RedHanded - Episode 71 - Satanic Panic: The Fall River Cult Murders

Episode Date: November 22, 2018

In the 1970s the US was in the throes of a unique cultural phenomenon - the ‘satanic panic’. The devil and devil worshipping cults were everywhere and they were coming to get you. This week Hannah and Suruthi follow the case of the Fall River cult murders, a brutal killing spree carried out by a group of self-proclaimed devil worshippers that saw 2 young women bound, raped and tortured to death, and a third missing with only skull fragments and a harrowing story left behind.    See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed. The satanic panic is something that we've touched on a few times. But this week we thought we'd give you a proper go at it. It started in the 70s, really picked up steam in the 80s and lasted into the early 90s. It was a widespread, commonly held fear within Christian communities that satanic ritual abuse was being carried out in secret all over the United States. You see this fear explored in films like Eyes Wide

Shut and I'm sure there has to be better examples Because it's a bad film But I couldn't think of one Can you think of one? A better film than Eyes Wide Shut About satanic ritual abuse I don't think it's a better film But did you watch that film?

I think it came out last year or the year before Called Regression No With Ethan Hawke and What's her face? Hermione Granger Oh, Emma Watson. Emma Watson.

It's not a very good film, but it's about sort of, I think he's a psychiatrist, psychologist. Yeah, I vaguely remember this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she talks about repressed memories. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How she was abused by a satanic cult. And it's basically the idea that you don't know

whether she's actually, it's like the whole thing of, is she actually having those memories or is he sort of coercing those memories to be in her mind um it's not a very good film but it does cover the topic if you can think of a good film that explores the the satanic panic idea then please let us know because we're stuck and in a way the idea that secret societies are hiding in plain sight while carrying out their dastardly deeds hasn't really gone anywhere. Now, instead of children being stolen to be sacrificed to the devil, people just think that pop stars sell their souls to old Nick instead. But snark as I might, for many this was a very real fear.

The fear that satanic cults were everywhere. You might even bump into a cult member in the supermarket. They look just like you. And why all this kicked off in the 70s, I think is really interesting and down to probably a few coinciding situations. You had the Manson murders in the 60s, which solidly planted that idea of ritual killings, I think, in people's minds. Then in 1966, Anton LaVey founded the Church of Satan and published the Satanic Bible, which we'll go into a bit more detail later. Then in 1971, William Peter Blatty released The Exorcist, which then in 1973 became absolutely, in my opinion, the most iconic and culturally transformational piece of horror cinema ever. I really believe that.

Oh, I'm fully with you on that. It took the idea of the devil just being like this idea in people's minds to being a real thing that could come and get you. That's crazy. Moreover, than the Bible did, I believe that the book The Exorcist and the movie The Exorcist did that. It actually is the film that took the Ouija board from being just like a fun game that families played in like a parlor game that they played to being like a genuine piece of kit that could help you open a portal and summon a malevolent demon it genuinely was that pivotal part of the ghost kit that any good ghost hunter takes with them with their what is it called what's the reader called that they used to listen to ghosts it's got it's um oh God, all of these years of watching

Zach Bagans' Ghost Adventures, I should know what it's called. I can't remember how embarrassing. But it's true. It's like that pivotal. And I think that makes it absolutely fascinating. And if you haven't read the book, The Exorcist, go read it.

It is such a great book. And then aside from all of this, there was also the book, The Satan Seller, which was released in 1972 by Mike Warnock. In this book, which detailed Mike's early life apparently, he talks about being bounced from foster home to foster home and eventually being taken in by a satanic cult. This memoir has now been widely debunked as total fraudulent drivel, but nevertheless, an entire generation of Christians learned about Satanism from Mike Warnock.

He was also billed, once, as the greatest Christian comedian. What's that stand-up routine about, I wonder? It's quite an accolade, isn't it? I wonder who is currently the greatest Christian comedian. I don't know. Maybe someone knows and they can tell us. So Mike Warnock, he came to Christ, he says, after climbing to the highest ranks of devil worship. But from everything I've read about him, he's just a con man. And there is a great article if you do want to read about this. And I even think, even if you don't go read this article, the title itself sums up perfectly the whole idea of the satanic panic. It's called Conviction of

Things Not Seen, The Uniquely American Myth of Satanic Cults. It's really well written. We'll post it on the social media group so you guys can read it. Very, very good article. So I think what's really interesting about the satanic panic in general, and generally how Christian theologies address the idea of devils and demons, as time has gone on, quite a lot of Christian denominations are a lot less fire and brimstone than they used to be. Having grown up in the Catholic Church, which is pretty fire and brimstone, I have no memories of ever being taught about hell or the devil or any of those things. In academia, it's called the disappearance of hell. So Christian teaching,

in my experience, what I have experienced, is it's just not really talked about. You know it's there, but it's never discussed in the same way that angels are or how God is listening to you and watching everything you do. And obviously you have to go to confession and all of that sort of stuff. But you're never really explicitly told about what will happen to you in hell. But I've given a lot of thought to this and you can't really have God and angels without having the devil and demons. You can't have one without the other, surely. And my experience of not being part of the Catholic faith, but being in an all-girls Catholic school as a young girl, I was very much taught fire and brimstone. I remember coming home as like a six-year-old child and not lying awake scared that I was going to go to hell,

but lying awake scared that my parents were going to go to hell. I don't know what I thought they'd done that they were going to go to hell, but I was convinced that they were going to go to hell. And it's fucking terrifying. And I went to sermons as part of like the school I went to that told it's all about that kind of thing. And it was just because it was in a different country, I think, where it was a bit more fire and brimstone. It was like torture porn. Yeah. Like you think of the stations of the cross and stuff like that it's fucking intense stuff I am a fully fledged catholic I was confirmed and

everything and before I was confirmed I had to go away on this like Jesus retreat which was somewhere in uh in West London somewhere we all had to go to this like it wasn't a monastery but it was like this big house in West London and we all had to go there and think about god for a whole weekend one of the things they told me was that purgatory which is quite a big deal in catholicism is just like being outside a party and you can see the party you've just got to wait what they don't tell you is in order to get out of purgatory you need to have a hundred masses said in your name or something stupid and i don't think you have to pay for them anymore but there definitely was a point where you had to pay to have these masses said for you to get out of purgatory and i just remember

totally accepting it i remember being in the car with my mum being like mum like do we believe in purgatory and she was like i don't know ask diane and diane was my uh was my sponsor and i asked her and she was like yeah and i was like okay cool i definitely believe in that then the satanic panic marked the ideology of christianity coming to the foreground of society it's this idea of the earth is this battleground between good and evil and the devil's trying to make you try to get you for his team and god's trying to get you for his team and if you buy into that the satanic panic falls in line with that ideology totally because satan is real he's tangible and he might even be in the house next door to you. And these satanic cults that no one could see but everyone

was afraid of did everything you could imagine. Incestuous rituals, baby sex, cannibalism, and of course, the classic human sacrifice. It's all of the things that people are obsessed with, isn't it? It's just an absolute manifestation of all of the things that people are obsessed with. Incest, paedophilia, cannibalism and human sacrifice. Think of the worst things you can think of. They're doing all of them. Absolutely. It's like curiosity bingo. That's what people are fascinated by this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. People were genuinely afraid of their kids being snatched by shadowy figures and being sacrificed to Lucifer in the woods on stone altars like Aslan and Narnia. Did you ever watch The Lion, the Witch and the

Wardrobe, the cartoon version when you were a kid? No, only the movie. The cartoon version that I watched when I was a child is so dark. Someone out there must have watched it. It can't have only been me. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is just a big allegory for jesus aslan is jesus and the white witch kills him but in the cartoon all of these monsters go to this like clearing in the woods and they put aslan on this stone altar and they're all doing this dance and the white witch kills him with this massive dagger and i was what i watched it as an adult and i was like how was i allowed to watch this and i loved it i watched it constantly wow there we go hannah's origin story. Yeah.

It's fucking C.S. Lewis got me, man. Did you ever watch the cartoon version of Animal Farm? Why they made that into a cartoon, I have no idea. It's absolutely fucking terrifying. Why was I allowed to watch that as a child? That I don't know. I don't know why you're allowed to watch Animal Farm. My dad pushing a socialist agenda with me from a young age. That's amazing.

Obviously, the media love the satanic panic because it's the perfect story. It's clickbait at its finest. As we said, it's everything. It's the worst things you can imagine all happening at the same time. And a lot of people say that the satanic panic is completely blown out of proportion by the media and nothing actually happened. But is it really all smoke without fire? Our case today, some claim, was the work of a genuine satanic cult.

And it all began in 1979 when the satanic panic was really getting some legs. I have a question. So you absolutely have the idea of people saying this was all blown out of proportion. The FBI repeatedly come forward and say that these are all debunked. It was completely a myth. There has never been a proven case of satanic ritual murder, of like satanic cults in the US. And today's case really reminds me of the case that we covered in the Halloween episode last year, the Ripper Crew of Chicago cult, who killed a load of women, said that they

were Satan worshippers, said that they were devil worshippers, killed using that ideology and that motivation. And we see, you know, the same thing in the case we're doing today. So if people say that they are devil worshippers, and they say that that's why they're killing, and they say that that's what they believe in, and they really do go kill people, isn't it then that this is true? That we do have proven cases of satanic cults killing? I've been thinking about this a lot. It's unavoidable with a case like this because when you talk about Satanism and all of that,

people are just like, oh, well, it's made up. It's not real. It's not true. They can't actually be worshipping the devil because it's not a real thing. What does real mean? Like, define real. Like, if they believe in it and they're doing something as an act of worship isn't that as real as it gets and

you know you obviously have the idea of satanist and then you have the idea of devil worshippers and i think when people say satanic cults i think what they mean are devil worshippers yeah i agree as opposed to like the church of satan or the satanic temple but if we say there's no such thing as devil worshippers there's no such thing as satanic cults that go on killing rampages. It's exactly what you said. If they say they believe in it and they kill saying that they believe in it, then isn't it real? And that's the thing I don't agree with whenever we hear that, oh, these things never really happened. Maybe what they mean is all of those people with all of those quacks who recovered memories and children, maybe that didn't really happen. But how can we say that there's never been cases

of satanic cults killing people? We've come across two now that have. We're back in Massachusetts this week and we're specifically in Fall River, which you may be familiar with because Fall River was the town that Lizzie Borden did her axe murderings in. And you can still visit her house today.

Although personally, I couldn't be less interested in Lizzie Borden if I physically tried. I've been trying to think about things I am less interested in than Lizzie Borden and I came up with Jack the Ripper and offending men by doing my makeup on the tube. Those are the only two things I care less about than I care about Lizzie Borden. Whatever I think about Lizzie Borden, the Fall River of the late 1970s was a very different town than the one

that saw her axe wielding in the 1890s. Modern Fall River was hard hit by the recession at the start of the 70s that marked the end of post-World War II economic expansion. Factories closed and the city decayed while sex work and drug trafficking unsurprisingly thrived. On the 13th of October, great date, 1979, two joggers were out on an early morning run. Don't jog, especially not early in the morning. You are going to be the first people that find dead bodies. Let someone else have a go, find all the dead bodies, clear them away, then you can go jogging. Joggers never find anything good. I guess at least these two were smart enough to go jogging in a pair. Never jog on your own. No, never jog alone. And sure

enough, the joggers did what joggers do and found a body in possibly the most American place ever. Under the bleachers behind the Demand Vocational High School, the body was a young woman. Her wrists had been bound with a fishing line. She'd been stabbed in the head. More head stabbing. Why? There's so much head stabbing in this case. I thought about that. And she'd been stabbed so hard in the head, her skull exhibited multiple fractures. I've read that this body showed signs of sexual torture. Exactly what those were, we weren't able to find. So we'll just leave that to your imagination. I don't know what it is about this case, but they're just,

I haven't been able to find that many specifics about how the bodies were found. Usually that's quite readily available information, but with this one it isn't. It's just, it's all quite vague about how they were found. For instance, I don't know if she was naked or not. So there's a lot of things that we can't really comment on just because the information isn't out there. Now the Fall River Police Department identified the body to be 17-year-old Doreen Levesque. She had run away from her hometown of New Bedford, which is just a 20-minute drive away from Fall River.

Doreen had become a sex worker. The police knew her, and she was often to be found in the Bedford Street area of Fall River, which was a bit of a red-light district. Doreen Levesque's occupation meant the police suspected that Doreen had been killed by one of her clients. This is a pretty logical step, and we do see a lot of sex worker assumption in this case, and it's supported by the sexual torture evidence as well.

But this early and obvious theory was quickly thrown out by the medical examiner, who determined that the killing was more likely to be the work of a group of people, rather than a solo killer. The medical examiner also suggested that there may have been some ritual involved in the killing of Doreen. They advised that according to their assessment of the body, Doreen Levesque had been stoned to death. Wow. So if you put that together with the signs of potential sexual torture, you've got satanic alarm bells. These alarm bells started to ring quite loudly in the minds of the lead detectives on the case, who are Alan Silver and Paul Carey.

We will see later on that Silver and Carey's personal religious views, intentionally or not, did play a role in how this case was handled. And when you watch the documentaries where they're interviewed, they genuinely look scared about devil worship and satanic cults. They genuinely look terrified by it. And this is what I mean when you're talking about Christianity can't satanic cults. They genuinely look terrified by it. And this is what I mean when you're talking about Christianity can't really exist without hell. And they say in the documentary as well, they're like, you know, I'm a God-fearing man, I'm a Christian, like blah, blah, blah. So this scares me. So you have to take that into account

when there is no way they could have gone into a case like this holding those personal views and it not have clouded their judgment somewhat, in my opinion. I completely agree with you. But the police didn't want to be looking for devil worshippers. Throwing petrol on the satanic panic fire was the last thing they wanted to do, but soon they would have no choice. A month after Doreen's body was discovered behind the high school, the Fall River Police Station was visited by a man called Andy Maltais. He filed a missing person's report regarding his girlfriend Barbara Raposa, who was 22 years old and just like Doreen River police station was visited by a man called Andy Maltais. He filed a missing persons report regarding his girlfriend Barbara Raposa, who was 22 years old and just like Doreen Levesque, was a sex worker. The police knew all about Andy Maltais. He was a rapist, a paedophile,

and known to be very unstable. Andy wanted to make one thing clear to the police in his garbled statement about the missing Barbara. He wanted them to know that he was a changed man. He proved this by showing them a small battered Bible and telling them, once I worshiped Satan, now I worship Jesus. Nothing makes you seem more reliable than whipping out a Bible in an investigation, I think. And nothing makes you seem more stable than telling them, I did used to worship Satan, but I'm over that now. I'm not into it anymore. I'm all good. Yeah, I've come over to the light. Andy Marteis revealed that he and his now-missing girlfriend had been practicing Satanists, but he went on to explain that he and Barbara Raposa weren't the only ones practicing Satanism in Fall River.

So now he's dobbing his old crew in. He's like, we're not Satanists anymore, but they're still here. Because according to andy and this is just great according to andy most of the sex workers in town were at it and by at it i mean at devil worship at devil worship active members in devil worship every single sex worker in the whole of fall river if you are in a city that is going through like total decay, economic turbulence, like post-recession, you've fallen on such hard times that you've had to become a sex worker. Do you have time to be a devil worshipper? I don't know. It really just feels like it's the 70s. They're not that

bothered about sex workers anyway. Throwing in a bit of devil worship doesn't make that much of a difference in the eyes of the police, I don't think. Absolutely. Why the hell not? And while Andy was firm in maintaining that neither he nor Barbara had anything to do with Doreen Levesque's death, he thought that the satanic sex workers cult that was flourishing in Four Rivers Underworld was ultimately to blame. Even for a country in the throes of a fledgling satanic panic, this story does seem a little bit far-fetched. And it's not as if Andy Maltias was a trusted police snitch. But as this case unraveled, Andy Silver and Paul Carey, and the Fall River Police Department,

would have to take the satanic sect story a little more seriously. So, despite thinking he might be full of shit, the police didn't dismiss Andy Maltias' story altogether. They managed to get him to agree to introduce them to other members of this so-called satanic cult. In fact, Detective Silver and Carey managed to witness one of the group's black masses. It was held in the apartment of Maureen or Sunny Sparda. She, like Doreen Levesque, was a sex worker. She lived in the Harbour Terrace housing projects near the waterfront in Fall River. And from what I've read, Sunny Sparda was a bit of an older hand at the game, and she had a habit of taking in young runaways, drug addicts, and new sex workers under her wing.

Presumably, she also introduced her collection of waifs and strays into the satanic gatherings she hosted in her home. Silver and Carey walked straight into the heart of this supposed satanic cult, but nothing really happened. Sunny explained to them what the aim of the gatherings were. She said, we prayed to Satan,

we chant, we tried to conjure him. Bish bash bosh. Exactly. It's just like, not difficult. Yeah, we get together, we pray,

we chant a bit and we, I love the, we try to conjure him. Like it's never really worked. I don't know. What Silver and Kerry saw that night though that they

attended the black mass we have no real idea but when you do watch a documentary again when they're talking about it it's like he's like yeah it was it was scary it was really scary but that's all they say about it like they're just like I was I was scared but like to be honest if I was in a room I'd be scared with a bunch of people trying to conjure Satan it wouldn't take much to make me feel scared absolutely definitely and I don't think

like we said I don't think anything spectacular happened at most I think there may have been some speaking in tongues but literally

you could go to like a revival or any type of religious gathering that is like more on the outskirts and you could see people speaking in tongues

like that isn't that fucking out of the ordinary is it? I'make 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. 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. 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.

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And Sonny also said that Satan appears in a form where we feel his presence or he takes possession of one of us. And you can tell when Satan is there. Some people even let him speak through them in his own language. It isn't human speech. There's no way anyone on earth could fake it. Really? Really? There isn't any way?

It's just so classic, isn't it? Sonny's like, no, no, sometimes really we pour blood on each other and we do these mock baptisms and sometimes Satan possesses one of us. And it does happen, we promise. Just not when you're here. It's so classic. It's so classic. I think these people are just bored. They just, they're taking all probably a load of LSD and like psychedelic drugs and they just get around and chant. There's a lot of drug use going on that isn't really mentioned in the police reports, I think.

And despite sharing all of this information with the police and welcoming Detective Silver and Carrie into her home to witness her worship, Sparda claimed to know nothing about human sacrifice. At most, she told them, they might sacrifice goats or cats, but never people. Sparda also told police that the black mass gatherings were much more lively when they took place in the nearby Freetown State Forest. This forest has a long history of paranormal activity and is swamped in urban legend. Unsatisfied with what they had seen at Sonny Sparda's place, Silva and Carey pressed Andy Maltiess to introduce them to more members of the subsect. And for the first time ever, Andy was true to his word. A few days later, he introduced Silva and Carey to Robin

Murphy and Karen Marsden, both of whom had been present at Sonny Sparda's apartment and were active members of the so-called Satanic cult. Karen Marsden was a 20-year-old sex worker with a sizable drug habit and a small child that she was raising on her own. Karen was described by police as emotional and nervous when she was questioned about the Satanic happenings in Fall River. Robin Murphy, on the other hand, although she was just 17, was the total opposite to Karen Marsden. Police described her as being cold, calculating and totally terrifying.

She's 17. Yeah, I know. This is the thing. Like, this is, this runs through this case like a rotten vein of shit. And it's so annoying. Like, the way they talk about her is like she's some sort of criminal mastermind that's worked her way up through the ranks and is like fucking with everyone's lives she's 17 years old and watch the documentary the way they talk about her the way the police talk about her is really quite

scary stuff officer carrie described robin murphy as the most feared person in the fall river sex work scene which is just so hard to believe it's the sex work industry like there are scary people working in there I don't believe and it's not like it was a tiny pocket it was quite it was really prevalent in Fall River at the time so there would have been a lot of big scary people who would have been there for a long time I just refuse to believe that they were manipulated by a 17 year old girl I just I find it so hard to believe but she had the devil on her side, Hannah. Oh, well, fucking evidently.

Yeah, you're right. Officer Silver claimed to see evil in her eyes. And when he was in the same room as her, he felt like he was being confronted with the actual devil. I'm sure that she was a piece of work. I'm sure she still is. She had a tough and abusive upbringing with sexual abuse playing a huge role in her younger years.

She was definitely an intelligent, hardened street kid. But the devil incarnate? Probably not. So, at just 17 years old, she's apparently the most feared person in Fall River. And Robin Murphy was a sex worker and an aspiring madam. So she's not even... she still has a pimp. Like, she's not... she's has a pimp like she's not she's still working for someone else you know she just wants to not and that's enough to be the most feared person in the scene and at the time of this interview karen marsden and robin murphy were living together and

they were in a sexual relationship this is the other thing about this story everyone is fucking everyone else sex drugs devil worship and there was probably some rock and roll in that these people were living just a sprink... Just a sprinkling. Just a sprinkling. These people were truly living the 70s life. Yeah. Karen Marston claimed that both she and Robin Murphy knew Andy Maltese from around. They didn't seem, though, to be particularly close or to have too much in common.

However, in later interviews with police, Robin Murphy would claim that Andy Maltese had been molesting her since she was 11. But in this interview, Robin Murphy didn't say a word. She just sat in stony silence, staring at the police officers, not giving anything away. Karen Marsden did all of the talking in a skittish, rapid-fire kind of way. She made varying degrees of sense and at times was quite difficult to even understand. But there was one thing that she said that the police heard loud and clear. Karen Marsden said,

Carl Drew killed Doreen Levesque. Carl Drew was another major player in the Fall River Bedford Street sex work game. At age 26, he was already a seasoned pimp known for his extreme violence. Carl Drew had been raised on a farm in New Hampshire. He would tell anyone who would listen about his alcoholic father who had subjected him to hard labor and physical abuse. Carl Drew's favorite and most chilling story to tell was how when he was a small boy, his father had tied a rope around his legs and lowered him headfirst into a well so that he could pull out a cluster of dead rats. Age 15, he escaped his drunk dad and the dead vermin and ran away to Fall River, where he

quickly rose through the ranks of the criminal underworld. Not only was Carl Drew an undesirable who the police thought to be totally capable of killing, he was also Doreen Levesque's pimp. He had once threatened a young woman who worked for him who was arrested for solicitation. He told her that he would tie her to a tree and pour the warm blood of a live goat all over her face. Just sounds like a new celebrity facial. Yeah, Gwyneth Paltrow's all over the warm blood of a live goat all over her face. Just sounds like a new celebrity facial. Yeah, Gwyneth Paltrow's all over the warm goat blood. Oh my god, she's such a wanker. She's the worst. She's the worst person ever. Was it her who was like, spend $2,000 on a jade egg and shove it up your fanny?

Yeah, it is her. It is her. Go fuck yourself, Gwyneth Paltrow. If you're listening or if you ever listen, go fuck yourself. She's such a wanker. I don't think Gwyneth Paltrow listens to anyone but Gwyneth Paltrow, quite honestly. She just makes me so angry. So besides being Doreen Levesque's pimp and certainly having form, the only thing linking Carl Drew to Doreen's murder was Karen Marsden's garbled testimony. And the police didn't feel like they could totally trust an addict. Like I think, yes, there's a lot of prejudice here against sex workers in general within the police department. However, I do think they've had quite a long dealing with Karen Marsden. I think they knew her quite well and they knew that she did sort of make stuff up. So they don't trust her totally. But officers did try to get more on Karl Drew out of Karen Marsden.

And crucially, in later questioning, she was not accompanied by Robin Murphy. So they get her on her own and she starts to give up the goods a bit. So according to Karen, Carl Drew was the leader of the cult. And he insisted all of his working girls take part in rituals with him. He told them all that Satan would take his toll. Karen told police that Carl Drew would take groups of people into the forest with him in the dead of night to conduct satanic rituals. These rituals included a fair amount of orgying and quite a lot of threats from Carl Drew. Karen Marsden only referred to Carl Drew as the devil

and told the Fall River Major Crimes Unit that if she were to turn up dead, it was Carl Drew who had killed her. And before we go any further, we should decide what we are actually talking about when we talk about Satanism. A really cool fact we came across while looking into this idea is that one of the earliest references to any accusation of Satan worship was levied against the Knights Templar, as in the Holy Grail guys. They were accused of worshipping Baphomet, the guy that some people think Rihanna pays tribute to in her music videos. Have you seen the YouTube conspiracy videos about the Illuminati and Rihanna? They are hilarious. I cannot trigger the never-ending YouTube algorithms that will ruin my life if I click

on a video like that. So no, I haven't watched it. That's a fair point. I'm too far gone. Too late for me. Go on without me. Baphomet is like that goat-leg Satan statue slash iconography slash symbolism, isn't it? But historians think that Baphomet might not actually mean goat-legged Satan, but it might actually be a mistranslation of Mohammed. That is really interesting. Isn't it? Baphomet, Mohammed.

Yeah, I could see that. And this would mean that during the Crusades in the Middle East, the Knights Templar were converted to Islam, which to me makes a bit more sense and feels a bit more likely than they just started worshipping the devil out there. But that's just us. If it is a mistranslation, they're being accused of worshipping Muhammad. Which would immediately be, though, that you might as well be worshipping the devil

if you have fallen out of the one true faith, like every religion says it is. But rather than starting Satanism, you've been converted to an already existing religion, which I would get. They were out in the Middle East for a long time. The Ottomans, they were pushing forward. They were all about conversions, so it would make sense. Now, I've read people calling Satanism a made-up philosophy.

But let's just hold up here because isn't all philosophy made up it seems like a very weird point to make doesn't it oh well christian islam buddhist hindu philosophies they're all real their philosophies are not made up but this one i decide i don't agree with that's a made-up philosophy like philosophy is just a way of thinking about things it's like you can't say one's made up and one isn't we think all of them so every word is a made-up word do you know what I mean and from what we understand and we may be wrong because we're not you know we're not satanists not that I have any issue with satanists do what you want I did think about it when I was doing some reading I was like am I a satanist um do I is this something I agree with?

I've decided I'm not a Satanist. You've decided you're not a Satanist. I mean, I'm like all cool with Satanist. Satanist, as far as we can tell, feel like it's very much an ideology around sort of self-empowerment and self-actualization. And it's very much about do as thou wilt. That's the ideology that we can glean from what they're talking about. It's all about doing whatever you want, regardless of what societal structures may be in place to prevent you from doing so. Yeah, it's like, if you want to fuck your brother, fuck your brother. If you want to kill that guy, kill that guy. I think the reason I'm not a Satanist is I'm a bit too concerned with other people's feelings. I mean, you're taking it quite far straight into incest and murder. I think a lot of Satanists out there probably are just like

lust and hedonism and greed and gluttony and actively breaking all the seven deadly sins, which aren't even that bad. What? Sloth, sleep in, greed, gluttony, lust. That's a weekend. That's like not that big a deal, is it? It's just like Satan is just a symbol of free will rather than an actual deity. That's the important thing. But we say that it's not an actual deity, but I think there is a distinction between the church of Satan, which is like the original granddaddy of Satanism, and then things like the satanic temple. And the church of Satan does actually call itself a religious organization, doesn't it? Which is weird because it's's like it calls itself like a atheistic religious organization which in itself is quite a oxymoron or contradiction i don't know

if being an atheist is an oxymoron with being religious i don't think it's not contradictory with being spiritual but i think if you call yourself an atheist you can't then also belong to an organized religion not that like whatever call yourself whatever you want it's up to you but i get what you're saying though I think it's very important the distinction between Satanism and devil worship. They're two very, very different things. So the Church of Satan, as we said at the top of the show, was founded in 1966 by Anton LaVey, who wrote the Satanic Bible. And my absolute favourite offshoot of the Church of Satan is the Satanic Temple, who you may be aware of as they made headlines in 2015 when they funded a nine-foot

bronze statue of Baphomet with two adoring children gazing lovingly up at him which they planned to instate at the Oklahoma Capitol building where a sculpture dedicated to the Ten Commandments stands. I think that's pretty funny. I do. I think it's very, very funny and actually like there's just so much even to unpick in here with the Church of Satan when Anton LaVey wrote the Satanic Bible. It was definitely like a seminal piece of writing within the satanic community. But there are a lot of people who say, and I kind of agree that it is a bit of a rip off of loads of other existing, pre-existing philosophies that were out there. He kind of just took a lot of work from people like Ayn Rand and sprinkled the devil over it. And he was just like, here you go,

off you go. Anton LaVey's whole thing was that, as far as I understand it, is that Christianity is very hypocritical. So when he made his own church, he inverted a lot of Christian rituals to sort of poke fun at them in a way, which is why satanic ideology is often literally a crucifix upside down. And I think I totally understand that feeling of rebellion, especially in the mid-60s, to middle finger up at the church. We're now the church of Satan. That's great. And, you know, say what you want about it. Like I said,

it was a seminal piece of work within the satanic community. But now the Church of Satan, and I follow the Church of Satan on Twitter, they just kind of seem like a bunch of pricks now. Really? That's a shame. They just sit there and they just like correct people's grammar and say little pithy things to people on the Internet. And they fucking hate the Satanic Temple. It's so funny. They fucking hate the Satanic Temple. It's exactly like you have in every other religion.

They've become the Catholics and the Protestants, the Sunnis and the Shias. They hate each other. And it's like the Church of Satan basically hate the Satanic Temple because they're like, you're just a bunch of fucking lame Satanists. You're not even real. This is the one true church. they're like you're just a bunch of fucking lame satanists you're not even real this is the one true church and like you're not real and I think they hate them because the satanic temple are the kind of people that like are true they're like activists they go to like those anti-abortion rallies and they hold up signs that say like abort everyone fuck you all and it's like they're funny and they're getting a lot of attention and I do like the satanic temple but I do think them suing that new netflix show the chilling adventures of sabrina is slightly lame oh stop it they are they're suing them oh i've changed my mind now i don't

like them anymore they used i'm i'm not watching that show i've just read about it but they used that baphomet statue or like a baphomet statue in the Sabrina show they don't own that I cannot they don't own that symbolism and now they're suing them that's a bit lame that's not cool that is lame that's not satanic I do think the the Oklahoma State Capitol building though was a good point I fucking love that unsurprisingly they were not allowed to erect their sculpture in Oklahoma and it's now in their satanic temple in Detroit boo Boo, Oklahoma. Yeah, I completely get the point they're making. Like freedom of religion is in the constitution. I'm just going to leave it there before people jump down my fucking throat. I think it's an

absolutely fair point. And that's exactly the point I'm making is that they say we are a religion, we have sincerely held beliefs, we believe in this, we should be able to practice freedom of religion and let's do it. I guess they could argue that the freedom of religion only extends us so far as that nobody is stopping you being able to practice it. You just can't put this statue here. Yeah, the separation of church and state or the lack thereof is an important thing to be talked about, I think. But key thing here is that the beliefs of the Fall River cult, whether it existed or not, is not what the Church of Satan is about. The best way to describe it is a crude theistic Satanism. It's a literal worship of the devil as a god and doing abhorrent things to please him. When Karl Drew was brought in by police and questioned, he openly admitted,

I worship Satan, I worship him like you worship God. Whatever was going on in Fall River, it didn't seem to be Anton LaVey's particular brand of Satanism. Basically, what the tabloids were painting Satanism to be, but not what it actually is as we understand it today. But then again, like, who the fuck are we to define a belief system, believe what you want? According to Karen Marsden, blood sacrifice played a big role in Fall River's particular brand of Satanic practice. The group would kill every 30 days, always under a full moon.

Karen was so afraid of being killed by Carl Drew because she held deep-seated Christian beliefs. So Drew sacrificing her to the devil would mean that she would never get to heaven. But despite her fears of Drew getting wind of her talking to the police, Marsden agreed to take investigating officers to the nearby Freetown State Forest, where, she said, the rituals were taking place under Carl Drew's instruction. And, if you remember, this is also where Sonny Spada had told officers things got a lot more interesting. They also took a woman named Carol Fletcher with them.

She was a young sex whacker affiliated with the alleged cult. Officer Silver and Carrie, Karen Marsden and Carol Fletcher, walked through the woods together looking for satanic evidence. It's like fucking Scooby-Doo. It literally is Scooby-doo it literally is scooby-doo they're just missing a big good dog and an annoying small dog don't you dare say you like i don't hate him you don't i mean it is like scooby-doo apart from there are actually loads of sex workers ending up being brutally murdered now as this little ragtag bunch passed through an algae covered pond karen marsden was overcome with terror she told

the officers that it was the devil's pond and that that was where drew would dump her body after he injected battery acid into her veins and offered her soul to satan does the devil do a lot of hanging out in ponds that seems like a weird if i was the devil i wouldn't hang out in an algae covered pond in the middle of a forest i'd'd pick somewhere cooler. I've been thinking about sort of stories of the devil. Like in Irish folklore, the devil shows up quite a lot. And what always happens is someone will be in their house and they invite a traveller from the road into their home and they start playing cards.

And then they look down under the table and he's got goat legs. Like that is always, I remember about six stories where that exact thing happens. Check their legs before they sit down. You hear the clip-clopping of hooves as they walk into your house. No, it really reminds me of this horror story that my grandmother used to tell me when I was a kid and it was my absolute favourite. I'd ask her to tell me again and again. I remember as a child being terrified. It was basically that this guy is cycling home one night past some woods in the dark and there's a little kid standing on the side of the road crying. So

he's like, oh my God, this little kid. So he picks this kid up and puts her on like the back of his bicycle and he starts and he's like, oh, I'll take her to the police station or whatever and take her home tonight and figure out who her parents are, where they are tomorrow. And he starts cycling and suddenly it gets heavier behind him on the bicycle and he turns around and it's not a child anymore, but it's a fully grown woman. And he's like, what the fuck? And so she starts threatening him. And so he gets scared and takes her to the police station. And he tells the police, I don't know who this woman is. I picked up a child on the side of the road and now she's a full grown woman sat on the back of my bike. They think he's mental. And this woman says,

he's my husband. He gets a bit weird. And this woman says, he's my husband. He gets a bit weird like this. Don't know what's going on. We'll just be on our way. This guy's like, she's not my wife. I'm not married. I don't know who she is. So the police are like, it's late at night.

We can't be bothered to deal with this. Maybe they're on drugs. Maybe they're drunk. So they just put them into two separate cells and piss off home. The next day when they come back, her cell is wide open and there's no one in there. And in his cell, he's been torn to pieces. Oh my God. I know.

She used to tell me this as a kid. There's my origin story, everyone. That's hilarious. Sorry. Side track. So back to this group hanging out by this pond in the woods. Karen was so scared of Carl finding out that she'd been talking to the police. That's what she kept saying.

She was like, I'm terrified that he's going to find out. But apparently she refused witness protection. And I don't really understand why. If I was that scared of a man who was going to pump my veins full of battery acid and dump me in a lake, and I told the police I'd want some fucking witness protection. Exactly. It's kind of skipped over too. Like the only thing I can think of is they offer it to her and she'll go, he'll still find me. If I disappear, he'll come and find me.

That's the only thing I can think of. Yeah, that it wouldn't even matter that these mortal police officers wouldn't be able to protect her from anything because he is in league with Satan. So she claimed that after the killing of Doreen, Drew had told her that if she went to police, he would kill her. And before we go on, like I just, I have to tell you about this caption of a photo of Carl Drew that I found and the caption was Carl Drew full stop satanist full stop bad man. Is that a grime album? Like that's hilarious. Brilliant. But as bad as Carl Drew was and as much as he may appear to be an obvious suspect

the more Karen Marsden spoke to the police about the cult, the more Robin Murphy's name kept coming up. Allegedly, even before Robin Murphy had become a fixture of the Fall River sex trade scene, she had been dabbling in the occult. What? When she was a preteen? Literally show me a preteen who hasn't thought about the occult a bit. hardly singles her out as lucifer you're a preteen and you never dabbled in the occult you fucking wasted your teenage years and if you're a teenager listening now and you're not dabbling in the occult go go dabble in the occult right now do it stay off the railway tracks the investigation took a dramatic turn on the 26th of january 1980 another body was discovered in fall river so this is about three months after doreen levesque's body was found under the bleachers at the high school Another body was discovered in Fall River, so this is about three months after

Doreen Levesque's body was found under the bleachers at the high school. The body was found in the woods behind a run-down printing factory. Just like Doreen, the body had its hands tied with a fishing line. It was clear that she had been sexually assaulted and her head had been crushed with a rock. This body was later identified to be Barbara Raposa, the young woman also caught up in the sex cult who had been reported missing by Andy Maltias. His prediction had come true. Barbara was dead and it certainly looked like the same person or persons who killed Doreen Levesque were the culprits. Barbara Raposa's body had been frozen solid. I don't know how long she was out in the woods. I don't know how long

she was dead for before they found her. And I think that Massachusetts does get quite cold in January. So it's possible she could have frozen overnight, but I think she might have been out there for a bit longer. Now the police made the next logical step and interviewed the obvious suspect, Andy Marteas. He was the last person to see Barbara Raposa alive. In his interrogation, Andy was visibly nervous. He's a career criminal, so there's nothing off really there. He could have been nervous about any number of things. Yeah, he could have been nervous about any number of the long, long list of felonies he had to his name. And he absolutely insisted that he knew nothing about Barbara Raposa's death. But just a few days after he was released by police, he rang the police station and told them that he did actually have information about Barbara Raposa's death and that it came to him, get this, in a psychic dream. When are people going to learn? Stop talking.

Don't. Just shut up. Literally find me a case where someone has been like, I have all of this information about a murder. It came to me in a dream and they didn't go down for it. Arrest him. Yeah, exactly. It was a pretty fucking excellent dream if we give Andy the benefit of the doubt that he isn't actually the murderer, right? Because Andy must have been the best fucking cold reader there is in the world. Derek Okora, eat your heart out because the details that came to him in this dream

were so specific. It's almost as if he was right there murdering Barbara. He knew exactly where Barbara's body was found, what position she was in, the time of her death and the method of killing, none of which had been made public. Unsurprisingly, Andy Maltese was arrested and charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Barbara Raposa. Following Andy's arrest, the police got more information from a member of the sex cult and it was the person they least expected. The stony-faced 17-year-old Robin Murphy contacted the Major Crimes Unit

and offered to testify against Andy Maltias. She told officers that she was present at the murder of Doreen Levesque and that she was happy to testify on that case as well as Barbara Raposa. In exchange for this information, Murphy was placed in protective custody and granted immunity on both the murder of Doreen Levesque and the murder of Barbara Raposa. According to Robin Murphy, Andy Martínez had killed Barbara Raposa because she had been cheating on him. So Murphy's story is this. All three of them were driving around Fall River together the night of the murder.

The couple, that's Andy and Barbara, had started to argue in the car and it got so heated that Andy pulled over behind the abandoned printing factory, dragged Barbara out of the car, and raped her. When Barbara cried out for help, Andy hit her over the head with a rock, got back in the car with Robin Murphy, and drove off, leaving his girlfriend to fend for herself, injured and in the dark. It's a good and believable story, but it doesn't quite explain her hands being tied with a fishing line, does it? Murphy followed up this story by explaining that the only reason she had not come forward straight away was because Andy Maltese had said that he would kill her too if she spoke to the

police. Murphy claimed that she was also present for the murder of Doreen Levesque, but other than her being there, there was no connection between the murders. Barbara's death had been a crime of passion, a violent fit of rage on Demaltais' part, and that he had accidentally killed her. Doreen Levesque's death was a different thing altogether. Murphy claimed that Doreen had been killed so that Drew and his gaggle of Satan worshippers could offer her soul to the devil. Doreen had been chosen as the one to die because she had recently made an attempt to break away from Drew and work the streets on her own, basically to be her own pimp. Carl Drew was not having this. He tracked her down in the Bedford Street area and forced her into his car. In the car were Robin Murphy, Karen Marsden and a new character we haven't met yet,

Willie Smith. He was a friend of Carl Drew's and a Satanist too apparently. They're all at it, aren't they? Absolutely. Once Doreen was in the car, Carl allegedly told her that she couldn't afford to work the streets alone and then he backhanded her across the face. So, according to Murphy, the car full of Satanists with a terrified Doreen pulled in behind the high school and dragged Doreen out of the car under the bleachers. Murphy and Marsden stayed in the car and claimed that they heard no screams and saw nothing. The men returned a while later and drove off. When Robin asked what had

happened to Doreen, Drew turned to her and said, you don't want to know. Judging by the state Doreen Levesque's body was found in, it's quite hard to understand how her death could have been carried out in a matter of minutes, as Robin Murphy seems to think it was. She told officers that she wasn't even sure if Doreen was dead until she saw it in the papers a few days later. The forensic report showed that Doreen had suffered extensive torture before she died. So Robin's story doesn't really seem to make any sense because it doesn't leave any room for that.

Karen Marsden maintained that she was at both murders and that Carl Drew was the leader of the pack. But she pointed out that Murphy had a pretty hefty leadership role too. According to officers Silver and Carey, Robin Murphy ensured that all those present at the killings of Doreen and Barbara actively took part in the torture. The example they give is she made everyone present throw a rock at the bodies of Doreen and Barbara.

Then she would tell the group that they were all murderers now, therefore telling the police what had happened was absolutely not an option for any of them. But this is all from Karen Marsden. And again, she's not the most trusted witness. She had a long history of drug abuse. She was incredibly flighty. She often promised to testify and then dropped out last minute. So the police didn't have a huge amount of time for her.

Each time Karen was interviewed by police, she became more and more erratic. She looked to be on the brink of a total psychotic break. So her testimony wasn't hugely valuable. She became more and more paranoid. She was convinced that she would be the next victim of the Carl Drew cult. And she was right. On the 9th of February 1980, so barely a month after Barbara was discovered, Karen Marsden was reported missing. Her body would never be discovered. Two months after Karen's disappearance, a man stumbled across a toothless human skull in the Freetown Forest, right next to the green algae devil pond that Karen had been so afraid of. Police were called to the scene and they discovered the rotting corpses of three cats, sheep bones, clumps of human hair,

jewellery, a high heel and pieces of a woman's jumper all within a two mile radius of the skull. Quickly, the forensics team identified that the skull was Karen Marsden's. Here's my thing about the scattered evidence. In the documentary and in all of the articles I've read, they say that all of the things they find point towards the satanic ritual killing of Karen Marsden.

However, it's a two mile radius. Like it could be anything. It might not have been her shoe. Do you know what I mean? But the way they present it is, oh, they dragged her for two miles and they did this and this and this. And I just don't know if there's enough evidence to support that. Then Sonny Sparda made another appearance at the Fall River police station. She told Detective Silver and Carey that Robin Murphy had killed Karen Marsden.

She also revealed that she used to have sex with Robin Murphy because everyone is just fucking everyone else. Sonny claimed that Murphy confessed to her on the phone that she had killed Karen. Carol Fletcher also corroborated this story. She said that both Murphy and Drew were the killers. Fletcher claimed that she was the one to drive the group out to the Freetown Forest where the satanic ritual human sacrifice of Karen Marsden took place. Robin Murphy had been relocated to Dallas, Texas, which is a whopping 1,750 miles away from Fall River, and this is all a part of her witness protection agreement. She thought she was in the clear, but a warrant for her arrest was issued after she was connected to the murder of

Karen Marsden by Carol Fletcher. She was brought back to Fall River. Carl Drew and Carl Davis, another alleged cult member, were also arrested. They were both serving short sentences in county jail for assault, so they were pretty easy to find. Robin Murphy was arrested and interrogated by police again, and this time her icy exterior melted away. She told the police that she would give them the full story. Murphy stated that Karen Marsden had become a liability and Carl Drew had to get rid of her. She was a witness to the murders of Doreen and Barbara, and there were rumours that she had gone to the police, which obviously she had. Murphy claimed that Drew had decided that Karen Marsden had to go, and he forced Murphy to help with the killing to prove her loyalty to him and the sex cult. According to her latest iteration

of events, Murphy was made to drag Karen out of the car by her hair. Then Drew, Murphy, Fletcher, and Davis stoned Marsden, but not quite to death. Drew then cut one of her fingers off, and then he broke her neck with his bare hands. Murphy claimed to be in a trance when she slit Marsden's throat with a knife handed to her by Carl Davis. This is all Murphy's words. Next, Davis and Drew pulled Marsden's head off and kicked it around the woods. Drew carved an X in Marsden's torso while speaking in tongues. Then he offered her soul to Satan. In true cult style, Drew dipped his thumb in Karen's blood and drew an X on Murphy's forehead. Then Murphy was made to perform oral sex on the headless cadaver before they doused it in petrol and burned Karen Marsden's body to ashes.

The press had a great time with this case. It's the perfect story. Sex, black magic, sacrifice, it's got it all. The satanic panic was right. There was an underground network of murderous Satanists in every town in America, and they were working to destroy God-fearing Americans. Except, were they? The testimony of Satanic ritual killings comes from Karen Marsden, not the best witness, and now obviously she's dead, and from Robin Murphy, who despite what the cops say, was only 17 and had sustained a great deal of abuse in her short life. So apart from the dead cats in the woods, what else is there? Marsden's body has never been fully recovered, so we don't know if they cut her up and kicked her head around like a football. Like, we just don't know. The

evidence isn't there. It's all he said, she said. That's all we have. All we do know is that Doreen and Barbara were found in similar situations, but couldn't that just mean they were both killed by the same person? The only thing that suggests a ritual killing was the evidence of stoning. What if Sonny's satanic practices was just a total coincidence? This is the thing I wonder. From what I understand,

Sonny Spard is kind of like this den mother figure and she takes all of these waifs and strays in and she introduces them to Satanism. That's fact. She's doing it in her house. We know that. Could it then be that all of this killing goes on, all of this jealousy, this sleeping together, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

and then the Satanism stuff could just be made up? They all know about it. It's a fixture of all of their lives. But if we believe Sonny Sparda, she's not telling them to go out and ritually sacrifice people. Or equally, she could be lying. Who knows? So Andy Maltais was the first to stand trial in january 1981 he was tried for the murder of barbara raposa and given life without parole he was

convicted almost solely on the testimony of robin murphy but i think it's safe to say he probably did do it given his little fucking psychic dream revelations yeah yeah he uh definitely shot himself in the foot though so he died in prison you know and I don't think anybody's going to cry any tears for him. Now, due to the media shitshow, a fair trial was impossible anywhere in Bristol County for the two Carls and Robin Murphy. The trial was therefore moved to Worcester County Superior Court in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Robin Murphy was charged with the lesser second degree murder, as her attorney argued that she was under the influence of the satanic cult at the time of Marsden's murder. She also testified against her co-defendants, Carl Davis and Carl Drew. Her immunity deal still held true also, so Robin Murphy escaped additional charges for the murders of Doreen Levesque and Barbara

Raposa. Despite these leniencies, Murphy was given a life sentence, but she was granted the possibility of parole. The case against Carl Davis totally disintegrated and he never stood trial for his alleged role in the kidnapping and murder of Karen Marsden. And I do kind of see why. The only thing that puts him there is Robin Murphy's testimony. He never comes up in anyone else's stories. His name is never mentioned by anyone else. And he did get his comeuppance a year later. He went to prison for seven years for assaulting Sonny Sparda. She was three months pregnant and he stabbed her in the head. According to Carl Drew, Carl Davis did this because Sonny had information that would absolve Carl Drew of the murders and implicate Carl Davis and Robin Murphy.

And this brings us on to Carl Drew. Carl Drew took the full hit. Numerous character witnesses took the stand during his trial and his extensive criminal record, including violence and intimidation, spoke for itself. Judging by the evidence in the trial, everyone who knew Carl Drew feared him. Robin Murphy's testimony told the same story. She told the court that Drew was undoubtedly the ringleader of the cult and therefore the murders. It wasn't just Robin either. Leah Johnson, an ex-girlfriend of Drew's, told the judge and the jury that Drew confessed to her that he had killed two women with the help of Robin Murphy and Carl Davis while he was on drugs.

Leah also claimed that Drew had given her a diamond ring as a present that had belonged to Karen Marsden. Throughout the entire trial, Drew declared his innocence, but it did him no good. He was convicted of murder in the first degree of Karen Marsden and is currently serving life without parole in Shirley, Massachusetts. He has filed numerous appeals but none of them have stuck and he's currently fully focused on trying to get a new trial. And he has a blog. I love it when they have blogs. It's called carldrewsfight.com

and definitely go and look at it because it's just hours of fun. And he claims that he's been totally failed by the justice system i really wish i could read the whole thing out but it is just solid gold but we don't have time so i've i've broken down some highlights for you the sub header reads the justice system question mark dot dot dot. Just another mafia. His argument is that like, because he thinks that Carl Davis got away with everything because he had a good lawyer and he had family connections and that's why he got away.

So he thinks that the only reason he's still in prison is because he's not well connected and nothing to do with the facts of the horrible murders he definitely did. He also goes on about how he refused to take the four plea deals offered to him because he was innocent and he trusted in the justice system. He goes on about the constitutional law and about like freedom and blah, blah, blah. Freedom with a capital F, no less. But Drew admits, this is a quote,

I was far from an angel and it is I who still feels the shame for those whose feelings I hurt. Feelings you hurt. Feelings, yeah. By feelings he hurt, he means physical and emotional abuse that he administered to many sex workers that he pimped out for years and treated like slaves. And it's just that it is I, like I have to carry the burden of that. They do too, mate. Good fucking hell. What a piece of work. He is a piece of work. He's in his 50s now. I hope he burden of that. They do too, mate. Good fucking hell. What a piece of work.

He is a piece of work. He's in his 50s now. I hope he dies in that. He will. And this is the thing that's really interesting with this case. This grown man basically pins the whole thing on Robin Murphy. Can we remember that she was 17 years old at the time? Yeah, and he's 26 and he's been pimping her out for years.

And he's like, oh, it's all her. It's all her. I mean, fuck off. I was powerless in the presence of this she demon. Absolutely. been pimping her out for years and he's like oh it's all it's all her i mean fuck off i was powerless in the in the presence of this she demon absolutely she was practicing paganism before she was even 10 years old apparently oh so was everyone even if she was you were fucking pimping her out she'd been abused her whole life she did not coerce you into doing this she was not the leader of that cult fuck off if she had been why

would she need you as her pimp yeah that that's true actually that's a really good point if she was she'd be your pimp if she was the devil incarnate she probably wouldn't be a sex worker would she no she'd be running a massive company or being the prime minister or at least being the fucking head that's such a good point of the sex work she wouldn't have been a sex yeah she wouldn't be on like rung three of the ladder she would have been your pimp you piece of shit now he also says it's quote this is a quote it seemed satan had his paws dug so deep into her that nothing seemed too crazy for her to do to those who crossed her path honestly it seems like the police even agree with him. The way they talk about Robin Murphy is really quite scary. Both Silver and Carey have said in interviews

that they believe that Robin Murphy was totally responsible for all three killings and that she was in total control of everyone around her. This is like some fucking witch trial shit. This is like almost a perfect summation of the satanic panic. This 17 year old girl was in total control of everybody. She made them all do it. For God's sake. Drew claimed that Murphy had it in for him because he slapped her once and she wanted revenge. He conveniently leaves out the bit where he fucking pimped her out for years though. The way he describes it is honestly sickening. He's like, yeah, I did hit her. I definitely shouldn't have done that. But this, this, this, this, this, like you absolute scum of the earth. I have absolutely no time for him at all. What he's trying to do is he's trying to,

he's trying to appeal to the very right wing, very heavily Christian people. Like he's trying to get those people behind him so he can get a new tribe. I was helpless. This woman took advantage of me. And she's in league with Satan. Satan has his claws into her. No one has ever been charged with Doreen Levesque's murder. It just seems to be forgotten. And she is the less dead after all. No one even cared enough about Doreen to take the case to trial.

The district attorney, Ronald Piena, stated that a trial for Doreen's death would be an expensive affair and all it would achieve would be a second sentence for Carl Drew. So for Doreen Levesque's memory, justice was just too damn expensive. Wow. But it's not over. Because in 1984, Robin Murphy, in an attempt to get herself a new trial, recanted her whole testimony. She told the parole board, I believe Carl Drew was guilty of killing Karen and many, many other women in the area. I believe he belonged in jail, but also knew justice was not taking place. So I just made the whole story up. She then claimed to not be present for the

murder of Barbara Raposa at all. And then she admitted that the testimony she had given against Andy Maltais was all nonsense. She had only said it as revenge for the sexual abuse he had inflicted on her since she was a child. Robin was not the only one to change her mind. Carol Fletcher, who had originally claimed to be present for Karen Marsden's murder, recanted her trial testimony, claiming that the police had threatened her into making false statements against Carl Drew. Fletcher claimed that everything about her statement had been false, that Karen had actually been killed in the Harbour Terrace housing projects where Sonny Sparda lived, and that the body was dismembered and dumped in various locations. Fletcher claimed,

I saw Robin put the knife towards Karen and I ran off. I was scared. Detective Paul Carey still maintains that Murphy was the real ringleader, not Drew. This is a quote. Levesque was murdered because Murphy was also in love with her and became jealous when Levesque started seeing Drew. I believe Murphy and Marsden were present when Levesque was killed. I think Murphy killed Raposa because Raposa was in love with Maltias. Murphy admitted that she and Raposa had previously been lovers and I believe Murphy killed Marsden because of the two previous murders.

Marsden was at the scene of both of those murders and I believe Murphy knew she was the weak link and might get them convicted. So again it's the 17 year old devil child who fully manipulated grown men and women into killing each other. Is it impossible? No. Is it likely? Also hard no. And Carl Drew totally denies being involved in Satanism of any sort, despite his statements in police interviews. He claims that the whole Satanist story was cooked up by Murphy and Fletcher and fed to the police. Was it real? Are we dealing with a satanic cult? Or a lot of people sleeping with each other, getting jealous and turning murderous, and probably taking lots of drugs? Why would you make it up? I can kind of see that maybe if she

was that young, she would make it up. Like can kind of see that maybe if she was that young, she would make it up. Like Miranda Barber made all of that stuff up. So maybe she did just totally pluck it out of thin air. But the fact is, like, three women are dead. So she's not making up the murder. She's making up, if she is making it up, she's making up the environment in which the murders happened.

She's not falsely accusing anyone of murder here. No, absolutely not. It is just whether the satanic element of it, the satanic ritual killing element of it was real or not. And that's the question that we don't really have the answer to because there's no unequivocal evidence that that was taking place. The only link to any sort of satanic behavior was the whole Sonny Sparta parties that she threw. But that could literally just have been a bunch of people who were taking part in orgies, taking loads of drugs and chanting about the devil. Like, there's no proof. And if it was a cult, it only seemed to have involved

about 12 people who didn't seem to be connected to the more sinister underground nationwide network of necromancy that the satanic panic told of. On the 10th of June 2004, Robin Murphy was released. She was out for seven years, but due to being found operating in a high crime neighbourhood, which was considered a violation of her parole, she was sent back to maximum security prison. I think it was something really minor that happened. I think she was in a car with someone who had heroin, but that was enough to send her back. And on the 26th of March 2017, Robin faced a parole board and pleaded for her release. She is now 55 years old and has spent 38 years of her life behind bars for the murder of Karen Marsden. She claimed again that she only gave the false testimony because she knew Carl

Drew was a dangerous man and that he needed to be put away. The chairman of the parole board, Paul Tresler, was not having any of it though. He asked Robin, you want us to believe that you did what you did out of the goodness of your heart to save the public from Carl Drew? I don't want people to be like, oh, you're just like, you're just defending her because she was an abused woman, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She did awful things. Yeah. I think she was definitely involved in the killings. I do believe that. I do believe she does deserve to be in prison. Was she the mastermind? No, I don't think so. Dr. Charlene Bonner, another member of the board, told Robin, you have a problem. You have a serious problem with credibility. And this is like the fourth

time she's changed her story. So I can totally understand the frustration. When it comes to Robin Murphy, you genuinely don't know if what she's saying is true because she's changed her story, so I can totally understand the frustration. When it comes to Robin Murphy, you genuinely don't know if what she's saying is true, because she's changed it so many times. But on the other hand, Murphy's defense attorney claimed that Robin was a vulnerable, abused child at the time of the Marsden murder, and she was never actually involved in satanic rituals. She only witnessed them. But it did no good because Murphy was denied parole.

This is savage. Another board member, Roger Michael Jr., two first names, stated during the hearing, I have never seen a case more shot through with lies and deceit by a person seeking parole than this one. I don't think you would know the truth if it jumped out of the ground and slapped you in the face. Robin Murphy's next parole hearing will be in 2022 and Karl Drew is still campaigning for his freedom. So what do you think? Cult, not cult? I don't think it's a cult. It's all about the sex work. They're pimps. They're trying to get these women in line. I think they were taking loads of drugs. I think maybe they were involved

in going to Sonny Sparta's parties. They just picked and choose bits. And I think there was abuse and probably orgies and lots of drug taking, like I said. But this was, I think, a tool by which people like Karl Drew could control these women, keep them in line, get them to do what he needed them to do. And what's scarier than that you're already a pimp that beats people up, throw in Satanism as well. People are going to do what you say. Exactly. And I think that's what this was. What do you think? Yeah, I'm totally with you on that, actually. I'm to and fro between how much I think Robin Murphy was involved.

But what I keep circling back to is that she was not the head honcho. No, I agree with that. So there you go, guys. Satanic panic. Check. And absolutely, like we talked a lot about the satanic panic in this episode. Obviously, this was really interesting for us to delve into. And if you think

though that the satanic panic is over it's not fucking over there are loads of people currently in prison as a result of the ramifications of the 70s and 80s satanic panic that happened in the US go read about it it's fascinating and horrifying follow us on instagram and on twitter at red handed the pod and you can join our Facebook group, which is great. And I'm going to be dropping another Car Chronicles on Patreon this week. So look out for that. These ones, we're going to be reading the stories that you guys have sent to us in the car. So please check that out. And you can do that on our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash RedHanded

and help us keep the show going. And here are some people who have already done that. We are super appreciative. So thank you very much. John Casey, Alyssa Hagen, Rachel Iboral, Jessica Stewart, Lindsay Lucas Bartlett, AJ Vieira, Mia Pick, Janelle Anthony, Alison Hutley, Sue Ann Evans, Kat Duncombe, Mark Collins, Elise Pantino and Laura Roman. Thank you guys so much. It is genuinely making the world of difference. It's getting us on that route to getting Hannah full time on the podcast so that we can do bigger, better, longer episodes.

So it's very exciting. Yeah, start making waves. Absolutely. So thanks guys. So we will see you next week. Thank you so much for listening. We love you. Goodbye.

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