Episode 609: Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell - The Doomsday Murders Part I - Beyond The Veil

Summary

Last Podcast on the Left: Episode 609 Summary

Title: Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell - The Doomsday Murders Part I - Beyond The Veil
Release Date: February 21, 2025
Hosts: Henry Zebrowski, Marcus Parks, Ed Larson
Podcast Network: The Last Podcast Network
Duration Covered: [00:00] – [115:05]

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1. Introduction

In Episode 609, The Last Podcast on the Left delves into the chilling true crime case of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell, exploring their descent into a doomsday cult that led to multiple murders. The hosts provide an in-depth analysis of their backgrounds, belief systems, and the factors that culminated in their heinous actions.

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2. Hosts and Podcast Context

Description:
The episode is hosted by Henry Zebrowski, Marcus Parks, and Ed Larson, known for their engaging and often irreverent take on true crime and horror stories. While the episode begins with banter and humorous exchanges, the focus swiftly shifts to the grim subject matter.

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3. Overview of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell

Key Points:

• Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell were self-styled Mormon end-times prophets.
• Their extremist beliefs led them to commit at least four murders in 2019, including the deaths of Lori's children.
• Lori has been convicted and sentenced, while Chad awaits trial for the murder of Tammy Daybell.

Notable Quote:

"Lori Valo is probably one of the more frightening human beings we will cover on Last Podcast on the Left."
— Henry Zebrowski [08:11]

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4. Mormonism and Its Influence

Key Points:

• The hosts discuss how fundamentalist interpretations of Mormonism can lead to extreme behaviors.
• Concepts like "blood atonement" and near-death experiences (NDEs) play a pivotal role in Chad and Lori’s worldview.
• The distinction between mainstream Mormonism and its fringe, survivalist offshoots is highlighted.

Notable Quote:

"The left and right sides. You're on your left, and you're on your right. Taxonomy."
— Henry Zebrowski [05:46] (Note: This quote appears out of context and may be an editing error; if relevant, include appropriately.)

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5. Chad Daybell's Background and Rise

Key Points:

• Chad Daybell was born in 1968 in Springville, Utah, a predominantly Mormon town.
• A near-death experience at 18, while cliff jumping, profoundly influenced his beliefs, granting him what he described as the "gift of discernment."
• This experience fueled his conviction in fighting perceived evil forces, leading him to author apocalyptic novels and engage with online survivalist forums.

Notable Quote:

"Chad Daybell is the least charismatic human to ever exist."
— Henry Zebrowski [09:38]

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6. Publications and Ideological Development

Key Points:

• Chad authored several poorly received novels that intertwined Mormon eschatology with apocalyptic scenarios.
• His publishing efforts included works from other NDE authors, further cementing his status within the fringe community.
• The failure of his publishing company led him to focus more intensely on his doomsday beliefs and survivalist activities.

Notable Quote:

"His writing is terrible. Rife with clichés, plot holes, and extraneous punctuation."
— Ed Larson [77:09]

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7. Influence of Tom Harrison and "Visions of Glory"

Key Points:

• Tom Harrison's book, Visions of Glory, played a significant role in shaping Chad and Lori's extremist views.
• Harrison's apocalyptic visions and claims of secret knowledge resonated with Chad, influencing his own doctrines.
• The endorsement of Harrison’s work by an LDS apostle lent unwarranted credibility to Chad’s beliefs.

Notable Quote:

"Tom Harrison is viewed as a true prophet. They are scheming to flip the entire Mormon Church."
— Henry Zebrowski [59:28]

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8. Preparing a People Group and Cult Formation

Key Points:

• Chad aligned with "Preparing a People" (PAP), a group focused on Mormon survivalism and doomsday prepping.
• PAP's podcasts and conferences amplified Chad’s influence, attracting like-minded individuals primarily from fringe Mormon communities.
• The formation of their cult was characterized by apocalyptic prophecies, survivalist tactics, and the mobilization of followers to prepare for the end times.

Notable Quote:

"Chad Daybell began his career as an absolutely God awful novelist."
— Henry Zebrowski [74:39]

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9. Path to the Doomsday Murders

Key Points:

• Chad’s and Lori’s increasing obsession with apocalyptic visions led them to see their actions as justified within their belief system.
• The murders were rationalized as necessary to eliminate "zombies" and enemies of their envisioned new world.
• The culmination of their distorted beliefs resulted in the tragic deaths of Lori’s children and other family members.

Notable Quote:

"This tale is what happens when people let their fantasies take over their entire lives."
— Ed Larson [09:38]

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10. Conclusion and Upcoming Topics

Key Points:

• The episode sets the stage for Part II, which will delve deeper into Lori Vallow’s role, her family dynamics, and the full scope of their criminal activities.
• The hosts emphasize the complexity of their case, illustrating the dangers of extremist beliefs intertwined with charismatic leadership.

Notable Quote:

"What really creates the actual very, very dark edge of Chad Daybell is going to be what Lori Valo brings to the table and her family."
— Henry Zebrowski [108:32]

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Key Themes and Insights

• Extremist Interpretation of Religions: The case exemplifies how fringe interpretations of religious doctrines can lead to catastrophic outcomes.
• Charismatic Leadership: Despite being described as non-charismatic, Chad Daybell leveraged online platforms and aligned with influential figures to attract and manipulate followers.
• Psychological Manipulation: The use of NDEs and apocalyptic narratives served as tools for justifying heinous acts within the cult.
• Isolation and Echo Chambers: The insular nature of their belief system, reinforced by exclusive forums and media, created an echo chamber that isolated them from mainstream scrutiny.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Henry Zebrowski [08:11]: "Lori Valo is probably one of the more frightening human beings we will cover on Last Podcast on the Left."
• Ed Larson [09:38]: "His writing is terrible. Rife with clichés, plot holes, and extraneous punctuation."
• Henry Zebrowski [59:28]: "Tom Harrison is viewed as a true prophet. They are scheming to flip the entire Mormon Church."
• Ed Larson [77:09]: "His writing is terrible. Rife with clichés, plot holes, and extraneous punctuation."
• Henry Zebrowski [108:32]: "What really creates the actual very, very dark edge of Chad Daybell is going to be what Lori Valo brings to the table and her family."

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Conclusion

Episode 609 offers a comprehensive examination of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell's transformation from religious adherents to murderers within a doomsday cult framework. By dissecting their involvement with extremist Mormon beliefs, near-death experiences, and survivalist communities, the hosts shed light on the mechanisms that drive ordinary individuals towards extraordinary evil. Part II promises to unravel further layers of their dark narrative, providing listeners with a deeper understanding of this modern true crime phenomenon.

Transcript

[Henry Zebrowski]

From the boogie down streets of Queens to a pile of beans, a new cup of piping hot polish, Italian java. Last podcast on the left and Spring Heeled Jack Coffee are rising from the rubble with a new brew. Butterfly dudes. Blue Eyed land. Nothing to do with any moth based entity. Don't even think about it. This is a butterfly dude. Don't mind the blue eyes. He's just Caucasian. Our new proprietary roast might seem eerily similar, but don't let your tongue deceive you. It's a butterfly dude. Rose. This is the butterfly dude's Blue eye blend. Entirely delicious and not just the same themes. Butterfly dudes, Blue eye Blend. From the cocoon to your room. There's no place to escape to.

[Marcus Parks]

This is the last on the left.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? You don't do that.

[Ed Larson]

No. Oh. Oh, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's refreshing.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, when I sit down, definitely.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that's.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, I'm sitting.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, fuck.

[Ed Larson]

I'm not sitting now. My butt's touching something.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, God, I'm sitting so hard right now. Oh, God, my butt is hard. Marcus, Is that cancer? Do I have hard butt disease? Is this the beginning of me turning into stone?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

No, you get. You need to go and get your butt massaged a little bit and then you'd be able to get out over your stone disease.

[Henry Zebrowski]

See, I don't know how to do that, like on a table, because they do work the back legs and I do wish that they'd manhandle my flaps more.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But the problem is, is that I feel like the more I ask, they say go, like north. Go north. That it seems like I'm asking to be sexed.

[Ed Larson]

No, that's the thing is that you can't actually ask for it. You just have to find a massage therapist who does it anyway and then you stick with that person.

[Marcus Parks]

Remember in New Zealand, the massage? I mean, I don't know about you, but my lady was like. It was like 20% rubbing my ass.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, that was different. That was something. That was somebody special, that was somebody new.

[Ed Larson]

Well, that's more European because I'm a bit of a massage connoisseur. I love massages. And when you get outside of the United States, they get a little less afraid. Regulated to get near the, you know, the private parts.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Because your butt is the most European part of you and it's got lots.

[Marcus Parks]

Of muscle in there. You know, there's lots of going on in there. It's connected to the legs and all that, you know, it needs to be worked to glutes. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Speaking of glutes, today's episode makes me long for the Catholic Church and the simple honesty of the leaders of the Catholic Church. Because you know what's nice about Catholic Church? Near priests. And they're. They know they're evil.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They act like it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And they're super confident about it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And they don't need to pretend to be humble because they got big hats covered with diamonds on. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

And they spend their fucking money.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They're spending their money. They're not just sitting on it like a bunch of fucking Mormons are waiting for a quote unquote rainy day, which is gonna kill the rest of us. And then they're gonna spend their money. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Buy your scepters. Buy your big hat. Buy bigger hats.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Do. Guys, it's not coming. Jesus Christ is not coming back to America. It sucks here.

[Ed Larson]

Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What?

[Marcus Parks]

Really?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. After all this time.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it's Marcus Parks. Nice to meet you. Here with Henry Zabrowski.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm angry today.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm angry. I'm full of it. I can't wait to come for these people. And. Come on. These people.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I also want to say this whole. This whole series is going out to our ex mos. We love you.

[Ed Larson]

Love you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And our soon to be exmos. I want to say if you somehow found yourself here right now, this is your signal to get the living out.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, man.

[Marcus Parks]

Ditch the backpack. Get a shirt with a color. You know, it's gonna be a big day for you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Seriously. Have a cup of coffee. I dare you to walk into a Dunkin Donuts right now. Get a cup of coffee. See what happens. You will be having visions beyond the veil. Like this. You're going to be doing this already. It's called a cheat cult. It's called experiencing something.

[Marcus Parks]

How do they hit the street so hard without a cup of coffee?

[Ed Larson]

God. It's the power of Jesus.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And soda. Sugar mode.

[Ed Larson]

They love sugar. And we also have the inquisitive Ed Larson.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, what is Mormon? No, I know what it is. It's stupid.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Correct. I just said also. Again, pumped up. This is not going to be super friendly to the Mormon religion. No, but we love all of you. Still you. It's important for you to hear this because we even just like with Scientology, we have seen the beginning of Mormonism and now we are seeing what I Just straight up call the middle of Mormonism. We are in the middle of Mormonism and that's very interesting because we get to see a religion grow up and turn into whatever evil form it's going to in front of our own eyes.

[Ed Larson]

Well it's not like Mormonism started off as a paragon of virtue. No, our Mormonism series like there was a lot of really horrible with Joseph Smith, with Brigham Young, the obsessed Brigham Young if you remember. Oh I do remember. I don't know if you know this but Brigham Young, you know the guy who succeeded Joseph Smith obsessed with. Oh really? Yeah, talked about it all the time.

[Marcus Parks]

Now you get me horny, you're kind of guy now. Now correct me if I'm wrong now Joseph Smith had his followers, he's walking across America and he shows up to Salt Lake City and he's like ah, is Nevada.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Actually I don't think Joseph Smith made it to Salt Lake City.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That was bringing me on. Really bring him young, brought him over there and then that was considered. If you do go across those salt flats it is very interesting. It's very beautiful over there. The natural arches is extremely beautiful. I do see why they would. They think that Zion would be there but they were wrong.

[Marcus Parks]

It's interesting that they're so obsessed with the end of the world and like that lake is evaporating and the gases are going to kill all of them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's almost like it's a feature, not a bug and they can't waiting for the rest of us to die.

[Ed Larson]

Well why are we talking about Mormonism? It's because today we're going to be talking about the two biggest Mormons in true crime today. Chad Daybell and Lori Valow. Chad Dabel and Lori Valo were two self styled Mormon end times prophets who created and lived in a fantasy world in which they did personal battle with the forces of darkness on a daily basis. But in the pursuit of this personal war, Chad and Laurie involved themselves in at least four murders. These murders were all committed in the year 2019. And you may very well remember the months long search for Lori Valow's two children that ended when her kids bodies were found buried on Chad Daybell's Idaho property.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And they are now. Now we know Lori Valo has been convicted three consecutive life sentences for the deaths of her children and not yet Tammy Daybell they are now that's going to be the next trial.

[Ed Larson]

Chad Dell is he's going to get charged with Tammy Val, Tammy D's death.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But now Lori Val is going to trial for Tammy D. Death and she's.

[Ed Larson]

On trial for Charles Valo's death.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's all mixed. It's all just this. But Lori Valo is. She's representing herself.

[Ed Larson]

So it is a one currently today, like currently she is representing herself in her murder trial.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, wow, that's very impressive.

[Henry Zebrowski]

She is very certain she is correct. And Lori Valo is probably one of the more frightening human beings we will cover on last podcast on the left.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, when they bury their children in Idaho, do you think they were just fertilizing their potatoes?

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey man, that's why they get so big.

[Ed Larson]

Well, Chad and Laurie were also involved with the murder of each other's spouses. Murders committed so they could be free to marry each other. This, however, is no simple, tawdry tale of two middle aged losers who erase their families so they can run off together unfettered. Although that is certainly an element at play here. Mostly the story of Chad and Laurie is what happens when people let their fantasies take over their entire lives, encompassing their beliefs and worldview to such a point where they were able to snuff out the lives of their children and spouses with all the emotion we'd use in making a decision that might affect a karma score in a video game. Now, this tale is a very 21st century flavor of true crime story because Chad Dabel and Lori Valow were both Mormon media figures, albeit very niche ones, and neither one of them would have gained much traction if not for the Internet. For Chad's part, he was an author and public speaker who wrote absolutely awful novels based on end times beliefs and memoirs about near death experiences that gave him superpowers. These writings only took off though, however slightly, because of online Mormon doomsday prepper forums.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I cannot stress enough how bad these books are. I have attempted to read several Chad Daybell books and I will not finish them. No, I refuse to finish them. Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

And you finished David Icke.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. You finished multiple L. Ron Hubbard books.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I actually think that Chad D. Is might be the least talented person to ever live. He might not have a single creative ability.

[Ed Larson]

Lori Valo, meanwhile, was one of our new media brethren. She was a podcaster.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yay. This is the first podcast based crime.

[Ed Larson]

Wow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's true.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it is. And she regularly discussed being in contact with the Mormon Angel Moroni on her podcast and claimed on her show to have been chosen by God as the future leader of the 144,000 Mormons who would survive the apocalypse after the Events of the book of Revelation came to pass, say.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And also, who books Moroni? How do we get him?

[Marcus Parks]

Is it still out? Can you listen to it?

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's very difficult to find. I went scouring the Internet to find all of their podcasts. They've mostly been taken down. There's bits and pieces. Mostly what I have found is videotape of the. Their various presentations at conferences like Preparing a people and of these other things that we will get to that and. But guess what, Eddie, you're not missing anything. They fucking suck. Yeah, they suck at talking, they suck at humor, they suck at talk. They're the worst group of fuckfaces to exist. How did anybody get involved with this?

[Marcus Parks]

Moments ago, Henry was like, I'm gonna be. I gotta chill out. I gotta be calm today.

[Ed Larson]

That's not even to mention how awful the producing is on the podcast. I mean, the sound quality is dog shit.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, but also. But also, I will bring up quickly one tiny little weird theology thing very quickly is that the 144,000 can be interpreted in different ways. There's one way, which was the Joseph Smith OG way, which is the idea that 144,000 people were what were going to be left. Right? But what these guys have interpreted as is in terms. Also their mentor interprets it as is the 144,000 are the generals and the captains of the Mormon army that will live through the turbulations and they will go and they will gather all of the Mormons that are left after everybody's dead, and they will have. Also have special powers.

[Marcus Parks]

More men. More like less man.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, don't do this. It's more bad because you get more powers.

[Ed Larson]

Now, I know we're hitting the M word a lot here, but from what I've seen in the media coverage, particularly the Netflix series Sins of My Mother, the central role Mormonism plays in the story is glossed over all too often. As one man who fell into Chad and Lori's sphere of influence put it. Chad Dabel and Lori Vallow basically turned Mormonism into a tabletop rpg, complete with weapons, magical powers, stats, and clear enemies to battle and defeat.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now you're coming against RPGs. I play a Mormon RPG, but they are. This is LARPing.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, no, it is LARPing, but it's LARPing combined with RPGs. I mean, stats, you can't argue with stats and you can't argue with magical powers.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You're right, but it's the LARPing with the involved because it's like, it's crazy. It's so hard to roll a natural 20 when you're trying to smother your children. Because that's what you have to get. You have to roll in that 20 so that you can properly sink them into the hole so that nobody can see. That makes a perfect flat lay. Like, that's like. If you hit a critical success, that's huge. But yeah, they're just doing it.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, sorry, I fell asleep.

[Henry Zebrowski]

As soon as tabletop games get involved.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, you mentioned the words natural roll to Ed and it's just. Where do you go when we are Jackson Rolls.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, they're great.

[Marcus Parks]

Put ham and cheese on them, a little mayo and mustard, maybe a pickle. Who knows? I love rolls.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Unbelievable.

[Ed Larson]

Well, in a way, the world where Chad and Lori lived reminds me of how the ancient Greeks and Romans looked at existence. Where gods and evil spirits were believed to influence and interact with daily life. Magic was considered real and displeasing the gods was met with swift and harsh judgment. For example, Chad and Laurie's most infamous belief was that the world was populated with 20,000 so called zombies. People whose bodies had been overtaken and their souls bounced to limbo by dark spirits. And the only way to save these innocent souls was to literally kill the zombie. Now, the zombies were usually just a convenient way to otherize people who disagreed with Chad and Laurie or people who stood in their way. But when the fantasy took over completely, Chad and Laurie used the zombie belief as justification for killing Lori's children and both of their spouses.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Because that's what you understand, Marcus. They're not dead.

[Ed Larson]

Just call me Americus.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They're not dead. They're not dead. They're in heaven. Yeah, of course they're busy and they're working.

[Ed Larson]

Have they got their own planets yet?

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, they can't. They're fucking gross. It's a baby. It's like a lady. Gross.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

She can't be in charge of a planet that too emotionally insecure. It takes the stable nature of a man, a grown boomer, to really run a planet correctly.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Especially Uranus.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, a lot of boomers love Uranus. Yeah. They're fucking you, huh?

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, man, I love it. Fill me up. Yeah, make me your jelly donut.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It shouldn't be red.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, well, you're right. Boston cream pie.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now the zombie thing sounds, in a word, stupid.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Something created by a two person echo chamber trying to find justification for murder. But Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell were not a two person operation. Because of Chad's writings and the talks he gave at conferences, Chad actually had a fair amount of followers and both he and Laurie were well respected names in the Mormon neo fundamentalist movement. Technically, Chad was the leader of an almost but not quite cult. And the people who listened to what he had to say were not around when it came to what they believed and how they lived their life.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The slow roll up of capital M straight down the line, Mormon to fringe. Mormon is not that far. No, it is very. It is. You can get over there very easily then. Capital M. Mormon is trying to make themselves now more reasonable, more approachable, more open to modern conventions, modern ideas.

[Ed Larson]

Well, that's how the Mormon Church has always been. They change, they change with the times.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes, but these guys, these guys want to roll, roll, roll, roll, roll it back. And they want to roll it back in a way that also never really existed. They want to roll it that never was. And the. But really the only way to do that again is if all the rest of us are dead.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, well, Chad had a whole crew of neo fundamentalist Mormons who lived lives primarily informed by survivalist doctrine, New age gibberish, millenarianism, and most dangerously, the belief that anyone not on their side had fallen under the influence of Satan. That of course is their right as Americans to believe whatever they want.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, that's the best part.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, of course it's in the Constitution. But the problem here is the neo fundamentalist part.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it always is.

[Ed Larson]

These people were heavily influenced by the old Mormon concept of blood atonement, in which a Mormon is not only allowed to kill an enemy of the church, but is justified in that action because killing the victim gives them a chance at redemption because they can no longer sin on earth. Put differently, Daybell's concept of killing so called zombies to save the souls of the people whose bodies have been overtaken by dark spirits. That's just the fundamentalist Mormon belief of blood atonement wrapped up in modern.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, so it worked out and they're free and nothing bad happened to them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Like Henry said, they're in heaven right now, they're busy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Which is a very Mormon thing. Yeah, if you're in, if you're. You can't never be. It's not like heaven's for relaxing. No, heaven's just a work release program. You go up to heaven and work. Because remember, in the Mormon world too, and specifically in the Chad Day Bell world, there's no such thing as death. You just move into another place and there's ghosts all around us that are both sometimes physical, sometimes not. There's demons, ghost, there's helpers, angels, disembodied spirits, non body spirits. And then they all live in, hanging out, having a great time. So, yeah, like, yeah, they, they didn't kill their children. They sent their children to college in space. So huge for them. That's the idea, is that they are. That's how they slowly massage the extremism in. Especially because Mormonism as a whole looks all innocent and it looks all silly and goofy until you pop the top and then you realize you're all fucking insane.

[Ed Larson]

Mm. Mm. Now, I know all this might lead you to assume that Chad Dabel is a charismatic Svengali who brainwashed his followers into committing four murders in his name. But I'll tell you right now that this could not be further from the truth.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He makes Marshall Applewhite looks like Elvis.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He is the least charismatic human to ever exist. If I'm ever in this same room as Chad Daybell, I'm going to punch him in his fourth chin so hard. I hate that Winnie the Pooh motherfucker so much.

[Marcus Parks]

He's got one of those heads that's as wide as his neck, which is good for swallowing his own.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The right.

[Ed Larson]

No, he's the thumb. He's that he is a thumb in human form. He's pathetic. He's cowardly. He's a marshmallow of a man. And after watching his halting, awkward speeches, the only thing I can possibly attribute his rise to is the obviously low standards of Mormon survivalist community.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's also what they take to be rock star behavior in Mormon communities, which I've noticed as we'll get to. This is a very deeper story. This even deeper story is that the Mormons, the Mormon people like somebody that's humble.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They like a sickly prophet. They love a going into and just hearing a man warble in a high, tremulous voice, just. And I knew that things were different. I saw him drink a full Coca Cola and I knew the next thing he would be is fornicating with a man in the jungle. And he's a. They are. Because if you listen to them talk, it's a very specific style. They even talk about it in some great podcasts I was listening to. They called it Ga Speech, which they. They're one of their big topics. Yeah, it was called Mormon Stories. They're great. They're. They're very dry, very good. And they talked about like. Like there's it's called GA voice. So Mormons love somebody who takes a long, plotting, thoughtful, soft. Just kill me.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Well, people who fell under Chad's influence were not really following Chad himself, really. They were following his ideas and his philosophy, which thrust each one of his followers into a world of demons and monsters. That was far more exciting and interesting than being, say, a thrice divorced hairdresser, which was Lori Valo's life before she met Chad. But speaking of Lori, while Chad Dabel played a significant role in all four murders, I think the real incendiary figure here when it comes to homicide was Lori Valo. Because when you listen to her speak on her podcasts, you get the feeling that she's so detached from reality that murder would not only be okay in her world, but inevitable. Adding to Lori's responsibility is the fact that some of Chad's most ardent and violent followers were Lori's own family members. Lori's brother in particular would play a key, if not leading role in the murder of both of Lori's children. Murders that would ultimately lead the media to dub Lori Valow the Doomsday Mom.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Cute.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Better than Tot mom.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, I remember.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Top mom was the worst. Yeah, yeah. Doomsday Mom's fun. Yeah, like I knew.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's the Nancy Grace part of it being like. When we get down to the final days, it will be between me and Lori Valow in a two top two time fall competition. I can't wait to see Nancy in there. But this is. It's not her whole family. We're gonna next episode. That's when we get to Lori Valo. Yes, they've been prepping. They prepped her with the prep sauce from the very beginning.

[Ed Larson]

Both of them were prepped heavily. But before we get into the story, let's acknowledge our two sources for this series. First up, we've got when the Moon Turns to Blood by Leah Soteal, which is more of a context based take that explores the whys of this informed by years of investigation of right wing extremist groups. The other is the Doomsday Mother by John Glatt, which is more of an account of the day by day lives of Chad and Lori. It's a very much a he said, she said book, but together these two sources have given us a pretty damn good picture of what really went down behind the scenes during one of the most fascinating true crime stories of the modern age.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I would like to thank like the research done at Hidden True Crime and Mormon Stories podcast have so there is like. Like, if you want content, if you like a fucking hole to go down like I do, this is where you go. If you want to find the Chad Daybell, Lori Valo, Sweet Marrow, it is within these podcasts, and it is long. Like, each one is, like, six hours long. There's so much information. You meet a lot of Lori's family. It's. There's a lot to learn here, and there's a lot to unpack.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And we're gonna do a fair amount of unpacking on this episode and on the next episode, but we're really gonna try our hardest to not get lost in the sa. I mean, that is sort of a feature, not a bug. In the Mormon religion. There's just layer after layer after layer.

[Henry Zebrowski]

After layer, and secret layers. Then you get to the secret layers, then you get to the code words, then you get to the stuff that doesn't mean what they say it means, like, it's a very mysterious religion.

[Ed Larson]

No, it's like, it's. There's a reason why we compare Mormonism and Scientology quite a bit. Like science, Mormonism is sort of the antecedent to Scientology, and they are both very American religions in the fact that. And the fact that, you know, both. Both, you know, they're based a lot on magical thinking, and they're also. Also both, like, heavily entrenched with capitalism and making money.

[Marcus Parks]

And the Mormons, don't they believe Jesus came to America?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It's fun.

[Ed Larson]

Absolutely. No, no, it's all the golden plates and all that. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Spoiler. Guess what? He loved big gulps. They just didn't have them in Jerusalem.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, the Garden of Eden is. And where. Missouri.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. The Mormon Garden of Eden is in. Yeah, it's in Missouri.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Love Missouri.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We might be going to St. Louis soon, so we'll find out.

[Marcus Parks]

Hello, Florida. Your favorite son and biggest baby are coming home to bring you the laughs you deserve. Everyone likes to poke fun of the Florida man. Everyone likes to use Florida as a punching bag whenever an alligator on meth eats an old person. That could happen anywhere. As a famous Floridian baby, I feel your pain. So that's why I'm coming home to let you know it's okay to be who you are. It's okay that the rest of America is scared of us. It's okay that books are illegal in our schools. It's okay whenever it gets cold, it rains. Iguanas. I'm here to support you, so come on out. March. I'll be in North Florida. And in May, I'll be in South Florida and Orlando. It's the Invasive Species Tour. Ed Larson, me is coming to Florida in March and May. I'm coming to Jacksonville, Panama City, Tallahassee, Marco Island, Dania Beach, Orlando and Key West. So lock up your public subs and start, start singing the Miami Dolphins fight song because we're gonna party like it's Florida, baby. [e-mail].

[Ed Larson]

Now to really understand how Chad and Lori got to the point where they could commit the murders of four family members without feeling an ounce of guilt, we've got to understand Chad Daybell and the decades long slow burn that led to the creation of his worldview. So Chad Daybell was born in 1968 in the small town of Springville, Utah. Technically, Chad's Gen X, not Boomer.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Whoa. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We know this. We know this is different. This is that. I was talking about the GA guys. This is the idea. This is different. No, no, he's new blood. He's super cool. Yeah, yeah, he's super Gen X. He's super like. Oh my God. Let me try and think. That's a lithium voice. Yeah, like Kennedy, you know, like it's the Kennedy voice. Hot girl, hot Gen X girl.

[Ed Larson]

Hey, we're here to listen.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Alternative music like that just made me cut my pants.

[Marcus Parks]

He's part of the caffeine free Pepsi generation.

[Ed Larson]

Well, founded by followers of Brigham Young, Springville's population of 35,000 people is 80% Mormon and boasts not only 18 Mormon churches, but a drive thru soda shop that sells dozens of sugary beverages. All, of course, without caffeine.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I'll always remember when I was on the Infant Child, all the first thing I had to do was wipe all that terrible vagina residue off of me because the stink of sin was all over my infant body. The slime of filth inside of my mother's cavern covered me with such sin that even at that moment, I wish I could burst into flames. I'll have a Diet Coke, please.

[Ed Larson]

Eighteen churches in a town of 35,000 people. That's incredible.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's overkill.

[Ed Larson]

But, well, but I know I. I grew up in a town of like 350 people and we had, I think seven churches. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Cuz you have to. I guess it's covering all of the bases.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, you had the Baptist church, Methodist church, church, Christ Four Square, so on and so forth.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, but these are just Mormon churches.

[Ed Larson]

These are all Mormon churches.

[Marcus Parks]

Did they have normal churches too?

[Ed Larson]

They might likely yeah, they might have one or two because it's, you know, 80% Mormon. I wouldn't imagine the other 20% are Satanists.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, man. That'd be awesome, though.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, that'd be a good way. I think that is equal. 20.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Is.

[Ed Larson]

It really is.

[Henry Zebrowski]

If you spend more time in Salt Lake City, it's like that alt community is wild. They just. They drink blood. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

No, there's this record store that I go to every time I go to Salt Lake City. And like, their logo is like lamb chop, like, as baphomet. Yeah, they know what to do now. According to his memoirs, Chad Daybell is simply the next in a long line of Mormons who began their association with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, aka the LDS, way back in the 1840s. According to the story, Chad's ancestor, Finity Table. It's the worst fucking name I've ever heard in my life.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You also be prepared for the avalanche of terrible names. Entire story. They all have the worst names. It's like Braxton and Fennec and like Tabular and Sky. Yeah, they're worse. Shit, it's awful Mormon names.

[Ed Larson]

Well, Finity Daybell saved a nephew of Mormonism founder Joseph Smith from a crowd who had begun throwing eggs at Smith's nephew while he was preaching. Happens a lot to Mormons.

[Marcus Parks]

Not anymore. Too expensive.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Eddie.

[Marcus Parks]

Save money.

[Ed Larson]

Also, Mormons have been fine for like, a hundred years now. Well, after saving Smith's nephew, the Day Bells became a fairly established Utah Mormon family. But when it came to shaping Chad's worldview, his lineage, like many fundamentalist Mormons, was full of stories of the supernatural. That's because Mormons are amongst the top when it comes to religions that claim personal encounters with gods and ghosts.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Maybe it's because their founder was a grave robber in a witch.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he was. Yeah. That's actually Joseph Smith before he was a spiritual leader. That's kind of how he got his start, is that he would rob indigenous grave mounds in upstate New York and sell the treasure.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Magical. Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't know about the wizard part.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, well, he said he was.

[Ed Larson]

He also said he was a wizard.

[Henry Zebrowski]

At the same time he's seeing stones. He would. You. He actually used chaos magic and, like, left hand magic properties as a young man. And it's one of those things. Same thing as the secret sauce of Scientology, which is the OTO structure. Like, it is the same thing. All of that wiggity stuff that they happen to be, quote unquote against all that Harry Potter that's what started them all.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, the bland wizard.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the seeing stones that Joseph Smith used and, you know, the golden plates and all the accoutrement. That's partly why Mormons and New Agers touch tips quite a bit. We're going to get that as the series goes on. But, you know, the idea of the supernatural, personal encounters with gods and ghosts, this is actually baked into the religion because Mormonism's founders, Joseph Smith, built the entire faith based on the concept of revelation, in which God spoke to him personally and gave him directives on how to construct and run the church. Polygamy, for example, was a revelation God gave Joseph Smith.

[Marcus Parks]

Who's got the time?

[Ed Larson]

Well, that's the thing that you're missing, Eddie, is that with polygamy, the secret is ignoring most of them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, that sounds great.

[Ed Larson]

But the power of revelation did not die with Joseph Smith. And every church leader from Brigham Young to the current president of the Mormon Church has claimed the power of revelation in order to shape the LDS Church to move with the times. For instance, Revelation took polygamy out of the Mormon equation so Utah could join the United States. And Revelation allowed black people to join the Mormon Church after the civil rights movement. Although God certainly dragged his feet on that one by waiting until 1978 to make it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So I can't do everything at once.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Only the most powerful, omniscient, prescient entity born at the beginning of the universe.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

And in 1978, he said, Let them dance.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's all I could do. That's the best I can do.

[Ed Larson]

Do you know how long it takes to build a planet for each one of these Mormons?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'll tell you instantly. I do it very, very quickly, and I don't really think about it afterwards. Honestly, you're cutting into my executive time.

[Ed Larson]

But that's all to say that Mormons are primed to believe that God can speak to them at any moment, just like he spoke to Joseph Smith and the dozens of prophets who came after. This is why so many cults spring from Mormonism, because people like Chad Daybell can suddenly say God is telling him to go his own way, just like God told Joseph Smith to go his own way.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I got a sign the other day when I heard that old. It was this amazing. I couldn't even believe it. It even just said it on the radio. Go your own way. And it's just, go your own way. I'm gonna go your own way. I'm sorry, I'm singing I know that. That's prideful.

[Marcus Parks]

Even God's like, hey, why don't you get out of here?

[Ed Larson]

Hey, leave.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You suck.

[Ed Larson]

You know that what revelation means is that Mormon cults can basically ignore anything the Church has said after Joseph smith died in 1844. They can go back to the beginning by saying that all the subsequent revelations that came after Smith's death are false, and only the new cult's leader has the true line to God. I mean, mostly these Mormon cults cut it off after Brigham Young because Brigham Young brought them to Salt Lake City and, you know, expanded the cosmology considerably. But, yeah, usually after Brigham Young, that's when they're like, well, everything went to shit after that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, I did speak with Brigham Young. The problem is, is that I lost my original plan and I had to change my number. So difficult nowadays. It's so easy to switch, especially with Mint Mobile. Yes, I am God, and I am here. I'm doing an advertisement for Mint Mobile because I chose Ryan Reynolds. And Ryan Reynolds will be your leader. He will call it. He will show, strike down various races because of my strength with the strength of God himself and Mint Mobile's ability to save you money.

[Ed Larson]

When you believe that God can speak to you and give you direction and I mean speak to you directly inside your head, tell you to turn left, turn right, it tends to warp your worldview. And Chad Daybell claimed from a young age a supernatural power that he called the Voice would give him direct guidance.

[Marcus Parks]

So Michael Buble's in his head.

[Ed Larson]

No wonder he killed his fans. Michael Buble, Lionel Richie.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, my God. Crazy X Tina's there. What do you say? X Tina? I say show them titties and get out there, Mr. Man. Well, let me ask Lionel Richie.

[Ed Larson]

But when it came to Chad's first experiences with the Voice, he wrote in one of his memoirs that when he was 13, he saw a hunch bee fluttering around, and he decided to smash it with his shoe. Mad with power, Chad began killing all the bees he could see until he had killed 120 bees.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Have you ever tried to kill a bee?

[Ed Larson]

It's hard with your shoe.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Impossible. The other bees attack you. Chad Gabel is a fucking liar. He's never stepped on a bee. He's never done a goddamn thing.

[Marcus Parks]

I mean, what a loot. When I kill a bunch of bees, I never catch count them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it's hard to do.

[Ed Larson]

I know. That's what always jumped out at me, is that, like, I killed 120 bees.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I just want to make Sure, I can put it down in my journal. One, Two.

[Ed Larson]

Ouch. Ow. Ow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey.

[Ed Larson]

Ow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Three. Ow. Four. Ow.

[Ed Larson]

Five.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Six, seven, eight. Suddenly, though, coming all swollen.

[Ed Larson]

Looks like.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I was talking to Xtina today and she said a bunch of crazy about become beast. Should have done that.

[Ed Larson]

Well, suddenly, though, Once Chad reached 120Bees, 120Be, he heard a voice telling him to stop. A voice that Chad was sure was either an angel or God himself speaking directly to. No matter which one it was, though, Chad stopped killing the bees. And he claimed that the voice became a constant presence throughout his life from that point on. And it's presumably still speaking to him in his prison cell today.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it's saying stuff like, hey, you know, we could get a pack of cigarettes if you just touch that man's penis. And then we can use the cigarettes to get a law book. And then I can use that law book to rip out the pages and make a little fire inside of my prison cell and make s'mores. And all I have to do is have sex with that man.

[Ed Larson]

Well, sometimes you're right.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes, you gotta do. Thanks, Xtino. Yes, Me, Xtino. Sorry.

[Marcus Parks]

No, it's great. You're doing your own act.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sorry.

[Ed Larson]

Well, sometimes the voice whispered, sometimes it shouted, sometimes it urged, sometimes it scolded. And sometimes it had specific directions or commands. But Chad wrote in his memoir that he trusted the voice implicitly and never disobeyed.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It definitely wasn't his own thoughts.

[Ed Larson]

No, it's definitely not just thoughts. His internal monologue telling him to do things. What is your. What was the last thing your internal monologue told you to do? That you said, no, succeed.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I said, no, I gotta leave room for others.

[Marcus Parks]

Mine told me to burn down the Zanku chicken. Who didn't put chicken on my salad?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I am still angry.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm so mad about this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's called in the name of the restaurant, chicken. And the idea that you would sell a salad and not put. It should be difficult to remove the chicken.

[Marcus Parks]

But I calmed myself. I did not listen to my voices.

[Ed Larson]

That's good.

[Henry Zebrowski]

My voices made me yell at Eddie about it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I took some of our ham and I. And I tore it up and I put it on my salad and made it worse. And that's how you do it. That's how you strive to be a better person.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So it was so sad watching him rip up the sheets of ham to put it on his salad to be like, it's the only thing that makes you edible.

[Ed Larson]

Chad Daybell. Despite him being a quiet individual, he was a reasonably popular student once he reached high school. He'd also become a committed member of the LDS Church, having had his spiritual awakening in ninth grade while reading the Book of Mormon in his bed. Bedroom.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Boing.

[Ed Larson]

The only thing that set Chad apart was his summer job working for the Springville City Parks Department as a grave digger. This was a profession he'd continue for many years and eventually used to his advantage when his beliefs led him to situations in which digging illegal graves became a part of his spiritual journey. When Chad was a senior, he had an experience that changed him. An experience that many Mormons revere and crave, especially now. That year, Chad Daybell had his first near death experience, or nde, while cliff jumping into a reservoir. So from now on, if you hear us say the acronym nde, we're talking about near death experiences. Chad said that when he jumped off the cliff and hit the water, he had a sharp shock throughout his whole body and he believed he'd broken his neck. He then realized that his spirit was leaving his body through the top of his head, but he'd gotten stuck duck in his skull. Once the spirit got stymied, Chad drifted beyond the veil. Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

So wet.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Cause there's fish and there's coral and seaweed here in heaven.

[Ed Larson]

He crossed over from life into death, where he heard a deep, rich, synthesizing melody and felt a soothing warmth all over him.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You felt across the avenue doo doo doo doo Shining right on you, Shining right on you.

[Marcus Parks]

Do you think the warmth that he felt was his own urine?

[Ed Larson]

Probably I peeing. Quite suddenly though, he was yanked back into his body. But he claimed, as many Mormons do, that his near death experience ripped open his so called personal veil and it never closed again. And the opening of this veil gave Chad magical powers.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So this is one thing I also want to remind everyone that I have to remind myself is that every person in this story is a Mormon. So they have not experienced a heck of a lot. And so I realized that this moment is that he had the breath knocked out of him. He did not die. He just was shocked by having never experiencing a single thing. And then his buddies making him jump off a cliff, because that's what he said. He's like, you know, I had a bunch of prankster friends and they thought it would be a real right scenario of hilarity if I were to jump. And I said, well, you can't pay me to be up there. But next Thing I know I'm up there and it's the way he talks about how he falls because then he sees his grandfather and his grandfather downloads all this information into his head. His grandfather shows him all the books he's gonna to write and he's like, these are all the books you're going to write. Enjoy yourself because you're the most talented Chad I've met since I don't know the la since I as your grandfather blew my brains out.

[Ed Larson]

Now for some Mormons, near death experiences are massive deals. Because if you go beyond the veil of death and come into contact with God himself, you can come away with special powers other Mormons don't have, like the ability to actually see into the future and witness the second coming of Christ. Christ. Most important amongst the powers an NDE can give you though, and especially when it comes to our story, is the gift of discernment. Certain Mormons who go beyond the veil are believed to come back with the ability to tell if a person is good or evil just by looking at them. And they also get the ability to tell the difference between a lie and the truth.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, also the gift of discernment really supposed to be a power of the authorities of Mormonism. So if you get what you call the second anointment, which is the super secret thing inside of Mormonism, so you get the second anointment, which means you're super extra holy and you might be one of the 144,000 and you get.

[Ed Larson]

Superpowers when you get a second anointment.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And that's the gift of discernment. And the gift of discernment is extremely important in this story because it makes everything concrete reality in the Mormon world. As soon as someone within the on the board of Mormonism says this is true, this is a part of capital M Mormonism. It is than concrete reality. And they are literalists. Everybody that is in the Mormon religion believes in the actual words of the Bible. They do not. They don't think it's metaphor, they think it's literal. So this is the same. They are being told that you can now do this. You have superpowers now that you have done this thing.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And what happens a lot with Mormons as well is that they find a way around it because the the establishment will say like no, no, no, we're the only ones that are allowed to do this. But eventually the rank and a way around that and near death experiences were how the rank and file found their way around the gift of discernment. Like you don't have to wait for a second anoint. You don't have to be a person up top. You can have a near death experience. And that's how you can get the gift of discernment.

[Marcus Parks]

See, when you say near death experience or nde, I hear CTE brain damage, which we all know makes you super peaceful and rational.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I like to call the benoisation of society.

[Ed Larson]

Now Chad claimed that when he went beyond the veil during his near death experience, the gift of discernment was bestowed upon him. This is the gift Chad would later use to deem who is and who isn't a zombie, which would be central to the belief system Chad sold to Lori Valo and his other followers. But the thing about Chad Daybell is that he is an entirely unoriginal creation. He's a patchwork man. Every bit of Chad's philosophy is either a rehash of fundamentalist Mormon beliefs or a str straight theft from other neo fundamentalist Mormon writers and thinkers. And that brings us to Tom Harrison.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Now this is where we're probably gonna get some kind of flack from somebody maybe, which I hope, because this, this little line we're about to take is considered the most heretical version of Mormonism that you can be a part of. Like this here is what I call the Mormon deep state that we are kind of stumbling upon. I'm going to explain that more through the series. But Tom Harrison is shyster, a fucking con man and an absolute piece of shit. And I do think that at some point, like, who knows, they are, we're going to, we're going to see what happens once we start talking about this.

[Marcus Parks]

He's dead though, right?

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, very much still alive. Very much still important in the Mormon church.

[Ed Larson]

Well, in 2012, Tom Harrison was the subject of a book called Visions of Glory. Glory, a book that is key to the modern near death experience world. Working with an author, Harrison outlined no less than four near death experiences that occurred over the course of his life. And through these NDEs, Harrison had apocalyptic revelations in addition to gaining magical powers and secret knowledge.

[Henry Zebrowski]

There is a distinct difference between the other Mormon NDE literature. So there's a whole subgenre of Mormon NDE literature.

[Ed Larson]

Massive.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's huge. Huge. But everybody else up to this point when they wrote one of these books, they wrote them in a kind of cushy way. It was very much like there's a heaven and it's nice and you'll meet your relatives and your ancestors and it's. And it was a Normally they were very positive and very fluffy and kind of garbage. Truly garbage. They're all garbage. Visions of Glory is the most garbage. But where Visions of Glory is different is the end sequence in which he talks about the end times and how he can prepare for the end times because he knows, because this isn't a quote unquote Mormon vision. This is just a standard nd he now has actual confirmation in what is going to happen at the end of the Mormon storyline. And the idea that Mormons are going to save the United States of America from invasions after the massive earthquakes and tsunamis and all this shit, who cares.

[Marcus Parks]

If they get it? We get invaded. If there's only 144,000 people left.

[Ed Larson]

Well, it's because a massive country.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's a massive country. It's a lot of land. Land.

[Ed Larson]

Now, Tom Harrison is primarily a Mormon therapist and spiritual leader who used the name Spencer when giving his testimony to the author of Visions of Glory. And Harrison used a pseudonym for good reason. See, in the Mormon religion, anyone can have a personal revelation. In fact, personal revelations are encouraged because each LDS member is supposed to have an intimate relationship with God and personal revelations are central to that. But only the highest patriarchal leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are allowed to discuss and distribute revelations that address or adjust church doctrine. And the rank and file are supposed to keep their revelations to the personal growth category. In other words, the LDS maintains a rigid separation between personal and authoritative revelation because the whole LDS system falls apart if everyone has equal authority to say God told them this or that about polygamy or fucking witch, whatever. But that rigid separation means that Tom Harrison, in publishing his revelations and in publishing that he's got these secret powers and that he shortcutted the gift of discernment that could very well have gotten him excommunicated for doing so. Or at the very least, it could have gotten him heavily chastised by the establishment. The only reasons why Tom Harrison is still in good standing in the LDS Church is because one, he comes from a very powerful Salt Lake City family and two, two, his book got the blessing of a high ranking LDS apostle, a member of the Quorum of twelve.

[Henry Zebrowski]

See, these guys are. I mean it if you want to. To be honest, if you want to wipe out most of the governing body of Mormonism, I think a couple of well placed air horns will surprise them to the point where their skin will fall off. The president of Mormonism right now, Russell m. Nelson, is 100 years old. Yes, he is looking like he's not going anywhere.

[Marcus Parks]

He looks like Dan Aykroyd from Nothing But Trouble.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He is turning into a urinal cake as a person. But this is also, it's slightly even more complicated than this because Tom Harrison was pulled aside. So Tom Harrison's.

[Ed Larson]

Of course it's more complicated. I'm just trying to simplify it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You're the best. Tom Harrison, he was in charge.

[Ed Larson]

This isn't a nine hour series. I want this to be.

[Marcus Parks]

It will not stop.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Tom Harrison start. Started as a man who was a therapist for children who have extreme. Who've experienced sexual trauma. And so that's where his, that's what his job is now. Tom Harrison, he not. So he wrote this book. All this controversy came out saying you have put yourself above Jesus Christ, between Jesus and God as the person that has the most answers. That's his idea. That's what you've done. With this revelation, Tom Harrison gets called into the main office. They say, you should have kept this in your pocket. This has been the thing you never should have put out. Even though he used his own own connections to the quorum of 12 to get it approved in order to backdoor get it published without their. Without anybody finding out until it was already too late. So this, when this comes out, they finally come in, they're like, you can't do this. This is fucking us up. He writes a letter of apology. Tom Harrison writes a disavowal of the book in which he talks about how he's Spencer and blah, blah, blah, but he's. It's utterly full of shit. But then what he does is on the side. But it's actually all true.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And that is the superpower of it. It's the super. It's because now it's free fringe, it's hidden, it's secret. Now Visions of Glory is a cult following. Now Visions of Glory is a thing that you're in the know. You have to know a secret. It's about it. And that's what gives it extra funky juice from your grave.

[Ed Larson]

Now to understand why an apostle endorsing Tom Harrison's claims is a big deal, you got to know a little bit about the modern Mormon hierarchy. Three men sit at the top. The President and his two counselors. The LDS President is believed to be a prophet who speaks directly to God, just like the Pope. And it's through the President that God bestows violations upon the Mormon people.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Who do you think he likes better?

[Ed Larson]

Oh, do you think the Mormon president or the Pope? Yeah, the Pope.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You Think the Pope's more fun than the Mormon? Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He drinks wine.

[Ed Larson]

He drinks wine. He's a better conversationalist.

[Marcus Parks]

He lives in Italy.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. That's a lot more fun than Utah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he's from Argentina. What would you rather hang out? Someone from Buenos Aires or someone from Ogden?

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know, I like Ogden, though.

[Marcus Parks]

I.

[Ed Larson]

You know, I've never been to OG Ogden.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's all the same. If you, you. I imagine that table because it's like, you know, the Pope. You got Russell M. Nelson, you got Tom Harrison, Putin. Ye.

[Ed Larson]

Kanye West, Tom Cruise.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Tom Cruise. They're all that must be crazy dinner.

[Ed Larson]

Well, under those three men at the top is the Quorum of twelve apostles who do double duty as spiritual guides and business executives who manage the billion dollar industries owned by the LDS Church. Basically, the Quorum are CEOs who give sermons and EST policy for the Mormon community. Now, from what Tom Harrison claimed, his family and friends ridiculed him for his vision, so he stopped talking about him. But when an apostle from The Quorum of 12 validated everything Harrison experienced, it legitimized Harrison's beliefs and therefore legitimized them for Mormons at large.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It also made them concretely real. That is the key, is that when you get that. That. Yes, go ahead. It means you have created a series of canon like stories for the Mormon relig. A whole.

[Marcus Parks]

What corporations do they own? Like, how do they get their 200 billion?

[Ed Larson]

We're going to get into it later, but a lot of it is doomsday prepping. It's doomsday prepping. It's real estate. Real estate. It's like the Catholic Church. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So you've contributed.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. God damn it. God damn it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Dirt.

[Ed Larson]

We're all in on it. We're all in on it. I hurt my hands last weekend by digging in the dirt too much.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Think about it.

[Ed Larson]

I use my hands. I didn't use my. I use my shovel sometimes, but mostly I use my hands. And men, man, they hurt.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We got to put little things over your fingertips.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, well, no, it was the wrists. Too much digging, like actual digging.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You got to jerk off more.

[Ed Larson]

That's not possible. I'm out. And, well, the other thing about this is that, you know, I. I know it might be a little bit confusing because, you know, you hear, you know, on one hand you've got, you know, the Quorum, a Quorum member saying that it. It's legitimized. On the other hand, you've got The Mormon establishment telling him to, you know, disavow the book and that. But the way it works in Mormonism, the way these things. The way these things kind of make it through, is when the Mormon Church doesn't like something, they come out and they disavow it publicly. If it's something that they kind of don't want to with, if it's something that's popular, that people are enjoying, they just don't say anything about it. They don't disavow it at all. And that's how Visions of Glory ended up being. The Mormon Church did not come out specifically and disavow it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No.

[Marcus Parks]

How would they say about Kendrick Lamar's halftime show?

[Henry Zebrowski]

They. Huge fans.

[Ed Larson]

Loved it. Love, you know.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, huge fan. No. They also are. Then you now see it with Lori Valo and Chad Dabel. Chad Dbell was very publicly. He was very publicly excommunicated.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But Lori Valo has not been yet because they don't want it to go back to her anymore. Chad Daybell, they feel a little bit of sense of responsibility for. But Lori Valo still the more dangerous, the truly more dangerous one, they just don't even want to mention. They just think again. There's something about the Mormon humble arrogance that fills me with such a powerful rage.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Where it's like. Because that's what this is. It's. We're better than Visions of Glory. Nobody cares about Visions of Glory. We're not going to let. Meanwhile, you are. Visions of Glory eventually will be known as the Turner Diaries for the Mormons.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It will be known as a book that creates radicalized murder cults. It is going to happen again. It already is. It's happening with Jody Hildebrandt. It happened with Tim Ballard. It is happening. It is. It is happening. It's real.

[Ed Larson]

Now. Chad Daybell stole quite a bit from Visions of Glory, details that we'll be peppering in throughout our series. And we know that Chad's partner in crime, Lori Valow, was a fan as well, because when she was arrested, she had a copy of Visions of Glory in her bag. In fact, when Chad and Lori went to jail, they both had burner phones with Tom Harrison's number saved in the contacts under the name Spencer. Spencer's Harrison's alias. So it's almost certain that all three of these people were in regular contact with each other.

[Marcus Parks]

Are you sure it wasn't Spencer's gifts? Because I get it. You know, I always gotta call and make sure they got the boob inspector hats, you know, because, like, I sweat.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Through them so quick.

[Marcus Parks]

And once you get the sweat ring around the top, you know, you can't wear it. It's not nice anymore. I just had another one.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I have to pay for the strength to not go back to that horrible store and look at the man where you press the bulb and you see his little penises. I will not go back and look weedleaf tote bags again. Please release me from this coil. This horrible coil.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, yeah. I'm always calling up Spencer's gifts, like, hey, do you. Do you have birthday cards with 500 pound women on them? Like, I need them. I got a lot of birthdays coming up.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Excuse me, do you have a waifu pillow in? Sorry, no. Oh, well, I'm gonna have to go kill my family.

[Marcus Parks]

Sorry my beer bonk doesn't have a giant cock on the end of it. Do you have something that could fix that for me?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'll pray for you. I'll pray for you. Give me that. That bong with this shows, though, I. That is a thing that we really can't push under the rug because what it's showing is that Tom Harrison to this day says, I have nothing to do with it. If you go and look it up, there is a thing right now that connects. It's like, I forgot, it's Tom. It's John Pontius's website. The guy who wrote Vision, quote unquote, wrote Visions of Glory. It says specifically, Tom Harrison has nothing to do with Lori Valow and Chad Nabal. Tom Harrison has nothing to do with Tim Ballard. I'm blah, blah, blah. They were hanging out. Yeah, they were texting each other. Tom Harrison was their Steve Bannon.

[Ed Larson]

Yes, he very much was. Now all of these people knew each other and everybody who knew Chad and Lori, Chad Dabell and Lori Valow, after the they were arrested, everyone was like, I don't know them, like. And despite there being like mountains of evidence, like, you know, podcast appearances together.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And they're like podcasts that were turned against them.

[Ed Larson]

But one of the big ideas that both Chad and Laurie remixed from Tom Harrison's book were Tom's visions of the apocalypse that he had after his fourth and final near death experience. In Harrison's vision, after the plagues and earthquakes and marauders have all settled down, a tribe of 144,000 Mormons would come together to build a new Jerusalem to prepare for the second coming of Jesus Christ. This, of course, is taken from the book of Revelation, which is incredibly important to the Mormons. It's right there in the fucking name. The Church of Jesus. Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Latter Day meaning the End times. As such, the Book of Revelation has influenced many Mormon cults, including Chad and.

[Marcus Parks]

Laurie's four near death experiences.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

That is like, you're clumsy.

[Ed Larson]

Well, he, you know, like.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Like who you. Mr. Bean.

[Ed Larson]

He also cheated one. He said that his first near death experience was because he was a premature baby.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah. I'm gonna go. You know what I'm gonna say. He didn't have a fucking single one. He had it. He won.

[Ed Larson]

Where He.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He was sick and he almost died. He says, blah, blah, blah. He had a very traditional ND in which he ripped it off of every other fucking book that's ever had an ND in it, except for all of the mountains of lore. All the. The. The weird world that he creates that Chad and Lori are gonna make. Try to make real. But later on he also had the. It was when. This is what I was saying about. Remember, they're Mormons.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So Tom Harrison, the second big NDE happened when he was. He took pain pills for the first time. He had surgery and he took pain medication and he was just stoned.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And he did not know what stoned was.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. The same thing happened to my dog.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Ask Tootsie if Tootsie could talk. I'm certain Tootsie's talking to Moroni as well.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I don't want to follow Tootsie's revelations though, because it's really just going to me about Chicken.

[Marcus Parks]

Talk about someone who's seen the other side many times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Four near death experiences, though. It's like if there is a God, God's trying to kill him.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's like, he definitely doesn't want you too. You know, like if you came back four times to God and he's still like, not your time yet. Actually, you actually got some time.

[Ed Larson]

I'm going to have to deal with this guy eventually. Not. Not this year. No, put it on. Put off for another decade. Like, put off for another decade and then we'll be ready by then.

[Marcus Parks]

Why do you think the president's a fucking hundred?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I won't die.

[Ed Larson]

Well, here's how the book of Revelation ties into all this. In the book of Revelation, it said that the pure and special people who survived the opening salvo of the apocalypse would number 144,000. And those people would found a church called the Church of the Firstborn.

[Marcus Parks]

He's not insulting you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, it's the other all the horseshit.

[Ed Larson]

Feels like he's insulting me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But.

[Ed Larson]

As I said earlier, Lori Valow would come to think of herself as a literal goddess who is gathering the 144,000 to prepare for Christ's return.

[Marcus Parks]

It's a lot of contacts in a burner phone.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It really is. And all thanks to Mint Mobile. My God allowed Mint Mobile. The increased amount of contact is so that you can gather the 144,000 in Ryan Reynolds name and we will rise against the establishment US Mint Mobile.

[Ed Larson]

Chad Dbell, meanwhile, having glimpsed the apocalypse as a result of his near death experience powers, he claimed that when he saw the future, he did not see Jesus Christ leading the Church of the Firstborn. Rather, Chad Dabel saw himself as more or less the mayor of New Jerusalem. Now, Tom Harrison has made public statements saying that visions of glory is supposed to be taken as metaphor.

[Henry Zebrowski]

How? It's not a metaphor, it's a story. It's a full story. There's nothing metaphorical about it. It just tells what happens.

[Ed Larson]

But behind closed doors it said that he tells people that everything in his book is 100% true. And it's almost certain that he told this to Chad and Laurie personally.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, this is called the power of the secret school. This is why ancient what you'd say like if you ever, if you believe in anything about the idea that there might have been secret schools or like this is a function of it. It was. What happens is you have something ludicrous. This is very similar to the Xenu Reveal. Yeah. Where you've now come too far. You have to believe that this is.

[Ed Larson]

Real because Xenu Reveal in Scientology, when you get to OT8, you find out that Xenu is behind everything. The whole crazy story.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, it's the Great Wall of Fire, right. LRH said that you'll hear the Xenu story and if you're not, if you aren't ready to hear it, you go insane and die. Right. They think that you'll flip out. And it's in a super secret room and they bring you a fucking suitcase and you open it up and it's handwritten pages from L. Ron Hubbard himself. And you read them silently in a room, put them back in a box, and then you just have to sit with it. That's what they do. And this is the same thing. Tom Harrison is viewed as a true prophet. The true prophet. And these motherfuckers were all scheming in order to flip the entire Mormon Church. And that's my Big leap motif that I'm gonna say at the end of this whole fucking thing. This thing as the deep Mormon state trying to get a hold of that.

[Marcus Parks]

200 billion you just said at the beginning.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, now I'm gonna do it later.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, we're like 40 minutes into this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We'll get to the next one.

[Ed Larson]

But for now, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, and let's rejoin Chad Daybell as a young man at Brigham Young University, where he studied journalism and somehow became a massive fan of everyone's favorite mopey Manchester new age group, the Smiths. The Smiths are amazing. I love the Smiths. I'm gonna. I'm gonna stand up for the Smiths right now.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You're allowed to. I love it.

[Ed Larson]

I love this. I mean, I'm not gonna stand up for Morrissey. He's a. But the Smiths are incredible. Johnny Marr. Johnny anyone? Johnny Marr.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know what's funny is that they never really took for me. Maybe it's because I'm not a big marshmallow of a man. I don't want to kill my kids.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I like happiness, you know, I.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Like anger in music.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, there's not really much. Well, I mean, there is. There's a deep undercurrent of anger in the Smith's music.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Very much so. But I like Sad Day. I do like sad dance music. So technically, that's the peak of sad dance music. But it's not necessarily, for me, feel.

[Marcus Parks]

Like Smith's fans just, like, chew on their own shirts.

[Ed Larson]

Some Do Carolina.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Is Some Do Carolina a huge Smith fan?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, we both are.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, you know, I mean, you know, everyone has their flaws.

[Ed Larson]

Well, after a year BYU you, Chad took a break to go on his Mormon mission, and he spent two years trying to convert souls in New Jersey.

[Henry Zebrowski]

God, what I would have given to see him on the streets of Newark. Oh, my God. Someone should have done the right thing.

[Ed Larson]

I think it was Newark. It sounds like Newark. He describes it like a torrent of sirens and insults, burning cars and getting held up by gunpoint. Sounds like Newark.

[Marcus Parks]

Could have been Elizabeth. Yeah, could have been Camden. You know, Union or Lyndon.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The craziest thing I've seen is that they don't even chop their pork. It's in a roll. And also the women with their hair so high, it would be closer to God if I couldn't see their nipples. And, oh, Lord, I love the dump.

[Marcus Parks]

I know, sir. I know you're lighting that tire on fire, but have you Ever thought about Jesus?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Yeah, man.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, I did. Come here, man.

[Ed Larson]

Let me show you.

[Marcus Parks]

Dude, please don't throw that shopping cart.

[Ed Larson]

In that pool, sir.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, the airport.

[Ed Larson]

Chad's experience, like the experiences many Mormon missionaries have when they leave the sheltered worlds they're raised in, this only confirmed his biases about the outside world. That we're all a bunch of animals living in the absence of God. Nevertheless, Chad reportedly set baptism records in New Jersey, not because he was charismatic, but because it was said that his calm, quiet demeanor comforted people and put them at ease. And that's a what? That's a very important part of Chad Daybell's personality. Like how he was able to bring people in. It's the. He is the polar opposite of like a Charles Manson or a Jim Jones. Like, it's this bringing people in with calmness, you know, more like a Marshall Applewhite.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I fucking hate him.

[Ed Larson]

I know you do.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I fucking hate the style. I hate everything about him.

[Ed Larson]

The slow, the bring in, the come on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Because there's. I watched. I just watched an hour long talk with him. Talking at a antique store where he's talking about his books. And that motherfucker is. He's so non magnetic. I. He's the least magnetic human I've ever seen.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't even make eye contact with the audience.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No. He's a big, punchy piece of.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But it was also in New Jersey, the Chad's. But get it all out now. I know you can't do this for six hours.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I will.

[Ed Larson]

But it was also in New Jersey that Chad supposedly realized that his near death experience while cliff diving a couple years earlier had given him the power to discern between good and evil ghosts. And that ended up being the first of many superpowers he would claim.

[Henry Zebrowski]

At first, when you meet Beetlejuice, you are. You are charmed by him. But eventually you know that is a deal that you will regret. Because Beetlejuice is difficult to remove. That made me laugh.

[Ed Larson]

How about Casper? You ever come across Casper?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Casper is, to be honest, is a pervert.

[Marcus Parks]

He tried to make a Casper.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He did.

[Ed Larson]

They do now. When Chad returned to Springvale, Utah, after his two years in Jersey, he decided it was his mission to find a wife. And he basically treated his younger brother's high school yearbook as the catalog. After flipping through the pages, Chad picked out a girl named Tammy.

[Henry Zebrowski]

She seems gettable.

[Ed Larson]

And they began dating after meeting at a local LDS singles night.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's that easy.

[Ed Larson]

Tammy actually worked at the Springvale Cemetery as a secretary. So after she and Chad started going steady, she got him a full time job as a grave digger and the two of them would hang out listening to the Smiths together. Cemetery gates being their natural favorite song. Tammy and Chad were soon after married, following a directive from heavenly Father in 1990. Heavenly Father, that's the, the Mormon name for God.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, I've heard of that. They say it in Catholics.

[Ed Larson]

Do they? Oh, yeah. Well, they say our Heavenly Father, like the Mormons refer to, like Heavenly Father. All like, that's their name for God. It's like, you know, Jehovah, you know, like for them it's Heavenly Father.

[Henry Zebrowski]

My Heavenly Father's Pedro Pasc.

[Ed Larson]

He's talented.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Icon.

[Marcus Parks]

Spread him open.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, fuck his ass. Yeah, cut his throat. Play with his fucking guts. I want to be inside him. I want to be with him till he's forever and be a part of me.

[Ed Larson]

Imagine if you were him listening right now.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, huge fans.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Please come on the show.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, please. Love your work. Well, two years later, Tammy and Chad had their first child, Garth, destined to be the oldest of five daybell children. And, and that's important to also remember at this point is that going forward, like, Chad is a family man with a wife and five kids. Normal guy by the by. Like I think like 97, 98. He's got five kids now. Since Chad had studied journalism at BYU, he soon got a job in Ogden, Utah at the Ogden Standard examiner as a reporter, where he was given the ironic nickname of Chatterbox Box because he was quiet and withdrawn. But it's chatter with 2ds, very, very Mormon type humor.

[Marcus Parks]

I get a 2D's like his bra.

[Ed Larson]

Size, you know, honestly call him double.

[Henry Zebrowski]

D. Check if I just, if I put a hand low and a hand high and I just look at the chest, I'm like Kelly Reilly.

[Ed Larson]

But soon after getting that job, Chad Dabel had his second near death experience while vacationing on the beach in La Jolla, California. As he and his brother were exploring rocks during low tide, the waves came crashing in and they almost swept Chad away.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Just him sitting there, waves. He's just at the beach and the waves are coming. They're like, be careful, Chad. Waves come in and oh, these waves, you know, like he's just standing on the edge of him like these waves. Waves are crazy. Yeah, Chad, you're gonna watch out for the waves. Yeah, these waves are really wild out here. Yeah, Chad.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. The way he talks about, he's like, yes, it was low tide when we went out, but then the tide began to come in.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's called going to the beach.

[Ed Larson]

Well, that's the thing. But that's the thing. The tide, it's not like the tide comes in in like five seconds. Yeah, it's a beach.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's a fucking beach. It's freaking how oceans work. They tell you how the tides work every day on an app called a weather app. Then you can find out.

[Ed Larson]

But what saved Chad was the return of the voice which told him, quote, get down, cling to that rock.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Get down, cling to that rock.

[Ed Larson]

Chad did so, but he was still. Chad did so, but he still smashed his head and started to drown. At that moment, he saw a tunnel of light and felt another warm embrace. Wow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh my God.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What a tunnel.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow. Yeah, sure sign of intelligence is when you're at the beach, swim towards the rocks.

[Ed Larson]

And suddenly two male figures appeared above him. The figures were his Utah pioneer ancestors. And they asked Chad if he would agree to a series of tasks.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Is it true English, that there's a little box that you can see the human anatomy and not Amish? Not I English. How many I've heard of this thing.

[Marcus Parks]

It's called gum.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I have a food, food that doesn't disappear out once.

[Ed Larson]

Chad said, sure, I'll do your tasks. He suddenly found himself back in his body. Later, Chad would say that his near death experience was more like an urgent business meeting where he was given information and assignments from beyond the veil. Do you you know what this assignments were at this point?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, the assignments are him understanding his place in the revelation and that he is supposed to lead and that he is going to. He needs to write his books. He needs to tell everyone his story.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

The assignments for Mormons are like make pancakes and force people to eat them because they need food and then try and convince them to join your church.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. Normally an assignment for Mormon is like, I need you to build a barn and I need need you to have sex with your daughter.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I. Chad's brother actually did come out later and say like this whole story is like he said. I. He's like, I remember that day and it didn't happen like that way at all. Like Chad got swept off from the rocks. He actually swam away from the rocks and there was no near death experience mentioned.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Maybe I'll put it this way, every single word he said says is horseshit.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And that he never had one and he stole it all from visions of glory. And Tom Harrison stole it from a psychiatrist that wrote about it during the satanic panic. Yep, they've all stolen it and each one is plagiarized. They made fun. None of it's real.

[Marcus Parks]

Also, almost dying a bunch does not make you strong.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What doesn't kill you make you stronger. If you almost die four times times, you become the Hulk.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Chad claimed that the veil was truly ripped open after his second nde and the voice continued to guide him in his day to day life. Chad became obsessed with near death experiences and became convinced that they could only be divine visions from God. As far as what he was doing with his life, at this point, Chad was splitting time between the Ogden Standard examiner and the Springville graveyard throughout the earth. But when the cemetery sexton retired, Chad took the job leading a team of three. Chad dug graves, clean gravestones, and weeded the lawn. But was the whole time beset by visions of the future.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, nothing makes me go think of my bright future like digging a grave.

[Marcus Parks]

He was real good at cleaning gravestones because he practiced every day when he washed his head, I got him again.

[Ed Larson]

For example, when it came to his visions of the future, Chad once envisioned a Polynesian man running over his son in a Kmart parking lot.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Some kind of Asian. Some kind of Asian that ran over my son.

[Marcus Parks]

Some kind of Poly Asian.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Poly Asian.

[Ed Larson]

Poly Asian. And in the vision, his son was wearing blue overalls. But don't worry, the next time Tammy Daybell dressed her son in blue overalls and said, I'm going to Kmart, be right, right back. Chad went with them. And by going with them, he altered the timeline and saved his son.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What's important here too, is the grooming of Tammy Daybell. Tammy Daybell is a normal, quote unquote, normal Mormon wife.

[Ed Larson]

Sure.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So during this time period, she is watching Chad change and she, I imagine, like many people at first, is like, oh, she did supported the visions. She supported little, little bit of this. But it's becoming more and more real. He's making it more and more part of their day to day, saying, my visions are saying we should get McDonald's and my vision, like he's saying stuff like this where they're all like, all right, then they go do it. So you get used to it.

[Ed Larson]

Now, after having visions for a while, Chad was given a new direction by his disembodied voice. A direction that ostensibly revealed why Chad was having visions in the first place. Quite suddenly, the voice told Chad, it's.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Time to write your books, Deborah.

[Ed Larson]

And with that, Chad Daybell began his career as an absolutely God awful novelist.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I know he killed Lori's kids and he killed, probably killed his wife and he probably helped kill a couple other people, but his biggest crime is his writing. It's awful.

[Ed Larson]

It's God awful.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's. Yeah, he is awful.

[Ed Larson]

Chad began with a trilogy, Errand for Emma, Escape to Zion and Doug's Dilemma.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Doug's Dilemma sounds like he can't decide which dick to sit on.

[Ed Larson]

This trilogy imagined Chad's three year old daughter as a teenager, traveling back in time to 1868 to solve the mystery of her LDS family history. Chad's publishing house, by the way, was the same that would later publish Tom Harrison's Visions of Glory. But as bad as Chad's books were, they were an incredibly important step in his spiritual evolution. See, Chad claimed that these books were inspired by his visions. And he had a scene in his book Escape to Zion in which the World Trade center was burning. Escape to Zion, however, was published in September of 2000.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Whoa.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Of course, there already been one attack on the World Trade center by that point. Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's also a very famous landmark and it's would seem like a really good way to show that society is falling apart. As if you, you kind of illustrate like a famous thing like that or the Eiffel Tower, like burning down.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But when 911 occurred almost exactly a year after his book was published, Chad came to believe that his visions were truths sent by God. And if that vision came true, along with the Kmart vision and all the other things that all the other coincidences that were coming true in his life, then that must mean that Chad's visions of the apocalypse were going to come true as well.

[Marcus Parks]

I. That he was in on it, bro.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Dude, where was he?

[Ed Larson]

You know what? He could be in on it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Was he in Tampa?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Where was he?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Ogden.

[Marcus Parks]

Everyone knows that's where they trained.

[Ed Larson]

But as it would be with Tom Harrison, it was only a matter of time before Chad Daybell ran afoul of the Mormon establishment. And he hit a significant roadblock with his novel Chasing Paradise. See, one of the biggest LDS bookstores, Deseret Books, was refusing to promote Chasing paradise because it had an extremely goofy scene in which a warrior angel dropkicks someone through a wall.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He uses the term drop kicks in a book like he's 13 years old. Like, that's how someone describes, like, I like a drop kick. I think drop kick's really fun.

[Marcus Parks]

I think I'd love a drop kick.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We all do.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, but they're, they're Supposed to be in, like, you know, Sylvester Stallone movies.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Well, Deseret claimed the segment was too irreverent. So Chad got irate, took it personal, personally, and came to believe he was being silenced.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I took that personally. Drop kicked the man at Deseret Books.

[Ed Larson]

I showed him.

[Marcus Parks]

I didn't do any of that.

[Ed Larson]

No, I can't.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I can't make my legs parallel in the sky. I can't do it when I'm sitting down. As you can see, my fupa goes over my dick and balls between my main thighs, leaving my legs at a.

[Ed Larson]

Permanent V. Now, really, Deseret Books was just looking for a reason to stop carrying Chad's novels because they were badly written and didn't sell. By Chad's own admission, his writing is terrible. Rife with cliches, plot holes and extraneous punctuation. But he insists that his failings are something the reader just has to, quote, glide past to reach the ideas and messages contained within his stories.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's not how books work. You have have to like all of it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, and have an editor.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that is true.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He did, but it was not a good one.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But spurned by his so called banning from Deseret Books, Chad decided to start his own publishing company called Spring Creek with his wife Tammy. And in addition to Chad's novels, they began publishing authors whose specialty was near death experiences. Now, Chad believed that his experience beyond the veil gave him the power to tell whose near death experiences were real and whose were fake. And he decided that a woman named Suzanne Freeman had had the goods. Over the course of three books called Led by the Hand of Christ, through the Window of Life and the Spirit of Liberty, author Suzanne Freeman claimed that during a hospitalization, she had a near death experience where she met Jesus, who gave her a tour of the afterlife and introduced her to the Virgin Mary.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Let me show you around. Over here we have the steam room, which is cool. We have some ice plunges.

[Ed Larson]

This.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This is the Virgin Mary. Not so much anymore right now she can be. She could be a lot. She is Many, many times.

[Marcus Parks]

We fuck.

[Ed Larson]

That's a great thing. She's my mother. Here in heaven, we're not held up.

[Henry Zebrowski]

By hang ups, man. No labels.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, me and mom talk about all the time.

[Henry Zebrowski]

She shows me how to I now.

[Ed Larson]

It'S crazy up here.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Suzanne's like, wow, I can't wait to get back.

[Ed Larson]

Jesus then showed Suzanne the apocalypse.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This is where it gets sad.

[Ed Larson]

Or Suzanne claimed to see rivers flowing with the bodies of aborted Fetuses get it?

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's beyond one man koozie in it.

[Marcus Parks]

Sounds like something that stops the apocalypse. A bunch of abortions.

[Ed Larson]

That is true. It would, but you get too many abortions. That's when the. The switch gets flipped. Because that's the thing. There's so many abortions happening, they're just tossing them in the river.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, I think a river of floating dead children is more apocalyptic than a bunch of abortions. Aborted fetuses, I would agree. But that, you know, that's just me.

[Ed Larson]

That's. You're not a writer.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm not?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Certainly not.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I prefer a hot tub of aborted fetus. A cauldron.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Cauldron's actually quite nice. Well, then. Then you're talking. Then you make a stew.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yep.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, my God.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We're making soup.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, my God. You ever put one on a flat top grill? Make a billy cheesesteak?

[Ed Larson]

Oh, wow.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Cute.

[Ed Larson]

Well, finally, after. After all that, Suzanne met the founding fathers of America, including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who are all hanging out in heaven.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This is my place. Yeah. Come on. You want to go see my place?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Here we go. It's a studio, but I like it. You know, I'm Benjamin Franklin. It's fine. You know, I thought I'd get more. I got away, you know, something to do with what I did with my slaves or whatever. But this is the Murphy bed.

[Marcus Parks]

It's funny that there is more slaves in heaven than there was on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I was surprised too, when I met a bunch of them. I was like, oh, wow. Oh, I'm in some hot water now.

[Ed Larson]

Suzanne Freeman's books were part of a Trend in early 20th century Mormon publishing where near death experiences and apocalyptic visions rife with Mormon persecution were going hand in hand. See, the visions that Mormon near death experience authors like Suzanne Freeman were bringing back from the veil. They not only prophesied plagues and nuclear war, but they also talked about prayer bands and concentration camps full of Mormons. And Mormons are already primed for persecution stories because of the trials and tribulations of their religion's founding, where they were chased from town to town before finally settling in Utah. But these modern predictions began to freak out a lot of Mormons, and they began doomsday prepping en masse. Interestingly, though, most Mormons were already doomsday preppers because of a passage in the Book of Mormon that says, if ye are prepared, ye shall not fear. In fact, doomsday prepping is a part of the LDS business model as the church makes billions selling dehydrated food and other survivalist supplies to their flock.

[Marcus Parks]

I knew their food sucked, but I didn't know it was on purpose.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's the last forever. But they. It, it is interesting is that it's a full part of the religion.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Is this doomsday prep like section There's a whole version of it and it's so it's normalized. And I also thought was really interesting while listening to Mormon stories is I said one thing that was interesting about the Chad Lorries story is that so every. They call them awards. That's like the neighborhoods every war.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Wards award is like certain section of wherever live that you're born to a.

[Ed Larson]

Ward W A R D. Like yeah. Robin was. Yeah, Robin was a ward of Batman.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. The sixth ward, the ninth ward, all that stuff.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And they believe that in within those wards you are like essentially you're responsible and you're. You're just kind of dropped in. But within those wards there's always some kooky guy that had a dream that they know where collob is or they know where to go where. Where the new navu is going to be. And they say that it's so common that you're just so used to it. You're like okay. And you just kind of roll past.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Now Chad Dabel was certainly one of the people who were influenced by the near death experience slash apocalypse literature. And since he was having apocalyptic visions himself, he also became a heavy doomsday prepper. As such, Chad Daybell refocused his writing career in the early 2000s from drop kicking angels and time traveling Mormons to near death experiences and end times predictions. This was also perhaps not so coincidentally around the time that the Left behind series of apocalyptic Christian novels were selling millions of copies. But if you'll remember, Chad fucking sucked as a writer. And his and Tammy's publishing company netted a profit of $2,000 a year in its best year.

[Henry Zebrowski]

A couple more, you have yourself cocktails.

[Ed Larson]

So in 2008, Chad and Tammy's publishing company went bust and Chad filed for bankruptcy. Although Chad conveniently blamed his failure on the Great Recession, it is key to.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Remember that Chad is chasing trends. He is trying to be quote unquote savvy about his positioning of his near death experience books and his own near death experiences. He knows this is one thing. Also Mormon stories said that I thought was really interesting is that near death experiences within wards are power grabs. They literally are a way to put yourself forward as a I'm a new prophet. When you can. And so this is. It's.

[Ed Larson]

It's.

[Marcus Parks]

His near death experiences are self made.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

He jumped into a sinkhole and he swam close to rocks.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's not. He just suffers from not being good at a single thing.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. So after his company folded, Chad returned to grave digging, while Tammy fell into a depression and tried escaping the pain by becoming addicted to a Facebook game called Frontierville. In other words, life was becoming real fucking mundane, and Chad was not one to live in the mundane for long.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I like excitement, you know.

[Ed Larson]

Meat is Murder. It's one of the most exciting albums to ever be released. So incredibly exciting.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Just that wild stuff in there, barely contained. I could barely, barely stay in this chair.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, my God. Do you think they like the Smiths because of Joseph Smith?

[Ed Larson]

Whoa, whoa. You know what? That probably led him to that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Joseph Smith's.

[Ed Larson]

I was in the record store one day and I saw a band called the Smiths.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They can't be that far off if they're in the same family as our savior. Oh, wow. I have nothing to wear. Such a rare name.

[Ed Larson]

Well, by 2012, Chad was being a bit of a pain in the ass to his family and friends, pressuring them to prepare for the end times. He also was continuing to write novels inspired by beliefs that were only becoming more extreme and dangerous. This is also probably around the time that Chad discovered Tom Harrison's Visions of Glory. Chad's beliefs were only made more extreme when he became obsessed with an online Mormon prepper forum called Another Voice of Warning, or avow, which was filled with conspiracy theories, fake news, and neo fundamentalist Mormon propaganda. AVOW was the other side of Mormonism. The stuff apart from, like the cutesy world of Sister Wives, more so. It was the logical continuation of the aggression held by the Mormons who committed, say, the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, where a group of Mormons slaughtered over 120 settlers from Arkansas.

[Marcus Parks]

You'll have to tell me more about that later.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it's a big story. Yeah. Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

But, you know, we're already running over.

[Ed Larson]

Actually, I think. Actually, I think that show, American Primeval, I think the. The new one. I think that's what. I think that's what it's about.

[Marcus Parks]

Everyone's been telling me to watch this.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's great. I actually did sort of watch it because Natalie was watching it because also, you guys want to go check out some place underneath in their coverage of the Mormon Church? I'm going to keep plugging them because they've They've been getting into the money now, but yeah, we've been watching American Primeval. Pretty good.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Now, as I said, Chad was not a successful author when it came to sales or skill. But when he showed up on the EVOW forums, he was treated like a celebrity. Not because his novels were any good, but because Chad was beginning to hit the end times and indie angles hard in his writing. See, the people who love Chad Dell's books, they didn't give a about quality. All they wanted was lurid descriptions of the apocalypse that would justify their prepper lifestyle and beliefs. Imagery like rivers flowing with aborted fetuses that was perfect for them. That was the type of. They wanted to. They wanted to get scared. They wanted. And they want their beliefs. All this crazy that all their families tell them, like, you're out of your mind. They want that confirmed by somebody else. In other words, Chad had finally found his audience.

[Henry Zebrowski]

These are my people.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

If you do. I listen to a very interesting talk on hidden true crime with a guy that is a prepper that was member of Lori Valo's family, the prepper family that she came from. And he said something that was so illuminating that we've guessed it for years, but he said the words out loud where he was like, I've been prepping my whole life. I'm ready. I want it. I hear and I need to be challenged now. I want my challenge. And so they are willing to do whatever it takes to bring about the end times so that they can larp on our time. They want to go and live their survival stories out loud while we all die, just destroyed by walls of fire and floods and comets and so that they can go live their Mormon romance fantasies of living in a world where your wives and children have to to die so that you could do the couple's ruse in the post apocalyptic Mormon future where you can hold hands. This is the fantasies they're talking about too. They're not like they're. No, it's not like it's cool stuff. It's like literally being able to like kiss another lady.

[Ed Larson]

It's.

[Marcus Parks]

Are you. But also with all the doomsday prepping, you bought the gear, you know you want to use it. Yeah, for we do, you know, and so like we use our stuff immediately. But if you're just sitting on it and looking at it, you're like, when are all these people gonna die?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it really is. No, and I think there's also an element where they don't want to feel stupid no, because if they've spent all of their money and all of their time and all their entire lives preparing for something that never comes, they're gonna feel like a fucking moron. And. And Americans especially do not like admitting they're wrong.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No. And we start to realize, though, is that what you can do to make your own reality, and it's a very good American concept, is that you can go out there and start it. So that's kind of what they think, is that if we just start acting like the end times are about to come, maybe they will.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And there's also. And that's also partly where this accelerationist bullshit comes from. You know, these people that are trying to contribute to the collapse of society. You know, partly that's made up of survivalist people who just want this to be real.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They just want everybody that they don't like to die.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Well, Chad decided to restart his book publishing company around the time he discovered aow. And in addition to four apocalyptic novels of his own called the Days of Turmoil series. Days of Turmoil sounds like got. He's got diarrhea.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know what's the worst part? You know what's the worst part of somebody who's bad at stuff like this? Is that he's also prolific.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

As well.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Because he doesn't spend any time editing or putting any thought. I. I could be prolific. I could write.

[Marcus Parks]

You are prolific.

[Ed Larson]

Well, yeah, but I could be. I could be prolific in fiction. Like, I could write a. I could. Could write three shitty books by the end of the year if I didn't do second drafts or if I didn't go and actually read back what I wrote and I had. And there was any thought behind it. Yeah. That's. Prolific is usually equal to shitty.

[Henry Zebrowski]

How's that novel you're working on where it's the reimagining of yourself as a gay octopus having sex with Carolina?

[Ed Larson]

You know what? It's going pretty badly. It was. It was going good.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The last draft was. I, you know, I said the last draft was irresponsible, was incendiary.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And we really can't have another visions of Glory out there.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, do you really. That's the thing. You can't change lives unless you take big swings.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I know, I know. And that's when you got the eight tentacles inside of her. My first thought was, is this nice?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I thought it was, hey, it's love, it's romance. So in the end, now that I am thinking about it.

[Ed Larson]

Well, in addition to his own Days of Turmoil books. Chad also published another near death experience author that he met on the AVOW forums, a woman named Julie Rowe. Now, Julie Rowe is a character, to say the least, who you may remember as the only neo fundamentalist Mormon to speak on the Netflix documentary series Sins of My Mother, the one who bragged about being rejected by the LDS Church for telling the truth. Row very much fits into the nerdy Mormon world, however, because when she would speak in public about her NDE books, she would twirl these long colored ribs, ribbons behind her that would usually become tangled up. But the audience, full of polite Mormons, would never laugh and would only watch politely while she untangled herself.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Should we get up? Should we help? No, no, no, no. This is a part of it. It's this awkwardness. This is a whole vibe.

[Ed Larson]

I tried to help her last month and she bit me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

She's. Yeah, she is very ready. She's very hungry.

[Ed Larson]

She bites.

[Marcus Parks]

Hold on. I need to start over. Do it again.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Start over.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, start the music over. Back it up. Lower the curtain.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's a great big beautiful tomorrow.

[Ed Larson]

Well, author Julie Rowe was also one of the many members of the AVOW forum to have their own podcast. Rose was called Eyes Open, where she would talk obsessively about her so called haters, haters flipping and reversing criticism by saying that the more haters she had, the closer the second coming was to come.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Fuck yeah, dude. Of course. Yeah. That's how I feel about my haters, dude. Fucking whatever. You're about to meet Jesus soon you're gonna be dead. Yeah, yeah, fuck you, haters.

[Ed Larson]

But even though Roe had her critics, her books far outsold Chad Daybell's. And they became so popular that the LDS sent out an official memo against her, saying that her book should not be recommended to students or used as a resource to teach them. You know, and you know, Chad, of course, wants his books to sell, but now he's making money. And this repudiation by the mainstream church caused both Julie Rowe and Chad Daybell to retreat even further from mainstream Mormonism. Now, the repudiation from the Mormon establishment only made Chad more popular with the neo fundamentalists. And around this time, Chad began collecting actual followers, all of whom were members of the AVOW forums and all doing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It with the, you know, I, you know, I don't have any. Anything special about me. Pay attention to me. There's nothing special about me. And I might be able to talk to God, but there's nothing special about me.

[Ed Larson]

No. Now quite Quickly, the eval forum turned into an echo chamber of alarmist conspiracies, paranoid catastrophizing and survivalist chatter. Their talk got so alarming that the aforementioned NDE author Suzanne Freeman, she asked Chad for the rights of her books back because she was so afraid of being connected to a vow. Chad, however, was only accelerating writing newsletters, collecting NDE evidence of Mormon prophecies, in addition to hosting podcasts, talking about how to best stockpile goods and where the safest places in the United States would be to write out the apocalypse.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Rexburg. And honestly, if I that's the only safe place, then kill me. Yeah, I did a Google walkthrough of Rex Perk because I've never seen. I just want to look at it. Not impressive.

[Ed Larson]

No, no. It's a town of 35000 people. Now, as far as the best location, when the seals began to open went Chad. That's seal number four.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. The tight one.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Starts real loose. Yeah, yeah. It gets tighter as it goes on.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Well, that's pestilence.

[Ed Larson]

Chad believed that he found the perfect place while on vacation with his family in 2014. While at a gas station in a small town near Yellowstone National Park, Chad had a vision that ordered him to move to Idaho.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You wouldn't believe it. I was sitting there, I was filling up obviously my Dodge Ram. Yeah, filling it up, all $95 of it. And I saw this little square hovering above where the gasoline prices were. And in that little vibrant square it said, come to Idaho. And I was like, no fucking shit.

[Marcus Parks]

Isn't the end of the world supposed to be started by the geysers in Yellowstone?

[Ed Larson]

That's one theory, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It's technically not the safest place.

[Ed Larson]

No, no, absolutely not.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No.

[Ed Larson]

The super volcano is going to fucking destroy Idaho first.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That is also one of the main features of the Mormon like post apocalyptic world is rampant volcanoes, which is hilarious.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Well, Chad's vision told him that there was a town called Rexbur which would become a sacred place where the righteous 144,000 could survive the apocalypse. Because Rexburg, Idaho was destined to be the so called new Jerusalem. Now, Chad didn't really discuss the move to Idaho with his wife Tammy or his five children. Instead he just kind of blurted it out at dinner.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The gas station told me she moved to Idaho.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm loving this.

[Ed Larson]

Tammy was furious at first, but after Chad told her to pray on it, which is Christian speak for this is happening whether you like it or not, Tammy reluctantly agreed. And so Chad moved his family to the mostly Mormon town of Rexburg in June of 2015. And Chad was almost immediately rewarded for his decision. His extremist Mormon views were quite popular in rural Idaho and he began doing local book talks and signings attended by like minded Mormons who also believed the end times were were coming soon. Basically. By moving from Utah to rural Idaho, Chad had broken away from the mainstream LDS and was now able to target fringe LDS church members to join what would soon become a very small but highly dangerous cult.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It also can't be stressed enough how non urgent and how non serious this very deadly thoughts were. Like when you go and listen to them talk, it's so cuddly, it's so no like oh shucks, you know. And it's not until you're listening to the words that you're like. Every single time they say something you're like that requires millions of people to die. Yeah, that's just called subjugation of a woman's body. That's like something like you're literally just like, you're just saying horrible things.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, they're saying it very nicely. They're saying it in a very Mormon tone.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Mormony.

[Ed Larson]

Now since Chad was connected to the successful near death experience author Julie Rowe, he had enough credibility to attend near death experience conferences as well as new age gatherings that were more focused on psychic healing and crystals.

[Marcus Parks]

Imagine the insurance for a near death experience.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's so funny. The idea of like, like you're yo so you're going near death. I don't know. Will there be saw blades everywhere? Is it all on a broken sheet of ice?

[Ed Larson]

Well, concerning those new age gatherings, in the last 20 years the new age movement has shifted to share far more beliefs with right wing extremists than they do with San Francisco hippies. RFK Jr is a prime example of this bullshit. And the near death experience movement was one of the connections that brought these two groups together.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They said that if I just commit and I could get all the way to the Mormon apocalypse of December. What Ludricius will be my voice. He said they're going to really. I don't work on it. They're going to do some tests, some new kind of procedures. I might help my voice.

[Marcus Parks]

Every breath he takes is a near death experience, hopefully.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I mean yeah it was near death experiences but the thing that really fused New agers and the right wing together was COVID lockdowns, vaccines, you know that, all that. Yeah. Now like seeing like the new like New Agers, like are basically eugenicists at this point. Like, you know, if they die, they die like some people. People should die.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We're gonna dig.

[Marcus Parks]

This is literally what they've been prepping for. They should be excited.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This is the problem.

[Marcus Parks]

They finally got the ball and they're like, all right, what do we do?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I have the same thought.

[Ed Larson]

I had the same thought too. It's just like, oh, you motherfu. This is the plague. It was the plague. The pike showed up and you all dropped the ball.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Fucking morons.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Not this plague. We thought the plague would have more boils. We don't like this one. It's not good. What is it? A cough.

[Ed Larson]

Now, even though Chad Dabel was a doughy looking, mumble mouth dad, jeans wearing SAP with a bad haircut.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey. He's also a bad author.

[Ed Larson]

He used self depreciating humor and a goofy charm to win over crowds at these conferences.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I won't allow it.

[Ed Larson]

And within just a few months, he'd collected even more followers from the fringes of the Mormon Church. Now, incredibly, most of Chad's followers were women. But I think the reasons behind this are twofold. First, Chad Daybell is a coward, and men scared the hell out of him.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Second, I think his affable, goofy dad joke demeanor was disarming and kind of comforting. It's like having bad news delivered by a big fat, dumb dog.

[Marcus Parks]

That sounds nice. Like that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Sorry, Mr. Zabrowski, your test came back as you have anal cancer.

[Marcus Parks]

Good boy.

[Ed Larson]

You want a treat?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, it's stage four.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, that sounds cute.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You, Chad.

[Ed Larson]

But in the end, I think Daybell's biggest strength that had nothing to do with gender was that he knew exactly what these crowds wanted to hear. And he knew how to regurgitate the ideas of other writers in a friendlier way. I also think there's something to be said about him being a somewhat boring presence because the way he would deliver things made it sound like he was trying to sell you printer toner, which I think made what he was saying seem a little more real.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They all have the very same kind of flat effect.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. The cadence, it's very.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's purposeful. It is done on purpose. He is doing it to sound like Tom Harrison.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And Tom Harrison is doing it to sound like Russell Nelson. They sound. It's kind of like it's. It's a voice, it's a style, like. And so people.

[Ed Larson]

This is all. Shucks. I know about that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And the best part is that because they keep getting pushed into the fringe deeper and Deeper. I think that really what comes about is that how could I be dangerous?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm just this guy. I'm a. I'm just talking my truth that this is. I didn't want to. I'm a humble messenger. You know, like it's all of this horseshit where it's like they're all blood. These are bloodthirsty maniacs.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And want to act like they're not.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. But like if you look at say like Warren Jeffs, like, he's of course creepy because we know everybody. Everything about him, but underneath. But really like Warren Jeffs when he just was out in the world before we knew everything about Warren Jeffs. Non threatening.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, I, I know he's creepy.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he's creepy. But ultimately what you're saying, like. But what I'm saying is that he is not someone that you would see as dangerous.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He doesn't seem like a threat.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. That's what non threatening means.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know, those are all the ones. Those are the ones that are all based upon plural marriage. I have my, my. One of my big major things theories is that Mormon cults can be broke down by specific Mormon sins and what they don't want you to do and they. How they. They. Certain things are hinged on it. Like the blood atonement stuff is kind of based upon those. The two brothers that had a death cult. And then we have this that, you know, Warren Jeffs is all about literally just creating entire system in order to have sex with children. And then this is. That's kind of what Tim Ballard was doing too. And then this is about the gift of discernment. It's about flipping the entire Mormon church.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, but it's all. But you know, it's the. A lot of these things lie on the two original sins of Mormonism, which is polygamy and. And blood atonement. Great. Well, now that Chad was based out of Rexburg, Idaho, and he was gaining followers, other extremist Mormons began to listen to his claim that Rexburg was going to be the new Jerusalem. And nobody listened to Chad more than a group of Mormon survivalists called Preparing a People, or AKA Pap.

[Marcus Parks]

Pap.

[Ed Larson]

See, Pap had started off as a group that organized conferences for Mormon Mormon survivalists. But they soon moved into web design, marketing services, and videography. Before finding their true niche in podcasting, Pap had a series tap and a series of three podcasts. The title podcast Preparing a People, stands for there's time to Warrior Up.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, that is the Worst name for a podcast I have ever heard.

[Ed Larson]

Never heard anything worse. And there was Feel the fire. That's a little bit better.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That could be cooking. That could be hell. That could.

[Marcus Parks]

All kinds of camping.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

But more than anything, more than the books, conferences, or forums, these Pat. These pap podcasts were what launched Chad Daybell as a leader. The host would constantly herald Chad Dabel as a true prophet, and as such, preparing a people not gonna fucking let you do it again. They moved their operations to rexburg, Idaho in 2017 to join Chad in the new Jerusalem.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I always said a pap.

[Ed Larson]

So after building up Chad for a while on their podcasts, preparing a people began hosting conferences at Chad's home, where anywhere between 15 and 50 people, mostly women, would show up to hear about Chad's apocalyptic prophecies.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, mostly old. Old women.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. The new agers amongst the crowd particularly enjoyed Chad's new interest, reincarnation, because Chad was now claiming that he'd lived 31 previous lives on all sorts of different planets across the universe.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I was a barber on Pluto. I was a bike messenger on Jupiter too. And I was just old Chad on. I was, matter of fact, just here on Earth, the craziest planet of all.

[Ed Larson]

What's cutting hair like on Pluto?

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's very difficult due to the gravity issues. Very difficult to clean.

[Ed Larson]

It's cold, very cold.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Get an umbrella, cuz, you know, but don't worry if you don't like the weather. Oh, wait an hour.

[Ed Larson]

Well, at these gatherings at Chad's house, Chad would divine the past lives of church leaders, friends and celebrities. He would claim that Kim Kardashian, Elizabeth Taylor, Cleopatra, and Kim Young Un.

[Marcus Parks]

Wow.

[Ed Larson]

Had all lived past lives as characters from the Book of Mormon.

[Marcus Parks]

So he likes Kim Jong Un.

[Ed Larson]

Well, I think Kim Jong Un was a evil character in the Book of Mormon. Oh, okay.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. Asian. He was an Asian character in the Book of Mormon.

[Ed Larson]

I am starting to see a bit of a trend with Chad Daybell.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, very much so. Did you ever see the. You ever read the chapter of the. Did you read Visions of Glory?

[Ed Larson]

No.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Did. There is a chapter.

[Ed Larson]

I don't have time.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, well, I did. And the. There is a chapter in Visions of Glory in which Tom Harrison says that he can. Psychically. He met. Met a man from. I believe I forgot what island it was from. He met a man from, I want to say was Polynesia. And he said that he touched his hand and then he said that he saw the entire history of the Polynesian people, including all of the rape and murder that they did and how they were an unsophisticated group of island brutes. And so it seems that he took it from that.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, it seems like he definitely has a bias.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes, he does. He's racist. He's deeply racist. They both are. All of them.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, all of them are. Yes. And we're definitely going to get more into that on the next episode when we get into the other person in.

[Henry Zebrowski]

This story, our queen.

[Ed Larson]

Now. Now. During a speaking engagement in the fall of 2017, Chad met a fellow prepper named Melanie Gibb at a survivalist camp in Ogden, Utah, where people discussed their spiritual experiences and visions in addition to learning survivalist skills. Chad, Melanie, Melanie hit it off. And a few months later, Chad introduced Melanie to the preparing a people group out of Rexburg. Melanie was so impressed that she opened her own Pap chapter in her home state of Arizona. Thank you for not interrupting.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I am. I understand it.

[Ed Larson]

And she even began appearing on Pap podcasts. Before long, Chad and Melanie were meeting up again at another Pap conference in Utah. But. But this time, Melanie brought along a friend.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Ooh.

[Ed Larson]

That friend was Lori Valow. And it's there that will pick back up for part two of our series.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Wow. This is just. I'm so happy that I got some of this rage out.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, a little bit.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I needed to get it out tonight.

[Marcus Parks]

I think so. I think. I feel like, you know, I'm just calling it now. You do you. But I think you're going to be calmer next one. I feel like you really did get some shit out today.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I think so. And also next episode, we're going to be telling the full story of Laurie Valo. And Henry doesn't get as angry about Lori Valo.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No. You know what it is about Lori Valo?

[Marcus Parks]

You like the way she looks. You know, you called her hot earlier.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I do find her attractive, but I do think that she's the evil one.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So I'm a little bit. I like that. We're about to get evil. Part two is going to get. We're going to see the other side. What really creates the actual very, very dark edge of Chad Daybell is going to be what Lori Valor brings to the table and her family, what she learned from her family. All this type of shit. That's what's going to evil toxic soup. And it's just going to get worse from here.

[Ed Larson]

Lori Valo's family is a den of vipers. And that when we talk about her family, you know, we're going to be getting, you know, don't worry if, if any of you out there are, you know, experts on this stuff. We're going to be talking about the White Horse prophecy, of course, the next episode. And we're of course going to be talking about Lori Fallow's father, the sovereign citizen.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, it's all coming around.

[Ed Larson]

Wow.

[Marcus Parks]

It really links together.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It all does bad. It's almost like every single group of villains, the United States of America are working together as a team and we are suffering as a result. But otherwise things are fine. And go check out someplace underneath run right now. Yes. Because they are really doing extremely deep work into the. They're going to cover the Tim Ballard story. They're going to cover kind of things that I even dropped. But right now they're running through all of the various sources of Mormon money because they're talking about these, these holdings, which is the actual. It's a, it's kind of a massive elephant in the room with all of these conversations. Because again, all of this humbleness hides the fact that they're sitting on a world changing amount of money. 200 billion, something like that. It's like a huge. It's a astronomical sum of money that they can do whatever they want with. And what's it going to be? We'll find out.

[Marcus Parks]

Also, if you want to watch something that pertains to this, watch the post apocalyptic game show the Hoopa Goo Game. It's very doomsday.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, we're. It's gonna be. You can see that on our YouTube page if you go to, you know, just go to YouTube, type in last podcast on the left or the last podcast network and you can find all of our shows after the fact. But if you want to watch Hoopa Gogou live and can participate late in the show. When does Hoopa Google air?

[Marcus Parks]

Yesterday. But there is. You could. The next one's going to be on March 6th at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern all on Twitch TV LPNTV.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And check out Good Bud will be live next week on the 27th and we might be taking a little trip.

[Ed Larson]

To where?

[Henry Zebrowski]

We'll see.

[Marcus Parks]

All right, I'll tell you who is taking the trip. Trip us. We're in Dallas right now.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Seriously, come out. If you're in Dallas, come out. We're gonna have fun. Tonight's gonna be a great show. We got a lot of stuff. We gotta.

[Ed Larson]

Tomorrow night.

[Marcus Parks]

Tomorrow night, the 22nd.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The 22nd. And then we have got dates. We're gonna be in the right. Come and see us at the Ryman if you're in Nashville. We're gonna have so much fun. We got the Ryman, I believe. Then we are going to Huntsville, Alabama for side stories.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, that's gonna be blast on the 16th and we're coming for you. NASA, the proof.

[Henry Zebrowski]

All right.

[Ed Larson]

Because I really need to go to Werner von Braun's grave.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, we are going.

[Marcus Parks]

Is he there?

[Ed Larson]

I'm almost positive he's buried there.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, I looked it up.

[Ed Larson]

He is and he is there.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, we should totally go to Werner von Braun.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Absolutely. We can do some Roman salutes. Marcus said this. And I want to remind you, go to last podcast on the left.com to buy those tickets. That is where you want to go. If you just look up last podcast on the left live, they will take you to seat like scammers, ticket scammers. Which apparently is. It's horrible. We can't do anything about it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. We get, we research. We seriously. We are not charging $350 for a fucking ticket. We are like, that's. Those are resellers. We just can't fucking. We can't do anything about that unless we created our entire ecosystem of ticket selling apparatus.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's very difficult.

[Marcus Parks]

So you want to buy resale Tickets, go to eddytunes.com reselling the tickets myself.

[Ed Larson]

That's a good idea. Double dipping. That's really. I can't fault that.

[Marcus Parks]

And you can also get tickets to my tour, Invasive species, the Ed Larson Tours fl Florida. So if you're in Florida in March or May, I'll be coming to your town. Hopefully if you're in Tallahassee, Panama City, Jacksonville, Dania Beach, Orlando, Naples or Key west, check that out.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And you also can see us again. Contact in the desert 2025. From May 29 to June 2, we are going to be there. We're going to be doing several shows over the weekend. We're going to be around doing stuff. We're not. It's not finalized quite yet what we're doing.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. And whatever shows we're not on, we will be heckling.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So be there. Be in the crowd. Because we already walked one. Michael Sedona is not coming back.

[Ed Larson]

He's not.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He said our spiritual attack on him caused him to lose 25 pounds.

[Ed Larson]

Are you sure?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes. He says our satanic spiritual attack on him ruined him and that he had to go into spiritual recovery. He had to go into a prayer monastery. Like he had to do all of this shit.

[Marcus Parks]

This is a man who supposedly fought aliens.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. The guy with the lasers. Yes. That sang the song.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

And so we, we hurt him by going there and by talking about how insane he is.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

All right.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's awesome. So we will be the ones burning the effigy of the World Trade center this year, and we cannot wait. If you want help us, if you want to send in a paper machete, World Trade center, go to the P.O. box, P.O. box 470, North Hollywood, California, 91603. If you're a lucky listener, who sends in the first World Trade center paper mache diorama. That's the one we're going to burn live. I'm contacting you best.

[Ed Larson]

All right, that's it. Later on, Hail Satan. Again.

[Marcus Parks]

Hail Gladys Knight, the own. I tried to find a cool Mormon and that's the only one I could find.

[Ed Larson]

She's Mormon, huh?

[Marcus Parks]

She converted in 1990.

[Ed Larson]

Okay, that's, that's fine.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, I know. It's. What are you going to do?

[Henry Zebrowski]

What about the Pips?

[Marcus Parks]

I don't think they joined her. Oh, they stayed Christian.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Makes sense.

[Ed Larson]

Pips can't be Mormon.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I love the Pips.

[Ed Larson]

Pips. Wait, that's too exciting. Pip.

[Marcus Parks]

Tallahassee. What's going on? Ed Larson here from Last Pack podcast on the left to let you know I'm coming to you.

[Ed Larson]

That's right.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm gonna be at the 926 Bar and Grill on March 23rd doing some stand up and some music with my good friends Evan Rossi and Danny Bedrosian. You know, the keyboard player from Parliament Funkadelic.

[Ed Larson]

What?

[Marcus Parks]

He's performing live with Ed Larson in Tallahassee. Yes, it's happening, so come on out. March 23, Tallahassee, Florida, to see Ed Larson, Danny Bedrosian and Evan Rossi perform at the 926-bar. You might just get a public subject.