
The boys reach the end of the road for Electus Per Deus and their trail of misguided murder as the cult's own members and lack of organization would lead to their arrest for both "The Satanic Murders" as well as "The Appointment Murders".
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Marcus Parks
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Henry Zabrowski
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Ed Larson
This is the last podcast on the left.
Henry Zabrowski
That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Kruger's door. Open the house. Kruger's door.
Ed Larson
Let's wrap this werewolf up, baby.
Henry Zabrowski
Dude, so much. Yeah. We're turning this werewolf into a GD mummy.
Marcus Parks
Hell yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
That's what we're doing.
Marcus Parks
Oh, God. Could you turn a. Can you imagine a werewolf mummy?
Ed Larson
Oh, my God. How about a werewolf daddy actually. You son of a bitch.
Marcus Parks
Welcome to the last podcast on the last left. Guess what, ladies and gentlemen.
Henry Zabrowski
Unfortunately, brat season is officially over.
Ed Larson
Oh, man.
Marcus Parks
My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zabrowski. What do you think about werewolf mummies? Or a mummy Dracula? Or a werewolf mummy Blue Lagoon monster?
Henry Zabrowski
I am actually thinking about bigger, more important things, Marcus. Bigger, more telling things about the very center of our country. Like, who am I and where am I right now?
Marcus Parks
Mm.
Ed Larson
I hate to continually call you wrong, but it's the Black Lagoon.
Henry Zabrowski
Thank you.
Marcus Parks
That's true. That's true. My mind is too addled by the monster match to think correctly. And I'm here with Ed Larson. I haven't got. I haven't gotten over the monster match. I'm a werewolf.
Henry Zabrowski
Well, if you are a werewolf, then you should probably go to jail for many crimes. Because werewolves intrinsically commit murder. It's during the day.
Ed Larson
No one knows it's me.
Henry Zabrowski
You're just a big fat man. You're just a hairy, fat man.
Marcus Parks
So here we are. Cougars. Dorp. Part four, the conclusion to this series.
Henry Zabrowski
Now you're going to see why we took this long to get through this much clock material. No, you won't. But we hoping as our audience does, because obviously we woke up today in a new fun world and we are just rolling with it.
Ed Larson
Because we're just so upset that Quincy Jones isn't going to know the end of the Kruger's Jord drama.
Henry Zabrowski
Nobody tell Jimmy Carter what happened.
Marcus Parks
So when we last left the members of Electus per Dais, they had just killed their fifth and sixth victims. But these murders had very little to do with the motivations behind their first four killings, which were committed ostensibly as a righteous act to battle the forces of Satan. The murders of Joan and Peter Meyer, however, their latest victims were simply the result of a robbery gone wrong.
Henry Zabrowski
A robbery did wrong. Yeah, that's what I would put it that way.
Marcus Parks
Did wrong and gone wrong both.
Ed Larson
Anyway, also robbing people without money.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, those.
Ed Larson
The first ones. The Myers. They. They were wealthy.
Marcus Parks
They were wealthy, but they didn't have cash on hand. Yeah, like they. Of course not. No wealthy person has cash on hand.
Henry Zabrowski
They went through the pain of an entire pitch meeting in order to get nothing.
Marcus Parks
They listened to this man talk about a South African water Park for 45.
Henry Zabrowski
Minutes in over here, what we'll have is the crocodile area. We go over here, areas with little zebras. You're gonna have a lazy river. So lazy that it's a lake, It's a river. Be sitting full of water.
Marcus Parks
Actually, it's so lazy, it's just sand. It's much sand and dirt.
Henry Zabrowski
It's dirt.
Marcus Parks
Very hard packed dirt.
Henry Zabrowski
Tired water. See.
Marcus Parks
The leader of Electus Perdus, Cecilia Stane, had commanded her cult to somehow find money for the fictitious American orphans that had become the focal point of the group. But this was only after the group had been quiet for two years.
Henry Zabrowski
Maybe they were quiet maybe also. Do you remember? Just to set the context again, the fictitious American orphans were the orphans, the babies of witches that were supposed to use those babies in rituals where they were supposed to carve up those babies and turn them into potpourri for Satan. But instead, these wise witches that are so indebted to the power of Satan, but they don't want to give up their child for some reason, they still then will put this, this child in a very special orphanage like system that is still being attacked by the powers of Satan from outside of it. Because those kids were lined up to be sacrifices. And instead what they did was take a bunch of Virginia hams, put bonnets on them and put them in the grinding machine.
Marcus Parks
Well, the reason why the cult reactivated was because their breadwinner, Zach Valentine, had quit his lucrative insurance agent job to start his own business as a stockbroker. And he had failed miserably.
Henry Zabrowski
I had a Listener point out something that I can't help but feel that I'm. I've been dragged into this just because of my. Who I am. Is that in the year that I believe this happened in the year 2012, right. 2013.
Marcus Parks
This was more 15.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. So this came out right after Wolf of Wall Street. And if you look at Zach Valentine and I watched a bunch of court footage of him, you could tell he's a man that might have much. And I love being in Wolf and I love being a part of the legacy of Wolf. Yeah, it was a great movie, but it did inspire some less than fun guys to do stuff that they shouldn't have been doing. And then Zach Valentine probably saw Wolf of Wall street and in his mindset was like, that's amazing. You know what I mean? Like, that's exactly what I want to be. Because they only watch the first.
Marcus Parks
Turn it off.
Henry Zabrowski
That's how it always ends. They watch the first two hours and they're like, that's incredible. And then they get bored when everything gets all the repercussions show up.
Ed Larson
Maybe it was the Werewolf of Wall Street. You ever think about that?
Henry Zabrowski
Don't you make fun of the only good thing I've ever been in besides Pretty Face. Don't make fun of it.
Marcus Parks
Because Zach had failed so miserably, they had to keep Cecilia staying lifestyle going.
Henry Zabrowski
Somehow somebody's gotta keep that. Man, she ain't paying for extra large sweaters and hair gel by herself.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, man. Someone's gotta pay the bill at Limelight.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, yeah.
Marcus Parks
But the problem with that robbery, the one in which they killed Joan and Peter Meyer, was that the crew had come away with just a hair over $40 for the whole operation. It involved costumes, backstories, financial plans. Now, after the robbery double murder was ultimately a net negative to the cult. They decided to enter the world of insurance fraud.
Henry Zabrowski
Man, I gotta say this again. Guys, remember, insurance fraud is hard.
Marcus Parks
It's so hard.
Henry Zabrowski
It's hard to get done. Dude, think about it.
Marcus Parks
It's hard to get an insurance payout, even when something.
Henry Zabrowski
Just know that that's how they get you.
Ed Larson
Yeah, it's better than committing murders like sketch comedians.
Henry Zabrowski
Though nothing, absolutely nothing makes it more unforgivable than the fact that they brought props and costumes. I did it for so many years, and I was so embarrassed each time to think that you did that to bring it to fight Satan. You thought that that's what you're gonna need is props.
Marcus Parks
Well, the thing is that they really didn't have the Imagination, nor the desire to plan a scheme that didn't somehow involve killing someone. Now, after Zach Valentine's wife Michaela was murdered by the cult, after she tried to leave, Zach changed the main beneficiary on his life insurance policy to Cecilia Stain. Meaning she would be the recipient of over $200,000 upon Zach's debt.
Henry Zabrowski
Ooh, yeah. And she was s in that D, and she was scrubbing that P, and she was rubbing that B up and down his M. Was she? Yep.
Ed Larson
Wow.
Marcus Parks
But the plan wasn't to kill Zach. Instead, Electus Perdus were going to fake his death and use another body in his place. Now, for the body, Electus per deus chose a 41 year old black man named Gerard Jackson, who lived at a nearby shelter with his pregnant wife. The cult had recently befriended him, and because of his station in life and because of his race, they figured correctly that his disappearance wouldn't be investigated.
Ed Larson
Was Zach black?
Marcus Parks
Oh, no.
Henry Zabrowski
God, no. But, oh, Marcus, he was extremely tan. If you saw him in the. And if you see him under the right. Maybe the right light in a shadow, or if you cover him in, like, brown makeup, he would look so black that you'd be. You'd assume they're all white.
Ed Larson
Right?
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Ed Larson
Just wanted to double check.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, yes. His name's Zach Valentine. Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry.
Marcus Parks
And so the manipulation began. And the typically Byzantine Electus per day fashion. Every plan they have is so complicated.
Henry Zabrowski
It's because they got. They just do meth and sit in an apartment all day.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Well, in early December 2015, Cecilia Stain hired Gerard to clean a storage room in her apartment complex, then told Gerard and his wife that they could then live in that storage room rent free.
Henry Zabrowski
Okay.
Marcus Parks
The only catch, besides the fact that it was just a room without a bathroom or a kitchen.
Henry Zabrowski
It's a storage unit. You keep saying storage room.
Marcus Parks
It's a unit.
Henry Zabrowski
Very different.
Marcus Parks
No, it's at the apartment complex. So it is a room, but it's a unit still. You know what I mean?
Ed Larson
Window.
Henry Zabrowski
No. Or a bathroom or a table or. It's not a room.
Ed Larson
Yeah, well, it's a room.
Marcus Parks
It is a room.
Henry Zabrowski
It's four walls. Yeah.
Marcus Parks
No, a unit is a part of a larger complex.
Henry Zabrowski
It was a part of a larger.
Marcus Parks
Complex, but of other units. It has to be solely units for it to be a unit.
Henry Zabrowski
I think that if it comes down to choosing a room or not. Rob, you lived in a studio for a while. You know the true difference between a unit and A room. Oh, yeah, yeah. One love can live in and one can't.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Go crazy.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, you go crazy in one. You know what you do? You get that fake window.
Ed Larson
You know, you just buy blinds and staple them to the wall.
Henry Zabrowski
Nothing is more. Nothing makes me more comforted than a plastic sheet looking like sun and trees.
Marcus Parks
Well, the catch was that Gerard and his wife needed to be locked inside at night so the other residents of the complex wouldn't stumble upon them. Poor and desperate. Gerard and his wife agreed. And you'd think that this had something to do with the plan.
Henry Zabrowski
Nope.
Marcus Parks
But it had nothing to do with the plan at all.
Henry Zabrowski
She loves improvising.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. After four nights of Sleeping in the Box, Cecilia lied and told Gerard and his wife that they'd been caught and they had to leave.
Henry Zabrowski
Wouldn't they know there's no place for them to go?
Marcus Parks
Yeah, I mean, they would know if they got caught.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Our friend Mike.
Henry Zabrowski
Just the one door would open.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Our friend Mike Lawrence definitely knew he was caught by my landlord when he was fucking sleeping in our first studio, which was also the cellar in my apartment building. He got caught. He knew he was caught and he was gone while I was at the. I went to the grocery store and he was gone when I got back.
Ed Larson
I can't believe that he was found in that dungeon. Like people actually went down there.
Henry Zabrowski
He is. He was the Elizabeth Fritzel of the early New York comedy scene. The fact that he was kept down there and it really changed his entire composure and it changed his, because I just remember him sitting in his whity tighties playing with his action figures. God, how surprised your Hasidic landlord must have been to see that large man.
Ed Larson
In there sleeping on the couch while we did Round table.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, yeah, dirt floor. Is it over?
Marcus Parks
Well, what Cecilia told them was that she had found a cheap room to rent for Gerard and his wife just a block away. But at the same time, in preparation for the eventual murder, after which he'd have to hide, Zach paid for a week stay at the nearby Herberg Hotel under the name James Vermoch. And this was a bit of a. This is kind of arrogant because James Vermack was the guy who'd recorded confessions of the so called satanic murders and had gone into witness protection after nothing happened.
Ed Larson
Why don't they just make up a name?
Marcus Parks
I know, that's what I don't get. I think it's. Well, it's with these types of people, they like to do the thing that's evil, like oh, how evil is it that I'm using James Vermac's name?
Henry Zabrowski
But it's funny cause it's evil in the name of Christ. So it's this almost perverted sense of what a Christian's duty's supposed to be that we're still dealing with today in many a way.
Marcus Parks
Dealing with that.
Henry Zabrowski
It seems to be microcosm of the issue that we're currently having.
Ed Larson
Christian duty.
Henry Zabrowski
See the main issue.
Marcus Parks
Main issue.
Henry Zabrowski
The main issue. You know, they say it was like 45% of people didn't read a book. Lester.
Ed Larson
I read one.
Henry Zabrowski
No, I know. That was about the whale. Yeah, you did. And that's what we. That's why we're the good. Yeah, we're the chain.
Marcus Parks
Yes, that's it. And so after Gerard's pregnant wife was presumably rehoused to the cheap room, Zach asked Jerrod to go for a drive. Cecilia, meanwhile, had prepared three bottles of juice. Two orange and one mango. But she filled the mango bottle with 20 sleeping pills. The plan was to knock out Jared, then kill him so his body could take the place of Zack's.
Henry Zabrowski
But can only work if Zach then does blackface. From here then out.
Marcus Parks
No.
Henry Zabrowski
Which I do think that could have been very edgy. Could have really played to a lot of different audiences.
Marcus Parks
Alexis Prydeus very much did enjoy being edgy. Oh, they did, yeah. Now, when it came time to take the drive, Gerard found that this had turned into a group outing. Zach picked Larue for his murder buddy and the two of them loaded up Zack's BMW with kerosene and gasoline before picking up Gerrard. But there was also another car which was driven by Mirinda Stain and the cult's newest member, John Barnard. They would assist once the scheme was played to its conclusion. And so, with everything planned out in advance, the best their idiot minds could handle. Zack and Le Roux picked up Gerrard and the two car caravan headed towards a town called Petra Steyn. And Steyn, I found out, is it's a very common word.
Henry Zabrowski
It's like Steiner Smith kind of. Right.
Marcus Parks
Stein, is that. Yeah, it's the Afrikaans version of Stein. Now, once they were all on the road, Le Roux, sitting in the backseat, handed Gerard the bottle of drugged mango juice, saving the orange for himself and Zach.
Henry Zabrowski
Gerard's mind different, shut down.
Marcus Parks
Gerard soon passed out and once he closed his eyes, Le Roux brought out a blue nylon rope and strangled Gerrard to death while Zack continued driving. After pulling over, Zack and Le Roux were joined by Mirinda And John and the four of them put Zack's BMW into neutral and gingerly pushed it off the road with Gerard's body still in the passenger seat. After dragging the body over to the driver's side, they slipped Zach's silver Adidas ring on Gerard's finger to help identify the body as Zach. He's a Pl.
Henry Zabrowski
Man, I don't. I'll never understand Adidas make springs. Yeah, it's a whole.
Marcus Parks
That's what I thought, too.
Henry Zabrowski
It's weird. In Europe, things get weird with the sports brands. Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Then to make sure the Benz was correctly identified, they removed the license plate and tossed it away from the car, thinking that no one would find it odd that the license plate had unscrewed itself and wandered a few yards away all on its own.
Henry Zabrowski
It was the power of Christ. He's trying to make Joel Wicked. No. Did it. He calls. That's cross doors cross. He tells people what go down.
Ed Larson
Should have signed the back of Zach Valentin.
Marcus Parks
But now we get to the part where we see why it didn't matter if giraffe was black or not. The cult doused the car in kerosene and gasoline and lit it aflame, desperately hoping that whoever found the car would just assume that the body behind the wheel was Zach Valentine's and wouldn't ask questions about a car that had seemingly pulled off the road and spontaneously combusted.
Henry Zabrowski
They must have done a quality amount of sins there because of their head and gore. Wouldn't have chosen a car to blow up because it happens randomly all the time. I mean, one time I was thinking about cheating on my wife and I made my cigarettes all melt. I remember that. And I was just like, oh, it's got something to do. Christ, I bet I can't do that. Cross watching. I can't believe. Crosswatch machine.
Ed Larson
You finally get the accent down and it's the last episode.
Henry Zabrowski
That's what it's all about. It's all about, hey, I just don't. I just want our country to get used to it. I get good at it when it's too late.
Marcus Parks
But that was their plan, is that the body would be so charred and unidentifiable that they wouldn't say, like, oh, this is a black guy. It would just be a crispy corpse.
Henry Zabrowski
It just doesn't really work out like that.
Ed Larson
And they wouldn't be able to tell that he was strangled?
Henry Zabrowski
No, they would tell everything.
Marcus Parks
No, they wouldn't be able to tell. Well, unless he broke the hyoid bone, but that's also assuming that they looked for such a thing.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Ed Larson
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
And so Zach was driven back to the Harburg Hotel with the plan to hide out until the life insurance policy paid. I am, however, a little fuzzy on the details as to what Zach was supposed to do after that.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, they thought that he would just come back to the house and no one would know the wiser.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, I mean, Krugersdorp is a relatively small city. It's roughly the population of New Orleans.
Henry Zabrowski
But from what I know, in New Orleans, everybody's fucked everybody and everybody knows everybody.
Marcus Parks
Exactly, yeah. Now, before the car even burned out, police had arrived on the scene. And because the license plate was thrown from the blaze, the car was immediately identified as belonging to Zach Valentine. But what police also immediately noticed was that the car was not on fire as a result of an accident, but had rather been cautiously pushed off the road because there were no indications of a crash like skid marks or broken glass. And cars usually catch on fire because they flipped over.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, some like, catastrophic thing that would happen to the fuel line that would then go in a fire next to the fuel line, push it off a cliff or something.
Ed Larson
Do anything.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, it's like that fucking. That scene of the Simpsons where car hands mole mouth. Man's car goes off the road and it taps a tree and then blows up.
Henry Zabrowski
I will say they have. They have a pretty good strong record of understanding that they, the South African police don't really do a heck of a lot. So I think that they. They push it off pretty lazily and didn't even think about it because they, you know, I guess the police just show up and say, like, well, priests do stuff like this all the time. Could have found out whether the man had some form of like wearing mixed linens or something, or maybe when you drink the wrong kind of wine or something. So they carefully push it off, you know, pre skate. They push the car off a little bit onto the soft shoulder and they sit it on fire. They just sit him right to hell. Right on earth.
Ed Larson
Should have just blown up the gas tank, no?
Marcus Parks
Why do you need.
Ed Larson
Why do you need kerosene if you got gasoline?
Henry Zabrowski
Because you got the key routine there. What it does is then you can directly affect the sinner. Right. It goes right on the center. You can go because, you know, you didn't do nothing. Leather exterior, cows are innocent. He's sinner. Sin got burned. You go there. You gotta go. Take big top, flammechanical split right around there. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Bryce.
Marcus Parks
Well, Regardless of all the obvious signs of criminal wrongdoing, the South African police once again gave the situation an old fashioned. What are you gonna do?
Henry Zabrowski
Hey, it's hot out.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. And they.
Henry Zabrowski
It's hot out. Things checked on fire. It's dry.
Marcus Parks
And they just moved on with their day. As far as Gerard's wife went, Cecilia told her that before Gerard even got in the car with Zach that day, he'd crossed the road to where two Nigerians were sitting in a white car.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, God, not in Africa.
Marcus Parks
She was told that after a brief conversation, her husb got in with the Nigerians and drove off.
Ed Larson
Wow.
Marcus Parks
But when Gerard's wife called his mother with this news, Gerard's mother pretty much said, oh, yeah, totally sounds like something Gerard would do. I wouldn't worry about it, man.
Henry Zabrowski
Nobody's got any faith in anybody. In Kruger's door, everyone's been like, yeah, that's to be expected.
Marcus Parks
So Gerard's wife, completely powerless, just had to accept the story for at least the time being. Although she had strong suspicions that something terrible had happened to her husband. Happened?
Henry Zabrowski
She was living in a storage unit.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Things were going poorly. And I think that this is just adds to the pile.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Meanwhile, a medical examiner had looked over Gerard Jackson's charred corpse and immediately decided that there was no foul play involved, solely because there weren't any bullet wounds or obvious injuries. But one thing that the doctor was interested in was determining the race of the body. Because even though it was charred, it still looked a lot like it belonged to a black guy. And Zach Valentine was lily white.
Henry Zabrowski
Let's check its butt. Let's see if it got to the other. To the cool sun.
Marcus Parks
To head off this discovery, Mirinda claimed that Zach was her brother and demanded that the body be immediately released to her care so she could cremate it as soon as possible. So by either being a huge pain in the ass, or most likely by making a couple of well placed bribes, Miranda was able to get the body released and transferred to a funeral home with the oddly informal name of Martin's Funerals.
Henry Zabrowski
Hey, I'm gonna get my mom and dad wrapped up at Sal's Fast Time Funerals. And I don't wanna hear any problems with discount funerals. It's a lot of fun. It's just a slide into a pit of lie.
Ed Larson
I'm gonna take my body to Martin's. Cause he's so crazy.
Marcus Parks
He's crazy.
Henry Zabrowski
Martins Martin's Funeral Home.
Marcus Parks
It would be a lot better if it was Crazy Martin's Funerals.
Henry Zabrowski
That would be amazing.
Marcus Parks
Crazy Martin's funerals. But we'll get you a funeral for half the price of any other funeral home.
Ed Larson
And down.
Henry Zabrowski
Are you dead? Are you looking for a discount? Come on down to Crazy Marty's funerals.
Marcus Parks
Well, once the body was there, Mirinda brazenly demanded that the cremation be done as soon as possible so she could finalize paperwork on an insurance claim. She totally. She told him straight up, this is what I'm trying to do. The funeral director, however, was a man of protocol and soon saw through Cecilia's lie about being Zach's brother.
Henry Zabrowski
Think about this. The only person that pumped any sort of break was the funeral home. You know, that's hilarious. Like, the whole police, Everybody's looking over their fellow neighbors. The family members of the victims are all like, what are you gonna do? Meanwhile, like, finally, the land of the dead. The most morbid person in town is like, think that there's something fishy with this corpse. I can't just burn it, much to my displeasure.
Ed Larson
Well, that's also the life insurance is usually how funeral homes get paid, of course.
Henry Zabrowski
And that's how. And that's always where. As soon as the money's involved, that's where they really give a shit.
Marcus Parks
Well, even if he wasn't a man of principle, I'd imagine that the cult spent all their bribe money on the medical examiner. So Cecilia called Zach's parents and told them that their son was dead and she needed them to approve the cremation all in one conversation.
Henry Zabrowski
Hey, you know, hey, how you doing? Big ups with the sucker match. Zach said, we want to turn him into a powder. Can we do it now? Can I do it today?
Marcus Parks
Amazingly, they agreed.
Henry Zabrowski
More just be like, yep, oh, yeah, I expected to get this call. Yeah, absolutely. Can we be there? I'm going to bring some cows.
Marcus Parks
And they said they come to Martin's funerals the next day to pay for the cremation themselves. As far as we don't take cash.
Henry Zabrowski
Come on down to Marty's funerals because we take cash and I take blow jobs. I'm just advertising at this point. I'm just advertising. Tell me to come down there, have sex with old Marty, and you get yourself a free casket for your beloved mother.
Marcus Parks
Well, as far as everyone else in Zach's life went, Electus Per Day has quickly spread the word that Zach had died in a horrible, fiery car accident. In reality, though, Zach was hiding out at the Herberg Hotel, where the cult brought him insulin, food and smokes at night, however, he would sneak out to Cecilia's apartment, albeit heavily disguised. Blackface.
Henry Zabrowski
My true form.
Marcus Parks
Later, during the trial for Gerard Jackson's murder, Zack would try to flip the whole thing back to Cecilia, saying that he only went along with the life insurance scheme because he was still too distraught over Michaela's death, and he believed that he was doing what he needed to do to protect the rest of his family.
Henry Zabrowski
Zach can go fuck himself. Zach, during a whole court case, he completely denied everything. He didn't flip at all. He's a fucking piece of shit.
Marcus Parks
Yep. The police, however, were finally doing something, although they were doing it slowly. And when. I mean slowly, I mean very, very slowly. See, before Gerard's body could be cremated, an investigator managed to halt the process so they could take a DNA sample. The body was transferred back to police custody, where a sample was taken, and By June of 2016, they said they could properly identify the corpse. Problem was, June was six months away.
Henry Zabrowski
Jesus Christ.
Marcus Parks
And Electus Per Dais would murder three more people in quick succession before those results came back. Now, as far as the insurance claim went, that was hitting roadblocks as well, because while Electus Per Day has proved themselves to be effective killers, they were.
Henry Zabrowski
Terrible criminals, as most killers are.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Killers, on the whole, are extremely bad at it.
Marcus Parks
At crime.
Henry Zabrowski
At crime. And there's. Because I do believe that now I'm starting to kind of see that the same gap in understanding that allows you to do these types of impulsive crimes also keep it, obviously, is the same thing as problem solving or like there's something in there that the lack of impulse control keeps them from also being good at it.
Ed Larson
I think that's why they call it organized crime.
Marcus Parks
I just realized exactly why they call it organized crime.
Henry Zabrowski
Because they need a hierarchy for it.
Marcus Parks
To work life from your grave.
Ed Larson
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Henry Zabrowski
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Marcus Parks
Well, a competent insurance adjuster noticed a lot of red flags surrounding Cecilia's claim. They noted that Zach's policy had been taken out pretty soon before Zach had died. Which is, you know, pretty strange for a young guy like Zach Valentine. And the person who was so anxious to get the payout was quite close to the person who was so anxious to cremate the body. That same person had lied about being Zach's relative. Additionally, Cecilia had made a payment on the policy two days before Zach's supposed death because the policy was already passed due.
Henry Zabrowski
I mean, it was the extreme, it was extremely suspicious, the whole thing. The account had went completely fallow. I think it was like no payments for two years. And then one day she paid a payment of like $12,000 to get it all back up to date, and then he died two days later like a fucking moron.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. And so since the payout was held up and since Zach was now actively costing the cult money because he can't work if he's in a hotel. They're fucking, they're paying for the hot. They're paying for smokes, paying for food, they're paying for insulin.
Henry Zabrowski
He's just hanging. He's having the best week of his life being dead. He's hanging out while listening to reggae, fucking, eating his insulin, smoking his food, having so much fun.
Marcus Parks
Because all this, Cecilia once again got nervous. And when Cecilia got nervous, people usually died. Now, once the cash reserves ran low, Cecilia returned to her old tricks by once again making herself the focal point of the cult's mission. Forgetting about the orphans completely.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, yeah, the orphans are gone.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Cecilia created a satanic witch named Jane, who was in mortal danger because she had stolen money from the Satanic Church to give to Cecilia.
Henry Zabrowski
My most, most toxic trait as a witch is that my boobies are always wet. I'm a big, mean satanic witch, but I don't want to be anymore. I want to be in love with Jesus Christ. I just hope Jesus will take lithe satanic body in my wide, wet pussy ready for his fillings.
Ed Larson
This is why we need an HR department. Very uncomfortable.
Marcus Parks
Well, if that money that Jane took and gave to Cecilia, if that wasn't returned, I suppose before the Church's Satanic accountant noticed it was missing.
Henry Zabrowski
You have no idea what Satan's comptroller is like and what he does when you're overdue. He might take it out on my behind.
Ed Larson
I do math for Lucifer.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, he does.
Henry Zabrowski
Wait a second. What if I just fucking press my top balls into your bottom balls? Will that give us a little leniency, Mr. Satan's accountant?
Ed Larson
Let's see if. As long as I put a period here and I carry the cock.
Henry Zabrowski
What's interesting is that Satan's accountant is Protestant.
Marcus Parks
Presbyterian.
Henry Zabrowski
Presbyterian.
Marcus Parks
Well, if that money wasn't returned, Cecilia said that both she and Jane would be hunted down and killed by agents of the devil.
Henry Zabrowski
Agents of the Devil are some of the most sneaky versions of it. Oh, agents, agents, agents. Oh, agents of the Devil.
Ed Larson
Yes, Agents of the Devil would be a great Japanese, like, metal band.
Marcus Parks
So the only way to keep Cecilia safe was to commit more robbery and murder. Murder. Now, it had never been the plan to kill Joan and Peter Meyer, but Cecilia convinced the cult that it was actually safer to murder the people they robbed, because then you got no witnesses. And since this was all supposedly for the greater good. Greater good being save Cecilia, there was really no crime here in the first place.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, we're saving Cecilia. Cecilia's gotta be saved. Look at her.
Ed Larson
Africa's never gonna get their water park.
Henry Zabrowski
No, no, this was in. This was really the nail in the guff. Actually, I did get mailed. There are water parks in Africa. Are they?
Marcus Parks
Well, it's. But in South Africa.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, but it's mostly you go and you get it to drink it.
Ed Larson
Yeah, it's not like the slides don't have water as much as it's just, like, covered in WD40.
Marcus Parks
And so the cult went back to their newest member, John Barnard, the only real criminal amongst them. So he could choose the next victim, he settled on a tax consultant named Glenn McGregor. Because Barnard had heard that Glenn was the type of Guy who kept all his money in his house because he didn't trust banks.
Henry Zabrowski
How is he a tax consultant if he doesn't trust banks? This is another problem. Yeah, if he doesn't trust the banks, how is he the guy consulting about with who? Who is he talking to?
Ed Larson
All right, the first thing you want to do is take all your money, change it into silver, and put it under your mattress.
Henry Zabrowski
That's number one. Number two, give me that silver and the mattress. Number three, I'm going to fucking punch you in the face because you're a moron.
Marcus Parks
And so Cecilia told Miranda to make an appointment with Glenn McGregor under the veil of solving Miranda's tax problem. She did. And I'm just now fucking realizing how stupid it is that the. Yeah, that the tax guy keeps all of his money at home. How does he pay his taxes?
Henry Zabrowski
It doesn't make sense.
Marcus Parks
Did he send them a big fucking, like, package of cash? What does he do?
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, here's an iou. You're gonna want to keep that one. Like, is it that?
Marcus Parks
Well, advantageously for the cult, McGregor just happened to live on a small isolated farm outside of town. And so on January 27, 2016, the cult sent out a larger crew than normal, which included John Barnard, Mirinda, Marcel, and Leroux.
Henry Zabrowski
Their X force.
Marcus Parks
Yes. Well, ar, armed with a.22 revolver, tape, rope and rubber gloves, Electus per dais headed out to Glenn McGregor's farm with the explicit purpose of committing their eighth murder.
Henry Zabrowski
We're going out to murder. We're going out to murder we're going out to murder tonight.
Marcus Parks
Now, after they arrived and chatted with Glenn for about 10 minutes to put him at ease, Miranda pulled out her revolver.
Henry Zabrowski
Charlie put him at ease. What did he do? I guess he must be suspicious. He's a tax consulter who doesn't do his job.
Ed Larson
So he must be actually quite paranoid that you're calm.
Marcus Parks
Stick him up. Well, perhaps not knowing what else to do, because I guess they did put him in ease. Glenn started laughing.
Henry Zabrowski
You crazy people cuz a bunch of children.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, cuz you have.
Henry Zabrowski
Larue is super young. Marcel's super young. You've got John Barnard who just arrived here.
Marcus Parks
Well, he's. I mean, he's an older man. He is.
Henry Zabrowski
But then Mirinda, I actually now even watching a lot of the court footage of Mirinda, you can kind like she had a. She had an interesting presence. She definitely was an English teacher all the way through.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
No, she was teaching English this whole time.
Marcus Parks
All the time. Killing people all this shit whole time wild. Yeah, yeah. There's no school teachers on meth out there.
Henry Zabrowski
No, I've never met one. I've never done drugs with teachers before.
Marcus Parks
Well, once Glenn realized that this was serious, he tried lunging for Larry. But as soon as Glenn moved, Miranda shot him three times. Damn. Twice in the stomach and once on the side. Glenn then fell to the ground where he was tied up by Marcel.
Henry Zabrowski
Mirinda doesn't give a fuck. She is just a fucking cold hearted, low running, fucking Dolger, dude.
Ed Larson
That's what grading papers does to you.
Henry Zabrowski
It just makes you so crazy. She's been like, I'm sick of syntax. I want to see blood. Oh, I hate adverbs. I want intelligence intestines.
Marcus Parks
Did y'all watch the Last of Us TV show? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You remember that?
Ed Larson
I remember this.
Henry Zabrowski
The gays kissing.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was beautiful. But remember the episode where they're like, they get to this town and the woman, like the woman in charge of everything is a demon and then you find out that before all this she was just a regular fucking person? Yeah, that too. Mirinda is.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes, yes.
Marcus Parks
And really that does make sense because Cecilia has created an environment in which Mirinda does believe that every, Every. Everyone's trying to kill her. Everything is dangerous. Every. There's Satanists everywhere.
Henry Zabrowski
I also.
Marcus Parks
So she, she creates these conditions for people to turn.
Henry Zabrowski
And I felt bad for her maybe for a little bit for a while in terms of being brainwashed. Until I watched the court footage and then what they did. We'll talk a little bit more.
Marcus Parks
Oh, no. I don't feel sorry for her in any way whatsoever for being brainwashed because it means she's a.
Henry Zabrowski
No. Well, Mirinda is literally the exact person we're currently dealing with. You know what I mean? Like, it's the exact. That is the exact person that we are dealing with in America currently is this style of person who's just looking for permission to be an animal.
Marcus Parks
Yep. Well, immediately the crew ransacked the house looking for money and valuables, but again, found nothing. Turns out he was a tax consultant and he did actually keep his money in a bank.
Henry Zabrowski
I thought he was bad at it.
Marcus Parks
Well, eventually they did. Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Imagine him to be like, where's the money? He's like, invested. It's earmarked for taxes.
Ed Larson
Trying to tell you.
Henry Zabrowski
I wanted to tell you guys you.
Marcus Parks
Came to me for advice. Eventually they did find a locked cabinet. Pay dirt at last. Ah, yes. But we're disappointed to find.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, it's just Child pornography?
Marcus Parks
Well, it wasn't child pornography. It was just pornography. It was Glenn's. It was Glenn's pornography collection.
Henry Zabrowski
And it's all just tax porn. Accountants lay it right and like, oh, someone's. It's time to peg the IRS sex by numbers. It's the most boring board. It's all just, like, itemized lists that should, like, equal out.
Ed Larson
And he's just jerking off like a 69 times. 69.
Henry Zabrowski
Nice. Yeah. No tits, only papers.
Marcus Parks
Well, after that, Miranda asked Glenn again where his money was. But after being told ain't no money in the house, Miranda told Glenn that she'd call someone to help with his wounds if he gave her his PIN number. He complied. And Miranda, through a banking app, transferred $345 to her personal account, writing the phrase excellent fuck in the transaction comment to make it look like he'd paid her for an excellent fucking.
Ed Larson
That's all the porno that got her excited, gave her the idea.
Henry Zabrowski
Now I see what you like, and I'll have you know you'll never see my babies. And I know you want to. And that's why I fragrantly would steal almost $350 from you. And your timely corpse will have to see my bush house.
Marcus Parks
But as soon as that was done, Mirinda gave a signal to leroux.
Henry Zabrowski
This one.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Thumbs up.
Henry Zabrowski
Thumbs up.
Marcus Parks
Thumbs up. And LaRue had apparently inherited a taste for murder from his mother. What gives me this feeling is that after the murder of Gerard Jackson, remember ye strangled him from the backseat of the car. Le Roux actually gave a name to his strangling rope. He called it his chokey. Chokey. He used the same rope every time.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Ed Larson
Get a new rope.
Henry Zabrowski
It's evident it's his choke. Chokey. Chokey.
Marcus Parks
And it's everywhere. It's his chokey.
Henry Zabrowski
Chokey.
Marcus Parks
It's his chokey chokey.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. I mean, that's.
Marcus Parks
He did, like. That's the thing he gained, like, a sort of attachment. Attachment to his murder weapon.
Henry Zabrowski
You don't have, like, a thing right in your home. Like, we have, like, a stick.
Ed Larson
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
That we use to get, like. So sometimes when the dogs go.
Ed Larson
I got a knife.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, Right. I got a specific tool that I use each time. There's no reason for it. It's an old scraper. And I use it to get old, dried, wet out of the Astroturf plates. Right. I have to go and I gotta scrape it out. And I sound like I get some new stick each time. It's my stick. It's my Pokey stick. And everybody's got something like that.
Ed Larson
I've used my knife for years, but.
Henry Zabrowski
It just becomes a default thing that you're just using from then on out.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, well, using the Chokey Chokey Larue strangled Glenn to death. The only thing I have like that is my. I have one can opener or one bottle opener. My Popener. It's a Pope John Paul ii. I got it from my friend Joe Garden. Our friend Joe Garden.
Henry Zabrowski
Love Joe Garden.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, that's the Popener. I still have it to this day. And I refuse to use anything else to open a bottle in my home.
Henry Zabrowski
Why would you? Because that's it. And it does its function.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
All right. The key, though, is that the thing does its function, but almost poorly, but you continue to use it. That's the key for it to be one of those objects.
Marcus Parks
But that's the thing that the Chokey Chokey actually did a very good job because it never failed to Chokey Chokey someone to death.
Henry Zabrowski
It seems that a Chokey Chokey is one of the most reliable things that anybody can have in their home.
Ed Larson
It's just like, why is the cute name? I guess they use cute names for everything out there.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, yeah. Have you ever. When you went to Auschwitz, don't they call it like, oh, the smelly house? Didn't they call it something like, oh, go take a smell?
Ed Larson
Yeah, yeah. The Bernie Bernie.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, yeah. We're using the Chokey Chokey Larue strangled glass. I'm sorry. I just couldn't think of anything else.
Henry Zabrowski
No, no. It's Chokey Chokey.
Marcus Parks
Well, using the Chokey Chokey Le Roux strangled Glenn to death, then helped his sister drag Glenn's body to the bathtub again. They believed that by putting the body in water, it would make the time of death harder to pinpoint while also washing away their fingerprints.
Henry Zabrowski
Wrong.
Marcus Parks
The cult then left Glenn's body to be found the next day.
Henry Zabrowski
Freeze. The key is to freeze. That is how you'd figure out whether or not that's how you muddy up when the actual day is.
Marcus Parks
Oh, really?
Henry Zabrowski
Yes. Freeze the body.
Ed Larson
I didn't know that.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, well, a lot. A lot of times the way that they tell the time of death is by looking at the insect eggs that are laid within the body. After that, the body expires because you can tell by the life cycle of a larva how long the body's been dead. Cool. Well, that's one of many ways to check someone's time of death.
Henry Zabrowski
You just Lick it. Or sometimes you do the thing too. You know, you do them with medium rare and meat. When you do with your meat, it's the same.
Ed Larson
Yeah. Someone get me an entomologist. We need to find out when this lady died.
Marcus Parks
Don't worry, the medical examiners know all now. Since the take was again quite small, Zach, the cult's new financial burden was moved to a small farm that cost much less than the hotel.
Henry Zabrowski
This guy's living the dream, though.
Marcus Parks
There he again used the name James Vermach to take another run at the stock market. Again, he failed. He's very bad at it.
Henry Zabrowski
You gotta read the trades, you know what I mean? You got to look at the cycles. It's very difficult.
Ed Larson
Stocks.
Henry Zabrowski
Yep.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. And the thing is, I don't think Zach's living the life. Cuz all he's eating is instant ramen. Because that's the most the cult could afford because they still had to satisfy Cecilia's every financial demand.
Henry Zabrowski
Well, just determined. Not doing anything all day.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
And just hanging out. He was more living life in the apart in the hotel while he was getting all the insulin. But now I feel like, yeah, this might. Now he'd be like, well, kind of want to be murdering again.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. I mean, after a while, the farm got to be too low. Lonely. So Zach returned to the Herberg Hotel in Krugersdorp. Now, as it turned out, Zach's sacrifice had been all for naught. Because on February 9, 2016, the suspicious claims adjuster not only denied the payout, but also opened an investigation. The adjuster, however, a bulldog named Shane Chatskillowitz, did not call the police and instead took on the burden of investigation himself.
Henry Zabrowski
The true knights of justice, the insurance adjusters. Insurance, true.
Marcus Parks
During an interview at Cecilia's apartment in which he grilled both Cecilia and Larue, Shane noticed that Cecilia dressed in an oversized tracksuit and a hat pulled low over her eyes. He noticed that she giggled and cracked jokes with whoever happened to be in the room.
Henry Zabrowski
Have you seen the footage? So the guy wore a cam. They videotaped this whole insurance, like, investigation when they went in to go talk to her. And she dresses like Gypsy Rose, like, because at the time, what she's doing is you would forget one of the games she's playing. So we have. She's doing so many different games to other people. I think we also have to remember. So she's doing the I am a former Satanist that is beleaguered. Right. And there are people coming to kill me. They're do. She is doing the I'm a werewolf. I'm a werewolf. She's doing that.
Marcus Parks
She's ties into the Satanist thing.
Henry Zabrowski
She's also doing the I have multiple personality disorder or did, which is also a part of it. But the other thing too is the she has cancer. That is another thing. That she was a line of thought during this time period that she's also telling people that she has terminal cancer and she only has a period of time. So what she's also doing is shaving her head and losing weight purposefully. And she's wearing oversized clothes. Like if you see the saying, she's like, I don't know what happened.
Marcus Parks
I don't.
Henry Zabrowski
I don't know. Like she does the whole gypsy Rose, I'm dying voice thing and then what the. But then you have like this shady ass motherfucker, like they're all like squirreling around like a bunch of meth head spiders behind her. And it's just like. You wonder why the insurance broker meeting didn't go well.
Marcus Parks
Well, Shane, of course, came to the immediate conclusion that anything that came out of Cecilia's mouth was a lie. To test this, Shane asked Cecilia questions that he already knew the answers to, just to see what sort of bizarre story Cecilia would tell. When asked about Mikayla Valentine's death, Cecilia said that it was two Zimbabweans who did it.
Henry Zabrowski
Some kind of Zimbabweans that did it.
Ed Larson
Some kind of Zimbabwean literally point at every other country. Like the Nigerians.
Henry Zabrowski
Anybody else?
Marcus Parks
Yeah, anybody. But she said that they'd been deported instead of being charged with murder. Everyone knew that.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Not true. When asked about the supposed death of Zach Valentine, Cecilia said that his wedding ring and medical paperwork had been in the car with him, which they weren't. And she'd claimed that the car had flipped during the accident, which is why it had caught on fire, which it hadn't.
Ed Larson
I thought the ring was in there.
Marcus Parks
Adidas ring, not wedding ring.
Henry Zabrowski
Not his wedding ring.
Marcus Parks
Oh my God. Yeah. Well, I think that Cecilia was so used to having her lies immediately accepted by the members of her cult that she thought that she could say anything to anyone and they would believe her because she was just that good. Or she may have also completely lost her grip on reality.
Henry Zabrowski
I think that that's a. I think that is two. I think that is a two folded thing because for a while she really did have a foot outside. I like we talk about this a lot with colts, which is how long does the leader have a foot outside of the cult. So they can understand that what they're doing is a scam and that they don't necessarily start getting high on their own supply because that's what normally, like, they have to do in order to stay in control. They have to also have a bird's eye view of the situation, so they know how to make moves. If they are too lost in the sauce, they can't make the big, like, timeline moves to hold the cult together. So now I think that she has. She's way overconfident to a manic mental health version of overconfident. Whatever.
Ed Larson
She's gotten away with nine murders.
Henry Zabrowski
Delusions of grandeur that, yeah, she can do, but it's only just because she's operating in a very. She's operating in the perfect environment for her.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. And I think Cecilia, like, one of the things that I realized over the last couple of days thinking about this is that Cecilia's cycle at this point in time is that it kind of mirrors what you see with serial killers, is that she is. Even though she is not committing any murders herself, she's still getting a charge every time someone is killed. Every time she convinces these people to go kill someone for her. What we see with serial killers again and again is that the less that charge gives them, the more they want to kill and the more often they.
Henry Zabrowski
Kill, higher the stakes they make for.
Marcus Parks
Themselves and the sloppier they get. Yes, they do have to make the stakes very high.
Ed Larson
That's how it is with me and marijuana. I don't get high like I used to, but so I smoke way more, and then, you know, know I go to sleep and there's another day.
Henry Zabrowski
But the difference between us, truly the difference between us and people who do sexually motivated crimes, Eddie, is the fact that I could just stop smoking weed for three days and it just goes back.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
You know what I mean? These guys, they stop killing, they stop raping for, like, six months, and they feel it just as bad as before. It's like with. It's honestly closer to nicotine. It's closer to what Marcus is dealing with. Still being on the patch.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. 10 years on. I quit smoking over 10 years ago. Now. Step one of the patch still right here on the left arm.
Henry Zabrowski
He's eating them.
Ed Larson
My boy. Patches.
Henry Zabrowski
Depending on your son. Remember that?
Marcus Parks
I'm forced to say patches.
Henry Zabrowski
Patches. I'm depending on your son to pull the family through.
Ed Larson
I don't know this one either.
Marcus Parks
Is that the sequel to Christmas Shoes?
Henry Zabrowski
Nope.
Marcus Parks
It sounds exactly like Christmas Shoes.
Henry Zabrowski
Patches are part of an extensive list of story based songs that have been throughout of all the 1970s. Much like the Night Chicago Died.
Ed Larson
Much like.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes. Those types of songs. Patches, the song about a day a boy that's left behind to run the farm after his digitized Gordon Lightfoot. Actually, I don't remember who sings Patches. Clarence Carter.
Marcus Parks
Clarence Carter. The same guy who did Stroking Backdoor Santa. Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Stroke it. Yeah, yeah.
Marcus Parks
Wow. Wow.
Henry Zabrowski
He contains multitudes. I love that song, Patches.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. And I love that song Stroking I'm.
Ed Larson
Back door Santa man.
Marcus Parks
Of you stroking. Now, for Cecilia, the cult's financial problems were not a result of her spending too much money on dumb. Instead, she told the cult that it was all their fault because they weren't bringing in enough money.
Henry Zabrowski
She's not wrong.
Ed Larson
Yeah, no, they, there's plenty of them.
Henry Zabrowski
If they all got jobs and they all just got legit jobs, they might be able to do this.
Marcus Parks
The thing is they do like they do all have legit jobs, except they just don't pay very much. And you know, and Cecilia is, I mean at this point she's created this story where she has all these financial burdens, like these medical burdens, like I'm dying of cancer. She also said my kidneys are failing. I have to pay for medicine and dialysis and you know, I have to pay for psycho psychiatry appointments for it. My did. So she's created so many bills and she can't say at this point like, oh, my kidneys are fine now or oh, I don't have did anymore. She has to keep that story going, you know, and at the same time she's just filling up her bank account and fucking having, you know, fucking the most expensive top shelf margaritas that the Limelight pub and girl can offer.
Henry Zabrowski
Because you know, those silver dollar margaritas at the Limelight have to be the womb. Man, oh man, they fucking catch up.
Marcus Parks
Well, if the cult didn't hop to it and turn on the cash spigot, Cecilia told them that she was going to be killed by Satanists. As far as the orphans went, that pretense was dropped al together or at least it faded into the background.
Henry Zabrowski
They aged out.
Ed Larson
Yeah, they, they, they grew up.
Henry Zabrowski
They. This is an adult orphan.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, well, I mean she could say anything because you know, at this point it's all magic. You know, she's saying, well you also.
Henry Zabrowski
When you get it down to people, just this is how I operate on a day to day basis and this is what I now consider my life. And I'm doing this, I'm just used to this. This is the temperature to which I have grown accustomed. And I am just going to keep going. And it doesn't really. You've already made your choice.
Marcus Parks
Yep. Either way, though, the only thing on the cult's mind was getting money versus Cecilia. Now, their first plan was to kill Zach Valentine to lesser their financial burden. Great idea, because that's the thing. I mean, they're looking at. They're basically looking at a budget. And they're like, well, we could get rid of Zach. That'll save 40 bucks a week.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
But after they voted that down, they decided, oh, wow.
Henry Zabrowski
See? And it didn't pass Congress just banish him. No, they gotta kill him. They already said they can't leave witnesses.
Marcus Parks
After they voted that down, they decided robbery and murder really was their only option to make a quick buck.
Henry Zabrowski
Tell me about it.
Marcus Parks
So Cecilia had LaRue draw up a list of potential victims.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, man, my list of victims is getting long because that's Next. That's the 2026 budget for LPN.
Marcus Parks
Now, they figured that financial advisors would be good targets because they often held appointments outside of their own office.
Ed Larson
You want to make money killing a.
Marcus Parks
South African Dave Matthews or a police officer?
Henry Zabrowski
Much. Sa much.
Marcus Parks
But having appointments outside the office, that would be key in luring targets into a situation from which they couldn't escape. So Miranda suggested her own financial advisor, Anthony Schoenfeld.
Henry Zabrowski
These poor fucking business managers and accountants are all just like, why do you think I have money on hand? All I do is tell people to not have money on hand.
Ed Larson
The difference between meth heads in South Africa and America is in Africa, they have financial advice. How do they have all this staff?
Henry Zabrowski
Do they even have teeth?
Marcus Parks
Yeah, well, Le Roux called Schoenfield under the name Ruan Schuman.
Henry Zabrowski
My name is Ruan Schuman, and I am the man of shoes. Please, I have to talk about you. Certain Laces investment. That I admit.
Ed Larson
You know, he was just, like, looking down while he was making up the name. He's like, I'm Shoeman.
Henry Zabrowski
Call me Mr. Leptop Cup Man. He's very Dutch. I'm very Dutch.
Marcus Parks
Leroux set up an appointment for the next day, May 10, at the key West Shopping center, ostensibly for advice about life insurance and investment.
Henry Zabrowski
Yep, Absolutely. On my way.
Marcus Parks
But a couple hours before the meeting, LaRue called Anthony Schoenfield and told him that he couldn't actually meet at the shopping center. So maybe you can come meet me at my apartment instead.
Henry Zabrowski
So Anthony the accountant is going to bring with him to the your apartment all his money. That's what he's going to do.
Marcus Parks
Well, the reasoning behind this runaround was that the cult believed that financial advisors kept paperwork about where they went for their meetings. So if they changed the location at the last minute, then the paper trail would lead police to think that Anthony had simply disappeared somewhere between his office and the shopping center.
Henry Zabrowski
I thought the point was to get. Get money.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
So the idea of all this like they do all these planning being like we're gonna get money this way and then it's just murder.
Marcus Parks
Well, it's murder with money. We'll talk about the money here in a second.
Ed Larson
It is interesting that they keep choosing financial advisors as like, you know, you'd be, you would think that more murderers would have done this.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
It's like, yeah. You don't think that accountants would always be strapped and like follow everywhere with security if they, they were the number one money holders of people walking around like, I just. It's truly stupid.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Now, when Anthony showed up to the cult's apartment complex, he ran into Mirinda, not knowing that Mirinda was Le Roux's mother. So Mirinda, Le Roux and Anthony walked into Mirinda's apartment, apartment number 17, where John Barnard and Marcel were waiting. After Le Roux turned on some loud music, Miranda pulled out her pistol and told Anthony, this is a stick up. See?
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. See?
Marcus Parks
Le Roux embarrassed by his mother's old timey vernacular.
Henry Zabrowski
Hey, mother, you are the most ignorant. This is not a stick up. It is a hold up.
Marcus Parks
Yes, he said, mom, it's a hold up.
Henry Zabrowski
Jeez, it's a hold up, not a stick up, mama. Okay? And soon it will be.
Ed Larson
I just can't believe this is a detail that was in the court.
Henry Zabrowski
Dude, this all comes out of the court case. All of this is in the testimony.
Marcus Parks
And so LaRue tied Anthony's hands and feet with tape and was strong enough to pin Anthony to the floor. When the 60 year old man tried wiggling away, I mean, again, they asked for his pin number. And once Anthony's bank cards were in their possession, Marcel and John ran out to the ATM to take out money. And as soon as they were gone, Le Roux pulled out his Chokey. Chokey. And strangled his third victim to death.
Henry Zabrowski
I tell you what, unfortunately, you will not be Okie Okie. Once you meet my Chokey. Chokey.
Marcus Parks
That basically solidified Le Roux as the new chief execution executioner of Electus.
Henry Zabrowski
Per day We I love to murder and bogs I love pogs.
Ed Larson
Everything gets there.
Henry Zabrowski
Ten years later, brand new thing. It's little discs. Have you tried them with a slam air little disk engagement with your fellow man?
Marcus Parks
As far as the body went, the cult wrapped it in plastic bags and put it in the trunk of Anthony's Honda. They then drove it to an elementary school and parked it in the lot with the keys in the ignition, hoping that someone would steal it and take care of the body for them. But Anthony's wife immediately noticed he was missing when he didn't show up at home that night. And after she called the police, Anthony's car and his body were found immediately before. Finally, after all those years, a piece of hard evidence was created that linked Alectus Perdus to a murder. When Le roux took almost $1,000 out of Anthony's account at a local gas station atm, a CCTV caught him on camera. That however, brought the police no closer to actually finding Alectus Perdus because the CCTV footage wasn't clear enough for a full identification. And so celebrating a win after three goose eggs, Electus per Day immediately began searching for another target.
Ed Larson
But the win was just a thousand dollars.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, no, it's not good.
Marcus Parks
I mean compared to 40 bucks and change. Yeah, no, it's not bad.
Henry Zabrowski
Still nothing. It's still not worth a human life. That's at least 25k.
Ed Larson
I was going to say 12 so. But you know, you pay me.
Marcus Parks
Fly from your grave.
Henry Zabrowski
Ho ho ho. The holiday season is just around the corner, little girl. And we're all looking for ways to spend and stress less like me, I'm eating my reindeer because I found out their meat is succulent and delicious. But since I've already run out, it's time for me to get hello fresh. Oh so much blood. Hello fresh. Makes meal time nearly hassle free with delicious home delivered chef crafted recipes that accompany together quick and are less expensive than takeout. And it's nice because it give time for Mrs. Claus to shop for lingerie. Oh yes, thank you. Hello fresh. I know when I'm looking upon my elves practice making toys. It's shirtless down to the waist. I know I'm watching the finest toy making professionals in the world. And I don't need to worry about my factory because it's in good hands. While I'm eating. Hello watching, watching through the cameras watching as they work. Oh, Mrs. Claus is here. Time to wrap up the commercial. Get 10 free meals@hellofresh.com freelpotl applied across 7 boxes. New subscribers only. There is my plan. That's 10 free HelloFresh meals. Just go to hellofresh.com free lpotl the.
Marcus Parks
Holidays are all about sharing with family. Meals, couches, stories, Grandma's secret pecan pie r recipe. And now you can also share a cart. With Instacart's family carts, everyone can add what they want to one group cart from wherever they are. So you don't have to go from room to room to find out who wants cranberry sauce or whether you should get mini marshmallows for the yams or collecting votes for sugar cookies versus shortbread. Just share a cart and then share the meals and the moments. Download the Instacart app and get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes. Plus, enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees and terms apply. Well, after finding an insurance agent named Kevin McAlpine, Le Roux, using the stupid alias of Ruan Schumann, again made an appointment at the same shopping center, then again changed the location at the last minute to his mother's apartment. Kevin McAlpine's murder went down pretty much the same as Anthony Schollenfield's, but this time, after bringing the body down to the victim's car, they drove it to a bad part of town to hopefully guarantee a theft. But after Miranda made two ATM withdrawals for $75 each. Because these withdrawal amounts from the ATMs in South Africa are. Oh, you know what it is?
Ed Larson
It's the.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, it's the exchange rate.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
So they're taking out, like, 4,000 rand.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Yeah. It's the dumbest name for a currency I've ever heard.
Henry Zabrowski
What are you talking about? What among you? Our best, most powerful fighter for liberty in our country or Brand Paul, everyone's favorite?
Marcus Parks
Kevin.
Henry Zabrowski
Miss him? Huh?
Ed Larson
You know, I almost forgot about him.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, Is that funny?
Marcus Parks
But after Mirinda made two ATM withdrawals for 75 bucks each, Kevin's wife shut off the car because she, too, immediately knew that something was wrong. The slightly revised plan of parking the car in a bad neighborhood didn't work either, because Shortly after Kevin McAlpine's wife called the police, they found his car and his dead, dead body. Now, it seems like the pace of murder for Electus per dais didn't really change depending on how successful a score was. If the score was good, they were excited to try it again. If it was bad, then they needed to do it again as quickly as possible to make up for the loss. But either way, Cecilia made sure to pressure her people as much as she could to commit more murder, possibly because she was, as I said earlier, ramping up like many serial killers do before they get arrested. Or this is also an option because she didn't want her people to have time to think about what they were actually fucking doing.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes, I think that it had a lot to do with that. I think it had a lot like also watch now because remember where all this started? This started with a bunch of people believing that the literal physical power of Jesus Christ that could change other people's lives. And then, and it went from this truly lofty war against satanic forces and now we are actually just killing people for money now. Yeah, now we went from any form of messianic version of crime to full on just murder for cash. And it is amazing how quickly that slip, that slope goes and how fast you can go. And all of a sudden now you're just murdering for hundreds of dollars at a time, which is far less than we pay our wonderful private contractors at Blackrock and stuff like that, which is just, they could be doing so much, much better.
Marcus Parks
Well, and that's the thing is it's not only like, it's not just murdering people for hundreds of dollars at a time, it's murdering people and thinking that there's absolutely nothing wrong with it, that what you're doing is justified.
Henry Zabrowski
It just shows that it's a, it's a really good example of that. I, I, I feel like the allegory of the frog in the water is, you know, like so overused, but it's just the truth.
Marcus Parks
It's overused because it happens all the time.
Henry Zabrowski
You just get so used to a way of thinking that it doesn't really matter anymore.
Ed Larson
Also, the meth gets you a little willy nilly.
Henry Zabrowski
But then I had some readjustment. We were saying that the meth was way overboard. Then I saw some people saying that for a group of that big 400, a week is kind of more normal.
Marcus Parks
I mean, well, it's four people. I don't think Marcel was doing meth.
Henry Zabrowski
No, not as much.
Marcus Parks
You know, I don't think they were doing as much meth. I don't know how much meth LaRue was doing. I think it was Zach and Cecilia and possibly Miranda that were doing the majority of the meth.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes, it does seem like that.
Ed Larson
And now I'm sure you'll get to this, but where the is Ria?
Marcus Parks
Oh, she's gone.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, she, yeah, Ria.
Marcus Parks
Ria's Disappeared. Ria moved to a new town, changed her name. And she's around though.
Ed Larson
Okay.
Marcus Parks
But just four days after the murder of Kevin McAlpine, Electus Pereus, who were basically a murderous criminal gang at this point, they made an appointment with a real estate agent. This time, woman named Hanley Lagan, after seeing her in a REMAX ad. For some reason, Mirinda assumed that real estate agents had cash. Cash on hand, more at least than financial advisor.
Henry Zabrowski
That's so that. That's the dumbest possible.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. I don't know why, like, did they think that people were paying real estate agents cash for homes?
Henry Zabrowski
It's causing what? It also shows if you're going to run a disastrous cult, I mean, this then, this is to all of us now that are now in the midst of it, is that you should do some reading about how to operate your cult a little bit. I mean, like, you gotta figure it out. You gotta do some kind of due diligence.
Ed Larson
Yeah. You want cash, you go to like blackjack dealers.
Henry Zabrowski
Got cash, dude, you know, heal from drug dealers.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, but the blackjack dealer only got cash when he's at work.
Ed Larson
Well, now they go home with tips.
Henry Zabrowski
See also, I feel like what they were doing, to be honest, is these are the higher echelon people that I think that they also thought that they could get pretty easily.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Because real estate agents work on their own and you can call them and single them out very easily.
Marcus Parks
Oh, yeah. That was the whole point.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. I mean, because at the end of the day, if they're just killing people, they'd get more money from a waiter.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Marcus Parks
No, Waiters make good cash.
Henry Zabrowski
Waiters make great cash.
Marcus Parks
That's what I mean. Like a waiter might go home.
Henry Zabrowski
Sex workers, drug dealers, people that work in the black market, people that are outside of the system. That's why serial killers, that's why really good serial killers do that. They murder people that aren't connected to the system because then they take their money. This is a person that was really high up on themselves.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, well, because Marinda assumed that real estate agents have more cash than financial advice advisors, she made an appointment where Hanley was set to pick her up across the street from Cosana Apartments. Meanwhile, Marcel was actually doing her best to try to escape the cult. While preparations for the murder of Hanley Latigan were being made. Marcel was informed that she'd been admitted to study medicine at the University of Pretoria.
Henry Zabrowski
But instead she's still doing college admissions. Yeah, she's murdering people and still filling out essays and doing all of this.
Marcus Parks
I'll push back on that. Marcel never murdered anyone.
Henry Zabrowski
She was just around. She was just watched. She just got traumatized.
Marcus Parks
Yes, over and over again. But instead of being happy for her daughter, Marinda was incensed by the news. She told Marcel that she should just kill her. Like she'd killed Michaela for even thinking about abandoning Electus, Pereus, and more importantly, abandoning Cecilia.
Henry Zabrowski
Man, I'm so afraid of my mom. I can't imagine having if I had to watch my mother imagine Linda systematically killing just people, just being like, oh, you don't think I won't kill you? I could just see her being like, oh, the quilt murders. Oh, my God. I can see her wiping out her quilt group. How dare you want us to move us in a modern direction? Country camping lives forever.
Marcus Parks
So, Marcel, Jokey choke.
Henry Zabrowski
I just made it. It's amazing. I got it from Vera Bradley.
Marcus Parks
So Marcel resigned herself to tacitly participating in yet another murder. This time, however, their quarry got clever before she got killed. After she was lured into apartment 17 and told to transfer money to Miranda again gunpoint, Hanley instead transferred a large sum of money to her husband. This triggered an alert on her husband's phone. And after he called her in a panic and got no answer, he canceled her bank cards. This time, however, CCTV managed to capture a second member of Electus per day. Marcel was able to withdraw $172American from Hanley's account and an ATM before all her cards were canceled. But after that, police had two suspects in what were now being called the appointment murders. But with Hanley, the crew tried a different plan in disposing of the body after stuffing the corpse into a trash can for transport, because I suppose they were worried about neighbors seeing them carry a third body shaped bag out of apartment 17.
Henry Zabrowski
No one has seemed to give a fucking shit in this entire apartment complex. This is happening in an apartment complex?
Marcus Parks
Yeah. They chose Miranda's car for disposal. See, Hanley's car was covered in REMAX stickers, which would make it even easier to find in the rest. So Hanley's body was wrapped in a red blanket and propped up in Mirinda's seat to make it look like she was sleeping. They then drove out of town past the sewage treatment facility, which South Africans disgustingly call those sewage farms.
Henry Zabrowski
This is why I think there might be a misunderstanding about what a water park is.
Marcus Parks
But after finding a remote spot, the cult dragged Hanley's body behind some bushes and just left it there. Then they drove back to Krueger's door, throwing Hanley's possessions out the car window on the way back. Now, the one thing the cult didn't think about was that if they didn't use Hanley's car for disposal, then her very identifiable car would instead sit across the street from the very location where she'd been murdered. But when police came out to investigate, Cecilia arrogantly went out to chat with them about Hanley's disappearance. Under the auspices of being a concern citizen again, like a serial killer, Cecilia enjoyed talking with the police about her crimes. Hanley's body, meanwhile, was found the next morning by a bunch of kids on their way to school. But still, no one was looking at Cecilia Stain for any of these murders.
Henry Zabrowski
She was nowhere near connected to it.
Marcus Parks
Technically, and she soon decided to start work on another insurance scheme. This time, the victim would be Leroux and Marcel's estranged father, who had just begun to reconnect with his children. He was. He was taking them out on, like, fishing trips and, yeah, do.
Henry Zabrowski
When they do divorced dad stuff, you go to, like, the roller skating rink and you go to. You do all the things you never did before, and all of a sudden now your dad's being nice and fun and he never was before.
Ed Larson
So how's the church going?
Henry Zabrowski
It is quite well. Daddy. Oh, Daddy, I have not seen you in so long. Cigarette?
Marcus Parks
But before that murder came to pass, Electus Perus would finally begin to unravel after 11 murders, all because Larue Stain was not particular good at crime. Le Roux had used the same name to make appointments with murder victims Anthony Scholafield and Kevin McAlpine, in addition to using the same meeting location, which was the first clue that connected the appointment murders together. Additionally, Le Roux had called to change the location of one of these appointments too early. Anthony Schulafield had written down the new address of the appointment, Cosana Apartments, which was the same place that Hanley Ladigan's car had been found.
Henry Zabrowski
So obnoxious how long this took and how bad they had to be to do it.
Ed Larson
He also used the same rope.
Henry Zabrowski
He had established it had a name, the rope had a name.
Marcus Parks
And once police canvassed the complex, they noticed that Larue and Marcel looked similar to the people caught on CCTV footage using the ATM cards of appointment murder victims. The two of them were therefore arrested for murder, kidnapping and robbery. Finally, and as soon as they were in custody, Cecilia Stain's fabricated world began to quickly fall apart. While in custody, Larue cracked almost immediately.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh yes.
Marcus Parks
And confessed to all three appointment murders. I think he was ready to talk.
Henry Zabrowski
Well, cuz he also knew that if he didn't. If he. They all like. I do think there's a cynical edge. Oh yeah, it's weird.
Ed Larson
Like we call him the dumb one, but he seems to be the smartest now.
Henry Zabrowski
Well, he just needs to be out. He understands that if I don't say everything that I know right the fuck now, I am going to be on hook for everything. This is how. This is why criminal organizations fall apart.
Marcus Parks
But that's the thing is that at this point, Le Roux is still saying I did everything.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes. He's taking on his own.
Marcus Parks
At this point, Le Roux is like, me and Marcel did it all. You got us on camera. We did it all.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Marcus Parks
But Marcel stayed silent and wouldn't say anything until well into their trial. This would prove to be a huge mistake. Meanwhile, the DNA test results for Gerard Jackson had finally come back, confirming that it was not Zach Valentine who'd burnt to a crisp in his BMW six months before. Going off a tip from Gerard's wife, who popped back up, police found Zach at the headquarters of a group that organized Bible camps where he was surviving mostly on chicken livers. Okay, I hope they were fried.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh yeah. Kind of sounds good, you know?
Marcus Parks
Yeah, but nothing but chicken livers.
Henry Zabrowski
It would get. It would sour at some point.
Ed Larson
A meal of chicken livers I enjoyed, but only twice a year.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, like Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, the day after Christmas Day.
Marcus Parks
But if chicken livers are your own, your entire meal. When found, Zach was quickly identified by his numerous horrendous back tattoos. Oh yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh yeah.
Marcus Parks
In addition to his electus per day tramp stamp, Zach had a lion. Zach also had a lion head, a dog, paw print, the face of just some guy.
Henry Zabrowski
No, it's earnest. A disheartened P word.
Ed Larson
Look, he's scared stupid.
Henry Zabrowski
Scared stupid.
Marcus Parks
Well, now he's going to jail. After he's gone to Africa, after he saved the camp. He also had a demon.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh yeah.
Marcus Parks
And a lot of random words and names in both English and Hebrew under the heading blessings.
Henry Zabrowski
Blessings.
Ed Larson
Don't they hate demons?
Marcus Parks
Well, I think it was a reminder that I do.
Henry Zabrowski
I deal with demons.
Marcus Parks
I fight demons.
Henry Zabrowski
This is a demon menu of demons I've consumed.
Marcus Parks
LaRue, meanwhile, was identified partly by his large back tattoo of a puppet that was very much in the style of Johan Vasquez, the Johnny the Homicidal Maniac guy.
Henry Zabrowski
That is a very of its time. Tattoo.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. And true emo style. The word puppet was tattooed above the image because Le Roux said that his strings were being pulled by Cecilia and his mother.
Henry Zabrowski
And I did not want anybody to think that the lines were either smears of saliva or some form of 3D thing. So it's important for you to see it is a puppet without the little joints. How do you know?
Marcus Parks
Now, once the connection was made between Gerard Jackson and Zack Valentine. Valentine. A further connection was made between Zach and the Appointment murders. And police rightly saw this as weird as fuck. So police started looking into all the other unsolved murders in Krugersdorp. That had a bit of a twist. In the meantime, the leader of Electus Perdeus and her number one woman were finally arrested in connection to insurance fraud related to Zach's supposed death. And so, on July 29, 2016, married Brenda Stain, 50 years old, and Cecilia Stain, 35.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, she's 35 and all that. She looks horrible.
Marcus Parks
I know. I know. God, she looks like a hard.48.
Henry Zabrowski
She does. Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. But they were finally put behind bars. Once they were in jail, police got an anonymous tip to search the high school where a Miranda taught English and were quite surprised to find 3000 rounds of ammunition and shotgun shells hidden in the Homex storage room.
Henry Zabrowski
It's just. God, I don't know what to say about that. I don't know why a part of me think it's awesome. You know, like, you found out your English teacher was like that. You just be like, damn, holy shit. I guess I should have. We really should have thought about how close we all were to getting shot in the head.
Ed Larson
We used to give the bullets out for extra credit.
Henry Zabrowski
Pretty good job.
Marcus Parks
But before Mirinda was arrested, she'd gone to the principal of her school and asked him to notarize a change in her will after her. Yeah, I mean, your principal every. Anyone could be a notary. My mom is a notary.
Henry Zabrowski
Absolutely. But it means nothing. You just stamp something.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, but you gotta. You know, I don't know how she became a notary, but she's definitely a.
Henry Zabrowski
No, you just pay for it online. You can just delay.
Ed Larson
Yeah, you fill out the paperwork.
Henry Zabrowski
I think technically I can be a notary.
Marcus Parks
Anyone can become a notary because I have a pastor. Yeah, but you don't need to be a pastor to be a notary.
Henry Zabrowski
I. I refuse to be separate. I must be separated.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, but you're also only a pastor in New York State because that's where you married me and Carolina I belong to the Universal Life Church, and that's state. That's countrywide. Yeah, yeah.
Ed Larson
I can marry civilized church. You have to. Every different state you have to go.
Henry Zabrowski
Except for California.
Ed Larson
Anyone can get married in California by anybody.
Marcus Parks
Cool. Well, after Mirinda's kids were charged with murder, Mirinda had modified the document to cut him out and leave everything to Cecilia. Cuz at this point, they're like, all right, Larue and Marcel are taking the ride for the Appointment Murders. We're cool. We're fine. We did it. We're safe. But after Larue was shown the document cutting him out of his mother's will, he was finally done with Electus Pereus. Saying something along the lines of fuck her in regards to his mother. Instead of taking the full wrap for himself along with his sister, he told police about Cecilia and Mirinda's involvement in the appointment murders.
Henry Zabrowski
It's important to remember that if the cult you belong to believes that certain people are expendable, that means everyone is.
Marcus Parks
Yep.
Henry Zabrowski
So the closer you're into the inner circle of the little cult that you belong to, the more likely you are to be on a chopping block at some point.
Marcus Parks
Yep.
Henry Zabrowski
And they are unforgiving about it. And they're going to grind you up like a bomb of sausage meat.
Marcus Parks
They really are.
Ed Larson
Yeah, you got to be the guy who just comes to a meeting once a week.
Marcus Parks
That's.
Henry Zabrowski
That's the cue.
Marcus Parks
That's the thing. If you're in the cult, getting ground up and getting thrown to the wolves is not only possible, it is inevitable.
Henry Zabrowski
It's coming. It's coming in a big way.
Marcus Parks
Yes. Well, the last member of the cult to be arrested was John Barnard, who had stupidly taken his own phone with him to every crime scene. So his location at all times was easily determined. Barnard also very quickly confessed to his part in the Appointment Murders, but added the murder of Joan and Peter Meyer. And just to put all this into perspective, the period of time between the murder of the Myers and the murder of Hanley Lagan. Six months.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, it. It was over years. And then the liken of berserker mode, like with the any other heavy hitter, they just exploded with activity because then again, they weren't making enough money.
Marcus Parks
There was still, however, the matter of what had come to be known as the Satanic murders. That was the first cluster committed by Electus Perez. And those murders, by the way, those four murders, that was three months.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Back in 2012. Well, it seems the only one who truly cared about the Satanic murders was a man named Captain Bon who'd made the connection between Zach Valentine and the rest of Electus Pereus. He had an inkling that the Appointment murders and the Satanic murders were all committed by this same group of idiots. But when he went to review the documents concerning the murders of Natasha Berger, Joy Boonze, Pastor Reg, Ben Dixon and Michaela Valentine, he found that all of the police reports have mysteriously disappeared. Just gone. Now it's speculated by author Jan Marks that three officers known only as X, Y and Z in her book, presumably because she was afraid of naming them, they were a part of a cover up for the cult. As we said many times before, this all probably stems from the fact that Cecilia Hussain's husband was a cop.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, I mean, and what we've seen so far, it's just so hard to say that true corruption was not involved if they don't want people to know that these were not being done by a Satanic cult, but in fact were being done from within.
Marcus Parks
I think it was down to pure corruption.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, yeah.
Marcus Parks
But officers X, Y and Z tried covering their asses by claiming that they'd infiltrated the cult after the confession tapes made by James Vermach had been rendered unusable somehow. But no paperwork concerning authorization for undercover work nor any reports on what they supposedly discovered were ever found.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, what in the whole living were the embedded cops doing? Just murdering and being there, just hanging out, watching the Hulk and watching the Ed Norton Hulk. I'm trying to think of else all other horseshit they just sat and watched in her stinky old apartment in townhouse all day.
Marcus Parks
Well, the point is that they were never there. No, they had never infiltrated the cult.
Henry Zabrowski
They didn't even try. They literally didn't even try.
Marcus Parks
No, they covered it all up and tried to forget about it.
Henry Zabrowski
But also the fact that having a. I actually feel like in many ways it was beneficial for them to have a satanic cult still running around murdering because then that gave them job security.
Marcus Parks
That I will say I will agree with that. A South African police official claimed that the offending officers did face disciplinary action and criminal charges for fraud and obstruction of justice. There's no evidence of that either. And even if they did face charges, those charges certainly aren't equal to the crime of covering up four incredibly brutal murders. No, but even so, there was enough evidence to link the satanic murders to the Appointment murders. And Electus Pereus went on trial for all 11.
Henry Zabrowski
Now that in the court case, in the trial was a circus A huge pain in the ass. I watched a bunch of coverage of it. It was. It really was exact. Because you have. The problem is at the center of it is Cecilia Stain who is a attention and need. Loves it, wants it. And they're all like this. They're all a bunch of weird little busybody.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
That really were excited for have people having people hear them talk.
Ed Larson
Did she take the stand?
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Ed Larson
She lied the whole time.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Ed Larson
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
You know, honestly, thank God in character not changing at all.
Henry Zabrowski
I find it refreshing because I hate it when Alex Jones busted character. I was like, what a weak right. That's a. That you gave up the ghost to keep your kids. Feel like you don't care about your fucking kids. You really don't care the fact that you busted it. That's why I almost admire Cecilia staying in her way. She stayed a fucking dumbass bitch the whole time.
Marcus Parks
Now, as the state was building its case against Alectus Perdus, they found that most of the people who could have been witnesses were too terrified of Cecilia Stane to testify. And some refused to even speak about her or Electus Perdus. I mean they'd kill. Killed 11 people. Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
They were definitely. They believed that they were killing in the. To fight Satan, but you know.
Marcus Parks
But in the end, Amber Duprees and James Vermac came out of Witness Protection to help put their former cult away. And finally, Rhea Grunwald took the stand to repair some of the damage she'd done by contributing more than anyone to Cecilia's rise to power.
Henry Zabrowski
She could still suck my fucking dick.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. I mean, she was the reason why all this happened.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes.
Marcus Parks
Mirinda, meanwhile, testified as well, but only to confess. She recalled all of the murders in great detail, including the satanic murders, and attempted to take all the blame. Because even after all this, she was still trying to protect Cecilia.
Henry Zabrowski
Mirinda and Cecilia spent months coordinating their testimony with each other off to the side to try to put Cuz then Mirinda wanted like that's what in the end like of all of it. Like Cecilia aggravates me and Mirinda scared the out of me.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
On the stand.
Ed Larson
Well, she's a true killer.
Henry Zabrowski
That's a psychopath, that woman. And the fact that she was when she's on that tr. Like taking it all just being like I did everything. It was all me.
Marcus Parks
It's a full psychopath who posed as an English teacher for. She was. When she joined Electus Pereus, she was like 45. Yeah, like 40. Like, I mean she joined in her 40s. Can you imagine that? Like, three years from now? Joining a cult? No, like, not especially. Not of this kind. Like, this is insane. Yes. I mean, it just shows you what normal people are capable of.
Ed Larson
They're not even hot.
Henry Zabrowski
They're not even hot. It's wild, right? Because even the. Some of the Manson girls were kind of hot.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, of course.
Ed Larson
I remember in college when that chick tried to get you in a culture. She was hot.
Henry Zabrowski
Shelby was really very attractive. She almost got me, man. That was a welcoming area. She had a whole seat put out for me. She was so hot and showed there. I was just so. I was so hungover that I was late for church. That's the only reason why they didn't get me.
Ed Larson
Like, why is this church out of La Quinta?
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, it was very. But then I also wonder how comforting would it have been, you know, I would have received my wife. I would receive my. Since. Because years later. It took years for the CIA to give us all the stuff.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
I could chose God earlier.
Marcus Parks
Now, that. Actually, that happened to me once in college as well. This cute girl, like, invited me to a meeting.
Henry Zabrowski
That's what happened.
Ed Larson
And.
Marcus Parks
And I. But that's the thing is that I.
Henry Zabrowski
Knew my name when I arrived, I.
Marcus Parks
Had a feeling that it was going to be, like, bad. So I had my buddy Nick, like, call me. It was like, call me 30 minutes after I get there. And as a way out, and if I say, like, oh, no, the station's gone up off air. Like, because our radio station used to always go off the air.
Ed Larson
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
Then it was ready for me to come to run. Or if I would say, like, okay, everything's cool, bye. And, yeah. I immediately like, oh, man. And he. I've never heard someone cackle so hard on the other end of the phone. Because he was the one who came up with the plan.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
He was like. He's like, dude, I'm telling you, man, you're gonna get caught in a Christian trap.
Henry Zabrowski
You don't understand that that's what's happening. You're just thinking about boobies.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Yeah. And I completely ignored the conversation I had with the girl a couple of days earlier about how God had to exist because the human eye is too complex.
Henry Zabrowski
We'll say anything. Penises will say. That's penises talking. That's. No, that's a penis.
Marcus Parks
That's a penis listening.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Ed Larson
Back in Tallahassee, I went to the Church of Hooters.
Henry Zabrowski
Yes. So you did. I remember that church. It was wonderful. Those priests Were great.
Marcus Parks
But Cecilia, when she took the stand, all she would say is, I don't know anything. I wasn't there and I don't remember. It wasn't me.
Henry Zabrowski
It wasn't me. Yeah. It wasn't me. Yeah. Like, all she did, she just said it. But very seriously.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Zach Valentine likewise denied that he was involved, and Marcel said nothing until the week before closing arguments. But near the end of the trial, Marcel admitted that she was present for many of the murders and had technically helped with body disposal, but had done so only because she was rightfully terrified that her mother would actually murder her if she didn't. The judge, however, offered no leniency. While most of the rest of Electus Perdus got what they deserved, the judge ruled that Marcel voluntarily associated herself with the group, even though she was only 14 years old when the murders began. As a result, she received seven life sentences, plus 144 years.
Henry Zabrowski
Should tried harder to get out, I don't think.
Marcus Parks
I mean, she was 14.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, I know. You got to run. Just got to run for the hills.
Ed Larson
She stabs. Stabbed one of them, right?
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, she had. She had to.
Marcus Parks
Well, she tried to, and. But the knife didn't ever actually go in.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. And then her mom had to do it for her anyway. You know, that is.
Marcus Parks
That's at least 10 years.
Henry Zabrowski
It's like me when I had. Whenever I had science fair.
Marcus Parks
I don't blame her.
Henry Zabrowski
Mom's gonna become a scientist this weekend.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. I don't blame Marcel at all.
Henry Zabrowski
I don't blame her. I don't blame her. It's not a blame. It's just. It's just, you know.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Getting out, I don't think was really. I don't know if that was really an option for her.
Henry Zabrowski
No, probably not.
Marcus Parks
Point. Yeah.
Ed Larson
And I think that they were kind of embarrassed by how long it took them to figure this out and threw the book at everybody, as they should have.
Marcus Parks
Well, they threw the book at everybody except Lu.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah. Because he actively participated. Participated with the state.
Ed Larson
He's the only one that had enough cigarettes to be in prison.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
I mean, everyone else got pretty much the same as Marcel. Cecilia, Miranda, John, they all got multiple life sentences. But LaRue, because he turned state's witness, only got 25 years. And that's after he voluntarily and enthusiastically murdered four people with his chokey. Chokey. Get about 60 years for murder.
Henry Zabrowski
Do you think that he can sleep now in jail without his chokey Chokey? Or you think he made like a little one that he can sleep with.
Marcus Parks
It's hard to get rope in prison.
Henry Zabrowski
It is. The only ropes are made by us and not penis. Says we joke off in each other, mix with love.
Marcus Parks
Oh, you're talking about shooting ropes. But even though everyone in Electus Pereus except Larue will be in prison until the day they die, Captain Boson believes that there are more murders connected to the cult.
Henry Zabrowski
I absolutely more than believe that there are more murders connected to the cult.
Marcus Parks
At least two unsolved murders can credibly be connected to Electus Pereus. And that's not even counting the story of Morin Hara. See, In September of 2008, six years before Electus Perdus began murdering their fellow Christians, 18 year old Morin Harmsa murdered a friend and injured four others with a samurai sword at his high school in Krueger's Dorp. He did all of this wearing a mask that resembled the one worn by Corey Taylor, lead singer of Slipknot.
Henry Zabrowski
You know, the most evil of the. They are just pure evil. They're definitely not a band.
Ed Larson
I hate that I hear the lead singer's name now.
Henry Zabrowski
I love Corey Taylor, he's very talented.
Marcus Parks
I love. I adore Slip Knot. And that's the thing is that like Slipknot, they were easy to blame. They have the song on IW, the heretic anthem. The. You know, if you're 555 them, 666. Fucking love that song. It's great.
Henry Zabrowski
It's awesome.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. But as far as how wrong these people got it, I mean, I'll stand by Heretic Anthem as a positive outlet for adolescent rage. You would tell kids like me way back when that feeling isolated and different was a totally normal feeling to have. It's nu metal at its best.
Henry Zabrowski
Absolutely. I thought I looked like one of the members of Slipknot because of my problems, my self esteem problems.
Marcus Parks
Did you look like the big fat clown?
Ed Larson
Yeah, that was the one. You could tell by his tears.
Henry Zabrowski
They're so thick. My tears are so big. How do I make my sorrow thinner?
Marcus Parks
But I mean, that's why I love Slipknot. They were the fuck you to Corns. Fuck me.
Henry Zabrowski
I love Slipknot.
Marcus Parks
It paired nicely with System of A Down's more learned Fuck the System of A Down's good. Yeah. And Limp Bizkit's ultimately unhelpful message of fuck everything.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah.
Marcus Parks
But yeah, so I'll stand System of a Down and Slipknot, two best new metal bands out there. Corn close. Third.
Henry Zabrowski
I love corn.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Jesus, have you Ever seen the. Have you ever listened to the original Corn? That.
Ed Larson
When I was younger I loved corn and I had the Marilyn Manson CDs. I did not fall into the Slipknot era, but System, I'm always down with system.
Marcus Parks
They're great. Yeah. But the boy with the sword Mournsa, he did claim that Slipknot made him do it. He said that when he listened to their music, he lost control of his body and his mind and therefore he had to take a samurai sword and stab five people.
Henry Zabrowski
Well, yeah, that's why I robbed that bank that one time as Michael Bu. He did it to me.
Marcus Parks
That's why I got that public masturbation charge, because I listened to Stroking. I'll be stroking to the east and to the west.
Henry Zabrowski
Yep.
Marcus Parks
Now, likewise, when police searched his room, they found the standard Ouija boards and so called satanic spell books, which of course made this a satanic murder.
Henry Zabrowski
Slap it.
Marcus Parks
That was their big thing. This is the satan. This is satanic murder. But what police didn't know at the time was that just before Mo went on his stabbing spree, he was receiving so called spiritual counseling from Cecilia Stain.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, dude.
Marcus Parks
Presumably by way of the Overcomers Through Christ. And if Cecilia's about two years into the Overcomers at this point, and if.
Henry Zabrowski
You listen to the Devil's Dorp documentary, I found it a little bit hard to follow. But the ending also very hard to follow. The ending really illustrated Straits that there were. There were several other crimes that you could definitely tie to this crew. Like there is absolutely. There was another person that went missing that was a part of Overcomers Through Christ. There was another child that went missing. They've done. There's stuff that they did that did not come out.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. And so while we don't know for sure that Cecilia Stain talked more into his attempted killing spree, I don't think it's a coincidence that wherever Cecilia went, murder followed. But it's important to note that murder only became an option after Cecilia's insane narrative was accepted and amplified by a group of fundamentalist Christians who so desperately wanted the myth, the murderous satanic cults to be real, that they accidentally created one themselves.
Henry Zabrowski
Be careful what you pretend to be, because we are what we pretend pretend.
Marcus Parks
To be could find.
Henry Zabrowski
It's very true. And we are. It's important now to even think about how in South Africa the Occult Crimes Unit there were the. That is still around really goes in and out of activity one time it was. There was definitely during the Judgment. So there's no jury system in South Africa. So it's all done by judge. And the judge who was interesting was a black man. And he is. Was trying to say that Satanism is now no longer illegal in South Africa. But in his judgment he labeled Electus Perdius a satanic cult because of their activities. So what they did, instead of owning up to this and the South African public saying what if there isn't a giant cabal of satanic cults that are ruining everything and maybe we're just looking for them and applying that thought to everything instead of that lesson getting learned, they were just called a satanic cult. So then it just became solidified and then that line of thought continued on for a long time. And one of the things, I mean.
Marcus Parks
It'S for a long time. This is eight years ago.
Henry Zabrowski
It's keep going. It just continues to go. But one of the main things that's hard is that the Occult Crimes unit is basically back as a way of working against these things called the muti Moody mutilations and moody murders where rural, very rare. I guess witchcraft activity which involves the torture of young kids for various ritual purposes which some shamans around the area say is relatively rare. But enough has happened that it has kicked up that Occult Crimes unit again. So they're still working on this thing in terms of occult related crimes. And it's gone so far that it looks like old Donker Yonker might have sold a television show that is a new South African version of True Detective where they're going to go back and talk about all this. So now they're making money on it saying that it's real. And it's just important for us to see what happens when the government of a country decides that this stuff is real and what it. How it does trickle down. Like the way this trickled down was that straight up, 11 people got murdered that should not have gotten murdered because of the. Because they were so upset their own ass looking for shit that was not there. And they. Or just not caring because they've already decided that this is some. This is like. I don't. God knows that it's some kind of fact of life that satanic cults rule the world and we have to fight them.
Ed Larson
I would say they're more of a Beth cult.
Henry Zabrowski
They are. But again, remember they weren't satanic, they were Christian.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
And they were doing it for Christian purposes.
Marcus Parks
They were fundamentalist Christians, all of them, except for Cecilia.
Henry Zabrowski
And all of the satanic based crimes seem to only happen as a Result of behaving an occult Crime crimes division. And because the state viewed God as real, you know, which is extremely bad for people.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
Because God's not real in that way.
Ed Larson
You know, in any way.
Henry Zabrowski
No, but God can exist as a way to help you. But that's really as far as it should go.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. You know, shouldn't be used as a way to justify murder or fucking with anybody else's life.
Henry Zabrowski
Yep. But God's been.
Ed Larson
So many people have been killed in the name of.
Henry Zabrowski
Oh, very much. I know.
Marcus Parks
That's what I mean is that it shouldn't be.
Henry Zabrowski
It shouldn't be.
Marcus Parks
It shouldn't have happened.
Henry Zabrowski
It shouldn't be.
Marcus Parks
Hey.
Henry Zabrowski
Because it seems like the main guy that they all like used to be a hippie, but what do I know? They nailed him a fucking stick. Yep.
Ed Larson
Killed it. Murdered him.
Henry Zabrowski
Murdered him.
Marcus Parks
So cougars are part four. Over and done with.
Henry Zabrowski
We did it. We are moving into a lot of. A lot of shit. Dude. We're doing. The last thing we're doing is slowing down.
Marcus Parks
Yeah.
Henry Zabrowski
For fuck certain. We are fucking. We are rolling into this life. We're going to do this the same we've always done it. I'm going to say this like I've always said this. And every single time of strife, which is. You're going to have to pull microphone for my cold, dead hands. We have done this through a plague. We've done this the worst parts of our lives. We're going to continue to do the show at our utmost ability for as long as possible.
Ed Larson
Any hints on next week?
Marcus Parks
It's going to get weird.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, it's going to get weird.
Marcus Parks
Yeah, it's going to be some weirdo.
Henry Zabrowski
Yeah, we got some weird coming. I love it.
Ed Larson
That makes me so excited.
Marcus Parks
Yeah. Patreon.com Last podcast on the left is where you can go to watch video episodes right now, including this episode. You can watch all the side stories episodes on YouTube completely for free. Speaking of free, you can also follow us at TikTok and Instagram LP on the left. Don't forget to go check out all of our streams at LPN tv. And that's Twitch tv. LPNTV free.
Ed Larson
You know, monetarily, but not emotionally.
Henry Zabrowski
No, absolutely not. Absolutely not.
Ed Larson
We're on the road, baby. Strong man. We got a whole bunch of shit coming up. Henry and I are going to come into Humboldt on the 23rd of November, and then we're going to be in New York City on the 7th of December in Kings Theater. And then we're going all over the place next year. We got a bunch of great shows coming up.
Marcus Parks
We got Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, Detroit and Toronto coming up in the first five months of next year. So go to last podcast on the left.com and click on shows to see exactly when we going to be there in your city or near your city.
Henry Zabrowski
Hey man. Hail sweet Satan. That's the only way out of this mess. I'm going to keep doing it until.
Marcus Parks
The very end and hel you hail.
Ed Larson
System of a doubt.
Marcus Parks
Yeah sure.
Henry Zabrowski
I'm down with sickness.
Marcus Parks
You wanted to.
Last Podcast on the Left: Episode 597 – "The Krugersdorp Cult Murders Part IV - The Werewolf of Wall Street"
Hosts: Marcus Parks, Henry Zabrowski, and Ed Larson
Podcast Network: The Last Podcast Network
Episode Duration: Approximately 99 minutes
Knowledge Cutoff: October 2023
In Episode 597 of The Last Podcast on the Left, the hosts Marcus Parks, Henry Zabrowski, and Ed Larson delve into the chilling saga of the Electus Perdus cult and their heinous crimes in Krugersdorp, South Africa. Titled "The Werewolf of Wall Street," this episode marks the fourth and concluding part of the series, unraveling the cult's transition from religious fanaticism to outright financial crime and murder.
Marcus Parks introduces Electus Perdus as a once-quiet cult led by the enigmatic Cecilia Stain, whose initial motives were rooted in combating satanic forces through righteous killings. The cult believed they were performing sacred acts to protect their American orphans, who were believed to be the offspring of witches intended for dark rituals.
Quote:
"Electus Perdus was initially committed to fighting the forces of Satan through what they perceived as righteous acts."
[03:03] — Marcus Parks
Cecilia Stain’s influence was paramount. She maintained strict control over the cult members, dictating both their spiritual missions and financial endeavors.
Initially, Electus Perdus carried out murders they justified as battling satanic influences. However, as the group faced financial strains, particularly after their breadwinner, Zach Valentine, failed miserably in his stint as a stockbroker—a position he abandoned inspired by the movie Wolf of Wall Street—the cult shifted its focus from religiously motivated killings to financial crimes.
Quote:
"Zach Valentine probably saw Wolf of Wall Street and in his mindset was like, that's amazing. You know what I mean? Like, that's exactly what I want to be."
[05:49] — Henry Zabrowski
This pivot was driven by the cult's need to sustain their operations, leading them to engage in insurance fraud as a means to secure funds.
The central plot of this episode revolves around the cult’s elaborate insurance fraud scheme, dubbed the "Werewolf of Wall Street." The plan was to fake Zach Valentine’s death to claim his life insurance payout of over $200,000. To execute this, the cult orchestrated a car fire to make Zach’s disappearance appear as a fatal accident.
Key Steps in the Scheme:
Disguising a New Identity: Electus Perdus selected Gerard Jackson, a 41-year-old man from a nearby shelter, to impersonate Zach Valentine. They equipped Gerard with Zach's silver Adidas ring to authenticate the disguise.
Staging the Death: After Gerard was drugged and strangled by cult member LaRue, Zach’s BMW was set ablaze with kerosene and gasoline, intended to make the carfire seem accidental.
Faking the Scene: The cult aimed to leave the body in a location where it would appear abandoned, hoping to minimize investigative scrutiny.
Quote:
"They decided that financial advisors would be good targets because they often held appointments outside of their own office."
[54:07] — Henry Zabrowski
Despite meticulous planning, the scheme had glaring flaws. The charred body still retained features indicating it was not Zach, and inconsistencies in the carfire scene raised suspicions.
Throughout the episode, the hosts detail several key murders orchestrated by Electus Perdus:
Joan and Peter Meyer: Initially killed under the guise of battling satanic forces, their murders lacked substantial financial motivation.
Anthony Schoenfeld (Financial Advisor): Targeted for his financial dealings, Schoenfeld was strangled and his assets were siphoned through bank transfers.
Kevin McAlpine (Insurance Agent): Similarly lured under false pretenses, McAlpine’s murder followed the same pattern, with the cult attempting to erase financial traces.
Hanley Lagan (Real Estate Agent): Chosen for his occupation, Hanley was murdered when he realized the cult's sinister intentions too late.
Morin Hara (High School Student): Although not directly connected initially, Hara’s murder bore striking similarities to the appointment murders, hinting at broader criminal activities by Electus Perdus.
Quote:
"Using the Chokey Chokey Le Roux strangled Glenn to death."
[41:13] — Marcus Parks
The cult employed ritualistic methodologies, often giving their murder tools evocative names like "Chokey Chokey," indicating a perverse attachment to their instruments of death.
The investigation into Electus Perdus unveiled significant procedural lapses and potential corruption within the local police force. Key points include:
Initial Ignorance: South African police struggled to connect the dots between the various murders, often attributing them to random satanic cult activities.
Possible Police Involvement: The disappearance of initial murder reports and the presence of officers labeled as X, Y, and Z suggested possible inside involvement or a cover-up, potentially linked to Cecilia Stain's husband, a police officer.
Quote:
"The occurrence reports concerning Natasha Berger, Joy Boonze, Pastor Reg, Ben Dixon, and Michaela Valentine had mysteriously disappeared."
[81:28] — Marcus Parks
This obstruction allowed the cult to operate with impunity for an extended period, complicating the path to justice.
As the cult's crimes escalated, internal tensions rose. Key events include:
LeRou’s Defection: LaRue Stain, pressured by familial threats and conscientious guilt, became a state’s witness, providing crucial testimonies that linked the cult to the murders.
Captcin Bon’s Inquiry: Captain Bon, investigating the connections between the satanic murders and the appointment murders, identified the overlapping patterns that tied Zach Valentine to Electus Perdus.
Final Arrests: By mid-2016, key members, including Cecilia Stain and her daughter Miranda, were arrested. Surveillance footage and DNA evidence further cemented the cult’s involvement.
Quote:
"Miranda brazenly demanded that the cremation be done as soon as possible so she could finalize paperwork on an insurance claim."
[20:21] — Henry Zabrowski
The trial was marked by Cecilia Stain’s unyielding facade, manipulation attempts, and eventual downfall triggered by internal betrayals and mounting evidence.
The episode concludes with Electus Perdus’s disintegration in the face of mounting legal pressures and internal betrayals. Key takeaways include:
Cecilia Stain’s Psychopathy: Stain remained the central figure, exhibiting manipulative and psychopathic traits that perpetuated the cult’s criminal activities despite mounting evidence.
Unresolved Mysteries: Despite the arrests, theories suggest there are potentially more unsolved murders linked to Electus Perdus, with the possibility of ongoing occult-related crimes in the region.
Government and Media Influence: The cult's portrayal as a satanic entity seemingly fueled public fear and paranoia, leading to sustained investigations spearheaded by specialized units like the Occult Crimes Unit.
Quote:
"Be careful what you pretend to be, because we are what we pretend."
[94:51] — Henry Zabrowski
This aphorism encapsulates the cult’s tragic trajectory from aiming to fight perceived evil to embodying it through their ruthless pursuit of financial gain.
Marcus Parks: "They listened to this man talk about a South African water Park for 45 minutes."
[04:50]
Henry Zabrowski: "A robbery did wrong. Yeah, that's what I would put it that way."
[03:28]
Ed Larson: "This is the Last Podcast on the Left."
[00:52]
Henry Zabrowski: "Nothing makes me more comforted than a plastic sheet looking like sun and trees."
[10:35]
Marcus Parks: "But the problem with that robbery... was a net negative to the cult."
[07:20]
Henry Zabrowski: "Yeah, it was extremely suspicious, the whole thing."
[31:07]
Marcus Parks: "They really didn't have the imagination to plan a scheme that didn't involve killing someone."
[07:34]
Henry Zabrowski: "It's hard to get done. Dude, think about it."
[07:28]
The Last Podcast on the Left masterfully recounts the dark narrative of Electus Perdus, illustrating how ideological fanaticism can swiftly devolve into violent crime under financial pressures and charismatic leadership. The episode serves as a sobering reminder of the thin line between belief-driven actions and criminality, emphasizing the catastrophic consequences when that line is crossed.
Disclaimer: This summary is based on the provided transcript and aims to capture the essence and key points discussed in the podcast episode. For comprehensive insights and the full narrative, listening to the episode is recommended.