My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 352 - Serve The Children

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

This week, Karen tells Georgia the story of church leader Gwen Shamblin Lara. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C, on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. See, it's truly criminal. Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstark.

That's Karen Kilgarov. And it is our, today, when we record this, it's our Halloween. It's our Halloween. And it's kind of overcast outside, and there's all these crows in my neighborhood. It feels so spooky. That I've never been there before. They just showed up. And they're holding little knives like that famous crow in Canada.

Canuck. Wasn't that his name? I think so. One of the great Nick Terry videos. That's right. How's your Halloween going? Do you have a lot of candy or did you not do that? You mean to have I eaten a ton of candy?

Yes, fine. Yes, I have. I was just wondering if you just didn't get any just for that reason alone. Yes, I've eaten 8K days just today alone. Right. It's the easiest thing in the world to do. The combo bag I got was Hershey's Plain, Reese's Cups, Almond Joy, and Kit Kat, which seemed like a good cross-section.

It hits only one mess because who cares about a chocolate bar, right? Right. Although I care about all of it so deeply. I wish I didn't. But it is the funniest thing where I've lived here now three years. No one's ever come to my door ever. And I still was like, but just in case. Well, I was just telling you that our new neighbors told us because this is a

Halloween street where people like bus in to fucking Halloween to trick or treat here and you can tell because the people who have like gone all out with their lawns and stuff are unbelievable. And I even heard there's like a band, like a live spooky band playing on one corner. Like it's great. It's going to be crazy. My chemical romance.

There's going to be a concert. But our neighbor said one year he did a clicker counter and they counted 800 trick or treaters. So I am not prepared for 800 trick or treaters. You're going to have to go to the last minute store and get one of those like gigantic plastic bags of like dumb, dumb. Yes. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Something that nobody wants just so I can pass them out. This will be your learning year. If you're new. Definitely. Yeah. Hopefully they'll give us a break. They don't start immediately egging your house.

And we don't even have a pumpkin. Like we have some like really dumb like paper decorations, you know, like on a paper decorations on a stick. We didn't even carve a pumpkin. Here's my advice. It's that's better because the second you hand out that last well payday. You've already told us payday. You hand out that last payday.

You pull down all those paper decorations, turn out all the lights head into the basement, the California basement done. I'm ready. Right. These days I've been going to bed at like seven o'clock. So these little kids think that I'm passing out candy later than that. They got another thing coming. They're like our bedtimes at seven thirty ladies.

Ding dong. Ding dong. Very exciting. True crime news. Yeah. There's a couple pieces going on right now. It's really exciting. Do you want to go?

We should talk about the Delphi murders that I covered in episode 235, which is a case. I've just been constantly obsessed with because it's the murder of two young girls in Indiana. Abby Williams in Libby, Germaine, and they have audio and video footage of the alleged killer and it's been like five years and they haven't been able to make her an arrest. So it's been so frustrating and almost seems impossible that they couldn't

make an arrest. Finally, someone's been arrested. A man in like a local man has been arrested and he absolutely looks like the guy in the video. It looks like the sketch of that the witnesses saw. So it's really exciting. I hope this is him. I hope he can be brought to justice.

It would have to look like the person in the video though. So that's kind of a given. I just want to not to argue, but only to do the thing that like just to be the fit for the fairness factor. Yeah, I did see people online. So this is about as alleged as it gets, but they were talking about the person that was arrested lived close to the bridge. Okay, all right.

So, you know, that could be Reddit chat, but it's very exciting that at least a cold case that's those little girls like the pictures. I know people keep sending us the like the breaking news. Yeah, yeah, and their babies. They're just really little girls. Yeah, it's such a tragic story. I really, I really hope that this guy can be brought to justice and the town of Delphi itself has been, you know, basically suspended and horrified

for five years. So it's just like video and audio. How is it not? It defies logic that they haven't been able to catch someone based on that. And the girl, the little girls took the audio and video themselves and it's almost like they were trying to help catch their killer. And they did. They did in the long run.

And they did. Hopefully. I mean, if it all turns out. Yeah. They did that that work and that forethought and smartness actually worked. Yeah. You want to give them that credit because and you can do that by arresting someone based on what they were able to capture.

So it's it's it's very exciting. It's really cool. That was one where I remember that at the end you telling that story and I was just like, yeah, those are the ones. I mean, I think that's how a lot of people feel about true crime. It's like, I don't want to know that. Yeah, because then you're just sitting there. I think anyone who listened that story, people who love true crime.

Yeah, those are the ones that stick with you. And then you're just like totally will anything ever happen? And then there's movement and that's it's amazing. Same thing with I don't know if you heard about this, the lady in the dunes. No, this is the first year you're telling me or this is the first I've heard about it. Please tell me this is so exciting. So essentially they used the same kind of DNA. I don't know tracking.

They use that same thing that they used for Golden State Killer. And 48 years later, this is from Boston.com written by Daya Lynn Dwyer. 48 years later, they have her name. She's identified as Ruth Marie Terry of Tennessee. Wow. Yes. And do they know any information about her or what she was doing there? It's just breaking right now.

This article says she was 37 years old when she was murdered. She had ties to California, Massachusetts and Michigan. The cool thing is authorities. It says in this article, authorities vowed during Monday's press conference that the step of identifying Terry is just the beginning of the ongoing work in the case, pledging that their mission to identify and bring to justice. Her killer is now redoubled. Yeah.

I forgot about these details. Her hands were severed and her head was almost cut off. Yeah. So, so dark. They absolutely need to identify who would do that to another human being for sure. Totally. Well, it's great that she got her name back. That's always a huge step in the right direction.

I mean, that's kind of eerie too in a day. I mean, I guess it would be a matter of a week or something, but two huge cold cases. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Finally getting a little movement on them. That is great. I love to hear it. Makes me so happy.

Very nice. Speaking of anxiety, I've got a book I'm reading. That's just kind of, it's called Anxiety RX and it's by this doctor named Russell Kennedy who created this like new way. He has anxiety. He's had it his whole life and he, I don't know, he's just giving me this new way to look at my own anxiety and to look at what anxiety is and how it's more this alarm in the body and that our brain picks up on and just runs with.

I don't know. It's just a really great book and I highly recommend it for people who want to understand their anxiety a little more and in that way are able to help themselves. Anxiety RX by Russell Kennedy MD. Cool. Let's see. Should we do a exactly right highlight? Sure.

This week, comedian Emily Heller, one of the greats is Bridger's guest on I Said No Guest. If you've ever seen Emily do stand up or if you like stand up, you have to watch Emily Heller. She's truly hilarious and you might know her because two years ago at the Emmys, she brought a purse that said Getty Images on it and basically like had the copyright Getty Images logo on her purse. Yeah. And she kind of got a little pickup for that, but she's, she's hilarious person. I love that.

Yeah. She's so funny. She's a great writer and then on lady to lady this week, banana boy Kurt Brunner joins the ladies. So be sure to check that out. Kurt is a lovely person and very, very funny. Who also has a special out. It's called Perfectly Stupid and truly Kurt is one of my favorite standups along with Emily Heller, but truly so brilliant. Like such a hilarious performer.

Yes. Go watch that. Also, we have a seasonal twist on a classic merch design over at the My Favorite Murder Store. We have a new fucking hooray t-shirt design that's basically in Christmas lights. So if you want to swear on the holidays, get over there and get your fucking new fucking hooray shirt. Yeah. And do, if you want to get your, all your holiday gifts at the My Favorite Murder Store, make sure you order by December 8th to guarantee delivery on time.

And that's at MyFavoriteMurder.com in our store. All kinds of good gifts over there. There's some good holiday merch coming up. Some like very pretty ornaments, you know, stuff that like, if you know someone likes the podcast, throw them a sticker. Sure. Stalking stuffers, pins. We have lots of pins and mugs and... Really good mugs.

Yeah. And what are those? Coozies. Everyone loves a Coozie. You love a Coozie in winter. It's funny. I love it. My sister sent me, just she walked down the row of kids from her class who are get, we're lining up for the Halloween parade at her school today. Oh, no.

And I'm telling you that some of the classics just never go out of style. There was a little girl who was so perfectly dressed like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Like, I was like, your mother handmade you that dress. It was so cute. Just a full on Pikachu. Oh. So many cute little kids. They're so excited.

Like this is the children's holiday. It is. This is the greatest holiday. I think that's the one that everyone, except for people who believe Satan is real, can get behind and enjoy and have fun with. I'd say the top two children's holidays are Halloween and Yom Kippur, right? Yom Kippur is a strong. When I was a kid and when Yom Kippur rolled around, man, oh man. Oh, your sister just screaming all the time.

Yeah. We wake up at 5 a.m. and you start yelling, it's Yom Kippur. Wake up, run downstairs in our little pajamas. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping and prepping handled, Hello Fresh has you covered. Hello Fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year. Hello Fresh meals are convenient, seasonal and delicious. Stay cozy all winter long with classic comfort foods available weekly.

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And I'm Brooke. And we're the hosts of Wondery's podcast, Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva, Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation and even after her death, her talent remains unmatched. But her incredible success hit a deeply private pain.

In our series, Whitney Houston, Destiny of a Diva, we'll tell you how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people led her down a dark path. Follow Even the Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Religion is a fascinating topic. I think every time we end up talking about a cult, something that's been proven to be a cult or whatever,

the arcs of religion and religious fanaticism, that kind of arc into the cult like behavior truly fascinates me. Because if you keep back from that cult dividing line, you can actually have like a spiritual experience that's very meaningful and guides your life in an important way. Absolutely. But it takes one little twist-a-roo, one little... A little sprinkle, a little sprinkle of something.

Sprinkle of something and then you're off to the races. And so that's what I'm going to be talking about in this week's story. And anyone who has seen the HBO series is called The Way Down. You will know all about this because that's what I'm going to tell you about. It's the story of weight loss guru turned church leader. Some would argue cult leader, but some would argue absolutely not. Gwen Shamblin, Laura. So the main sources used today were multiple articles

from the local News Channel 5 Nashville investigative journalist, Phil Williams, who I think basically found the story and followed it and made sure it was in the news. A 2018 CBS News article called How to Identify a Cult? Six Tips from an Expert. And of course, this HBO series that I highly recommend. It is so fascinating and there's so much to this story. It's not simple.

It's not simple at all, but it's very fascinating. And you may have already seen pictures of this woman because her hair, you may have heard the southern bell saying of like, you know, the higher the hair, the closer to God type of mentality about people in the South. This woman takes it to a degree that is hilarious and you can track it over the years. It's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing.

So let's start at the beginning. Gwendolyn K. Henley was born in 1955 to Dr. and Mrs. Walter Hodges Henley in Memphis, Tennessee. They're members of a conservative Christian church. Basically, they're raised, this family's faith is everything to them, which is very common, you know, people talk about it. And almost all of the quotes that I'm going to give you are from the way down the HBO docu series.

Okay. Because there's so many people who were ex-members of this, what would end up being eventually a church who talk about this. And they basically talk about how when they started and when they were first in it, it was the best times of their lives, which I think is really fascinating. Yeah. And really the thing to think about. She's raised in a very strong Christian faith.

Her father's a general surgeon, so she's also fascinated by medicine and the way the body works. And so she goes to the University of Tennessee Knoxville and studies dietetics and eventually gets a master's degree in nutrition. So when we talk about this, though, a lot of this subject is about weight loss, eating disorders, extreme dieting, a lot of triggering stuff. So if you have a problem with any of those things, please listen with caution or not at all.

Because, and especially same with watching this series, I was, there's so many things that are built into, I think, women's mindsets. Just if you grew up in a certain era, where it was just like, should I read this book just in case? Yeah. That kind of constant shopping for a diet or shopping for an answer the way we were all raised here in America. I can't get it out of my head.

It's totally ingrained in our brains as much as we want to fight it. And as much as I think every woman should accept and love themselves the way they are, I can't wrap my own head around doing that because of the media and the way we're brought up. It's horrible. It's the way we're all raised. And I think obviously certainly not strictly adhering to women. It's pretty much any person like over the age of eight in America,

it's horrible. It was bad when I was growing up. But now, especially in the kind of Instagram world we live in, it's just like you have to be beautiful the end. Whatever quote unquote beautiful means to other people, it's always an exterior definition. So you're just left to wait to see what the judgment is. It's kind of a horrible thing.

That's very easy to manipulate. I think so. If that is a problem that you have, don't bother. There's plenty of other ones to listen to because I definitely felt it when I was watching all the stuff and reading. Yeah, it's triggering. It's so weird. It is triggering.

So when Gwen goes away to college, she like every other human being on earth gains the freshman 15. Gwen starts cycling through fad diets to try to lose the freshman 15 that she gains, but of course they don't work because they don't work. Because they don't work. They don't work for anyone. So she tries to take a scientific approach. And what she does is she has a skinny friend

and she starts eating with the skinny friend and observing how the skinny friend eats, which sounds like the most uncomfortable dinner dates of all time. And she basically documents this person's eating habits and then starts mimicking them. And when she does that, she finds that she loses weight. Now, let me wreck the secret. Literally the friend eats less food than she's given.

She's basically restricts herself at all times. So it's not a secret and it's nothing amazing. And Gwen kind of ends up building an empire by romanticizing of this very plain old concept. And also I would argue that this quote on quote skinny friend probably felt very observed when they were eating and probably was eating less for a reason. We don't know what people do in the privacy of their own homes.

No, also everyone has different metabolism and their hormones work differently in everyone's body. You can't mimic someone else because you're not in the exact same replica as anyone else. So what's going to work for one person isn't going to work for everyone. Also, speaking of eating disorders, that skinny friend could have gone home and thrown up every single thing that she was observed to have been eating.

It doesn't work that way. But if you're looking for an answer and then you do one thing that seemingly gives you that answer, you're going to get real excited that you have somehow discovered a brand new way of doing things. So Gwen likes that she's made this connection but she kind of wants to make more of it. And so she begins associating her weight gain with lust for food

which is one of the seven deadly sins and her weight loss. She correlates with her devotion to God. So by 1982, Gwen has graduated, she's married a man named David who is planning on being a church leader. They've started a family in Nashville, Tennessee and her career in health and nutrition is off to a start. But this is early mid-80s. So it's a very toxic era of the eternally toxic diet culture in this country.

Yeah. So this is cabbage soup diet. It's jazz or size. Cocaine, pill, diet pills. Cocaine is not bad for you. Everything's fat-free. This is when like every, it was like, look, fat-free cookies. And it's like, right, you're just going to gain weight from the sugar

and all the chemicals. Also Diet Coke was invented in 1982. I didn't realize it was that late in the game. So everything at that time in the 80s was about body judgment. Let's call it. Totally. And being as skinny as possible. That was like, there was no fluctuation in like body types.

It was everyone should be skinny period. Right. It was like, it was like super model skinny. Yeah. That's it. And if you had a butt like this idea these days, it literally makes me like well up with happiness and joy. Yeah.

For current generations that having a butt is great. Being curvy is great and trendy. Yeah. What a fucking relief because it was not like that in the 80s whatsoever. So Gwen starts hosting. This is her idea. She basically, she knows what she wants to look like. She loses this weight by associating it with her religion.

And then she starts recruiting other people to do it basically the way she's done it. So she starts hosting meetings for like a little weight loss group in her free time. She advertises at local businesses and in medical offices. And she eventually builds a group of around 12 people who are mostly women from her church to meet at her house every week. So it's like she is an off brand weight watchers essentially. And at first she's not exactly sure how religion configures into this diet equation, but she knows that it should.

And then in 1986, she says that she quote, prayed to God for wisdom and the scriptures and understanding started coming in little by little. And soon Gwen constructs the Bible based weight loss program that will make her a star. So she makes it like a religious study to lose weight. So she starts saying, and this is the simplest way to say it is, she says in the Bible, Jesus says all food is clean. Therefore there's no food that is bad for you, which it was revolutionary back then. This was like you, it had to be fat free, no carb, whatever, there was all kinds of tricks and fads.

She said, there's no food that's bad. You just can only eat when you're hungry and you have to stop when you're full, which is essentially intuitive eating. That's and most people know that is the best way, but that would be like, and if we could all do it, everybody would be thin with that because that's not the way people do it. Yeah. Or that's not the way some people do it for whatever reason. So pretty soon Gwen's diet group has gotten so big they can't fit at her home to meet anymore.

They have to start doing their classes at the church that she goes to. And she starts recording these lessons onto cassette tapes. And then she sends them around to other churches. And she calls this program The Way, W-E-E-I-G-H Down Workshop. And so here's what that basically entails. You pay $100, which is $272 in today's money. Isn't that horrifying? Yeah.

It's like almost three times the amount. You get 12 classes that meet weekly and people share their weight loss progress, their setbacks. And then they watch video tapes of Gwen telling people only to eat when they're hungry, essentially, but then with Bible verses in it. She talks a lot about basically the feeling of hunger, that they have to have faith and turn to God when they don't actually feel a biological grumbling in their stomach, but they feel like eating. That's when they have to go to God and basically start praying and give it over.

Got a little busy for that? Yeah. For every single time you're like, I absolutely will eat that payday. You're supposed to hit your knees and beg for help. I can't even text my therapist when I'm having an emergency. I'm not going to be knocking on God's door every time I want to pay day. I mean, God, the ultimate therapist. Maren, my researcher, Maren, goes, as not helpful as that sounds, the program takes off.

There's a lot of editorializing literature. She's like, this is bullshit because it's basically saying that we as humans are bad. Yeah. And that what we do to ourselves are bad. You know, like the body is a temple and how dare you desecrate the temple, which puts a lot of fucking pressure on people who are just trying to lose weight. So soon Gwen is holding way down conferences and she's leading rallies across the country. So essentially because she sent out the tapes and they make dieting a church activity.

Yeah. There's community. There's people like everyone's doing it together. Totally. There's like unity and friendship in it and it starts to work for people because intuitive eating, if you can do it, works. Yeah. That's the natural state, but eating is also a coping mechanism like exercising

or drugs or anything else. So oftentimes we misuse it. So essentially she goes around and she videotapes these rallies and she has people getting up and these women are losing hundreds of pounds like 100 and 150. And of course those are the people she highlights because the story that she's building is that everyone's doing unbelievably great, not just regular on this diet. Well, it does make sense and it's so evil to make eating and weight loss a moral judgment thing. Right.

You're morally bad in God's eyes if you eat, which is just like, it's so like insidious. It is. Put that in someone's head, you know, especially someone who really believes in God. As they like to say in politics these days, they're saying that the quiet part loud because all that advertising is basically saying you're not good enough to buy this purse because it's the skinny lady's purse, but maybe you can get it anyway. And then you're like, I have to have that purse. It's that mentality.

Only they're just saying it. Yeah, basically. Yeah. And then if everyone's kind of coming together and being like, I'll do it if you do it, which is really helpful when you're trying to like stay on a program or, you know, do anything good. If you're looking around and the people around you know, that's what you're doing. Yeah. Like there's community there and there's maybe support.

So literally at these people give their testimonies about this diet program. They're of course standing in the front of a church every time microphone and hand gushing to the audience about how Gwen changed their lives and how appreciative and indebted they feel to her. Not only for the weight they've lost, but also it's all about strengthening their relationship with God. Right. So by 1991, way down workshops are being held in churches throughout the United States and in Europe. And by 1997, there's about a quarter of a million participants worldwide. Wow.

The same year Gwen publishes the book version of her diet. It's called The Way Down Workshop. And it's an instant hit. Now what's crazy is in the HBO series, they spell it the way down WAY. Yeah. And they show old like Nashville local news where they're showing like they're basically about to do a story about her. But they go to the bookstore and there's so many Christian diet books and basically like God will help you lose this weight. She wasn't the first.

Yeah. At all. God, it's so evil. But I also think she she put a face to it and she was like really, you know, she especially the 80s. She has the perfect blonde Bob. Yeah. She's really bubbly and smile, huge smile. So she's like really positive and she really skinny too.

Right. She's pretty regular looking in the beginning. In the beginning, she's like she looks like anyone you'd see on TV. Yeah. Yes. So yes, very skinny. Okay. But it's almost like losing weight is an after effect.

Mm hmm. It's the relationship with God is kind of what she's focusing on in a way. So when her book comes out, it's an instant hit. She was on the bestseller list. She she did book tour. She was on Larry King. Like this this book hit in a way. I think because she was the face of it probably.

Mm hmm. By the year 2000, Gwen's the head of a multimillion dollar company. Her book has sold a million copies. There are thousands of way down workshops being held in churches around the world. So especially as a church kind of a church ordained activity. It's taken off because at the time there were so many of these kind of like Christian Bible based diets out there. Mm hmm.

People started looking at it, you know, with a little bit of suspicion. And at the pinnacle of this craze, a theologian and writer named Mary Louise Bringle talks about what she calls the cult of thinness and says, quote, dieting has assumed the fervor and proportions of a leading new religion with its own Bible, its own ritual observances and its own high priestesses and priests. It's so true. Yeah. What she's talking about is also some foreshadowing.

Yeah. So now Gwen is writing the success of her weight loss program all the way to wealth and fame. Just two years after her book, The Way Down Workshop is published. She makes the leap from weight loss guru to church leader. So basically when her husband David and another couple decide they're going to start a new church called the Remnant Fellowship Church, which is just outside of Nashville in a pretty well to do area called Brentwood, Tennessee. Mm hmm.

So in the early days, the Remnant Fellowship Church has about 80 members. Most of them are from Gwen's Way Down Workshop. It's actually a lot of her employees. Some Way Down staffers eventually claim that they were under enormous pressure to leave their respective churches and join the Remnant Fellowship, although Gwen has denied this. And what's really interesting in the first episode of the Way Down series, they have like footage of a videotape of her in a deposition of some kind. And they're asking her these questions of like, who is the leader of this church?

And she's like, there are several of us. Like she's trying to kind of say, it isn't me the whole time. You know, just that's something to keep in mind that there's another side of this. That's why they, I believe that's why the filmmakers were doing this series is because they wanted to basically delve into a person that has built this empire and what, what that person's really all about. Right. So basically after about two years of her 90 total employees, 25 of them leave this church.

That's actually kind of a lot. There are multiple discrimination lawsuits filed against Gwen, one of which states that Way Down employees were quote, never to question Gwen's teachings. And then if they did not espouse her doctrinal beliefs, they should seek employment elsewhere. All of those lawsuits eventually end in settlements. So this is the first of what feels like an unending series of Remnant Fellowship controversies. In the year 2000, Gwen posts a newsletter that questions the concept of the Holy Trinity. Now we're going to focus on some Christianity real quick.

Basically the bedrock doctrine of Christianity, it's that God exists in three parts. The father, the OG, the son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. And that's basically God on earth in all of us making us kind of spiritual beings. That's the thing where when you're like, I don't get the Holy Spirit part. They're like, it's faith. You have to have faith, essentially, because it's very high concept. Her saying like, yeah, that's not how we're going to do it is not cool. Blasphemy.

Yes. Especially evangelical Christians are all about exactly what the Bible says. You don't just get to go in and cafeteria your way through it. So religious publications like Christianity Today and Baptist Press called Gwen's Dance Heretical, and a Christian broadcast news piece warns Christians of people like Gwen who would twist such a fundamental part of their religion. So the fallout's very real, particularly among evangelical Christians. So Remnant Fellowship Church loses members, Christian bookstores pull Gwen's books.

The publishing house that she works with cancels her next publication. People churches stop offering the way down courses as early as 2001. There's already some Christians accusing the church of being a cult, which Gwen and the other church leaders flatly deny. Again, Gwen and the Remnant Fellowship Church have rejected the accusation that there anything other than a regular Christian church. So let's discuss the criteria of a cult and everyone can come to their own conclusion. We talked about these cult criteria a little bit when I did the Um Shinrikyo episode a

couple of weeks ago, but there's a 2018 CBS News article by a cult expert named Steve Eischel, and he listed the warning signs of cults. And you can read that article will be in our show notes if you want to read it all at once. His first criteria quote says, be wary of any leader who proclaims himself or herself as having special powers or special insight. And of course, divinity. So in 2003, that Nashville based investigative reporter, Phil Williams that I told you about at the beginning, he's done some of the most in depth reporting on Gwen Shamblin and the

Remnant Fellowship. And he straight up asks her if she's a prophet. And she basically gives this very cagey uncomfortable answer and says, quote, I don't believe I know what my gift name is. That's a yes. Yeah. I interpret that answer as a yes. But remnant members say that Gwen and other church leaders claim she has a direct line

to God. So this is always the thing of like, we're all going to the same church. I can talk to God, I'll let you know what he says. And the next step is I'm God. So there's no denying Gwen is treated with incredible amount of respect and authority within the church. And in the documentary, a former remnant member says, Gwen, quote, gets all her services for free.

Someone comes in, does her hair, her nails for free, the cooking's free, everything's free because it's a service to God, so to speak. And speaking of her hair, this is her hair in the 90s when she started. Okay. Just a little Bob. Right. Yeah. Regular blonde Bob.

This is what it progresses to in by 2018. Oh my Lord in heaven. That is the biggest hair I've ever seen in my life. It kind of looks like not about her appearance, but the hair itself looks like drag queen hair if they were going to do something where they pull something out of their hair. Totally. There's something hiding in there. There's like a shoe or something.

It's literally a foot of hair teased up. Yeah. It's pretty amazing. But the point of all that is that as a head of this church, basically everyone's been convinced to give her everything. Yeah. Also, I was just thinking about that idea that in the beginning with like, just let's assume she had the best intentions of all.

And she started this thing. And there are people who are actually losing weight because they're intuitively eating. They've kind of used a couple good mind tricks to eat less than they were eating because a lot of the people who are saying they have lost 150 pounds, clearly they were very, very overweight and something clicked with them. And it actually, this was a system that like actually was effective for that period of time. Yeah. It worked for some people.

And for her, it having been her idea must have been a very powerful sensation. Sure. So she's in there. Her plan is working. It worked for her. It's working for all these other people. And now it is that churn of like, thank you, I love you. Thank you, I love you.

And she's touring around to get it. And so that affects you as two people who have been on the road and have VIP meet and greets. It affects you. It does. Yeah. You get a little surge. You get a little, you know, a little thing from it.

To me, it feels very like it just tracks that she would then be like, we need our own church. We need our own rules. Maybe I'm a prophet. Yeah. Yes. I'm in charge. Jokes aside about her hair, it's almost like the bigger her hair got. And I think it was the consciousness.

And this was like, you have to think late 80s into the 90s, like that weird thing of no one was on TV except for famous people. And suddenly she was, she was on the news and she was being featured in these stories and stuff. So then she has like an awareness of how she looks, she watches one time, thinks her hair is too flat, starts back combing her hair. Yeah. You can see it happening.

It's like, that's her descent into, with her descent into madness, you know, downward her hair goes upward. Yes. In a way. Yeah. Like this is how, like the focus is off for sure. Yeah. So Steve Eichel, the cult expert also says, quote, typically cults also exploit their

members most financially. In the group, they'll exploit members financially, psychologically, emotionally, and all too often sexually. So there's a qualifier for this exploitation of everyone is giving her stuff for free, you know, anything that they, anything she needs or wants, they want to provide for her because she's, you know, the queen basically. One of the ways where the, she starts stepping over the line is that she starts in encouraging her church congregants, especially women, to stay in their unhappy marriages.

Former remnant member says that Gwen quote, has not let any woman divorce their husband ever in that place. And all of us women that had biblical authority, which basically means they got their husband cheating. So the Bible says, like, if that happens, then you are allowed to get a divorce. She said they couldn't. So basically she was rewriting those, those extreme roles. Also, the remnant fellowship condemned the use of anti-depressants or any psychiatric

medication. And there's one former member who has a story that Gwen encouraged her to go off birth control after her husband complained to church leaders that he thought it was affecting her libido. So it's just a wild overstep into the private lives and basically counseling people in things that they don't really know what they're talking about. So each of these things points to incredibly twisted and authoritarian control over members' relationships, their bodies, their mental health, and ultimately their happiness. So this church starts its own micro economy because basically there are people that went

there that were financial planners that were realtors. There were like mechanics. And so they all start, you know, if you go to the church, then you go to this guy who's the mechanic who's also in the church, like getting their hair done, getting Botox company that does electrical and HVAC work, and essentially a tight-knit micro economy built around any group has two obvious benefits for a leader trying to maintain power. One is that it keeps all of your congregants in this bubble. So you're not going to any outsiders who are saying, hey, what did you just say?

That doesn't make sense. That doesn't line up. That's not good for you. You keep the outsiders out. So you have professionals that are basically keeping you in line with the church's thoughts. And it also makes people think twice about leaving the church, because if they leave and they're the mechanic everyone goes to, all of those people will stop talking to them. They'll lose everything if they leave, which is another indicator of a cult.

According to Steve Eichel, people who wind up involved with dangerous cults often have this idea that, quote, if you leave the cult, horrible things will happen to you. Just so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle of all the religious part of what was being built, fatphobia remains central to Gwen's teachings throughout all of this. She's not only preying on people's vulnerabilities around body image, but positioning herself as the person who can help deliver her followers from what she considers to be a sinful relationship with food. So in 2000, she's recorded saying that, quote, if you're struggling with your weight, you

have good intentions, but you do not have the desire to serve God. Remember, the pathway to hell is paved with good intentions. So she's basically equating any weight issue with literal damnation. So the stakes are going up. A former remnant member once told reporters that she asked Gwen, quote, when I was 254 pounds, are you telling me that I wasn't a child of God? And Gwen reportedly told her, quote, that's right. Gwen denies saying that.

But other women have similar stories that back up that claim, essentially that level of judgment and that level of, you know, like you were saying, like, if you overeat, you're a bad person, you're a less holy person. Another member said, quote, I asked her if she thought my salvation occurred when I lost 60 pounds. And she said, yes, I've been a Christian for 25 years. And another defected remnant member says, quote, if you aren't losing two pounds a week, you're told to fast.

And the more weight you lose, the holier you are. Yay. Yeah. It's frightening setup. So it's easy to see how this could break a person down spiritually, mentally, physically. But this degrading and offensive practice of linking a person's value and their literal holy salvation to a number on a scale also makes the church and Gwen, along with it, reliably richer.

She is making a ton of money off of this entire idea. Former remnant fellowship members say that they were required to take continuous way down courses, which the church charged them for. And they had to buy all the related materials, the way down books, the videos, the workbooks, any related products that the church sold. And all of that was cash that went straight into Gwen's pocket. So what's next for this up-and-coming weight loss obsessed church? It is so weird to think of it as an entire church.

Yeah. It's not just like a weight loss community. It's like church. Yeah. So of course, it just all ratchets up the longer it goes on and the more kind of autonomy she has. Gwen is quoted as saying, there's only one choice if you want to enter through these doors.

You will love authority and direction and redirection. You will love it. As is the case with many conservative Christian churches, children are expected to obey their parents, wives are expected to be submissive to their husbands, and worshipers give authority to the church leaders who in turn strengthen their connection to God. But even by evangelical standards, remnant fellowship is next level when it comes to discipline and authority and soon serious allegations of abuse are made against the church. It just makes sense.

It's like she's starting with a big smile on her face, but basically saying you're not good enough if you're not skinny. And then people entering into that are like, I agree with you and I'm forced to like take on this mindset and the only way I can feel better is to lose all this weight. And then now I have the mindset, I've proven this mindset is true. And then they can like put it on other people. But also lose weight by starving yourself because two pounds a week, like that's very hard to do.

And so you're already kind of torturing yourself in a way based on what this person's telling you to do. But based on what God supposedly through this person is telling you what to do, like that's torture in a way, starving yourself. Yeah, the amount of control that these people are that are having to, they're having to kind of like introduce into their lives, but it's being controlled by her and then by everybody else. That's like, imagine the peer pressure there.

Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Nasty. So a 2007 Associated Press article says, quote, former members have accused remnant fellowship leaders of condoning beatings with glue sticks and locking disobedient children in their rooms with only a Bible for company. So I looked us up because I was like, what do you mean glue sticks?

They mean hot glue gun sticks that you put in for a hot glue gun. So they're like 10 inches long and they're basically made of unmelted glue. It's just a little hard, long piece of plastic to beat kids with. Oh no. Yeah. It's super fucked up. There's church audio circulated where Gwen reportedly, quote, praises a remnant leader for repeatedly spanking his strong willed two-year-old daughter, horrifying.

The church has denied categorically of physical abuse toward children, but they don't disavow corporal punishment. The Associated Press piece reported that Gwen, quote, does believe in spankings and has used a wooden spoon on her children. And that, quote, she hadn't advocated glue sticks as punishment, but didn't think there was anything wrong with it. Fuck that. So this is the problem with absolute power.

Is there still human beings making these decisions? So if Gwen beat her kids, then it's okay for you to beat your kids. Totally. I hate it. I think Jesus would raise an eyebrow. So this leads to the horrifying conclusion where two remnant fellowship church members, Joseph and Sonia Smith, are convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the 2003 murder of their eight-year-old son, Joseph.

So to be extra clear, there's no official criminal link that's ever been Joseph Smith, Jr.'s death, and remnant fellowship church. But during the investigation, police received a recording from 2003 that captures a conversation between Sonia Smith and Gwen. So Sonia Smith, who's the mother, is talking about how she had, quote, locked her unruly son in his room from Friday to Monday. And afterwards, he began to behave respectfully. Gwen responds to that statement by saying, that's a miracle.

You've got a child going from bizarre to in control. Praise God. So this mother was like trying to report her extreme kind of discipline and get credit from Gwen. Yeah, totally. And that it was like, that's, she's like, sounds good, not even entertaining the idea that these people could be not okay or taking it further than they're telling her. And in fact, remnant fellowship never waivers in their support of this couple.

The church takes donation for their legal fees. They dedicate a website to declaring the Smiths innocent. They peddle a conspiracy theory that former church members are actually behind the quote false charges. And later in 2009, the church even files an appeal on behalf of the Smiths. That appeal is denied. So what finally starts kind of waking people up within the remnant fellowship church is Gwen's second marriage.

So the woman who historically suggested her congregants should not under any circumstances divorce their husbands. She divorces her husband. She falls in love with a man named Joe Lara, who's a sporty guy from California who has had a bit of a reputation for letting his girlfriends support his lifestyle, his very lux lifestyle. He's a struggling actor who was known for playing Tarzan in a series called The Epic Adventures.

So in 2010, Joe and his on and off partner, Natasha, moved with their infant daughter to Nashville so he can pursue a country music career. He doesn't make it in the music biz. And his relationship with Natasha eventually falls apart. And Natasha is featured in the HBO documentary and she's a badass, so you probably want to watch it just for her input. But they break up, Joe starts working as a handyman and in 2017, he joins remnant fellowship through a networking group.

That's when he and Gwen meet and fall in love. Some people have questioned Joe's love for Gwen or whether it was genuine. No one will ever know the heart of man. But in any case, he very quickly becomes a prominent member of remnant fellowship church, climbing the ranks to become, quote, an essential part of the church's leadership team. Of course, he reaps all the benefits from this. He starts appearing in remnant videos with Gwen, is able to record his music in the church's studio.

At this point, the church has their own music studio. Wow. So he's just taken advantage and like getting whatever he can out of it. I mean, could be, they could have been deeply in love, who knows, but it's basically it benefits him, for sure. And in some ways it feels like his dream of stardom might be coming true. At the same time, Gwen is softening her messaging on divorce, saying at that point that, quote, there's obviously cases of divorce that God allows as much as he hates it.

God hates it. I just imagine her pretending that God said that to her, you know, like, come on. I imagine her pretending that she fucking knows what, quote, unquote, God is thinking. Those are those little things that start to slip in where it's just like, you start to take for granted. Well, Gwen would know what he likes and doesn't like. There was another interview where she starts talking about how God is jealous of us because we can lose weight, like that we have these, whatever she says something is like, and the

interviewer goes, God is jealous, like, what isn't he supposed to not be petty? I don't think so. So Gwen has rationalized her divorce from her husband, David, who she was married to for 40 years. Holy shit. Uh-huh. David has mostly been in the shadows, he's in the leadership of the church, but some people attribute the relationship ending to David's possible discomfort or even disapproval

with what the church was turning into. Others think it might be because David himself was overweight, Gwen didn't like how that made her look, and it wasn't her vision of how remnant church members should look. Ultimately no one knows but God. There are these videos that they made of the church, and it's like children singing in a choir, but the little girls have like dark red lipstick on, it's really creepy, but it's like, there's a lot of like cartwheels and playing in the sun, and it's like, it's always great, everyone's always laughing, and it's very creepy, very stepford.

So it would make sense that she would want to get rid of like a not hot first husband and then marry a hot second husband. It's all about image, it sounds like with her, so of course. So it's reported David doesn't want a divorce, so Gwen has to pay a lot of money and give him a lot of the assets to end the marriage so she can marry Joe. The divorce is finalized only two months before her second wedding. The Shamblins divvy up their many assets, which include properties worth a collective $20 million.

Holy shit. Yeah. Man, church is big business. Yeah. Well, because they don't have to fucking pay taxes. Oh, right. Oh my God. Yeah.

Eventually, two months later, Joe and Gwen get married in an over-the-top ceremony on remnant property, of course. So there's an ex-member who describes what life in this church was like, and they say, quote, this is in the HBO documentary. The leadership has a say in everything you do. You don't go on a trip anywhere without their permission. You don't have family come visit you without their permission. You don't go to funerals or weddings of family members without their permission.

You are not alone ever. You're in church services or you're going over to someone's house. They stay in touch with you all day long. They even control your social media. Damn. Fuck that. That's not regular church. No.

One of the filmmakers of this series, The Way Down, Niall Capello, talked about the difficulty they had getting former members to open up about their experiences in the remnant fellowship church. Because some ex-members were worried that it wasn't a real documentary, that the whole thing was a ruse, that the producers basically were hired by the church to dig up dirt for like legal battles and custody cases and stuff like that. Yeah. Holy shit.

Yeah. That's scary. It's scary. And it just speaks to the level. If you're used to a church panel being the ones who tell you whether or not you can go on vacations, then it seems like all of that, it's all actually kind of reasonable for them to be that suspicious because it's like, I'm sure they've seen much worse than people going, oh yeah, we're making a documentary here talking to this microphone and tell me

all the bad things you think. Disparage the church to us right now. Yeah. For sure. For sure. It's like, no thank you. There are two more characteristics of cults that apply here from Steve Eichel's list. One is the qualifier is the group operating under the intense feeling of pressure from

its leaders, which we just talked about, whether it's the pressure to lose weight, buy books or videos, keep your business and social circle only within the group, pressure to not get divorced, so on. And he also talks about groups using deceptive means to attract followers. For example, a diet program that turns into a church. Sure. But the rest of that paragraph says, then once recruited, the church will subject its members to an organized program of thought reform or what most people refer to as brainwashing.

And we've talked about brainwashing a ton on this show, and one of the very first steps of brainwashing is withholding food. Food. Yeah. That's so true. It's kind of a perfect setup, right, to just kick off like exercising is the thing a lot of cults do of like, get up and jump up and down for five minutes or whatever, where you're kind of just burning and you're not eating protein.

They feed you a lot of sugar, but they don't let you eat anything else. And that slowly starts to break you down from just from exhaustion. So this was a congregation of people who were probably exhausted and underfed most of the time. Yeah, totally. So they were easily manipulated. Yeah. This is a quote from a list verse article by a writer named George Edwards.

And it said, a cult technique sometimes used in conjunction with sleep deprivation involves instructing members to follow special diets containing low amounts of protein and other important nutrients. And as a result, cult members always feel tired, rendering them powerless to resist the dictates of the cult ideology. Yikes. So that kind of begs the question, why would anyone want to join this church separate from the diet parter if they weren't there from the very beginning?

Right. A journalist named Adrienne Horton theorizes about what drew people to the way down program and then the remnant fellowship church. She says, quote, the way down workshops promised something many women were desperately craving, a framework for weight loss that felt meaningful, infused with righteousness and familiarity of religion, a community in common purpose beyond the home, a message of control delivered by another woman, thin and perpetually bubbly, an extreme and euphoric manifestation of the diet mantra, nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels.

Remnant fellowship offered support, the security of rules and black and white thinking, plus free babysitters, in-house homeschool, legal services, and so on. So they kind of made it as easy as possible to be on this diet, all that support. So this next part I'm going to tell you about is the spoiler of all spoilers. So if you are planning to watch this series, then don't listen to it. You have to listen to it, Georgia. If you want to go watch it, really watch it because it's great. It's really an amazing story and there's a lot to it.

This is obviously such an oversimplified way to tell this story. There's so much more good stuff and it really does contain that subtlety of what people derive from the feeling they get in church or temple, wherever they go, to seek kind of like solace and peace in a truly fucked up world and how that gets twisted and how it's hard to catch because it's small and nuanced. And if you're in it, it seems normal to you, like the frog sitting in the pot where the water starts boiling. This happened, so they go to make this documentary basically, right?

And it reminds me of like the leggings, multi-level marketing Netflix series where it's like, you want to talk to the people who are doing it of like, hey, talk to me about what your idea is, like, let's really get into this. So they had been shooting with Gwen Shamblin, her family, the people in the church. Then on the morning of May 29th, 2021, around 11am, the Reform Fellowship Cessna, they had their own plane, a small plane, and they were flying to Palm Beach, Florida for a MAGA rally. And it was Gwen and her husband, Joe, and five other passengers, including Gwen's son-in-law, Brandon Hannah.

And shortly, 90 seconds after takeoff, the plane experiences mechanical failure, crashes into Tennessee's Percy Priest Lake, and everyone on board is killed. No. Yes. What the fuck? In the middle of filming this documentary? Yes. Yes.

Holy shit. Yes. I really want to watch this now. Yeah. And I really want to, I know I've said it a bunch, but I really do want to be fair in the way that this documentary, they were making it so that Gwen Shamblin herself could speak for herself about where she came from, what she built, why she did it, and what it was all about.

And to me, that's the best part of documentaries is that you basically just get presented with the facts and you get to decide as you're watching it and as you hear people who are in the church, people who have left the church, you get to hear what everyone has to say and decide for yourself. So it's tragic that all of those lives were cut short in the middle of basically this filming. Totally. None of those questions, Gwen can't answer any of those questions for herself.

And what's interesting is the remnant fellowship church is still in operation. Its website says it has, quote, a leadership team of over 90 shepherds, deacons, ministry leaders and ministry assistants. There are reportedly 15,000 members in 150 congregations worldwide, but it remains unclear who is going to actually lead the church now that Gwen is dead. And then just in an ironic afterward, a lawyer named Gary Blackburn recently told Phil Williams, the investigative journalist, that he's looked at Gwen's will multiple times and that he says, quote, I haven't seen any money left to the church.

Perhaps I'm cynical, but it suggests to me that the accumulation was not for God. It was for Gwen. At the time of her death, 66 year old Gwen Shamblin Lara was, quote, about one third the way through a nine week video series on greed, a series in which she urged remnant fellowship followers to prepare to give up their wealth. No, but we'll never know what she wanted to say because it all ended. And that is the tragic story of the way down Christian diet program, the remnant fellowship church and its late founder, Gwen Shamblin Lara.

Damn, what a fucking tale. Isn't that just insane? Yeah. My God, that was long. That was long and wild and involved and good. Good job. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. I just think it's so fascinating. What's happening in our country these days is based in just the split, the way people are so truly polarized to a degree where someone tried to kill Nancy Pelosi in her house in San Francisco, attacked her husband. It's gone so far and it is so extreme and it is so dangerous. And if we never question our sources, who's telling us what to do, why, how it actually feels, what our life scenarios are like, if we just don't question anything and it becomes

only focused ever on the fight or the hate or the anti aspect, then we're all going to end up in a cult because it's just reaction after reaction. Totally. What we need talking about, the essence of Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, who was Jewish, who was probably a man of color, who basically hung out. And part of this I'm stealing from John Fugal saying who is a brilliant comedian, writer and philosopher and I just watched him say all of this.

So I'm stealing it from him, but and he says it much better than I will. What Americans are starting to do to Christianity is so in direct conflict with the teachings of Jesus and taking care of the poor, like basically doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. We've gone through the looking glass in that way. So people who are arguing like they're MAGA Christians and they're glad that someone tried to kill Nancy Pelosi with the hammer, you have gone too far. This isn't the elephant versus the donkey anymore.

No. No. You can't really say that because no one, no one can tell your year in a cult. And it's so scary. It's so scary that, you know, they're indoctrinated in this hatred and believe that they're, that it's the right way and it's the right thing to do and the right way to be and feel is to be someone who hates. It's all about make the other team suffer.

Totally. So kill Nancy Pelosi. Are you fucking like, no, this is about, no, totally, totally. That's not okay. That's a well put. It's just scary. It is. It's a very scary time.

Should we leave it at that for this week? I feel like that was a pretty solid story, a standalone story. And then I'll go next week. Okay. Let's do it. Cool. Oh, now you get to go and serve candy to the children. Oh, I serve the children.

Serve the children. Serve the children. Tell them you serve them as you get them to say they are. I serve you to totally creep out their parents the whole time as I'm drinking a can of wine. I serve your children. I serve you. Thank you guys so much for listening and being along for these almost seven years with us. Thanks for being in our cult.

We think you're closer to the God, to the God, if you eat like at least eight paydays a day. Absolutely. That's always been our stance. Yes. It feels good. Eat the payday. Do it.

Eat the payday. Do it. All right. Well, stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?

This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton. Our producer is Alejandra Keck. This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris. Our researchers are Marin McLashen and Gemma Harris. Email your hometowns and fucking hurrays to myfavoritmurder at gmail.com. Follow the show and Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritmurder and Twitter at myfavemurder. Goodbye.

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