Was I In A Cult? - The LeBaron Polygamy Cult—Pt2: "Wives in Bulk"

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

In Part Two of Pamela Jones’ extraordinary story, the so-called “escape” she dreamed of at fifteen turns into a new kind of prison.After growing up under the violent rule of the LeBaron brothers — a murderous offshoot of Mormon fundamentalism — Pamela marries young, believing it will be her salvation. Her husband David doesn’t just take her innocence — he takes her freedom, her home, and her dignity. She raises babies on rationed potatoes, lives under the threat of blood atonement, and tries to stay safe inside a community run by fear, hierarchy, and men who call their control “God’s will.”But years later, and many sister wives later, something in Pamela begins to shift. A spark. A voice. A quiet rebellion forged from decades of silence.This is the part of her journey where the cracks in the doctrine begin to show… and where Pamela realizes the only person coming to save her is herself.Next week: the escape — across a border, across a belief system, and into a life she was never meant to reach.____________FOLLOW USFor more culty content —follow us on Instagram & TikTok → @wasiinacultSUPPORT THE SHOWIf you believe in what we’re doing (and want to help us keep shining light on the dark corners of control and charisma), please rate, review, and share the podcast. It helps more than you know.Want to go deeper down the rabbit hole?Join us on Patreon for ad-free episodes, bonus content, and our eternal gratitude for helping us keep these stories alive.HAVE A CULTY STORY?We’d love to hear from you — drop us a line at [e-mail] WITH PAMELA JONESYou can follow Pamela Jones — speaker, author, survivor, and all-around badass — here:Her Book: The Dirt Beneath Our DoorWebsiteLinkedInInstagramFacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hey, everybody. Welcome back to was I in a cult. I'm sick. As you can tell from my voice. But you got like that raspy, sexy. Is it? We can pretend. People will bear with me. He is Tyler threesome-mesum over there. And I'm Liz Izzy. And today is part two of the incredible Pamela Jones story. Right. And it's very likely that you just binged part one. But if you have a short memory... I don't think you can binge one part. That's not what binging means.

You just listen. I guess you could listen to it over and over and over. That would be very stupid. But we are going to recap it, but feel free to skip the recap. Or be contrarian and just listen to the ads. That would be very different. Be special. Good.

Okay. But for the rest of us, here's a quick refresher from last week's part. One, Pamela Jones. She grew up inside a violent Mormon fundamentalist polygamy cult in Mexico, led by the infamous La Baron brothers. Polygamy was all Pamela knew. It was the only way to get into heaven. We met her father, a troubled, abusive man battling alcoholism, who had 11 wives, 57 children, and a knack for breaking both commandments and the law. We watched poverty wreak havoc on her family, Hunger was as familiar as the flies in her outhouse and the dirt under her fingernails. But by six years old, Pamela was forced to grow up, becoming the caretaker to her five younger siblings while her mother worked.

By the time she turned 15, the only way out of that hell in her mind was through marriage. And that's when a young man named David proposed. And on top of all of this, Pamela was constantly living in fear of blood-a-taught. The so-called Mormon Manson. Orville LeBaron was on a killing spree. He murdered his own brother, his own daughter, and yes, Pamela's father was on his hit list. He was on the America Most Wounded for a while there. They were trying to catch him and his people.

He probably wasn't evil throughout the United States. It was mainly Utah, where he was coming after the fundamentalist churches and taking different members out. But eventually he was caught in Sanada, Mexico, and he was turned over to the American authority and put in prison. This was 1979, nearly a decade after his killing spree began. But being in prison did not stop his mission. Well, he went off and wrote some big old manifesto, I don't know how many thousands of pages. He was writing and prophesying. He actually got a bunch of followers right there in prison, and they worked with people on the

outside that implemented a lot of the murder still. So he finally was able to murder a second brother. And his mom was alive when all this was happening. So there's this mother who has these boys. One is murderous and kills two of her other boys. I can't imagine anything worse. He was murdered in prison in 1981, the same year I got married. So while Ervil was finally behind bars, Pamela was unknowingly preparing for her own kind of prison.

her impending marriage to David. I'm super excited. I get to be his wife. But now that I'm engaged, now he's pressuring me for sex. And I'm just so petrified of my father. I got the hell beat out of me for a hug. What would he do if he found out anything? I would just keep telling him no, and I'd say, please, like, I want to be virtuous. I want to be a virgin.

And no one would know he'd tell me. I did pretty good throughout my whole dating and kept him off and away. You know, my education on sex was I seen the chickens. You jump on and you jump off and it's over. But I never ever knew what my female parts were like. Never knew anything about them. Never explored. Definitely didn't try to feel your way around and find out what's down there.

I mean, you washed it, but you made sure there was a washcloth on your hand. None of that stuff. I remember, like, if I ever even heard a story of a girl touching her bummy, oh my gosh, it was like she was just the most evil thing. And in fact, that poor little hoo-ha only did the naughty and gave birth. Other than that, no one had anything to do with it. As I'm planning my wedding, I end up finding or running into a magazine that my sister had sent down on wedding dresses and whatever.

In the back, it has all this honeymoon suggestions and getaway. Well, it has a little write-up on what to do on the honeymoon night. Well, I'm curious, so I start reading it, and I'm reading it with the fifth grade education. There's some words that in there that I probably should go back and read to know what they're saying, but at the time I thought I understood it. But needless to say, cupping and licking and holding and body parts that I'd never heard of, Scrodom or something, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I throw the book across the room, and I said, I will never do any of that.

I'm virtuous, I want to go to heaven, you know? So I'm sitting there thinking about all these things I just read. And I'm really focusing and visualizing everything they're saying, and I finally come up with the conclusion. Okay, he can do whatever he wants. I'm just going to lay there and hold still because I'm going to heaven. So when God comes and condemns me, he'll say, oh, you're virtuous.

You didn't cup and hold and do all this stuff, right? God bless the 80s. I would love to see this magazine article telling me to cup my husband's scrotum on our honeymoon and how exactly to do that. And I hope it provides pictures. You know, women's magazines in the 80s were just fodder from my youthful imagination. My sister got, my older sister got a L, or mademoiselle or whatever, just sexy how-to articles, scantily clad models, important part of my youth. Tell me you're a creep without telling me you're a creep. If I say it in a RASB, voice, it's even creepier.

Tyler's voice is going, but he really needed to say this line, everybody. I'll be back for more. So for Pamela, she's a new bride. She's figuring out her wedding dress. What to do or not to do on her wedding night. But you also need wedding rings. You know, we went to buy our wedding rings, blah, blah, blah. I said, well, aren't you going to buy a ring?

You know, we're going to get married. He says, no. And I said, why? He says, because I'm not getting married. You are. He believed that I was married and he was still single. That's how it was in his polygamy and what my experience was. My father never wore a ring, so I'll say yes.

My father flirted with every woman he ever could because he wasn't bound by marriage. And I was married once I married. I was his woman. I was his property. But I said, when you realize he was a victim to the cult himself, the only difference was is when he left his mother's body, He had said, boy, and then he had his list of duties and privileges. And then when I left my mother's body, it said, girl,

and then I had my list of duties and no privileges. A couple of days before my wedding, we go off to our favorite taco stand, and he informs me that he's bringing a girlfriend to my wedding. It was a girl he tried to date before me. She was a year younger than me, so they stayed liking each other, and he was going to marry me, and then go after her. He invited her to our wedding. I was heartbroken. I had no idea who she was or whatever.

He says, but don't worry, your wedding day will be all about you. Because after all, you're the one who's getting married, not me, right? Dude, hold me back, Tyler. I got words for this son of a bitch, and none of them are church-appropriate ones. I'm excited about getting married, being a big girl. A lot of people came in town, a big old fuss. about my wedding, my grandma was there, my aunt, and a lot of people from a different colony drove in.

And let us not forget who else was in attendance. He brought a potential girlfriend. It was his girlfriend. Oh, he didn't bring her. He invited her. She showed up. I didn't know who she was. I saw these Hispanic girl thinking, is that her?

Is that her, you know? Girl, you actually showed up to your boyfriend's wedding? Like, what the fuck is wrong with you? What do you think this is a networking event? That's fucking normal. Maybe she just likes wedding cake. Give her a day. Give her a week.

Give her a month. So we have our wedding. We didn't have a dance because dancing's of the devil, according to him, even though I come from a dancing family, we don't have a dance, but then they bring out the accordion, so they play square dancing,

and he permitted me to dance the dollar dance. So that means that people come up and pin money on my dress, and then they would dance with me until the next person came up and pinned money on my dress. Then it starts to dawn on me that I'm not going to go home. And I realized that I'm actually going on a honeymoon. I'm going to have to do the naughty.

Then I remember that nasty magazine, according to me, it probably was so innocent. And I'm just thinking, oh, this stuff is going to happen. And God, I want to go to heaven. I mean, I'm just not going to move. I'm just going to hold still, and he can do what he wants. But anyway, so my wedding happened. He grabs his stuff. I'm still in my waiting dress. We go over to my mom's house. I say goodbye to my family, which was really hard because I was a big sister, and I've been raising a lot of those kids. I'm leaving my mom and this shit hellhole with my dad, and I realize I can't take them. I can't save them. So I'm in a lot of pain.

So we drive the two hours to Insanada, and we actually stayed at the resort that I was working at. So we finally get to the hotel and I had a sin or whatever, and I'm sure. shaking in my boots, obviously, because I know that something's going to happen, and I've heard stories, it's going to be bad, right? I knew what was going to happen because I knew procreation animals, whatever, I knew, kind of, I read the book, I knew where it was going. So I go into the bathroom to get ready for the night, and now it hits me, and I'm scared, and I want my mom, I want my mom to help me. You know, I wanted her to just tell me what to do.

You know, I was 15 when I married him. you're taught all your childhood that anybody that sees your bottom is going to go to hell. If you even see it or touch it, you're going to go to hell. You're so brainwashed it's of the devil and you'll go to hell.

And now you've got to change all that and say, it's what you have to do. You have to give your body to this man. He can do whatever he wants with that. And I had to have a conversation with myself and talk myself through this. And I realized that it was time for me to be a big girl.

You're going to be naked. He's going to see you. He's going to tell. Like all that stuff. that was so scary. And though some people say, oh, you lose your virginity, you lose your innocence, but I lost mine in the conversation I had with myself

telling me that you've got to be a big girl now. And then I walk over the threshold and I gave myself to my husband in marriage. It was not a fun event. There was nothing icky from him, but in a little girl's mind, everything was icky. The feeling I felt of shame and I was bad, stayed with me for a while. I didn't know how to navigate that, and I needed help. I should have

had help. I mean, I love my mother, and she was great, but I feel like she failed me in that. So, yeah, I spent that first week trying to mentally get through it. If you want to call that one week Marital Bliss, if that was Bliss, we did the naughty every night. Everything is dead and numb, and I didn't know anything. and I held true to my beliefs as I was going to hold still, and I did a good job of that. I just want to give young Pamela a big mama bear hug right now. We'll be right back. Hey listeners, it's Liz. So here's the thing.

When I'm super stressed out, I don't need to trip face. I just need to chill out. I'm a mom to a toddler, okay? Gone are the days of partying hard. And honestly, that is perfectly fine with me. Most nights I'd rather go horizontal than go out, which is why I love our new sponsor, Indy Cloud. No, not Indy Club, Inde Cloud. It's perfect for just chilling. They've got gummies, sodas, cookies, flour, all federally legal THC, DEA certified lab tested and shipped discreetly. And you can shop by strength, which is crucial if you like me are what the experts It's called a light weight. One night, just wanted to sleep. Just wanted a full night of

uninterrupted sleep. That is my heaven, okay? I took one half of one of their sleep gummies, not even the whole thing. I slap like a rock, no groggy like melatonin hangover. And when I do want a party, which is like giggle on the couch with a girlfriend, because again, motherhood, they have fun sativa gummies for that too. So if you're 21 or older, go to indecloud.com and use our code in a cult for 40% off your first order plus free shipping 40% off guys this is indecloud's biggest sale of the year and it runs all month long it's not one of those like blink and you miss it flash deals that's indecloud.co code in a cult for 40% off free shipping and a little extra breathing room for you our listeners during the holidays as always please enjoy responsibly

and thanks to indecloud for sponsoring today's episode So Pamela's marital, blissful life is off to, well, an imperfect start. But, I mean, there were some perks, even if they were short-lived. We get home from our honeymoon, and he had inherited from his father the nicest house in town. They had two indoor bathrooms, marble floors, both the ceilings, beautiful. beautiful home. Now I had a ringer wash machine. I had electricity. I had indoor plumbing. I had running water. And I'm extremely happy. And I'm eating really well. But obviously I'm hurting because my mom is struggling. So I will make trips over to my mom's house, taking her parts of my rations of my food.

She has 11 kids. There's no way I could supplement her life with my meager or whatever I got. But I still tried to help. My mom, I can see, is just beaming from ear to ear that her daughters married someone who appears to have a lot of money, well, he just inherited the house, that's all. I felt like I was living a wonderful life. One week later, and he tells me he's ready to date. And my heart's broken. And he's not dating the way polygamy or the law of Sarah's to be done. He wouldn't tell me who he was dating. I didn't know he was dating. He would just go to the United States and he would disappear until midnight. For context, the law of Sarah is the supposed divine order of plural marriage, meaning a man must ask his first wife for permission

before taking another wife on. Think of it like celestial consent that men ignore almost every time. It's the law of Sarah, though, Liz. It's like the law of speeding. You don't speed, so... I think most men think of it as the suggestion of Sarah. Most likely. Ironically, while he was free to be with whomever he pleased, it seemed, His possessiveness and jealousy of Pamela was turned up to 11. He worked drywall in the United States, and then he did pine nuts, which is harvesting the pinions up in Nevada for a few months every year, and when David would come home from work.

He'd questioned me where I'd gone, who I'd seen, and then he wanted to know what I was wearing if I'd changed, and I'd have to go bring him the clothes that I had, and then if he didn't think that they were appropriate, it, they would disappear, like my jeans, little by little, they all disappeared, tighter tops that I had, those disappeared, and I had to dress. And long dresses, and knee-high stockings, tennis shoes, long-sleeed blouses, yada, yada. So he was trying to get me to dress in a way that would keep men from lusting after his wife. Then he started separating me from my family because they were Gentiles and they were wicked and they wore makeup and their pants were too tied and they ate different things.

and they didn't believe in his father's authority, and there was all kinds of reasons why. So that broke my heart. Okay, we're going to do our best to break this down. Pamela's family followed Joel LeBaron, one of the brothers who founded the Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times. Not the name of a cult. He was the so-called prophet. But then his brother, Ervil, Evil Ervil, decided that he was the real prophet,

splinters off to form his own group, known as the Ervilites. That's when the whole blood atonement doctrine took over, and he eventually killed his brother Joel. There were five brothers in total, and Pamela's husband David was the son of Alma Leberon. He's another one of them. Alma's group leaned towards Erville's stricter, more militant version of fundamentalism. So even though Pamela and David came from the same extended family of this cult, his group saw the Joel followers. her family as weak, worldly, even sinful. Which meant that when David called Pamela's family Gentiles, he wasn't talking about outsiders.

He meant her own mother and her own father. It's like the Russian nesting doll of cults. She left her cult only to enter an even stricter doctrine and now is ostracized from her own blood relatives from the first cult within the cult. You can't make this shit up, guys. Some of the questions I get asked now, which since you say, you can say anything on your show, you can bleep it out, is like, how was the sex? Back then, there was no intimacy.

They probably would have burned you to a stake if you'd had an orgasm or something, because women are not supposed to. Women had problems if they ever engaged or enjoyed any of that. So that was all taken away. He got to do it as often as he won, and he was 21, so you can imagine it was every night. I think in a twisted way, I craved him using me, like needing me in that way, because then that made me feel of value, like sexually even, you know, use me. It had nothing to do with joy. It was more just trying to find some value as a woman.

And now I know how twisted it was totally all unhealthy. And I can't even believe I'm saying as much as I'm saying. I've never had these conversations about this kind of stuff. I've said little jokes, but never to this detail. But hey, you can blackmail me later. We're going to broadcast this. And soon it's time for another cult conference. I love cult conferences.

It's in August. We go to the colony for the conference. We're down there. We're having a great time meeting everybody. We're newlyweds. I'm married for five months, and I'm not pregnant. What's wrong with? with you is what everybody's saying.

I don't know. I'm doing my part, right? Anyway, so we end up staying 10 days and I notice we write the bus when we come home and I'm feeling a little sick on the bus, like car sick. And I'm noticing I'm late, I'm putting

together something's going on and I kind of figure I am pregnant. So I told him I was pregnant. He was super happy, but he had girlfriends now. I mean, priorities, Pamela. Come on. You're a dick, David. You're a dick. Thanks, Liz, for letting him know and the audience know that he's a dick.

Never let them figure out on their own. Tell the audience what they need to know. What is David, Liz? He's a motherfucking dick. Thank you. I'm pregnant with my child. He brings the girl to the colony, the Los Molinos. Her name is Delilah and introduces her to me and tells me he wants to date her.

She's a year older than me. and, you know, I'm struggling with it, but she's homely, she's humble, she's Hispanic. So he ends up dropping me off at the house and goes to take her home, and she just says, you know, your wife and you just got married, I think your wife needs more time. So that was really kind to her. I had just gotten married. At least someone is being thoughtful here, and his name is not David. And just when she thought, perhaps she could have a moment of reprieve,

she was told that we're going to the United States to harvest pines so his brother moves in while we're gone and took care of our house and while we were gone he decided he wanted the house so David goes to a meeting

and his dad says you know what I'm going to give you this big bunch of land in Chihuahua Mexico and I'm going to give your brother Santiago your house and they took all of our possessions everything we had from us and they shipped us

down to Chihuahua. It was the outskirts of the colony, which is known as the Colony La Barron. It was the outskirts of it. No one lived up there. There was a couple of little shacks, and then there was a little sheep pen that he turned into my home.

So there was no cement floor. It was just a sheep manure that had packed down and packed down. He poured a cement floor in the inside, and then he cut out the little tiny door for the sheep that they could go in and out of, which, you know, it was up like two feet high and probably a foot and a half wide. He cut that out so a normal-sized door could fit in that. I'm almost six feet tall, right?

And I got there, and it was just one cement room, no electricity. And I laid down, like, an aerial rug, and put my bed in, bassinet for my baby, a trastero, which is a tiny little dollhouse hutch for my dishes, and I had a little tiny stove. And then there was an house outside. When I got there, I thought, well, where are we going to shower? I didn't know how. And he says, oh, you just stand outside on this little slab of cement

and pour water on you from the bucket. That's how the bathroom situation was. A pregnant woman. It's a girl, Liz. She's 16 years old. She's a girl. She's a girl living in a sheet pen. Pregnant.

Sharring with a bucket. Fuck you, David. Again, fuck you. My baby is born in March of 1982, traumatic birth. So I had placenta previa, which means the placenta was coming first. I wasn't even due to have the baby for five weeks. So the baby had turned and was coming head down the way a baby should. And when he did that flip to engage the head in the birth canal,

it put so much pressure on the placenta that it ruptured and I was hemorrhging to death. The hospital was 45 minutes away, and for some reason, my body had formed a blood clot in the birth canal, and that's what saved my life. So when we're driving into the hospital, I start talking to my baby. I don't know why I didn't beg and talk with God. For some reason, I just talked to my baby. I figured it was scared as well, and mommy's here, and I'm 16.

I don't know what I could have said, but I feel the baby kick a little bit. And I feel like that just was his sign and way of saying, I'm still here. So when we get to the hospital, the doctor goes in internally to check me to see if I'm dialyed, to see what's going on. And he removes a blood clot, and I started gushing. She's like, oh, my God. And they rush me into farm a C-section, and he tells me the baby's gone. We just need to save her life.

So they rush me into the operating room. I'm crying. I want my mom. whatever a typical teenage kid would feel, they put me completely out. And I wake up to the most beautiful little redhead, blue-eyed boy of my life. And there he is. It was quite an interesting ordeal. And if you didn't think cool, David, could be even more insensitive and ruin not only your wedding, but your birth, too?

Well, then you just don't. know David. While I'm in bed with my new baby, David brings her to come see me. To meet his son, and he tells me he's going to date her now. So he takes her home, and then he comes back again and says, no, she says you just have the baby that you need some more time. Bro, even your girlfriend could read the room. What the fuck is wrong with you, seriously?

Right, but for David, more time didn't necessarily mean that much more time. That was March, and he marries her by the 16th of July. So they get engaged. He plans the wedding. I go and help him ask for her hand in marriage. So I had to go. To the girlfriend's father, who, of course, had his own set of stipulations. He told him, no way in hell you're going to marry my daughter

and then give all the privileges to the white wife. I remember just sitting up and then my little curled up. while holding my baby, why he's telling me in Spanish, if you don't have enough shoes for both of your wives, then your white wife goes without the shoes. I was just, I just took it. You're trying to just find a way to turn a blind eye to that and say what you feel you don't feel.

Say, I'm trying to get to heaven, you know. The road paved to heaven up until that point, and for a long time after, was paved with heartache and disappointment and suffering and, and that was the way I was going to get to heaven. So we did whatever we had to do, and he planned the wedding, and they got married,

white dress, big cake, bridesmaids, groomsmen, and she walked down the aisle. I stood by him and gave permission for her to marry my husband. Her dad performed the ceremony. Most wives were chosen from within the faith, daughters of other believers. But when the pool ran dry, men like David looked outward, targeting poor local women in nearby villages,

women who were told, or girls, for that matter, who were told that marrying a, quote, man of God would guarantee them salvation, or at least a better life. Once the ceremony was over, it was a dusty hot July day, and he went with the bride, got in his vehicle, and they left me with my baby walking, because I was no longer. his new wife. So I walked down the street, go to where they're having the big old dinner

and Hispanic people everywhere and they're partying and there's people out drinking and they're having to dance. They're playing this Mexican music and he picks her and they're out on the dance farm. And that was what got me because dancing was supposedly of the devil. I make eye contact with him and I shake my head like I cannot believe you.

And he dances around again. So I stood up. Walked across the dance floor to one of my sister-in-laws and told her, I am leaving so she can drive me home. And then I leave, and I start bawling so hard. Like, I'm crying out loud, hard. She throws her arms around me, and I just thought, I can't do this. I can, so everything I was feeling was coming out. My sister-in-law drives me home.

We don't talk much, and I live clear out in the middle of nowhere. Little house that has no electricity, has no running water. It's the sheet pen that he turned into my home. I go in and light my kerosene lamp, and I lay on my bed, nurse my baby to sleep, and I start to drift off to sleep, and lo and behold, he shows up. He comes in, lays down beside me, and just begs me to forgive, and I tell him it's fine, I forgive you, whatever, whatever. Then he says, now I need you to perform the ceiling, like they have to seal this girl.

My dad has to marry, so we're going to do this all over again. I need you to get up and get dressed and do this, and I said, just leave me alone. I'm bawling. And she comes in, it was so cute. She's in this white veil and dress and stuff everywhere. She sees me on the bed bawling, sees him laying by me crying. She starts yelling at him. I don't want to do this.

And she starts crying. She takes off running. He jumps off to go chase her. I jump up to go see. And you see this beautiful train white dress running in the dark moonlight, running away. He's chasing her. I'm yelling at them. I'm fine.

I'm fine. I'll do whatever. so they bring her back, she's crying, she sits on the bed, like she's just heartbroken. She's telling me how sorry she is, and I don't want you to suffer, and I tell her I'm fine, I'm faking that I'm fine. His dad shows up, and we redo the ceremony, and I have to put her hand in his hand for marriage, and they get sealed to be married for all time and all eternity, and yada, yada, and I'm just like, get the hell out of here.

He kisses me and thinks me on the forehead or whatever. They unplugged the little wires that are on the batteries of his trucks that's making the the light bulb go on, and all of them are gone, and I'm left in the dark with my baby. And at that moment, I was so happy to be left alone, it was over, and they were gone for a week. Came home, and we started living, plugging in me. Yeah. We'll be right back. by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game, shifting a little money here, a little there, hoping it all works out? Well, with the name your price tool

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The cult within the cult. David, my husband at the time, He inherited all that land in 1982. Before the baby was born, he started working with his brothers that were members of his dad's church. So they started devising this plan to create this community. They started Zion's camp. It's just a bunch of brothers and their fathers starting a church and their wives and kids. That church started, and that was a new united order of the Church of the Firstborn and the Fulness of Times.

Pretty soon, Zion's camp, and they put a fence around, and it was a gated community. you might say, but not in the beautiful way of gated communities. It just had a gate. And my family wasn't allowed to come see me. So as time would have it, none of my family would visit anymore. It was just his brothers and the members of the science camp and their wives and their children. And that was our community. I didn't see my mom hardly at all in those 19 years.

I never went down to Cancun to see her. He never allowed me to go see her. Quick note, her mother had been sent to Cancun by Pamela's father at this point. Which sounds like a vacation, but it wasn't. We don't have time to get into all of that here, but trust us, it's a whole other story. We're all living on this united order, where everybody's living equally. Everybody put all their money together in a group, and they purchased all the food for all the church, and then everybody would get their ration.

So they would send my husband out to the United States to work, and he'd work his hidey off and drywall, and then he'd bring all the money in it, go into that common pot. So they had a little storehouse I'd go every Friday and they'd give me the rations for that week and they decided what they were. If they were buying potatoes, then I got potatoes. There was a family that ran that and they kept us in extreme poverty. They measured everything out. It was ridiculous.

It was like, oh, you deserve a fourth a cup of salt for this week. There never was anything left over. I'd get a bolt of flannel every time I was pregnant and I would make my own diapers. They would go into the United States to the second-hand store. and buy in bulk clothes for everybody, and you could just go to the storehouse, pick whatever fit you and whatever you needed. And it was their way of living the united order for God, right?

It was like prison. And like in prison, the prisoners keep on coming. After wife number two, I thought all the rest of his wives would be that easy and kind, even though it was hard, she was great. But I was mistaken. He marries his third wife, and she's just, something else. She had quite

the struggle to lip-ligaming, the jealousy, and the drama. She's starting to burn my house down, threatened to kill my children. And then eventually, which is cute, he built another house next door almost, and it was just two cement rooms, plastic windows, and I moved into that, and she moved into the sheep pen. Again, these were not your sing-songy, one big, happy sister-wife family, to say the least.

So he goes off and starts marrying all these women And when they start having babies And I'm having a bunch of my own kids And he's dating and dating And he married five other women He married some outside the cult And some inside the cult And then he married his cousin

From Utah How they hooked up, I don't know It was bizarre His brother had died So Then he marries his brother's wife Because that's normal She had 12 children

and she was a terrible, very dirty girl. She wasn't classy. She wasn't sister-wife material, in my opinion. Yeah, but those wives simply weren't enough for David. No, he was trying to complete the set, you know? She marries his cousin's wife. One of Joel's sons married this girl for a second wife. Their whole marriage goes awry.

They got divorced. She has a little girl, and now this new girl's going to marry him. She comes home from San Diego. and she's bought in a used, beautiful, big white dress with the train. And I'll tell you something cracked in me. I said, I'll be damned if she's wearing a white dress, marrying my husband. You just had a big, huge, fancy, white wedding, beautiful dress two and a half years ago. You're not doing it again with my husband, you know, and we're not paying for all that either.

So I talk her into dining at Purple. We go in town and I buy some silly dye, put big old pot on the stove, and put the dress and then I'm plunging it up and down, and I can't believe how gutsy I was, and it all goes purple perfectly. And then I look at it, and it has this long, beautiful train, and I think, no, you're not going to have a train either. I cut the train off, and the whole time I'm working on this dress, I'm bawling my eyes out, and Kenny G's is playing in the background. I couldn't listen to music. It was of the devil, but Kenny G's I could. To this day, I hate Kenny G's music because of the...

that day. And I'm crying and snot on whatever, and I can't believe that he's marrying this girl, you know, and she came with her extreme. She had the badonka donk like something you've never seen in your life. Nobody could have imagined that a Norwegian woman could have the bodonka donk the size this girl had. The woman who married just before that, she had like triple G breast. I'd never seen nothing that huge of my life. And I'm thinking, what is next with this man? Anyway, so she wore the purple dress, walked down the aisle. It was a pretty dress. It looked great. I think she went on to have a total of 11 children for him. She went on to make good use of her assets. A big beautiful family. Oh, yes, it is my assumption that her assets were considerable.

I'd call it an assertion. A well-rounded assessment, if you will. Formed by an assembly of ass-johnished, onlookers to assess the situation. Astrotaut. We've assuredly lost the plot. We'll just leave it as his. He built another house right next door. It was kind of a cute little dollhouse I did.

she moved into that one, and then the next wife lived in his sheet pen. And I believe five of his wives all lived in that sheet pen. Then I moved into a bigger house right there that his dad built. It was a nice house, and it had electricity, and I had running water. And then there was an outhouse outside. But my outhouse was spotless. And as soon as they'd leave, I'd grab my gallon of bleach and scrub that thing spotless and sprinkle it all down every time after they would leave.

I'd be determined I wasn't going to have their shoe. in my life, figuratively, and literally. This message is sponsored by Greenlight. When I was a kid, my allowance system was, well, let's, we'll just call it inconsistent. Okay? My parents would sort of forget to pay me and then throw me money here and there and be like, we owe you. Yeah, that's 90s economy of I owe you.

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So by now, Pamela was dealing with nasty sister wives, a husband who she shared more than she enjoyed. more and more children to take care of. And don't forget, in the midst of all that, she was part of a violent extremist cult that justified murder, all in the name of God. It's like being in the war zone while I was married and we're constantly being hit with something. And had I not lived it,

I would not have believed the life that I had to endure and live. Pamela did share with us many stories of bloodshed and violence. Too many stories to go into, of course. But just to give you guys a taste. He went out to use their bathroom out in the weeds. They murdered him. He took the ranch out and bludgeoned the prophet in the head. He helped murder Erbil's brother. Verlin has been murdered. Erbil has been murdered. Murders his brother, Joel. He murdered Rulissie Al-Rid. The murder still kept happening. That's how her father got murdered. He murdered his daughters, murders, his brothers, four o'clock murders, blood atonement murders, he murdered,

murdered, murdered, murdered, he murdered, murdered, murdered, murdered. While living in extreme fear, I take a knife to bed with me, like, that's going to do any again. And if you would have saw my knives that I had, he would laugh. All right, enough violence. Let's go back to sex. Yes, to sex. Okay. In my life, I have known many polygamists, both current and past. Weird circles you run in, Tyler. It is weird. Mostly, it's work-related. But something... Work-related. I'm just saying that for the IRS, so I can deduct my multiple houses. Regardless, it's something that everyone is always curious about, and I'm never not curious about, is how the men deal with the schedule of being with so many women

sexually. And for Pamela, this is kind of how they did it. My kids kept track on my schedule because they'd have so much fun when it wasn't my night. But when it was my night, they dreaded it. They couldn't have the fun, and mom's always crying, and now we ought to sing hymns, and whatever it was, they just hated it. If he has five wives, every fifth night is mine, that was my rotation. Obviously, there's mess-ups and forgets and anniversaries and drama and women playing stupid games and all kinds of stuff. I could tell you stories. We could do a whole podcast on just the drama, but don't want to waste your time.

on that. You know, it's okay to waste just a little bit of our time. Yeah, our listeners are stuck on the freeway right now anyway. So spill the tea, sister. I'm down in Mexico doing my work, and also one of my sister wives, his third wife, shows up with her hair all pulled up in a bun. She never wore her hair up. She always wore it down with braids or whatever, but she has it all pulled up.

And she says, oh, she tells me Spanish, I came to help you with your laundry and the kids, whatever. I said, oh, can I look? And I see that she has a huge hickey on her net. And I'm just, like, pissed. Like, all the times I could have used you for helping me. And now you're here with your hicky, and I was mortified. Like, you dirty little girl.

So she stayed for a little while, and she went home. And then I went over to her house, and I sat her down. And I said, you are not going to do that. You expect for me to be kind to you and support you. And you come like that thinking that he only fucks you. Well, that's not the case. But you are not going to come to my house. And my kids see what their dad has done with you.

And I said it nasty in the Spanish way. You, no have been to my house and do the chingadera with my husband. No, I think that these mendigas hikis are no more tues, if not my kids, me those are swear words, the last two. Since I'm his first wife, now all the wives are coming to me with their problems. Saying, you know, he always gives my night to so-and-so, and one wife will come and tell me, oh, David came to my house last night, and we did this.

the noddy and it wasn't even my night. Then a few minutes later, the other wife would come over. I don't know where David was the whole night. You know, he didn't come home. And I was thinking, I know, but I can't say, you know. He had so many women. His job was just to make sure we were always pregnant. I was pregnant 17 times in 19 years.

He'd come and do the naughty every time it was your night. But it wasn't the full act. It was just enough to say I slept with her. A little kissing, jump on and get the job done, and go to sleep. he got the job done. I didn't know what was I going to compare it to. He'd love to get a break, so any time you could be on your period

or be pregnant or whatever it is so you didn't have to do the naughty, he needed his breaks because he had so many women. He had to take care of. Poor David, am I wrong? I'm very wrong. Fuck David. I mean, I don't feel bad for him

because he's a dick, but this honestly can't be easy. He carried around his little black, notebook in the pocket of his shirt. And he started tracking his wife's periods, I guess what he thought their ovulation was. He had tracked who he had given his seed to. I noticed that our sex life started changing. By the time for sure, he married his third wife, I thought, you know, he still did the naughty every time he was at your place just because he had to do his act of marriage. But it wasn't the same. I could tell, hey, you're not finishing here. Where are you finishing? And then I put it together

that he was saving himself for the women that need to get pregnant. And there's a teaching. They believe that if a woman, I hate that I'm saying this, that if a woman sleeps with her husband or a man and they are engaged in the act of sex and the semen, she absorbs it through her body. And as time goes on, a woman's body absorbs the semen of a man and then she becomes like him,

starts to act like him, and starts to be a lot like him. So I know he was trying to make sure he was evenly dispersing when he was, not only to procreate, but to keep us, it sounds so weird, I'm not a doctor, I don't even know what the big words are, enough to keep us acting like am to certain ways, and before you know you start talking a lot alike, and that was a teaching.

You know, I feel like it's not really necessary to break in and scientifically refute this claim, but we're going to do it anyway. Here's what actually happens. Seamen meets the vaginal and cervical mucosa, Most sperm die within minutes. A few heroic swimmers make it to the uterus, and only a handful ever reach the fallopian tube. Your body, my body, is lined with barriers in an immune system that's basically on full-time, no-entry duty because sperm are technically foreign cells, and your immune system's job is to keep invaders from crossing the vaginal border.

So, no, women, to reiterate, you do not absorb a man. his DNA does not rewire your brain, your personality, your taste in music, or sports. No biological mechanism for, quote, turning into your husband, guys. As much of a bummer, I know that is to hear. I'm glad we cleared this up. By the time I was old enough to figure out there was different body parts and different things worked certain ways. I resented him too much. And there was way too many women in between us. You want to feel unique. You want to be yourself. You want to say, oh, everybody does. is this? Everybody rides backwards cowboy. Why not you? And I remember being so afraid that anything

I would try with him, he would do it with his other wives. And it would have been fun if I could have convinced myself, oh, you're the Holy One that's wild and naughty and you are. But I couldn't convince myself of that because he had married some interesting women that I knew were very naughty. But at the end of the day, I just lost all my uniqueness, any desire for anything besides a normal missionary. Get it done because I'm still your wife. And half the time, you feel like you're losing your identity. Who am I?

Am I just number so-and-so? Well, to me, of course she felt like that. She had no safety to let herself explore or be free. But soon, the contradictions and the justifications and the hypocrisies, well, they became much too loud for Pamela to ignore. When I noticed there was different sets of rules that, you know, the say the commandment says,

Thou shalt not steal, just for an easy you measure. And that means I can't even steal someone's pencil, yet he could steal people's cars. And then it says, oh, you're not to covet. I would say, oh, I've always wanted a purse like that or whatever. I couldn't do that.

But he could look at his brother's wives or neighbors, women, or whatever, and covet them. And then if I made eye contact with a man I had committed adultery already in my heart, yet he literally was committing adultery, right? So as I'm seeing all these things happen and I'm starting to realize that I've been sold a bill of goods, it's all lies.

I start getting stronger internally and starting to say no to some of the things he says and I won't participate in that I'm not going to your family's Thanksgiving dinner because your brother that's hosting has just raped his daughter. I was getting stronger and was learning how to use my voice. I can go back to different times when like when I said I stood up to one of the sister wives says, no, we're not doing that. or I stood up to my ex-husband and said, you know, I don't feel like you love me anymore like you used to, and he says, you're right, I don't. Ouch. What were you saying about David earlier?

I forgot. What was it? He's a dick. He's a fucking asshole. That's what it was. I'm a very romantic. Finally, one day, he brings me a beautiful card, and it says how much he loves me, and he bought this thinking about me. And I felt so special, like, oh, my gosh,

I can do this a little bit longer. I'm still special to him. So I put the card out, and I go to one of the homes, and she says, come in, whatever her name is, you know, yada, yada. And on her doggone kitchen counter is the same damn card. And I just feel like a knife in the heart. Like, what? I'm not kidding you.

I went to every one of his wife's homes, and the same card was there. Everything was in bulk. His cards were in bulk. His grocery shopping. His laughing at your joke was in bulk, his semen was in bulk. I went home and tore my nup and threw it away, and I continued my plans on detaching and leaving him. I didn't have the strength to actually leave until my 16-year-old son tells me

that he's tired of seeing me so sad and seeing you this way. And I realized that he was suffering by seeing me suffering, and something in me just crack and I realized that by staying married to their father, I would have four little of my ex-husbands because I had four sons and I would have five little mes because I had five daughters. And when I finally had the chance to say I will not live that way, I'm not having my sons believe that it's okay to treat a woman this way. I will not let my daughters lose their voice and not be able to speak what it is that they want to say.

When it came to me, I just thought you can handle. I had suffered so much already. That's all I knew was suffering, so I could continue. But when it came to the children, then the roaring lightning in me came out, and I thought, no, I realized right then I had to get out. Sometimes it takes one small mirror, like the eyes of your child, to finally see the truth you've been too afraid to face. And once you've seen it, well, you just can't unsee it. Next week, Pamela does The Impossible. She finds a way out of the marriage, the colony,

and the world she was convinced was her only option. And what she builds after, well, it is nothing short of extraordinary. Agent McGuire and a furry guardian angel. That's all I have to say. He pokes his head into the vehicle, tells me you're all. up to something. And it's starting to get dark. And there's six little kids right over there,

parked in the country they know nothing about with nothing. Mommy's not there. And I'm over here with the boys. And now this guy is saying, you're up to something. I was petrified. And I felt like everything in me was saying, please let me go.

to spare my life, crucify me. Thank you again, Pamela. I'm going to be so sad when her story's over. I just, I get attached. I get very attached to our guests. Her new memoir, again, is titled The Dirt Beneath Our Door, and it is linked in our show notes. And we'll see you all.

Next week. Yeah. Was I in a cult produced by us? Written by us. Hosted by us. By Liz, seventh wife. Iagoosie, who would be a shitty seventh wife. Because I would bite your dick off?

Yeah. Yeah, I would. I would, David. That's what I would do to you. You'd have no dick. And Tyler, the I don't use my polygamy background to play the field, quote, unquote, me some. Those days are past, Liz. He's committed to one.

We love you, Diana. And Chandler Mays, you are fantastic. Thank you for editing, sound mixing, designing, and making Tyler sound not so bad. It's a huge lift. Action is free on Pluto TV. Go on the run with Jack Reacher. Every suspect was a train killer. Then buckle up for drive, World War Z.

Happy human being we saved. It's one of less to fight. And Charlie's Angels. Damn, I hate to fly. Launch into sci-fi adventure with the fifth element and laugh through the mayhem in Tropic Thunder. What is going on here? All the thrills. All for free.

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