You're Wrong About - Summer Book Club: "The Satan Seller" (The Debunking!)

Episode Date: August 9, 2021

This week we debunk Mike Warnke right out of his cabin and into the lake, using Cornerstone Magazine’s long overdue exposé as our guide. Digressions include "Star Trek," a classic New Yorker cover and Ariana Grande. We definitively conclude that the Bible endorses cancel culture. This episode, we’re sorry to say, includes detailed descriptions of domestic abuse.Support us:Hear bonus episodes on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy stickers, magnets, T-shirts and moreWhere else to find us: Sarah's other show, You Are Good Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseSupport the show

That's what I like about gone girl like it really shows how much you can accomplish if you make to-do lists and use a calendar Hey debunk mates quick technical note here we recorded this episode thinking we were gonna include it in the last week's episode But then we ended up recording for like three hours, and we thought it should be its own thing so there's no intro or any of the front stuff we just dive in and We also had some technical problems with Sarah's recording. So for the first 15 minutes, we're using our backup Skype recording So that's why it sounds a little bit weird. Thank you for bearing with us We hope you're having a wonderful summer and enjoy We have traveled far with our satanic acolyte Mike Warnke

Like this is this book has been a roller coaster I guess before we debunk which will also be a roller coaster between roller coasters I would like to sit here with you and eat a big soft pretzel and reflect on what we have learned What can you say about books like these? This is always your quandary. You're always like what can I say about something that someone made up? Yes, exactly Yeah, I think what's so striking about this and Michelle remembers is how just obviously made up it is like Awuga noises bright red flags flapping in the breeze the entire time and yet these like very obvious basic facts

Don't seem to have permeated the legacy of this book or the cultural impact of this book Like it seems to just exist in the world as like wow this crazy thing happened to this dude Yeah, well and and the debunking in cornerstone magazine is is wonderful and also hilarious because they debunk details like with the folk music Venue that he went to was full of chairs and tables and had no room for the dancing he described and it's like Yeah, I think the part with the Satanist Mansion in Redlands, California is like the more obvious debunk thing Yeah, and the thing where drug dealers give you drugs for free until you're hooked on pot It's almost like it's in the small details that you can pin someone down

Oh, yeah But I mean what's also interesting about this to me is that the people who unveil this con are also Christians Yeah, and we can see the kind of some of the I guess Interfaction stuff happening in Christianity. I always love stories like this because the sign of a Intellectually robust community is when it has internal policing mechanisms Yeah, I wouldn't have been a reader of cornerstone magazine at the time But like this is what healthy movements do is they kick out the grifters It's true. Yeah, and well actually can I read you something to kind of yeah in this vein?

Okay, so the cornerstone article which was written by a Mike Hertenstein and John Trott They expanded it into a book called selling Satan the tragic history of Mike Warnke And so this is from a review of that from an author named Ken Sidi And this touches on one of our previous episodes one of our our classics if you will I love touching upon previous episodes Gross way Okay. Well, here's a pop quiz. What's a story of religious misconduct that we have done on this show? Oh, no, this is uh, James. This is praise the lord. This is James Baker. Jim Baker. Yeah, Jim and Tammy Fay Oh, yeah, of course

They were just gigantic like they had there in theme park Jim committed significant fraud And also according to Jessica Hahn sexual assault. Yes. And so when Jim Baker fell for his financial crimes I imagine that maybe there was a sense on behalf of american christians of like you never pay attention to us and now you are This is how the kids at Oberlin feel Ever since the charlotte observer broke the ptl story members of the religious press at least those who consider themselves journalists rather than public relations flax Have asked why was the exposure of such unethical behavior left to an outside source and not performed by a part of the evangelical body

The editorial soul searching that came of the ptl debacle found fertile ground in cornerstone magazine published by jesus people usa in chicago Unfettered by the organizational and commercial ties that bind most other christian publications The magazine has been able to devote extensive time if only modest resources to playing out its commitment to absolute truth That course eventually sent it headfirst Not only at satanist turned comedian mike warrenke But also at the whole evangelical celebrity slash publishing slash recording complex that built him Oh, yeah

To say the article written by editors mike hurtenstein and john trott sent shock waves through the evangelical subculture sounds like a cliche But it is in fact an understatement beyond the warrenke story itself the whole affair reheated debate over the same issues raised by ptl Christian celebrity biblical accountability and the role for good or bad of mass media in contemporary christian living One of the key allegations of this article and the thing it's asking anyone reading it to pay attention to is like mike warrenke and his writing and his performances have been pretty key in establishing The ideas that a generation of people have about satanism in america specifically a generation of christians And if the satanic panic in which he is one of the kind of expert witnesses who's been appearing on mainstream media programs to talk about If his book is fake then like what does that mean about this whole epidemic of satanic cults in america?

Yeah, I mean it doesn't seem to have worked because we're gonna get the satanic panic like the real one in a couple years Well, I mean at this point actually the satanic panic was on the wane Like when this debunking article comes out because this comes out in 1992 Oh, the the debunking comes out that much later. Yes, it comes out like 20 years after Wow Yeah, that's a bummer Yeah, michelle remembers got heat drawn to it and and got debunked much earlier than that But it also took quite a few years like longer than you would honestly think

Like think about 20 years like 20 years ago I was 13 and like for that amount of time like since I was downloading dieto songs on kaza Like people read this book and were like, hmm. Yeah, okay And by the time it gets debunked people barely remember what it was even about and their belief That satanism is widespread in america is already so entrenched in their brains. Yeah, this isn't gonna dislodge it Yeah, something that terrifies you at an impressionable age. Yeah, you can really shape your psyche I think that's why since I was an early viewer of pet cemetery. I'm very protective of my ankles Oh

Okay, so do you want to hear some of this cornerstone article and yes and go through its highlights desperately This is the story of well-known comedian evangelist and professed ex satanist mike warnkey Known as america's number one christian comedian Mike warnkey has sold an excess of one million records June 29th 1988 was declared mike warnkey day by the governor of tennessee The satan seller has according to its author sold three million copies in 20 years However, his ghost writer said it was 500 000 Mike warnkey's press material includes credits for appearances on the 700 club the oprah windfree show larry king live

Focus on the family and abc's 2020. Jesus christ. What do you remember about little mike's childhood? Oh, this was his dad was a gangster Wielding tommy guns bullet holes in his car. Don't tell me that's not true. It doesn't appear to be true Wow, but he did run a truck stop Okay, the thing about his mother dying in a car accident when he was a child is true his mother louise died while driving the family's packard when mike was eight years old And his half sister who later adopted him. That's she's also real

She was interviewed for this article like they this article is like exhaustively Source like they have tried to talk to like everyone who so much has sold mike warnkey a pack of gum as far as I can tell Love it. So mike's half sister surely told cornerstone dad louise and mike will came out to california in the mid fifties Prior to that. I wasn't writing my father. I didn't even know where he was My dad had abandoned me when I was little He was an alcoholic and maybe twice in my childhood. Did he make any effort to communicate with my mother? And then after mike's mom louise dies in a car accident

He proposes that she and her husband keith can come out to tennessee and help him run this truck stop And basically like his drinking was out of control He had them both working constantly. He wasn't reliably showing up and He also wasn't paying them. So mike had a sucky dad, but not a like al Capone prohibition chicago dad Yeah, which makes sense is like something you would prefer to have been traumatized by Yeah, you know what I mean like I do think that the satanic panic as a larger phenomenon like exists partly because there's so many people Who were traumatized by their parents, but their parents really just like boring

A lot of us would prefer like I certainly feel this way would prefer to have our weird behavior and our trauma come from like Something that makes people go. Wow. No wonder you're like this As opposed to these much less extreme forms of abuse and just hurt in your childhood that are just like kind of normal Your dad's not around. He's kind of a dick. Yeah, and like you know a garden variety drunk can be very abusive Yeah, and society doesn't know how to recognize that and especially fundamentalist christian society doesn't really know how to recognize that Well, this is one of my theories about what the kind of work to crime does in america where in you know Many aspects of american culture the kind of privilege to do kind of whatever they want white middle class male patriarchs have

Is so strong that the only way to remove them from that power dynamic is to label them criminals Yeah, yeah and just like in the book Al Warnke dies pretty soon after his wife and then Little mic lives with his aunts for a while And then he is sent to live with his catholic Half sister and her husband and riverside. Okay, it really it sticks relatively close to the truth until he gets to high school And then still he's like we have in his book He's like I was in with a rough crowd and I was drinking all the time and I was having sex and his friends were like No

Mike was really into electric light orchestra and playing tennis Light harmonizing and at this phase and really through his whole life I start to think of mike as being kind of like elie cash and the royal tenon bounds The light comes over to your house before school with his toothbrush in his pocket Yeah, because he just like wants to be absorbed into your family And so he had friends who described him being quote like for like a piece of furniture at their house and their catholic and so he gets interested in Catholicism and He does have like a period of sort of trying on Catholicism in high school. That's also true

A consistent thing is that his friends from high school are like, you know We weren't like the best young citizens ever but we we had kind of wholesome fun We were young kids and American graffiti times and we didn't really have access to alcohol or drugs And mike was a kind of normal nice guy, but he did make up stories a lot. He really liked making up stories And like pretending to be people Just characters just being someone else. Oh, that's bad He tells a story where he goes on a date And he gets his friend to like chauffeur him around and then he tells his data story

Where the guy driving his friend who's being his chauffeur is an orphan who mike's family raised Okay, and I just feel like there's a sort of sense of of discomfort Well, maybe discomfort at being himself or maybe also this more basic sense of like who even am I? I mean, I kind of remember this feeling maybe From when I used to be more into acting and I just really loved the feeling of kind of disappearing into a character Like it's kind of a meditative act like when you do kind of improv and character especially which Making up fake stories is a good and kind of maybe exhilarating way to do that Also, if you're going through stuff, it's a way of hiding in plain sight without actually revealing anything of yourself too

To be sort of like as loud And outgoing as possible is a way of like not really letting people into who you are so One of the things cornerstone does that I really love is that they're like, well Mike goes to san bernadino valley college starting september 13th 1965 And we know from his military records That he joined the navy on june 2nd 1966. So the only period in which this story could have taken place is like less than a year Yeah, like he had eight and a half months

To become an alcoholic Start dabbling in satanism going to orgies officially joining the satanic church becoming a middle manager initiating new policy becoming a sex criminal And then getting kicked out and the whole time he's running to the thrift store to get weird pants I know how to see up time. I mean a thrifting was easier back then but still doesn't add up So his college roommate was a guy named greg gilbert

And when cornerstone talked to him, he said after mike became a star I assumed that since he had gotten this far with his satan story He'd always get away with it. I never knew what to do. Who could you tell? See today This guy would be like I was mike warnkey's roommate. Here's a thread one slash question mark. Yeah, he just needs the notes app This is also I was just reading about uh, frank darabont the guy from catch me if you can There's significant evidence suggesting that he wasn't really this arch criminal Oh, yeah, and that actually he was he kind of was doing low level cons and mostly manipulating women

This is such Sarah bait, dude It's like there was no mastermind. There was no mouse game Maybe the real mastermind was just manipulating women endlessly and not getting recognized as someone who just Mistreats women and someone should do a podcast where they tell stories like that. I know free idea Anyway, one of the reasons that wasn't you know, just hasn't really troubled His success or his ability to make all these claims is that You know, there were a couple of articles when he was first I think touring on this book or he was You know, he was on tv in the 70s like he was kind of a low level star

and there was like Initially an article about him in like local press In I think colorado or something like that and then another article About him in some other state and some other local newspaper, but it's like below the fold Local newspapers like who in the population of the country is even going to have read both of those articles and Notice that there's a pattern may be happening here And it's one debunking article to 50 articles that reinforce the myth and being like look at this guy and yeah

and as a like journalists And publishing houses are much less motivated To debunk stories that are making the money. Yeah. Oh, yeah, and then we get to Mike's first girlfriend Lois Eckenrod and they met During, you know, the very start of his college career, which they would have to because he wasn't there for very long And they dated for a couple of months. She tells cornerstone before getting engaged and they saw each other every single day And at this time his friends describe him being thin with thick glasses and short hair

Young ned Flanders and they specifically debunk the freaky shirts claim The shirts were decidedly unfreeky They quote the freaky shirts description that he gives and then as a rebuttal that his friend greg says he looked like everybody else Brutal and it's also around this time that he starts kind of dabbling in occult lies He tells his roommate at one point that he had quote some kind of white witchcraft background He claimed had been reincarnated any number of times that he was born in the irish moors in the 1970s Along with his other stories. He claimed he'd once been a trappist monk

It's actually interesting that this grift of like making up a fake life story goes far further back than just the memoir It's like art. It's like being an artist or it's just like any any other pursuit I think you kind of start off and you're young And you have certain lies that you kind of tell experimentally and see what kind of reaction people have and If a lie gets traction you keep going with it you riff on it And so it's what he like starts off being like i'm a reincarnated trappist monk and like that's kind of interesting But you can see how when he hit on satanism he would just keep going back to that. Yeah, that's the money shot So greg his roommate says there were times we listened to mike tell his tall tales

But if mike thought we believed what he was saying or that we looked at him like some kind of guru He was greatly mistaken. We were all part of the same bragging team Yeah, he honestly needed to find like a fandom that he could be part of or like some sort of community That would encourage this kind of thing, but also Know that it's fake the whole time. I guess like i'm looking at when was star trek originally on Okay, star trek started in 1966. He was one year too early for star trek man. See that's the problem He should have been a trekky. Wouldn't that have been great? He was like, hello, my name. I'm mike warnke and i'm a vulcan Mike also, you know said various contradictory things about, you know, how many times he was wounded in vietnam

How many times he was injured as a satanist? Um, and so in mike warnke alive, which is an album that he did I think his first album he says i'd had hepatitis four times for shooting up with dirty needles I had scabs all over my face from shooting up crystal. I was a speed freak I weighed 110 pounds soaking wet my skin had turned yellow My hair was falling out. My teeth were rotting out of my head. I'd been pistol whipped five or six times My jaw had been broken. My nose had been almost ripped off. I had a bullet hole in my right leg Two bullet holes in my left leg

Come on Craig gilbert and the others saw mike on a daily basis and say that it is totally impossible for mike to have Had hepatitis facial scabs for injecting crystal and wounds for being shot three times Without us knowing it. It's a lie. And craig says also I don't think you get scabs on your face because you're shooting crystal into your face You get it because you pick at your skin. I mean christians are really great people to lie to because their idea of bad behavior Is like that classic new yorker cover of like America

Oh, yeah seen from new york seen from new york. Yeah, exactly like it flattens out very quickly Yeah, here's a quote you'll like none of the college friends who frequented the apartment ever saw a colt books and ox blood leather couch Or two love slaves I did see some sandwiches though I never slept with him says lois we kissed and hugged but I never would have had sex with him because I was very devout catholic And I wanted to be a virgin till I got married. Thank god. I didn't marry him This does make his descriptions of sex make a lot more sense. Yeah, he's like they were doing things I couldn't even imagine it's like well, you can't imagine terribly much

Um Okay, so the and by the way the timeline is even shorter than I implied earlier So cornerstone says in the satan cellar weren't he has gone through his drug sex and promotion to high priest before christmas? Of 1965 he started school in mid september You can't even rise through the ranks of like denny's in that amount of time Yeah, I just like think about what you accomplished during your first semester of college everybody All I did was start listening to the magnetic fields. Yeah, and so in real life he

Leaves college and he decides to join the navy and then in the book This is where he does his sort of born again story Yeah, and like and that progression is basically true But like, you know, his reason for joining the navy which is that he's trying to escape the satanists Is obviously and probably not true and in his later works. He talks about having this drug filled Very counter cultural going away party The article tells us lois says she was the girl who gave mike is going away party

I bought a big cake decorated with a navy boat lois remembers it said ship ahoy mike Don and I made food and pop and we had a bunch of people over it was just clean fun I took him to the bus stop put him on the bus to go to boot camp lois says We were supposed to get married when he finished. It's like an adorably normie going away party. These people just sound like nice I know doesn't that cake sound so cute like yet to go to the cake store Or the grocery store and be like right ship ahoy mike. Yeah I'm so happy lois didn't marry him either. You mean to know good god Yeah, he goes to boot camp and then he graduates august 22nd of 1966 and then the next time lois sees him

She says he was different. He was carrying a bible. I asked him about it. He said he'd found christ at boot camp and uh He found someone else. He also found sue. Oh Sorry lois I'm not accusing him of anything But I feel like if you're going to break things off with your first and only girlfriend To abruptly marry somebody else Then like this whole like my whole life is different and i'm completely different because i'm a christian now even though

I was basically one before yeah thing if it's not a scheme. It's at least psychologically a way to like Allow yourself to like lie to others and maybe yourself about like what the hell you're doing It's a way to make yourself like a little butterfly emerging from a cocoon. Yeah and not being like oh I definitely cheated on this lady who was waiting for me back home And the person who with lois like that that mike is dead. He doesn't exist anymore And it's like well that doesn't excuse what you're doing to lois really the lois story So he and sue got married the following year may 13th 1967 they moved to san diego which again is what happens in the book and

After his service in vietnam Which last six months He starts telling his satan story and I think just like the response to him is positive enough that he keeps Building it. Yeah, so it's also around this time that he meets dave balsiger who's going to be his co-writer for the satan seller Yes, and he's working for an evangelist named morris cerulo and August really this paragraph. It's pretty great After starting a youth ministry in san diego cerulo had come in contact with kids dabbling in the occult and decided to write a book on the subject Balsiger was assigned the job

It was during this time that he met mike warnke and enlisted his aid The book was to be called witchcraft never looked better They also created a specially outfitted trailer Purchased to house research materials such as voodoo oil graveyard dust and fortune-telling spray The vehicle dubbed the witch mobile was to be unveiled at an upcoming morris cerulo convention This sounds like a fucking rpg You have to gather the like coffin dust to go like talk to this other character

It sounds like an like an early 90s cd rom game With like minimal animation So this this book is cerulo's idea and he has enough pull that he is really instrumental in helping mike Get out of the navy Which is a major plot point in the end of the satan seller that he wants to minister full time Oh, right. That's why he has to leave the navy and it's not dishonorable It's because he's called by a higher power Again, he's using jesus as like a get out of jail free card

We asked dav balsiger about evidence for the story told in the book. Was he concerned about that? Oh, yes, he said and what was the evidence mike offered for the satan seller's 1500 member cult Mike took me to some of the sites He said I saw where there had been a fire started and there were some indications of cultic writings and graffiti Oh my god, there's been a fire mike This is like me saying that i'm really good friends with ariana grande And then you come over to my house and the only evidence i present you with is like a ponytail ribbon Like see it has to be her ariana grande has a ponytail and so there it is there it is

I believe you So cerulea gets him out of the navy and then at that point mike Immediately is like hey actually you can't use any of my satan testimony and i'm going to write the book myself Thanks for getting me out of the navy bye. Okay, nice. So the book comes out the Guy who runs a publishing company says it sells much better than they expected it to Mike warn keys personal demons have aligned with something that society is going through. Yeah, and so mike starts going to ministry school

and He meets A woman who he has an affair with oh and then he also keeps on her with someone else Jesus christ still married to sue man. They're really going after this guy We're like way past the satanist stuff now. There's like this dude sucks in every way You know what I suspect is that if you're writing this expose like a you want to get as full of pictures You can of course B if someone's a liar in one arena

Yeah, like it's easier to believe he's a liar elsewhere I can see a lot of people reading this and like reading the whole like How could he have had time to become a satanist high priest in three months if he was spending every day with lois Right and he could be like well the satanists are so powerful that they've enchanted lois Obviously and given her all these fake memories and you can you can not believe that I think if you just choose to throw the whole thing out, but I think it's harder to throw out all of like he Cheated on everyone and also I think we respond to people just being like kind of dicks

In a way that we don't always respond to like someone faked a memoir right if I ever debunk anybody's memoir I'm going to throw in the fact that they like only tip five percent at restaurants or something That would be a great job for you then one more debunker. Okay. Do you want to hear what mike's how mike flirts? Oh god, no, but yes, mike started telling me he and sue had different ideas about what they wanted out of life And that he didn't love her anymore says carolin Mike began passing notes to me in class with stuff like hubba hubba Written on them. That's rough hubba hubba like on a note You write down those words. I wonder if he's learned all the sex things by now

If he's still confused I feel like he has not learned all the sex things bags of sand And then near the end of the school year carolin says that's when it gets physical She says we've been assigned to paraphrase the book of isiah Mike rented a cabin outside tulsa to do his work and he offered to help me with my homework there And so they work at the cabin for a while then they go out for a drive They stop in a mini mart Warnke returned to the car says carolin with two bottles of annie green springs wine two packs of cigarettes and a package of peanut butter cookies

That day they began an affair that would lead to marriage two years later and divorced two years after that Oh, man, I guess from day one. I was wrong says carolin And so he's just left a trail of like fake memoirs and disappointed women behind him. Yeah I mean, this is another big theme on our show that like the world is full of lovely women who You can woo with like a fake life story and some peanut butter cookies And they deserve better and we deserve to live in a world where women can have more reasonable standards for who they're gonna Let into their life Thank you. Thank you

And then in order to make it seem legit that he's leaving sue for carolin. Do you know what he does? What's what more jesus stuff? Yeah, in a way, he's like sue is cheating on me, which she obviously isn't But that's a way to make it her fault He does a ceremony with carolin where he Mixes their blood so they can become one sounds kind of satanic, but okay And so at this point he's touring he's going around performing, you know, his he's building his comedy career and Then he starts being physically abusive with carolin. Holy shit

After one night the way carolin describes that they were fighting and then he throws her at a wall and Threatens her he says if she goes to a hospital and tells anyone what her name is Which means they can figure out she's his wife that he'll kill her. Jesus christ And carolin says there's a revolver in the nightstand. She takes it out. She says if you hit me again, mike I'm gonna kill you because I'm tired of your beatings And then she gets in the car and she doesn't stop driving until she's in pensacola. Holy shit And so she stays there a week

and then mike Sends her a note That reads dear carolin. I don't know how we ever got to this place. All I know for sure is that we are here I can't blame you for not wanting to be around me right now Nor can I condemn your disgust at my rages and tantrums. I'm trying hard to get control I'll always be there when you need me The scar on my wrist will never fade peace to you

Dude, well now I understand why they kept all this stuff in the debunking. Holy shit. Yeah, it's not just petty It's like an escalating pattern of abusive behavior. Jesus christ. What do you think of this note? I mean, it seems like he's sort of like letting her go in a way But also like he's also pulling some weird power move shit. I don't know This is like he's being like don't cut the baby in half I think together to be like, oh, he seems like a good guy And also he's like, I I'm not gonna blame you or condemn you and it's like wow. That's really maganis After you assaulted her so do they get back together like what happens?

So carolin talks to him on the phone while she's away from him when she last about two weeks And then she goes back to nashville I think maybe with thoughts of reconciliation And she says I came home and there was a for sale sign on the house all locks had been changed and everything in the house was gone What in just a matter of days? I had no funds. No furniture. Nothing Carolyn felt most of the people she knew in the industry had been siding with mike who was telling everyone stories about her unfaithfulness So he just goes like scorched earth. Yeah, this is a wild fucking story. Yeah Nice work cornerstone. Someone had to do it

20 years after this stupid book came out. Jesus Christ. So what happens to her? Is she okay now? I don't know how she's doing now But according to cornerstone as of the early 90s She was working as an undercover narcotics operative with the regional organized crime information center A law enforcement organization in nashville. I mean mass incarceration is bad But i'm also glad that she found a sort of sustainable future away from this fucking dude You know like if you can figure out how to use the skills you learned in your terrible marriage to mike warnkeith and That'll be good for you for the rest of your life

So in the same way that he's positing Catholicism and like weed as gateway drugs to satanism We've also got like blatantly lying about your life story as a gateway drug to like much worse behavior I don't know. Maybe it's really facile to link those two things But it seems like at no point has this guy been subject to any form of accountability Well, because he's found a subculture that's rewarding him for a certain kind of story that he's telling and they're empowering him and they're giving him You know, I think that this kind of attention would like swell your ego and put you in circles where Yeah, there is an emphasis on a lack of accountability, especially if you're making money for people and like he was doing well with his

Anti-satanist christian comedy like apparently there was a lot of money in that in the 70s. Who knew see okay? I'm amending my earlier statement because I said the cornerstone expose You know is an indication of like a healthy movement, but the fact that it took 20 years And that there were all these other red flags about his behavior is like not a sign of a healthy internal checks and balances Movement, right? If somebody's doing this to his wife I mean surely people around him knew that he was behaving this way and would have had clues About things like, you know physical abuse, you know everything else going on Or just the fact that he's discarding women in a very unchristian way. Yes, exactly

It doesn't take someone who's like a gumshoe to be like are all these women really cheating on mike? Yeah, exactly three in a row and he left them all in kind of the same way and then like cleaned out her bank account Like there's obviously other red flags about bad behavior that should have encouraged somebody to be like Let me take a look at this book again. Yeah, how many fingers did you eat mike? Like let's let's do some fact checking They're finger licking good Okay, and then someone who knew him at the time Mike told him that carolin was rubbed out by the mob. Oh my god He told someone else that carolin had been killed in a boating accident

And it's like that seems like a bad sign if you're lying about your ex-wife who you just Horribly booted from your life if like if in your fantasy kingdom, she's also dead That's like pretty fucking easily checkable too. I mean that's like a bold move to kill off your living ex-wife Yeah, but like if you run into any mutual friends or acquaintances you can be like Isn't it terrible about the carolin and the boating accident? Someone can be like carolin's an undercover narcotics officer What are you talking about? Yeah, I mean to what you were saying before about like Making up fake life stories And abusive behavior like I feel like they probably

Show up next to each other Fairly often like that makes sense to me as a pattern because I think they're fueled by the same needs And also then the fact that like like he's found a religious faction That has allowed him to just keep upping the dose of this kind of like maladaptive behavior Right that I think is encouraging it to get worse and then if you keep making money for people Like they're not inclined to Try and employ accountability measures that might make you unprofitable Yeah, there's no reason for them to start sniffing around his life story because everybody else is getting rich on it too

And lo and behold like one month and four days after he divorces carolin He marries a woman named rose hall. Okay, and They got divorced in 1991 And so I found a memoir that she had written And I was like, oh my god Yeah, I bet it's a tell all divorce memoir and it's called the great pretender And I was like this has to be a tell all divorce. Yeah

And then I ordered it and it came and it's not she wrote it when they were still married. Oh, no Yeah, but what is the great pretender referred to if not Mike Warnke dear reader Satan is the greatest of all pretenders He only is the author and teacher of lies and deception. I feel so bad for you and you found out what her memoir was called I know How can I have predicted that it wasn't about her husband? I know you're like jackpot. Yeah Wait, I'm gonna turn my camera on for a second. I'll show you this cover Oh, it says the great pretender pretender pretender pretender and it's in like pride colors. It's like a nice little spectrum

I was so hopeful. I was I know this is like my pie, right? Okay, and then here's the back cover and you're ready. You're not ready, but I'm not ready. Oh, it's them How are they looking? This is the Warnkees in the mid 80s So it's Mike Warnke and this like beautiful woman in like a hawaiian shirt and they look Unbelievably happy and he looks like a big dork Like I get what people mean now when they say like he didn't wear weird pants and freaky shirts Like this is like the least freaky attire. Is he wearing a polo shirt? Yeah, it's like a polo shirt and a mustache and like glasses

He just looks like a normal like I don't know 35 year old dude. He looks like he's your all state agent Yeah, yeah, and she is like relegated to like a tiny corner of this photo She's like almost cropped out of a photo in her own book Pictures like 80% Mike like first of all this book is still like 90 times better than the satan seller And b I can't believe this is real, but it is when you were reading it whenever Mike Warnke's name appears It is bold and it italicized What? So all the Mike Warnkees just leap out at you

What? And it makes me read it in my head like in a in a certain tone like she's emphasizing his name every time It's like how when Jesus speaks in the bible. It's in red. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah So this is the story of how they met it's from a chapter midway through the book called not so crazy mike I first laid eyes on michael alfred patrick warnke About nine years ago when I attended a christian music festival in wilmore, kentucky So she went to the gathering of the christelos So she sees him perform she likes it and then she sees him speak at a little church elsewhere in kentucky and

She goes up and introduces herself and she says I brought all my friends here and we live in paintsville and drove all the way from there And then five months later He's going to be performing at the university of kentucky because he tours relentlessly And she's also she's been married before she's a single mom and college student And so she takes her friends to go see him and she also takes her little daughter kathryn And then mike warnke comes into the auditorium and she decides she's going to tell him that she again brought a bunch of kids to the concert And so she goes up to mike warnke and I guess need you to remember every time his every every time I say his name

It's bold. Yeah the emphasis I got up and went over to the door and said do you remember me? I was at your concert in may at the church in hazard. Yes, he said then I found myself saying You're going to do great tonight. I really love you Maybe after the concert you can meet some of the kids and he takes her hand and he says yeah, bring them afterwards Wow, they're really going for it. It's like west side story like everything blurs around them We were whispering and I was real close to him as he took my hand and held it to his chest He was very nice. He later told me that my words had stunned him

And so mike warnke wants to have dinner with her and she's like well I have I have to get back home because it's a three hour drive and I have school tomorrow and I have exams And he's like no let's just have dinner and she's like well. I have my little daughter And I need to bring her home and he's like bring her And so they're eating they have dinner And then They sit in the car and talk until one in the morning. Her daughter is curled up sleeping in the backseat of the car So she gives him her phone number and drops him off and goes home

And then she decides that she must say goodbye to him and she calls his hotel and he's already left And so she calls the airport and has him paged And she says never in my life had I ever called an airport and had anyone paged But he picks up the phone and she says I just wanted to tell you goodbye One more time that's either very sweet or very creepy depending on how you feel about the person doing it to you Yeah, and then he's like let's both fly to Atlanta and we can stay in a hotel and like separate hotel rooms And so she flies there and then pages into this. She says looking back It had never occurred to me to say you're a minister an evangelist. Are you married?

It never entered my mind. I mean to be fair like was he wearing a ring and he's definitely giving her I'm available vibes. Obviously. Okay. This is Mike Warnke's big move This is the thing I am most impressed and most grossed out by I think that he does in all of this literature So they're at this hotel in Atlanta. They're going to go to dinner And she writes before we left the hotel Michael said let's pray about our relationship As we prayed Michael said lord, you can see we're visiting each other We're talking and sharing and we want to spend time together Please lead us as to what we should do about it. Okay, and then they go to the omni center

And they dine and then they take a cab back to the hotel And they're talking to the cab driver and he says I'm married I have a wonderful wife a christian wife. In fact, I don't know how I could do this if it weren't for my christian wife Michael turned to me and looked intently into my eyes The cab driver continued to talk about how important it is to have a good christian wife Which he already has one of and how necessary it is if you are serving the lord Michael turned and looked out the rear window of the cab and said well, gee lord What are you saying? What he's like?

It's a sign That this cab driver is talking about his good christian wife which as far as you know, I don't already have one of Yeah, and he's like well golly lord. Are you giving us a sign that? This woman who I've just met Should marry me and like god's not gonna tell him he's wrong. So do they get like married immediately almost immediately This is the hard part about not being able to have sex before you're married, man You get uh get a lot of excuses to get married real fast He really he appears to be having his share of extramarital soft pink sex

Yeah, that's true as well. Oh, and then he gives her a necklace With mw on it with his own initials Yes, not to be too heavy-handed But like one of the things we say about fake satanic cults is that they like to brand their members and they were a special jewelry And mike satanist had special rings And like Yeah, anyway, but were was it engraved with bold italic letters? So they get married again, canary third 1980 they bring both of their kids from their previous marriages

And then afterwards they go to pizza hut But then is the rest of the book just her being like we're in a happy marriage and everything is fine Yes, and then you go to her wikipedia page and it's like some fucking nightmare I don't think she even has a wikipedia page, which it seems unjust. She deserves one. Oh, and this is what rose says about the time prior to the writing of this book when mike inevitably cheated on her She says we weren't communicating and satan provided a woman to fill the gap in michael's life. Oh my god It's like can we not blame satan for everything? Let's start blaming mike for some stuff. I feel like he's abusing christianity to his own ends

He's abusing the faith of these like Typically highly devout women. Yeah, who he's manipulating and just this idea being like well, it looks like god is sending us a sign Yeah together and he's like a highly regarded christian entertainer So like in a way, it would be hard to say no to that you'd be like, well, I can't argue with god Can I and there's already a power imbalance because he's like, you know famous and everything And it's also like a very patriarchal kind of norms within that community So that gives him power as well, but to then throw in like guess god just wants this for us, you know Yeah, well, let's go back to cornerstone. Let's zoom out again. Okay, because they

Working together do a lot to expand the ministries He starts his own church in kentucky Its technical title is hawk the holy orthodox catholic church in kentucky According to cornerstone As time went on they staffed it with a series of christian women whose opinions of the warn key ministry were much higher When they joined than when they left One of the staffers says mike was usually out of town But one day he just showed up and said i'm gonna do the teaching this week

So he sang and then mike put on his robes. I thought he was plain ridiculous It was like dressing up to be something or not. It made me feel sad He wants to be so much and he isn't I can still see him standing there in his robe all velvet and dark. Oh my god That's fucking cold. And so yeah, they're raising all this money, you know, theoretically to combat satanism And mike predictably is using it as his own personal piggy bank. Oh, of course. There's a financial grift involved too. Jesus christ Well, yeah, inevitably. Yeah, like people who abuse power are very predictable and boring I think yeah

And according to a staffer named jan ross on several occasions rose said to me that anybody who was in the position She and mike were in deserved to have the best of everything Because of who they were and what they had given up to be where they were. I thought what did you give up? Yeah We gave up not being rich in order to be rich Well, you know what rose says in her book is that because they're speaking out against the satanists like they're being targeted by the satanist And they have to be really careful. It's also funny because like on some level Yeah, like we deserve to be comfortable because we're doing a lot of work and people are, you know, buying our books Whatever, but like great then be transparent about it

Like give us a donation and it goes into our bank accounts If you actually felt that you wouldn't be fucking lying about where the money's going We actually have a table of their income between 1984 and 1990 brutal So in 1984 mike made 34 500 dollars And rose made 11 500 and in 1996 years later mike made 239 291 And rose made 230 And 291 dollars because they're pulling in like 500 k in like 1980s money. Yeah, like for

470 with those put together. I do appreciate the wage parity. Yeah, that's rare But also as cornerstone points out part of the reason they're pulling in more money. It's not just because they're paying themselves more It's because the organization is taking in more money for them to pay themselves with And the growth of warnkey ministries in the mid 80s paralleled a sudden explosion of public fears about satanism In march of 1985 mike warnkey appeared on an abc 2020 report called the devil worshipers Oh, no stories of hideous satanic crimes were often woven together by self-proclaimed experts to demonstrate the existence of a worldwide satanic conspiracy And it's like, yeah, like what a great way to get people to buy your book Yeah, it makes sense that he would ride the wave of like michelle remembers and all this other panicked stuff going on at the time

Well, it's like when you write an article and then years pass and then there's like A biopic about the person you wrote about. I don't know what I might be referring to And you're like, excuse me. I was talking about this years ago. Yeah, like I helped loosen this jelly jar There's a story that mike Really relies on as a fundraising tool for this ministry And it is about a kid named jeffie Okay Who is supposedly a little boy who had become a vegetable because of all the satanic abuse he'd had

Oh my god The story was used to raise money to help all the jeffies of the world. There wouldn't be so many jeffies Mike always had to count the money after a concert and call rose to give her an idea of what was there She'd ask if he told the jeffie story if he hadn't she'd say you tell the jeffie story tomorrow night So basically rose is like just as much of a grifter as mike I mean does she believe that his stories are true is question a and question b is like Even if these stories are entirely true like this still seems like a con Because they're raising this money for jeffie and then spending it. So yeah, she's like she's she's at least a quarter of the grifter

He is yeah their staffer jan says it's scary to think you can get involved with something like that with a pure heart to serve god And then find out it's run on deception lies and thievery first time for everything You know ironically one of the things I've read in Literature talking about what these alleged satanic cults are up to one of the things they get accused of is like Spiritual abuse, you know, and there's this idea that satanists are they're obsessed with desecrating altar claws They like to pee in the holy water And so the idea is that what satanists do is especially important because they

Make you associate your original faith with negative associations and rob you of your faith And I think it's kind of ironic Yeah Spiritual abuse for sure exists and I feel like the main people committing it are the people who Believe that they are sincerely trying To just be christians and are somehow incredibly bad at it Yeah And also as we've confronted so many times doing the show like the the villains in american life are easy to find and they are always

In places where they have lots of power and no accountability Heads of churches like my parents talk about this all the time that there's essentially no Obligations for transparency or accountability for heads of churches You can just like be the ceo of like the michael hobbs church in seattle washington and like no one will ever check your financial statements No one will ever come and audit you like your congregation is trusting you completely and like i'm sorry But like that's a structure that encourages people to do exactly this kind of grifting and like sometimes it goes all the way To like sexual assault and sometimes it stops at just like you know stealing money or like using it to buy a car or whatever And like we shouldn't be shocked at like the ten thousandth time that we see somebody doing this

And blaming the satanists for like the thing that they're just doing themselves I'll all by themselves without help from anybody Including satan himself like leave satan out of it. He's busy. It doesn't take satan. It just takes no surveillance It just takes mic. Yeah And cornerstone ends by basically summing up their philosophy on that and I was reading this and I was like the sounds Oddly relevant to the cancel culture conversations we're having right now this second So they write we would be remiss in our duty as christian journalists if we could not offer some concrete suggestions and reflections

Some of our readers will expect us to have followed the steps of matthew 1815 to 17 Starting with private confrontation. This passage gives christ's instructions on what to do Quote if your brother sins against you and the process stops if the brother repents privately We have two remarks on this passage First mic has already been confronted numerous times over the years by many concerned christian friends Acquaintances and church leaders mic knows what the bible says about truthfulness integrity and fidelity He is responsible to put into practice what he already knows Second, this is not a private dispute between mike warnke and a magazine

A public figure is susceptible to public scrutiny and criticism Matthew 18 is not violated when public figures are publicly rebuked. Okay, but don't you love I love this They're offering scriptural basis. Yeah for a call out. It's lit. Yes I also think I mean if this story demonstrates anything It is the fact that like the lack of cancel culture is worse than cancel culture Having internal mechanisms of accountability is good because you stop people like this in their tracks Before they can become like massive Financial grifters and like make up a bunch of jeffees

Like we talk a lot about how like public shaming and sort of callouts can have this element of toxicity to them Which is absolutely true, but it's also very important to police ethical norms within a community Well, and then they also have an action plan, which I really like they're like If mike were to seek forgiveness and restoration, what could the church expect to see as evidence of the genuineness of his repentance? The following principles should apply to any christian leader who has manifestly fallen One repentance repentance is fundamental to christianity. It denotes a complete turnaround And mike warnke's case true repentance would necessitate complete withdrawal from public ministry. Like what does this sound like? Televangelists are the original youtubers. They're shame dothining him. Yes

To confession if mike is repentant He should make an open admission of guilt on the other hand mike warnke has built a career of telling us about past and present sins The church must not allow him to emerge as a new authority on fraudulent testimonies three Restitution true moral change involves some attempt to undo past wrongs and provide some kind of restitution Perhaps the best kind of restitution mike warnke could perform Would be to take satan cellar and all his other products off the market. I mean, yeah to me This feels like it could have been written today. Oh, yeah, and in a totally secular context totally

These are like normal mechanisms of accountability Transparent stop profiting from your lies Admit what you did show that you know why what you did is wrong if anything. It's too generous Well, you know, it's based on math you And then they end by quoting the apostle paul and they say it's not too late for mike to change If he wants to The secular press may scoff and those who consider themselves real satanists may snicker But the jesus of the bible is still the god of truth

and it's It's very sweet and it's also kind of a burn. It's like jesus still loves you. Yeah Yeah Even though you're dead to us your channel's demonetized. So I mean there are actually consequences for him Christianity today interviews him and he's like, yes, I was a satanist, but like there were fewer people at our meetings Like there were only like 13 people instead of 1500 Good stuff and most of them are dead weirdly. I can't confirm any of this But you know, I mean I've told some lies, but they're not as bad as the lie

I mean, this is like classic admit to what you're already busted for but double down on anything They can't bust you for yes and be like I can't believe you discovered my misconduct Which is only extends to the things you've found out about already. Yeah And then as with a lot of people like it's it's his financial misconduct that takes him down because reporters at a kentucky newspaper continue the investigation into the finances they find That they have like even more money. They're they're receiving when they're low-key grifting Saying that they have no money left because a classic hymn bakerism

Yeah And he is forced to close his ministry Just once I would like one of these things to be or like you look into it and it's not as bad As it sounds instead of being worse. I feel like it's always worse. Yeah, and his label drops him also his recording label cancel culture He tries to make a comeback to the christian comedy world About 10 years later and this doesn't get the traction That he used to and I think it's it's kind of like the goodfellas ending, you know It's like you live but like what for I mean these stories always do

Have sort of like a bittersweet side to them in what way because it is like this sad story of like this guy Who was like processing a bunch of stuff? He became this villain based on his own like lack of impulse control And the total inability of anyone around him to put up some fucking walls and be like that's enough mic Yeah, and I think that like it's a prot like when society Can't recognize serially mistreating women as a problem. Yeah One advantage of being able to do that is not just that you protect women like if you don't care about that then fine because

You have other reasons to notice because even if you don't care about the women like if someone's doing that They're probably out of control in other ways. Yeah, and they might be manipulating you Jeffy might not be real and like that's also that way of looking at the world It's like a cluster of personality traits that manifest in a bunch of other ways So it's never like this guy's shitty to women But like that seems like that's it and like he's great in his finances. Yeah, and I guess to me It's like there are lots of people who tell lots of lies and who even maybe start to believe them and

Get some amount of attention that they apparently need for that reason The question is like what amplifies that and what trains them to do it more and bigger Like it's really interesting that munchausens by internet is like a whole its own thing now Because it's just so easy to use the internet to Either pretend you're sick or to document your life in a way that allows you to just create fabulous Stories about you know that like have some basis in reality, but like not much of one. Yeah, and that require sympathy and perhaps money

From people like the internet Actually, I think is behaving kind of like the churches that Mike Warnke is working in in the 70s where it's like Rewarding maladaptive behavior basically. Yeah, but it also imposes consequences in a way that like the mechanisms that Warnke was subject to didn't Sometimes. Yeah, and I also wonder about like like, you know, there's consequences for him But also like was there a cultural reckoning with how Like he was huge. He was extremely popular. It's hard to overstate How big of a deal he was and like a lot of people by the early 90s would have grown up on his albums And and his comedy stylings and also his claims about satanism. Yeah, and like you can't undo that

Right and it's very hard to go back and like really reckon with I believe something that was false Based on extremely weak information and like actually confront that and that's something that we don't do very often I think I mean I think that like he needed a lot more support than this would offer But that a career that he could have done that maybe would have taken These behaviors and done something more positive with them would be acting. Yeah, or historical reenactment Or thrifting Go buy people some weird pants

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