Episode 5: Live, Laugh, Lose

Summary

Camp Shame: Episode 5 - Live, Laugh, Lose

Introduction

In Episode 5 of Camp Shame, titled "Live, Laugh, Lose," host Kelsey Snelling delves deeper into her harrowing experience at Camp Shane, one of America’s longest-running weight loss camps for kids. This episode uncovers the dark underbelly of what was marketed as a transformative environment for young campers struggling with weight and body image issues.

Arrival and Initial Impressions

Kelsey begins by recounting her arrival at Camp Shane on June 22, 2011, which coincided with her 21st birthday. Despite the lack of typical birthday treats like alcohol and cake, she was enthusiastic about her role as a camp counselor responsible for a cabin of thirteen-year-old girls.

“It’s June 22, 2011, camper arrival day at Camp Shane. It’s also my 21st birthday, but there’s no alcohol and there’s definitely no cake.” [00:48]

Upon arrival, Kelsey immediately noticed the camp’s deteriorating state. The food was subpar, with minimal portions that failed to meet calorie needs, and the campgrounds were in disrepair.

“I arrived at Camp Shane a few days before my sister, and right away I realized the food was less than optimal... the portions were so minimal.” [09:12]

Counselors' Motivations and Challenges

Kelsey’s sister, Bobby, also joined as a counselor, driven by her own struggles with weight and a desire to inspire the campers. Both Kelsey and Bobby were attracted to Camp Shane by its promises of fostering fitness and self-love among participants.

“I really was going in with a very optimistic view that this would be a place where kids that were struggling with their weight really could get some guidance...” [07:54]

However, the compensation was dismal—coupled with long hours and inadequate pay, counselors were overworked and underpaid, receiving a total of $1,100 for approximately 11 weeks of work.

“Base salary, $550. Completion of contract stipend, $275. Travel stipend, $275. For a total of $1,100...” [08:12]

Camp Activities and Their Impact

Early activities at Camp Shane included mandatory swimsuit photos meant to showcase weight loss transformations. This practice was deeply humiliating for campers, many of whom arrived already anxious about body image.

“Imagine showing up to a completely new place where you know no one, and then you’re asked to take off your clothes and show off your body...” [13:15]

Weekly weigh-ins became a central focus, fostering an unhealthy obsession with the number on the scale. Campers went to extreme lengths to manipulate their weight, including starvation, excessive exercise, and deceitful behaviors like pretending to be constipated to receive laxatives.

“The weigh-ins had been around since the camp’s inception and kids were desperate for their number to go down each week.” [14:04]

Disordered Eating and Mental Health Issues

The restrictive diet at Camp Shane led to widespread disordered eating among campers and counselors alike. Kelsey and her colleagues engaged in secret binge-eating sessions during their time off, indulging in high-calorie treats to cope with the stress and restriction imposed by the camp's regime.

“I consumed a big brownie sundae, complete with four scoops of ice cream and a brownie of magnificent size...” [35:26]

Counselors like Casey struggled with their own body image issues, often exacerbated by the intense environment. Casey shared her personal battle with weight gain during adolescence and her eventual transformation, which motivated her to become a counselor.

“I just decided enough is enough. Threw away all the food in my apartment and I went to the grocery store and just like started from scratch.” [16:54]

Lack of Proper Support and Staff Training

Despite Camp Shane’s claims of having licensed nutritionists and professional staff, the reality was starkly different. Casey, lacking formal training, attempted to educate campers on basic nutrition, but her efforts were insufficient to counteract the camp’s flawed approach.

“We learned how to bake chicken with certain seasonings... but why is the chicken healthy? And they’re like, oh, they didn’t tell us.” [24:07]

Moreover, the camp did not provide adequate psychological support, leaving counselors ill-equipped to handle the emotional and mental health crises that arose among campers.

“How distressing it was to learn about the trauma and the eating disorders and the body dysmorphia...” [31:39]

Crisis and Counselors' Resignation

Tensions peaked when a serious incident involving an 18-year-old male camper with a developmental disability being sexually inappropriate with a 13-year-old girl was mishandled. The camp did not remove the perpetrator, prioritizing the offender’s feelings over the victim’s safety. This negligence led to the resignation of key staff members, including Cole Perry and Danielle—a decision driven by their inability to condone such inaction.

“We just felt like we couldn't be here anymore.” [44:54]

Kelsey herself faced immense pressure, dealing with trauma, depression, and PTSD from her time at Camp Shane. The lack of support and the realization that leaving would mean abandoning vulnerable children compelled her to stay until the end of the summer.

“I felt like it would be easy for me to walk away, but that my campers would still be there...” [54:29]

Aftermath and Reflections

Post-summer, the emotional and psychological toll on Kelsey was profound. She experienced lingering depression and PTSD, fueling her determination to expose the truth about Camp Shane. Her experiences highlighted the camp's systemic failures, including inadequate training, poor management, and a culture deeply entrenched in fatphobia and shame.

“Camp Shane felt like a fever dream. What I saw left me exhausted and empty.” [56:39]

Conclusion and Next Steps

Kelsey concludes the episode by reflecting on the broader societal issues of body shaming and the detrimental effects of dieting culture on young minds. She expresses uncertainty about the role of Simon Greenwood, the hands-on camp director, questioning how someone so revered could allow such harm to continue.

“Maybe Simon was exhausted and depleted, but was sticking around to make sure things didn’t get worse.” [57:59]

Kelsey sets the stage for future episodes by indicating her ongoing investigation into Camp Shane’s operations and the cultural forces that sustained its flawed system for over five decades.

Notable Quotes

• “Trust me, this is going to be an amazing summer.” — Kelsey Snelling [00:48]
• “Their motto was live, laugh, lose.” — Bobby [22:00]
• “Eating disorders are the most lethal mental health disorder, second to opioid use disorder.” — Dr. Lisa Erlanger [32:32]
• “We just couldn't get over it the way that it was just breezed over like it was totally normal.” — Casey [31:39]
• “I wished I knew what David told himself in order to go to sleep at night.” — Cole Perry [45:26]

Final Thoughts

"Live, Laugh, Lose" paints a grim picture of Camp Shane, revealing it as a place where the veneer of transformation masks severe psychological and emotional harm. Through in-depth interviews and personal anecdotes, Kelsey Snelling exposes the camp's failure to provide a safe and supportive environment for its young attendees. This episode serves as a powerful critique of societal obsessions with weight loss and the damaging consequences they can have on vulnerable individuals.

---

For those interested in exploring the full depth of Camp Shane’s impact, subscribe to Camp Shame on your preferred podcast platform and follow @CampShame on Instagram for updates and additional content.

Transcript

[Kelsey Snelling]

This is an I Heart podcast.

[Enrique Santos]

Discover the life changing benefits of Meow Greens for your cat. Ever see your cat slowing down or having health issues and wonder, what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add Meow greens to your cat's food for 90 days and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings. I'm naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, inventor of Meow greens, and I invite you to take the Meow Greens 90 day challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and and increased energy. By day 60, your cat will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, they're going to have better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch a free Jumpstart trial bag for your cat today. Go to trymeowgreens.com use promo code try Meow. That's Try Meow. You just cover the shipping. You don't have to change your cat's food to improve your cat's health. Just add a packet of meow Greens. In 2012, 16 year old Brian Herrera was gunned down in broad daylight on his way to do homework. No suspects, no witnesses, no justice.

[Casey]

I would ask my husband, do you want me to stop? He was like, no, keep fighting.

[Enrique Santos]

After nearly a decade, a breakthrough changed everything. This is Cold Case Files Miami. Stories of families who never stopped fighting. Listen to Cold Case Files Miami on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

I'm Robert Evans, and on my show, behind the Bastards this week we have one of our worst subjects ever. David Berg, founder of the Children of God cult, who we'll be talking about with special guest Ed Helms. He's not just like a weird religious cult leader. He was like fusing a bunch of hippie ideology in with this kind of like evangelical Christianity, Pentecostal preaching in the mid century. He's a very weird guy, but yeah, I'll just get into it here.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Like nothing you just said makes sense.

[Casey]

That doesn't sound right, but that's the beauty of cults.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to behind the bastards on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Andrea Gunning]

I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the podcast Betrayal Police Lieutenant Joel Kern used his badge to fool everyone, most of all, his wife, Caroline.

[Cole Perry]

He texted, I've ruined our lives.

[Casey]

You're going to want to divorce me.

[Andrea Gunning]

How far would he go to cover up what he'd done.

[Kelsey Snelling]

The fact that you lied is absolutely.

[Robert Evans]

Horrific and quite frankly, I question how.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Many other women are out there that.

[Robert Evans]

May bring forward allegations in the future.

[Andrea Gunning]

Listen to betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kelsey Snelling]

This episode contains mentions of disordered eating, mental illness, and suicide. Please take caution while listening and check the show notes for resources. It's June 22, 2011, camper arrival day at Camp Shane. It's also my 21st birthday, but there's no alcohol and there's definitely no cake. And for the next nine weeks I'm in charge of a cabin of a dozen or so 13 year old girls. It's my first time as a counselor at a summer camp and I'm giving each and every camper an enthusiastic welcome to what will be, if I have anything to say about it, the best summer of their lives. Some campers are excited. They know that good times and freedom from their families await. But some of the girls are apprehensive and uncomfortable, resistant to being left behind by their parents. One camper is actively and inconsolably crying. Her mother leaves and I sit on the bed next to her, trying to offer comfort. I tell her what I've been repeating all day long. Trust me, this is going to be an amazing summer. I explain all the crazy activities we have planned, all the wacky counselors, and the old camp traditions. I figure she's just a little scared to be in a new place. But eventually she takes a breath and says something that stops me cold. You don't understand. This is not my first time here. She knew something about Camp Shane I didn't, something I would soon see for myself. This is Camp Shame. I'm Kelsey Snelling. This episode we're zooming in on my summer at Camp Shane, the experience that set this whole podcast in motion. Today we're talking about 2011, a summer filled with disordered eating, mental health issues, and a giant pit of Jell O. By the time I got there, Camp Shane's heyday was in the rearview mirror. Fewer campers were signing up. This was in part because the cultural tides were turning. Traditional diet culture was starting to be overshadowed by wellness culture. Super skinny was deprioritized in favor of fitness and strength, or at least that's how it was sold. Wellness culture is just diet culture with a minimally disparate ideal. Plus, the aftershocks of the 2008 recession meant families didn't have as much Money to send their kids to summer camp anymore. Shane was reaching a tipping point. David was seeking bodies to fill the camp. And according to multiple sources, tensions were high between David and his right hand man, the hands on camp director Simon Greenwood. I tried to talk to Meryl about it when I interviewed her last spring. What was Simon and David's relationship like?

[Casey]

I would like to not go there.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Yikes. In the spring of 2011, I didn't yet know about any of camp's shortcomings. I was a junior in college and I hadn't even heard of Camp Shane. I'd seen the movie Heavyweights, but I didn't realize fat camps were a real thing that actually existed until one day when my older sister called me on the phone and said, I found the.

[Casey]

Coolest job ever and we need to apply.

[Kelsey Snelling]

So I said, okay, what is it? And she sent me the link to the Camp Shane website.

[Casey]

I had finished college. I wasn't quite ready to get started on a career yet. But I had this laundry list of jobs that for one reason or another, I had always wanted to try. And at the top of that list was being a camp counselor.

[Kelsey Snelling]

That's my sister Robyn, but you'll never hear me call her that. To me, she's just Bobby.

[Casey]

So I did an Internet search and one of the very first results that came back was this camp that wasn't too far from where I lived. It was in a beautiful part of the country. It had tons of celebrity endorsements, and it just looked like a really fun place to spend a summer Based on all of the activities that they had on their website.

[Kelsey Snelling]

At this point, Bobby and I were drinking the Camp Sheen Kool Aid. Or maybe Crystal Light. In this case, the way the website sold it. Camp seemed like a fun, positive environment. We looked forward to the chance to teach kids about fitness and how to love themselves. And maybe we'd lose a little weight ourselves. Sign us up. So we applied and both got jobs. Her as a general counselor for the young adult women and me as the arts and crafts teacher. I'd also be in a bunk with 13 year old girls. We were stoked.

[Casey]

I really was going in with a very optimistic view that this would be a place where kids that were struggling with their weight really could get some guidance on how to develop better habits, how to be healthier, develop their body image, that sort of thing.

[Kelsey Snelling]

There was one downside. The pay sucked. Base salary, $550. Completion of contract stipend, $275. Travel stipend, $275. For a total of $1,100, spanning about 11 weeks of work and about 90 hours of work a week. That amounted to basically a dollar an hour. But I didn't care. I was young. Any amount of money was exciting to me. Employees had staggered start days, and as the arts and crafts teacher, I had some setup to do. So I arrived at campshaen a few days before my sister, and right away I realized the food was less than been optimal. All of the work Simon had put into elevating the cuisine at camp didn't seem to matter much when the portions were so minimal.

[Casey]

I remember you called us to let us know how camp was going. And this was, of course, before all of the counselors and campers had arrived. In the early days of just getting things set up. And you said something about, we had breakfast, and it was one silver dollar pancake and five blueberries. And I remember talking to mom and saying, she has to be exaggerating. There's no way they would be feeding adults this for breakfast. And then I got to camp myself and realized that was not an exaggeration. It was quite accurate.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Thank you. I get accused of exaggerating.

[Casey]

Well, not this time.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Another thing that needs no exaggeration. The camp was in complete disrepair. My first three or four days were spent just cleaning with my new colleagues, rearranging mattresses, dusting and cleaning windows and sweeping the floors, which had huge gaps between the wooden planks. In some areas you could see down to the ground below, and when you looked up, the roof leaked too. As the arts and crafts teacher, I also had my own classroom of sorts to prep. It was in my favorite building on campus, tucked into the woods away from the busiest parts of camp, with a big balcony looking onto the lush greenery below. But inside, it was gross. There were unclaimed art projects that had grown moldy from years in storage. Bottles of glue had completely hardened, and empty tubs of what was once glitter were filled with dead bugs. I threw everything into trash bags and started from scratch, which included repainting the walls and sanding the splintering floors. One day during this orientation week, a few counselors and I went down to explore the campgrounds creek, which was a bit of a walk from the main part of camp. I a dip into the cool crystal water surrounded by towering pine trees. Sounds idyllic, right? Well, in this case, no. The creek was filled with trash. There were old car parts scattered around, and at one point, I felt something bump my leg. When I looked down, I saw a bloated dead beaver carcass staring up at me. I still think about its eyes. Now, here's the thing. I'm all about that rustic life, okay? I camp, I backpack, I'll sleep on the floor. I don't care. But by 2011, families were spending nearly $10,000 to send their children to camp. And at that price point, I was pretty shocked at the state of things. Now, I refer to this time as orientation week quite loosely, because really, training.

[Bobby]

Was just kind of like cleaning up the camp and getting to know each other. And we really weren't given any sort of formal training. Like, I think I knew what to do if there was a fire in the cabin, but I feel like that's probably where it stops now. Looking back, I'm like, none of us were trained or qualified or really knew what we were doing, but, like, some of us really were there for the right reasons.

[Kelsey Snelling]

That's another Camp Shane counselor from my 2011 summer. She requested to be anonymous, so we'll call her Casey. Casey was hired to be a group leader at Camp Shane, meaning in addition to counselor responsibilities, she would also be managing other counselors in her cabin's age group. When she arrived at camp, she was amped up and ready to bond with the girls in her bunk. She had the 16 year olds. When the kids eventually arrived at Camp Shane, they were told to strip down to a swimsuit in front of everyone to be photographed. This would be the before picture which would showcase their inevitable big transformation over the summer.

[Bobby]

And my campers were so anxious.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Understandable. Can you imagine showing up to a completely new place where you know no one, and then you're asked to take off your clothes and show off your body, which is perhaps your biggest source of shame and insecurity.

[Bobby]

And I went ahead and took my, my T shirt off and I had like a sports bra and shorts on. I was like, come on, guys, we can do this. Like, we'll do it with you. And so all my counselors all removed their outer, you know, T shirt. And from that point on, we were known as, like, the Naked bunk because we were always like, you know, fuck what anyone cares. Like, okay, we have fat on our stomachs.

[Kelsey Snelling]

She even came up with a special name for her girls to help boost their confidence.

[Bobby]

We called ourselves the Honey Badgers because, like, I would encourage them to, like, work out in a sports bra and just not care what anyone fucking thinks about them.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Honey Badgers, named after that viral video that was everywhere in 2011.

[Casey]

The Honey Badger has been referred to.

[Kelsey Snelling]

By The Guinness Book of World Records.

[Enrique Santos]

As the most fearless animal in all.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Of the animal kingdom.

[Casey]

It really doesn't give a shit.

[Kelsey Snelling]

In addition to these photos, at the start of the summer, there were the infamous weekly weigh ins that tracked kids progress. The weigh ins had been around since the camp's inception and kids were desperate for their number to go down each week. Sometimes they'd completely starve themselves the day before. They'd refuse to drink water, they'd cram in a couple of extra sit ups, and they'd even make trips to the nurse claiming to be constipated so that they'd be given laxatives or prune juice. Now, laxatives are a huge red flag of disordered eating. You'd think a nurse at a weight loss camp would recognize that and not pass out laxatives willy nilly. But it happened. And Casey remembers the toll these weigh ins took on her campers.

[Bobby]

My girls would not want to eat Saturday night. They wouldn't want to drink water so that they would weigh more with water weight. It was a giant obsession with the number on the scale. And so there was always a lot of anxiety walking over to weigh inside. And there was tears and there was high fives and there was just a mix of disappointment and pride depending on the kid and what, what they saw when they got in.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Casey had her own struggles with weight, which had inspired her to apply for a job at Camp Shane in the first place. As she tells it, she started gaining noticeable amounts of weight when she was around 12.

[Bobby]

I grew up in a house, which was a pretty conservative house, I would say. And I hid a big secret a while to my family, which was that I struggled with my sexuality. I started gaining weight right around the time I realized that I was gay or maybe after. I mean, I think I knew when I was younger, but I'd say around the age of 12, 13, it got pretty out of control.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Struggling emotionally, Casey turned to binge eating.

[Bobby]

Just reading other people's testimonies. As an adult, I'm like, man, that's like a thing where you actually eat your feelings.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Throughout high school and college, Casey continued these habits and continued to gain weight. It didn't stop until one day she had a difficult conversation with a close friend.

[Bobby]

I kind of had a hard conversation with a friend of mine in college who was like, why don't you ever go to the beach with us? Why don't you ever go on cruises with us? When we go for spring break, you're really missing out. And I would always Come up with these horrible excuses like, well, I have a really big thing I have to study for or I just want to go hang out with my family or, oh, I have other plans. And I really didn't. I just didn't want to be in a bathing suit or in shorts or anything showing any body part. So at about 21, I just decided enough is enough. Threw away all the food in my apartment and I went to the grocery store and just like started from scratch.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Now it's important to say that big changes like this don't always lead to big weight loss. In fact, they usually don't. But for Casey, changing her eating habits and exercising more did lead to significant weight loss. By age 24, she was in a completely transformed body. A colleague then suggested she apply for a summer job at Camp Shane. And Casey thought it was a great idea.

[Bobby]

I wanted to inspire people, as cheesy as that sounds, and use my transformation as, like an inspiration to pass it on. And, and that's really why I was there. I wasn't. I definitely wasn't there to find a hookup. I wasn't there for the money because God knows they didn't really pay. But I thought making friends would be fun. And I thought being a good model for these kids was a great idea since I never had one.

[Kelsey Snelling]

I also had struggled with eating and body image throughout my life. Casey, Bobby, and I were all at Camp Shane for similar reasons. We thought this was going to be a body, positive, progressive environment, teaching kids to love their bodies and enjoy active lifestyles. But Camp Shane, being Camp Shane, that's not how things panned out.

[Enrique Santos]

In 2012, 16 year old Brian Herrera was gunned down in broad daylight on his way to do homework. No suspects, no witnesses, no justice.

[Casey]

The call was horrible. I replayed over my head all the time.

[Enrique Santos]

For years, Brian's family kept asking questions while a culture of silence kept the case cold.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Snitches get stitches. Everybody knows it.

[Enrique Santos]

Still, they refuse to give up.

[Casey]

I would ask my husband, do you.

[Cole Perry]

Want me just let this go?

[Kelsey Snelling]

He's like, no, keep fighting.

[Enrique Santos]

I told her I would never give.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Up on this case.

[Enrique Santos]

And then, after a decade of waiting, a breakthrough.

[Casey]

We received a phone call that was bittersweet because it's a call that we've been waiting for for a very long time.

[Enrique Santos]

I'm Enrique Santos. This is Cold Case Files Miami, a podcast about justice, persistence, and the families who never stopped fighting. Listen to Cold Case Files Miami as part of the Mikeultura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

I'm Robert Evans and on my podcast behind the Bastards we talk about the worst people in all of history. We've discussed a lot of horrible monsters in our time, but this week we have one of the very worst we'll ever talk about. David Berg, founder of a cult called the Children of God. We'll talk about all of his horrible crimes with special guest Ed Helms. He's not just like a weird religious cult leader, he was like fusing a bunch of hippie ideology in with this kind of like Evangelical Christianity Pentecostal preaching in the mid century. He's a very weird guy. But yeah, I'll just get into it here.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Like nothing you just said makes sense.

[Casey]

That doesn't sound right, but that's the beauty of cults.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to behind the bastards on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Andrea Gunning]

Just like great shoes, great books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget.

[Kelsey Snelling]

And think any good romance. It gives me this feeling of like butterflies.

[Andrea Gunning]

I'm Danielle Robaix and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from hello Sunshine and I Heart Podcasts. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers and more to explore the stories that shape us on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep diving book talk, theories and obsession, obsessing over book to screen casts for years and now I get to talk to the people making the magic. So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character or cried at the last chapter, or passed a book to a friend saying you have to read this, this podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kelsey Snelling]

You're listening to Camp Shame, an eight part series about one of America's oldest fat camps for kids.

[Casey]

Nothing about that camp was right.

[Kelsey Snelling]

It was really actually like a horror movie. If you're dying to know what else lies in store this season, subscribe to I Heart True Crime plus, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts to get all episodes one week early and completely ad free. Plus you'll get access to other chart topping true crime shows like the Real Killer, Betrayal, the Godmother and so much more. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe to I Heart True Crime plus to start Listening today, Camp Shane wasn't what my sister and I had hoped it would be. First, the meal plan. We've talked about the food plenty already. But as Casey pointed out to me, there didn't seem to be a specific strategy around the small portions. It wasn't low carb, it wasn't about filling up on greens. It was random food in a calorie deficit.

[Bobby]

Their motto was live, laugh, lose. But I wasn't really sure, you know what if they, if they agreed or aligned with a certain nutrition philosophy or weight loss management philosopher philosophy. It was just no one really knew like how to lose weight health in a healthy way and keep it off. And so people just did their best with their own knowledge.

[Kelsey Snelling]

The Camp Shane, no strategy. Strategy didn't sit well with Casey.

[Bobby]

I didn't feel like the kids were learning how to maintain any sort of weight loss, which led me to start having thoughts like, oh, they want kids, kids to gain weight back so that they come back next summer. It makes sense. It's a business.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Throughout the years, the camp advertised on its website a professional chef on staff as well as licensed nutritionists to put Shaners on the path toward a better lifestyle. But Casey noticed that the people teaching nutrition classes didn't seem qualified to make sure her girls were getting the education they had signed up for. Casey took matters into her own hands.

[Bobby]

The girls would come in and be like, I'd be like, what'd you do in nutrition class? And they're like, we learned how to bake chicken with certain seasonings. And I'm like, okay, that's good, but why is the chicken healthy? And they're like, oh, they didn't tell us. So I used to sit down with my campers like a couple times a week and they would bring their notebooks and I would share what limited knowledge I had. I tried to introduce them to like Nutrition 101, like from a scientific sort of thing, but also how you could incorporate it into like a regular life. Like instead of going for fruit Loops, you could eat hard boiled egg or whatever in the morning yogurt or Greek yogurt because it's very low in sugar and high protein and, and they were just furiously taking notes and I'm like, this is what you should be doing in nutrition class. But I did it on my time off.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Casey wasn't a licensed nutritionist or dietitian and some of her tips were still steeped in a diet culture mindset. She was just using her own experience to try to fill in some gaps in the camp's programming. She also got special permission to cook her girls dinner one night so they could get a taste of a meal that was healthy, nutritious, and didn't leave them starving afterwards.

[Bobby]

I was allowed to go to the grocery store with a couple of my counselors and we did like, you know, baked Greek chicken. We did like a side of roasted vegetables and Greek yogurt for dessert sweetened with like, stevia or something like that. It was, it was really good, really healthy, very protein packed. And that was probably the most special night I ever had with my girls. I think these kids needed a safe space to divulge their sort of emotional issues surrounding food. I feel like they needed education. I feel like they needed a lot of love, a lot of forgiveness.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Outside of her ad hoc nutrition lessons, kids at camp that summer were subject to a whole host of problematic approaches to food. Camp Shane prided itself on unique and immersive activities throughout the summer, Many, of course, attributed to Simon and his head staff. There was a Vegas casino night, a carnival, and something called fear factor day, inspired by the NBC game show. For the most part, these were creative and memorable experiences for the kids. But sometimes they turned out to be memorable in all the wrong ways and only reinforce negative relationships. With food. Like the jello pit, a truly unsettling sight to behold. A few counselors were asked to dig a four foot deep pit in the ground, then fill it halfway with red jello. This was for an activity where kids could jump in two at a time and compete in a wrestling match. Many of the campers were shirtless, sweaty, and covered in mud. But that didn't stop them from attempting to sneak a little taste of the dessert in which they literally swam. As you can imagine, this posed a threat to that week's weigh in. So staff started mixing soap in with the jello to discourage any snacking. This deterred only about half of the attempts. Then there was the Apache relay, the last part of the famed color war, which we talked about last episode. This race was the culmination of summer, and every single person on campus was involved. Essentially, everyone was assigned a different leg of the competition. You might be tasked with a dizzy bat run or rolling an orange across a field using only your nose. My sister Bobby was assigned the second to last stretch of the relay race for her team.

[Casey]

And so the baton is passed to us. We're running the end of the course and we turn the corner, and the end of our leg of the race is two picnic tables. One is full of blueberry Pie. The other is full of watermelon. I'm talking of full watermelon, not slices of watermelon. And I had to watch my female co counselor eat an entire blueberry pie as fast as she could. And one of my male co counselors eat an entire watermelon in front of all of the campers. This is pretty messed up, right? Like someone decided at a weight loss camp they were going to have counselors down as much food as they can while all the kids are watching and cheering. After my co counselor ate the blueberry piece and I did watch her make herself throw up, we had to swim together on a raft across the pool.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Bobby wasn't the only one who witnessed puking. The counselors couldn't help but throw up publicly in trash cans in front of the crowd. I have photo evidence. But beyond being gross, these events were reinforcing two dangerous ideas about food. We've already established that Camp Shane's diet was problematic, to say the least. There were the minuscule portions, the ever present weigh ins, the pig out room and now the pie eating contests and giant pits of Jell O. All of these things set up a damaging cycle of restriction and excess. It encouraged campers to covet forbidden foods and then feel guilty afterwards for eating them. All of this combined the lack of nutritional education, the restrictive diet, the emphasis on food, without taking into account the mental toll it takes on kids. It's dangerous. Bobbi started witnessing disordered eating from her campers.

[Casey]

One of them had a total breakdown because she, in quotes, slipped up and ate a single potato chip and she wanted to go talk to the counselor about it. So there were, there were a number of little things like that that were happening all around me that, you know, I started to realize this is not just a group of people who are looking to lose a little bit of weight. Like there, there are some deep seated things here that this camp is not. Not only is it not able to address, but is doing things that may actually be detrimental by pushing the weight loss and pushing the restricted eating and really spending no time on the deeper issues.

[Kelsey Snelling]

And again, Bobby was not a trained psychological professional. She didn't know how to handle this kind of distress kids were experiencing. So she brought it to Simon.

[Casey]

I was having a conversation with a couple of other counselors and staff members. I was saying how distressing it was to learn about the trauma and the eating disorders and the body dysmorphia that a lot of my campers were revealing to me. And I didn't necessarily know how to Handle it. And he said something along the lines of, oh, everybody at camp has an eating disorder. And he said it in such a nonchalant way. And I just remember thinking, I never want to get to the point where I normalize children having eating disorders. I just, I couldn't get over it the way that it was just breezed over like it was totally normal.

[Kelsey Snelling]

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if everyone left camp with an eating disorder just by the nature of the camp environment. Here's weight inclusive physician Dr. Lisa Erlanger, who you've heard from throughout this series.

[Casey]

Dieting in childhood and adolescence is one of the best predictors of disordered eating behaviors. Later in adolescence, behaviors like binge eating, fasting, alternating with eating, compulsive exercise and eating disorders rob people of life. They're like any other mental health disorder. They consume so much time and they become solitary pursuits. It makes it hard to eat with friends. It makes it hard to exercise in public. People, people develop so much hatred of their body. They don't want to be with other people. And it becomes hard to do things that we know support health. And that's not what any of us want for our kids.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Many people don't understand the severity and danger of eating disorders. They are not to be taken lightly.

[Casey]

Eating disorders are the most most lethal mental health disorder, second to opioid use disorder. Anorexia, which is under recognized, vastly under recognized in larger bodied kids, is a deadly illness. So not only does it rob kids of joy and well being in their childhood and their adolescence, it kills them.

[Kelsey Snelling]

More than 5% of anorexia patients die within only four years of initial diagnosis. Symptoms of anorexia include thinning bones, dry and yellowish skin, low blood pressure, slowed pulse, heart damage, brain damage, infertility and organ failure. People with anorexia are at risk of severe dying from medical complications associated with starvation and suicide, is their second leading cause of death. Anorexia is perhaps the best known eating disorder, but bulimia or binging and purging is also common and can have physical, emotional and even financial effects. Stripped tooth enamel, esophageal issues, shame, and of course, other poor health outcomes from eating piles of fetishized foods. At Camp Shane, I succumbed to binging myself. Remember, counselors were on the same restrictive diet that the campers were. So my fellow counselors and I used our nights off to visit the local diner and gorge ourselves on all the foods that were forbidden at camp.

[Casey]

Once the evening activities were over, a pre percentage of the counselors were sort of set loose to go out into town, get off of the campgrounds for a couple of hours and do whatever they needed to do. So we're in the middle of nowhere. There's not a ton to do, but the one thing that every single counselor wanted was to get as much food as they could as quickly as possible.

[Kelsey Snelling]

For our elaborate binge missions, Bobby, our friends and I would drive down the street to the Liberty Diner. My meal of choice was usually french fries, a plate of buttered toast, chocolate milk, and a big brownie sundae, complete with four scoops of ice cream and a brownie of magnificent size served on a literal silver platter in a moat of whipped cream topped with a cherry.

[Casey]

This was meant to share with, I'm going to say six people. People would eat it by themselves, no problem.

[Kelsey Snelling]

During the production of this podcast, I actually went back to that diner and thank God they still sell the brownie sundae.

[Casey]

The diner was like the place that you went to just find comfort in food, but then also just all of the emotions came out.

[Kelsey Snelling]

We'd dig into our food and let out our frustrations about how dysfunctional camp was. Then we'd go to the gas station and buy pastry cakes and candy bars. If we had any leftover time. We'd hit up McDonald's for quadruple topping Rolo McFlurries, and sometimes we'd even venture to the grocery store for a few tubs of Nutella. At the time, this ritual was the only thing getting me through the stress and calorie restriction of working at Camp Shane. Casey, on the other hand, felt an obligation to her new body to stick to the Camp Shane diet. But she sometimes got dragged along to other counselors binge missions. One involved Dunkin Donuts and a trash bag.

[Bobby]

Dunkin Donuts has this policy, or at least they used to. If you rolled up to the Dunkin Donuts drive thru at like 11:55 as they were closing because they closed at midnight and they would give you donuts for free. One time I went with with some counselors and we rolled up and there was a literal like huge garbage bag. I'm talking like the size like 4ft tall garbage bag. Like very big for those big industrial trash cans filled with Dunkin Donuts. It was literally like pounds and pounds and pounds and they brought it back and snuck it in.

[Kelsey Snelling]

The donut syndicate was a clear indication that things were out of control. How were we supposed to help kids develop healthy habits when many of us were dealing with our own disordered eating and Eating disorders weren't the only mental health issues campers were struggling with. Cole Perry was a staff member in 2010 and 2011.

[Cole Perry]

I think that eating disorders and or being overweight or having body issues or having a hard time with food, they're not a singular issue by any means. I think that those issues are often fueled by depression, self esteem issues, anxiety. They relate to each other very heavily. And I think a lot of the kids that came to Camp Shane definitely had one or the other.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Cole was the camp videographer. They didn't directly oversee any campers, but they got to know many of the kids quite well as they walked the grounds each day, gathering footage for promotional videos.

[Cole Perry]

At Camp Shane, there was definitely a lot of kids who had a lot of self esteem hardship and a lot of them were bullied in school. A lot of them got made fun of. A lot of them had parents who were upset with the fact that they were not a skinny kid and would shame them. They were looked at as a product that could be changed.

[Kelsey Snelling]

That mentality wasn't just the fault of the camp. Most kids were receiving the message that they'd better lose weight all year round, sometimes from their own families. After all, these kids wouldn't be at Camp Shane if their parents didn't sign them up and bring them there. There's one example of this that really struck me. One of my campers was thin, but still sent to Shane to lose weight. Her brother was sent too. Their mom told them whoever lost the most weight would get a $500 gift card at the end of the summer. There were plenty of parents who bribed their kids with shopping sprees, gifts and vacations and somehow had absolutely no idea how messed up it all was. Pretty quickly into that summer, the pressure of caring for a bunch of tween girls was taking a toll on me. Us counselors were acting as parents and coaches and nutritionists and therapists for dozens of kids at once, in many cases while still being kids ourselves. Even if campers wanted to talk to their parents about what they were going through while at camp, they couldn't. The whole summer, campers didn't have their cell phones. They were taken away on the first day, supposedly to promote a fun environment where kids aren't just sitting around texting all day. Kids could use corded landlines to call their parents while once a week, but counselors would be standing steps away listening in on the conversation. If the camper said anything negative, counselors were supposed to hang up the phone. I ignored this rule, but the fact that it even existed is absurd. And left us counselors offering what emotional support we could.

[Cole Perry]

You're basically taking care of this kid. You are the parent for 12 weeks. They look up to you for absolutely everything they are going to use for when should they eat food, when should they go to sleep? What am I doing? When they're going to you? For all of their love and care that they want from a parent that they're not receiving at home, you are everything to them as a staff member at a summer camp and especially at Camp Shane. Because these kids are not getting what they need from their parents most of the time.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Remember, I was freshly 21 and I'll be the first to say that at that age I was not equipped for the things that were thrown at me. I had a camper run up to me screaming about how another camper was cutting with a razor in the shower. My co counselor was battling a serious case of bulimia and there was absolutely no support for her, for me or any of us. And on top of all of that, it might not be surprising to hear that through threats of suicide were popping up among campers. About three weeks into camp, the head counselor is called a staff meeting. We were told that an 18 year old male camper had been sexually inappropriate with a 13 year old girl at camp. The male camper was not asked to leave because he had a bit of a developmental disability and the higher ups didn't want him to feel bad. That evening happened to be my night off. So my friends and I went to the diner. I ordered the brownie sundae I loved so much and overwhelmed, cried into it. Sitting with me was Bobby, my friend Amy and Cole. It felt abundantly clear that no one was going to protect our kids and that that responsibility fell on us alone. Though we were powerless. It was a heavy and hopeless weight. There was a silence between tears. And that's when Cole announced they were quitting along with the other videographer, Danielle. For the two of them, the incident with the young girl was the last straw.

[Cole Perry]

So we were just waiting to see if anybody had said anything about like police were called, maybe a professional was called to talk to the kid or like were the girl's parents even called? Absolutely nothing to our knowledge was there that should have been done for this poor girl. So we just were like, what do we do? We are here as a videography team promoting this camp and it is our job to promote a camp. Now that is essentially condoning behavior that we don't agree with. That is actually really up behavior. So we just didn't feel good about being there. And Danielle, really, the point for me that, like, drove it home was she was like, I have a young daughter. If I ever sent her to a camp and this happened to her and nobody called me about it, like, I would raise hell. I would. I don't even know how I'd react. And I was just like, you're right. Like, that's absolutely fucking terrible.

[Bobby]

And.

[Cole Perry]

She was like, I have to leave. Like, I just, I can't be here anymore. I have to go. And I was just like, you're right. Like, we're leaving. Pack up your stuff.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Looking back, knowing what I know now about Camp Shane, this situation wasn't just one egregious misstep. It was a whole series of poor judgments, starting with letting in kids that had higher needs than the camp staff could handle. Then add on top of that, not supervising campers enough, not training staff to prevent these situations from occurring, not kicking out campers when they should have definitely been kicked out. And then not providing support to the victim.

[Cole Perry]

I wish I knew what David told himself in order to go to sleep at night.

[Enrique Santos]

In 2012, 16 year old Brian Herrera was gunned down in broad daylight on his way to do homework. No suspects, no witnesses, no justice.

[Casey]

The call was horrible. I replayed over my head all the time.

[Enrique Santos]

For years. Brian's family kept asking questions while a culture of silence kept the case cold.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Snitches get stitches. Everybody knows it.

[Enrique Santos]

Still, they refused to give up.

[Casey]

I would ask my husband, do you.

[Cole Perry]

Want me just let this go?

[Kelsey Snelling]

He said, no, keep fighting.

[Enrique Santos]

I told her I would never give.

[Casey]

Up on this case.

[Enrique Santos]

And then, after a decade of waiting, a breakthrough.

[Casey]

We received a phone call that was bittersweet because it's a call that we've been waiting for for a very long time.

[Enrique Santos]

I'm Enrique Santos. This is Cold Case Files Miami, a podcast about justice, persistence, and the families of who never stopped fighting. Listen to Cold Case Files Miami as part of the My Kultura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

I'm Robert Evans, and on my podcast, behind the Bastards, we talk about the worst people in all of history. We've discussed a lot of horrible monsters in our time, but this week we have one of the very worst we'll ever talk about. David Berg, founder of a cult called the Children of God. We'll talk about all of his horrible crimes with special special guest Ed Helms. He's not just like a weird religious cult leader. He was like fusing a bunch of hippie ideology in with this kind of like Evangelical Christianity Pentecostal preaching in the mid century. He's a very weird guy. But yeah, I'll just get into it.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Like nothing you just said makes sense.

[Casey]

That doesn't sound right, but that's the beauty of cults.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to behind the bastards on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Andrea Gunning]

Just like great shoes, great books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget.

[Kelsey Snelling]

I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies.

[Andrea Gunning]

I'm Danielle Roubais and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from hello Sunshine and I Heart Podcasts. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers and more to explore Explore the stories that shape us on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep diving booktok theories and obsessing over book to screen casts for years. And now I get to talk to the people making the magic. So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character or cried at the last chapter or passed a book to a friend saying you have to read this, this podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book club on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kelsey Snelling]

You're listening to Camp Shame, an eight part series about one of America's oldest fat camps for kids.

[Casey]

Nothing about that camp was right.

[Kelsey Snelling]

It was really actually like a horror movie. If you're dying to know what else lies in store this season, subscribe to iHeart True Crime plus, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts to get all episodes one week early and completely ad free. Plus you'll get access to other chart topping true crime shows like the Real Killer, Betrayal, the Godmother and so much more. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe to iheartrucrime plus to start listening today. You might remember when I mentioned my Camp Shame contract had a completion stipend. David would pay counselors half of their paycheck at the midpoint of the summer. The final half of their payment was to be received at the end of the summer. So if counselors quit before one of those two payments like Cole and Danielle did, they were shit out of luck. They never received payment for the work that they did put in and tons of staff members despite this system quit. By the end of the summer camp, Shane was operating on a skeleton crew. And as the session neared its close, counselors were suspiciously fired. This happened summer after summer, including 2011. Here's Casey.

[Bobby]

He would fire people at the end of every camp session so he wouldn't have to pay them. And we're talking like $1,200. Like it wasn't, you know, and kids paid something like nine grand to go there for a few weeks. And so, you know, to withhold a thousand bucks from like a 20 year old kid who just worked for all these weeks seemed a little ridiculous to me. And I, I definitely was like, well, that's not going to be me because I'm gonna follow the rules and, and be good and, you know, show who I am.

[Kelsey Snelling]

One of the people who got fired just before payday was Casey. Casey wasn't interested in hooking up or drinking after hours like some of the other counselors. She was really trying to make a difference with her kids. She's the one who just said, that's.

[Bobby]

Not gonna be me cause I'm gonna follow the rules.

[Kelsey Snelling]

It all started during the last week of camp when she took a day trip to New York City with a group of counselors on their day off. On the way back from their day of debauchery. As often happens when driving in or around New York City, they hit traffic. Casey was driving.

[Bobby]

Curfew was midnight for the counselors and it was one in the morning for group leaders. So I knew I was okay, but I was worried about getting the counselors back on time. And anyway, we rolled up to camp and it was a negligible amount of minutes that we were late. So we went to the girl's head counselor's office and everyone was extremely apologetic that we ran into traffic. It was an accident and I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I felt bad, but I was also like, wow, this sucks. We're probably going to get a slap on the wrist. And so I went back to the bunk, woke up the next morning and I was called into the the office again. And she was just, she like looked at me and she was like, you're done. And she like slapped a piece of paper in front of me and like made me sign it. It was a termination paper. And I remember my heart was beating so fast and I was like, what does this mean? She was like, get off camp as soon as possible is what this means. And I said, well, I mean, all my stuff is in my bunk. She was like, yeah, don't care. You can just grab it and here's trash bags.

[Kelsey Snelling]

It was a flimsy excuse. People came in late all the time. It wasn't a fireable offense, at least based on precedent. And Casey hadn't even missed her own curfew. But she felt like there was nothing she could do. She went to her room, collected her things, and then got picked up by a staffer in a golf cart to remove her from campgrounds. But just in those few minutes, word had spread to Casey's campers, and they were not going to let her leave without putting up a fight.

[Bobby]

And then, like, this swarm of kids runs out of, like, all these buildings, and they were just like, stop the golf cart. And they just surrounded me, and they were like, jump, jump, jump. I told him. I was like, can you stop? Can you stop? I want to say goodbye to my kids. I was like, they're my kids. I need to say goodbye. He was like, I can't. I can't. And he was so nervous. He was like, I'm not supposed to. And I was like, well, you know what? I'm gonna jump. And he was like. And the kids were like, jump, jump. And so I did. And then they just flocked around me and just huge hugs. All these tears in there, like, don't let them do this to you. And it was like. It was, like, a lot of love and support, and I was very overwhelmed.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Casey was fired days before last payday. She never got that completion stipend. You may be wondering at this point, why didn't we all just leave? Why didn't I leave? There were red flags from the very first day, and the pay was a joke anyway. I spent 11 weeks straight overwhelmed, overworked, and underfed. I talked to my sister about this. Did you ever consider quitting? And why did you not quit?

[Casey]

Oh, boy. There were many times I thought about quitting. Honestly, if you hadn't been a counselor, I think I would have been out of there because it was just too overwhelming for one person to process without having somebody that they trusted to talk through it with. What kept me there at the end of the day is, like, knowing that it would be easy for me to walk away, but that my campers would still be there and that I trusted myself more than I trusted the, quote, unquote, professional staff to give them a memorable and positive experience. So, you know, that's not great. I have no background in this. I have no training on how to deal with some of this trauma and these, like, really challenging Situations that campers are coming from. And yet, just by being a moderately mature and, like, sensitive person, I felt like I. I could change their experience, if even a little bit.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Bobby and I made it the entire summer. And once campers were gone and the days of cleanup had gone by, we collected our pathetic paychecks and left with zero desire to ever go back.

[Casey]

I realized that camp had really no understanding of the situation its campers were in. It certainly didn't have the solutions that they needed. And it didn't really seem like owners were invested in making it better. They had a model that worked and they were sticking to it. I felt like for a short period of time, all I thought about was food. That was like a new thing. Luckily, I kind of, with time, got out of that stage. But I completely looked at food differently and not in a good way.

[Kelsey Snelling]

After the summer ended, I was messed up for a while. Depression, ptsd. I never got an official diagnosis. Camp Shane felt like a fever dream. What I saw left me exhausted and empty. I felt like I couldn't go to the police necessarily, but maybe I could create something that would reveal what was happening to these kids, something that would expose this place, which is just one cog in a huge societal machine that teaches people to feel shame about their bodies. So I started interviewing everyone I could. I've also wondered about Simon's role in all of this. Despite his missteps, nearly every person I've spoken to characterizes him as the absolute heart and soul of the community and magic of Camp Shane. I'm left wondering how someone so revered could also allow such terrible things to happen. But maybe Simon was in the same position as me, financially under David's thumb and emotionally bound to Camp Shane through the campers. Maybe Simon was exhausted and depleted, but was sticking around to make sure things didn't get worse. Next time on Camp Shame.

[Bobby]

Finally, we got connected, and Sadie is on the phone with her dad at the time, and she just breaks out crying. Come get me. Come get me. Please come get me. She told her dad. She said she was scared.

[Kelsey Snelling]

We reached out to David Attenberg, his wife Sapora Janowski, and Simon Greenwood for comment. At the time of this recording, we have not received a reply. If you or someone you love is struggling with an eating disorder, you can call the free hotline of the national alliance for Eating Disorders. The number is 1-866-662. Camp Shame is a production of I Heart Podcasts. I'm your host, Kelsey Snelling. Camp Shame is produced by Brittany Martinez Taylor Williamson, Sarah Schleed, Lucy Jones and Aaliyah Yates Grau. Our editor is Courtney Hommeister with additional editorial support from Lindsay Cradlewill and Grace Lynch. Our executive producers are Jenny Kaplan and Emily Rutter and me, Kelsey Snelling for iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. Fact checking done by Madeline Gore, Lucy Jones, Paloma Moreno Jimenez, Lauren Williams and Fiona Pestana. Our theme music is produced by Shaan Patel. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram ampshayne. That's with an M. If you or anyone you know went to Camp Shane, reach out with your camp stories.

[Enrique Santos]

In 2012, 16 year old Brian Herrera was gunned down in broad daylight on his way to do homework. No suspects, no witnesses, no justice.

[Casey]

I would ask my husband, do you want me to stop? He was like, no, keep fighting.

[Enrique Santos]

After nearly a decade, a breakthrough changed everything. This is Cold Case Files Miami. Stories of families who never stopped fighting. Listen to Cold Case Files Miami on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Evans]

I'm Robert Evans and on my show behind the Bastards this week we have one of our worst subjects ever. David Byrd, founder of the Children of God cult, who we'll be talking about with special guest Ed Helms. He's not just like a weird religious cult leader. He was like fusing a bunch of hippie ideology in with this kind of like evangelical Christianity, Pentecostal preaching in the mid century. He's a very weird guy, but yeah, I'll just get into it here.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Like nothing you just said makes sense.

[Casey]

That doesn't sound right, but that's the beauty of cults.

[Robert Evans]

Listen to behind the bastards on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Andrea Gunning]

I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the podcast Betrayal. Police Lieutenant Joel Kern used his badge to fool everyone, most of all his wife, Caroline.

[Cole Perry]

He texted, I've ruined our lives.

[Casey]

You're going to want to divorce me.

[Andrea Gunning]

How far would he go to cover up what he'd done?

[Kelsey Snelling]

The fact that you lied is absolutely horrific.

[Robert Evans]

And quite frankly, I question how many.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Other women are out there that may.

[Robert Evans]

Bring forward allegations in the future.

[Andrea Gunning]

Listen to betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kelsey Snelling]

From.

[Enrique Santos]

Iheart Podcast. Before social media, before cable news, there was Alan Berg. He was the first and the original.

[Cole Perry]

Shock, shock, that scratchy, irreverent kind of way of talking to people and telling them that you're an idiot and I'm.

[Kelsey Snelling]

Going to hang up on you.

[Enrique Santos]

This is Live Wire, the loud life and shocking murder murder of Alan Berg.

[Kelsey Snelling]

And he pointed to the Denver phone book and said, well, there are probably 2 million suspects.

[Enrique Santos]

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kelsey Snelling]

This is an iHeart podcast.