RedHanded - Episode 191 - "Bride of Christ": Swedish Sects & Sex Slaves

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

In the late 90s Pastor Åsa Waldau became the leader of the Knutby Pentecostal church. She had already been sacked from such a post in Uppsala after having "inappropriate relationships'' with the teenage boys in her congregation, but that wasn't about to stop Åsa. In Knutby she doubled the size of the sect and soon decided that she was in fact the bride of none other than Jesus Christ. Needless to say, the community soon found itself in cult territory... BOOK! Pre-order your RedHanded book here: https://linktr.ee/RedHanded_Book For tonnes of bonus content: patreon.com/redhanded Sources: redhandedpodcast.com   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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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. 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, where we feel fully back in the swing of things, I think. There was a moment where I personally wasn't sure if I was ever going to pull it back, but we're here. And today is the day that we're going to tell you what the not-so-secret-but-also-very-secret project is, was, will be.

And if you can judge by the incredibly smug way i said i'm sruti we're so fucking proud and excited and happy and joyous and every other positive adjective that there is out there guys we wrote a book yeah we wrote an actual book we did a whole book it's like a legit book it's a legit book whenever i like go back over it I'm like oh yeah this is a book that's some good shit right there read that there's some good shit people who I've told about it who are like I know they're like what's it about and I'm like well it's about what isn't it about well what isn't it about it's about what makes a killer tick we played around for a long time about the kind of whole nature versus nurture,

but inevitably the answer is always that it's just both. So we were kind of like, okay, let's just focus on the fact that too often people are trying to otherize killers and say that, you know, they're monsters. And if you listen to the show, obviously, you know, that's not how we talk about killers because it's quite reductive and pointless. So what we wanted to do was kind of pick all the very human things that lead a person down a very murdery path to murder. Is that a good summation of the book, Hannah? I think that is a pretty good summation of the book. I think we've all met people who are like pretty terrible, like maybe someone's really manipulative or like they're really like dependent on those around them or like they're desperate for your time or whatever and they're like that because of something that happened to them usually and what we try to do with the book is like really dig into like okay

what is it exactly that makes people kill other people and obviously every killer is unique just like every person is special so there's no broad strokes happening, but some really interesting psychology. And I think I learned a lot about how brains in general work. There's just so much to put together. Basically, each chapter picks on something like genetics, childhood and adolescence, sex, relationships, cults, whatever it may be that we feel drives a killer or makes a killer tick. And we have learned so much. We've been doing true crime podcasting for four years. Yes, four years. Firstly, that feels unbelievable. But in all those years, in all the cases we've

covered, we've, you know, come across this idea of like, what really made this person do what they did again and again and again. And obviously we try and decipher that in every episode that we do. But this was the first time we sort of sat down and went through this kind of intensive crash course in true crime and just forensics and psychology and neurobiology and everything in between. And honestly, I have learned so much. So many things have been poured into my brain during the course of writing this book. So we feel like you guys are really going to appreciate it. It's a great book, in our opinion. So you should go buy it. We haven't even told you about that. It is available for pre-order. This is important and technical. If you are in the UK, please buy it from the UK link and not the American one,

because that's really important for like bestsellers lists and stuff like that. If you pre-order it from an American website, that's going to do fuck all for the Sunday Times bestsellers, which is all we want. So please use the UK link, which we'll put somewhere probably in the episode description if and when we have it. Yes, please. Americans and everyone else, you may use the US link or wherever you feel most comfortable. Do what you'd like to do. Honestly, if you guys could have come behind the scenes with us on this journey that we took from

no book to book, it has been a wild one with quite a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Emphasis on the tears. Just hours and hours and hours of work and strife and graft and whatever else has been poured into those pages. And I think it really does show in the book. It was a real labour of love for us. We love the book. We love you. We would love you to love the book. So please get yourselves a copy. It would mean the world to us just to have you guys firstly share in all the things we learned but also just support us in something that was so important to us and I have to admit like I'm such a dork this has always been like a fucking lifelong dream of mine when I was a kid I used to just like write little stories on pieces of like paper sellotape them together with illustrations, and then say it was a book.

But it would just be a complete rip-off of a book I'd read. I would just read 101 Dalmatians and then make it about cats and write the book and say it was a book. And it would be like three pages long. It was quite a time. It was quite a time. I also used to copy out science books, and I remember writing a little book-slash-pamphlet on the Big Bang.

It wasn't referenced very well at all. It was completely plagiarized from a book I had read but I was convinced that I was an author and I gave it to everybody and made them read it. Now you are an author. I know. It's mad. Saruti Bala author. It's mad. Look at us writing books and doing all of that and again none of this would be possible if it wasn't for you guys, because no one in the world would have given us a book deal if the show wasn't where it is. And that's thanks to you guys. So thank you as ever for your continued support and for keeping this secret, not a very secret secret. Secret's out now. Go shopping. Okay, that's it. That's it.

Book chat, right? I have no more book chat. I don't think I've got any other chat either. No. The only other book chat I would have is that there is an entire chapter in the book on cults where we talk about all sorts of very fascinating things, which leads us nicely, possibly into today's episode. Well, I'm going to cult in inverted commas, to be honest. And you'll find out why. Have you seen Midsommar? This case is that. Without the bear intestines, but still with the flower crowns, is what I would be saying if this story is anywhere close to what the media coverage has made it sound like, which unfortunately for us

duvet detectives, it is not. This case is on a lot of like most outrageous cults lists. But there is so little information out there in English that I'm like, how have you actually come to that conclusion? There are way more outrageous. This is still an interesting story, but it's not an interesting story because of the cult aspect of it, I think. But those kind of like top 10 most unknown serial killers. Like, shut the fuck up. Oh, my God. I just can't. Shut up, Oh my God. I just can't. Shut up, BuzzFeed.

I don't care. Oh my God. I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos of like why I left BuzzFeed and it sounds like a fucking horrible work environment. Look at the trash they produce. Of course it is. I think some of their YouTube content is like pretty good. But like the people who have left and now like just do their own YouTube channels were like, I wanted to kill myself because they were working

us so hard. Yeah, I bet. I bet. And the answer to I'm struggling was like, but do more work and then it will be fine. The thing is, I haven't watched much of their YouTube content. So I can't comment on that. But considering the number of people who have left and gone on to become what appears to be very successful YouTubers, they must hire good talent to produce that kind of content. My issue is with their website and all of their bizarre, like kind of race baiting articles and stuff. And I know we could talk about this in Under the Duvet. This isn't the place to be going into this, but just stuff like 10 things your Asian friend wants you to know to know shut up that's not what i want anyone to know shut the fuck up but anyway i will save this for another day possibly under the duvet speaking of which if you would like to become a patron of the

show you can come do that and then hang out with us immediately after this where we talk about something completely different on under the duvet but for now i'll let us stick to swedish cults slash non-cults. For the sake of the narrative, let's run with the word cult until at least halfway through. The cult we've got for you is the first time we've had a cult in absolutely ages. And also, this might be our last one ever. For reasons that will probably become apparent shortly, or they might not. You thought we only had one secret project at a time. We are secret project ambidextrous. We've got a lot going on. We do. We do. Including trying to balance very precariously on the cusp of reality and insanity, mainly.

Well, yeah, which is, you know, I think we need to learn from BuzzFeed. That's true. Maintain our sanity by taking some breaks sometimes. Don't Buzzfeed Yourself. Don't Buzzfeed Yourself is the name of our next book. Often our cult episodes are a great opportunity to laugh at Mormons or to discuss how cult leaders can break down their followers' egos so much that they just wander around murdering at their leader's behest.

But that's not what happens here. Not this cult. And as we said, cult might be a bit of a strong word, which coming from us, and particularly me, who will take any opportunity to rip down organised religion, is really saying something. Usually, when we do cult episodes, we get to say that the cult leader didn't actually kill anyone, but that they are criminally responsible for the deaths of their members because they manipulated their followers so expertly. Whether the cult leader was criminally responsible for the murder and attempted murder we're telling you about this week is cause for debate.

To be honest, we're not entirely convinced that this particular cult leader has any blood on their hands, even metaphorically. So let's pop off to Sweden, home of infuriating flatpack furniture that remains permanently on the wonk, and England's most disappointing manager who never managed to get the golden generation past the quarterfinals. Just some football jokes for you, don't worry about it. I was gonna say, that's a football joke everyone, paying attention, good. Actual football, not American football. The World Cup qualifiers are happening at the moment, which is why I was like, I can definitely get a Sven-Joran Eriksson joke in here. Spent 10 minutes.

I'm joking. Sweden's amazing. I want to go for Midsummer. I've wanted to go for Midsummer for years. Sweden's cool. I think we can all agree on that. And Stockholm is cool. In fact, it has one of the 15 coolest neighbourhoods in the world, according to Vogue. And they know. They know cool neighbourhoods when they see them.

They do know. You know, we've kind of tricked you there because we are not about to head to trendy Stockholm. No, no, no. We are going to a tiny community in Knutby in the mid-90s. Knutby is north of Stockholm, but not really near anything else at all, to be honest. And for those of you who don't know, Sweden is absolutely fucking massive. Which was me. I did not know. Like, if you look at the United Kingdom next to Sweden, it's absolutely fucking enormous. Yeah, this is why I'm not about to get my judge on for people who didn't know that Sweden was massive, because I didn't know, and I also didn't know how big Romania was until we tried to drive around it.

And then we just were like, get me out of this fucking car. And it also has like three roads. So to go anywhere, you have to do exactly the same journey you did before. So you just feel like you're in the Twilight Zone. It's a lot. Bottom line, Sweden is cool. Sweden is massive. And this particular lot. Bottom line, Sweden is cool. Sweden is massive. And this particular case is also massive in Sweden. But unfortunately, as Hannah alluded

to, rather predictably, heaps of stuff on this case is, of course, in Swedish. So we have to give a massive thank you to True Crime Sweden and their coverage of this particular case. It is full of stuff you cannot find anywhere else. So if you do want to sort of do any further reading on this, head on over to True Crime Sweden because they've got it going on. Yeah, and it's a very well told story. And I think something I'm often aware of and that sometimes gets us in trouble is that obviously we like to go to different countries on this show. I think it's a very important part of what we do. But because, you know, we cannot be from every country in the world simultaneously, there will be cultural nuances that we will miss. Like that's just a fact. So if you want to hear the story from a Swedish person who knows about being Swedish,

I would go and listen to True Crime Sweden. Yes. Very good podcast. Go to it. There's very, very, very little else out there in pod land on this case. So the community we are looking at today have been called a cult by some, but even if they did end up as a cult, which we're going to figure out as we go, the Canuteby community started out as just a branch of the Pentecostal church. Now, of course, Sweden is rather famously super secular. The Lutheran Church of Sweden has been separated from the state itself since 2000. But in the 90s, there was a brief surge in Pentecostal congregations because the lead up to the millennium seems to have put the shits up enough people that it made them turn to God in what we can call a surge of

religion. Which I get it. The millennium was scary for a lot of people. I can see why if you were even remotely religious, you would be like, oh, the millennium makes sense for the return of Jesus. I can see that thought being made. Pentecostal Christians take their name from a miracle in the book of Acts, where the apostles all spontaneously started speaking all of the languages in all of the world all at once because the Holy Spirit put some fire in their mouths or something. I have very clear memories of Pentecostal masks. The priest has a purple colour dress on that's different from the rest of the time. There's like flames everywhere. It's definitely something to do with fire.

Like it's definitely like a flame is bestowed upon the apostles and then they go forth and preach the gospels. Just in case anyone thought Christianity wasn't weird. Yeah, it's quite the imagery. I appreciate it though. I think about it so often where I'm like, I cannot believe I was just presented with all of this stuff as if it was normal. And I was like, yeah, sure. Fire in people's faces, no problem, next. Don't worry, if you hadn't already guessed, there will be a full-blown Helen Hot Takes coming later on in this episode.

But first, let's have a look at Canuteby and the Pentecostal Christians who lived there. Pentecostals were among the first of the Christian sects to allow women to be leaders, which, you know, great news. And the leader of Kanupi in the late 90s and early 2000s was called Usa Valdau. Usa, even by Swedish standards, in my humble opinion, is pretty slamming. And although cult leader may not be the right term for her, there's certainly something dark going on. In 1992, Usa got sacked from a Pentecostal church in Uppsala which is not that far from Kanupi where she was working as the children's minister and she lost that job because of a quote-unquote inappropriate relationship with a teenage boy. As we have hammered home there's not that much out here in English we don't know what this

inappropriate relationship actually was but we're going to find out what she goes on to do so we can take a pretty good fucking guess. We haven't, on this particular occasion, been able to find out exactly what that relationship was, but it lost her her job. Okay, so I'm like trying to figure out how to say this. You've got a bunch of men who work in various churches, various denominations of religion, not even just church,

abusing kids. And you're like, fuck. And you're like, okay, not even just church, abusing kids. And you're like, fuck. And you're like, OK, we need to have a children's minister. Let's make it a woman because women are much less likely to do this. Bam. She's also fucking doing it. What is going on? Can we just? It's like when we've discussed before about it's not uncommon for serial killers to have military backgrounds. And it's a bit of a chicken and the egg thing of like, does the military turn you into a killer? Or are you attracted to the military because you already were one? It could be a similar thing with Usa of like, did she want to be a children's minister because she just liked being around teenage boys? Or did she like teenage

boys because she was around them? You know, either way, not ideal. No, and I can't help but think that the reason there is such a prevalence of it in there is just this whole mentality of like, you can't question the spiritual leader. And I'm not saying like, obviously, churches are as bad as cults where you couldn't question them at all. But there's definitely a vibe, right? I think we can all agree on that. And of course, that kind of thinking gives space to someone who has predatory tendencies. I feel like that's just a given. Yeah, and she was sacked from that particular congregation, but she was not got rid of completely. In classic organized religion style, this inappropriate relationship wasn't

enough to get her expelled from the church totally. She was redistributed to a more rural setting. So they're just sweeping her under the rug is what they're doing. And she was swept to Canuteby, where Usa rose quickly through the Pentecostal ranks and was made a pastor of the community just a year after her arrival. And if you're imagining Canuteby to be a midsummer type situation where everyone lives in a large tent or a wooden hall, you can stop because it literally is just a small village where everyone

goes to the same church and knows each other everyone's got normal jobs they have normal lives normal ish some things not so normal as we'll go on but like really not we'll go on to the like cult formation of it but I just don't think it's a cult I think it's a very conservative Pentecostal community and I just don't think it crosses a cult. I think it's a very conservative Pentecostal community. And I just don't think it crosses that line, really. And I think that people want it to be in the coverage of it, like, you know, all the lists of like top 10 most crazy cults, because it fits that kind of Ari Aster Midsommar style vibe that we all want to consider it to be, but it's not. And I actually think that's what makes it a more interesting story. This isn't about a crazy cult that were all so brainwashed that they were just ready to kill each other. This is just the story of a small community

within which there was quite a lot of depravity and murder going on, which I think is infinitely more interesting, if anything. Yeah, and they're very human things, and if you would like to learn about human things that make people killers, please go and buy our book. In Canoopy, everyone's very invested in the church, everyone's very huggy, that's a Pentecostal thing, sort of physical contact is a big part of it, but

that's not out of the ordinary in a lot of places, especially rural ones. Oosa, as well as being a stone-cold fox, was a very charismatic pastor, which, again, in the Pentecostal church, is not unusual. Speaking in tongues is their whole bag, hence being Pentecostal. Their singing, shouting, falling over, the devil being very real and rolling around like James Brown is very much in a day's work.

Easy peasy. That being said, Oosa's particular brand of histrionics drew a younger crowd, and as always happens, this very much pissed off the older people. The older members of the congregation were also boxed out when OUSA started to preach that illness, or any physical not-totally-amazingness, was the work of the devil. Naturally, older people tend to be a bit more ill, or any physical not-totally-amazingness was the work of the devil. Naturally, older people tend to be a bit more ill,

so it's no surprise that they no longer felt welcome in the Pentecostal church of Canoopy. Very suspicious. She's like, okay, I'm going to attract all the young ones in, and I'm going to get rid of the old ones. Let's get rid of them. Yeah, she's like, ooh, you know what? Your knee's not working means you can't really be here. Sorry about it. And it's not at all just because I don't find you very fuckable, but get out.

Exactly. And also, I keep giving the game away, but I can't contain myself. If it was a cult, they wouldn't have been allowed to leave. Yes, yes, yes, yes. This is very important. We're going to keep coming back to leave. Yes, yes, yes, yes. This is very important. We're going to keep coming back to this. So as the millennium approached, the future was filled with uncertainty. It seemed obvious to some that the year 2000 would be the perfect time for Jesus to return to earth, and Usa took full advantage of this. She traveled across Sweden recruiting people to come to Kanupi and live amongst the holy, led by her. Where Nusa

arrived in Kanupi, there are around 40 people there already. Some places report that she managed to attract a further 60 people, bringing the total population to around 100. Now, by cult standards, that is a pretty low number, like 100 people. But by minor sect within Pentecostalism standards, that is a pretty low number, like 100 people. But by minus sect within Pentecostalism standards, that's bloody massive. That's loads of people. That is a home run. If you're bringing 60 people to your particular branch of the church, which by the way was like for the most part, a part of the Pentecostal church we're like yep canute b you're with us she would have got so much praise for that bringing 60 people absolutely so the major players in this story are helga fosmo and sarah svenson and i just can't

help but feel like sarah svenson is the most fucking swedish name i've ever heard. So it's when Helga and Sara came across Usa on her tours of Sweden. And they did this at very separate times. And they both decided independently that they wanted to dedicate their lives to the church and move to Kanupi to follow their dreams. So Helga, firstly, I feel like when you say it like that, it sounds like a woman's name, but it's not. Helga is a man and a married man. He's a beardy man. A beardy married man. And he moved to Canuteby in 1997. And Sara moved there completely, like I said, independently of

him. She didn't know him before or anything like that in 1999. And this episode is their story as much as it is Usa's. Helga had always been religious even as a child and he'd always been charming. He started a youth movement in his teens called the Word of Life. Having grown up in a religious family and having been subjected to youth mass for most of my life. I know exactly the kind of person that Helga Fosmo is. I can picture them in my mind. Do you know what I find so disturbing? I find so disturbing the idea of a pious child. Just stop it. Stop it. You're fucking creeping me out. Stop.

I don't want to meet a pious child that really freaks me out I can't remember if I was pious I remember taking it very seriously well I kind of didn't really have a choice yeah no for sure like so much of my life was completely consumed by church and especially when I went to Catholic school but I went to a not Catholic secondary school but still had like Catholic friends outside so I had like two lives being super Catholic but then not being that person at school like so so odd when I look back but at the time it felt totally normal especially when I was like in the run-up to my confirmation having to go to like confirmation classes twice a week and then I had to go on this like retreat to think about Jesus before I got confirmed. Like it just takes up a lot of time being that religious. Commitment. Yeah so anyone who tells me I don't know what I'm talking about when I talk about

the Catholic Church you can get fucked. Helga met his wife Elena in 1989. They got together and she was the one who turned Helga on to the Pentecostal church. His parents weren't actually religious, which makes it even more creepy that he was a pious child. He had been very Christian up until he met Elena, but pretty non-denominational. But the Pentecostal church pushed all of his buttons. Interesting that his parents weren't particularly religious, but he was so committed to the cause even as a child.

I know. that's even fucking creepier and it also reminds me of jonestown of jim jones yes who as a child growing up being quite you know ostracized and on the outskirts of his like peer group i think he looked at society and looked at the community he was in and was like oh it's preachers who are the most lauded the most like adored and being power hungry and being a little narcissist he was like that's what I'm gonna do I'm just gonna become that because that's how I get adoration and respect and I feel like that's maybe quite similar to Helga's mentality possibly I think you're absolutely right and I also like that's maybe quite similar to Helga's mentality, possibly. I think you're absolutely right.

And I also think that he will have used his secular upbringing to be like, so I am chosen. God plucked me from secularism. Like I was never indoctrinated. Like I am just pure word of God. Yeah, it's fascinating. If you would like to find out more about Jim Jones and Jonestown, you could buy the book. Buy the book, Red Handed. There's an entire chapter in there on cults and what Jim Jones got up to. But I couldn't help that comparison because it's a very interesting connection between the two stories.

Exactly. The Pentecostal church pushed Helga's buttons. So my experience with Catholicism is, you know, nothing about the relationship is personal. It's just you do what you're told. God might speak to you, but he probably won't because you're trash. Pentecostalism, very different. It's all about your personal relationship with the Holy Spirit itself. So it's very miracle based, very like your connection, how you feel. That's fascinating. So it's more like the Catholic Church and possibly other denominations are like much more hierarchical. Totally. You know, you are subservient to the powers on earth that be.

But this feels more like a kind of egalitarian democratizing of Christianity. And you're like, hey, you can all have a personal chat with the big man if you just believe kind of thing. Yeah, kind of. It's like the holy spirit is this is something i found as a bit of a stumbling block in my own faith when i had it was that the holy trinity is supposed to be everywhere all the time but the holy spirit is the one that acts now so like it's the holy spirit that will heal someone because like god is busy doing other stuff and jesus like who knows so, yes, it's a very personal relationship with the Holy Spirit that is part of the Trinity as in they're all the same, but they are different. The like famous allegory is that like this is so obviously not true, but this is something I was explained as a child.

You can explain the Holy Trinity with a shamrock because it has has three leaves but they are part of the same thing okay got it which you know just and i'm sure someone was like saint patrick said i was like no he did not just like jim jones helga fucking loved the real life interaction with the holy spirit which like why wouldn't you if your blind faith is a big part of christianity you just be like oh well you just have to believe whereas Whereas he's like, oh, I can believe because these physical things are happening. Stuff is flying around. People are speaking in tongues. And I feel this connection with the Holy Spirit.

He quickly became a youth pastor and started to speak in tongues and have prophetic dreams. At 22, he came across Usa at church and they hit it off. She offered him a post in Canoopie. Helga was delighted. He was sure that Jesus was coming back any minute. And he was also sure that Oosa was going to play a part in the second coming. And he wanted to be around to help. So he uprooted his wife and kids.

By the time Helga and his wife got to Canoopie, Oosa was married to a man called Patrick, who was 10 years her junior. And okay, right, we're not here to like judge age gap relationships, whatever. But here, there are some issues because Usa and Patrick got married the second he turned 18 in 1994. And Usa had been living with Patrick's family for years before that. So I think it's safe to say that something probably not entirely wholesome was most likely going on between Usa and Patrick before he was legal. We should also clarify that within this particular Pentecostal community, it's not that unusual for single people to move in with other families. It may seem weird to the rest of us, but it was perfectly normal in Pentecost town.

However, given Usa's previous sexual affiliations with teenage boys, I think we can probably say that she almost certainly had bad intentions going in and possibly all along. But the Pentecostal church, however, had no problem at all with Usa marrying a child. What they did have a problem with was a few other things that Usa allowed in her congregation. Firstly, that those living in Kanutbi were on the booze. Most Pentecostal congregations are terrified of the evils of drink, but the Kanutbi contingent argued that there wasn't actually anything in the Bible about not drinking. Jesus himself transfigured water into wine because he loved it so much. And after all, Pentecostal Christians are very into the literal wording of the Bible.

The second problem that the wider Pentecostal community had with Canuteby was when, in 1999, Usa got engaged to Jesus. Oh, is that not okay? That will do it, I'm afraid. Yeah, that will set anyone off, yeah. Set anyone off. When Usa started referring to herself as the Bride of Christ, this got Canuteby effectively excommunicated from the Pentecostal church, which as far as I can tell,

doesn't mean that much apart from they were removed from the Pentecostal yearbook, which is a thing, promise, found it. It like lists all of the parishes in the back and Canuteby was removed from the list when she started calling herself the Bride of Christ. I am shocked. I am shocked because I just feel like what line is there that one has to cross before the religion are like, nah, we're going to lose a hundred people, at least a hundred people

from this particular branch of Christianity. And apparently her saying that she was married to Jesus was what did it. Wasn't all the like inappropriate relationships with teenage boys. No, not that one. Her personally being married to Jesus kind of unpicks a lot of Christianity. So I can understand why they were like, step too far, Usa. You can keep your child brides, but Jesus, we need him. The term bride of Christ is something that if you are a Christian or have been near Christians, you will have heard that term. It comes from a passage in Revelation, of course,

which we all know is confusing at best and gibberish at worst, and you can basically make it mean anything. But the Bride of Christ is widely accepted to be the church itself. So if you are a Christian, you are the Bride of Christ, but so is everybody else. Got it. Yeah. So that's why they've got a major problem with Usa being like no not you guys only me I really don't want to drag this conversation into the fucking like recesses or the fucking like estuaries of Christianity chat but what about nuns I thought their whole thing was being married to Jesus? Yeah. Full stop. Like, that is basically it. Yes, they are married to Jesus in a

more committed way than the rest of us. But the church as a whole, the like following of Jesus, like, you know how Queen Elizabeth I was married to England? Jesus is married to the church. Okay, got it. Except he definitely did have a wife in real life. We've all just conveniently forgotten. Come at me. I've read the Da Vinci Code. Kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. So basically, if you are a Christian, you became betrothed to Jesus the second you converted, heard the call of the gospel, or got dunked into a bucket of water by a man in a dress. Did you know that the colour of a priest's dress depends on the time of year?

No, I didn't. So depending on which festival, the priest will of a priest's dress depends on the time of year? No, I didn't. So depending on which festival, the priest will have a different coloured dress. In normal time, it's just like yellow. But Pentecost is purple and Easter is green. And Christmas is something else I can't remember. And I've probably got that wrong, but we'll find out within seconds of this going out. But they have different coloured dresses for different occasions. So when you're betrothed to Jesus, which happens when you convert or are bapt into Christianity, welcome to Helen Hot Takes, by the way, people, if you hadn't

realized that this was our particular segment, you then have to patiently await Jesus's return before you can skip off into their married life. And the reason for this is in Bible times, obviously super patriarchal society in Nazareth 2000 years ago. So if you are betrothed to someone, that means you're, as a woman, you just have to wait, right? You are basically already married to that person, but the man can fuck around, do whatever he wants. On the day that is agreed of your actual wedding, the wife-to-be has to wait in her house until the groom comes to get her. And she doesn't know what time he's coming. She just knows the day. So she has to be ready and waiting in light lamps and stuff, waiting for her husband to come and get her so that's why we have this notion of

waiting for Jesus to come and get us because we are his bride. As we mentioned before the literal letter of the word of God is very important in the Pentecostal doctrine. Bible classes revolve almost entirely on decoding the Bible and in Canuteby there had been some discussions about Jesus actually being a human and not part of God which would therefore mean that his bride would be human too and Pentecostal Christianity as we said very focused on real life relationships with the Holy Spirit so miracles and the idea that Jesus will physically return are not that weird. But extracting Jesus from the Holy Trinity is way out of left field, even for Pentecostals. And Canuteby were taken out of the yearbook for it. Whether there were any financial sanctions for

being excommunicated from the Pentecostal church, not too sure. And as I'm sure you won't be that surprised to hear, the separation from the main body of the church only made Canute be stronger and Usa more powerful. Now she didn't have anyone above her telling her what to do. She didn't even have to pretend to play the game. Within Usa's particular brand of Pentecostal philosophy, her child marriage to Patrick wasn't a problem. Her marital union with Jesus would only properly start when the end times came,

leaving her free to do whatever she wanted on earth. Everyone's a winner. And this is once again something that is so typical of cults, and in this case, quote-unquote cult, the idea that you use an existing religious framework to win people over, to get them into your sect or whatever it may be. And then once you're done with that, once you've used that sort of bait which is quite palatable because it's easy for people to understand it's already something maybe that they're aware of and then you flip the script

and you're like ah nah it was never about that it's about whatever fucking crazy shit I want it to be about yeah bring me more teenageely. And this in particular is a tactic that is used by some cult leaders, which is that idea of creating a society within which their own perversions aren't perversions anymore. They're actually totally fine. And in fact, they're great. And everyone should be doing it like the Children of God cult and David Berg. You guys, if you don't know that story go look into it maybe we will cover it one day but it's a fucking massive case and yeah there this guy david berg was just like i'm a child sex offender i just am a terrible person who loves sexually abusing children obviously he knew that society wasn't going to be cool with that so he started the

children of god cult and then made everyone else do it so that it became normalized. And that's like what they want to do. They want to reshape the normality to fit what their own deviancies are. I'm not necessarily saying that that's what Usa is doing. But I think that I'm not surprised she eventually just was like, no, we're not to do with that anymore. We're just going to be to do with whatever I say. Yeah, it's called norm migration and she does like it's easier to do that if you don't have the arm of the church that's above you being like

actually no you can't just decide that nobody else can be the bride of Christ anymore absolutely you've got to usurp everybody and maybe one day as you see with some cults even usurp the magical power or the cosmic universe or the god that you made everyone else revere so that you can take their place and tell everybody what the absolute truth is. Exactly. 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 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 and. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. 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. 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. Helga was very useful to Usa because he used all of his Bible knowledge that he'd built up over the years to back up her teachings with chapter and verse, which the congregation felt lent Usa legitimacy.

But actually, you can use the Bible to say basically whatever you want. In fact, some people claim that the whole Bride of Christ idea was Helga's to begin with. Helga was so enamored with Usa and her connection to God that he dedicated his whole life to protecting her from the devil. He and Usa became very close and they would even stay up all night talking about God, Satan and everything in between. Predictably, they started shagging in 1999. But this wasn't normal, sinful adultery. Oh no, this was the work of God. Helga's job was to do God's job on Earth.

Remember, that's his whole raison d'etre. And may we all engage in the level of blue-sky thinking that Helga does for this next particular part. Because he manages to convince himself that by having sex with Usa, he was giving her what her betrothed Jesus could not. Dick. No ghost dicks for Usa. No spirit penises here. The real thing, please. Real thing, sir. No spirit penises here. The real thing, please. Real thing, please. So therefore, the infidelity was filled with purpose, and it was his spiritual duty to get his dick wet. Unsurprisingly, Helga's wife, Helena, was not very happy about this whole arrangement at all,

and she actually withdrew from the church, but found that she had nowhere to go. In stark contrast, on the other hand, Patrick, Oosa's husband, didn't seem at all bothered by what his wife was up to. Oh, he just doesn't know any better, do he? He's just doing teenage boy things. Yeah, he's like, whatever, all right, I'm gonna go play on my skateboard or whatever. So in one of their late night conversations, Helga mentioned to Usa that his wife Helena was suffering from depression. So he and Usa agreed that this depression must be the devil's work and of course have nothing at all to do with their late night spiritually sanctioned sexcapades. Usa and Helga then decided that their only option would be to expel the devil from Helena, presumably by having more sex.

And after this, their next bright idea was that someone within the congregation would die soon and that their death would be the will of God. After this, death started to be referred to by Usa and Helga and their followers as no bad thing, just like going home or something. Which is very Christian. Like, that is not weird to be not afraid for thou goeth within the light of the Lord. Like, you know, that's pretty standard doctrine. Absolutely.

And that idea of, like, preparing for the end times and devaluing human life is also quite a classic cult play. To hammer home this ideology, Helga and Usser told other members of the congregation that Helga kept having dreams about his wife dying in the bath. So when Helga's wife was found dead in the bath with toxic levels of painkillers in her system, it was assumed by everyone that the depression devil had won and Helena had killed herself. They also assumed that Helga must be chosen by God to be able to predict his wife's death so accurately. No one battered an eyelid when Helga married

Oosa's younger sister just months after his wife was found dead. And no one thought that this new union could have been a motive for Helena's murder. The police agreed with the congregation and ruled Helena's death as a tragic suicide, even though she had a wound on the back of her head and the bath had been scrubbed clean of blood by the time that they arrived. Oh my god. Yeah, not excellent police work, I'm afraid. Helga later claimed that Usser told him to tamper with Helena's death report to erase the bit that stated that she had drugs in her system. Helga did as he was told.

Whether Usser actually told him to do it or not, we'll never know. We'll go on to see that quite a lot of Helga's side of the story is quite difficult to fact-check. In later years, Helga would claim that he was not allowed by Usa to properly grieve his wife and that this was the real turning point for him after which he started to make some terrible decisions. These decisions included not being enchanted with his new much younger wife for very long and he turned his attention to Sarah Svensson, who we met briefly earlier on. Sarah had come to Canuteby to be closer to God.

She had a difficult childhood. Her mother died and she herself was in and out of hospital and had a lot of domestic responsibilities put on her when she was, in honesty, a bit too young. Feeling lost and pumped full of abandonment issues, Sarah turned to the church where she found acceptance, love and peace. After high school, she went to Bible school where she met Usa and was convinced to move to Kanutby. Once she was there, Helga had taken a shine to her and they spent an increasing amount of time together. Both Helga and Sarah both caught the flu at the same time and spent 40 days in bed as a result bizarrely

this was interpreted by the congregation as proof that helga and sarah together were a super spiritual protective shield for usa i mean what yeah yeah they both get fucking ill and then everyone's like oh my god it's like they're're Vic's first defense for Usa, but against the devil. Yes. Yeah. Which sounds fucking nuts. But like within fundamentalist Christianity, not that weird. Hundreds of thousands of people have beliefs like that and they're not in cults. Like it's, you know, a very fine line. Oh, absolutely. And this is the hilarious thing is that a lot of media outlets want to point to a story like this after a murder takes place and be like, oh, my God, it was a cult.

And it's like, no, a lot of these beliefs are very, very mainstream within a lot of religions, not even just Christianity. So essentially, basically, after this flu situation happened, Helga and Sarah kind of got the reputation of being able to fend off the devil with their immune systems. Which again, just to reiterate, may seem cultastic, but really isn't that out of line with other Pentecostal teachings. Some arms of the church don't even let women wear trousers. And that's not questioned. I know maybe that seems like, well, maybe you can just be a sort of misogynistic person and it's not to do with wild beliefs. But it's this idea of not questioning anything. Anything goes. Sure, whatever. From the

mundane to the absolutely crazy. So Usa's particular doctrine revolved around the very black and white concept of right and wrong. Everything fell into one of two categories, and that included people. If a person was right, they were ready to be with God. If a person was wrong, then they were doing the devil's work. And of course, Usa decided what was right and what was wrong. So soon after the 40-day flu bedtime extravaganza in 2001, Helga claimed to be experiencing some pretty gnarly stress-related symptoms, like stomach pain, hearing loss and temporary blindness.

He would physically shake and convulse, often very publicly. Helga, of course, didn't think these extreme symptoms were stress. He thought they were the devil. Stomach pain, hearing loss and temporary blindness, all very easy to fake. Yes. You know, he's not bleeding from his rectum, is he? Conveniently for Helga and his penis, these symptoms improved when Sarah was around. So it was pretty easy for him to convince

his much younger wife that Sarah should move in with them as their nanny. Soon Alexandra had been moved to the spare bedroom. Sarah slept in the marital bed with Helga and Helga told Sarah that having sex was what God wanted them to do so they did it loads. Helga did a lot of sex preaching actually and he also kept Sarah in the house for six months straight convincing her that sex was the only thing that could heal him of his completely made-up illnesses. Unlike Helena before her, Alexandra didn't seem to have a particular problem with this, and neither did anyone else. How much the rest of the congregation actually knew about this particular domestic arrangement

is a subject of great contention. As we said earlier on, not unusual for single younger people to live with families, especially if they're like nannies or stuff like that. So we don't know if everyone knew that they were sleeping together, but given the amount of sex preaching that Helga did, I wouldn't be surprised if they did. And to be honest, even if Alexandra did have a problem with Helga shagging Sarah all the time, within the community, women just did what their husbands told them to do, which unfortunately, the world over, is really not that unusual. Usa and Sara were close as well.

Usa took on a maternal position in Sara's life, which is what Sara had always been desperately trying to find. But it didn't last very long. Sara made the big mistake of telling Helga that she wasn't sure that Usa could really be the bride of Christ. Sara took her religion very seriously and had studied the Bible at length. She just couldn't get past one obstacle.

If God loved everyone the same, with the same unconditional strength, then why was Usa, a normal human, getting such special treatment? Helga, of course unconcerned with the welfare of his sex pet, relayed all of this information back to Usa, who was naturally furious. She told the whole community that Sara, once a sort of handmaiden to Usa, was now wrong, and so Sara was shunned by the entire congregation. Her ongoing affair with Helga had previously been no problem at all, but now Sarah was a sinner and her punishment for adultery and for doubting Usa was particularly odd.

Basically, it was that she was to stay in Helga's bedroom while he refused to have sex with her. This is where it gets proper fucked up. Like, this is real. Like, Sara has a very dependent personality anyway because of her childhood and what happened to her. And at this stage in the story, like, Helga just, like, completely runs with that. So how much Usa had to do with this, we don't know. We can't confirm for sure. Helga would later claim that everything that happened next

was just down to him following orders from Usa. don't know, we can't confirm for sure. Helga would later claim that everything that happened next was just down to him following orders from Usa. But orders or not, Helga used the classic abusive manipulation tactic of break them down and build them up to totally dismantle Sara's ego. Sara was already full of anxiety and a desperate need for acceptance before she ever made it to Kanupi, making her extremely susceptible to this kind of dependency-inducing treatment. And on top of that, she was also only 26. Helga was 32. And if we want to talk about power dynamics, he was also her pastor and her boss.

So this is what happened. Basically, Sara would be made to beg Helga for sex and forgiveness, and he would repeatedly and continuously refuse her, telling her that she was not only useless, but also possessed by the devil. Then came the kind of up-build, where he would have sex with her and tell her how beautiful she was. This is like every kind of narcissistic abuses playbook, that idea of the devaluation phase, then the like idolization phase. You're great. I love you. You're on a

pedestal. You're amazing. God loves you. And then you're worthless. You're useless. You're stupid. And it creates dependency. It breeds dependency and it breeds desperation in the victim. And I don't know about you guys listening at home in your cars on your dog walks, but I'm struggling to see how Usa would be benefiting from any of this. Usa's much more interested in inappropriate relationships with young boys than she is with what time of day Helga had sex with Sarah. Like, I just don't understand if it it's true that Usa's, like, instructing him to do all of this stuff, why? He's married to her sister.

Why would she want her sister to be miserable and sleeping in the spare bedroom? Yeah, I mean, the only thing I can think is she wants to punish Sarah, and she knows that the best way to punish her is through Helga. But again, I don't know. I feel like Helga saying that he was only doing it to follow orders

is bullshit. He is directly benefiting from this and I think he knows exactly what he's doing and he loves it. Whether he and Usa were in cahoots, I can believe that. But I definitely don't believe that Helga's just saying, oh my god, I had no idea and I was forced to do it. The sustained abuse had the effect that it usually does. Sarah, unable to leave Helga's house, became obsessed with achieving not only Helga's forgiveness, but God's too. And as excellent podcast True Crime Sweden points out, you can tell from Sarah's diaries that she had totally brought into what Helga was feeding her. She wrote in her diary that she had committed a sin so huge that she no longer had the right to live like a normal person,

and she was willing to do whatever she could to get God to forgive her. What Sarah needed to do to achieve forgiveness was filtered straight through Helga. For Helga, having a live-in sex slave was not quite cutting it anymore. He was bored and he moved on to yet another married woman in the community called Annette. He had literally no interest in Alexandra at all and it seems like it was at this stage that he started to hatch a plan to get rid of her because pretty soon he was asking Sarah if she thought she was capable of killing a human being. Sarah said that she thought she could if she knew for sure that it was what God wanted her to do. Desperate for forgiveness, Sarah was ready to do basically anything.

Before long, Sarah started to receive text messages from God himself. These texts, like the book of Revelation, were almost impenetrably cryptic. But funnily enough, Helga could always decipher what they meant. It's just convenience after convenience, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Just everything is just coincidentally working out just the way he wants it to. Absolutely. Oh, don't worry. I'm the one. I'm the key. I am the codebreaker.

So Helga told Sarah that the texts were God confirming that she needed to become a murderer or he would never forgive her. And God had his sights, murdery sights, set on Alexandra. Again, another convenience because of course Alexandra is Helga's current wife. Oh, and God also wanted her to kill a man named Daniel Linder, who just so happened to be Annette, who is of course Helga's current mistress's husband. Sounds quite interesting, isn't it? Just clearing the decks is God, isn't he? He's just clearing a path for Helga to swing his dick wherever he wants. Yes, very, very convenient as you can see that Helga's obstacles also seem to be on God's most wanted hit list. Why not? So God also told Sarah that she had no choice, that she couldn't trust anyone, and that if she didn't shoot and kill Alexandra,

that Helga would be forced to do it himself, which would be much worse. How could she force him to do something so awful? How could she? How could she even bear the thought of making him do it instead of her? Honestly, it's classic, classic manipulation tactics. Unbelievable. So God clarified via text again that the first murder, the murder of Alexandra, was a, quote, must. And the second one, the murder of Daniel, had to be done out of love. Love for whom exactly seems unclear. But why do you need clarity when you are getting text messages straight from the big G? And, you know, you could argue, you know, why does God need her to do it?

Surely he can just strike down whoever he wants. And the way Sarah got past that is, can you even call it a parable? It's Abraham, isn't it? God is like, kill your son. And then he like walks all the way up to the top of the mountain. And? God is like, kill your son. And then he walks all the way up to the top of the mountain. And then God is like, only kidding, just testing your faith. Sarah thinks this is a test of her faith. She thinks she's going to have to go all the way to the top of the mountain. And then God is going to say, don't worry, you are forgiven.

You've proven yourself. Okay. I see. I see. And as much as that is obviously in the Bible, I think we can all safely say that what is happening here is the abuse of an incredibly, incredibly vulnerable woman who literally believes that she is receiving text messages from God. And she's about to go on some sort of Abrahamic mission on a hit list from God. And also coming back to like if this is Usa's doing or if this is just Helga acting rogue. Why would Usa want her own sister murdered? Why would she want Alexandra murdered? I don't know. I think that is a bit of a mystery in this when you take into account that Helga tries to blame it all on Usa. So anyway, in November 2003, Sarah was ready for action. She needed forgiveness to survive, even if it meant someone else wouldn't. So she took a hammer and

snuck into Alexandra's bedroom in the middle of the night. Sarah was not exactly the queen of stealth, however, and Alexandra woke up and asked her what she was doing. Sarah said that she was looking for some toothpaste and receded again. A couple of hours later, though, Sarah was back at it, and this time she was sneakier and Alexandra didn't wake up as she approached her. Zara then hit a sleeping Alexandra in the head multiple times but Alexandra wasn't having it. She wrenched the hammer out of Zara's hands and called Helga for help. Helga though was conveniently out of the house on a petrol station rendezvous with his mistress, Annette. It's almost as if he knew what was happening.

When Helga returned to the house, Sarah was banished and Alexandra was taken to a neighbour's house for help. Not hospital, you will note, and that's why we don't actually know how bad her injuries were because there are no record of them. The police were not called. The community, for now, remained silent. They chirp up later on, but not until it's too late. Sarah left Canuteby at 5.30 in the morning and found refuge at her dad's house about three hours away. She stayed there for a few months, and while she was there, she was in contact with Helga 2,200 times, there or thereabouts. She's still trying to fix it. She's still trying to win forgiveness from God. In these texts and calls to Helga, Sarah suggests multiple ways that she could

get the job done, including burning Helga's house down. He told her that that didn't really work for him. It would be incredibly inconvenient for his house to be fire damaged. A shooting would be much more preferable. So Sarah set about finding a gun, which proved quite difficult. It is illegal for civilians to carry firearms in Sweden unless they're on a shooting range or have a hunting licence. It's not like Sara could just nip into Walmart. Still, her methods of gun location were pretty unorthodox. This is absolutely true.

According to True Crime Sweden, Sara just went to Stockholm and started asking people on the street where she could find a gun. Oh God. She's so unwell. She's so unwell. She's small, she's tiny, she's young, one of which just flat out took her money and then never showed up, and the other that sold her a gun that was blocked up along with ammunition that didn't fit, Sarah finally got her hands on a functioning weapon. And in January 2004, she was ready to strike again. Helga text Sarah to let her know that the door to his house was unlocked. Sarah drove back to Canuteby. She put a sock on her head that she had cut eye holes out of

so she could see and still be disguised. Sarah, how small is your head? A sock. Why are you fitting your whole head into a sock? That's quite the achievement. I mean, maybe it's a mistranslation of something and maybe it was more like... Tights.

Sock. Like, okay, I feel like your head should be bigger than a foot. Zara wants to disguise herself. She's very worried about being tracked, but she saw absolutely no problem with driving her own car straight to the scene of the crime. Good, good. Sockhead is not enough, I'm going to say. Don't take your own car.

So with Zara banished, Alexandra had been allowed back into the master bedroom where Zara found her sleeping after sneaking through the unlocked door. Confident that she would finish the job this time, Zara shot the sleeping Alexandra three times, once in the torso and twice in the head. Alexandra was only 23 years old. After she had in her mind carried out God's will, Sarah then called God's little helper Helga to make sure that she still had to go on and do murder number two. Helga assured her that killing Daniel next was the right thing to do. So Daniel ran an IT company and lived nearby and he

was just a super normal guy whose wife was of course having an affair with a super not normal guy. Normal Daniel was awoken by a knock on his bedroom door at 4 40 a.m. When he opened it he was shot in the chest. His lung collapsed and then he was shot again in the mouth. His teeth and his jaw were destroyed but but unbelievably, he lived. He called 112 as Sarah ran from the house into her car and drove back to her dad's. She threw the gun off a bridge, but it wouldn't save her. She was brought in for police questioning the same day. She was so adamant that no one had ordered her to carry out the murders that the police immediately, of course, suspected that the opposite was true. And soon the police had Helga and Usa under surveillance and they'd even

tapped their phones. And the Kanupi congregation turned on Helga too, calling him a tool of the devil. They also decided that now was the right time to tell police about the hammer incident months before. Helga and Annette were arrested on suspicion of instigation. Annette was released after two weeks, and we don't know what happened to her, but she didn't go to prison. Helga would not be so lucky. The texts from God were found on a burner phone that belonged to him. What Helga hadn't counted on was the fact that deleting a text from a phone

doesn't mean it's gone. And as soon as those texts were unearthed, he really didn't have a leg to stand on. Knowing this, when it came to trial, Helga blamed it all on Usa, saying that he was afraid of her and had to do what she said. Then, at the trial in 2004, and still now, Helga blamed everything on Usa. And maybe it's because this is a Swedish case and the information has been difficult to get hold of. And maybe not. But Usa's involvement, personally to me, I think she's nuts.

I think she is a sex offender. I don't think she told him to kill her sister in the middle of the night. I agree. Because Helga is the one that is benefiting from these very specific murders. The Bride of Christ doesn't seem to be getting anything from them at all. At trial, Usa said that she had nothing to do with it and even that all of the Bride of Christ stuff was Helga's idea as well. She told the court, quote, he wanted to elevate me. He pushed me to live as the Bride of Christ to exert his power. He tricked me and this year I have gradually come to question this picture of myself. On the other hand, that is exactly what a cult leader trying to get away with it would say.

So it's so difficult to know. Someone's lying. Oh, yeah. I think that both Usa and Helga are both incredibly abusive and manipulative people. We can see that in the other facets of their life. So in terms of who is lying here and who is exerting more power and control, it's hard to say, but I think that Helga didn't need Usa's permission to do the things that he did. So therefore, I don't know if he did have it, but he certainly didn't need it. So basically, yeah, it's difficult to know who's telling the truth. Nobody

in the community has come forward to say what was really the case. It is interesting to note though that the night the murders went down, Usa wasn't even in Kanupi. She was in London. Now, was that to distance herself from the crime that she had orchestrated or did Helga strike while Usa was out of town so that she couldn't stop him from murdering her sister? Usa's foster daughter was meant to testify at trial too, but she never showed up. She was fined 2,000 kroner and is reported to have gone underground to avoid testifying, whatever that means. When Sara eventually took the stand, she placed the blame squarely on Helga. She said she was afraid of him, saying, He is so unbelievably powerful over me, I became a robot programmed to kill. Now that is certainly true.

Sarah didn't have any meaningful grip on reality when she murdered Alexandra and attempted to murder Daniel. Helga had total control over her. And in the end, after all was said and done at the trial, Helga got life to 27 years in prison for a charge that doesn't really translate into English but is essentially conspiracy to commit murder and the attempted murder of Daniel Linda. Sarah was committed to psychiatric care where she stayed for seven years. She really did think that she was acting for God. I think that's one thing that we can be like

certain of like there's a lot of uncertainty around who's telling the truth. But I think it is absolutely certain that Sarah really thought she was in communication with God and that she was doing the right thing. Absolutely. So Sarah was eventually released in 2011 and is now living a fairly normal life. She has a house and a job and a group of friends who are all Christian. It seems her faith has not been shaken by her experiences. Helga has given multiple interviews in prison in which he describes the culty activities in Canuteby. He agrees that he should be held responsible for his part in the murders, but that he was under the spell of Usa and unable to make his own decisions.

We don't know how true that is. In these interviews, he uses a lot of psychiatric jargon and it sounds a little bit like he's read Cult Formation and then squashed Kanute B into a cult shape. His narrative is focused almost entirely on external events, not on his own role. And he claimed that although he did make choices and behave in a way that caused someone's death,

the charge he was handed didn't really match the reality because, quote, the picture is much more complicated than that. I really don't think it is, Helga. I think you are just a fucking sex maniac and you just wanted to do whatever you had to to clear the decks, clear any obstacles standing in your fucking sex pest way. Exactly. And something else he does in this interview that really just makes me sick. This isn't in all of them, but in a few of the ones I read, he doesn't use Sarah's name.

He just calls her the nanny. In news that will surprise absolutely no one, Helga has been in trouble in prison for a sexual relationship with one of the guards in 2017. And he's also remarried, not to the same person. The investigation into Helena's bath death was reopened in light of Helga's conviction. There was a lot of noise made about whether her head hit the tap, whether the tap was stationary or movable, but in the end, nothing happened. Helga claims that he does regret tampering with the death report, though, because it made him, quote, look guilty.

Yep. Yes, it does, Helga. Because you did it because you killed her like oh my god oh my god I love that he's just like well of course I tampered with it and I don't regret it at all because it made me look fucking guilty as fuck and I got away with it I mean what whoops shit so after the murder of her sister Usa wouldn't set foot in the church at Kanupi. She had expressed multiple times that she felt deeply disappointed that the Pentecostal church had not supported her or her ministry. She stuck around for a while, opened a health spa and released an album of hymns. But in 2016, she eventually left Kanupi. That album of hymns, very widely available on Amazon Music.

Amazing. If you would care to have a peruse, but also don't give her any money. No, don't do that. But while you're on Amazon, I know everyone hates Amazon, but our book is on Amazon, so there you go. So anyway, Usa eventually, unsurprisingly, ran off with yet another pastor. We don't know whether he was age-appropriate or not, though. But for a while, she was a celebrity.

Both her and Daniel Linder have been invited to attend parties as compares. One DJ called Anders was very keen to get them on his team, saying, It's a fun thing. People would probably decide to get married if the bride of Christ was at the party. What? Just keep the teenage boys away from her, though. This is true. You probably don't want her in a family situation. No, not at all. So I think it's safe to say there was definitely something not good going on at Kanupi. And Usa Walder is definitely a scary

person. But was she a cult leader? We don't know because we don't know who's telling the truth. Can we say that Kanupi even qualifies as a cult? I mean, sure, it has a charismatic leader and there was definitely abuse, but the process of indoctrination really wasn't that unorthodox. It just strayed from the usual Pentecostal doctrine and it seems like people were allowed to leave whenever they wanted. So I don't know. It's hard to tell. Either Usa is a not very successful cult leader with a long record of child sex abuse, or she's just a very charismatic preacher with a long record of child sex abuse. Neither of these things is great. Whether Helga was the one pulling the strings or not, we can all agree that he's a real piece of work. The entire congregation at Canoopby

was closed down in 2018, and there were several allegations of abuse. Usa has been charged with eight assault cases against different people. I don't know if anything has happened about them. She seems to have completely disappeared. Two other members of the congregation have been charged with assault. They're called Urban and Peter Gembach. Some sources state that these were shocking sexual allegations.

But a closer inspection seems to indicate that they were for restraining a violent child and that neither Peter nor Urban were ever convicted and both men were allowed to return to work and schools. Again, there is just not that much out there in English. If you know, then please get in touch and let us know. But upon first look from us, it doesn't seem like, like the way it's presented in the press, like all of these allegations of sexual abuse and like beating children coming out of this tiny community in Kanupi.

And as far as I can tell, not the case. So we are not sure if it's a cult, if it's not a cult, whether Usa was in charge, whether Helga was in charge. You can please feel free to learn Swedish, read all of the stuff and make your own minds up. Absolutely. I do tend towards thinking that Helga was in charge. You can please feel free to learn Swedish, read all of the stuff and make your own minds up. Absolutely.

I do tend towards thinking that Helga was the one who was more in charge. I feel like he was Dominic Cummings to Usser's Boris Johnson. But what do I know? So we will leave it there. If you would like to learn more about cults, more about the insanity defense,

because we also talk a lot about that in our chapter on insanity the book's not out till september but you can get your pre-orders in now so please do that and if you would like to support the show on patreon you can also do that and get your lovely ears on some lovely extra content here are some people we need to thank for having done that. wood sierra mccooey abby crouch tara barrett nicole robey adrian gessler noel no no no no katarina graham delaney annabelle grinsbergs charlotte penny cat q ellis lovett grace glimbowski lisa jennings julia bottles charlotte lakin, Rose Johnson, Faye Butler, Erin Scholar, Izzy Curry, Jessica Reddle, Sarah Turner, Hannah McCluck. McCulloch. McCulloch, that's the one.

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We are trying very hard to work our way through the names. However, we think that in the interest of your guys' and ours' sanity, we have to bring it to a close. So from this day forth, if you have signed up for the $2 and up tier up until this day, which is 25th of March, we will read out your name. We will get to the end of that list.

We'll be going for ages because we are only at, oh, we're at October. We're at October, so we're okay. But after that, getting your name read out on the show will be a $20 and up reward on Patreon we're so sorry guys but we just can't keep doing it and it's shit for you guys as well because we promise you this thing and then we literally cannot deliver it until like six months later and that's not a sustainable model for anybody so we're really sorry but like I don't think we can communicate to you just how many names there are.

There are so many names, so many names. So yes, like Hannah said, if you have signed up at any level up until today, we will honor that and we will read your name out on the show. But if you sign up tomorrow, no, no, no. Unless you sign up as a $20 patron, your name's not getting read out. I'm sorry. We just can't do this anymore. So thank you. We just snuck that in at the end. Yeah. Bye getting read out I'm sorry we just can't do this anymore so thank you we just snuck that in at the end yeah bye guys

I'm so hungry bye bye bye bye 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.

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 Lainey 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

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