The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - Deadly Cure | 8. The Rattlesnake King

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

Genesis II has recently gained a significant following in some South American countries, according to local reports. Hundreds of buyers have been lining up outside makeshift MMS distribution centers in poor rural communities as the pace of Covid vaccination falls behind that of major cities. What does the story of MMS tell us about the future of public health in the U.S. and abroad? How we can foster informed, trusted dialogue around science and health globally? 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

It was 1893 at the Chicago World's Fair when the original snake oil salesman entered the limelight. Clark Stanley, a.k.a. the Rattlesnake King, traded in spectacle. Onlookers would swarm his booth at the fair, even though it was off the beaten path, where he kept a sack of live snakes. And he had a shtick. He was dressed like a cowboy with a beaded leather jacket and bandana. He would grab a knife and slice the snake right down the middle,

and then drop the snake into boiling water. I can imagine that crowd, their shriek of fright and delight, as Clark dropped that live snake into the bubbling stew. The hiss and crackle of flesh meeting boiling water. The gasp of onlookers. The fat from the rattler would rise to the top of the water in these white, viscous chunks. That, he claimed, was a miracle cure, an ancient solution he'd learned from Hopi medicine men.

Snake oil. But here's something you might not know. Snake oil, the real stuff, it actually works. It's a Chinese folk remedy to treat joint pain that probably made its way to the U.S. with rail workers building the American West. It's rich in omega-3 fatty acids

that really do seem to help reduce inflammation. Chinese rail workers offered it to their colleagues as a way to treat the aches and pains of long days on the job. Stanley's miracle cure? It consisted of mineral oil, something that was probably beef fat, red pepper, and turpentine. Congress later passed a law

that would eventually become the modern FDA in order to go after people like Stanley. In the end, he was fined just 20 bucks for violating it, or about $541 today. He would slip out of public view, but his fortune basically remained intact. I'm telling you this story because it's striking to me how similar it is to the story of MMS, over a hundred years later. The FDA was created to make sure

that if you bought something labeled snake oil, there was actually snake oil in it and that it would help you, not hurt you. The FDA has never been able to keep up with all of the quacks out there, but they're also the only agency who can stop peddlers of fake medicine. How do you stop MMS?

At the end of this journey through this bizarre world, it's a question I keep asking myself. And for the government, it seems like there was only one solution to ridding the world of a supposed quack cure. You cut off the head of the snake. 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 8, The Rattlesnake King. In April of 2021, a grand jury indites Jordan, Jonathan, Joseph, and Mark on one count of criminal contempt and conspiracy, and on a second count of defrauding the U.S., and on a third count of delivering misbranded drugs.

This is Thomas Buckley. We work together. Thomas was among the first reporters to start looking into the Grennans and their bleach empire. He remembers when each of the family members was criminally charged. It was a pretty big deal. And an escalation. Remember, Judge Kathleen Williams issued a temporary restraining order against the Genesis II Church and the Grennan family back in 2020. It basically barred them from labeling or distributing any misbranded drug, which obviously included MMS.

So the criminal contempt piece of it is actually very simple. So what that means is that despite the fact that the Grennans and Genesis 2 had received an injunction to immediately stop selling any misbranded drugs, including MMS, they continue to do so, and there's a mountain of evidence to corroborate that. So basically, the government told the Grenins to stop selling MMS. This product is being sold.

The money Genesis 2 is receiving doesn't function as a donation. It was very much a one-for-one system. Whoever sent in a donation to the amount of about $20 would receive a G2 sacramental kit. Which, of course, is more of a sale than a donation. The government was tracking every sale. Every bottle shipped out. So the government asserts that the Grenons

distributed over 28,000 bottles of MMS to the American public. 28,000 bottles. That's a whole lot of bleach. But the thing is, it wasn't the product, the raw materials of MMS that was special. It was the idea. And as a result of those sales, over time, the Grenons received more than $1 million. They were selling an idea. And they were certainly on track to earn another $1 million in 2020 after they claimed that MMS could cure COVID. A million. That's impressive for a family operation.

And that's just direct transactions between the Grenins and their church. It's not accounting for the global spread of MMS, the countless sellers in virtually every country in the world. That temporary restraining order did very little to stop the Grenins, which means they broke the law again. They knowingly, directly disobeyed the lawful order to cease selling MMS and continued to label, hold, and distribute an unapproved and misbranded drug. You know a lot of this story. Mark and Joseph are finally caught. Joseph is extradited in December 2021.

And his extradition terms show that he's only being tried for the first count of criminal contempt and not the other two. Mark is then extradited some months later in July of 2022. The Grennan's most recent status conference occurs and Judge Altenoga sets a new trial, which is for July of 2023. This isn't just a warning they can defy, not just a slap on the wrist. If found guilty, the Grennans are facing years behind bars. The Grennans in the first instance, so count one of conspiracy, are facing

up to five years imprisonment. And for counts two and three, which is the criminal contempt, which you'll remember as being them defying an order willfully to keep on selling MMS, they could face up to life imprisonment. Here's what we do know. We'll be in that courtroom in July 2023, reporting on the trial. What all this means for the larger MMS phenomenon, that's a much tougher question to answer. What happened to the Grinnons is the story of what happens

to a lot of people when they think they're too big to fail. The Grinnons, like I've mentioned before, wouldn't speak to us for this podcast. But it does seem clear. Even after ABC. Even after the FDA's warnings. Even after federal criminal charges. The Grenin's still saw themselves as above it.

For a while, at least. But to really understand this case, you have to look beyond the legalese and out at the perfect storm that bred MMS. There is, you know, the fact that people don't trust big institutions and don't want to look to the government or the CDC or, you know, big media for the answers to their problems. I think there's kind of a breakdown in trust that is going on right now,

and people are turning to alternative solutions. Davy Alba covers misinformation. She's a colleague of mine here at Bloomberg, and she also feeds my cats when I'm on vacation. As she points out, one might be drawn to something like MMS because they've experienced some sort of hardship and they're looking for a way out. I think at the core of it, people have situations in their lives

that are legitimately terrifying. They're economically insecure. They have health problems. They are sort of at the whims of systems where, you know, there isn't an easy answer. But I think our brains are sort of wired to look for that easy answer. And in that sort of vulnerable moment, these outrageous miracle solutions can take hold. Part of what helps sell an outrageous cure to a vulnerable until they are just in the water in the conversation. And the outrageousness of something like bleach being medicine is no longer outrageous. This repetition happens because of social media platforms. They're in the business of keeping you on the page for as long as possible.

Of course, it may not start on Facebook or Twitter. There are communities that come together around a certain idea and they feed off of each other for a long time and those communities grow. And in some cases, those communities are subject to algorithms from social networks, such as Facebook's algorithms, which prioritize outrage and honestly conspiratorial thinking because it's entertaining. That's how all this germinates, in small circles. And then sometimes there's an inciting incident, like what happened in spring 2020. All the people who are in these groups that, you know, feel like they're onto something

but haven't gotten that kind of national stage become really, really excited. And I think that's what happened in the moment when Trump floated the idea that bleach could be a cure for the coronavirus. But it's not hard to think of the other ingredients that help create this perfect storm of misinformation. Think about what we've lost.

Local newspapers, community gathering spaces, reliable, fact-based information. The people that you end up trusting and the sources you end up trusting are just other people who are also sort of conspiracy-minded like yourself. The idea of MMS spread from person to person like a game of telephone. The sourcing of knowledge becomes another person,

you know, someone you have emotional ties to because you're in this together, sort of finding out the quote-unquote truth. And that truth that is published on any one of these websites that are connected to the government or media or big institutions, educational institutions can't be trusted. And I think that also closes off communities to outside knowledge coming in. But like all big issues, particularly some of the biggest of our time, this one is complicated. It's too easy to blame people who consume this type of content. They're the ones who have been failed by multiple systems so that they feel like they have to, you know, grasp in the dark for answers.

And that makes them have a very vulnerable mindset to, you know, trickery and sort of these snake oil salesmen. But in a lot of cases, it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle. I think as long as there are people who are willing to hawk this thing, and in a warped way, I'm sure some of those people truly believe in its ability to quote-unquote cure and not harm. It's a basic issue of supply and demand. Buying sodium chloride isn't illegal, so as long as people want it, there will be people to sell it. And I think that's the thing we have to unwind, is that vulnerability of people to believe things that are simply not true. It's really hard to do that, to convince people who already bought into a certain mindset that is simply not science and facts of the physical world, that bleach is harmful.

Genesis 2 is just one of MMS's many lives. It started with Jim Humble. It was reborn with Daniel Smith and Project Green Life. It thrived as the Genesis 2 church. Now it's ubiquitous, almost hard to keep track of, as it masquerades as a cure-all and its peddlers cosplay as healers. There's Andres Kalkar, accused of pushing bleach as a cure for COVID that ultimately killed a five-year and its peddlers cosplay as healers. There's Andres Kalkar, accused of pushing bleach as a cure for COVID

that ultimately killed a five-year-old boy in Argentina. There's Kerry Rivera, who was raided by German authorities and remains on the lam. And Commisov, a fringe anti-vaccine group that parades as a legitimate health organization, which, of course, it's not. They all still promote MMS. We reached

out to all of them and didn't hear back. But then there's all the disciples. The smaller branches on the trees Genesis 2 and Jim Humble planted. The names we don't know. People who believe in a miracle. Take a little bit of it and then give it to their friends to take too. Because Kamyasava there, and there are people forming Genesis 2 groups as we speak. And the Genesis 2 have trained those people. They have learned everything. Everything that is now, that is operating now, has come from the Genesis 2.

All the protocols, all of Jim humble's crazy teachings they use those protocols and they're like tweaking them or whatever but like if they go away it doesn't mean it's gone away you know what are we saying here we have to be attentive to what's happening here now you know like this If you've been looking to buy MMS in the last year or so, you may recognize Christopher Key. He's white, middle-aged, has some gray streaks throughout his dark, spiky hair, drives a sedan with big block lettering on it. Vaccinepolice.com. The parts of the car that aren't emblazoned with his website are covered with the U.S. Constitution and the Confederate flag. This is who the MMS baton is being passed

on to. An example of it, at least. Christopher Key is a friend of Mark Grennan's. He actually wasn't always super interested in chlorine dioxide. He was primarily interested in vaccines. So much so that lately he's been talking about arresting every governor to mandate vaccines. What Christopher calls a bioweapon. And to get to those states with vaccine-mandating governors, he'll drive his big vaccine police vehicle, which he says he doesn't need a license to drive

because it's actually a wagon, not a car. Anyway, he got really interested in MMS after Mark and his son were charged. Once he got put in prison, I've seen so many people benefiting from it, so I decided to carry on and continue to make sure those that needed chlorine dioxide, Like this woman, Mary. She called Christopher about her cousin with COVID.

She was looking for MMS. She taped the call. You can probably figure this out. Mary is not Mary. It's another pseudonym for, you guessed it, Fiona. So how does this work? How do they get it from you, Christopher? Thank you.

They send me a text with their name and address. Okay. And if there's any way they could possibly donate to vaccine-police.com that helps me put up more billboards. He says it'll show up in about two weeks

from Alabama. Can they collect from you personally? Just, I mean, they're quite... No, okay. No, that's okay. No.

That's okay. You're great. Love you. God bless you. Bye. Bye. I love you. Bye.

Bye. Love you. Christopher's philosophy surrounding MMS looks a lot like Mark's. He's tried to separate himself from any sort of liability and certainly seemed to be doing that when we talked to him. My name is Thomas Buckley. I'm a reporter in London for Bloomberg. How are you? I'm always fabulous. Key, unlike the Grennans, has instituted a separation of church and state.

He says his ministry does not peddle MMS. My ministry has no association with his. They're completely totally different entities. He makes that abundantly clear. There's no sale taking place here. He's admin, almost offended anyone would suggest otherwise. He says claiming chlorine dioxide cures anything would be practicing medicine without a license, would land him in jail. Just like Mark Grennan's doctor friends

in the Dominican Republic had warned him at the start of all this. The thing is, those who want MMS can get MMS. How they get it, how they spend their money, and where it goes, it's all a little besides the point. He says so himself. It's why this whole thing is so sticky. Even with the Grenons in prison, and even with a years-long attempt by regulators and prosecutors to put the kibosh on the whole operation, MMS is still for sale.

And that's why the cat is out of the bag, the genie's out of the bottle, the snowball is going down the ceiling. You can't put this back in the bottle. And you can write as many hit books as you want to about me and Mark Grennan and everybody else. Not even Fiona would disagree. But at this point, it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle. The only thing that makes me feel hopeful is that they will get a very severe punishment,

which in turn might frighten people. Like the whack-a-mole and telegram, there's no point. Like someone said, why don't I report these people to Telegram? Telegram is like hell. It's like going to Satan and asking him to help you. The Grennans can go to prison. But tonight, I can almost bet you Melissa's going to go back to her computer, compiling reports on parents giving their unwitting children this concoction.

Eli Dagon will be back at his post, meticulously tracking details missed by most. Fiona's going to be back, poised to fight. This job won't stop. I'm in too deep, you know, and it is like that for me. Like, I won't stop until they're all stopped. There will always be a new seller to expose. The bigger problem is that trust in our systems is broken.

And that is what needs to be restored. Until then, Fiona and the other bleach hunters will stay on watch. She imagines what she might say if she were face-to-face with Mark Grennan. I would say to Mark Grennan that you are an evil man, a child abuser, a criminal, and someone that doesn't have any regard for human life. And it is that. It's not just about the money. Mark Grennan, he knew what he was doing to autistic children. So I would probably just say to Mark Grennan, fuck you. That would be it.

Because he's trash to me. With a major seller behind bars, we wanted to know, how easy is it to get MMS? The FDA told us that it continues to, quote, vigorously monitor fraudulent and illegal products. But has the pressure from the government made a difference? I wanted to find out. On a recent December morning, I picked up a package outside my house. I'd gone online in search of a place where I could buy MMS.

And I found one. Pretty easily, actually. Within, like, two minutes. On this online marketplace where you usually find homemade arts and crafts. It's pretty popular. I buy pottery and clogs from there. And the seller was in Imperial, California. They could ship it fast, like in 48

hours. I called up our executive producer, Jonathan, when it arrived. So opening the box within an envelope now. Okay. These things are so, like, I really am going to break a nail in this quest. It's Etsy. I bought it on Etsy. Oh, it's cute. It's like very sweetly packaged. Oh my gosh. Now, we didn't buy the Grenin's version of MMS. It's not even called MMS. This version is marketed as water purification. But it's the same chemical elements as the Grenin stuff.

They're sending us good vibes with our poison. Oh my god, my hand is like stinging. I have a cut on my hand and I think the bleach got in it. So we bought this on Etsy and on Etsy there was not anything that indicated this should be used for anything other than water purification, right? You're camping, you're backpacking, whatever. These people are very clearly selling something to ingest for a health purpose. But on Etsy, they are not marketing it that way. So there it was. None of it was too hard.

We didn't spend a long time looking online, waiting for it to ship, or even assembling the concoction. It wasn't the Grennan's brand of MMS, but it did pop up when I typed MMS into the Etsy search bar, or Jim Humble. The whole process was seamless, as easy as ordering groceries online or clogs. We reached out to Etsy to ask if selling MMS on their platform violated their rules. Just two days later, they removed MMS listings from their site and told us that selling hazardous substances is not allowed. But a few days later, I did a Google search for where to buy MMS. Product listings for it popped up on three other sites. Sites you have definitely heard of and probably shop on all the time.

MMS is easy to find if you are looking for it. It made me wonder how easy it might be to find if you aren't looking for it at all. Anyway, maybe it was the repetitive feedback loop that Davey talked about. Maybe someone advertised it to them on an alt-right podcast or through a stranger on Telegram. Maybe they weren't looking for this at all, but a toxic blend of misinformation, unregulated online marketplaces, and a fraying institutional trust shoved it in their face, normalized it. It's not hard to see how that might have happened. It was easy to buy MMS online.

Imagine what it's like to make it at home. So when you mix your sodium chloride with your citric acid, people are dosing it. they're making it themselves now. So we've had lots of websites shut down. People are making this in their kitchen. So people are just making their own batches at home. So they're not even measuring, you know, they're just putting bits in.

So they're getting a lot of a much more potent dose when they're ingesting. So, who's responsible? The Grennons may go to prison. Carrie Rivera may face charges at some point. But in a lot of ways, this will continue. It'll be MMS or something else. And it'll sicken and kill other people too.

And that's part of what makes the story of MMS and the Grinnons so messy. What's your name? Deputy. Okay, you too? Okay, I got you guys. And it brings me back to that video, the one where Jonathan Grinnon is shouting at the cops. So guess what? You are going to be followed up. We've written the president and we're going to talk to the sheriff. You should stay away from here. He seems scared, yes. Angry, for sure. But also confident. Like, he's not speaking to the cops.

He's speaking almost to the camera. To the viewers on Genesis 2's many social channels. It matters more what they think, it seems. So the story of the Grennans is, in a way, a story of the internet. Sometimes it feels like we live in a world where it doesn't matter if you've got it right. It only matters if someone is listening. You have no right here. You are nothing to me. You are nothing.

Smokescreen Deadly Cure is an original production by Neon Hum Media, Sony Music Entertainment, and Bloomberg. It was written and produced by Carla Green, Kate Mishkin, and Jonathan Hirsch. Our associate producers are Navani Otero, Zoe Kulkin, and Anne Lim. Production assistants from Stacey Wong, Gilda DiCarli, and Magnus Henriksen. Editing by Jonathan Hirsch, 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 Ivanovic.

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 V. 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.