The Puppeteer

Summary

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Project Mind Control: "The Puppeteer"

Podcast: Project Mind Control
Host: Dr. Julia Shaw (Always True Crime)
Air Date: March 24, 2026

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Overview

This episode, "The Puppeteer," delves into the harrowing story of Lana Ponting, a teenage runaway sent in 1958 to Montreal’s infamous Allan Memorial Institute. Through Lana’s fractured memories and historical investigation, Dr. Julia Shaw uncovers the dark legacy of inhumane psychiatric experimentation, the targeting of vulnerable girls, and the hidden machinery of institutional abuse—operations shadowed by covert government interests and societal prejudice. The episode also questions the very nature of memory, documentation, and truth, while hinting at even deeper mysteries regarding indigenous children and unmarked graves.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Content Warning and Context Setting

• [02:12] Dr. Julia Shaw warns listeners:

  "This series includes discussion of inhumane medical experimentation, including on children, violence, sexual assault, abuse of children and cultural genocide."

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2. Lana Ponting’s Story: Entry Into The Allan Memorial Institute

• [02:30] Lana describes her entry:

  "I shouldn't have been put into the Allen. I was a runaway kid. I did not commit a crime. All I did was run away from home."

• [02:40] Dr. Shaw introduces Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron and the institution’s goals:

  "He was preoccupied with a theory that sounds like science fiction—that he could erase a person's mind."

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3. Experimental Treatments and Their Effects

• [03:00–05:45] Lana’s fragmented memories and Dr. Cameron’s methods:

  • Lana recalls endless drugs (including LSD and sodium amytal), electroshock, and disorienting sensory deprivation (flashing lights, isolation).
  • Key quote, Lana:

    "There was a room I was put in where the light was consistently on and off. It made me sick...I remember the pain I felt. And I remember all the drugs they gave me. I think a lot of it was LSD."

    • [03:40]

• Dr. Shaw and actor-voiced Dr. Cameron explain “depatterning”—multi-stage erasure and breakdown of mental faculties, leading to the “electrical lobotomy,” where patients lost memory, language, and autonomy:

  "Rendering people unable to be independent in the most basic ways is a symptom of brain damage... It is a severity of the effects of the depatterning procedure that earned it the nickname electrical lobotomy."
  — Dr. Julia Shaw, [05:49]

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4. The Culture of Psychiatric Experimentation

• [06:42–08:25] Historian Andrew Scull contextualizes the reckless experimental climate of mid-century psychiatry:

  "Psychiatrists in the 20th century indulged in an orgy of therapeutic experimentation... allowed to do things that when we look back now, we tend to see as quite horrific." — Andrew Scull, [07:20] "Sincerity is no guarantee of doing the right thing. Indeed, when you become a true believer... it blinds you very often to the consequences." — Andrew Scull, [08:08]

• Extreme and bizarre medical ideas in practice; surgical removal of body parts for "mental illness" (teeth, colons, etc.), resulting in fatality rates up to 45%—"and nobody squawked."
  — Andrew Scull, [08:51]

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5. Institutionalization of 'Difficult' Girls

• [09:09–09:33] Lana explains her commitment was arranged by Judge Nicholson, known for partnering with Dr. Cameron:

  "He was soliciting people to be brainwashed. That's basically what he was doing."
  — Lana Ponting, [09:15]

• Dr. Shaw: A 'status offense' like running away was enough to lock up children, especially girls, for 'reform' or psychiatric treatment.

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6. Medical Records and Institutional Bias

• [10:53–12:13] Producer Simona Rata and Dr. Shaw analyze Lana’s medical records:

  • Nurses repeatedly described Lana as "childish," "attention seeking," and obsessed with appearance.

  • Notes focus on her grooming and relationships with boys, reflecting a deep gender and moral bias.

    "Several boyfriends." — nurse’s note, [12:13]

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7. Gender Bias in Psychiatric Treatment

• [12:25–13:29]

  • Andrew Scull details how "almost all" experimental therapies, especially lobotomies, disproportionately targeted women—sometimes at a ratio of 70:30.

    "The fact that women could, after all, he says, return to work as a housewife, that doesn’t take much imagination." — Andrew Scull, [13:33]

• Dr. Shaw:

  “It didn’t matter if they fried women’s brains, because these patients were, in his view, just housewives.” — [13:39]

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8. Missing Evidence and Shocking Discoveries

• Lana’s records show no documentation of psychiatric treatment, only baseline physical checks.
• [14:41–16:09] Lana’s most devastating discovery: She was pregnant and gave birth after leaving the Allen, but has no memory of the pregnancy, birth, or what happened to her baby.

  "I got pregnant when I was at the Allen. Now. Who by? I don’t know." — [14:41] "When I went into the Allen, I was a virgin. But who made me pregnant? I don't know." — [15:55]

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9. Sexual Assault and Memory Gaps

• [17:45–19:01] Lana describes being gang raped and names Dr. Cameron as her assailant, based on affidavits and recovered memories.

  "I was also gang raped when I was there, and I think that's when Cameron and all of them decided to get rid of me. I was starting to really question what they were doing, so they got rid of me. I was pregnant." — Lana Ponting, [18:13] "Dr. Ewan Cameron, who raped me." — Lana Ponting, [18:40]

• Medical records, however, suggest an alternative timeline—that she got pregnant after release. Dr. Shaw examines this discrepancy, pointing out the unreliability and possible manipulation of records and memories.

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10. Memory, Truth, and the Limits of Documentation

• [25:12–27:01] Dr. Shaw reflects on the nature of memory (true, false, or in-between) and her own research on how trauma can create, erase, or distort recollection:

  “While memories long forgotten and then recovered can be accurate, they can also exist in between truth and fiction. Your brain using aspects of things that really happened and weaving in elements that aren’t quite real.” — Dr. Julia Shaw, [25:37]

  “Proof in itself that the procedures at the Allen had unimaginable consequences.” — Dr. Julia Shaw, [26:19]

• Lana:

  "It takes nine months to have a child. So where was I?" — [25:32] "It really bothers me that this happened because, you know, when you have a child and you don't know who he is, it's very, very hard to live with that." — [27:01]

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11. The Mystery Deepens and a New Investigation

• [27:21–28:00] The conclusion hints at a broader pattern: Lana describes her friend, Morning Star, an indigenous girl who vanished inside the institute—raising the spectre of further, uninvestigated crimes and missing children.

  "Morning Star was my friend...and all of a sudden she was gone." — Lana Ponting, [27:50] "We search for an indigenous girl who disappeared from the institute. When they found bones, they're like, oh, that's an animal...But these were deep in the ground." — Dr. Julia Shaw, [28:00]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Lana Ponting [03:15]:

  "We’re going to be his puppets and do exactly what he says."

• Andrew Scull [07:20]:

  "Mental patients were shut up in a double sense. They were locked away, but their voices were also silenced..."

• Dr. Julia Shaw [25:37]:

  "While memories long forgotten and then recovered can be accurate, they can also exist in between truth and fiction..."

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Timeline of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Topic/Quote | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:12 | Content warning and trigger topics explained | | 02:30 | Lana's introduction and her entrance to the Allen Institute | | 03:40 | Lana describes drugging and traumatic treatments | | 04:22 | Dr. Shaw explains depatterning and memory erasure | | 06:42 | Historian Andrew Scull contextualizes psychiatric experimentation | | 09:15 | Lana explains how the judge placed her at the Allen | | 10:53 | Nurse notes and institutional attitudes toward Lana | | 12:25 | Gender disparity in psychiatric treatments | | 14:41 | Lana discovers her pregnancy; no memory of it | | 18:13 | Lana alleges rape and details sexual assault | | 25:37 | Dr. Shaw discusses reliability of trauma-affected memory | | 27:50 | Introduction to the disappearance of Morning Star and further mysteries |

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Tone and Style

The episode is immersive, sobering, and investigative, weaving personal testimony, archival analysis, and forensic skepticism. Dr. Julia Shaw’s narration balances empathy with clinical caution, always returning to the limitations of memory—both personal and institutional. Lana’s voice, battered but unbowed, haunts the account; historical context is provided with grave clarity.

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Conclusion

"The Puppeteer" is a chilling exposé of psychiatric abuse, memory manipulation, and bureaucratic indifference. Lana Ponting’s ordeal blurs the lines between medical horror and institutional gaslighting. The episode ends by opening investigative doors into missing indigenous children, signaling that Lana’s story is just the beginning—and that the crimes, even after decades, still demand answers.

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Transcript

[Podcast Host / Advertiser]

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[Dr. Julia Shaw]

This series includes discussion of inhumane medical experimentation, including on children, violence, sexual assault, abuse of children and cultural genocide.

[Lana Ponting]

I shouldn't have been put into the Allen. I was a runaway kid. I did not commit a crime. All I did was run away from home.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

In 1958, Lana Ponting found herself at the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal under the care of psychiatrist Dr. Donald Ewan Cameron. He was preoccupied with a theory that sounds like science fiction that he could erase a person's mind.

[Lana Ponting]

I don't even remember how we ate. I don't remember that at all. And that. That bothers me a lot that I

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

can't remember that and rebuild it from scratch.

[Lana Ponting]

What we were going to be like. We're going to be his puppets and do exactly what he says.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

I'm Dr. Julia Shaw, and this is Project Mind Control. Lana's memories of her time at the Allen Institute have gaps, but there are some memories that still trouble her.

[Lana Ponting]

There was a room I was put in where the light was consistently on and off. It made me sick, made me very sick. I was scared. I remember treatments and I remember the pain I felt. And I remember all the drugs they gave me. I think a lot of it was lsd. There was sodium Amitril. There were so many drugs. And then I remember lying on a. Lying on a stretcher and I was bleeding from the vaginal area.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Lana's memory of what it was like inside the elm is poor, which is in line with what Dr. Cameron said about his own depatterning procedures. Dr. Cameron is voiced by an actor.

[Podcast Host / Advertiser]

In the first stage of disturbance of the space time image, There are marked memory deficits.

[Lana Ponting]

I don't even remember how we ate. I don't remember that at all.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

And in the second stage, after more treatment like electroshock therapy, drugs or induced comas, Dr. Cameron explained that the patient

[Podcast Host / Advertiser]

has lost his spacetime image, but clearly feels that there should be one.

[Lana Ponting]

I must have slept in a bed. Obviously I did, but the rooms. I can't remember.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Imagine the fear of realizing that you should know where you are, but you don't. That you should know the time and date, but you just can't quite grasp it.

[Podcast Host / Advertiser]

He feels anxious and concerned because he cannot tell where he is and how he got there.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Then there was a third stage.

[Podcast Host / Advertiser]

During this stage, the patient may show a variety of other phenomena such as the loss of a second language or all knowledge of his marital status. In more advanced forms, he may be unable to walk without support to feed himself and may show double incontinence.

[Lana Ponting]

She was sitting on the floor. She couldn't walk.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

They forgot whole languages, forgot that they were married. Rendering people unable to be independent in the most basic ways is a symptom of brain damage. It is a severity of the effects of the depatterning procedure that earned it the nickname electrical lobotomy. You probably know what a lobotomy is. But as a reminder, lobotomies were a form of brain surgery that was popular in the mid 20th century, most people will know it as the procedure which involved hammering an ice pick through the eye socket into the front of the brain behind the forehead in order to treat various forms of mental illness. But it turns out there were multiple versions. Lobotomy originally was not that sociological historian Andrew Scull.

[Andrew Scull]

It was so called precision lobotomy, which is an ironic tone of phrase given what they were doing, drilling holes in the top of the head and inserting something that looked like a butter knife and severing bits of the brain.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Lobotomies, whether using ice picks or electricity, basically turned people into zombies and would often have long term effects on their memory. This was a time in history when psychiatry was doing many weird and terrible things. Here's Andrew Scull.

[Andrew Scull]

Mental patients were shut up in a double sense. They were locked away, but their voices were also silenced because whatever they articulated was seen as a product of their madness and therefore easily dismissed. And families were usually desperate and so on the flimsiest possible basis. Psychiatrists in the 20th century indulged in an orgy of therapeutic experimentation that I describe in my book Desperate Remedies. They really were allowed to do things that when we look back now, we tend to see as quite horrific.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Would they at the time have said that they are experimenting for the benefit of their patients and that they're ethically doing something good?

[Andrew Scull]

Absolutely. Sincerity is no guarantee of doing the right thing. Indeed, when you become a true believer in what you're doing, it blinds you very often to the consequences that are happening all around you.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

There were some truly wild medical ideas that were still actively being studied when Dr. Cameron joined the Allen Institute, the

[Andrew Scull]

Enthusiasts for focal sepsis as a cause of mental illness. The idea that low grade infections in your body were poisoning your brain, which led to surgical excision of teeth, tonsils, stomachs, colons, spleens.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

So they were removing these body parts?

[Andrew Scull]

They were removing those because there were no antibiotics. So you engaged in what was called surgical bacteriology, the ones that got the abdominal surgery in America. You were killing 45% of them and nobody squawked, nobody said, oh my God, what are you doing here?

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

So how does a teenage girl end up in a place like the Allen just for running away?

[Lana Ponting]

Judge Nicholson was the one that put me into the Allen and I found out he was a friend of Dr. Cameron's. He was soliciting people to be brainwashed. That's basically what he was doing.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

We found the judge that Lana is talking about. In the 1950s, he was heavily Involved with sending children between the ages of 16 and 21 to reform schools, an alternative to adult prisons. At the time, Canadian children could be institutionalized for so called status offenses, things like incorrigibility, sexual promiscuity and running away. This means that Lana's teenage rebellion was enough. So what happened to her at the Allen? Young girl admitted accompanied by father. She complains of sharp pains in her head and abdominal pain, which she states, everyone says I imagine it, but I don't. Seems to be adjusting well. Lana was able to get access to some of her medical records which she shared with us about 60 pages, half of which are from the Allen. Most of them are bedside notes, records written down by nurses and kept, as the name suggests, by a patient's bed. They track things like the patient's treatments, progress and medications. And they were recorded three times a day. My producer Simona Rata, went through them.

[Simona Rata]

April 28, 1958, 3pm Attractively groomed. Playing rock and roll records most of the day. Childish attention seeking manner.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

What stood out to us was the tone in which many of these notes are written. Lana is called childish and attention seeking repeatedly.

[Simona Rata]

April 6, 1958, 10:30pm Silly girlish manner. Childish behavior and conversation. April 11, 1958. Usual childish, flippant manner.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Her appearance is mentioned more than once by the staff at the Allen.

[Simona Rata]

Attractively groomed. Has been primping and complaining about her appearance.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Appearance is sometimes clinically relevant. Not showering or failing to look put together can signal things like depression or dementia. Too much attention can hint at anxiety, manic episodes or obsessive compulsive thoughts. But it's one thing to note that someone hasn't showered in weeks and another to note that they have been primping or are attractively groomed in the notes. There's also a significant amount of attention paid to Lana's relationship with boys.

[Simona Rata]

April 5, 1958. Dressed up. Talks freely of her several boyfriends.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Several boyfriends.

[Andrew Scull]

In talking about all these therapies, almost all of them were disproportionately visited on women.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

The notes remind me of something I spoke about with Professor Scull.

[Andrew Scull]

It's true of ECT and remains true of ECT today. It was true of lobotomy. We don't have national statistics because nobody was keeping them on lobotomy. But several of us have gone into the hospital records. But every one of us who has seen those records sees that with lobotomy, the ratio is something like 70, 30.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

So 70% of the people who received lobotomies were women. This has been a pattern in psychiatry in general. Women have been treated more often, including with methods that are more invasive and brain damaging.

[Andrew Scull]

I think, in my view, it's impossible to escape the fact that gender bias was heavily at work here, even for Freeman.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

That's Walter Freeman, the man who popularized lobotomies.

[Andrew Scull]

The fact that women could, after all, he says, return to work as a housewife, that doesn't take much imagination.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

It didn't matter if they fried women's brains, because these patients were, in his view, just housewives. And when it comes to Lana's notes, there's something else. There is no mention of experiments anywhere. In fact, there is no mention of her having undergone any psychiatric treatment at all. Instead, there are records of her body temperature, pulse, blood pressure, and respiration for the first three days and only the first three days, which looks to me like they were tracking her baseline vitals. It's the kind of thing you might do before administering treatment to make sure that the patient can tolerate it. But when Lana first saw these records, there was something in them that redefined her whole life.

[Lana Ponting]

I got pregnant when I was at the Allen Now. Who by? I don't know.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Lana, now in her 80s, discovered from her records that she had carried and given birth to a healthy baby not long after leaving the Allen at the Missouri Court Hospital in Montreal. She had no memory of this, no memory of being pregnant, no memory of delivering the baby, and no memory of what happened after to her or the child. She had spent the five decades after she left the Allen Institute unaware that she had had a child. The records we were sent don't include a birth certificate, but they do note her child's date of birth as 10 March, 1959 at 10:12pm Lana's age is recorded as 17. Seeing these records, specifically the dates, led Lana to believe that it was during the one month she spent at the Allen that she got pregnant.

[Lana Ponting]

When I went into the Allen, I was a virgin. But who may be pregnant? I don't know.

[Podcast Host / Advertiser]

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[Lana Ponting]

I remember lying on a stretcher and I was bleeding from the vaginal area.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Lana believes she was sexually assaulted while she was at the Allen. She's explained her assault to us and has recorded it in two separate affidavits, both from 2022. Here are extracts from those affidavits voiced by an actor. Note that this section contains graphic details.

[Lana Ponting]

I was also gang raped when I was there and I think that's when Cameron and all of them decided to get rid of me. I was starting to really question what they were doing, so they got rid of me. I was pregnant.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Dr. Ewan Cameron, the man in charge of Lana's care and the care of hundreds of others.

[Lana Ponting]

Dr. Ewan Cameron, who raped me.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Lana's medical records are incomplete and what is there doesn't match what she remembers. They say that Lana's pregnancy lasted 38 weeks and again that she gave birth on the 10th of March 1950.

[Lana Ponting]

1959.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

38 weeks before that is the 17th of June 1958. Lana was discharged from the Allen on the 1st day of May 1958. So while the dates are close, at least according to the records, Lana had been released from the Allen for a month and a half before she became pregnant. She was recommended for follow ups at the Allen even after she left.

[Lana Ponting]

Everything they said about me, they're not true. They're not true at all.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

The notes also repeatedly list dances, noting whether she was attending or was not attending them. Like this mention from 28 April, attended dance. Stated she had lousy, probably meaning she had a lousy time. Her bedside notes have Lana as physically leaving the Allen and later coming back multiple times. But Lana remembers things differently.

[Lana Ponting]

The Allen kept us like prisoners. That's why we were doped up so much that we couldn't run away. We couldn't do anything. They had people to catch us. We wanted to run, but where would we run to?

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Would a psychiatric institution let a teenage runaway leave? According to her notes, on many of these occasions, she was leaving to see her boyfriend.

[Simona Rata]

April 23, 1958. Returned from Outing with boyfriend, cheerful.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

When she wasn't seeing him, she was either writing to him.

[Simona Rata]

April 13, 1958. Occupied with hit Parade on the radio and writing letters to boyfriend or waiting

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

for him to call.

[Simona Rata]

April 28, 1958, annoyed because her boyfriend did not call.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Despite the lack of detail relating to her treatment, there seems to be a surprising inclusion of an alleged engagement.

[Simona Rata]

I found two entries that hint at that possibility. So one is from April 29, two days before she left the Allen. And it reads, returned at 9:30pm states she had a good time with her boyfriend. Says she has, in quote, a very special secret which she cannot tell. And there's an earlier one from April 16, and it reads, returned from her afternoon. Apparently showed the attendant a diamond ring saying she was secretly engaged.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

What about Lana's parents? Did they know that she got engaged? Lana told us that they did visit her.

[Lana Ponting]

I didn't recognize them. I had no idea who they were because I was so drugged I didn't know anything.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Could this Lana, the Lana who didn't recognize her own parents, have accepted a marriage proposal? Lana sent my producer Simona, her records from the Missouri Court Hospital, which is where she gave birth.

[Simona Rata]

I was sent the files late at night and I'm scrolling quickly through everything curious. And at one point I stop and I zoom in and I read Lana MacKinnon.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

MacKinnon. Lana's family name is Ponting. Why is her surname here McKinnon?

[Simona Rata]

Misspelled and corrected a bunch of times throughout, by the way, but every time it said MacKinnon. There was no mention of Ponting anywhere. So either these are somebody else's files or. Or Lana got married at some point between her time at the Ellen and giving birth. Is it possible that Lana not only does not remember giving birth in 59, but also that she does not remember getting married?

[Podcast Host / Advertiser]

The patient may show a variety of other phenomena such as the loss of a second language or all knowledge of his Marital status.

[Lana Ponting]

I looked at the records, the Misericord file that I sent you. And they said the father's name was Alex McKinnon. I don't know anybody by that name at all.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Lana does not believe the version of events supported by her records.

[Lana Ponting]

They had this occupation as detective at the age of 21. And I thought, these are all lies. All our files were full of lies.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

There's another document in Lana's files, a letter from Social Services informing the Allen of Lana's pregnancy six months after her

[Simona Rata]

discharge, November 3, 1958. Patience pregnancy has been definitely established. She is presently staying at the Misericord Sheltering Home for unmarried mothers. But far too disturbed to remain there.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

They discuss the possibility of readmitting Lana to the Ellen after she's given birth. But crucially, they refer to her in this letter as Lana Ponting. In fact, we've discovered that at the Missouri Court Sheltering Home, an institution run by Catholic nuns, all unmarried mothers assumed a different name for the duration of their stay. The anonymity was to protect the reputation of their families. This was an era when names and records could be altered to suit the sensibilities of the time. Could this have happened to Lana?

[Lana Ponting]

I thought I was going in there to get better. But that didn't happen. That didn't happen at all.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

At this stage, it's all but impossible to be sure of what happened to Lana. We know that during her time at the ELN or in the month immediately after leaving, she became pregnant. And we know that this life changing and traumatic experience which ended with her separated from her baby, has been wiped from her brain.

[Lana Ponting]

It takes nine months to have a child. So where was I?

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Lana's memories of her assaults in the ELN Came back to her fairly recently. In an interview from 2021, Lana, she said, I was asleep one night, and then all of a sudden I just woke right up. I don't know how long this happened for, but I started to remember things. While memories long forgotten and then recovered can be accurate, they can also exist in between truth and fiction. Your brain using aspects of things that really happened and weaving in elements that aren't quite real. Right. I am a criminal psychologist. And in my academic work and my work as an expert witness, I specialize in research on false memories. It is my role to examine the quality of memory evidence in criminal cases. In my own research, I have shown that we can create complex false memories of crime from pieces of information that we are trying to make sense of. While Lana will never know the paternity or circumstances surrounding the birth of her child. What we do know is something horrifying happened to her behind those walls that wiped those memories away. Proof in itself that the procedures at the Allen had unimaginable consequences.

[Lana Ponting]

It really bothers me that this happened because you know when you have a child and you don't know who he is, it's very, very hard to live with that.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

The Lana we spoke to firmly believes her medical records are a work of fiction. And she has reason to believe this because Lana told us something else. Something that would open up an entirely new investigation. One that would lead to years of searching and the deployment of three human remains detection dogs. Next time on Project Mind Control.

[Lana Ponting]

Morning Star was my friend. Yes, I saw her for a while and then. And all of a sudden she was gone.

[Dr. Julia Shaw]

We search for an indigenous girl who disappeared from the institute. When they found bones, they're like, oh, that's an animal. Oh, that's an animal. And it's like when animals die, they don't get buried. Other animals eat them or the elements take them away. But these were deep in the ground. I'm Dr. Julia Shaw. Project Mind Control was presented by me and written by me and my producer, Simone Arratta. The executive producers are Elsa Rochester and Louisa Adams. Sound design by Craig Edmondson. Lana's affidavits were read by Martine Richards. The words of Dr. Cameron were read by Paul Livingston. Project mind control is an always true crime. Production.

[Podcast Host / Advertiser]

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[Dr. Julia Shaw]

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[Lana Ponting]

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[Dr. Julia Shaw]

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[Dr. Julia Shaw]

Nope. She bought it 100% online from her bed, actually. Was it scary? Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof? It did, actually.

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[Dr. Julia Shaw]

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[Lana Ponting]

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[Dr. Julia Shaw]

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[Podcast Host / Advertiser]

Want more? True Crime this podcast and loads more are part of the Always True Crime Network. It's packed with box sets to binge and twisted tales you won't find anywhere else. Find your next podcast obsession at Always truecrime. Com.