The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - Deadly Cure | 4. The Limelight

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

Self-appointed archbishops Jim Humble and Mark Grenon begin hosting seminars around the world, and charging $450 per person to attend. But it wasn’t just locals expressing interest in the so-called cure: now, national media was catching wind of the group, thrusting the Genesis II Church further into the limelight. Want the full story? Unlock all episodes of Smoke Screen, ad-free, right now by subscribing to The Binge. Plus, get binge access to brand new stories dropping on the first of every month — that’s all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Just click ‘Subscribe’ on the top of the Smoke Screen show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. A Neon Hum Media, Bloomberg, & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Daniel Smith went to prison in 2015 for selling Miracle Mineral Solution. He said goodbye to his wife, his 11-year-old daughter, his home, and his business. Smith's conviction was a big deal, a cause celeb for the bleach hunters. This wasn't a slap on the wrist. For the first time, a seller was serving real time. MMS was officially on the radar of the federal government. And if the Department of Justice hoped Smith's conviction would deter or spook would-be sellers, that message did not reach Mark Grennan.

There's a saying that I love. I read it on the Missouri Senate when I was in Bible college. It said, nothing is legally right that is morally wrong. I don't care what laws you have. Mark didn't seem to care who was watching. When Daniel Smith was facing a lengthy prison sentence, the Grennans traveled to Southern California to lead a Genesis 2 seminar. Over the course of two days, Mark and his son Jonathan would train and ordain a new batch of Genesis 2 health ministers. We had 50 people at the seminar. They go through the whole thing.

They ingest everything. They try everything. They put it in their eye, their ear, their nose. We show them everything. Attendees paid $450 a pop to be there. It was held in the conference room of a legit hotel. The Grennans weren't hiding. It just seemed like no one was looking.

That is, until the group breaks for lunch. I was coming back from lunch at a seminar. I mean, these guys just surrounded me. This moment is captured on video. Mark and Jonathan are outside, walking along the driveway entrance towards the hotel. The pavement is slick from a recent rain. Mark's got his hands in his pockets, and he's casually chatting with a woman walking alongside him. That's when a man in a suit walks up to them. Brian Ross, ABC News.

Can we talk to you for a second, please? Brian Ross is on assignment with 2020, and he's all business. He's holding what looks like a stack of documents. He's got a lav mic on, and he's trailed by a camera crew. You can treat all those diseases? We are. We are. Check the testimonies out.

We tell people to cure a lot of things. Heal, cure, treat. Ross walks alongside Mark, peppering him with questions. Are you selling poison to these people? Why don't you go? Why don't you go? Are you selling poison? Mark swiffens his gait as they near the hotel entrance. The 2020 crew trails Mark into the hotel lobby.

He is visibly agitated. It looks like he wants to escape the whole scene. The questions, the cameras, the reporter. But then he swings around and faces Ross. ABC's bulls**t. Who owns that? The Rothschilds? It's an anti-Semitic retort. A dog whistle. Mark takes a step towards Ross. Are you really serious?

You're really lost, man. You're so out of touch. Brennan looks directly into the camera. ABC, CBS, Fox News, you're all liars. It's all scripted. This guy's an actor. Are you really serious about this? You're an actor. No It's all scripted. This guy's an actor. Are you really serious about this? You think this... You're an actor. No, I'm a reporter. Mark walks away through a set of French doors

and into an airy courtyard. You're an actor, okay? I'm a reporter. Jonathan is now at his dad's side. His lips are pursed and his brow is furrowed. He looks a little wary. You're a piece of... that they say in Spanish.

Mark steps right up to Ross as Jonathan tries to play peacemaker with the camera crew. Just leave. Go check out the facts, okay? I've asked for live interviews, and you people are bulls*** liars. You're just an actor. You're a puppet. You're a puppet. Mark is inches from Ross, waving his finger right in the reporter's face. You don't know what the hell you're talking about.

I do know what I'm talking about. Yeah, you don't know. You're a scripted actor. Have you seen these? That's all you are. Enjoy yourself, buddy. Grennan gives Ross a pat on the arm and walks away. And then, over his shoulder...

Stupid son of a bitch. Grennan, Genesis 2, MMS, it's all about to go primetime. And it's unclear if the Grennans are ready for it. They say sunlight is the best disinfectant, or the second best disinfectant, I suppose. But for Mark Grennan and Genesis 2, that sunlight was about to shine the brightest on the Church of Bleach. And when it does, their whole operation is exposed. It's the second domino to fall in the case against Mark Grennan and the Genesis

2 church. From Neon Hum Media, Sony Music Entertainment, and Bloomberg, I'm Kristen V. Brown, and this is Smokescreen, Deadly Cure, a podcast about how a family on the fringe convinced tens of thousands of people across the globe to buy a miracle liquid made of poison, the international conspiracy it ignited, and the people who fought to take them down. Episode 4, The Limelight. After the courtyard confrontation with 2020's Brian Ross, Mark and Jonathan returned to the conference room where dozens of seminar

attendees awaited further training. Most were unaware of what had transpired minutes prior. And Mark Brennan, unsurprisingly, didn't miss a beat. The show had to go on. I didn't notice nervousness. It almost seemed like it kind of pumped him up. And we can confirm this because there was another reporter in the conference room, taking notes and filming the whole thing. We just sort of agreed that it would be best for me to go undercover, sort of undercover. Lisa Bartley is an investigative producer for ABC7 Eyewitness News in L.A. She was part of the team that investigated Genesis 2 for 2020.

I mean, I signed up to take the seminar, and I used, you know, my partial real name, and we paid for the seminar. Lisa paid her $450 admission fee, just like the rest of the attendees. She took a seat in the hotel conference room and settled in for two days of Mark and Jonathan-led training. She asked Mark if she could record the event, and he said okay. You know, it was a bunch of tables all in a row, kind of facing the front.

Facing Mark Grennan. The supposed Archbishop Mark Grennan was clearly in charge. He's a showman for sure. He's very gregarious and friendly and animated, and he did most of the talking. Mark and Jonathan stood in front of an overhead projector and pontificated about MMS. And they were showing, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff, you know, before and after photos of, I specifically remember a cat picture that had been treated with MMS for something. Lisa wasn't totally surprised by what she was seeing and

hearing in that conference room. She'd been reporting locally on Genesis 2 for a while. The church first came on her radar through a tip emailed to the station. Said this is an incredible story and a dangerous group. And he said, I believe they have chapters of this supposed church in Southern California. Turns out the tip was solid. There was a Genesis 2 chapter not so far from the Los Angeles station, in Oxnard,

led by Reverend Gary McElroy. A local chapter of a dangerous church, right under their noses. Lisa had to see it for herself. And it turned out to be just this one guy's, you know, his apartment was listed as a church chapter. Lisa and a colleague went out and interviewed Reverend McElroy, the head and sole member of the Oxnard chapter

of the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing. And on his wall, he had a bunch of plaques, you know, that declared him a minister in the Genesis 2 church. McElroy, recently widowed, said he wished his late wife had known about MMS. He really believed in it. He thought he could have saved her life if he had known about it then. He drank the concoction in front of us and mixed it with tomato juice, if I remember correctly. He was friendly.

And I mean, I guess to me, I thought he seemed gullible. But, you know, yeah, too trusting. Trusting, yet wary. This is what she saw in the hopeful expressions of the people at the Genesis 2 seminar, in this dimly lit conference room with low ceilings. And here, Genesis 2 not only offered an antidote to all kinds of illness, it offered a financial opportunity. The true believers wanted to be part of the solution.

And who knows? Maybe earn a few dollars. This seemed like more geared towards if you wanted to make it yourself and perhaps sell it. They talked about how you can buy these ingredients at a store for swimming pool supplies. Lisa sat and took notes with the rest of the attendees. She heard about the various ailments MMS could cure. What a miracle it was. What a miracle the church was, legally. How it could protect them from government interference and prosecution. And even the guy in Oxnard, he said, it's not really a church. You know, yeah, I'm a minister, but no, no, I don't have any followers. And it

was kind of funny the way he put it, that it was just kind of a protection thing, a racket. Mark often boasts about how many Genesis II health ministers and bishops are out there in the world. Those titles suggest clerical leadership, evangelization, devotion. But the scene in the conference room seemed more professional than spiritual. There was no stained glass windows or vaulted ceilings. Archbishop Mark wasn't donning vestments.

He was wearing a black leather jacket over a white t-shirt. Bishop Jonathan was wearing jeans. I still have my little card. They sent me a laminated card that says I'm a minister in the church. Lisa passed the training with flying colors and was an ordained minister. The certificate she received reads, in part, Lisa Ann is hereby elevated to the status of Minister of Health. From this day forward, Reverend Lisa Ann may conduct all business affairs of the chapter to which she was assigned. She is authorized to teach and administer all of

the sacraments, cleansing waters, and other healing methods of the church. It was signed by Archbishops Jim Humble and Mark Grennan. Lisa's undercover work was just one part of the 2020 investigation into the Grennans and Genesis 2. The special report also covered the death of Doug Nash's wife, Sylvia. Fiona O'Leary, the bleach hunter, was in it too. It took aim at Mark Grinnon and the grandfather of MMS, Jim Humble. 2020 and Brian Roth tracked down Humble in a town outside Guadalajara, Mexico. The government says what you're selling is poison, that you're hurting people, you're hurting children. There may have been deaths.

What do you say about that? I'd say it ain't true. You stand by this? Of course. You think that's a good thing for children to take? I do, yes. 2020's special report aired on October 28th, 2016. It was pretty damning.

Millions saw MMS in the harshest light. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the G2 Voice. It is October 30th in the year of the Lord, 2016. Two days after it aired, a little more than a week before the 2016 presidential election, Mark hit the studio. My name is Mark Grennan. This is a special report. He had a lot to say. Things were moving fast. Mark's face had been piped into the homes of millions of Americans, and they didn't like what they saw. And this would prove to be a key turning point in the story of Genesis 2, another moment

where the Grinnons may have gone too far. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the G2 Voice. It is October 30th in the year of the Lord, 2016. And I'm here with... Joseph Grennan. Good morning, guys. This is a special report. Mark's special report on quote-unquote ABC's accusations is almost two hours long. He had a lot to say about the special on his podcast and a lot to say to the reporters involved. After the seminar, Lisa got a letter from Mark. He says, I can go on and show you all the connections of 95% of the world's media

owned by a handful of evil families. You are all puppets, only reporting what your owners tell you. So maybe that is why you don't have much truth in your investigations. You're kind of like a Mickey Mouse detective, huh? Lisa got a message from Jordan Grennan after the story aired, too. He announced that she'd been excommunicated from Genesis 2. In the email, he says, the card and certificate sent to you is now null and void. P.S., Bishop Jonathan said to tell you he knew you were a plant all along. God bless. And Mark had some words for the reporter who wasn't undercover, Ryan Ross.

He was hitting my buttons, Joe. And you've known me. I'm a pretty calm guy. No, I'm not. I'm passionate about a lot of stuff. I'm not screaming. It makes me feel really good in the flesh to tell that scumbag right to his face, you're a piece of dung.

Over the course of the nearly two-hour response, you can hear Mark oscillate between rage and decorum. It's like he's struggling with whether he should be proud or contrite over his on-camera behavior, particularly his confrontation with Ross. You know, they call it the wacky church. ABC did something on 2020. I didn't help it that day, okay? To which I'm sorry. And if anybody out there was discouraged even looking into MMS because I said a few off-color words, I'm sorry for that.

And I even talked to Jim last night a couple times. He agreed, we agreed. And we need it in public. Now we have public voice. Mark brings up this idea of a unified public voice a few times in his ABC reaction tape. Something about this media tension brought Grennan and Humble's differences to the surface. But that was really ticked off me. I really was.

Boy, I tell you what, we're fighters, okay? And so this is why I have to calm down. Jim's like all the time, calm down, Mark. Jim was a boxer. Humble seems concerned about Mark's impulsivity, his bombastic tone and coarse language. You can hear Mark trying to heed Humble's words, but he can only rein it in for so long.

Let me tell you something. You start mocking us with this Bleach Church stuff, and they mock us, Bleach Church. Huh? What are you going to call? The Mormons? The Polygamy Church? Huh? You're going to call the Catholics the Rosary Bee Church? Or the Muslims, you're going to call the Catholics the Rosary Bee Church? Or the Muslims, you're going to call them the Burka Gang? The 2020 report dug into the prevalence of MMS use on children with autism. It exposed the sellers, the marketplace, the misinformation, and the harm. Mark refutes the facts, spreads more misinformation, more conspiracies, and takes aim at one source who spent relatively little time on camera,

Dr. Paul Wang, former senior vice president of Autism Speaks. He's paid, Joe. He's a paid puppet, Dr. Wang Wang. And either way, you're not a genius just because you're a chemist and a doctor. You know, look into common sense. Mark and Joseph hammer home the same message over and over. Not just in this podcast episode. It's a constant drumbeat across the platforms. Don't trust the doctors.

Don't trust the scientists. Don't trust the media. Don't trust the government. Question reality. All of these forces are working together. So please, the propaganda you hear from lies, lies. This is what I like about Trump. You're lying. The media's rigged. Mark said he admired Trump, not only in this podcast, but a bunch of other times leading up to the 2016 election. He liked Trump's honesty, his brashness, his boldness calling out corruption and the swamp. The elections are rigged because these polls, they're just rigging it. Then it's even more

rigged by the electoral votes. That is such a scam, especially if you, the guys that like you own the voting machines. Mark's guy, as we now know, shocked a lot of people. Nine days after Mark said this, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States with 306 electoral votes. As a nation, we were about to enter a new era, one where the internet and politics shifted our definition of truth. It was a world that Mark seemed poised to navigate with or without Jim

Humble. Just about a year after the 2020 expose, in 2017, Jim Humble publicly announced he was retiring and leaving Genesis 2. He explained it in a blog post on his website. Although I'm almost 85 years old, I still have a lot of energy,

and I have a lot of things I must do in this lifetime. But now, along with my retirement, Mark Grennan is head of the Genesis 2 Church of Health and Healing. Jim Humble's announcement was curious. Mark may have had a louder voice, Mark Grennan is head of the Genesis II Church of Health and Healing. Jim Humble's announcement was curious. Mark may have had a louder voice, but Humble was the face of the Miracle Mineral Solution. Any MMS seller worth their salt followed and promoted Humble's protocols. He and Mark seemed like good partners.

Jim was, after all, the grandfather of MMS. He'd been promoting his, quote, American health drink all the way back in 1996 as a gold prospector in South America. We don't have a clear explanation for what prompted Humble's departure, but there are clues. Humble started distancing himself from MMS, Genesis 2, and Grennan

the day after the 2020 piece aired. He posted this to his blog. There are certainly times I've said some things that I probably should have said differently. In the past, I have stated that MMS cures most of all diseases. Today, I say that MMS cures nothing. Jim Humble says MMS cures nothing. The guy who coined the name Miracle Mineral Solution, who published all those books championing MMS for decades, just comes out and says it cures nothing. That is a dramatic about face. Something to notice.

And there are some tells in his retirement announcement. He's very careful with his wording. He emphasizes that he's leaving the church, and going forward, his name will not be affiliated with Genesis 2. And at the bottom of the announcement, Humble slaps on this long disclaimer. It's like something you'd hear on an infomercial about how MMS is not FDA approved. So what was going on?

Why did Humble distance himself from Genesis 2 and Mark? It's possible the 2020 piece spooked him. Where Mark saw enemies to be vanquished, Humble may have seen litigation and liabilities. Maybe he didn't think the church loophole was as strong as Grennan did. Maybe he was trying to stay in the game off the FDA's radar. Maybe he was building a future defense. Jim Humble's son has a different take. He doesn't think his dad is that calculating, and he lays it at Mark Grennan's feet. You realize Mark Grennan is a village idiot, right?

Those are my words. Those are my words. We interviewed him for this podcast. He didn't want to be tape recorded, though. This is an actor. My dad is a very trusting individual. And unfortunately, he's also a very bad judge of character.

Telling him that Mark is unethical. Mark's a loose, a loose cannon. And you don't know what he's doing. You only know what Mark's telling you. And this guy? This guy is a known braggart. And he misrepresents the truth. Um, you really don't want to be anywhere near that kind of guy.

And fortunately, my dad listened to me and walked away. So Jim walks away. He disappears completely from public view. And by now, Mark has seen the FDA warnings, the publicized death of Doug Nash's wife Sylvia, the nightmarish use of MMS on autistic children by parents following Carrie Rivera's autism protocol, Daniel Smith's trial conviction, the 2020 expose on Mark in Genesis 2. And kind of like Trump himself, he seems unfazed by this controversy. While the media, advocates, even the federal

government are sounding the alarm, Mark Grennan was busy taking Genesis 2 to new heights. And some new foes were already there, watching, waiting to pounce. At this point, it wasn't clear where the Grenons were operating out of. And that mattered. If they were in the United States, the FDA could pursue them. But if they lived abroad, it was trickier. By 2019, Mark claims on his podcast that Genesis 2 has over 3,500 members worldwide,

200 churches, 135 countries. This was no longer just a church offering its sacrament for a humble, maybe mandatory donation. This was a full-on operation with seminars and, most importantly, sales, an exchange of money for product. They were manufacturing, promoting, selling, and distributing the drug. And notably, promoting that drug as a cure for a variety of diseases. And with a few exceptions, selling and marketing of unapproved drugs is illegal. That's what the bleach hunters have been trying to prove. But it didn't matter at this point

what 2020 said about the Grettins, because they had their own platform that piped in information to their own audience. And their audience wasn't looking to major outlets like ABC for their information anyway. Many were actively avoiding it. In their view, mainstream media was in on the plot. They operated in a parallel universe.

But that doesn't mean they were entirely on their own. While the Grennans continued to expand their operations to promote their international seminars, their church membership, and their sacrament, the bleach hunters were watching. It's the middle of the night. Dark, still, quiet. Melissa Eaton is sitting in front of her computer while her kids sleep.

When the day's over and, you know, the kids are in bed, then we go to work. Go to work tracking down MMS wherever it spreads. Melissa is in her early 40s with long brown hair and has the North Carolina accent to prove she's from somewhere between Tobacco Road and the NASCAR Hall of Fame. If the bleach hunters are this loosely affiliated group of keyboard warriors hunting down MMS sellers around the world, Melissa is the chief bleach hunter in the U.S. office. This is her turf, which matters because she's the one on the ground, gathering evidence that she can send to the FDA. And if she ever wants to see the Grinnens fall,

it's going to be because the FDA comes after them. The FDA isn't just important in the U.S. It only has authority to regulate what happens in the U.S., but its influence is global. Melissa's good at the job she's given herself. She's got a near photographic memory. She spots the little things. She takes meticulous notes,

gathers evidence, and quietly turns most of it over to the government. It's really like solving a giant puzzle. And, you know, sometimes it can take hours or days to put all the dots together to actually come up with what we need to report. But it's not just skills. It's our style of reporting.

A lot of what we do as far as with the peddlers, it requires a certain amount of secretiveness. Melissa has developed her own methodology over time. In the early days, she thought it'd be easier. I was a bit naive and I thought this is going to be, you know, this is easy. We can, you know, make some calls. We can make people aware this is going on. Melissa got involved in the issue in 2016, after Sylvia Nash died. She read about the prosecution of Daniel Smith and had reached out to the DOJ because she wanted to do something about the sellers of MMS. They referred her to the FDA. She learned that a case needed to be brought to prosecutors for these sellers to be indicted. The problem that the FDA has as far as getting on top of the sellers is that for the FDA to prosecute these sellers, there has to be two aspects.

There has to be you're selling it and promoting it as a cure, treatment, mitigation for any disease or condition. And so what happens is you have all these suppliers that are just selling it who are behind closed doors connecting with these group owners. So you have one person promoted it while one person sells it. And the FDA has to be able to piece that together and show like a conspiracy to provide that product for the unintended use. And that's where it kind of makes it difficult. And so Melissa had made it her mission to piece these elements together, to roll up an investigation out of what she'd found in her research and then turn it over to the feds. And then it becomes a bigger issue that we have proof that there's harm being done.

So that's when we get to work trying to locate them. Melissa's reported hundreds of these cases. One still haunts her. One of them was a family with two children. One child was autistic and one child was neurotypical. And the mother was so ingrained in this whole chlorine dioxide protocol and everything that the children were getting the oral doses, but they were also getting the enema doses, and it was just a very strange parenting situation. The mom had a name for this parenting activity, Family Bonding Time. They would read Little House on the Prairie stories, and that she would do an enema and

then do one on the kids, and the kid was in the video, and the kid was in the video and the kid was around my son's age and that one was just really, really hard for me. Hard as it is, it's cases like these that keep her on the trail of MMS distributors. And on one of those late nights, when the kids had gone to bed, she stumbled upon something.

A huge break. It was a social media post from Jonathan Grennan. It starts with a shot of a white shed, surrounded by mud and grass, with the caption, where we began. We meander over to what looks like a cross between a circus tent and a shade structure you might take to the beach. There are sheets, maybe blankets, hanging off the sides like makeshift walls. Eventually, we get a shot of some lumber. And then the camera spins around to show us Jonathan's face, peering into the lens. The music fades out, and Jonathan starts to give us a tour of the property. This is kind of how we're trying to do it.

He steps inside one shed to reveal rows of metal racks and large plastic storage containers. In this video, like so many of the videos he posted, Jonathan Grennan seems carefree. He's proud of how far they've come. It doesn't seem like he has any idea that the video might ever be used against him. But that's the thing about the internet.

You never know who's watching. I think it was like a 15-minute video. Like Melissa. She's watching the video. It kind of was like a 15-minute video. Like Melissa. She's watching the video. It kind of moved like a progression to like building onto a building, onto the house, and just like really showing how they had went from just mixing these chemicals in the backyard under a tarp, basically, to the setup that they currently had. And she notices something in that setup with all those barrels.

This video that Jonathan posted, all of a sudden Melissa realizes this is evidence. Up until this point, Melissa and her friends thought the Grinnons were making MMS outside the U.S. There was ceramic tile. There were evergreen trees that just didn't seem to add up that this could possibly be in the Dominican Republic or Colombia. Melissa focuses in on the video, plays it back. Where are they? I don't know if you've ever been to Florida or southern Georgia,

but the grass there grows out of, like like a gray sand. A gray sand. Where most other parts of the U.S., it's like red mud. So it's like, okay, this looks like Florida. Florida. Melissa's like, they're making the MMS here, in the U.S., in Florida. They're not out of reach at all. It's just a lot of details that kind of family made it all add up to all this was being manufactured in a residential neighborhood in Bradenton, Florida. Got them. Melissa sends what she knows to the FDA.

She doesn't hear back. When she let the feds know that the Grenin's were distributing MMS from a neighborhood outside Tampa, she couldn't be sure the government would do anything about it. Would they? Regularly warns consumers to be cautious of websites and stores, selling products with unproven claims to prevent, treat, diagnose, or cure COVID-19 or use unauthorized tests. And these products might actually be dangerous to patients. Next on Deadly Cure, the world is thrown into an international health crisis. MMS becomes an even larger threat, and the government finally decides to put its thumb on the scales.

The mission? To take down dangerous and false medicines that claim to be cures. Its name? To help tackle the issue of health fraud during the pandemic, the FDA has launched Operation Quack Hack, which monitors online marketplaces for fraudulent products and identifies misinformation about COVID-19. Operation Quack Hat. Thank you. Our associate producers are Editing by Catherine St. Louis and Maureen McMurray. Catherine St. Louis is our executive editor. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville.

Theme and original music composed by Asha Ivanovich. Catherine Nguyen is our fact checker. Our production manager is Sammy Allison. Alexis Martinez is our podcast coordinator. Our executive producers are Jonathan Hirsch, Katie Boyce, and Jared Sandberg. Thomas Buckley's reporting on Genesis 2 for Bloomberg informed the development of this series. Special thanks to Chloe Chobel, Krista Ripple, Stephanie Serrano, Odelia Rubin,

Liz Sanchez, Shara Morris, and Jeff Grocott. I'm Kristen B. Brown. Be sure to rate and review the show. It helps more people find and hear this story. Thanks for listening.

For emergency assistance, please call Poison Help at 1-800-222-1222 to speak with a poison expert or visit poisonhelp.org for additional resources.