Original subtitles

I want to tell you

about a book that kept me awake for two nights this week

as I read it.

It's one of those you-can't-put-down books.

It was a journey of horror,

of sadism, and perversion.

A story of brutality and death.

It is the story of a woman who wrestled with the Devil...

and won.

Joining me now from Victoria is Michelle Smith,

a one-time victim of abuse by a Satanic cult,

and Dr. Lawrence Pazder,

the psychiatrist

who helped her come to terms with that nightmare.

They are co-authors of the book Michelle Remembers.

The book is called Michelle Remembers.

The authors are Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder, M.D.,

who, acting as a psychiatrist,

extracted from her

bizarre childhood memories of Satan...

which have shocked many people.

Michelle Smith created a sensation

with her story of abuse at the hands of a Satanic cult.

This was the first publicized account

of such rituals.

Now, you've mentioned evidence

which proves some of the early things

you feel that happened to her

as a small child in Victoria, B.C..

I have to say that the evidence is clear

that this came from an experience

that Michelle had.

Michelle, can I ask you

what it was that, after four years of therapy

and this deep state of consciousness,

that came out of your mind?

Uh, basically, what I remembered

was a 14-month period of my life at age five,

where I was given to a group of people,

whom, at first, I wasn't aware of what they were doing

other than, to a child,

they were adults doing things I couldn't understand,

and it frightened me.

They would put me in cages,

they would sacrifice animals,

they would have a lot of candles,

and chanting,

and bizarre things I had never seen.

Eating feces, and orgies, and-- and, um...

dismembering fetuses--

these were things that you experienced?

That's right.

Now, when you say something like that,

that's alarming-- I mean,

people get terrified by this sort of thing.

I mean, are they rightfully terrified?

I think that, today,

that it's very, very wise

to take a good, hard look

at where you place your children,

into whose care you place your child.

I have been interested

in the "Satanic Panic" for years--

I researched it for years...

...and once I read Michelle Remembers,

I could not get it out of my head.

I did a five-part series on Michelle Remembers.

To me, it was important

to present a discussion about it to people,

because this book

has helped shape the world we now live in,

and whose contents we have to have some understanding of

if we're going to know how we got here, so...

I think of Michelle Remembers

as the "Patient Zero" of the Satanic Panic.

The book begins

when Michelle is in the hospital following a miscarriage,

and Dr. Pazder comes--

because he, in the past, has worked as her therapist--

and she tells him about a dream

where there's an itchy spot on her hand.

She scratches it, and then...

countless tiny spiders come surging forth,

and she's extremely upset by this dream,

and so he decides, based on this,

that it's time for them to return to therapy.

What went on in your childhood

that you discovered?

What, basically, I began to remember

was a series of events that stretched out

over about a 14-month period in my life.

Was this through hypnosis, Doctor, or--?

Actually, it's beyond hypnosis.

It's a method that Michelle had devised

to go deep into her depths.

How had you devised this technique

yourself, Michelle?

It just came about

in the atmosphere of Dr. Pazder saying to me,

"Just go where you have to go. I'll be there with you."

I could then shut my eyes,

and through breathing very deeply,

go way down inside.

It felt very much like falling over backwards into the dark...

and that's where I began to find the memories.

Side "A"-- November 1976.

The first thing I remembered

was a night when a group of people

were gathered to do...

I didn't know what.

They were doing dances

that were not like the dances I was used to.

They had the walls draped in black.

They had set up candles.

My mother was present...

but not in the ceremony, not in the ritual,

she wasn't involved in that.

Her position seemed to be one of giving me to this group.

They were dedicated

to doing a lot of seriously...

frightening kind of things,

and they sacrificed animals,

and they used fetuses of babies in their ceremonies.

No! No! No!

No!

Incredible story.

Tell me about Michelle

and what, in fact, you believe

happened to her as a small child.

Well, I have to back up a little bit.

I knew Michelle very well through four years of therapy,

uh, intensive therapy,

and there was no evidence

of any of this kind of material present,

but I knew her personality and everything.

When she came to me a year after it had been discontinued,

and went into a very deep level of consciousness

and began to relive, essentially--

to see, to hear, to feel, and to tell me in detail--

these events, for 14 months,

of what happened to her as a child,

it was very difficult for me to...

decide where it was coming from.

Victoria was very small in the 1950s.

I mean, the population was 70,000--

that's it.

It was safe.

It was quiet.

Tertia's the oldest,

and then Michelle is the middle child,

and I came along five years later.

Tertia was pretty.

Michelle was kind of a fuddy-duddy.

I was gorgeous.

No, I'm just joking!

But Michelle and I were always getting into trouble.

I think that's because we had such an up-and-down childhood.

My mom, she didn't have an easy life,

raising three girls on her own.

I mean, Dad was in and out.

You know, he was an alcoholic,

and he had a gambling problem, so...

When you have a husband that's an alcoholic,

you don't have friends.

You just don't.

So Mom spent a very lonely life.

My sisters talk about it now, and it's-- they always say,

"Well, she always-- she would drink,"

and I said...

"You know, if I had three young girls,

and I sat down in the evening and had a cold beer,"

you know, "I wouldn't classify that as drinking," you know?

She just, she had a lot on her plate.

We moved eight or nine times in ten years

because of Dad.

Dad was quite violent.

And it always happened Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving.

We would all end up at a hotel somewhere

because the police would have to come and take us,

because Dad would start to...

terrorize and destroy the house,

and beat my mom up.

That was my childhood. Right?

You know, I just assumed that's what everybody did--

got drunk and had fights.

I don't know.

Larry liked the limelight.

You know, everybody liked him

and he liked being liked...

and Michelle wasn't like that.

Michelle is like a Puritan, you know?

No off-colour jokes, and...

not really any swearing,

and no alcohol.

But Michelle is

a caring,

loving,

gentle person

who cares about the whole world.

I worked with them for about a year and a half,

and I only did it because I love typing.

Larry had recorded everything that Michelle said

in her reliving process.

He took his reel-to-reels,

put it all on onto cassettes,

and I went through the whole 14 months

from the beginning to the end,

and filled in as much missing words and sounds

as I could.

And so, what Larry did was he clipped out, you know,

excerpts of the typing,

and he would put that,

and then put his own writing underneath it,

and then he'd give it to me, and I'd type it all and--

and send it off to the publisher.

To be 100% honest with you,

I listened to all the tapes

and I believe that something happened to Michelle.

There isn't much doubt in my mind.

Something definitely happened to her, and...

I do believe

it was a group of Satanists,

and they had her for those 14 months.

As they get deeper

into these memories of Satanic ritual abuse...

Michelle learns that her mother

is not merely dabbling in this social scene.

She gave Michelle to the Satanists

because she is a Satanist.

She belongs to these people.

And essentially,

the bulk of Michelle Remembers

is long descriptions

of a young child being mercilessly tortured.

Dr. Pazder and Michelle

were spending more and more time together.

The sessions are getting up to six hours long.

It's becoming both of their worlds,

and yet, surprisingly,

each of them is going home to a spouse each night--

Michelle to her husband, Doug,

and Dr. Pazder to his wife, Marylyn.

I met Larry at Michelle's wedding

when she was getting married to Doug Smith.

She loved Doug.

They were happy, you know?

He was a kind, kind person.

Michelle had a huge imagination.

She always created things-- she was very creative.

So, she had made her wedding dress

and she had made her husband's suit.

But the wedding-- I remember Larry coming in,

and, uh, I thought it was odd...

that a psychiatrist

would show up at a wedding of-of-- of a patient,

but there must have been a connection

between Michelle and him.

Well, I was married to Larry Pazder.

We met when I was 13 and he was 17,

and we married in 1961,

when he graduated from medicine

and I had graduated from nursing.

Well, he was always lots of fun,

and always very happy and cheerful,

and very charming.

My mom said,

"he could charm the birds right out of the trees,"

and he collected friends like a dog collected fleas.

My dad was really religious

and we went to church every Sunday.

He was very much, like,

"The Catholic Church is the only church,"

but with my dad, like...

I was his princess, basically-- "Daddy's little girl".

So I was always really, really tight with my dad.

Like, I knew he was a psychiatrist,

and I think

that's one of the reasons why I really looked up to him

because, like, a psychiatrist was sort of seen

as somebody that was kind of all-knowing

and expert in human behaviour kind of thing.

You're a conventional medical psychiatrist.

Absolutely.

How would you describe what was done...

mentally and physically?

It was a very carefully organized assault on Michelle,

on a physical, emotional, intellectual,

and finally, on a spiritual level.

Very organized.

-Very sophisticated. -Who were these people?

Well, they're a secret organization.

They're a secret society.

Uh, a secret society does not reveal

the identity of the people or the ways of their practices.

I was familiar with this type of society firsthand

in Africa--

practicing general medicine there--

and if one of the members of that society

revealed who he was,

he was killed instantly.

Larry had the camera when we were in Nigeria--

for taking 16-millimetre.

He liked to record things

and he had all the latest photographic equipment,

recording equipment-- everything like that.

He loved doing that.

Larry was a character,

and he told these stories of Africa.

And he had some run-ins with nuns down there.

Nuns kept telling him that he was evil,

and he was full of voodoo, and he should leave.

There were strange things there.

It was a completely different culture.

Very, very different.

He did take some pictures of this group dancing around...

and it was like as if they were in a possession state.

He went in there and took those pictures

of two big wooden masks...

and he really liked that sort of thing.

He seemed to be very fascinated with it

and just kind of drawn to that.

Well, I had worked in Africa

and done a lot of work in transcultural psychiatry,

so I was familiar with cults,

and the degree of sophistication and organization

that these people were using on Michelle

told me that they were a serious cult, indeed.

But they believe in the other God--

-the Devil, right? -The Devil.

They worship the Devil

to bring down anything good that they know about.

How do they do this, Michelle, what rituals--?

Does the Devil appear? Is that the idea?

Well, that is one of their intents, of course,

is to summon a presence.

And you quote

that the Devil always talks in rhyme?

This is historically a fact

that was brought out to us

by the priest who we had to call in

to help us understand what we were experiencing.

"But I'll be back-- you wait and see.

I'll be back to take the world for me."

You heard this, Michelle?

Yes. It was serious.

Father Guy said

that Michelle could never know

the symbology...

of what she was saying.

Like, mostly, when Satan comes out of the fire

and he speaks in rhymes.

Father Guy was the priest

at the Catholic Church that Larry and Michelle went to,

and so he helped Michelle to understand

what she's seeing and-- and what's happening

in that reliving process.

"Michelle is saved

by the timely intervention of the Virgin Mary."

What was that referring to?

I was literally being frightened to death.

At that moment, when I think I was dying,

a very soft white light came and enveloped me,

much like the feeling of being padded with cotton batting,

and out of that, a woman came and stood beside me,

and took a hold of my hand,

identified herself as "Ma Mère",

and basically told me to hang on,

to help me understand the situation I was in,

and how to get through it.

-"Ma Mère"? -Ma Mère.

-The Virgin Mary? -That's right.

Mother Mary--

they referred to her as "Ma Mère"--

visited Michelle

and talked to her in French.

She helped to keep her going.

Father Guy...

felt concerned about it enough

that he took Larry and Michelle over to his bishop,

which was Bishop Remi De Roo at the time, and...

Bishop Remi De Roo decided

that her memories had enough import

that they needed to go to Rome and tell the Pope this...

and so they did!

Larry and Michelle and Bishop Remi De Roo

went there,

and they did get to see the Pope...

...and they did tell him Michelle's memories.

It sounds like Dante's Inferno--

hundreds of mutilated corpses.

-Now, you saw this? -Mm-hmm.

Now, you've placed this in the hands

-of the Catholic Church? -That's right.

The entire tapes were transcribed

with a great deal of time and effort.

There's some million and a half words,

and these are presently in the hands of the Church

for their study.

And so, the Vatican

still has some pronouncements to make upon this?

-Very much so. -Yes.

...And they're taking it very seriously.

It was October, in 1980...

as soon as the book came out,

Larry and Michelle started this big publicity tour.

She was traveling all over the place

for this whole book tour.

We didn't think it would really get

as-- as big as it did,

but then it just--

I don't know how it did, it just blew up.

I had a ton of articles from all the papers

and everywhere that they went.

Michelle and Larry were famous.

They were famous. Everybody was talking about it.

I mean, in the newspapers in San Francisco and Houston.

She was in Seattle, Dallas, and New York.

She was everywhere.

I mean, they just went right across the whole country,

and when they were on the book tours,

they stayed in all these really fancy hotels.

They had limousines.

And I lived in San Francisco

and they came down on one of her many book tours,

and I mean, we had fun, we had some wonderful dinners...

...and they wined and dined whoever they were with.

I know they got $245,000 U.S. advance for the book.

And I know it was translated

into a bunch of languages other than just English,

so I know the book must've sold a lot of copies.

The book's already a big bestseller!

Who wrote it? You wrote it?

-We wrote it together. -We wrote it together.

But at that time, I had to have surgery,

and so I had just come out of surgery,

and I was lying there and I was really groggy,

and I looked up at the TV,

and all of sudden, there was my sister,

and I was like, "Oh, my God."

I, Michelle Smith,

was turned over by my mother at the age of five

to a group of practicing Satanists...

who, for the next year,

held me captive and abused me

both mentally and physically

as part of a demonic ritual called the "Feast of the Beast".

After my ordeal,

I lived normally and happily until 1976,

when a strange sense of unease

led me to seek psychiatric help.

All the terrifying memories that were buried for so long

began to surface

and were recorded by my doctor, Lawrence Pazder,

and Dr. Pazder and I have told my story

in a book called Michelle Remembers.

At first, I thought I was imagining it--

I was hallucinating, I thought I was, like,

"Man, that morphine must be really good."

When you relive these things,

was this just in your head, the reliving?

No, this took place--

Oh, the reliving itself?

Yes. This, took-- This was in my head.

It was just too strange...

and she told the whole story.

So who's the person that was turned over to a Satanic cult

and had written a book?

The votes are all in--

now, we're gonna find out which of these ladies,

in fact, did survive this, uh, demonic, uh, uh...

possession, and we're gonna-- who better to pick her out

than the co-author of her book, Dr. Lawrence Pazder?

Doctor, come down and pick out Michelle,

if you would, please.

And of course, she stood up,

and I was like, "I can't believe this."

I think I called her and I said,

"I can't believe I just saw you on TV."

Can you squeeze in there?

-Are you comfortable? -Yes, indeed.

Um, Doctor, before we go on,

I'd like to ask, is there any misinformation that emerged

from this particular, uh, spot that you'd like to clear up?

Well, one of the important things

is the, uh, journey to the Vatican

was to bring the information

Michelle had seen some special presences--

Ma Mère, who is thought to be the mother of God.

The book came out in 1980,

and I heard about it almost immediately

because I was the first Wiccan priest

in law enforcement.

It was a very, very popular book--

it still is, in some circles--

and she's all over North America

in years following the publishing of that book--

in front of police audiences,

in front of church audiences,

in front of community audiences...

and they're both being seen as an expert.

I knew that it needed to be shared.

It's the average person that, with this kind of information,

maybe we can make some wiser decisions

about the kinds of things that go on.

Maybe we won't get so easily pulled into cults.

She was everywhere.

They were plugging everything.

That's what they did for... at least two years.

And he was all of a sudden being asked to come and talk

because, apparently, now he was the guru of...

being able to decipher when a child has been abused.

So that's when they started the speaking tours

for the psychiatric conventions.

In 1981,

there was an American Psychiatric Association

annual meeting,

and Pazder talked about

the content of Michelle Remembers,

and he started generalizing that there was this phenomenon,

you know, beyond that particular story--

that there was a phenomenon called "Satanic ritual abuse."

"Satanic ritual abuse"

was a theory that people took as a fact,

that there's a Satanic conspiracy

and there are children who are kidnapped or stolen,

and sacrificed.

Children are involved

in graveyards and crematoriums,

in funeral parlours

because one of the primary focuses

of these people is death.

Everything is attempted to be destroyed and killed

in that child, and in society,

everything of goodness.

I'm Gordon Coulter.

For many years,

I served as a law enforcement officer.

Today, it's my privilege to host this program

on a little-known area in law enforcement.

It's the area of Satanic cults.

People would come in and they'd be paid

to give these seminars to the police,

or particularly the mental health professions.

There were just all kinds of seminars,

and, you know, the problem was

that you could get credits for these

and they'd get their little certificate.

Now they know all about Satanic ritual abuse.

A few months ago,

Chicago played host to a conference

featuring ritual abuse.

One thing that's super-important to remember,

I think the field is forgetting,

is these people come from cults.

Like-minded social workers

and therapists eagerly noted

the latest on the Satanic threat.

Police are also being taught how to "spot Satan".

I, um, do lectures throughout the country.

In fact, I was in Canada.

Did a presentation, uh,

for about 150 multi-agency personnel up there.

We called them "Cops for Christ"--

people who had their own agenda,

and they created these seminars and these materials

and presented as actual, uh, scientific, confirmed fact.

There was an enormous amount of time spent

dragging police into conferences

to be taught how to investigate this stuff.

All of that can be directly traced back

to the Pazders' book... and others, you know?

That's what fuelled that.

That's what made that happen.

Pazder said that it was very widespread,

and he pretty much validated that claim--

that Satanic ritual abuse is a real concern. You know?

People panic over this stuff.

Michelle and Larry were always talking all the time

of Victoria, in the church,

explaining Satanic cults...

and that's when someone said

that the child was gonna be stolen from the hospital,

and it caused major havoc!

We stepped up our extra security staff itself,

and we've taken other certain precautions

within the hospital that I can't discuss.

It was in the paper

that Satanists

were going to take a baby from the nursery.

People were really alarmed.

They were really upset.

The patrol guards seem to be

wandering around the halls constantly.

I've been up at times during the night and seen them.

Dr. Lawrence Pazder,

who works out of this Victoria medical building,

expressed concern the Satanists' threat

hadn't been checked thoroughly enough,

and denied any connection between it and his book,

the bestseller, Michelle Remembers.

People got caught up in it.

It was like a snowball, you know?

The more interest it got, the bigger it got,

and it was just... it was a hot topic.

Up until 1983,

I was not aware of any of these cases...

and then it just began to grow

and grow and grow,

and I kept hearing about more and more of these cases.

I'd say, "Man, this is some weird stuff.

This is--

This is some really serious, heavy-duty stuff here."

I didn't know what to call it!

I didn't say, "Wow! That's Satanic ritual abuse."

I just heard people

start to refer to these kinds of cases

as "Satanic ritual abuse..."

and it touched a nerve.

"Satanic! Oh!" Those--

"I knew those people were involved in all this stuff!"

And ritual? "Oh, yeah, what's that?

That sounds sinister and evil!"

And in Quantico, Virginia,

Special Agent Kenneth Lanning of the FBI...

I became an FBI agent in 1970,

and I was a regular FBI agent for ten years.

Eventually, I was assigned

to the FBI Behavioral Science Unit,

and I became the Bureau's expert on Satanism,

the occult, cults-- the whole package.

Special Agent Lanning,

I'm going to ask you to deal first with the belief,

which is quite widespread out there now,

that there are just too many people

telling too many stories that all sound the same

for this not to be true.

Well, it's very interesting that that argument--

the fact that there's so many people

telling the same story, so often...

As I began to respond to these cases,

I started out with an open mind,

and I kinda thought that this had to be going on,

because why would these people be saying that

if it didn't happen?

Pretty soon, somebody mentions Dr. Pazder

and the book, Michelle Remembers ,

so I start to hear them getting involved...

and the number of cases

that they were consulting on in this area

just began to grow...

...and then somebody called me up and told me

about the McMartin daycare case.

The McMartin case

was one of these preschool-type of cases,

the daycare cases,

and all of these kids were making--

you know, ended up making these accusations

about things that supposedly happened

at a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California.

41 youngsters over a six-year period

had not just been sexually molested,

but had also been forced

to participate in Satanic rites.

There were also charges that, to keep the children quiet,

animals had been mutilated before their eyes.

They're remembering being abused

and Satanic rituals.

They're remembering

having to... kill animals and breed babies,

and kill those babies,

and drink blood,

and all kinds of pretty wild and bizarre things.

The defendants faced more than 300 counts

of sodomy, rape, and oral copulation.

The evidence of abuse was largely developed

by social worker Kee MacFarlane,

who used puppets to get the children--

who were between the ages of two and six--

to reveal what had happened.

"Children's Institute International,"

which was a group that was involved

in trying to get disclosures from children

from the McMartin daycare case...

decided to bring down Lawrence and Michelle

as "consultants"

to-- to assist in the process.

So they were directly involved in getting these disclosures

and "recovering" memories.

Michelle Smith, what are the goals of these cults?

They want to possess the soul of the child.

It's not just they want to capture them physically, um,

but they want to have the child theirs.

And these are people whose families

are either involved in these cults

or who, because of you, because of some connection,

fell into their hands?

Or through such, um, vehicles as daycare centers,

where the chil-- they have access to the child.

They went down to the States

for the McMartin trial...

and I know Michelle spent a lot of time with the kids

because that's what she would talk to me about,

was the kids, and how she related to the kids,

and helped the kids remembering, reliving...

what had happened to them.

The mother of two children,

who admitted that they were severely abused

while at the McMartin school,

agreed to talk to us on camera.

What actually happened to your two children?

They were tied up, sodomized,

um, they were taken off the premises.

They were threatened...

by watching animals being slaughtered.

Uh, they were sold for prostitution.

People wanted to validate

what children were saying,

and the problem is,

if you can't believe everything that the child says,

what can you believe?

How do you decide what happened and what didn't happen,

what might have happened?

Maybe the child misremembered it.

Maybe it's distorted.

Maybe the child didn't understand.

But I would estimate that, as time went on,

during that time,

from '83 to maybe the late '80s,

I consulted on hundreds and hundreds of these cases.

How alarmist would you be

about how we should be dealing with this problem

and how widespread it is?

It's widespread.

It's a-- It's across North America.

We've had reports of it in-- in every province

and in every state.

It isn't, uh, just in California or just on the West Coast here.

As the daycare cases erupted,

which started in about '83, '84...

there were police

who were investigating these cases,

and prosecutors who were deciding to take them to trial,

who were using Michelle Remembers

as a kind of a checklist to develop cases...

which meant that they would try to come up with questions

based on what had happened to Michelle

to ask the children.

Michelle Remembers actually led to this panic

over children being endangered.

People panic over this stuff.

They panic

because they think that this is the end of the world.

It's known as the "Satanic Panic"

from the 1980s and '90s,

and this stuff just spreads like wildfire!

And, as an FBI agent,

I could step back,

and see cases from all over the United States

and, eventually,

all over the Western industrialized world.

Police officers all over North America

went out looking for this stuff

and prosecuted people.

The Satanic Panic was picking up steam

and it started to spread out and affect more people.

It just... went viral.

And all of this was started by this book.

Victoria was a great city.

Growing up here was so much fun.

It was happy.

It was... it was fabulous.

I was really lucky.

You know, my dad had a great sense of humour.

He also had, like, a bit of a twinkle in his eye,

and sometimes, at Christmas,

all the family would come over,

and there's a ukulele.

My dad would play and my mom would sing and...

they were just so happy, singing along together.

Those were good memories...

...but that was before the book.

Before he started on this book...

I was at home,

and I was sitting there, watching that show--

Sybil , was on TV.

Sybil...

Oh...

please don't touch me.

It hurts.

Sybil is about a woman who goes into therapy,

and she ends up in extreme therapy,

like, five times a week,

and she gradually remembers

really horrific, sadistic sexual abuse and torture

by her mother.

The book came out in 1973,

and it was just, like, this instant wild success,

and then it was made into a made-for-TV movie in 1976,

and I think about, like,

one-fifth of the American population watched that.

He said, "I want to do the same thing,"

and he said, "I don't want to be just an ordinary psychiatrist.

I want to be famous,"

and he said, "I've got a patient just like that,"

and that's when he phoned her and gave her the phone number,

and that's when it started.

It just took off from there.

The phone started ringing in our house constantly,

and it was usually really late at night.

You know, to have a patient calling all the time

was just unusual.

No patient had ever called before.

When she got the phone number,

she didn't stop phoning.

She'd phone several times a day.

When he came in the door, I would watch the clock...

and sometimes, it would get to maybe about

two minutes, three minutes,

and then the phone would ring.

And so I thought,

if we went to Mexico for Christmas,

that he'd be able to distance himself

in a more realistic way,

but she just phoned and phoned

and phoned and phoned and phoned,

and he did believe her.

There's no two ways about it.

He believed everything.

The big change was that trip,

and when they came back, I mean, all hell broke loose.

Michelle was, like, showing up at all these different things

behind us, and following us and...

it was frightening.

We went to Edmonton to a wedding

and she followed us all the way,

and I cried all the way,

because there she was, right behind us.

His patient was everywhere.

We thought this was the story

that she used to get his full attention.

It had him wrapped around her finger.

No question.

You know, she was always there,

always reaching into our house with the phone,

showing up at the doorstep.

That was the Michelle we knew before the book.

To us, she was like... this stalker.

Although, I think he saw her differently than we did.

Definitely.

I felt that she was...

deeply in love with him.

She was very protective of him,

and, you know...

all of us that-- that did the typing,

we all felt the same way,

that she just wanted Larry to herself.

Essentially, this has become a relationship where...

the boundaries

that exist between doctor and patient

are no longer there,

and Dr. Pazder and Michelle are first holding hands.

He's then sometimes placing a hand on top of her head,

and gradually they move from the couch

to a rubber mat he has on the floor

so that they can both lie on the floor together,

their bodies touching,

and according to this book,

this is "very necessary" for the therapeutic experience.

She's experiencing so much pain,

she's in so much distress,

that she needs to be held

in order to continue remembering.

You know, around that time,

my dad started sort of disappearing quite a bit,

and we didn't know where he was...

...and my mom didn't know where he was.

I didn't...

I just knew all these weird things were going on, and, uh...

he was making a lot of effort to keep it secret.

So I started asking around,

and I found out Father Guy was involved with it.

Larry had all tape recorders and all kinds of equipment,

so I phoned and recorded Father Guy.

Father Guy said

many people are going to be killed,

and many people are going to be saved, and...

you know, there was something wrong up there.

And Father Guy told me

that they were gonna make a million dollars from the book

and there was a lot of money involved.

So we went to see the Bishop Remi De Roo,

and said, you know, "Stop supporting this."

But I didn't realize he went to Rome with him.

I didn't realize that he was so mixed up in it

until the book came out,

but they obviously were all believing all of this.

They were all for it...

but I can't understand why anybody would believe it.

I don't know why these people would follow such a stupid book.

One of the first things that came out

after the book came out

was the article in People Magazine,

and there she is, lying on this couch,

and she's got her top off and...

Why would you give that picture in the first place

to a-- to a magazine?

Like, you've got a wife back home.

You're really gonna get shit for this.

That was heartbreaking,

to think that he would do that, you know?

So I realized that there was no hope.

For me, that's... that's where his...

affection was.

Michelle was still married to Doug.

He had a good job.

You know, Michelle got to stay home

and do what she wanted to do.

But they had a really hard divorce.

Michelle wanted everything her way

and he did not see it coming at all.

When that book came out,

it was really rotten,

and it was so hurtful to see my mom at that time.

She was in bed

and she was, like, destroyed.

My dad was her first boyfriend.

They had just been together, like, her whole life,

that's the only person she knew.

He definitely, like...

he broke her heart.

And yeah, no, he wasn't the same with me at all.

He wasn't friendly.

He wasn't joking.

He kind of didn't have that same look.

There wasn't that twinkle.

There's just a lot of sadness.

I got so upset

that I just went down and filed for a divorce.

I said forget it.

Forget it.

No way.

Now, Michelle Smith,

you survived a year of abuse by one of these cults

when you were five years old.

When you first talked about these things,

I mean, did people think this was a fantasy,

that y-you'd made this all up, it was such hocus-pocus,

that it couldn't possibly have happened?

Well, I was one of the first to stand up

and start to recount these kinds of things

and to bring it, um... publicly,

and I think people are so uncomfortable

and so afraid of this whole subject

that, yes, I experienced a lot of the uncomfortableness,

but what I also experienced

was a tremendous number of people saying,

"this is true."

I'm a cynical person

who spent 30 years in law enforcement.

I assume that people are lying unless I know otherwise,

but a lot of therapists have an opposite bias.

They assume that everybody's telling the truth,

unless they know otherwise,

and actually, this becomes a huge aspect

to these allegations of Satanic ritual abuse,

particularly with what's called the adult survivors,

and that's what Michelle would be.

The things in the adult survivor cases--

the stuff was even more weird

than it was in the younger kids

at the daycare centres.

Bonnie, you were made pregnant when you were 11 years old?

Yes. That child was sacrificed within the cult

when she was about six months old.

S-- Sacrificed how?

By being stabbed,

and I was coerced into doing the act myself,

with my own child.

Uh, the police never found out about this?

The groups are extremely careful to cover up all evidence

through using crematoriums and things like that.

At least that's how I understand it.

"Adult survivors"

are where you have an adult

who goes into therapy

without any memories of horrific abuse

and comes out

with all of these allegedly repressed and recovered

trauma memories.

That was some kind of altogether...

different thing.

This wasn't just a little kid and a fantasy.

And you would have patients

who had essentially the Michelle experience,

where suddenly, you were logging enough hours

on the couch, "in the depths,"

to qualify as a full-time job,

and where a doctor who you trust...

...is telling you

if there is anything wrong with you,

it was a result of sexual abuse that you had forgotten,

and probably Satanic abuse,

because apparently, there's a lot of that,

and you can read about it in this book

that was a bestseller.

We have so many cases

that essentially are the fruit

of this tree that Michelle and Larry planted.

There are therapists all over the country today--

many of them that are not really qualified

to be therapists--

that are-are passing on these stories.

They were salesmen.

They were going around the country,

selling fear of Satan, fear of Satanic cults,

and they were-- they made a living out of it.

Her therapy-- 13 months of in-patient work

for misdiagnosed Satanic, ritualistic, everything...

her therapy, over $1,300,000 for her,

then they got both of her teenage daughters in.

One daughter went in

for 11 months of in-patient therapy.

I think it's very clear

that the therapists saw

the opportunity to make some money

off of these wild accusations and stories.

This wouldn't have happened

had it not been for the therapists

who compromised their ethics

and encouraged their patients

to elaborate further and further.

They cut us and made us sign our names in blood

in The Satanic Bible.

That was the first ritual that I remember.

I was informed that my parents were in the occult.

She claimed

that we had a pizza delivery boy come to our home.

We cut him up, grilled him, and ate him.

I said, "I know what you did.

You're the ringleader of this cult

that I know you murdered babies,

and I know you made me murder babies,

and eat babies,

and I know just what you are.

I know you for the Satanist that you are."

And Sally, most of these women

don't come forward until their mid-30s,

after five or seven years' worth of--

This is not a case in which someone has repressed memory.

This is a courageous woman who has--

I would run into adult survivors

on, like, The Sally Show ,

and so many different kinds of people--

including educated people--

believed that this was happening,

and if you didn't believe it, you were suspect--

I mean, at best, of not caring about children,

and at worst, that you are a Satanist.

Are you accusing me of being a Satanist? Yes or no?

You're acting like-- You're acting like one.

Say it. Yes or no?

I'm saying you're acting like a Satanist right now.

Some people suggested that what they thought

was causing Satanism was heavy-metal music,

and some of the people

who were trying to investigate this stuff,

they thought they were doing a good thing.

How often do you find

heavy-metal-music indicators

at the scene of a crime involving Satanic worship?

Probably about 35 to 40% of the calls.

-Regularly, then? -Yes.

At the same time, there was kind of a...

I guess you'd call it a rumour,

although it got picked up by the press

and it was taken as absolutely-- as fact, to the effect that--

that, you know,

thousands and thousands of children were missing.

Thousands.

You know, then, the next question is, well, why?

I mean, who's taking them?

Supposedly, the Satanists were taking the children.

I believe that they do.

I can't-- We can't prove that they do,

but as a law-enforcement officer,

I question two million children missing in the United States,

knowing that many, many of those are not runaways.

They were saying two million children

are sacrificed every year in the United States.

3.71 million children

were born every year in the States.

You're telling me that 54% of the children born

are all kidnapped and sacrificed?

Really? Like...

no evidence of that, folks.

The hard evidence is difficult to find,

because if a child is sacrificed,

that child's body isn't going to be left.

If it's an orthodox Satanic cult,

they're going to burn the body

and they're going to eat it during ceremony,

so they'll leave no evidence around.

The proof that we have had disappears.

W-What proof has disappeared, that we had?

Okay, a good example is I had, uh, baby wax.

What's "baby wax"?

Wax from a baby that was burned.

A baby that was burned

and the wax was made into a candle

of b-baby wax.

It's a very important thing in the cult.

They make candles out of babies?

It was part of the zeitgeist.

There was just a complete lack of skepticism.

I mean,

Michelle Remembers had something to do with that, right?

Because in Michelle Remembers, it's kind of,

"This is what's happening to the babies."

Within Michelle Remembers,

they use the term "Church of Satan"

to describe this...

cabal of vile, terrible people

doing these heinous criminal acts--

saying that we sacrifice animals,

that we sacrifice babies...

but the whole point of the Church of Satan--

what Anton LaVey founded in 1966--

was liberation

and embracing our strangeness, our uniqueness,

the things that make us different from each other.

This is a very selfish religion.

We believe in greed.

We believe in selfishness.

We believe in

all of the lustful thoughts that motivate man

because this is man's natural, uh, feeling.

This is based on what man naturally would do.

Anton LaVey blended

magic and science and rationality,

and a lot of people, especially in those early days,

found the Church of Satan uniquely liberating,

for one reason or another.

They found Satanism

to be a celebration of their differences.

It wasn't a tolerance.

It was a celebration.

And that's what Satanism is to us,

to a Satanist.

Are you planning on training a lot of little devils?

Only those that wish to become little devils.

-Are you married? -Oh, yes.

Do you have any little devils?

Oh, yes. I have two.

Are you gonna raise them as Satanic kids?

Certainly,

but not to go around chopping people up

or sacrificing human beings.

One of the things

that Anton LaVey was particularly miffed about

was how Michelle Remembers was marketed--

that it was supposedly a true story...

...but Michelle Remembers, obviously,

is so chock full

of things that Satanism very clearly isn't.

He said we are an established religion,

protected by the Constitution of the United States.

Here they were, using it,

as if we were some international criminal organization.

And that's why the Church of Satan

brought a defamation suit against them

in the court of law in 1981.

And subsequent printings of Michelle Remembers

did take out

most of the references to the Church of Satan.

Hail Satan.

Hail Satan.

I don't believe

that my mom is that type of person

that would turn her child over to a Satanic cult.

It was not part of my childhood when I was a kid.

I couldn't see my mom doing that.

I just couldn't...

As a mother,

your instinct is to protect your child...

but when I was 10 years old,

my mom was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma,

and so she died shortly after that.

When my mom passed away,

her wish was that she wanted to be cremated.

She wanted to have her ashes put in the crypt.

This is how important this church was to her.

It was important to Mom.

You know, her marriage was not great,

so she came here for support.

In the book,

Michelle said that my mother was this horrible person,

giving up her little girl to a Satanic cult...

But I don't understand why Michelle would even think that.

What is wrong with her?

Why did you think

that there were others

who would have been through this experience?

Because when I was in that experience,

I wasn't the only child.

So there had to be others,

and I knew this wasn't an isolated thing in--

in just Victoria.

I thought maybe there would be...

you know, unrealistic,

30, 60 people out there at the most,

not the hundreds...

It was in 1987,

and it was a conference in Richmond, Virginia,

where I met Dr. Pazder.

So we sat in this room

and Dr. Pazder was up at the podium

and Michelle was off to the side there.

One thing that really got me interested

is Dr. Pazder indicated

that he thought that most of the alleged cases

were a bunch of nonsense,

but he then said something

that I was just tremendously interested in.

"I'm gonna tell you how to identify the real cases."

So I said, "Man, this could be really valuable information,"

because I never was one of those people who believed

they were all true or they were all false.

There can be a middle ground in here.

He would start to describe these rituals

and began to talk about Michelle.

But cops tend to ask a lot of questions,

so the cops in the audience began to raise their hand--

"What about this?" "What about that?"

and-and I just kinda began to notice

that every time somebody asked a question,

Michelle never said a whole lot,

and he would always answer the question,

and after a while,

after this happened half a dozen times,

I just raised my hand, I said,

"I'm curious, when people ask-- this all happened to Michelle.

"How come she doesn't give the answer?

She turns to you."

He just said some version of--

I don't remember his exact words--

something like, "Well, when she first came to me,

she had no conscious memory of it,

and through this therapy,

this story began to come out over a year or more as time..."

and then he recorded it, wrote it all down,

and documented it,

and then after that...

it kind of-- most of it left her memory

and he was now the keeper of the story.

I decided that that greatly reduced the value

of what he was telling me,

so I put my pen down

and didn't take as many notes after that.

Every time she entered into a new area of working,

everything that she had said before

was totally consistent,

and then, when she had completed what she had done,

and was completely free of it...

it had a ring of truth to it, that I said, you know,

"This is not accountable from anything in the literature,

except from the fact

that she'd been through that experience."

There's no other way I can explain it.

During, I think, the lunch break,

somehow, it just came out--

although, he didn't try to hide it,

but it came out that Michelle was now his wife,

and that was another factor that caused me to think,

"Well, that's kind of an inappropriate," you know,

"doctor-patient kind of a thing.

How did that affect this story that he's now telling?"

I think Michelle loved Larry.

She worshipped him.

But him and Michelle were exact opposites,

and, uh...

I can't figure out why Larry married her.

I really can't. I-I...

You know, would it come from a--

from needing to protect her?

I know he felt a need to-to protect her

and look after her...

but marrying her is a whole different ball game.

We always thought

there was a reason why he had to marry her.

You know, he's a psychiatrist,

and he crossed the line with her.

And she had tied him into that lie so tightly

with that book,

that there was no getting out of it.

We're never told that a sexual relationship

begins between Michelle and the doctor

at any time during therapy,

but regardless of what you think

about what did or didn't happen

or what we're not being told,

I think you can take what they say

at face value in this regard

and still see a wildly unethical relationship.

After they got married,

everything stopped.

She just wanted a normal life.

I know that Oprah Winfrey called.

I was there at the house when I picked up the phone,

and... and, uh, Michelle says, "I don't want to talk to them."

You know, there are thousands of men and women

who are secretly worshipping the Devil.

The Devil!

If you'd like to join that audience on Thursday

when we discuss Satanism,

call now to reserve your seats.

The daily talk shows--

people, today, I don't think realize

how pervasive these opinions were.

Why, Doctor,

would you perform an exorcism

on a patient who came to you to seek psychological help?

Well, because the patient

who was referred to me by the State

was a Satanic ritual survivor.

At the time,

these talk shows would be several times a day,

and they were very well respected,

but they were all feeding on the Satanic Panic.

Explain to us what really did happen

over these 17 years.

They started a Satanic cult when I was five.

-Who did? -My parents.

They would either kill an animal,

sometimes they would kill a baby--

A baby? Where would they get babies?

Um...

sometimes, people in the cult would have them just for this--

...and then when it was...

...when it was dead,

then people in the group ate parts of it.

Dr. LaVey said, "I'd love

for somebody to call them on their bullshit,"

but they wouldn't do it,

because it wouldn't make good television.

In a nutshell, there was a lot of craziness.

It was a fearful time,

and the one big promotion of it,

the one really big promotion of it,

was Geraldo's three-hour program

about Satanic cult crime in the United States.

Of course, millions of people saw it.

Millions of those people who had preconceptions

believed it,

and it caused a lot of harm.

These women say

they speak from personal experience.

They claim to be breeders,

forced by covens to bear children.

Did you give birth to infants who were sacrificed?

My first two.

-Were sacrificed? -Were sacrificed.

I was told it was

the highest honour I could ever do as a woman

was to sacrifice my first two.

There's a part of me that wants to think

that these people are just flat-out nuts--

and some of them are, don't get me wrong!

And you look at this,

and you say, "Are these people...?"

It is most common

for the heart to be taken from the child...

and offered to Satan.

Today, a lot of people

think that the Satanic Panic was sort of a joke...

...but a lot of conditions were created during that time

for people to get more interested

in the idea that evil, bad things were going on,

and you know, one of those things

that you could really hang your hat on

was Satan.

And... it was dead serious.

The Essex County Prosecutor's Office says

26-year-old Margaret Kelly Michaels

is a manipulative, sadistic, child...

Preschool teacher Michaels

was convicted of molesting 19 children.

Molesting them in bizarre ways,

and in the middle

of this crowded New Jersey school

without any teacher or parent noticing anything.

I covered the Kelly Michaels' case

and I walked into that jail,

and it was so filthy,

and I interviewed her,

and it was terrible

to see this happen to a young woman,

because, you know, I felt like that could have been me.

I mean, I could've gone,

worked in a daycare centre when I was in my early 20s.

It was very vicious, what was done to her.

They say you inserted objects, including LEGO blocks,

forks, spoons, serrated knives

into their anuses, vaginas--

And a sword, that was in--

-...And a sword? -Yeah, yeah.

That you made children drink your urine,

that you made kids take their clothes off,

and licked peanut butter off them?

It's very hard to believe,

yet the jury believed it and not you.

No one is willing to doubt a child.

There were people who went to jail

as a consequence of the Satanic Panic.

Certainly, Michelle Remembers --

...all of it can't be laid at the foot

of one book, two people,

but they sure didn't help.

They did an enormous amount of damage.

They ruined people's lives.

They cost them enormous amounts of money.

They put misinformation out there knowingly.

Tell as big a lie as possible with a straight face,

and just keep tellin' it.

It works, to a certain extent--

it works until those of us who are...

...paying attention

stand up and challenge it.

It's a very interesting question

when people talk about where this began...

...and so, Dr. Pazder's ex-wife sent me a letter.

She had heard my name was out there,

and she knew I was looking into all of this,

and she said that she could tell me

and explain to me

how all of this evolved and how all this came to be.

We didn't know

that people had gone to prison because of the book...

and that was, I think, about 1990 that I realized.

It was just a terrible shock.

It was just terrible.

We were-- It was just terrible.

But I felt that, if people were in jail,

it's our responsibility

to do everything that we can to help those people.

So anybody that came to Victoria...

I would just help them the best I could.

My mom started looking into it,

and she went to the house,

she went to the neighbours,

she went to the school records.

I went to the registry.

We found out every place she lived,

where she was,

went to the neighbours,

and we gave that evidence

to the different investigations in the States

and that sort of thing.

They were very specific claims,

Michelle Remembers ,

about a certain period of time,

and she named the time-- I believe it was 1955--

where she was gone,

she was held captive by these Satanists,

and so we thought it should be pretty easy,

you know, to see whether we can find her

during that time.

We just went to the school...

...and asked them for the yearbook.

They have a collection of all the yearbooks.

Her picture was right there.

And they said the picture was taken in the fall,

while she was supposed to be locked up.

She wasn't.

Her picture was right there.

There she was.

You can't deny it.

Could this possibly have happened?

Is there any truth to any part of this?

You go, okay, you're describing

these rituals in which you are severely treated.

They cut you up with knives

and they sew things onto your body

that are ripped off,

and they knock out your teeth,

and they do all these things...

...and then...

miraculously,

the Angel Michael comes and takes all your scars away?

This is ridiculous, you know?

I mean...

the Virgin Mary appears and speaks to you in French.

What?

"Ma Mère" is really the Virgin Mary?

-Yes, the Virgin Mary. -She spoke in French?

Well, throughout the experience--

I remember hearing my sister

on the radio broadcast,

and she said, "Oh, but I-- I never knew French."

I was like, "Yes, you did.

You took it in high school, for one thing,

and you won an award for it, because you were so good."

Plus, my grandfather spoke fluent French

and she used to converse with him,

and she said, "I've never spoken French ever in my life,

and it just poured out of me."

You know, just like the lies poured out of her.

There's just a variety of things

that can go on in therapy

that we now know

can lead people to false memories.

Guided imagination is one.

Using hypnosis is another one.

Particular kinds of dream interpretation

can lead people to false memories.

Suggesting things to the patient.

Reinforcing the patient

with, you know, attention and interest

and other kinds of rewards

when the patient remembers

what the therapist wants the patient to remember,

and sometimes, the more lurid, the better,

in terms of producing a reward for that patient.

The Michelle Remembers story

does seem to be a case that has all these ingredients

that are known to lead people

to think they have

repressed memories they've recovered,

but then there's this weird little thing

about how they get married.

So, um...

I-I don't know what to think

about the sexual, romantic element.

That-That's a little different

than what you see in the typical repressed memory case,

but that could mean

there was even greater interest on her part

to do whatever she presumed

her romantic interest would like to be done.

In the book,

very, very often what is happening

is she's telling a story

and then Lawrence is interpreting it

in terms of his experiences in West Africa,

where he did

medical missionary work for a while,

and he keeps mentioning that this is like those practices.

We know that he witnessed some tribal ceremonies,

he filmed them...

but you look at it and you go,

"Okay, I believe you saw this, but I don't believe

you understood what you were looking at,"

but she has grabbed pieces of it

and is pulling this information out of it

and incorporating it into her story

so that he can recognize it,

and then try and make the connection,

and, like, put this-- this story together,

this false story of these memories.

You know, people see what they want to see.

I mean...

he's very Catholic, so what does he want to see?

He wants to see angels. He wants to see demons.

He wants to see that sort of stuff.

This book features

an extraordinary number of dead babies.

By the end,

it's just a baby slaughterhouse,

and...

if your patient starts seeing you again

because they're feeling extreme grief

over a miscarriage,

and if they are telling you

again and again these stories about dead babies,

I would imagine that this patient

could be feeling incredible, unresolved guilt

about the miscarriage.

But Dr. Pazder is Catholic...

...and so he decides

that whatever Satanic image appears to Michelle

connects to something

that literally, physically happened to her...

and I think

one of the things that stories about demonic possession,

stories about Satanism

tell us,

is that there's a very clear answer for all of this,

and it's God.

My dad was convinced

that this was a really big thing.

I really think he thought he was on

some kind of mission from God.

And I lost my faith completely.

Like, I saw the Church as being a part of it.

The Church is, you know, drinking this in,

and encouraging it.

We found some documentation

about the fact that the book

was actually subsidized by the local Catholic church.

Whether that was a local project

or whether it went beyond local, I don't know...

but it certainly, you know, seemed like

it was a inspirational book for Catholics--

Michelle Remembers --

and to the point where

the Church was willing to subsidize it.

I don't have a problem with Christianity--

I have a problem with Church-ianity.

It's a business.

They're making money, right?

It's got nothing to do with being devout.

Most of the people involved in putting this out there,

they actually are interested in three things--

power, influence, and money...

...and they realize this is a way that they can get it.

"I know that I can use this information

to make you fearful and pay me money.

I don't care that it's a lie.

I know it's a lie, but it's not important.

I need your money. I'm gonna get it.

I need your attention. I want to get it.

I need power over people.

You will give it to me,

because you'll see me as your saviour." Okay?

Over and over and over again.

"Ironic," I guess,

is the word that some people would use.

But I've been involved in many, many cases

involving Catholic priests who are molesting kids,

and yet, I've had people tell me--

devout Catholics say,

"Yes, you know these priests who are molesting kids?

You know who they are?"

I said, "Who are they?"

"They are Satanists

who have infiltrated the Catholic Church

to destroy it."

Okay.

As the Satanic Panic wound down,

like, around '91, '92,

a lot of it had to do with insurance companies,

because the therapists and psychiatrists

and psychologists,

they were being paid,

sometimes covered by insurance companies,

for these-- for this endless counselling,

and the insurance companies started investigating.

They said, "We're not gonna pay anymore."

Some of these patients

began to realize their memories were false

and that they had been planted by the psychotherapy.

Some of them sued their therapists

for planting false memories,

and they ended up with these huge settlements.

I could not stand...

what was happening to my brain,

and the memories, and the thoughts,

and the pictures.

Although Dr. Hosen claimed

that he did nothing wrong,

his insurance company settled

and they paid Nadine Gould $2.4 million.

I didn't even know...

that this doctor was a fraud until recently.

And it didn't happen to just us.

It happened to our children,

our significant others,

our spouses or ex-spouses, to our family.

The issue is that counsellors and therapists

are leading people astray

and destroying families.

We need laws. We need things changed.

They need to be made accountable for what they're doing.

Also, things got laughable.

There was the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live.

Who could it be? Oh, I don't know...

...Satan?

All of this has to do with the changing zeitgeist,

and people understood then

that this was all pretty-- pretty absurd and out-there.

A bunch of people were falsely prosecuted.

They wasted millions of dollars, police chasing after ghosts.

All right. We are ready for the jury.

Raymond Buckey and his mother, Peggy,

were the only McMartin defendants to stand trial.

We, the jury, in the above entitled action

find the varied defendants

not guilty.

Preschool teacher Michaels served

five years in jail until this year,

when her conviction was overturned

by an appeals court

that questioned the reliability of the children's testimony.

Childhood sexual abuse does happen,

but there is something else going on,

and that is whether some therapists

are actually encouraging individuals

to believe in abuse that didn't happen.

A lot of these things simply didn't happen.

But the thing that really scares me

is that, as people say,

if you don't study history, you are doomed to repeat it.

We're not covering Pizzagate enough

to expose the Satanism and the occult.

We have these strange allegations now

of "Pizzagate" and things like QAnon--

the idea that thousands and thousands

and thousands of babies are missing, you know?

It's all sort of coming up again.

QAnon...

with its claim

that "Satan-worshiping pedophile elites"

are running our lives.

"Oh, boy. Here we go again."

I mean, that-- that's exactly what I thought.

"Oh, no, not again."

Man showed up at that pizza parlour with a gun

demanding to know more,

and now this has become

the centre of a national debate over fake news.

I came to realize

this story is one of the most relevant topics

that you could ever talk about in today's world--

it's just not about

Satanic ritual abuse of children,

but this problem

of what people believe

when there's no real objective, professional evidence of it,

is an amazing thing to behold.

It's not going to go away.

I used to think it was.

I used to think,

"Well, all you have to do is debunk the stuff

in a rational way,

and I'll just be a good journalist,

and I'll do that," you know?

And, uh... it just happens again.

This has been kind of difficult for me,

to tell you the truth,

to see that none of that stuff really mattered.

None of what we did

really seems to have made much of a difference.

We had to deal with the "Bride of Satan".

All the time-- we had to deal with her.

And we had to live under the shadow of that book.

We had to live under the shadow of her.

Once they married, you know...

we couldn't get close to him anymore.

It was really hard,

and I think that's why I really made an effort--

"I'm gonna call you every Sunday."

I really, really pushed for that.

During that time,

the phone calls started changing a lot.

He was kind of pulling away from her...

and I think

there was things coming up, like, different things

that made me realize...

...that, you know, that he was coming around.

You know, he had said, you know,

"What if it weren't true?"

I was at work.

My sister, Tertia, came up to my office

and she goes, "Larry's dead."

And I was in shock. I was just, like...

I said, "What happened?"

She said, "He got up, went to the bathroom,

and fell."

Apparently, the ambulance took a long time to get there,

but he was dead anyways.

He had a massive heart attack, they said.

Michelle discovered

that he'd kept all his pictures from his marriage to Marylyn.

Michelle was really upset about that one,

and she said that, "He was not the man I thought I married."

I went to the funeral

and I connected with Michelle

and I stayed with her for a few days,

and then, when I was leaving,

this little deer came around the side of the house,

and it just stood there and looked at me,

and it was weird.

I felt like it had something to do with Larry,

like-- ah, it's breaking me up right now--

and, um...

I don't know, I just felt like it was Larry,

you know, standing there.

I felt like he was asking me to look out for Michelle...

so I did.

I said that to myself, that I would look out for her,

for him,

and I've kept that promise.

She's a good person.

She had her life ruined,

first, by whatever experience she did go through--

I am convinced

it's not mismemory or false memory,

and then, the book, you know?

It's ruined her life.

She hates the book,

because when people see her, that's all they see.

And if anybody should have blame,

as much as I loved Larry,

and I'm not even big on men,

but I loved Larry, and he...

I think, was responsible for the book.

I believe in the pain

that they experienced as a child,

the details of what they present.

I'm not there to believe or not believe.

I'm there to try and understand

what they're trying to tell me of an experience,

and those experiences are not simple to separate

from whether that has actually happened to them

or that is their way of trying to express

a profound pain that they've experienced

beyond their body, in their very heart,

in their very soul.

I always hung on

to that dad that I grew up with...

and I think that's what made it hurt so much,

is that you hang on to it.

You really love.

But he did take her out of my life,

and that was the only good thing about his death.

You know? I-I, um...

It was...

really good to have her gone.

It was, um...

I think that's when I started to feel

that that whole chapter was over.

It wasn't one chapter.

It was a book. Literally.

It was more than any type of an affair.

Far more than that.

They were both obsessed with each other...

...and she was in love with my husband.

And maybe she saw our happiness and she wanted it for herself.

But you see, you can't get that for yourself,

because it doesn't belong to, and it never will be yours,

because you-- if you try to take somebody else's happiness away,

everybody's going to be unhappy all the way around,

because it's not yours to be had.

You make your own Heaven or Hell right here on this Earth.

I think she's living in hell...

...because the story has haunted my family for years.

We could pretend that we're a family,

but there's always that feeling of,

"How could you do the damage that you did

by telling a story that wasn't true?"

If she came along and said to us,

"Hey, I made it all up. I'm sorry," you know?

Then we would understand, but she hasn't.

She's never apologized.

She's never, you know...

Nothing.

Whether she made it up

or whether Larry and her made it up together,

I don't know...

but she was able to do it.

You know, she had a motive.

Her motive was

that she wanted Larry as her husband.