The Cut - Snap Classic

Summary

Snap Judgment – “The Cut” (Snap Classic)

Podcast: Snap Judgment & PRX
Episode Date: March 12, 2026
Main Story Producer: Shayna Shealy
Theme: Haircuts at the intersection of authority, ritual, and rebellion in an Amish breakaway community, told through the lived experience of Johnny Mast.

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Overview

In this Snap Judgment episode, “The Cut,” host Glynn Washington and a skilled production team immerse listeners in the raw, complex world of Johnny Mast, who grew up in a rigid Amish splinter group ruled by his dictatorial grandfather, Sam Mullet. What starts as a tale about bad haircuts unfolds into an examination of control, abuse, and ultimately, survival and escape. Hair in this story is more than fashion—it’s identity, power, and a means of subjugation and rebellion. Johnny walks us through how haircuts became tools of punishment, the catalyst for hate crime arrests, and, in the end, a symbol of breaking free.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Stage: A Haircut Gone Wrong

• [00:39] Glynn Washington opens the theme with a childhood haircut disaster:
  • “If I jack up your head, you're gonna be mad. So just relax… My laughter is pure, clean, free. I can’t breathe. It’s a disaster. A haircutting horror show. And it's not even my fault…”
  • Tone: Playful, light—preparing the listener for darker turns to come.

Introduction to Bergholz: The Community & Its Rules

• [03:40] Johnny Mast’s world is small, conservative, and tightly controlled:
  • "My hair had to be almost perfect...but the bowl style was my only option. All the guys in town had the same cut."
  • The group’s dress and haircode: bowl cuts, home-sewn jeans, beards with no mustache.
• [05:12] The figure of Sam Mullet:
  • Johnny describes Sam as both revered and feared, a self-appointed leader:
    • "He’s just kind of like the whole justice all in one package. Whatever he says... it's just Sam said it."

The Approval Trap

• [06:42 - 08:28] Johnny’s need for Sam’s approval dictates his actions:
  • “I just always felt like I wanted to grow up to be like Sam. You know, I wanted to please him in some way, shape or form.”
  • Details Johnny’s innocence—rebellion was sneaking to the payphone to listen to music.

The Confessional & Manipulation

• [08:28 - 11:12] Sam’s mass confessional—everyone must write down their sins.
• [11:12] Sam singles out Johnny as favored:
  • “John can stay, but the rest of them are all going to have to go. Because none of them told the truth.”
  • The manipulation deepens as Johnny must choose between family and compliance.

From Participant to Enforcer

• [11:40] Johnny becomes Sam’s enforcer:
  • Reporting others, bullying those deemed ‘sinful’, enforcing arbitrary rules under threat of spiritual banishment.

Punishment and Dehumanization

• [12:34 - 14:13] “Exiling” Levi Miller—banished to the chicken coop for alleged dishonesty about his sins:
  • “Sam basically told him...you're gonna have to sit in the chicken coop for X amount of days until you write everything.”
  • Levi, surrounded by 45-50 chickens, eats scraps meant for animals:
    • “He was hungry enough where he was picking through that leftover stuff. Imagine what that looked like...they basically made him live like an animal.”
  • The ‘cage’ is unlocked; compliance is psychological.

Hair as Instrument of Shame

• [14:56] Sam escalates, ordering Levi's hair and beard cut off:
  • “Cutting off an Amish man's beard is like ripping off a woman's clothes and making her walk around naked for months.”
  • Sam’s rationale: a humiliating “new beginning.”

Johnny the Cleanup Man

• [17:05 - 21:09] Johnny’s role complicates—he’s tasked with ‘fixing’ these shameful cuts:
  • He struggles to do right within the rules: “I just couldn’t take it anymore…I have to make this look better.”
  • Buys electric clippers at Walmart—a daring act, crossing an unspoken border:
    • “I felt like I should be looking over my shoulder…”

Family’s Humiliation and Johnny’s Guilt

• [22:16 – 25:51] Sam orchestrates mass hair and beard snipping as punishment/torture ritual:
  • Johnny is ordered to cut his own father’s hair:
    • “My heart kind of hit my toes…The sound of the scissors going through that hair, like it was yesterday. It was a terrible feeling. Terrible.”
  • Johnny tries to restore dignity with careful haircuts, but is haunted by complicity:
    • “It felt to me like I was fixing something that I’d ruined.”

Escalation to Hate Crimes

• [27:38 - 29:11] Sam’s vendetta against outsiders:
  • Boys are sent out on a ‘punishment mission’ to cut beards of Amish men outside Bergholz—leading to a 911 call and criminal investigation:
    • Quote, 911 Operator/Caller:
      • "Some guy...gave him a bad haircut." [29:20]
      • "They cut off his beard and give him a haircut." [29:26]

Burying Evidence & Making a Choice

• [30:51 – 32:36] Johnny hides and then turns over the camera used to document assaults:
  • “I was confused and very, very angry... it's damned if I do and damned if I don't.”
  • Giving the camera to authorities enables convictions.

Aftermath: Conviction, Escape, Recovery

• [32:47 - 37:54] Sam and 15 others convicted under federal law; Johnny and others rebuild lives:
  • “Sam was sentenced to 15 years and carted off to a federal prison in Texarkana, Texas.”
  • Johnny's family is fractured, but several siblings escape Bergholz.
  • Johnny, with partner Clara, reflects on what’s lost and gained; they talk openly, drive by old homes, and muse about their new lives.

Bergholz Endures, Sam’s Control Persists

• [37:58 - 39:31] Even from prison, Sam continues his grip by mail. The cycle of confession and punishment recurs:
  • “Sam is still in prison, but he’s still in charge…Even though Sam is in prison, Johnny says he’s still in charge from behind bars.”
  • Clara, on seeing with new eyes:
    • “The point of view that you get after not being Amish, how much it changes…”

Reflection: The Approval Trap

• [38:58] Johnny’s regret:
  • “Approval makes you do stuff you wish you wouldn’t have done. Like I said earlier, I always wanted to have my grandfather’s approval. So when I finally had it, I ended up doing stuff that I regret.” [38:58]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “Cutting off an Amish man’s beard is like ripping off a woman’s clothes and making her walk around naked for months.”
  — Narrator [15:07]
• “Every footstep across the Room sounded like thunder. And finally got over to where my dad was sitting…I just remember the sound of the scissors going through that hair like it was yesterday. And I took one snip…It was a terrible feeling.”
  — Johnny Mast [23:49–24:28]
• “He was hungry enough to where he was picking through that leftover stuff...they basically made him live like an animal.”
  — Johnny Mast [13:49]
• “I felt like I should be looking over my shoulder, make sure nobody’s looking, you know, to see what I’m doing there.”
  — Johnny Mast [19:46]
• “Approval makes you do stuff you wish you wouldn’t have done...I always wanted to have my grandfather’s approval. So when I finally had it, I ended up doing stuff that I regret.”
  — Johnny Mast [38:58]
• “Sam is still in prison, but he’s still in charge. He’s still in charge. He’s always been.”
  — Johnny Mast [38:00]

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Critical Timestamps & Segments

• [00:39–03:25] Opening anecdote, “the cut” premise
• [03:40–07:38] Johnny’s upbringing, community context
• [08:28–11:17] The confessional incident & Johnny’s selection
• [12:34–14:13] Levi Miller’s “chicken coop” punishment
• [15:07–17:05] The shaming haircut and escalating punishments
• [19:46–22:13] Johnny’s first use of electric clippers, risking community rules
• [23:29–25:51] The forced haircut of Johnny’s father, deep personal conflict
• [27:38–29:11] Outsider beard-cutting: hate crime and call to 911
• [30:51–32:36] Buried evidence, Johnny’s decision, federal investigation
• [33:22–39:31] Escape, rebuilding, reflections on trauma and healing

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Tone and Style

Snap Judgment’s immersive, dramatic narrative style is present throughout. The story is vivid, deeply personal, and nonjudgmental—allowing Johnny’s conflicted voice to guide the listener through both horror and humor. The rhythm alternates between tight, emotional confessions and snapshots of rural life, reinforcing the feeling of peering into a closed world.

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Conclusion

“The Cut” elevates a story about haircuts from the mundane to the profoundly symbolic. Through Johnny Mast’s journey—marked by love, complicity, regret, and ultimately, agency—the episode explores how control operates in insular communities, how rituals can serve both to bind and to wound, and how escape often means both loss and liberation. While Sam Mullet’s reign persists behind bars, Johnny and others grasp new lives and perspectives, ever marked by the razor’s edge of their past.

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Further Reading

• Breakaway Amish by Johnny Mast & Shawn Smucker
• Renegade Amish by Donald Kraybill

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Production Credits:

• Story by Shayna Shealy
• Score by Renzo Gorrio
• Thanks to WYSU Youngstown, OH
• Hosts: Glynn Washington, Earlonne Woods

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For full episodes and more cinematic storytelling: snapjudgment.org

Transcript

[Earlonne Woods]

Snap Studios. I'm Earlonne Woods.

[Nigel Poor]

I'm Nigel Poor. We're the hosts and creators of ear hustle from PRX's Radiotopia.

[Earlonne Woods]

When we met, I was doing time at San Quentin State Prison in California,

[Nigel Poor]

and I was coming in as a volunteer. The stories we tell are probably not what people expect from a prison podcast,

[Earlonne Woods]

like cooking meals in a prison cell,

[Nigel Poor]

keeping little pets prison nicknames, and trying to be a parent from inside.

[Earlonne Woods]

Stories about life on the inside shared by those who live it.

[Nigel Poor]

Find Ear Hustle wherever you get your podcasts.

[Earlonne Woods]

Snap Judgment is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. Okay, so when I was younger, I used to cut my brother's hair because I could work a tight fade. But you had to have patience. Looking good takes time. One day, my brother decided he didn't have any patience. None. Talking about he had somewhere he was supposed to be. Camille said she was gonna stop by Larry's place. Man, Camille ain't stepping foot in that dump. She might catch the tetanus. Hurry up. Shut up. If I jack up your head, you're gonna be mad. So just relax. Hurry up. You're lucky I don't cut your ears off for you. Slowly and methodically, I try to make it even on both sides. Give me them clippers. I said shut up. He snatches the clippers out of my hand, runs it through the middle of his scalp. The clipper guard snaps off. He shaves a furrow right through the middle of his hair. My laughter is pure, clean, free. I can't breathe. It's a disaster. A haircutting horror show. And it's not even my fault. I warned him twice. And things unfold as they might in a storybook. But my brother cries real tears as the rest of us laugh. It is magic. Snappers. Amazing. And so today on Snap Judgment, we proudly present the Cut. Incredible stories from the Razor's Edge. My name is Glenn Washington. Please know, for a small fee, I will gladly cut your hair as well, because you're listening to Snap Judgment. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Cut episode. Incredible stories from the Razor's Edge. We started with a bad hair day, but up next is a haircut story that actually ends with a 911 call.

[911 Operator]

911, what is your emergency I'd like

[Caller Reporting Haircut Incident]

to ask the home signature about it.

[911 Operator]

What's wrong out there, huh? What's the problem there?

[Caller Reporting Haircut Incident]

Some guy attacks my grandpa, gave him a bad haircut.

[911 Operator]

What happened?

[Earlonne Woods]

But to figure out how we got here, you have to start with a young man named Johnny Mast in a small insular farming town in northern Ohio. And Johnny had a thing for good hair.

[Johnny Mast]

My hair had to be like almost perfect. I'd have a comb and I'd comb it and comb. And if I found a couple hair too long, I'd have the scissors there and snipping a little here and snipping a little there. It didn't always turn out the way it was supposed to, but I did

[Narrator/Interviewer]

what I could, did what he could because Johnny was only ever allowed to have one hairstyle, a bowl cut.

[Johnny Mast]

Basically you let your hair grow out and then you just like cut a straight line around your head and that's about it.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Johnny's hair is rusty orange and thick in a bowl cut. It poofed out above his ears. It almost looked like a fur hat.

[Johnny Mast]

I wanted something more and I always wanted a haircut with a clipper. Buzz style haircuts, you know, shingled.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But the bowl style was his only option. All the guys in town had the same cut. They wore the same hand sewn jeans, the same suspenders, the same blue cotton button down shirts.

[Johnny Mast]

The men in the community, once they get married, they then grow a full beard, minus a mustache. I guess you'd call it like a chin strap beard. Even if, let's say one side grows longer than the other, they're not allowed to trim it to make it even

[Narrator/Interviewer]

the hair beard suspenders are part of a dress code in Bergholz. Burgholz is a tiny little community. It's Amish, but not really Amish. 25 years ago, a man named Sam Mullett broke off from his nearby Amish church and drove his horse and buggy deep into the hilly Ohio woods. He bought 800 acres of land there and put himself in charge.

[Johnny Mast]

He's like some, how would you say it? Like a small town somewhere that has had their sheriff for 50 years. And basically whatever the sheriff says is gonna fly, he's just, he's just kind of like the whole justice all in one package. Whatever he says, it doesn't really go to a grand jury or anything like that. It's just Sam said it. So let's go. The man's 6 foot 4 and probably weighs 280 pounds. You know, he's just, he's he's a big built dude and if he gets frustrated about something, he wants to try to get his point across, he'll just stand there and with his straight ahead, confident way of talking and kind of stares you down and tells you what the what is. I mean, you're just okay. Yes sir.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But Sam is also Johnny's grandpa. And back when he was young, he was so obsessed with pleasing Sam that he didn't even see this thing he's talking about. That Sam was really the dictator of a tiny village.

[Johnny Mast]

I just always felt like I wanted to be, grow up to be like Sam. You know, I wanted to please him in some way, shape or form.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

It was an approval trap and it would become really, really dangerous for the whole town, especially Johnny. And the thing is, Johnny did have his grandpa's approval. He was a really good kid. His big acting out was sneaking out to the town payphone where he and his friends called a number that played music and then huddled around the receiver to listen. His daily life was all about helping out, farming corn or wheat or oats with his uncles. Johnny's favorite task was tending to the

[Johnny Mast]

horses, letting them eat their grain in their hay in the morning, getting the horses all harnessed up and hooked them up to a plow.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

When Johnny was a kid, he had his own pony. He remembers staying out in the barn all day trimming the hairs around its feet.

[Johnny Mast]

If there was one hair too long and I happened to see it a day later, I'd be there working on getting that hair down and maybe next thing I know I'd spent two hours giving my horse a haircut. It was just, I was just real picky about stuff like that. It had to be perfect or it wasn't good enough.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

School only goes up to the eighth grade in Bergholz, and Johnny started working odd jobs after that. He groomed horses in his free time. His life was simple and predictable. But one winter evening When Johnny was 17, his mom called him in from the barn. She had come back from this women's meeting at Sam's house.

[Johnny Mast]

Normally they just get together to help grandma work on whatever. And then the one day she came home and had the news that we all had to write our sins on a paper.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So at the meeting, Sam started off by announcing that there were bad things going on in disagreement, divorces, death. Then he explained that those bad things were happening because the people of Burgholz were sinners. And then Sam explained that he as a bishop, could forgive people for, but only if everyone wrote down all their sins. So he called for this sort of mass confessional.

[Johnny Mast]

I was very, very freaked out about it at first. Like, I was like, you know, this is super weird. Kind of had a deadline. We had about a week.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Johnny's mom brought out notepads for everyone, and Johnny went to his bedroom. He spent hours scribbling every sin he could think of, from the tiniest incident of cheating in math class to the more serious stuff, things that I'm not

[Johnny Mast]

comfortable to discuss, but.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So Johnny's family submitted their list of sins and then waited. They heard nothing about the list for weeks. And then suddenly, it was Christmas. Johnny looked forward to Christmas day all year. A big dinner with all his cousins at Sam's house. Fresh ham, mashed potatoes, homemade bread, Turkey hunting with all the guys in the afternoon.

[Johnny Mast]

So we went out to the barn, you know, brushed a horse, put a harness on him, hooked him up to the buggy, got some thick blankets in the buggy, trying to stay.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Johnny and his family rode their buggy through slick, hilly, snowy terrain for hours.

[Johnny Mast]

And we walked in and smelled the ham and the mashed potatoes, and everything just smelled great.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

They were just sitting down to dinner, and that's when Sam decided to bring up those lists of sins. He wasn't happy.

[Johnny Mast]

None of you were truthful with what you wrote down on your letters. My mom just stood there, and she basically just looked like somebody punched her in the face. And my dad just stood there and looked at Sam a little bit, and he's like, I don't know what more you want me to write.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Sam wouldn't let it go. He ordered the family to leave the house right then and there. There would be no Christmas festivities this year. Stunned, Johnny and the rest of his family started putting back on their gloves and coats. They turned for the door.

[Johnny Mast]

John can stay, but the rest of them are all going to have to go. Because none of them told the truth.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

This was the moment that Sam chose Johnny.

[Johnny Mast]

And I was, like, really, you know, kind of flustered. Didn't know what to do. I didn't know, should I stay, should I leave? I had to basically kick my family out, you know, not stand up and, you know, agree with them.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Johnny decided to stay, not just for Christmas night. Johnny moved in with Sam for good. He slept in his own room upstairs. And it's not just that he moved in with Sam. He allied himself with Sam. He started to enforce Sam's rules. Like if he heard someone was late to cut Sam's hay or saw someone smoking a cigarette, he'd report back to Sam. Or if Sam said one of the guys in town was sinning, then Johnny got his buddies to bully that guy into admitting his sins, Real or not.

[Johnny Mast]

I was doing good, and I finally started to feel that moment of kind of having Sam's good graces, you know, kind of getting on his good side. He had me to the point where I was scared of the fact that if I wouldn't listen, do what he says, I would basically be signing a lovely ticket to hell.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

There were a lot of people in burkholes who were scared of Sam. He would single people out, like this one guy, a vegetable farmer named Levi Miller. When Levi Miller wrote up his list of sins for Sam's approval, Sam said he was lying and decided to make an example out of him.

[Johnny Mast]

Sam basically told him, you know, hey, you know, this is. You're gonna have to sit in the chicken coop for X amount of days or whatever until you write everything.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Sam sent Levi to live in a chicken coop. So Levi just walked himself into a chicken coop?

[Johnny Mast]

Yep.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Are there chickens in the coop?

[Johnny Mast]

There's probably 45 or 50 chickens in there.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Like live chickens?

[Johnny Mast]

Yep.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Oh, my God. Sam told Levi he had to stay in the chicken coop until he came clean with his sins. The real sins. To be clear, this demand was entirely impossible to meet. Two or three weeks went by, and

[Johnny Mast]

it got to the point where he was so hungry that whenever the little kids or somebody would bring out scraps for the chicken, like table scraps being, you know, lettuce. The bad part of a tomato.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

For the chickens.

[Johnny Mast]

For the chickens.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

They were feeding the chickens.

[Johnny Mast]

Yep. And it got to the point where he was hungry enough to where he was picking through that leftover stuff. Imagine what that looked like. It's got a terrible smell to it. So basically made him live like an animal.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And is he locked? Is there like a chain around the chicken coop?

[Johnny Mast]

There's literally a bungee cord holding that door shut. All he has to do is push that door and he can walk out. Why doesn't he walk out?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And what did it feel like for you to sort of like, passively watch all this going down?

[Johnny Mast]

I didn't like it. I didn't think it was right, but at that time, I didn't really. My feelings were kind of dead, in a way.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Inside the coop, Levi kept writing down his sins over and over again, but his list never satisfied Sam. And then one evening, after putting up the horses, Johnny and some of his cousins headed to Sam's house. They sat around a table talking about Levi.

[Johnny Mast]

And finally Sam was like, cut this guy's hair and his beard off. I bet that'll make him talk. He's like, bring it down to my house and I'll hang it up on the wall like a turkey beard.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Cutting off an Amish man's beard is like ripping off a woman's clothes and making her walk around naked for months. But Sam had built up a sort of gang of loyal young men who wanted more than anything to please him. Johnny watched them walk out the door.

[Johnny Mast]

About 8:30 Saturday night, Levi's son in law walks into Sam's house and he had a garbage bag and said, well, here's your hair and your beard that you want it. I didn't really know what to think. As far as, you know, was this pushing it over the line, you know, was this. I didn't really have an opinion on that, if that makes sense. And Sam even said it, you know, this is crazy. But he just, he just felt like it would give Levi a new beginning.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Sam didn't hang the hair on his wall. Instead, he asked Johnny to check in on Levi in the Chicken Cooper to make sure he wasn't lonely.

[Johnny Mast]

Sam had this thing where he'd slam somebody so bad and then he pulled them back, try to make them feel good. So he said, you know, you guys go visit him. You know, he probably liked that. So we went up there to see him and he was glad to see us. But when I walked in and seen him, I would have hardly known that man.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Levi hadn't trimmed his sideburns, and over 20 years, his beard had been more than 10 inches from his chin.

[Johnny Mast]

His hair was completely gone. I mean, there was just. And it wasn't a nice smooth hair, it was just like chopped off. There was some long strands hanging down beside his ears still, and it was just a mess. His beard was cut off straight. He actually, he looked scary.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Johnny says the haircut was so ugly it looked like it hurt.

[Johnny Mast]

Yeah, after I seen him with his bad haircut, I said, we gotta, we gotta do something, he looks terrible. And then Sam was like, well, yeah, you can, you know, you can give him a haircut if you want, you know, make him look better. And the guy hadn't had a shower in like a month.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So Johnny got Levi from the chicken coop, walked him into Sam's house and propped him up on a wooden stool in the kitchen. He smelled like rotting garbage. Johnny ran his fingers through thick patches of scruff on Levi's head and dirty long strands of hair hanging from the sides of his face and snipped away.

[Johnny Mast]

It looked decent but it just wasn't quite, it just wasn't quite to my satisfaction. So I kept, you know, thinking I like, you know, a clipper would be real nice. It'd be real easy.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

What Johnny really needed to fix Levi's face, what he had always wanted, electric clippers, which weren't a thing in burgh holes. Johnny asked Sam if he could get them. Sam just stared back at him and frowned. He didn't exactly say no. On the way home from work a few weeks later, Johnny put all his savings in, in the pockets of his hand sewn jeans and walked into Walmart with his bowl cut and suspenders to buy a pair of clippers.

[Earlonne Woods]

Stay with us Snappers. When our story continues. Find out what happens when a rural farm boy attempts to use an electric shaver. The stunning conclusion in just a moment. Stay tuned. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Cut episode. When Lasby left Johnny, he was trying to fix a haircut that looked so bad, it looked so bad it hurt. Snap Judgment.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

On the way home from work a few weeks later, Johnny put all his savings in the pockets of his hand sewn jeans and walked into Walmart with his bowl cut and suspenders to buy a pair of clippers.

[Johnny Mast]

Just the fact of being Amish with a bow style haircut and standing there at Walmart looking at these clippers that are actually made for, you know, to give buzz cuts, I felt like I should be looking over my shoulder, make sure nobody's looking, you know, to see what I'm doing

[Narrator/Interviewer]

there. In the men's beauty aisle, Johnny saw a world of possibilities.

[Johnny Mast]

Yeah, I think I paid 40 bucks for it or something.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Did it feel powerful at all?

[Johnny Mast]

Yeah, I mean I think it kind of gave me, you know, after going and buying it, taking it home and not really getting any repercussions for it, I think it kind of, kind of gave me a little bit of a, like a daring, like a daring attitude of, you know, kind of crowding the line a little bit maybe. I guess what some people would say coloring outside the line a little bit. It just like it kind of kind of took the edge off of, from doing something of, you know, stepping over the line just a little bit.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But I'm still sort of wondering what compelled you to take that risk.

[Johnny Mast]

I just, I just couldn't, I just totally couldn't take it anymore. I was like, wow, you know, this guy, he just looks terrible. I don't know, I think that just, I don't Know, it just pushed me to the point where I was like, I have to do something. I have to make this look better. I have to fix it.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

That night, Johnny powered up the hair clipper with a homemade battery charger. He brought Levi into Sam's kitchen again.

[Johnny Mast]

I was really nervous cutting his hair the first time.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The only haircut he'd ever seen was a bowl cut.

[Johnny Mast]

I looked at the paper that came with the clippers and I was looking over the paper and I was like, okay, this is supposed to do it this way. And then like this.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

When it was done, Levi's beard was even. Johnny handed Levi a plastic mirror.

[Johnny Mast]

And then he smiled a little bit and then he went back to work and I went back to doing my work.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Deer hunting season opened the next week and Sam invited about 10 guys over to his farm to stay for a while and work the land. One of those guys was Johnny's dad. Johnny and his dad hadn't really been talking for the past year since Johnny moved in with Sam. But they were cordial with each other. Everyone was just excited to be together and go hunting drama free.

[Johnny Mast]

Everybody, you know, walked along the table cafeteria style and got their hot meal and sat down and ate. You could tell they all felt good. They felt relaxed. They were sitting back, you know, just

[Narrator/Interviewer]

starting to relax when Sam's daughter came into the room to clear the plates. She was holding scissors. She looked out over the table of men and said, all of you are sinners.

[Johnny Mast]

And she just went along the line and everybody's hair and beard just kind of sort of got chopped off right then and there. You should have seen the look on those poor guys face. They look like a. They look like a beaten puppy is what they look like. I mean, they just. Just look like somebody just really, you know, just punched a crap out of them is what they look like. Some of these guys had long, thick beards, big bushy hair. I mean, there was hair everywhere on the sofa, on these guys, clothes on, on the floor. I've never in my lifetime seen that many hair.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And then Sam's daughter, Johnny's aunt, walked over to him.

[Johnny Mast]

Then Sam was like, well, Johnny, you might as well go cut some of your dad's hair too. And that's when my heart kind of hit my toes.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Sam asked Johnny to cut his own father's hair. The worst imaginable thing a son could do to his father. This was Johnny's big test.

[Johnny Mast]

I was still like in a daze. Standing up, walking across the room and every footstep across the Room sounded like thunder. And finally got over to where my dad was sitting. And I just stood there and looked. My dad kind of looked up at me, and I just kind of looked the other way and took the scissors and took a hold of a strand of hair. And just remember the sound of the scissors going through that hair like it was yesterday. And I took one snip of hair off of his head. And it was a terrible feeling. Terrible.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Johnny's dad and the other guests went to sleep in the barn that night. They slept in the cold on piles of hay. The next morning, Johnny went to see his dad in the barn.

[Johnny Mast]

His hat was too big, sitting down almost in his eyes. His ears were pushed out the side of his hat, looking all cold. And his beard was just chopped off straight across the bottom. His face looked white. He looked like a scary, scary beast.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So Johnny did his thing. He brought his dad into Sam's kitchen.

[Johnny Mast]

I asked him, you know, kind of like, well, what kind of haircut you want? You want real short, or you want your beard, like, completely gone, or you want to leave it? You know, like a little bit of.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Ever since Johnny moved out, he and his dad spoke like strangers on the street. And now they were face to face.

[Johnny Mast]

He didn't say much. So I got the clipper and I started clipping, you know, took the longest guy I could, you know, try to leave as much hair as I could. Ended up having to do almost a buzz cut. I would say I probably took a little bit more time and was a little bit more particular about, you know, every little detail on his haircut more so than normal, just because, you know, it felt to me like I was fixing something that I'd ruined.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But Sam kept ordering more and more haircuts. He ordered his minions to cut off women's hair and other beards of men who had sinned. And every time, Johnny would find these guys dazed with botched patches of hair on their faces and heads. And every time he sat them down in Sam's kitchen and went to work.

[Johnny Mast]

I probably did 4, 5 a week on average for a couple weeks.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So Johnny was Sam's henchman. But now he was also a bit of a cleanup man, fixing and trimming, smoothing and caring for all the hair and beards that Sam had hacked up.

[Johnny Mast]

After a while, I got pretty good at it. Another one of the guys would have been my second cousin. And he had dark hair, dark red hair, and he always had kind of a bald head and a real long, bushy beard. So I just kind of left Him a nice little goatee. He kind of looked around and he's like, you just gonna leave that there? Like, yeah, I'm just gonna leave that there for right now. I think it looks good. You kind of look like a guy that'd be riding around on a Harley Davis. And everybody kind of had to laugh then.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And do you think that cutting hair, that cleaning up people's haircuts was the way that you coped with the situation?

[Johnny Mast]

I would say every time I got done with helping somebody clean up their haircut and, you know, making it look better afterwards, I always felt like I kind of had a personal connection with them and could walk up to them and talk to them about anything. It was just. It felt like I was able to, like, reach out to somebody that was hurting and help them and pull them up, you know, and make them feel better.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

This went on for about a year. Inside the confines of the Burghholz community, everyone knew the wrath of Sam. But then in the fall of 2011, Sam took the hostile haircut thing outside the borders of Burgholz. Johnny says Sam wanted revenge, meaning he wanted to punish other Amish communities who were accepting defectors from Sam's group. On October 4, Johnny piled into an empty livestock trailer hooked up to a truck with 18 boys from Burgh holes. They headed west.

[Johnny Mast]

It's pretty crazy what happened that night.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The truck pulled up to an unfamiliar house. A group of boys got out of the trailer. Johnny stayed back because he was Sam's right hand man, the boys decided he shouldn't get his hands dirty.

[Johnny Mast]

Sat there a couple minutes and we heard knock on the door. Everything was quiet for a couple minutes, and all of a sudden there was a screaming. We heard women just, I mean, screaming at the top of their lungs.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Johnny says the boys barged into a house, pinned down an Amish man and forcibly cut his hair. The victim fought back, causing a scene and wrote down the license plate number of the truck.

[911 Operator]

911. What is your emergency?

[Caller Reporting Haircut Incident]

Let's see. I'd like to ask the home signature about it.

[911 Operator]

What's wrong out there, huh? What's the problem there?

[Caller Reporting Haircut Incident]

Some guy packed with grandpa gave him a bad haircut.

[911 Operator]

What happened?

[Caller Reporting Haircut Incident]

Guy from Birkin to Ohio stopped in, got grandpa out of bed and cut off his beard and give him a haircut.

[911 Operator]

Did you know these people?

[Caller Reporting Haircut Incident]

Yes.

[911 Operator]

Are they still there?

[Caller Reporting Haircut Incident]

No, they left us.

[911 Operator]

How long they been gone?

[Caller Reporting Haircut Incident]

About 15 minutes ago.

[911 Operator]

Okay.

[Caller Reporting Haircut Incident]

But we would like to show them, the police, the evidence that they can return.

[911 Operator]

Still there.

[Caller Reporting Haircut Incident]

And take him in the prison. Okay, they're doing this. It is now just three different guys.

[911 Operator]

Three men came there?

[Caller Reporting Haircut Incident]

No, there were five of them.

[911 Operator]

Five? What'd they say?

[Caller Reporting Haircut Incident]

Well, I wasn't there at the time. I was.

[911 Operator]

What's your name?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The next day, a county sheriff showed up at Sam's house and arrested four of the boys. The Holmes county sheriff eventually turned the case over to the federal government. Suddenly, there was a federal investigation into Sam's revenge haircuts. The feds were desperately looking for one piece of evidence, and Johnny was the only one who knew where it was. So we're hiking up now into the woods. This is where you buried the camera?

[Johnny Mast]

This is the woods where I buried the camera in, yeah. This woods is long and steep. I hear a lot of acorns coming down with the wind right now. Try not to get bopped on the head with one of those.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

When the boys went out in the van that night, they had taken pictures. Pictures of men forced against a wall, getting their beards, chopped.

[Johnny Mast]

The guy that had the camera wanted me to destroy the camera, said, get rid of it. You know, it's evidence. They don't want it to be found, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I'll put it somewhere where nobody's ever gonna find it. From where we're standing, almost straight up the hill, you can see the trail going up the hill. And I buried it there without anybody knowing it. I put it into two Ziploc baggies and got down on my hands and knees and dug a little hole beside the tree and buried it, covered it up and carved an X on the tree with my knife.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Months into the investigation, Johnny and most of the other boys were subpoenaed. The prosecutor was looking for that camera.

[Johnny Mast]

I was confused and very, very angry.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Johnny had a choice. Turn in the camera or go to prison.

[Johnny Mast]

And I knew he would get convicted no matter whether I cooperated with the government attorneys or not. So I was like, it's damned if I do and damned if I don't. He's going to prison no matter what.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Johnny decided to save himself. He went back to the woods, dug up the camera and turned it over.

[Johnny Mast]

Lee the Justice Department making it clear that in the Amish community, a man's hair and beard are sacred, and any effort to forcibly shave or cut that hair in their eyes is elevated to the level of a hate crime.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

15 men and women from the Burghholz community were convicted and sentenced to up to seven years in prison. But the most severe sentence was doled out to Sam Mullet. Sam was sentenced to 15 years and carted off to a federal prison in Texarkana, Texas. On a humid fall afternoon, two shirtless guys are on the roof of Johnny's new house. It's about two hours from Burghol's. The guys are yelling to each other in Pennsylvania Dutch, or as Johnny calls it, Amish.

[Johnny Mast]

Remind me of their name, Aidan. And I'm my brother Vern. He's up on the scaffold.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Almost all of Johnny's brothers have left Bergholz. Cousin Aiden left just two months ago and now they're rebuilding their lives. Johnny lives here with his girlfriend Clara. She also left her Amish community. The three of us climb into Johnny's truck. We make the two hour drive to Bergholz.

[Johnny Mast]

We're out where it's very rolling and there's.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

We pull off the highway and drive through a small town, across a shallow river and up winding hills.

[Johnny Mast]

Even just driving around, just driving on the roads, you know, there's a lot of good memories of basically driving up and down the road with our horses, you know, racing our horses on the road and a lot of stuff like that, you know, we used to have it up absolute blast.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The road gets narrower as we pull into town. The pavement is etched with tracks of thin buggy wheels.

[Johnny Mast]

I'm going to stretch my legs just a little bit.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

We step out of the truck onto the side of a road in burgh holes.

[Johnny Mast]

I don't know why they got all those stickers on the trees. Oh, that's my cousin Eli. Well, he's not even gonna wave at me.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So what did you have in?

[Johnny Mast]

My cousin Eli just went by his horse and buggy and I waved and he kind of gave me a dirty look and kept going. So take that as not a welcome.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

We get back into the car and drive towards Sam's house.

[Johnny Mast]

Working horses. That's actually a.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

We pass wooden barns, the bulk food store, a rusted over cement mixer that the people of Bergholz refashioned into sort of an incinerator where they burn garbage. City trash collection doesn't come out here. We pull up to a sprawling white farmhouse.

[Johnny Mast]

Sam's house is here on the right.

[Clara]

Is that where you guys used to live?

[Johnny Mast]

That's where we used to live. Up there, yeah.

[Clara]

Oh my God.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Women peek out from behind the window shades watching us.

[Johnny Mast]

We'll just sneak on out again.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Only the kids wave and smile back. We keep driving past white houses with green roofing, laundry lines with white socks and sheets drying under the sun. I asked Johnny if he was ever scared riding his buggy on these roads,

[Johnny Mast]

on a main road like this. Yeah, it's scary for me.

[Clara]

I mean, wouldn't you say, though, that it's more scary now that you're actually not Amish anymore and you see how dangerous it is? Like, when you're Amish, you don't really think about it that much because it's just the way you've always done it. You don't really think about it being scary because you just drive a horse and buggy.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Clara's dad gave her a buggy ride a couple of weeks ago and she was terrified.

[Clara]

The buggy just seems so weak, like it could just fall apart or like he was just going down the road and it just. I don't know, I was scared. I was like, oh, my gosh, I couldn't even do this anymore.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Clara can't imagine putting her kids in a buggy these days. It just seems so dangerous.

[Clara]

It's crazy. The point of view that you get after not being Amish, how much it changes and how much you.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Johnny's changed so much since he left Burgholz when he was 23. He went back to school for his GED and graduated in just six months, which is remarkable because he tested in with a third grade reading level. He has very cute little daughters and a partner who asks him tough questions, throws parties, and buys him mini cupcakes from Walmart every Valentine's Day.

[Clara]

Normally, I'll just get him a whole big box and he'll eat it all in one night just for help. I'll get it for him.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But things are the same in Burgholz. Even though Sam is in prison, Johnny says he's still in charge from behind bars. He has new loyal men he's appointed as his liaisons. And apparently Sam asked for another mass confessional. This time, he demanded people send their lists to him in prison, mail their sins to Sam in prison.

[Johnny Mast]

Everybody in the whole community had to do it again. Again, Again. Everybody.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And Sam is still in prison, though.

[Johnny Mast]

Sam is still in prison, but he's still in charge. He's still in charge. He's always been.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And last spring, cousin Aiden said Levi Miller was cooped up again. What do you mean, cooped up?

[Johnny Mast]

Cooped up. They had him out in a shack in the woods. It's back to the same thing.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And back in the chicken coop, Levi was doing this weird thing, like he was trying to send a message to Sam.

[Johnny Mast]

He's sitting there making these circles they keep telling him to write his sins down. They ring him a paper and a pen and he sits there and just makes big circles on his paper. He doesn't do it to write anything on the paper. He just sits there and makes circles. I would bet money to what he's doing. He's basically telling Sam, you're just going around in circles and circles. You're basically going around in a circle and you're back to where you were seven years ago. You're going to make a full circle again.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Now we're back in the beginning in this approval trap.

[Johnny Mast]

Been there, done that, and didn't like it. Approval makes you do stuff you wish you wouldn't have done. Like I said earlier, I'd always, I always wanted to have my grandfather's, you know, approval. So when I finally had it, I ended up doing stuff that I regret.

[Earlonne Woods]

Today, Johnny lives about 70 miles outside Bergholz in a small Ohio town where he shoes horses. His hair is short. Read more about the Burgholz community in the books Breakaway Amish, by Johnny Mast and Sean Smucker and Renegade Amish by Don Crabill. Special thanks to David Lucher and the folks at WYSU in Youngstown, Ohio, for letting us use their studio. And last we heard, Levi was no longer cooped up. The original score for that story was by Renzo Goriot. It was produced by Shayna Shealy. Now it's about that time, but do you know where more snap judgment awaits? Wherever you get your podcast, that's where. See, I just met a guy that listened to Snap the entire way from York City to la, then turned right back around and made the return trip. Not because he had someplace to be, but because he loved the podcast so much. Snapjudgment.org Snap was brought to you by the team that never, ever cuts their hair. Give it up for Rapunzel himself, the uber producer Mark Ristich Mountain man Pat Mesiti Miller, Anna Mountain Lady Sussman, Nancy Lopez shoots pool, Liz Mack shoots baskets, Adeza Egan shoots the messenger, Eliza Too Far Smith Tail Too tall to cut, Leo Morimoto can't wait, Zagoro can. Shayna Shealing knows the score and Jasmine Aguilera has thoughts on Team Snap. The union represented producers, artists, editors and engineers are members of the national association of Broadcast Employees, Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL CIO Local 51. Even though this is not the news, no waste this news. In fact, you could be in the back of the trailer divvying up your money only to realize this ain't money. This wad of cash is just old newspapers cutting the triangles, even while you hear the motorcycles roaring away in the distance. And you would still still not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is prx.