Uncover - S6 "Satanic Panic" E1: 'It was such a perfect place'

Episode Date: February 11, 2020

Police Officer Claudia Bryden is drawn into a bizarre case unfolding in the peaceful Prairie town of Martensville, Saskatchewan. What starts with a single complaint about an alleged sexual assault in a home daycare grows into something bigger and more disturbing than anyone could have imagined. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/uncover-season-6-satanic-panic-transcripts-listen-1.5437487

Queer life in Montreal was wild. Montreal in the 90s was a great time, but it had a dark side. It was not a safe city for gay people back then. But what else was behind a series of deaths in the city? Somebody's killing gay men, and we want to know why. I'm Francis Pruort, and this is The Village, The Montreal Murders. Get early access to episodes at cbc.ca slash listen, or by subscribing to the CBC True Crime Premium channel on Apple Podcasts.

This is a CBC Podcast. This is very unnatural for me to speak to the media. I don't really have a lot of interest in having anything to do with the media. I'm sitting across from Claudia Bryden in a hotel room in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It's a meeting that, after months of back and forth, I didn't think was going to happen. But the reason I'm here mainly is, well, it's partly because you're a very tenacious woman.

Claudia is long out of policing, but she still carries herself like a cop, with a straight-spined confidence. She measures her words carefully. Nearly 30 years ago, Claudia was at the center of an infamous case in the tiny prairie town of Martinsville. But she's kept quiet since. Until now. I feel like now is a good time.

It's the first time in a very long time that it's felt right. The investigation started out very simply and started out small, like a lot of large cases do. And there were no signs of anything really unusual at the beginning. It was just a matter of, you know, a parent reporting that their child had been abused, and that's where it began. What started with a single allegation grew into something bigger and farther reaching than anyone could have imagined. Interviewing children is tough.

And listening to them is hard. And watching them cry as they talk. And seeing their parents off, sitting in the distance, crying. And of course, I needed to stay composed. I still have scars on the inside of my cheeks. I would swallow my own blood in the middle of interviewing children because I did not want to show that this was difficult for me to get through as well. And so, yeah, I have permanent scars from biting down just to try to get through things.

After months of investigation, gruesome details begin to emerge of sexual abuse and torture, and of rituals as terrifying as they are bizarre. And these details would connect Claudia's case to a rash of others across this continent and beyond. It's like a bad dream. It's not something you'd think happened in small town Saskatchewan. 27 years later, sitting here, recalling these things, it is horrible to think of the stuff that went on. This isn't a work of fiction.

This is a work of history. It wasn't the lack of corroborative evidence that concerned me. It was the lack of corroborative evidence when there should have been corroborative evidence. How do you get over something like this? Our lives are gone. Our reputation is gone. Our job is gone. It seems to be a memory that everyone still carries. Sitting here today all these years later, I don't even want to hear that. It's not me. I never did it. That is what is going to be associated with me until I go to my grave. Their innocence is taken away. Everybody's looking for a pedestal.

They're going to come in and steal some children and use them for their rituals. I'm Lisa Brynrundel, and this is Uncover. Satanic Panic. Episode 1. It was such a perfect place. Throughout the 80s, a strange phenomenon was sweeping North America. Underground satanic cults were believed to be torturing and terrorizing children, forcing them to take part in sadistic rituals,

then deftly covering their tracks. Scores of perpetrators allegedly committing the most heinous crimes imaginable against hundreds of children. A new term is coined to describe this emerging epidemic. Satanic ritual abuse. In ritual abuse, in addition to assaulting a child physically and sexually, there is an attempt to turn the child around in terms of what a child's belief system is. Cases popped up in Jordan, Minnesota, Kern County, and Manhattan Beach, California. They have been indicted, after all, on the belief that they sexually assaulted and terrorized more than 100 children in their care.

Then in Florida, North Carolina, Arkansas, Texas. She and her three-year-old brother were involved in numerous sex acts with their parents and others, and were forced to take part in rituals where animals were sacrificed and the devil was summoned. The judge was told about allegations of murder and mutilation. There were 30, 60, 100 child victims, targeted by 7 perpetrators, or 24, or 36. And it spread further still,

taking root in cozy Canada. The sensational child abuse case gripped the city of Hamilton for 16 months as the revelations of two little girls grew more and more bizarre. They said they were forced into sexual activity, pornography, even cannibalism. The allegations were horrifying, but the truth was almost as disturbing. After dozens of exhaustive investigations,

no conclusive evidence of these crimes was ever found. Anywhere. But there were trials and convictions, and people did go to prison. Some for decades. It was a world turned upside down. The result of a strange kind of mass panic that swept up police, prosecutors, psychologists, social workers, journalists, parents, and children. Fear had conjured into being a new kind of truth, one that didn't require proof, but was fueled instead by unshakable belief alone. And that made it very real for all involved. Including those of us who were just watching from afar. The 80s was the decade I went from being a little kid to a proto-adult,

and Satan was really everywhere. There were so many stories about cults and sacrifices and rituals and worse, and I didn't really question any of it. It just twisted its way into the Rubik's Cube of my consciousness and stayed there, unsolved. By 1992, that confounding puzzle would make its way to the quiet prairie town of Martinsville, Saskatchewan. The chaos that followed became known as the Martinsville Nightmare. And nearly 30 years later, the people touched by it all are still picking up the pieces. So tell me the story, you know, if we were at a dinner party and I said, Oh, you worked in Martinsville around that time. What happened? Wow.

I don't know if we can complete dinner. When Randy Cheddock moved to Martinsville in the late 80s, he liked the place immediately. A kind of snug oasis under the great dome of prairie sky. It was a smaller community just north of Saskatoon. Very quiet community. It was off smaller community just north of Saskatoon. Very quiet community. It was off the main highway. And a really tight-knit group of people that lived in that community.

Martinsville attracted so many young families, people started calling it Diaperville. There were somewhere shy of 4,000 people living there at the time, but the town had its own municipal police service. And Randy was pretty happy to become one of its handful of officers. You know what? I thought I was going to be in Martinsville for my whole career. Honestly, it was just like, it was such a perfect place, close to a big city, but you didn't have all those big city problems. People were really, really nice and welcomed me and my family. And we made some good friends there. And yeah, I thought I was going to be there for a long time.

But it wasn't all perfect. In 1991, as summer descends into fall, the Martinsville Police Service is a bit of a mess. According to the province's police commission, long-standing problems are coming to a head. Files mishandled or misplaced altogether, generally shoddy police work, and mismanagement. One officer is off on suspension, and so is the chief. Another officer is off with an injury, all of which leaves the modestly staffed Martinsville Police Service pretty much unable to serve.

I was one of a number of constables that were hired to help fill the holes. Claudia Bryden is home in Saskatoon, caring for her two young children, when she gets a call asking if she can help out. Because it was only supposed to be four to six weeks, right? Very temporary. Claudia had started her law enforcement career at a small detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the RCMP, one prairie province over in Manitoba. It was the kind of posting where you might be the only law enforcement officer for miles, where you can find yourself completely on your own facing any number of calls, from break-ins to assaults to murders. It was tough work, but Claudia found great purpose

in it. Nevertheless, seven months in, when her husband, also a cop, got a job in Saskatoon, Claudia resigned. And so, with two small children at home, she hadn't been planning to go back to work quite yet. I hadn't been to Martinsville, you know, until I was there two nights before because I was sworn in with a few other people, but I didn't know Martinsville at all. So my first shift was an orientation shift, and I was taken to the Sterling home for coffee.

That would be the home of Ron and Linda Sterling. Ron is assistant deputy director of a correctional center not far out of town. He's buddies with some of the local police officers. And the Sterling house is a frequent hangout. Linda Sterling runs a home daycare.

For some reason it was very important for me to be taken there the first night. You know, they were very friendly. You know, said I could come there anytime for coffee, and they offered to babysit my kids if I needed a daycare. And I said, thank you, now I've got that covered. When I imagine Claudia and Ron and Linda meeting for that first time, they all seem so small,

oblivious to the storm gathering above them in the vast, inscrutable sky. It was about to hit, hard and fast, upending their lives. In the last days of September, 1991, a Martinsville mom, a nurse, notices redness and broken skin on her child's bottom. The girl is two and a half, and she's had some diarrhea.

But what her mother sees strikes her as something angrier than a typical diaper rash. She asks her daughter what happened. The girl says that a stranger had, quote, been poking her. Later that evening, her mother asks about it again. The toddler says, the stranger poked her with a pink rope. That was Thursday. On Friday, when her mother asks again, the girl tells her that the stranger lives at Linda's. Linda Sterling's. Where she goes to daycare.

Over the weekend, the parents ask more questions, and the girl provides more details. By Monday, they reach out to the Martinsville police. The girl's father explains that, based on his daughter's descriptions, he believes she has been sexually assaulted by Ron and Linda's adult son, Travis Sterling. by Ron and Linda's adult son, Travis Sterling. The parents take the child to a doctor, who sees no signs of abuse. But they remain convinced. I tell people, you know, it's a good thing I didn't know what was coming because I would have run.

I would have been gone. Officer Claudia Bryden is handed the file on October 1st. She's just a day into her investigation when the station's secretary hands her a game-changing little rectangle of paper, an index card from the station's filing system for old cases. They had a card ex, you know, those little rolly things. And they had the names of accused in this Rolodex. And she had gone through there and she found a card with Travis Sterling's name on it.

And there was just very basic information. So his name, his date of birth, and the allegation, sexual assault. his date of birth, and the allegation, sexual assault. Travis Sterling had been accused of sexual assault by someone else. Claudia goes looking for the old case file and finds a single page, crumpled and torn, shoved in the back of a filing cabinet. You know, as an investigator, when you trip across an old complaint like that, it sends up a big red flag.

And I had a very bad feeling, you know. And that feeling only got worse when I found, actually located the physical file and discovered that nothing had been done. The complaint dates back to 1988. A nine-year-old girl had reported being groped, repeatedly, while at the Sterling daycare. According to a deeply reported magazine story, police did interview Travis,

but charges were never laid. One of the investigating officers said the parents didn't seem inclined to proceed. But the girl's mother said she never heard back from the police. And by the time Claudia went looking, the paperwork had gone missing. It's actually a miracle, in my opinion, that that complaint was even found. And so I dug through, and there it is. It's actually a miracle, in my opinion, that that complaint was even found. And so I dug through, and there it is.

And I pull it out, and it is not three pages, it's one. And stapled in the top right-hand corner are three tiny little pieces of paper with some handwritten scribbles on it. And so a file had been opened. The complainant was identified on the report. The accused was identified in the report. But no police work was done. There was no statement from the child victim. There was no statement from the child's parent. Nothing had been done, not even the most basic of police work had been done. Two days later, 22-year-old Travis Sterling is arrested and charged with one count of sexual assault in relation to that 1988 complaint. in relation to that 1988 complaint.

The very next priority, of course, was to identify, as best as possible, other potential victims. It was a problem to have this daycare still operating. While we were actively investigating these types of complaints, we had a duty to protect the public. Claudia contacts as many families as she can whose children have been to the daycare. And along with the growing case, there are growing challenges. Unlike at the RCMP, there are no detailed policies or procedures for what she's facing in Martinsville. There's the difficult work of interviewing children, almost all under 10 years old. And then there are the challenges coming from her new

colleagues. I was not treated very nicely by some of the members in the office, they resented me because I think simply I was a woman and I was ex-RCMP and I was in their space, right? A corporal from the Saskatoon police comes to assist with the interviewing of kids. At first, the children have nothing to report. Nothing bad happened. The children have nothing to report. Nothing bad happened. But over time, they begin to offer different answers, pointing the finger at Travis's parents, Ron and Linda. One child accuses Ron of forcing him into a sexual act at gunpoint.

Another alleges Linda forced him to take his clothes off and took pictures. Ron and Linda are ultimately found to be innocent of all crimes. But that wouldn't happen for a long time. More charges are laid, this time against Travis and Ron and Linda. Multiple counts of sexual assault, uttering threats, pointing firearms. Then the children say there are others who hurt them. And the number of suspects just keeps climbing. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs.

We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This case, as you know, started out very simply and very small. And within a pretty short period

of time, it grew. And I could see that, you know, the needs of this file were going to be significant. And it wasn't long, it was only a few weeks into it, where the actual physical size of the file was becoming unmanageable. Not long after Claudia started working the case, the suspended Martinsville police chief is forced to resign for unrelated misconduct. A chief from a neighboring police service takes over temporarily. But he works 25 minutes away in the rural municipality of Corming Park. And he doesn't come out to Martinsville much.

I was 32 years old. I had a little bit of experience in my background coming into this whole situation, and I quickly recognized, and you wouldn't need a lot of experience to recognize that this case needed a lot of attention, a lot of expertise, a lot of bodies. And so, you know, I began asking.

I asked fairly early on, you know, are we doing every, this is a common question I would ask, are you sure we're doing everything we need to be doing? And he was, oh yes, yes. And not much time would pass and I would ask him again, you know, can we get the RCMP involved in this? And he was adamant that that was never going to happen. In court, the interim chief would dispute this. But a later review by outside investigators confirmed that, quote, the frustration that has been articulated by Claudia Bryden

appears to be legitimate and compounded by the fact that she received no consistent direction, either from police supervisors or Crown prosecutors. And so it was troubling for me because by November I was literally drowning in this file. Then the case takes a hard turn into unknown territory. Children start talking about rituals and sacrifices.

They report being taken to a blue building out of town. Some call it the Devil Church. There, they say they were injected with drugs and tortured. The children allege they were forced to watch people being dismembered, even killed. They say they saw people have their eyes plucked out and were forced to drink blood. They describe enduring all manner of abuse, according to court records, hoisted in cages, locked in freezers, and forced to perform sexual acts with the adults and with each other. Each horrifying story builds on the next. The Sterlings and others are accused of belonging to a secret cult,

and others are accused of belonging to a secret cult, the Brotherhood of the Ram. And if you think it couldn't possibly get any worse, there's this. First one child, then another, tell Claudia that the other adults wore uniforms, like hers. Police uniforms. The hers. Police uniforms.

The children had said officers were involved, but couldn't always specify which ones. It could be any cop. At what point did you realize that you and other colleagues of yours were under suspicion? It probably wasn't until about two or three months into the investigation. And remember Randy Chudak, the cop who loved Martinsville? He's now working alongside Claudia. We were all brought in to the chief's office, and we were all told that we were subjects of the investigation as a result of the interviews.

And at that point in time, we were kind of really shocked because none of us, well, myself, and I know two of the other, two of the members that I worked with at that point in time, had basically no knowledge of this daycare or any of the children that even went to it. What did that feel like to be told that you were in essence being investigated? Initially I was very mad and I went no yeah like you do whatever you want but I'm not part of this I'm not involved never been involved. Now you're being accused of not only being a pedophile or involved in child abuse, but you're also accused of being in a satanic cult. And I mean, just separately, it's an amazing, unreal type of situation but to put them together it was

almost to the point where it was unbelievable What was the mood around the office? You try and go about and do your job to the best of your ability but you look at everybody differently. You look at everybody going, are they involved? And it not only became very hard

to work, like be in the office, be in the station, but it was also very hard trying to do your job in the community. Yeah, what was it like going for groceries and walking around town? It was hard. There were comments and, you know, obviously people, once people caught wind of this investigation and everything else like that, they looked at the police department completely different. And you always had the looks of, wow, is he involved or is it, you know, does he know what's going on or any of that stuff? And, you know, people just treated me differently. Does he know what's going on or any of that stuff?

And, you know, people just treated me differently. And I know a couple of the other members, they were treated differently as well, and so was their families. So here's the funny thing about a very small police department. There are so few officers, and the investigation is so big, that they have to hurry up and clear some of them, so they can help with the investigation. So Randy lets himself get hooked up to a lie detector. To my knowledge, I'm the only one that took the polygraph. And I passed the polygraph and was cleared.

And he moves from being a suspect in the case to helping work it. Fall hardens into winter. And the unrelenting cold makes it hurt just to breathe. The investigation has taken over Claudia's life. I was working around the clock on something I should have been working on in an office at work. You know, I was trying to manage my home. I had two little children and a husband and a house to care for. And at one point, you know, the file was in a kind of a vulnerable position and I had, you know, there was a need to secure it.

And I was left holding the bag on that. Vulnerable because the physical file, with all the notes from the investigation, lived at the Martinsville police station, surrounded by potential suspects. So it ended up in our basement. And we were basically tied to our house. You were guarding it. Well, it was never vulnerable to, you know, it just meant that one of us was always at home. It never should have been there.

I used to field calls at two in the morning from a parent that was in tears because their child had just had a nightmare and had run in. And, you know, this was, it was, the file grew quickly because of the number of people that became involved. I had a duty to serve and protect those people. But personally, yeah, it was, it was very difficult. It was exhausting. It was exhausting. When did the Satanism part first come to your attention? So this would be in 1992, probably starting in February or March.

The kids were in regular counseling who wanted it know, who wanted it or whose parents, you know, it was made available to them. And I got a phone call from one of the counselors when I was at work one day, and she asked me questions about ritual abuse. If I had, you know, was I, had I ever heard of it or, and I said no. And I hadn't. You know, it was nothing I'd ever had an interest in. Finally, a new chief of police, Mike Johnston, arrives in Martinsville. And under his leadership, the investigation focuses in on possible satanic connections. So the chief was fielding calls from, you know, members of the public. And he was receiving information.

And that's where the term Brotherhood of the Ram, where the term Brotherhood of the Ram, I first heard that after Mike Johnson had received information from the public. And so, you know, he acted on information that was coming in as he saw fit in order to run the police service and protect the town. run the police service and protect the town. It's 1992, and as the great thaw of spring is finally underway, a tip comes in from a local pastor. He's heard that a group of Satan worshippers has its sights set on Martinsville.

They would arrive in the dead of night, and they'd be armed and bent on destruction. The chief dispatches an urgent memo to his officers, putting them on high alert. They brace for a fight. And he authorized us to go ahead and bring in our own guns and just be as heavily armed as possible. And at the time, I've got to admit that I had never been more scared in my life. Martinsville Police Officer Mike Swan in a 2003 CBC interview. I told a friend of mine if something did happen to me,

that he would make sure that Barb and the kids were looked after. Randy Chudak also remembers that night. We're going to be attacked, basically, is what he said. So we had to be on alert and that we were going to be inundated with things and we would have to deal with them. Basically, they were going to come in and attack the town and burn things down and attack all the churches, and they were going to come in and steal some children and use them for their rituals. Going through everything that happened and then getting this,

it just shakes your foundation and sends shivers down your back. Then you start to think, well, maybe this was real. Maybe there is some truth to all of this. Before long, nine people would face nearly 180 of the most terrible charges, only two of which would ultimately stand. only two of which would ultimately stand, both against Travis Sterling and neither having anything to do with satanic ritual abuse. So where did the panic come from in Martinsville and beyond? How did a hysteria manage to cloud the thinking of so many otherwise rational people?

And if we don't understand that, could it happen again? Coming up on Satanic Panic. Everything looked suspicious. There's blue buildings everywhere. Is that it? And if that's it, what do we do? Like, do we roll up? And what if they grab me and cut my head off?

I am reading in the 20th century the 17th century Salem witch trials. If you dare suggest that this was all made up, I would fear for your safety. When you're not guilty of anything, never did anything, I mean, what are you going to say? The next morning, my grandma and my aunt were at the door and picked me up. It was early. I'm sure they came as soon as they could. I've heard since how horrific that night was for them. Because they didn't know either if they'd ever see me again.

Uncover Satanic Panic is written and produced by me, Lisa Rundle, and Alina Ghosh. Mixing and sound design by Evan Kelly. Chris Oak is our story editor. Our digital producer is Emily Connell. Evan Agard is our video producer. Original music by Olivia Pasquarelli. Tanya Springer is the senior producer of CBC Podcasts. Arif Noorani is our executive producer.

Special thanks to Mitchell Stewart. Whether you lived through the Satanic Panic, or if this is the first time you're hearing about it, either way, we'd love to hear from you. Find us on Facebook and Twitter, at CBC Podcasts.