RedHanded - Episode 237 - The Satanic Panic: The Murder of Betty Ann Sullivan - Part 1

Episode Date: March 17, 2022

When Betty Anne Sullivan’s body was found - with her face carved up and eyes missing, lying in a burning house filled with books on the occult - the police of Jefferson Township knew this w...ould be a case that would change everything.  And the unbelievably gruesome discovery made the next day, left the people of America shaken to their Christian cores… Sources: redhandedpodcast.com  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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Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. 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 Saruti. I'm Hannah. Hannah. Hannah this week. And welcome to Red Handed.
Starting point is 00:00:44 So the way you're really supposed to pronounce Hannah, because it's like a Middle Eastern name, is Hannah. Hannah. Hannah, yes. My friend was like, wouldn't it be really weird if you just suddenly decided that you're changing your name to Hannah? I think you should start saying it. Live your truth, Hannah.
Starting point is 00:00:59 Live my Middle Eastern truth. Uh-huh. Shall I start saying my entire first full name? Yeah. Let's start again. I'm Sruti Leia. I'm Hannah. And welcome to
Starting point is 00:01:08 a very ethnic version of Red Handed. I did enjoy today Hannah trying to get me a corporate business card. I'm sat next to her in the office working away
Starting point is 00:01:18 watching satanic documentaries as you're about to find out why. Hannah just completely misspells my name to the American Express woman. I really enjoyed it. Barely spell my own name i know i enjoyed it i was like if there was ever a point where you sound like you're just defrauding them and making up names it's when you can't spell the first name of this fictional character that you've created i just i can't like i'm just terrible especially if i don't have it written in front of me no no i just can't do it
Starting point is 00:01:44 i get my own name wrong often. Maguire's hard. I think spelling words out is hard. I think it's difficult too. And I was saying to the lady on the phone, I was like, look, I do know her. I promise. She sat right here. I just, I'm really dyslexic.
Starting point is 00:01:55 I also realised, and I didn't want to make this joke while she was on the phone, it did also at points sound like there was somebody with like a gun to your head. Because you were like, what's her birthday? I was like, the 29th. The 29th. i know what your birthday is but i always panic when someone asks me on the phone i'm like is it the 28th or is it the 29th it's panicky it's panic inducing but we made it we've done all of that saruti leia and hannah are here to tell you quite the tale it is quite the tale a tale that has been told a as old as time. A tale as old as time that has been told. As many times since the beginning of time.
Starting point is 00:02:29 Right, exactly. Not always particularly well, but we are here to solve that problem for you. Yes, so previously not told very well story, but we are going to try and do it a bit more justice today. This case, once we started looking at it, it actually was when Hannah and I were on our post-UK tour little break in the Highlands that we tried to listen to a podcast about this story, which we'll refer to later. And we were just like, this cannot be real. It's real. It is absolutely crazy.
Starting point is 00:03:07 This story and how we've pieced it together out red-handed, it's going to make it a two-parter. We're going to have to come back and do it all again next week because there's just too much to fit into one week's episode. And speaking of tours, Queen of the Segway. The Queen of the Segway strikes again. You thought you were going to get through this without Paris notices. You are not.
Starting point is 00:03:25 We are doing a live show. We are doing a live show at Islington Assembly Hall. It is on the 27th of May. It's coming up. Grab your tickets. It's on a Friday night, baby. I know, at 7.30pm. Could there be a more sociable day, a more sociable hour?
Starting point is 00:03:40 I think not. It will be me, Saru, some Prosecco probably. Who knows, maybe a Turbo Wine. Absolutely. Depending on how tired we are when we get there. Let's all have Turbo Wine. Let's all have Turbo Wine. Red Handed Live, sponsored by Turbo Wine. So yeah, get your tickets. Link will be in the episode description below. Like we said last week,
Starting point is 00:03:57 guys, we are definitely not going to be doing a UK tour this year because it is just not possible. It's not possible. For reasons that will become clear quite imminently, we hope. Absolutely. So instead, we're going to be doing these one-off shows around the country every time we get the opportunity. And the first one this year that we have the opportunity to do is the one we're doing at Islington Assembly Hall. Get your tickets and we will see you there. Parish notice is done? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:20 Okay, good, because we've got to get on with this, because it is a beast of a case. On the 9th of January, 1988, just before midnight, Thomas Sullivan Sr. was woken up by the sound of the house fire alarm blaring. He quickly got out of bed and ran to check what was happening. He could see there was a fire downstairs. Thomas headed back into his room to get his wife, Betty Ann, but she wasn't there. Thinking that Betty must have been grabbing their two sons, Thomas checked their rooms, but he couldn't find anyone. He needed help, so he ran out of his burning house and across the street to his neighbours, the Eastmans. As he made his way through the snow, because yes, it is January and they live in New
Starting point is 00:05:00 Jersey, as we'll go on to find out, as he made his way through the snow, little did Thomas Sullivan know that he and his family were about to become the victims of one of the most brutal murders in American history. And one that would pour an absolute oil tanker of fuel on the satanic panic that was already sweeping the nation. The Sullivan family lived in Jefferson Township in New Jersey. Everything is legal in New Jersey. Everything is legal in New Jersey. It's a small... Including incest is what we discovered.
Starting point is 00:05:30 It's a line from Hamilton. Oh, is it? I haven't seen Hamilton, but I do remember from... Should we go? Yeah, let's go. Okay. My dreams come true. Perfect. But no, I remember from when we did the episode on genetic sexual attraction and Katie Playdell. Do you remember? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I had done all that research into all of the various states and their incest laws. New Jersey. No problem.
Starting point is 00:05:49 No problemo. Everything's legal that side of the Hudson. Even vaginal incestuous sex. Well, I'm glad they're specific. They are. Other states are like, you can only have anal incestuous sex. Because fuck me in the ass because I love Jesus. No, fuck me in the ass because I can't have a baby.
Starting point is 00:06:05 I can't have a- I think it's the same thing. I can't have an inbred baby with this person that's related to me. A means to the same end, to be honest. No babies in the butt. No butt babies for you. Anyway, Jefferson Township, New Jersey. Small, quiet, strong sense of community, that sort of place. That's something that's really hammered home in a lot of stuff that you read about this. What they mean is like everybody's in everybody else's business. Yeah, the valley
Starting point is 00:06:28 of the twitching windows. So it's a sort of perfect place to raise a family, one could argue if you're into that sort of thing. It's just an hour's drive from New York City, but it feels like a town in the middle of nowhere. It's surrounded by forests and lakes and all sorts of natural beauty. The Sullivans were a normal, happy, slightly above middle class family. And I think it's important to pause here just for a moment. I don't know how big a deal this is, but I do think culturally, geographically, this makes a difference. So in the podcast on this case, which is called The Devil Within, which is made by Wondery, which, how can I say this? It's a very in-depth look at this case. I would recommend you listen to the first three episodes.
Starting point is 00:07:07 That's what I was going to say. It starts off strong, loses its way. This is the thing. I'm not here to bash other podcasts. And I really was very interested in this case and was really excited when I saw Wondery create that podcast. But after three episodes, they kind of take what is an absolutely true crime that happened and sort of really kind of fictionalize it. Yeah, we saw a review on, I can't remember what it was on, but someone had called it true crime fan fiction, which just kind of hits the spot. Make up your own mind. Make up your own mind. We're not going to tell you what to think. But sorry, the point I was going to make about the slightly above middle class family point, they say that in the Wondery podcast. It's hammered home, like the Sullivans are like, you know, slightly above middle class. I do think middle class in
Starting point is 00:07:53 the US means something very different to middle class in the UK. I think middle class in the US means working class in the UK. It's like how the Simpsons, so the Simpsons are always referred to as like a middle, middle class family. Whereas here, I wouldn't say that they would be what you would call middle class. And I don't think the Sullivans are what you would call middle class in the UK. I mean, it's not really that pertinent to the case. I just thought it was interesting. That is interesting.
Starting point is 00:08:18 It's like when America say quite good, they mean not as good as good. But when we say quite good, we mean better than good. Yeah. Or is it the other way around? No, when we say quite good, we're like, oh, it's not as good as good. Yeah. we say quite good, we mean better than good. Or is it the other way around? No, when we say quite good, we're like, oh, it's not as good as good. Yeah. But Americans are like, quite good is better than good. Yeah. If I ask somebody how, like, I look today and they were like, quite good. Yeah, all right. You look quite good. I'd be like, what? Yeah, no, exactly. But in America, that's the other way around. So middle class, upper middle
Starting point is 00:08:38 class, middling middle class, Thomas and Betty had been married for 16 years and they had two sons, Tommy, who's 14 and Brian, just eight. Brian was a pretty happy kid, and Tommy was an all-American all-rounder, who was a smart kid but also an athlete. In middle school, he wrestled, and he was all set to join the local high school, Pope John, clue number one, the following year. Tommy, unlike a lot of other local kids, had actually been sent to a middle school a couple of towns over because his parents could afford it and they thought he'd get a better education over there. But that meant that the next year at high school, he'd be less integrated into that year's cohort than most of the other kids because they'd all been to middle school together.
Starting point is 00:09:18 He's come from the outside and I can speak from first-hand experience, that is quite difficult. But Tommy didn't seem to be particularly fazed by this. And like we said, the Sullivans were as normal as normal can be. But even if they hadn't been, because this is the thing, they constantly go on about how normal the Sullivans were, and they were. But when I read this case, the only thing I could keep thinking was, even if they hadn't been, even if they had been the fucking weirdest family in town, the bloody Boo Radleys of Jefferson Township, the events of the 9th of January 1988
Starting point is 00:09:51 would have been no less unbelievable. So let's get back to where we left off, with Thomas Sr. running to the Eastman's place. As he crossed the road, he saw something. It was his car. It was crashed into the Eastman's driveway. And it was still running. Thomas had no idea what was going on. But with his house on fire and his family nowhere to be seen, the car would have to wait. He banged on the neighbour's door and grabbed the Eastman boys to help.
Starting point is 00:10:17 Two of the men stayed outside trying to control the fire, while one went in with Thomas to try and find his family. Upstairs, Thomas was screaming for his wife and his children when suddenly, eight-year-old Brian appeared from his room. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone.
Starting point is 00:10:44 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.
Starting point is 00:11:08 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.
Starting point is 00:11:31 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.
Starting point is 00:11:57 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 favourite podcasts. The little boy told his dad that he'd seen his brother Tommy covered in blood. Apparently, Tommy had cut his hand and their mum was going to drive him to the hospital. Oh, OK, Thomas thought. Now it made sense. Betty and Tommy must have crashed a car outside in their rush to get to the hospital. Oh okay, Thomas thought. Now it made sense. Betty and Tommy must have crashed a car
Starting point is 00:12:45 outside in their rush to get to the hospital. But Betty wasn't in the car. She was much closer to home, as Thomas was about to discover. Suddenly Thomas heard one of the Eastmans screaming downstairs and then he watched in shock as this man ran out of the front door as fast as he could. Thomas got Brian outside and then headed downstairs. What had made his neighbour scream like that? The fire didn't really seem to be spreading beyond the living room, so Thomas continued further down into the basement of his family home. Once down there, first he saw his wife's feet. She was lying on the ground. He ran to her and immediately saw what had made the other man run out, screaming and retching. 37-year-old Betty's face had been carved up with a knife
Starting point is 00:13:31 and her eyes were missing. There was blood everywhere and it was clear that Betty had been attacked from behind. She had suffered multiple skull fractures and a bloody dumbbell was found laying near her body. When the fire was put out and police arrived, the things they discovered only made this nightmarish scene even weirder. The fire seemed to have started in the living room. Here, investigators found books piled up in a circle on the floor. And are you ready for first what the fuck moment of this case, apart from the fact that mum is dead in the basement and her eyes are missing i would say eyes missing was my first moment yeah all right
Starting point is 00:14:09 my second fine um fine let's go with number two 2.5 for two eyes well and the face carving i guess oh sure sorry because these books that have been piled up on the floor of the living room and set fire to. All of these books were about Satanism and the occult. So yeah, the police, 80s police, they're going to be a little bit like, what the fuck? Yes, but I imagine also, just as I said. Yes, also, also that. And I think given the murder, how gruesome it was, and now the books, I know we're like, oh, 80s police, I'm sure they'd have been like, what the fuck? I think you can say, given all of those things put together, you can't really blame the town for what they did next, which was absolutely freak the fuck out. Who the hell had done this?
Starting point is 00:14:56 And where was Tommy? I think you have to also put into perspective, like, this town, when we were going on about, like, how community it is, what, like, a nice safe place it is to, like, raise a family, even though it's only an hour away from like literally standing in Times Square. The police officer who they call, like who answers the call to come to the house, it was the first homicide call he'd ever been to. Jesus Christ. This murder would have like freaked people out in New York. Yes, anywhere.
Starting point is 00:15:20 Let alone in Jefferson Township in New Jersey. So yeah, the questions were obviously who had killed Betty and where was her son Tommy? People searched all night. They even came out in like tens of volunteers to scour the surrounding woods. Because remember, this town, it's just like surrounded by forest. But there was absolutely no sign of him. Then, the next day, a neighbour of the Sullivans was standing in his kitchen, just staring out at his snowy garden, when something caught his eye.
Starting point is 00:15:51 Someone was sitting against his winter woodpile. The man gingerly made his way into the garden to see who it was and what they were doing, because whoever it was, they were sitting in the freezing snow. But as he got closer, he noticed that the snow surrounding the figure was saturated in blood. And the figure? It was 14-year-old Tommy Sullivan. The man stumbled backwards, unable to take in what he was seeing. It was like a scene from an Eli Roth movie, because one of Tommy's wrists was cut so deeply that his hand was hanging backwards at an unnatural angle. But it was his head that Tommy's poor neighbour couldn't take his terrified eyes off. The boy
Starting point is 00:16:32 had a savage cut running across his neck from ear to ear. So deep was this slash that Tommy's head was, according to this man, hanging on by a thread no thank you there's something more terrifying that he finds him in the morning i think for me it's the snow it's the snow i don't know what it is about like it's just so like classic ghost story i mean there's something about snow that like adds something else oh and the snow makes it so much worse as we're about to see in the next couple of sentences. I was setting it up. Thank you. Sorry.
Starting point is 00:17:10 No, leave it in. No, no. So surely this neighbor thought whoever had killed Betty must have killed Tommy as well. But investigators noticed in disbelief that this is where the snow comes in. There was only one set of footprints leading to where Tommy's body sat. One set of human footprints and one set of goat footprints. I'm kidding. That's probably what they wanted to see. One set of human footprints and they led from the woods and there were none, human or goat, leading the other way. I hate that. I hate it. It's the footsteps from the woods.
Starting point is 00:17:44 One set of human footsteps from the woods. One set of human footsteps from the woods and a man-called dead body. Does it get more fucking terrifying? No. What those footprints had to mean is that either Tommy's killer had floated from the woods, killed him, and then vanished into thin air, or Tommy had done this to himself. I hadn't thought about this before, but I suppose snow is quite a good forensic tool. Yeah, and the thing is, you could argue, like, maybe it snowed again after it happened, but then how are Tommy's footprints there? There are no other footprints there that are visible.
Starting point is 00:18:15 So even if the person had, like, stepped in Tommy's footprints because they were walking behind him, it would have mangled everything up. They would have been able to see that there were multiple footprints. There is no countermeasure for that. I think the assumption that Tommy did it to himself is the only one they could have reached at that point. Which is quite a tricky assumption to make had all of the other conditions not existed because what Tommy had done to himself was so brutal. It's almost unbelievable that he could have done it to himself, that these injuries could have been self-inflicted, but they absolutely were.
Starting point is 00:18:45 The knife that had cut his wrist had slipped in between the bones of his arm and ended up severing Tommy's tendons. It's kind of like, do you remember that case we did, Danny Casolaro? Yes. And he dies in the bath and he had damaged the tendon so badly that when he had slashes on his other arm people were like how could he have cut his other arm because he wouldn't have been able to hold the knife once the tendons in this hand were fucked and that was like a big question mark because we were really like Danny Casolaro was murdered but in this the tendon cuts are only on one hand so if you'd have seen the other thing on the other hand as well I would
Starting point is 00:19:24 have been like how could he have done that to himself on both sides but because it's only on one hand. So if you'd have seen the other thing on the other hand as well, I would have been like, how could he have done that to himself on both sides? But because it's only on one hand, I can believe that maybe he did it. I agree. I always find it weird when you think about the two bones in your arms that they swap places every time you flip your hand. Yeah. And he just slipped that knife right between the two of them. And also listeners at home, your bones are wet. Think about that for a minute. So Tommy had severed his own tendons. Not only did that mean he couldn't really use his hand anymore, it also meant that bleeding out quickly kind of wasn't an option. Yeah, because he doesn't cut the actual blood vessels. He just cuts through the tendons. So he survived the savage gashes to his wrist. As for his neck, the cut was so deep that it had gone through his windpipe and his spine.
Starting point is 00:20:07 And the only knife found at the scene was a three-inch Boy Scouts knife. So a lot of determination would have been needed to get that knife to do that much damage. Yeah, and it was also the knife that had been used on Betty. So a three-inch Boy Scout knife. The reason they're giving that to Boy Scouts is probably because you can't do a lot of damage with it. Yeah, just supposed to whittle spoons and stuff. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:30 You can see why people were so freaked out. And it's only going to get worse because investigators soon discovered a note from the car crashed into the Eastman's driveway. It had been written and signed by Tommy Sullivan and it was a contract between him and, quote, the greatest demon of hell. In the contract, Tommy promises to murder his entire family and then to kill himself. None of that hereditary shit here with bloody payment or whatever.
Starting point is 00:21:01 He's going straight to the greatest demon of hell. Yeah, payment, don't waste my fucking time. No. He's like seventh king or something. Exactly. Like straight to the greatest demon of hell. Yeah, Paimon, don't waste my fucking time. No. He's like seventh king or something. Exactly. But aim low, please. So all of this led the police to rule the deaths of Betty and Tommy Sullivan as a nightmarish murder-suicide.
Starting point is 00:21:17 The fear emanating across the town reached a crescendo because the people had been scared at first when they thought this had all been the work of a stranger who was possibly still on the loose, well, they were all the more horrified to discover that the murderer had actually been her very own teenage son. As soon as the news emerged, the town and pretty much the whole country went into panic mode. This murder reinforced a long lived and persistent fear that lived in the minds of many americans the fear that the devil was real and walking amongst us possessing and corrupting people forcing them to commit acts of unspeakable evil it's interesting isn't it that the horror shifts
Starting point is 00:21:55 from like oh there's a madman out there to not only is he one of our own we know him and he's a child yeah but what they've done by packing it in with the satanic panic thing is they've also managed to externalize it as well, because it's nothing to do with how we're raising our children or mental health or checking in. It's there is this external force that is turning our children against us. It's nothing to do with us. Oh, absolutely. The call's coming in from outside the house this time. Now, if you are a long-time red-handed listener, then you'll know that we visited this phenomenon quite a few times before on this show. But in this two-parter, we're going to approach the whole thing in a different way. wake of ever more bizarre and undeniably satanic conspiracy theories once again spreading on the internet through the likes of QAnon, we thought it would be interesting to talk about the evolution
Starting point is 00:22:50 of the satanic panic from the 70s and 80s to today and why it never really went away. Let's start with a very quick refresher on the satanic panic. This is the introductory paragraph of your textbook on Satan. We have covered this quite a lot of times. You can look at our episode on the Fall River cult, Paul Ingram, the Southwest of Salem case. And of course, our episode on Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan, in which we explore all of the different types
Starting point is 00:23:16 of Satanism that are around today, both theistic and most not. So because there is a wealth of information in those episodes, we have put together a sort of cliff notes of what you need to know for this episode to make sense. However, we do advise you to arm yourself with knowledge and go back and listen to them. So what we need to know for today is that the idea of the satanic panic is a very uniquely American phenomenon. Here in the UK,
Starting point is 00:23:39 we had more of a moral panic around the same time that was more to do with video nasties and the corrupting influence of movies featuring violent sex and sexy violence. And there's actually quite a good horror film that came out possibly last year, sometime during lockdown, called Censor. I really love the cover art of it. I appreciate a good film cover art. Just look it up. I'm not going to describe it. But it's basically about this woman. Her job is to watch movies and to say what needs to be censored out or and to give it ratings so this is an 18 whatever and she has a dark past and she's watching and she's a woman and she's a woman no basically what you find out is that she when she was a kid she thinks that her sister was
Starting point is 00:24:20 kidnapped but her parents are like your sister was killed on that camping trip she was murdered and she's like no i feel like she's still alive and she was kidnapped and then one day she's watching this horror film and she thinks she sees her sister in it being tortured by this man and then she becomes obsessed with the fact that it's like a real snuff film and it's actually her sister and she like goes looking for her it's pretty good but it's basically all set on the backdrop of the moral panic in the uk it's a british film right right right and it's basically all set on the backdrop of the moral panic in the UK. It's a British film. Right, right, right. And we really were obsessed with the corrupting influence of those kind of things rather than satanically.
Starting point is 00:24:53 Again, I think that's probably to do with America fundamentally being a religious country as opposed to here in the UK. Obviously, we can't speak about every country in the world, but we're going to have to focus on the US. We are sure that there are countries who are more religiously inclined, who have had similar issues at some point in their history. But what we're looking at today is this notion of ritual abuse, possession, and Satan as a real life entity, as a truly American thing. Actually, it's as American as apple pie with cheddar on it. And it all began in the 70s. In the 70s, as any good spooky bitch knows, the US was an absolute sweaty hotbed of serial killers. All that lead in the air. And it was absolutely also the era of
Starting point is 00:25:40 the heavy hitters. We're talking Zodiac, Berkowitz, Bundy, Gacy, the Hillside Stranglers. And of course, I know they aren't serial killers, but Manson and Jim Jones were also doing their cult business at this time as well. And the media obsession with these cases really cemented a feeling of evil lurking around every street corner for the average American. You also have to remember it was like, all of this was also happening at the advent of things like, you know, Bundy was the first court case where they had a video camera go into the courtroom. So you were talking about a case like Bundy, who murdered and committed necrophilia against countless women being streamed directly into the homes of millions of people in America. Like, of course, this really, really did, for want of a better phrase,
Starting point is 00:26:28 capture everybody's imagination. And also around about this time, in 1972 to be precise, the book The Satan Seller was released. And that is seller like to sell something, not seller as in your downstairs basement. And if you aren't familiar with this book you haven't listened to our paul ingram episode you haven't listened to that episode but i'll give you a very quick reminder it's essentially a work of total fiction written by an egotistical con man named mike wonky i think that's how you say i did look up his wife saying his name and i
Starting point is 00:27:01 think that's how she said that he claimed that this book was an account of his time involved in the occult from being sexually richly abused as a child all the way up to his life as a satanic priest and mike warnicky how do we say his name it's difficult because you want to say warren eckie but it's not it's not that's a different guy episode so he basically uses this book in which he denounces Satanism in favour of Jesus to catapult himself into the upper echelons of evangelical Christianity. But it's all lies. And it absolutely lit many fires across the country in terms of the satanic panic. So he really does it in a very cynical, money-grubbing, fame-grubbing kind of way. And he was eventually debunked by a Christian magazine called Cornerstone in 1992. So he got a good run out of it.
Starting point is 00:27:51 He got a very good run out of it. So yeah, the book The Satan Seller came out in 1972. And although it was proven to be absolute bullshit, at the time it came out very, very quickly, it became like a number one religious book seller. Like it was absolutely huge. Everyone was reading it. Then in 1974, out came the movie The Exorcist, which again, we've talked about this before on the show, but it bears repeating. This movie reinforced this idea of the devil being a real character in our human lives. I honestly don't think it's an exaggeration to say that The Exorcist is the most influential film of all time. I always say that. I think it is. I always say that every day, every chance I get, I always say that. No, you're right. There's few films that
Starting point is 00:28:36 you're going to find that are more influential in having reshaped the pop culture psyche. It changed the paradigm. It really, really did. Yeah. And if you haven't listened to it still, even though we have recommended it multiple times, listen to Inside the Exorcist. Oh my God, it's so good. It's so good.
Starting point is 00:28:52 It's such a good podcast. You know what, I'm going to listen to it now. I know. Let's fuck this off. Let's listen to it together. Let's go upstairs and lie on the floor. No, no, no. But you, dear listener, don't stop listening to this.
Starting point is 00:29:03 Listen to this and then go listen to Inside the Exorcist. Also listen to Inside Psycho. It's really good. Also, I think they're Wondery shows. So we've balanced ourselves out. We've balanced it out. I didn't love The Devil Within, but loved Inside the Exorcist. So yeah, you're seeing the timeline building, basically. You've got all the serial killers, you've got the Satan seller, then you've got the exorcist coming out. It's like this growing wave of panic building amongst the populace in the US. And basically, the idea that you have to get your head around when we're talking about the satanic panic isn't that there's just some random occultist doing weird shit and maybe they believe in something a bit fucked up
Starting point is 00:29:41 and they're going to come get you or come get your kids. Oh, no, no, no, no. What they actually literally believed is that the devil was walking amongst them in the community and he was out there waging a war of good and evil here on earth, a literal war of good and evil. And remember this rather menacing idea, keep it firmly planted in your head because, dear listener, although we're talking about the 70s right now, we're going to be coming back to this particularly bizarre idea when we get on to QAnon next week. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America.
Starting point is 00:30:19 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. 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 mom'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.
Starting point is 00:31:06 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 Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. But for now, let's stick to the past-o times. The historios.
Starting point is 00:31:48 The old-os. In 1980, the extremely famous book, which we've spoken about before, called Michelle Remembers was published. And that set the wheels of satanic ritual abuse, or at least the rumours of it, spinning. It was written by a Canadian psychologist called Lawrence Pasdar and his patient, Michelle Smith. They later got married, by the way. Of course they did. As a pair, they claim to be shining a light on satanic ritual abuse, or SRA.
Starting point is 00:32:17 You'll see that on Reddit and TikTok and stuff. You'll see people refer to it as those letters. So we're talking about cloaked cultists sexually abusing, drinking the blood of, and cannibalizing babies and children. All to please the devil. They're very specific about it. Oh, you know what? You can say a lot of things about the satanic panic. You can. In specific is not one of them. Very, very, very frighteningly specific.
Starting point is 00:32:44 Yes. Entirely made up, I up i'm afraid but detailed and it was all the best lies are as all the best lies are like this lie was so fantastic because after michelle michelle remembers came out there was i can't remember it was in seattle the seattle tacoma area there was a survey and it was like one in nine psychiatrists in Seattle was like, I have a patient who was a victim of satanic ritual abuse. It's just, it's impossible. I mean, it's honestly, we'll go on to talk about some frightening statistics later on and next week. I'm going to save it. I'm going to save it.
Starting point is 00:33:19 Okay. You edge yourself all the way till next week. Stuff like Michelle remembers and also the phenomenon of repressed memories. We don't have time. Go and listen to Paul Ingram. It took a really long time to settle down. It actually took decades before satanic ritual abuse was debunked by the FBI. But believe it or not, there are still people sitting in prison today for satanic ritual
Starting point is 00:33:44 abuse crimes that not only did they not commit, no one committed them. They never happened in the first place. That is the ultimate, isn't it? Not just sat in prison for a crime you didn't commit, for a crime that never happened. Yeah, it's not even you've got the wrong man, it's you made it up. Yeah. And case in point is, of course, the McMartin preschool case. And if you're listening to this podcast, you've probably heard of the McMartin preschool case and if you're listening to this podcast you've probably heard of the McMartin preschool case but let's do one of our usual
Starting point is 00:34:11 red-handed rundowns on this absolutely fucking enormous story. Basically what you need to know is that in 1983 children from a rather prominent Californian preschool began making accusations of ritual sexual abuse against their teachers and their parents. In response, and this is one of my least favourite things I've ever come across in the research of Red Handed, the police, in response to these claims, sent letters to all of the parents in the whole area telling them to question their kids on sodomy, oral sex and satanic abuse. I'm just going to do a little pause there and then
Starting point is 00:34:56 I'm going to remind you that these are preschoolers. That means they haven't gone to school yet. I think it's nursery. It's nursery age kids yes so it's like four i think it's fucking young it's young sodomy oral sex what's happening if you want a full inbox that's how you get it fucking hell someone was sitting on their ass on a tuesday afternoon be like you know what i am awfully bored. Let's get these parents fucking talking to their kids about sodomy. My God, it is. I know, I know, I know. I know that we're looking at this from the perspective of hindsight. I know we're looking at it from 2022, peering back into the 80s, judging them. But come on. The one positive thing I will say is that this whole shit show I'm about to explain to you
Starting point is 00:35:45 it ruined a lot of people's lives kids and adults alike but it did change the way in which law enforcement and psychiatrists and psychologists and any authorities really interview children because this is basically how not to talk to children yeah how don't even fucking look at children if you are in the 80s. Yeah, this is how to get a kid to say whatever you want. Precisely. And then ruin their own life and then ruin your life also. So yeah, what do you think, friends, happened when these parents started questioning their children about sodomy, oral sex and satanic ritual abuse?
Starting point is 00:36:21 I think the children were like, oh, actually, mom, I've just been to university and I figured out that I know what these things are now and they've absolutely never happened to me. Almost the exact opposite. So what happened was, of course, all of these preschoolers, they completely mixed their stories all together in a big soup of SRA. Filthy, sodomized SRA.
Starting point is 00:36:42 No, I'm going to say it. They did it first. And yeah, of course. I don't want sodomy soup. No, you have going to say it. They did it first. And yeah, of course. I don't want sodomy soup. No, you have to have it. You have to. Stop forcing me. And your mum's going to make you have it. Of course, these kids also cross-contaminated them because the parents are talking to each
Starting point is 00:36:58 other. The kids are talking to each other. There's a whole heap of just like cross-contamination and mixed up sodomy in this and also the parents planted ideas in the kids head because the police remember told them to talk to them about these things specifically yes parents with absolutely no forensic training precisely and preschoolers don't know what sodomy oral sex or ritual abuse is so for them to be saying those things unless they actually happened and they didn't happen they've been planted planted. Those ideas have been planted in their heads. And the worst thing is they were planted in their heads by well-meaning parents. And here is just one really fucking outstanding statistic I can throw up for you straight away, Hannah. The therapists who were
Starting point is 00:37:38 eventually brought in to help all of these kids who were fucking traumatized by all of this sexual abuse that never happened to them, concluded that 90% of the 400 kids in like the adjoining schools there had been abused. Oh, good. 90% of the 400 students. It's just like, I think a good rule for life in anything. It's never 90%. No, it's definitely not. I'm not saying, obviously, that child sexual abuse in school environments doesn't happen. No, no way.
Starting point is 00:38:10 But I don't think the school paedophile has abused 90% of the kids at the school. No, tricky. Unless he's working for the devil, obviously. So you might be like, well, how do you know none of this happened? How do you know none of this happened at all? Well, the thing is, they run with this 90% statistic, despite the fact that there was absolutely no physical evidence whatsoever ever found. Not on the kids, not on the adults, not in the school. And these kids, they're not just talking about you know somebody did some
Starting point is 00:38:46 inappropriate touching i'm not saying that's okay i'm saying that's not all they said they are saying things like a great winged monster was tearing me to shreds in the cupboard these are the kind of things they were saying if those things were happening there would have been more physical evidence at the school unless you obviously of course believe that the devil was involved in which case there wouldn't be yeah you're you have few options the problem is on top of all of this for why of course these ideas were planted and not sort of authentically gathered from these children is because in the interviews of these kids being talked to by these psychiatrists,
Starting point is 00:39:30 none of them ever spontaneously of their own accord ever said that these things happened to them. The therapists are absolutely and clearly leading the children, asking them outright about things like naked games and winged beasts, like they're planting these ideas in the kids' heads and then the kids are saying yes. They never spontaneously say it. And in fact, at first, the kids say no. They're like, no, that didn't happen. None of that happened to me. Yeah, when they ask them about the sodomy and all of it, the kids are like, no. But the therapists, the grown-ups in this situation, keep going, repeating the questions over and over again. And that's the absolute opposite of how to interview someone, especially a child, because typically kids want to please adults.
Starting point is 00:40:10 They tend to do whatever gets them a positive reinforcement. And if you do enough torture of shit to an adult, that's what they will do as well. So the kids just say exactly what the therapists want to hear, because children inherently want to please adults, especially ones in positions of power that aren't their parents. Absolutely. So this not only led to countless adults being labelled as satanic child rapists, but it also created unbelievably traumatising memories in these kids of horrific things that never happened. So even if you were never abused as a child,
Starting point is 00:40:42 if you think that you were, you truly believe that you were, and your brain is brimming with these quote unquote memories of it all having happened, the outcome of your trauma is the same. And we fundamentally don't understand. And I don't mean we as in me and Hannah. Like the scientific community doesn't fundamentally understand how memories even work. And one of the things we do know is, of course, that you can implant memories. And other people said, again, like Hannah said, we're not going to go into that idea today. Go listen to the Paul Ingram episode that we've done. The thing I was thinking about when I was writing this part is the documentary on Netflix, Tell Me Who I Am. And I don't want to spoiler it here because it did only come out last year, but if you haven't watched it, go watch it. It fucked let me give you the synopsis so twins identical twins one of them loses his memory and then the other brother lies to him about their childhood but he does it for a
Starting point is 00:41:34 nice reason because something really bad happened to them and his life when he didn't know that that bad thing had happened was categorically better until he found out and then he was re-traumatized by it right he has an inkling yeah he knows something isn't right but it's definitely a very traumatic rediscovery yes and i think here it is the opposite isn't it it's the tragic horror of the fact that these children were never sexually abused but they go on to be adults or go on to be teenagers who are traumatized in the same way as if they had been because they have these false memories of it having happened to them. And even though these memories were false, the investigation into the McMartin Preschool extravaganza dragged on for four long years with hundreds of children being interviewed.
Starting point is 00:42:22 And the resulting trial only ended in the 90s. It was one of the longest and most expensive trials in US history at the time. And all for something that never happened. But at the time, people were sure. You'd hear things like, we know the truth, we believe our children. And that actually became the slogan for those who were convinced it was all true. And if you think that that can't possibly be real, that these adults with jobs and homes and cars can't really be thinking that this is true, we're going to play you a very quick clip from the
Starting point is 00:42:56 infamous documentary, Devil Worship Exposing Satan's Underground. It's on YouTube, if you must. Here are some parents of the McMartin preschool children talking about devil worship. Whoever is the designated spokesman there, please tell us why you believe this was part of a ritual cult, abuse as part of a satanic cult. Well, the easiest reason to that question, Haralo, is the fact when the children started talking, they started talking about robes and candles. They described an Episcopal church. And once they started narrowing that down, you could see that it had to be satanic. It's very important in satanic religions to have a priest because they truly do believe in power. The difference only between Catholicism and the
Starting point is 00:43:39 Episcopal religion is almost done. They both use wine, they both use bread, and so on. The truth about Satanism is they truly do use blood, and they mix it with urine, and then they also use the real meat, the real flesh. This is what makes Satanism true, and this is what 1,200 molested kids in the city of Manhattan Beach have told the sheriff's department, and it's an outrage that we are where we are with this case and these poor unprotected kids that have that's a third of the school system in the city of Manhattan Beach has been molested we have eight preschools closed here this is the child molestation capital of the world we have more preschools closed in this city than any city this side of Detroit and I'm not picking
Starting point is 00:44:19 on Detroit I think you are picking on Detroit my friend and. And it's just the pose as well. We're going to come on to talk about this documentary in a bit more detail in a moment. But that particular scene really does stand out because it's all these parents wearing suits, sat on the floor like they're there for fucking satanic story time. Yeah, there's this one dad who's sat in the front row cross-legged on the floor. And it does look like he's sitting down for story time, circle time. But, you know, that man who's speaking, as ridiculous as it sounds now, you can't argue that he doesn't sound convinced.
Starting point is 00:44:52 Oh, no, no, no. They absolutely believe it. And anyone with an even passing knowledge of QAnon and the phenomenons that surround it will find that everything we just heard sounds particularly familiar. Because, of course, in 2022, this notion of needing to protect children from a satanic cabal of paedophilic cannibals is still unfortunately alive and well. And like we keep teasing you, it's something that we're going to revisit in next week's Very Modern Day episode.
Starting point is 00:45:21 So while of course QAnon is a bit more fringe today, it's hardly mainstream. Back in the 80s, everyone absolutely believed in the satanic panic. FBI agents, police officers, lawyers and social workers would get together and even share their findings at things like Satanism in the Community conferences, which are 100% true and not made up by me at all. I sound very insincere. I'm not being insincere. This is true. It's just the way I speak.
Starting point is 00:45:51 And according to an article in the New York Times, these people would even hand out like satanic calendars to each other so that they could like keep track of when they thought they were going to see the most satanic activity. I can't say outrageous. Oh, for god's sake i'm so annoyed i've changed my accent and it gets better because they'd also give each other leaflets um lovely love a leaf except when you're passing it through my door stop fucking giving me leaflets i don't want your pizza and they'll have like little satanic symbols on there with an
Starting point is 00:46:21 explanation of what each one is just in case you spot one oh right so you know like when you're a kid and you go do like a little uh scavenger hunt these people are doing satanic scavenger hunts essentially and they give each other the symbols that they found at the park or whatever they also shared lists of suspected occultist organizations in their local areas and my favorite thing was that a lot of these were like lists of people like local astrologers oh leave doris alone she's just having a nice time she's not hurting anyone i know i know it gets better it gets better because if you think that i'm overregging this that i'm saying that all of these people believed it and it couldn't possibly be true. I'm sorry, friends. It is true because we actually managed to find the law enforcement guide to satanic cults circa 1994. 1994. This is so not that long ago. This entire
Starting point is 00:47:22 law enforcement guide, you can find it on YouTube. We'll leave a link below. It is an hour and 14 minutes long. And it's basically a training video made for police to understand how to spot and combat satanic cults. We're not going to play you an hour and 14 minutes of it, but we have picked out some very choice cuts. Everybody ready? Let's do it. To better understand Satanism, it might be appropriate to talk about some of the initiation practices for Satanists. And to better understand them, you would take a look at what might be traditional Christianity or some normal faith, and if you reversed it, it would be something that Satanists would embrace. Initiation into Satanism, or a similar cult, usually includes a spoken denial of the Christian faith,
Starting point is 00:48:09 generally accompanied by saying the Lord's Prayer backwards. Re-baptism in Satan's name, and taking a new name to replace the given Christian name. An oath of allegiance to Satan while standing in a magic circle, entering the initiate's name in the Book of Death. And a promise to sacrifice children to Satan, and marking the initiate with the Devil's Mark. This program is designed to help law enforcement officers better understand satanic cults. Now remember, all satanic people do not commit crimes. Some of their activities are perfectly legal. But there are some things that
Starting point is 00:48:53 some Satanists do that lead to illegal behavior, and some of them seem rather innocent on the surface. Some of those things might be just simple vandalism or trespass. Cruelty to animals that might be detected through mutilations and sacrifice. Kidnapping, whether they're adults or children or even kidnapping of animals. Rape, molestation, child abuse, child sexual abuse that may be different than just harming a child, ritual abuse, arson, murder, which might include human sacrifice or mass murders or cannibalism, drug trafficking, sexual trafficking of children, corpse theft, cemetery vandalism, black market sales of bones and skulls, black market baby selling,
Starting point is 00:49:57 pedophilia, pornography, torture, desecrating churches or other religious buildings, human slavery, weapons violations, suicides, disposing of animal parts, illegal entry into mortuaries and cemeteries, necrophilia, or having sex with dead people. These things may or may not be satanic kinds of rituals, but they're important to note in your reporting because they would fit together in a fabric as follow-up investigations might indicate a deeper need to look into the dark side of your community. So note them well and ask the investigators to do a little further follow-up if you find any of these indicated in a crime
Starting point is 00:50:50 or in a police report. The only heinous crime I'm worried about is that fucking green jumper. Mate, I think that is the worst jumper I've ever seen. I know it's not a very appropriate joke for this audio format, but go and watch it. We have just watched it together, but go and watch it we have just watched it together so go and watch it the link is in the episode description below i promise you
Starting point is 00:51:09 you will be entertained because am i wrong in that did he just list all of the crimes yes every crime that occurs and he is like if you see any of these crimes make sure that the law enforcement that is involved in that is taking note of it very, very seriously and looking for basically satanic people in your community. He keeps hammering that home. It's kind of like when you see those signs that are like, this is a zero tolerance crime area. And you're like, well, what is everything else then? Is it like you can get away with a bit of crime? No, we're not having it here.
Starting point is 00:51:41 We're not. We're absolutely fucking not having it here. Just get out. Get out. There's just so much of this we could have played you go watch it and towards the end there is like such a great part of the the entire thing i don't even know what to call it training video where there is like this blonde woman laying in a bikini on and like on an autopsy table and he's got like covered up with a sheet. And then he takes it off and he's like, now we're going to talk about the signs you might find on the body of someone who has been a victim of satanic homicide. And then she's got like Sharpie on her. There's like a pentagram on her stomach and like a pentagram on her chest. And he's just like, if you see a
Starting point is 00:52:22 pentagram like this on her chest it might be a sign that there is a satanist in your community i'm not even making this up but we don't have time for that but i do want to play one final little snippet from this absolute treasure trove of training video so much policing in an hour and 14 minutes you truly. Think of all of the police who had to watch this. Oh, mate. Honestly, the eyes that have passed over this, it's mind-warping.
Starting point is 00:52:49 That's for sure. So in this documentary, documentary, training video, it's not just the man in the ugly green jumper. They also have experts. Oh, oh, okay.
Starting point is 00:53:00 And one of the experts that they have on this thing is in the shape of a former satanic priest turned mullet-clad Christian. And this man, let me set the context for what you're about to hear. He's basically like a lot of satanic stuff goes down in parks. That's his premise, right? through this park in daylight and he just so happens to again and again come across various satanic symbols that have been drawn on trees or on the ground in chalk to me it seems hugely
Starting point is 00:53:32 coincidental that within what looks like quite a small urban park he's come across so many satanic symbols it almost seems like they were drawn there so that this man could explain them to law enforcement. Production, as we call it in the industry. Precisely. As he's entering the park, this is what he had to say about parks. When I was practicing occultists, oftentimes I would come into this park and practice on various different holidays, lunar holidays and occultic holidays. And we'd actually have rituals in the park when we didn't have a space to do rituals indoor. So what I'd like to do is take you into the park
Starting point is 00:54:11 and just kind of show you one of the places that you would start asking your questions and start looking to see, you know, what the occultists are up to. There's two different communities that use this park. One is the pagan or or occultic community and the other community is of course the homosexual community interestingly enough uh they go hand in hand help interestingly they go hand in hand and you might be wondering why did i just cut it off there because maybe he's about to explain how they go hand in hand he doesn't he doesn't he just goes on to talk about something else he's just like casual they're the same just the same i mean there's no shade on being either of those things but it's just this and this so like 80s well 90s because it was 1994
Starting point is 00:54:54 like mindset of like well you know it's the same hand in hand just you know tar them all with the same brush no problem i guess if you can stomach it, my friends, go and watch that. I can't. I never want to see it again. So now you have a little bit more background. So let's leave that there and go back to 1988 and the Sullivan case. Because now you understand the environment within which this case was unfolding. In fact, just 18 months before this murder-suicide, four other teenagers in New Jersey had been banned from their own high school graduation for their, quote,
Starting point is 00:55:31 fascination with or worship of a demonic creature. And it really was that vague, and try as we might, we haven't been able to find more information about it at all but we do know that it caused quite the panic and it turned out that all four of these teenagers had been fans of the role-playing fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons. Yep because it wasn't just the Ouija board after the release of the movie The Exorcist that found itself a bit of a satanic pariah in the world of board games, though I have been told that D&D is not a board game. It was, of course, in the 80s, Dungeons and Dragons, that fell squarely into the crosshairs of several fundamentalist religious groups, and they were not at all happy with this game. And it seems, as far as we can tell, that this kind of excommunication of Dungeons and Dragons started in 1979,
Starting point is 00:56:30 when a 16-year-old child prodigy by the name of James Dallas Egbert III... Find me a more American name. I dare you. I cannot. Can't be done. James Dallas Egbert III disappeared from his room at Michigan State University, because yes he was 16 but he was a prodigy and that's why
Starting point is 00:56:47 he was already at university I think they do a lot more of that in America because they can't drink until they're 21 whereas you can drink when you're 18 here so everyone's drinking at uni
Starting point is 00:56:54 so you can't send a 14 year old to go and live with a bunch of pissed 18 year olds it's just not going to work well yes so 16 year old Egbert is there
Starting point is 00:57:04 he disappears and his parents hire a pi named william deer to go looking for him and despite the fact that james dallas egbert the third struggled with depression and substance abuse issues and this was very well documented and very well known and the fact that during one particularly manic episode that he had suffered, had actually gone full Cropsey and holed himself up in the utility tunnels underneath his university, PI William Deere decided that Egbert's disappearance must have been to do with D&D. We'll just ignore all of that. We'll ignore the well-documented series of how this boy, because he's 16 years old,
Starting point is 00:57:46 is in an incredibly vulnerable state and maybe he shouldn't be on his own at university, prodigy or not. Maybe he should be at home being looked after by his parents and some doctors. Nah, it's because he liked playing D&D. It's those little elves. Burning bushes I have no problem with, but I don't like it when they are elves. Filled with elves. No, no elves for me. Thank you very much. I only like the magic that our dear Lord Jesus Christ did. No one else is allowed to do magic. Exactly. No magic for you.
Starting point is 00:58:14 This isn't a fun fact. This actually made me quite sad, but it is a fact. The tunnel incident in which James Dallas Egbert went missing into the tunnels underneath his university, was actually turned into a novel. And then a 1982 Tom Hanks film called Mazes and Monsters, which I have obviously not watched. But if you look it up, it is described as a film about, quote, four college students who become immersed in fantasy role-playing games causing tragic results.
Starting point is 00:58:43 Oh, no, I'm sad now. Yeah, no, it's not the games that cause tragic results. If you're referring to the fact that this fucking 16-year-old boy ended up hiding in the tunnels underneath his university probably because he was so scared, it's because he wasn't very well and no one was helping him. Oh, dislike. Tom Hanks, I really didn't think I would ever...
Starting point is 00:59:02 80s though, isn't it? It was a tough time. 82 was a tough time for a tall hank. Yeah. So, of course, it was fuck all to do with Dungeons and Dragons. In reality, where we all live, whether you like it or not, Egbert died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. And even though all of the evidence pointed to his mental health problems being the reason, some anti-D&D activists believed that Egbert's suicide was caused by the game.
Starting point is 00:59:26 I hate this because, again, it's hard to know, obviously, if these people are being sincere in their activism about this. I guess if you genuinely believe that this is true, then, like, I guess you're not doing it to be malicious. look at this from like a 2022 perspective and be like it's so sick how they hijack this poor child suicide to like further their weird anti-dnd campaigns i'm just like when it comes to stuff like this because dnd all all that is happening is people talking and rolling dice that's literally just telling stories it's just about the witch i mean like there's evangelical christians today who like don't let their kids read harry potter i mean yeah sure but i'm just like it's so cripplingly depressing how and i'm not gonna say we've got to because it's been around forever but like this idea of imagination being a bad thing like what are you so afraid of but that's almost like the founding principle of
Starting point is 01:00:25 so many religions isn't it i mean the whole idea of like do not eat from the tree of wisdom or whatever the fuck it is like you shouldn't have that knowledge it's all rooted in this isn't it knowledge imagination all of those are corrupting forces and you should just blindly follow because of course it's like any cult the minute people start to think for themselves i.e use imagination or seek to gain knowledge they're going to start questioning you a lot more. And guess what? You don't have any fucking answers for them. Because you never read any books. Or played D&D.
Starting point is 01:00:56 Two years later, after Egbert died, another high school student named Irving Lee Pulling also shot himself. And despite all of the challenges Irving had had his mum Patricia was convinced that it was the D&D that had killed him. Yeah once again another boy who had struggled with his mental health challenges being you know not fitting in at school and things like this they're just like none of that it's because he was playing D&D. And you know maybe Patricia has some questions to answer but she she doesn't answer them. She instead claims that a curse had been placed on her son's D&D character. Come on. Like the kids who are playing D&D don't believe it is really happening.
Starting point is 01:01:34 I know, I know. The parents somehow do. That is absolutely the wrong way around. I know. I think just to be fair for a moment, as opposed to all of the rest of my life where I'm completely unfair. No, the only thing I was thinking while I was obviously writing this, I was like, oh God, it can't be like Patricia. No. But then at the same time, you do have to remind yourself that people like Egbert's parents and Patricia Pulling, they lost their sons through suicide. It would be an incredibly difficult,
Starting point is 01:02:04 if possible at all, thing to wrap your head around and to come to terms with. I don't have any personal experience of this, but I assume one of the biggest challenges that they would face in this is like, what did I miss? What should I have done differently? And this feeling of, oh, my God, not even wanting to believe that your child did that. Yeah, fair enough and so to at least to be able to be like it wasn't down to anything i did or didn't do and it wasn't down to my child it was down to this unbelievably powerful force from outside and of course i have all the sympathy in the world for the people going through this it's the sadness of like how they're obviously
Starting point is 01:02:41 not able to look at the real thing that happened here. And just again, we have to talk about this because it fits into the whole idea of the satanic panic and this great D&D panic that also was a subset of it. And also other people in a similar situation stated that if a person's character died in the game, then that person would kill themselves in real life. I think there's quite a lot of folklore around that. And after an unsuccessful attempt to sue the makers of the game, Patricia formed the group Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons, so that's B-A-D-D, in 1983. Not the strongest name, Patricia.
Starting point is 01:03:16 Bad with a double D. Bothered By Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, bothered is not... It just paints the picture of a really gentle person. I'm just a bit bothered by this. I'm a little bit bothered by my son's suicide. I know. It should be like mothers raging against Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, mothers raging against the machine for Christmas number one.
Starting point is 01:03:33 So this campaign group started by Patricia. Their premise was that D&D was, quote, a fantasy role-playing game which used demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination, and other teachings to open up young people to influence or possession by demons. Yikes. Yes, indeed. And so, if you've kept your timelines in order, you will be aware that the Tommy Sullivan case is basically playing out in the midst of all of the satanic panic stuff we've just talked to you about,
Starting point is 01:04:12 as well as during the great 1980s D&D panic. So, when people found out that on top of the occult and satanic books that were burning in the house, what had happened to Tommy Sullivan and to Betty Sullivan, when they found out that Tommy Sullivan also played D&D, everything fell right into place. The townspeople reignited long-standing rumours of covens of Satanists operating in the surrounding woods of their town.
Starting point is 01:04:39 To be honest, if I lived in New Jersey, surrounded by woods and it snowed often. It's dark quite a lot. I would probably think that too. And they surely did. And I would say you don't even need to live there because we've talked about this before on Red Handed, but obviously there's Clophill. The famous. The famous Clophill near where we grew up, which as a teenager I used to go to, if you don't know what Clophill is, basically it's an old leper colony that was an old church that basically everybody just moved their houses away from it so they could turn it into a leper colony so now it's like this old church that doesn't have a roof anymore because somebody nicked it at the end of a really long dirt path
Starting point is 01:05:16 away from the town of I think it's I think the town's called Clophill or is that the church it doesn't matter but anyway we used to go there as kids and like basically like dare each other to touch the church and be freaked out. But basically, there was real stuff going on because they had to actually dig up all of the gravestones and put them around the edge of the churchyard because people kept going up there and digging up bodies. And if you do Google it, I will try to find these stories from back in the day and share them.
Starting point is 01:05:42 But this was kind of like my hometown, you know, horror stuff. People go up there at halloween and do kind of weird rituals and stuff people used to go up there and cloaks and freak other people out yeah they stick up the bodies and there were genuinely like front page news articles in our local paper about people going up there and acting like occultists well there you have it you know where else i learned very recently used to be a leper colony robin island oh that makes sense there you go yeah. You know where else I learned very recently used to be a leper colony? Robben Island. Oh, that makes sense. There you go. Yeah, I mean, it's the perfect place for it.
Starting point is 01:06:09 Precisely. So yeah, after they find out about this case, and they find out that Tommy is into D&D and all of the other satanic stuff, everybody is all over these covens of Satanists hanging out in the woods. And in preparation for Tommy's funeral, the local police were actually given what I can only describe as Batshit Ariasta's hereditary keep the demons out of the funeral training. Because the police were seriously worried that the woodland Satanists would come to Tommy's funeral in order to get his body and take it back to the devil. And that they would kill anybody who stood in their way.
Starting point is 01:06:44 This is a real fear that the police had at the time. They're adults. I know, I know. But again, it's like, this case was so bad. Like, would you also not get swept up in the hysteria? I'm not saying I wouldn't. I'm saying I probably would. I definitely would.
Starting point is 01:06:58 So as weird as this case was, weird being an understatement, it was, of course, by no means the first case in which a seemingly ordinary person killed, citing the devil as the cause. But this case struck Americans particularly hard because it made parents across the country quite literally terrified of their own kids. And so, the murder of Betty Ann Sullivan wasn't seen as the shocking but incredibly rare abomination that it was. After all, current statistics, because I couldn't find them for the 80s, but current statistics in
Starting point is 01:07:30 the US, I'm guessing it's not too different, show that matricide, which is of course killing your mum, doesn't even account for 2% of all homicides. This is the thing with this case is they don't look at it like an abomination, like a completely unbelievable case that's happened. Instead, this case leapfrogged in the minds of many people to become a real, deadly, otherworldly, but everyday threat. They stopped looking at it as a unique case. They see it as something that could happen at any time to anybody because of their kids. Authorities, including politicians and the police, were absolutely convinced about the satanic side of this murder. Assemblies featuring local priests were being delivered in high schools up and down the nation.
Starting point is 01:08:11 Everyone was beating the drum of Tommy's satanic corruption, claiming that he must have been exposed to devil worship and that's what had made him kill. And it becomes harder and harder not to shake your head in disbelief, not because this is unbelievable, but actually because it's extremely believable indeed when you take into account that Tommy was just like your very own Hannah Maguire, raised as an Irish Catholic, and he went to a very strict Catholic school where he was taught all of the grisliest and most interesting bits of the Bible. He was even an altar boy, just like me.
Starting point is 01:08:51 I was an acolyte. It's very sexist, altar serving. Acolyte is shit one. You only get to carry a candle. They don't want to touch you. That's why. No. Well, the best one, the best one is the thoroughfare.
Starting point is 01:09:02 That's the one that waggles the incense around. That's the big boy stuff. Wow. But only boys got to do it. I bet only the prettiest boy got to do it. Oh, yeah. But the priest has nothing to do with the altar servers. There's like a king altar server who's an adult, and he's the one.
Starting point is 01:09:15 I mean, they're all. That's bumming everyone. Exactly. Allegedly. Allegedly. So he was an altar server. I'll tell you what else an altar server is. Fucking boring. it's the same
Starting point is 01:09:27 right so i used to because obviously not obviously the parish i attended 10 o'clock sunday morning you go to mass right it's fucking early on sunday and i thought i'd crack the code right because i figured out how to yawn with my mouth shut ventriloquist yawning yeah but so what i did was just kind of swallow the yawn and just flare my nostrils really wide. And I told my mum about it. She was like, yeah, Hannah, everyone can see you. She's like, everyone knows what you're doing. But 10 o'clock on a Sunday, that's very aggressive. Every day for your whole life. That's very aggressive. I don't like that. And I already had to go at school. Anyway, enough. So altar boy is a particular level of commitment to Catholicism. He also went to Bible study every Saturday and church every Sunday.
Starting point is 01:10:07 So I'm whinging about 10 o'clock on a Sunday morning. His Jesus hours was 24-7. He was putting in the time. So it's pretty safe to say that he was well exposed to hardcore torture porn, Christian style, just as much as he was exposed to Dungeons and Dragons. But no one seemed to be able to even contemplate that maybe it was a combination of some sort of mental break combined with all of the images of violence and stories of good fighting evil that may have led to the satanic
Starting point is 01:10:36 themed tragedy that the Sullivans went through. And actually, it's very common that psychoses that appear in religious people, people who have been exposed to religion people who live religious lives when their psychosis happens it very often takes a religious form because your religion is very often what you are most afraid of yeah and it's also like people who have religious delusions are typically always religious yeah because otherwise you wouldn't know yeah where are you just going to be pulling that from yeah you wouldn't be like oh my stigmata if you don't know you know what's this and it's safe to say that tommy was of course we can't diagnose tommy and i haven't come across any assessments of his mental health because there weren't any while he was alive it's almost like
Starting point is 01:11:20 nobody really figured that anything was wrong with him until it was too late but i think it's very safe to say that tommy was suffering from some sort of psychosis or some sort of delusions given the contract that they find in the car. And people who experience religious delusions, just like Tommy, almost without exception, grow up in religious environments. They absorb all of the things they have been exposed to, and they incorporate that into their delusion. So how can you constantly talk about evil, the devil, sin, hell, retribution, and then think it had nothing to do with anything in a case like this? Because I think that's the thing that often gets swept under. It's very easy to talk about satanic panic and satanism and all of that sort of stuff, particularly with Catholicism, which
Starting point is 01:12:01 I am qualified to talk about. You can start my day. You can't have angels without demons. You just can't. So there is no way of teaching children about Catholicism in a way that isn't absolutely terrifying. Yeah. And I think that is the biggest thing that I find hard to bridge in my mind is your, I also went to Catholic school when I was very young. And I remember coming home and being absolutely terrified that my parents were going to go to hell. I can't remember them having done anything that I thought was going to make them go to hell. But I remember thinking... They're being naughty Hindus, that's why. Yeah, I was absolutely terrified of it. And I think, how are you going to constantly bombard people with these kind of images and visions and words? And then when something like this happens,
Starting point is 01:12:42 I'm not saying it's to do with the religion, like per se, because people aren't just inherently religious and then violent. I'm saying it's like this religiosity got sucked into his delusions, but they completely ignore that and say it must have been because he was exposed to devil worship. So we're not saying that people who grow up inside religion are more prone to violence or anything like that. But if you're talking about exposing people to terrifying ideas that creep into their psyches, we can't really come up with anything more powerful than the ideas that religion puts forward. But in this case, no one even considers that to have been a possibility, because the question on everyone's minds was how? How had this happened? How had this little normal boy suddenly transformed into a satanic killer. And now it is time to bring in a cameo from none other than Geraldo Rivera.
Starting point is 01:13:31 Boo. Boo. I fucking hate this guy. I fucking hate this guy. It's tough. So Geraldo Rivera has obviously been around for a very long time. He's, I think, been doing, think been doing you know reporting quote unquote for at least the past 40 years but specifically today we are talking about his quote unquote groundbreaking
Starting point is 01:13:51 documentary devil worship exposing satan's underground and this documentary was released a mere nine months after the murder of betty sullivan and we're not talking about like today today they could have turned that fucking documentary around in a month. This was back in the 80s. So turning it around in nine months, they basically started it the day after Betty was killed. I'm guessing. Jesus Christ. I mean, I could turn out something of that ilk in about five minutes, I think.
Starting point is 01:14:17 Well. It is quite literally the worst thing I've ever watched. It's awful. We are going to leave the link to part one of the documentary on YouTube in the episode description below. It's like in fucking 24 parts or something. I couldn't finish it because it's so awful. But basically, this documentary, if you want to call it that, is at the very least very eye opening about the context within which we're operating when we're talking about the satanic panic in the 80s. In this expose, again, take that with a massive fucking sea load of salt, Rivera is basically making the case that satanism is a real and dangerous issue. He laments that too often people just laugh it off and then he plays clips of like teenagers in mosh pits cut together with like Charles Manson rambling and then things like the son of Sam being arrested. Even though, of course, as we all know,
Starting point is 01:15:07 Berkowitz admitted that after his conviction, he was actually malingering and that the devil hadn't actually made him murder six people. But the main purpose of this show, aside from obviously the cash and ratings grab that came with it, because yes, at the time it aired, it was the most watched thing on television in the US. So everybody was fucking watching this thing.
Starting point is 01:15:27 I think it's still up there with the most watched documentaries of all time. I wouldn't be surprised. Documentary in inverted E colors. But other than these very obvious moneyed reasons, the other purpose of this documentary seems to be a rather odd smear campaign against heavy metal music. He really like narrows down on that, doesn't he? At one point, Rivera even says, quote,
Starting point is 01:15:51 every single kid involved in these cases, talking about cases of teenage violence that he cherry picks and showcases in this documentary, had an interest in heavy metal. He just makes that as like a blanket statement and says it. But he's picked the cases of teenage violence that he's covering in this documentary. And he's just like, all of them, all of them were listening to heavy metal. Fact. Facts, facts, facts. But as far as I could tell watching it, every single kid that he talks to, because yes, he interviews these children, also had a religious upbringing. How many of them were struggling with their mental health? We don't
Starting point is 01:16:24 know because he never asks. We never find out. How many of them had been abused? We don't know. How many of them were taking drugs? At least some of them, but I'm guessing probably all of them. None of these other variables are ever addressed because according to Geraldo Rivera, it's all down to the music. And also, he's the worst interviewer I've ever seen. It really is quite something to be that terrible. So ask someone a question and then just completely ignore their answer and be like, okay, moving on. And there's one particular bit
Starting point is 01:16:53 where he's speaking to Anton LaVey's daughter and Michael Aquino, who's the head of the Temple of Set, who are obviously a theistic, satanic situation. So he asks Anton LaVey'sve's daughter color questions and she goes to answer she visibly takes breath and he's like michael aquino yeah and she's like you can see her be like because he knows she's gonna say things that don't agree with what he wants whenever that happens in the show he just like moves on and it's not even that it's like when he's talking to michael
Starting point is 01:17:22 aquino michael aquino is the only one who's saying anything that makes any fucking sense and he's just talking about how you know radically individualist satanism is and then rivera just goes off on one about how all satanists definitely believe in demons possessing bodies and michael aquino is just out there like we don't literally believe that that's not even remotely what i said it it is mind-blowing it truly is It truly is. It truly is. And the documentary, I don't even know how long it is because it's broken into so many parts on YouTube,
Starting point is 01:17:50 but it feels like it never fucking ends. Yeah, no, I couldn't finish it either. So we aren't going to play all of it, but we're going to, again, just play you a couple of little choice cuts that we discovered. So here's the first one. Sometimes I didn't feel like I was the master of my own body.
Starting point is 01:18:05 Like something else kind of took over with inside of my mind. What took over? Just the violence, the devil, lust and greed for drugs, for money. Pete gradually withdrew from family life. That is probably one of the main things i noticed um he even got to where he avoided eating meals with us he listened to the music heavy metal music every opportunity another example of the link between heavy metal and teenage satanic crime describe what this music did to you it's kind of like in the way of the, when we killed animals, it was just like,
Starting point is 01:18:47 it would just go, things would go through my mind and I could see the thoughts, I could see me hurting someone, you know, torturing people, and just along with the words too, some of it was just, all hail Satan, and ripping apart, severing flesh, gouging eyes, things like that, you know. And after you listen to this, you know, three or four hours a day, every day for, you know, years or months, it can get to you. Why did you choose this guy as your victim? Why Steve? Just because he was a human. Just because we could deceive him easy. The boy deceived was 19-year-old Stephen Newberry,
Starting point is 01:19:23 who then took the first of some 70 blows as his classmates swung their baseball bats. I kind of looked down, and I heard a pop, and I just knew what it was. And I looked up, and Steve's eyes were real big, you know. And he just said, you know, why me? Why me? And he just looked like he was really sad and and one of them someone said because it's fun steve and then we just all just just like vultures you know i mean we just went in just it happened, you know. You hit him?
Starting point is 01:20:07 Yes. In the head? Yes. How many times? A lot. And I look at my hands sometimes and I think, you know, are these the hands that killed him? I mean, I know they are, but it just doesn't seem like it, you know.
Starting point is 01:20:24 I don't want to, you know, I would never want to kill anybody again. I mean, right after we did what we did, I just, I felt real empty inside. I felt like I could never love again, you know? I felt like a zombie. The devil double-crossed you? Yes. It just leads to your own destruction. How do you know that now?
Starting point is 01:20:45 Look where I'm at, you know, look at my sentence. I mean, I'm in jail with life without parole. The little kid, little kid, he's probably a teenager, definitely was when he did his criming. He's called Pete Rowland. And what you heard there is him talking about the same exact thoughts that he would have had had he been listening to the Lighthouse family. Yeah, I just feel like they kind of make it seem like he's talking about wanting to torture animals or like he does kill a man and they're talking about all these fantasies but he's really really
Starting point is 01:21:14 condensing it and like mashing it together with the fact that he listened to heavy metal music and that's why he was thinking those things but i think he would have been thinking those things whatever he would have been listening to. But Rivera explains to the no doubt captivated 80s audience that this boy's killings were a sacrifice to show allegiance to Satan. And even if Rivera doesn't really believe this himself, and it was a cynical lunge for viewers and notoriety, there is an unavoidable, uncomfortable issue with Rivera's narrative. Blaming everything on the devil was very clearly allowing these killers to distance
Starting point is 01:21:50 themselves from their own actions. It was enabling them to not take responsibility for their crimes. And can rehabilitation really happen without acceptance? Like that boy is just like, yeah, you're right right it's like something completely took over when I did the killings I was possessed by this idea of the devil he made me do it so how are you ever going to tell me that he's ever going to be rehabilitated he's so young maybe he could be but how can he be when you're not allowing him to even get to the point that he can accept that he did this because he did it not because the devil did it I actually hadn't thought about it from that angle. I've obviously thought about it from the sort of more overarching thing of like, oh, the parents don't have to look inwardly or society
Starting point is 01:22:32 doesn't have to look inwardly. It'd be like, oh, well, what are we doing to create the circumstances to produce these children who are doing these things? But I hadn't thought about it from that perspective. But you're absolutely right. It is in this very particular case, from the killer's point of view, it is allowing him to feel like it's not his fault. Absolutely. And this is the kind of thing we see with other killers who blame it on somebody else or blame it on a killer so that they can, you know, get away with it or get an insanity plea. Not that we obviously know that if you are in a rare situation found not guilty by reason of insanity, you haven't got away with it. It's often much worse. But you know what I'm saying.
Starting point is 01:23:05 And on top of all of that, Rivera uses the poor, traumatised parents of children who have killed other people or themselves to drive his narrative home. There were some things that I saw that I feel like I should have paid attention to. I saw the album covers and they're hideous. I just assumed that if they sell it, it's got to be okay. I saw satanic symbols on his bookwork and I'd spoken to him about it. Didn't mean anything. You know, it was, I assumed it was a passing phase. I had my things when I was that age. I assumed that he had his, I assumed wrong. And I would advise anybody, if they see anything like
Starting point is 01:23:46 that, to look into it. Don't ignore it. It doesn't pass. It's just something I'll never get over, ever. Parents, heed the advice of Pete Rowland's mom. Pay attention. Satanism is not a harmless fad or a passing phase in some of these kids' lives. Okay. Rage. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this poor woman, she looks absolutely fucking broken in this. So she's the mother of Pete Roland, the kid that you heard earlier who had killed a man. And the blame that she's obviously placing on herself for something that is not connected to what happened what you can't see obviously in this famously audio format is the video that is accompanying this where they are like rolling the camera over pete roland's
Starting point is 01:24:31 belongings like his books and his journals and whatever and he's drawn like swastikas and written the word satan and you know drawn little devils and whatever drawn the number 666 everywhere these are kids who grew up in a religious background who become teenagers who want to rebel against their parents. For fuck's sake. Like this idea that him drawing 666 and a pentagram on his bloody school book. I did that. Exactly. It's a middle finger to you, parents and church and school.
Starting point is 01:25:00 It's not actually communing with the fucking devil. And also, when has it ever been helpful to encourage parents to be scared of their children, especially when their children are already feeling alienated? I'm guessing these kids who killed were already feeling pretty ostracised from their communities. And then now these documentaries, quote unquote, are just further pouring fuel on the fire of parents being scared of their own fucking kids. Honestly, watching that documentary upset me a lot more than I thought it would. It was truly the worst thing I've ever seen.
Starting point is 01:25:29 It's awful. But now, let's get back to the Sullivans. After the funerals, Thomas Senior immediately took his younger son, Brian, and moved to Florida. He didn't tell anyone, including other family members, where he was going. And then he was remarried in just over a year. This actually did make some people point the finger at Thomas Sr. and say maybe he had actually done it and
Starting point is 01:25:50 just framed his son because look how quickly he left. He didn't tell anyone where he went and then he got married a year later. To be honest, your fucking son killed your wife. I wouldn't tell any other family members where I was going either. No, me neither. And the marriage, like, that doesn't necessarily prove anything, obviously. So even though Thomas and Brian were obviously trying to move on, people back in New Jersey were still reeling.
Starting point is 01:26:13 Mainly because of how quickly Tommy seemed to have changed. Like we said, he was a boy who had some prominence within the school community in the area because of his wrestling. How had he gone from this seemingly ordinary kid to being the child who of his wrestling. How had he gone from this seemingly
Starting point is 01:26:25 ordinary kid to being the child who killed his mum and then himself? He didn't fit the mould of the usual suspects in a case like this. Cases like, obviously, you know, the West Memphis Three and stuff like that. He wasn't the kind of weird, black box, hair dyed, weirdo goth kid. But soon, more and more details about Tommy's quote-unquote secret life began to emerge. Apparently Tommy's interest in the occult had started with a paper that he'd had to write for school. Tommy's eighth grade teacher was a Jesuit in training and as such he was interested in the study of and education around theology as much as he was just in the practice of religion. So this Jesuit teacher set his class
Starting point is 01:27:05 the task of each researching and writing a paper on a different religion from around the world. And this seems to me, and probably to most people listening to this, as a pretty bog-standard basic assignment to do. But it was apparently incredibly controversial at Tommy's school, which again tells us how fucking religious they are. Regardless, the Jesuit teacher stood by it, and Tommy got Mormonism, while his friend and wrestling buddy got Satanism. I think Tommy got the short straw here, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if he'd perhaps been a bit more interested in talking with his friend about the topic of his paper.
Starting point is 01:27:40 Because it was after this that the authorities claim the doodles in Tommy's books and journals changed. Apparently, they started to become satanic in nature, with Tommy suddenly now scribbling little pentagrams and devils on everything. Two observers after the fact, that was Tommy literally being corrupted by the devil, not just scribbling in his rough book. The rumours about this part of Tommy's life are pretty wild and we have to be 100% honest, literally not a single sausage of it can be backed up at all. We know that the assignment was set. Everything else we're about to tell you, we can't back it up. But anyone who grew up in a small town like Jefferson knows exactly how this goes. And Jefferson Township had its own
Starting point is 01:28:27 small town ghost stories. And they all centred around Clinton Road, which just so happens to be America's most haunted street. Apparently, Clinton Road is where you'll find witches, devil worshippers, and even yetis. Yetis in new jersey's a card ball i thought they were more a pacific northwest situation yeah i would have said appalachia at least we were hoping for some really scary stories to tell you have a little uh red-handed feature towards the end of this episode but red haunted red haunted fucking whatever man stood up for an hour and a half no i'm so tired. My feet hurt. We're trying to be health kick and we're trying to do all of our records standing up,
Starting point is 01:29:09 but it's just making my back hurt. Yeah, it's just, I'm hungry. Anyway, so we were hoping for a ghost story for you, but we couldn't find any. I really tried. I don't doubt it. We couldn't find anything really boot rattling for you, but this is what we could find. It's the most common one you'll come across. And it's one of a little boy in a river. Apparently there's a bridge in the woods on Clinton Road. And if you toss a coin into the water, the ghost of a little boy tosses it back to you. That's it.
Starting point is 01:29:37 It's quite wholesome, really. I know. I think it's quite cute. It's not like the one here where your dog tries to kill itself by jumping off the bridge. Have you seen that yes there is a bridge if you don't know if you're not british there is a bridge i think it's in cornwall where dogs apparently kill themselves by jumping off it because there's i don't know an anti-dog demon i don't know what it is but apparently people are it's it's a real thing allegedly the scariest thing that is true that we could find about this road is that ice tea made a movie there
Starting point is 01:30:10 ice tea man ice tea has his own true crime series that is in season seven don't hate the player hate the game i'm fully in the game trust me so the film that ice tea made is called clinton road and it's about a widowed firefighter whose wife goes missing on Clinton Road, and then he must unlock Clinton Road's secret if he wants to get out alive. That's a quote. I bet it is. You're a much better writer than that. It does seem that, again, like any small town,
Starting point is 01:30:41 when rumours like this circulate, teenagers and other people just start acting out. They did what everyone does at Clophill. They hung out there, freaking each other out, and themselves, no doubt, in the process. And according to some locals, and the team behind the Devils Within podcast, Tommy Sullivan spent quite a lot of time hanging out in the woods off Clinton Road. And it was there, not at school in his RE class. Pick a side. Well, basically they say that the kid who was doing the Satanism research was his friend. And once he started doing it and he found out about Clinton Road,
Starting point is 01:31:13 then he's like, I'm going to go to Clinton Road. And Tommy's like, I'll come with you. And that is where he was exposed to devil worship by the Satanists who used the woods as their lair. Another thing, I really don't want to go on about the satan's underground documentary because i think it's an abomination but they very frequently swap the words satanism and devil worship and it's just like you have not even read a single book here you have no idea what you're talking about time for books hannah got a fucking documentary to
Starting point is 01:31:37 make got money to rake in he won a b-body not for that but for the Willowbrook, which also like local news crews broke that story. He just turned up with a fucking giant camera. So anyway, just like in the Satan's Underground documentary, we have literally no evidence that Tommy ever even set foot in the woods off Clinton Road. Yeah, like actually no evidence. It's firstly, it would have been an hour bike ride away from his house. I'm not saying that's impossible. That's quite a lot of commitment. There and back in fucking freezing New Jersey.
Starting point is 01:32:08 Yeah, those things. So he might have been going, we don't know. The evidence that's put forward in the Devil Within podcast about why they're so certain that Tommy was there feels a bit weak. But you can make up your own mind. What do we think happened to Tommy Sullivan here at Red Handed? Well, I think unfortunately, given how rapidly
Starting point is 01:32:25 Tommy seems to have gone downhill, I think it's most likely that he was struggling with delusions, like we said. And apparently, according to his family and teachers, Tommy had actually always been a really conscientious boy. You know, he'd always done really well at school. He was an athlete. Like, you don't accidentally do all of those things when you're a kid. You're already starting to show the signs of being quite a committed hard worker. But apparently Tommy had started to become dismissive, sullen, angry and aggressive the Christmas before the murder. And sure, of course, he was 14 and these changes could easily have been written off as just sort of teenage angst. But in hindsight, there was clearly something much more severe unfolding for Tommy Sullivan.
Starting point is 01:33:05 It's possible, of course, that due to Tommy's ultra-religious upbringing, the ideologies he'd always been exposed to became the building blocks of his psychosis. Much of this episode will feel like a story from a time long, long ago, something we can't possibly relate to today. But unfortunately, that's just not the case. And as we have been breadcrumbing throughout this week's episode, next week in this two-parter, we're going to delve into the murky world of QAnon and the theory that a satanic, paedophilic cabal of cannibals is in fact secretly in power. And
Starting point is 01:33:38 we're going to talk, of course, about the real-life murders that this bizarre idea has resulted in. But you're going to have to hold in, you you're gonna have to hold in you're gonna have to hold it all in you are all of it like i'm currently holding in my stomach um we yes you will have to wait until next week to find out how the satanic panic and q anon are basically the same buy your tickets for our live show on the 27th of may if you are based in london even if you're not get a plane it's fine we're allowed now covid's over and if you would like more Red Handed with a twist you can go over to Spotify for our other show which is called Sinner Societies which is all about cults and if you want more Red Handed Red Handed flavor yeah go to patreon.com forward slash Red Handed and sign up to all of our delicious Patreon content
Starting point is 01:34:18 that is there and here are some people who have given us 20 whole dollars a month Suruti Bala it's certainly not me, but it is. Michelle Aisha, Charlotte Meldon, Louise Muirhead, Niamh Donnelly, Laura Turner, Jennifer Norris, Alicia McLeod, I'm sorry, Michelle. I'm sorry, Alicia. Rebecca Craig, yeah, I've killed Hannah. Florence Delaney-Back, Sydney Fadema, Marshall Sassena,
Starting point is 01:34:52 Kim the UK, Samantha Darko, what a great name. Donnie Colquett, Nadia Mossman, Emma Sventilius, Janie, Christy Cordova. Valerie Wheelie, Saoirse Berry, Ali Bro, Callie Reynolds, Lisa Murray, Jill Moore, Julia Waters, who knows? Irina Cabrera, Tekla, Bethany Walsh, Adizi, Verity, Mireille, Katie Newman, Dernie Scali, Nadia Blant, Nadia Blant, sorry.
Starting point is 01:35:20 Hannes Oberg, Jenny Godfrey, Donna Marie Bergman, Marlena Sorensen Marie Eliza Prado Prado who knows it's a mystery Hayley Bond
Starting point is 01:35:31 Maxi24 Chloe Marie Page Crystal Clinton no relation Emily Joy and Sarah thank you ever so much for supporting the show
Starting point is 01:35:39 and we will see you next week or directly after this for Under the Dubo where we're probably talking about Ukraine goodbye next week or directly after this for Under the Devo where we're probably talking about Ukraine. Goodbye. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart.
Starting point is 01:36:15 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.
Starting point is 01:36:42 But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
Starting point is 01:37:06 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
Starting point is 01:37:49 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.

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