all of them with platinum blonde hair, all with this weird like blunt bob cut for the boys and the girls all have like, you know, hair down to their arses. They look like the kids out of The Village of the Damned.

It's fucking weird. And like the kids that Lady Gaga has in American Horror Story Hotel. Exactly, exactly. And like, is it the, what's that? There's like a treehouse of horror in the Simpsons where they go to watch a film and it's like, there's weird little English kids. Which one? What's the name of that film? The deadening or something weird. The deadening. Oh, and I would also say, this is your hint number two, for you to guess who our celebrity cameo is at the end of today's episode.

So you go, clue number two. Now, the other thing that I think about all of this is that there's an obvious difference here between a male cult leader and a female cult leader. We know with male cult leaders, they usually just get like a harem of women, get them all pregnant and they populate, multiply exponentially. But here, Anne can't just have a harem of men and pop out more and more kids

she has to be the queen bee as well so she can't allow other women to rise up and be in a position of power but the problem with this is that it holds back procreation and it holds back the cult's ability to grow so anne has to steal babies but the haircuts the dyeing their hair blonde the dressing them up the same, the maternity dresses, the prosthetics, all of that, is important because she has to pass them off as hers. And to manage the growing cult, they bought more and more land. Remember, they have all that money.

And so they bought up land around Lake Elladon in Victoria. And it honestly looks like my scary heaven. It's like super remote and terrifyingly isolated. I can't think of anything worse. Horrible. I paused the documentary a couple of times just because I was so like, oh, that's so nice, but also horrifying. Nice for like three days.

And then I'm like, actually, I've had enough of this. There's a reason we built cities. Like, I just, humans have moved on. It was here in the woods around the lake that Anne built Kailama or Up Top

and this was to be the children's home. Three of the, air quotes, aunties were tasked with watching the kids, Elizabeth Whittaker, Trish McFarlane

and Margot McClellan. The adults lived in Fernie Creek about a mile away so they don't live with the kids, Elizabeth Whittaker, Trish McFarlane and Margot McClellan. The adults lived in Fernie Creek, about a mile away, so they don't live with the kids, but Anne needed them to stay close. So she wants to keep all of the adults engaged, keep them spreading the word, and to do that, the cult actually started churning out propaganda films. And it looks just like the Hitler Youth. It looks like Nazi propaganda. And yes, of course, with a name like the Great White Brotherhood,

we're not far off. These kids were to be the white master race that would rebuild the world. In the videos, the kids are all exercising, running around, laughing and playing, but in reality, life was miserable for them. It makes me think of of during World War II, German soldiers were shown films of what we now know to be death camps.

And they were like, they've got cinemas and they get to eat all the time. It's the same kind of idea of making it seem like it's just not what it is. Oh, of course. And the whole point with this is when you watch the videos, it does look like some weird little white hitler youth nostalgia dream it's just like all these kids running around they're super happy but the problem was these kids were fucking starving they were starving so what the aunties used to do is wave chocolate around when they brought the film cameras out and the kids

would be running around and doing what they were told to in return for pieces of chocolate. And yeah, the whole like blonde little bobs running around in the sun, it was all like a holiday video. It was used so that these high society cult members could take that video off and pop it in at the next like fancy party they went to and lure some more people over. Because when you look at the video, who wouldn't want to be a part of that little life like that? When you live in a climate when you're maybe terrified that the whole world's going to end? I don't know. But like you said, the kids were miserable. And like I said, they were starving. Every day at up top, they were woken up at 5.30am. They were forced to do hours of yoga and meditation. This was then followed by school and they had school seven

days a week. And at up top, punishments were frequent and severe. Beatings were a regular thing. But the aunties would also do things like essentially waterboard the kids. Some of their punishments, if their aunties thought they were lying to them, would be like to get a bucket of freezing water and stick the kids' heads in there, put it out, ask them a question, put it back in. Like they would just continuously do this for hours. When I was teaching in Korea, one of the punishments that the other teachers,

I never did this, but the Korean teachers, what they would do is if a kid misbehaved, they would make them stand at the back of the class with their arms in the air for like 20 minutes. Or if they were really bad, they had to do downward dog in the corridor for 45 minutes. It's very intense punishments. It's not just like a, oh, here's a smack with a ruler or something. They were torturing these kids. They were just getting beaten for absolutely nothing. The kids said the rules were so unclear that you could break a rule without even knowing that you had,

because that rule wouldn't have existed the day before but now you're getting beaten for something that you was fine to do 24 hours ago that's a complete head fuck for these young children and if you're thinking that the aunties were just like sadistic crazies doing this of their own accord absolutely not and not only encouraged this abuse she demanded it she absolutely the char-roaring to the aunties, but she would often ask to be on the phone when the kids were being abused. She wanted to hear her. She wanted to hear them screaming. And these kids were starving. We see this with cults all of the time.

If you deprive people of protein, their cognitive function decreases. And these kids were just given a plate of boiled vegetables for lunch and for dinner. And they were also forced to constantly exercise because they were told that they were in training for the end times. And as if this wasn't enough, the children were frequently dosed with heavy duty psychiatric drugs like diazepam, serapax and stelazine. And when the children turned 14, they had to go through a ritual called clearing or breaking through. The child would be taken into a dark room and injected with LSD. Then they'd be left on their own. Every 12 hours, an auntie would return and administer another

injection. And this would go on for days. And during the initiation procedure, Anne would appear. She would open the door wearing a long dress with a bucket of dry ice behind her. Smoke surrounds her and then she asks this no doubt terrified, doped up child, Who is Jesus? Who is Jesus? Who is Jesus? Until the child replied, You are. That would fuck anyone up, let alone a child. Exactly. And that initiation process would go on for at least three days.

Like, fucking hell, locked in a dark room, being injected with LSD for three days, and then suddenly this terrifying woman turns up at the door with dry ice behind her. And bear in mind, since you were a baby, you've been beaten and abused and tortured. Like, these kids were fucked. And the mind-altering drugs, the beatings, the isolation, it all sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it? Because we've definitely spoken about MKUltra on this show before. For those of you who don't know, it is like a huge thing.

We can't cover it all now. It was a CIA-run mind-control operation that started in the US in the 1950s. It ran all the way up until the 1970s, officially ending in 1973 in the US. Coincidentally, just at the same time as the family were kicking off in Australia. Some people on the internet speculate that the family was just like an offshoot or a branch of the MKUltra machine, and was in fact watched over by the CIA.

We can't confirm or deny this, of course, there isn't enough evidence. But what we do know is that their procedures seemed very similar. How bothered are the CIA about Australia? That's my only question. I don't know if they were bothered by Australia, but if you think about it, MKUltra had to be quote unquote shut down in 1973. They either shut it down and potentially it went away but why would you stop? It's valuable stuff they thought valuable enough that they had been doing it for 20 years. Would you just move it deeper underground into the US or would you move it to another country

into some woods maybe? Around a remote lake? And have this crazy woman run it for you? Who knows? Who knows? She disappeared for a long time in her teens. Was she CIA? I don't know. She was just a sleeper, a sleeper cell, sleeper agent. She got activated when at 20 years old. So yeah, I don't think it was so much like care about Australia. But if they're just trying to test out, continue to test out these mind control things that they were doing maybe you just move it to another country but whatever was going on sadly Anne was untouchable she told everyone in the cult that she was descended of

royalty and of Jesus that's such an oxymoron the whole point of Jesus is that he's like the common man who is descended very far back to King David like Like that's so stupid. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So she is, she says, one of the kids says in the interviews in the documentary that she was of the bloodline of David, but she was also related to the Queen of England. Oh, for God's sake. And she like would just go have tea with her and stuff like that. Yeah. I won't lay down some facts about what I think of the royal family because I am biting my tongue still about all of it. But yeah, no one cares. At least I don't lay down some facts about what I think of the royal family, because I am biting my tongue still about all of it. But yeah, no one cares. At least I don't care.

Especially you, Prince Andrew. But anyway, the point was that Anne's word was final in this cult. She was just following cosmic divine orders. Whatever she did, this was her mission. It was divine vision. But it was all soon about to come crashing down. During the 80s, the cult started attracting more and more unwanted attention. When one of the young girls at Uptop called Leanne was going through the clearing ritual, she screamed so loudly that the police were called. But when they arrived, the aunties

hid all of the children in a secret hiding hole, and the kids wouldn't give the game away. They had been told that the police were dangerous rapists. So they got away with it. But then Sarah, Anne's first stolen baby, started stealing food from local houses. She and her siblings were starving, so she started to steal more and more, and eventually the break-ins were investigated. And it all seemed to lead back to the weird people living on the lake. Increasingly, Leanne and Sarah became more and more rebellious and the aunties couldn't control them, even with the drugs and the torture. Finally, in 1987, Sarah Hamilton Byrne, at just 17 years old,

was kicked out of the cult when she brought an outside friend home for the day. Anne was livid. She told Sarah as she left, quote, you are no longer our daughter. Go out there and die in the gutter. So Sarah went to stay with her friend. And you have to understand how incredibly brave this is. It's like when we talked about like Colleen Stan or any person who's been kidnapped and brainwashed. They're told everyone else out there is dangerous they're going to hurt you they were even told that the police were dangerous rapists for Sarah to break years and years and years since birth level of mind control and leave is remarkable and she wasn't the only one, because 15-year-old Leanne followed Sarah and ran away from the cult

and joined her. At last, they were free. But neither of them could stop thinking about the siblings that they had left behind. The other 26 kids were still at up top. So they went to the police and told them everything. Even though they had turned their backs on Anne, they still felt that what they were doing meant that they would be damned forever.

In their minds, they had betrayed the great leader. They were cursed. They even said about the betrayal, and by the betrayal I mean leaving but also going to the police to report them. Quote, every messiah has a Judas. But thanks to their bravery, that very same year in 1987, Australian federal police raided the property and removed six children and arrested seven of the aunties. In 1988, those aunties were jailed for defrauding social security to the value of almost $200,000. Really, in the grand scheme of things, it was a small win.

But the police knew that there was more. Where had all these kids come from? And remember, at this point, they've only managed to get six of them. So in 1989, Victoria Police created a task force called Operation Forest to investigate the family. By the late 80s, I think Anne was done with the cult, to be honest. She had been promising them that the world would end in the mid-80s, but it hadn't, and now it was almost the 90s. And this is the thing with doomsday cults, they need an endgame. You always need an endgame. So either, as the cult leader, when what you say is going to happen doesn't happen, you either

keep moving the day of the apocalypse back, or you kill everyone like Jim Jones at Jonestown or Marshall Applewhite at Heaven's Gate. Or, of course, you cut your losses and piss off. And Anne pissed off. The members who joined the cult had to pay dues. And remember, these people were rich. Some estimates place Anne's fortune in the 80s at $50 million. And that was in the 80s, so she was absolutely fucking loaded. And Anne had used this money wisely and bought a massive house in Kent and a mansion in upstate New York and a property in Hawaii. So she wasn't even around a lot by this point. She and Bill still maintained control of

the cult over the phone and through audio tapes, but I think that was probably just to keep the money flowing rather than an actual vested interest in what was going on. So during the raid in 1987, Anne was again abroad, and Bill managed to escape and fled overseas to join her. In 1990, Lex Duman, who was leading Operation Forest, was coming under intense pressure and was told that he had just 12 months to close the case down. Finally, he got something on a cult member who was a solicitor. His name was Peter Kibbe.

Lex told Peter to spill the beans or he'd arrest him and that would be the end of his career. So Peter confessed to forging birth records on Anne's orders, and Lex also managed to get former auntie Patricia McFarlane to tell him all about how the adoption scams had worked and what was going down at Up Top. After this, Lex had enough for extradition, and in 1994, Anne and Bill Hamilton-Byrne were found and extradited back to Melbourne.

Bill was 71 and Anne was 72. Despite finally being put on trial, Anne and Bill still had loads of money and they used it to fight the charges and avoid testifying at trial for months. But on the 26th of September 1994, the verdict was announced. Anne and Bill were found guilty of faking documents to pretend three children were theirs. That was it. Because what they would do is they would adopt, like they would steal one kid, and then because they would end up with like two or three kids more after that initial child,

Anne couldn't like pretend to immediately be pregnant again. And to avoid falsifying too many multiple documents, they would just change the document to say that that child was a triplet, and they were taking all three of them. So this was like a really common thing that they were doing. So basically, given all of the abuse, all of the crazy shit we just told you about, that was all Anne and Bill were found guilty of.

Conspiracy to falsify adoption documents. It's unbelievable. And this was because the court said that there was no evidence of abuse. And the courts decided that the children were just too traumatized to testify. So Ann and Bill escaped prison, and they were fined just $5,000 each. This was fucking nothing for them. Absolutely nothing. And Lex Duman, after spending years on this case, was rightfully furious. He felt that the system had completely let everyone down. And I think it was more than that, really. Because let's consider what the court says it says that these kids are too traumatized to testify the kids by this point were adults Sarah for example

was an intelligent capable young woman who was in that courtroom she was at the trial but they said that she couldn't testify it's a fix we know that the tentacles of this cult spread all the way to the top, including to the judiciary and into politics. Anne and Bill went back to Fernie Creek along with a few loyal followers. And as for the children, it's been a lifelong search for them to figure out who they are and where they come from. Sadly, many of their parents were already dead

by the time they found their birth families. And in the documentaries on this cult that are out there, which we'll link down below in the episode description, you just watch as these abused kids, now adults, sit there with just a photo of their mothers. Mothers they never got to know or have a connection with, all while having lived a life of intense abuse. And it is really tragic. They also spent a long time feeling super detached from society. After all, they'd never known anything else other than the family. Many have serious psychological issues as a result of the abuse they endured

and many became suicidal. Sarah, the first child that Anne took, is really so strong. She escaped and saved her brothers and sisters. She went on to study medicine and became a doctor, using her skills to help poor children in India and Nepal. But she struggled with clinical depression, bipolar and PTSD. She became addicted to opioids and, in desperation, started writing her own prescriptions.

Sarah tried to kill herself multiple times and tragically in 2008 she lost a leg after injecting air into it while trying to kill herself. In May 2016 at the age of 46 Sarah after years of trying did kill herself. In 2001, Bill died a free man, and Anne lived to the ripe old age of 97. She died this year, in July 2019, in the dementia ward of a hospice in Australia. Now, for the moment that I assume you've all been waiting for, at the start we promised you a celebrity cameo in this cult. Of course, we know that Joaquin Phoenix, River Phoenix and Rose McGowan all grew up in the Children of God cult. If you didn't know that, go read about it.

It's fucking weird as fuck. But did you manage to guess who is rumoured to have been a product of Anne Hamilton Byrne's family? Why? It's none other than flaxen-haired hide-and-seek champion Julian Assange. And before we go any further, I do want to say that there is absolutely no concrete evidence that Assange ever lived in the cult. And we're not trying to fucking have a defamation suit go in here. No, let's make that clear.

Please leave us alone, Julian. Let's make that clear. But what we can say is that his mother's boyfriend was a member of the family and some people say that there is a boy in some of the photographs that the cult has that looks a lot like a young julian but to be honest when you look at it uh to me anyway they all look like little prepubescent assanjas like they all look the fucking same because they're meant to yeah there are some like side by side comparisons out there but you're just like I mean literally even the girls could be Julian Assange like I literally have no I can't differentiate any of them they all just look like the children of the village of the damned like it just looked awful they really do and also the

thing with with Julian Assange his official backstory is very patchy like he makes claims that he attended 37 different schools in just six years that would mean that he moved schools every like month and a half for six years that seems unlikely it seems completely untrue is what it seems like this is me uh combating the defamation suit that seems unlikely um but anyway that's what he says and it does kind of seem like maybe it's a cover up so that nobody can really piece together his life or his true movements but then you'd be like why would you want to do that as a child or for your childhood? Was it because he was in a crazy drug cult? Who knows? And also, come on, the peroxide blonde hair. Why does he still keep dyeing it? Julian Assange is a natural brunette. There you go. A lot to think about. There is an article. We haven't got time to go into this conspiracy theory any more than we have done,

but there is an article on Bitpanda that goes into pages and pages and pages of theories about this. We will link it in the episode description below. Go knock yourselves out. But yes that is the story of the family and the great white brotherhood of initiates and leaders. Thank you so much for listening. You guys know the drill. Go follow us at Red Handed the Pod on all the social medias. And if you would like to, you can head on over to patreon.com slash redhanded and make a little pledge there to help support the show and to get yourself lots of extra bonus content and fun little goodies. Here are some people who have done so.

So thank you very much. Erin Brody, Michelle Meadows, Colleen Blaylock, Severin Anderson, Carissa Tika, Suzanne Talley, Minda Sahota, Justine De Jager, Caroline Clark-Riviera, Sarah Alexander Bonney, Anna Perrino, Stephanie Vicky Schumacher, Nirali Patel, Milo White, Charlotte Collins, Isabel Smith, Nicole Emanuel, SoDevilish, not Nicole Emanuel, that is a separate person called SoDevilish, Anjaliya R. Kala, Nim Derringer, Gloria Azucana, Jessica Ducasse, Harley Gomez, as you can yep jessica ducas harley gomez daniel robichaux charlotte bacon alissa shauna sacow paulia anna madeley iris kushna kush kushnir and then hannah go i saw someone on the facebook group suggest that we publish a list of the patrons so they can read along and see how hard we fuck it up. Oh my God.

Which I think that is a pretty good idea. You're right, we should. Maybe that's your Christmas present from us to you. There you go. Just a book of Patreon names and a read-along audiobook. Elizabeth Saloka, Rondika Melvin, Sarah Absher, Kaz Asher, Lynn Dunn, Heather Johnson, Amanda Mason, Lisa Davies, Laura Sanford, Danielle Blandford, Tate's Row, Tricia Edsina, Rishiri, Claire Hatcher, Hannah, Elisa Dorbau, Daniela Ribici, Paige Horne, Christine Johnson, Chrissy Van Mielo, Sarah Ongiri, Zoe Rasko, Neil Charlton, Tessa Williams-Haley, Meredith Fague, Annabelle and Chris, Chelsea Singleton, Gemma Carter, Megan McCauley, Sinead Simmons, Melanie Peterson, Shade Moriarty, that might be Sade, not sure, Samantha Gray, Steph Given, Lydia Hicklin, Fiona Simmons, Karen, Laura Goldman, Joe Hutchinson, Laura, Asia, Paul, oh, you did this on purpose, Pokalun Skijensen, Sarah Rose, and Katie. And I would just say that I think the person before Asia was Lauren, not Laura.

But that is it, guys. Thank you so much. We've had a great time. We'll see you next week for the last one before christmas 2019 which will be the last one of 2019 before 2020 i feel like 2020 is a mythical year i feel like everyone's been talking about 2020 since the dawn of time and now it's finally here it is here it's happening it's official it is very soon and it's going to be no fucking different we will be there still so yes so we'll see you next week and then we'll see you again in 2020.

Bye, guys. Bye. Bye. 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 Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of 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 2 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.