Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 189 - The Children of Thunder Cult

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

Get ready for one helluva tale. Today's story is so crazy. The promising beginning, insane planning, and tragic pre-life-in-prison final acts of Taylor Helzer are hard to wrap one's mind around. Taylor grew up as a devout Mormon, a no-drug, no-sex, no-profanity, law-abiding-citizen until shortly after returning home from his two-year Mormon mission at the age of 21. Then he got married, quickly grew dissatisfied with married life, then started coming up with a preposterously delusional plan to take over the Mormon church using Brazilian orphan-assassins and money he'd made with a weird escort business. If you like weird, WTF? stories - this one's for you. Vimeo link to new standup special: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/dancumminsgetouttahereOnly $0.99 to rent between 5PM and 9PM, April 28th. Dan will be on IG live, @dancumminscomedy at 4:45PM and then again at 6:30PM to have a Q&A about the special. Hope you like Get Outta Here; Devil! We've donated $5,000 this month to the Meals on Wheels COVID-19 response fund. https://www.mealsonwheelsamerica.org/take-action/covid-19-response Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9HXjO1XDitoMerch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Want to try out Discord!?! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions: https://badmagicmerch.com/pages/contact Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 7500 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

Boy, oh boy, do I have a tail for you today? For me, this was a top 10 suck. I'm excited to tell this story. So strange and fascinating and horrible and darkly hilarious in moments. Today, we appear into Glenn Taylor-Helzers, twisted world of opposing ideologies and more than half baked plans

for prostitution and murder and stopping and apocalypse. Plans fueled by so much math. We're talking today about the children of Thunder Colt and the unbelievably cruel crimes they committed. A good prelude for this suck would be our Mormonism suck since Taylor's very twisted plans revolved around taking over the church he grew up loving the Latter-day Saints. The crimes committed by the children of Thunder would shock millions of Northern Californians due to their sheer brutality.

The tiny cult would come to an end shortly after three of their members committed five gruesome murders, including the slain of the daughter of a beloved Bay Area Blues musician, Elvin Bishop. The body parts of three of their victims will be found mixed together in duffel bags, floating in the San Francisco Bay Delta. What led to that? Today's tale is of one highly egotistical and mentally unhinged delusional man who once seemed destined for a promising future preaching the Mormon gospel.

And then later seemed destined for wealth as a young successful stockbroker. But religious delusions of grandeur and lustful ambitions and lots of meth turned him into an evil monster. How does one convince themselves that God commanded them to randomly murder people for money to win an imaginary war against Satan and fend off an imaginary apocalypse? Let's find out on this Children of Thunder holy and welcome to the Cult of the Curious. Get in here. Yeah, yeah. I'm Dan Cummins, a suck master, civil war reenacted the tractor, Bojangles groomer, rebuke or of plaque, and you are listing the time suck. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, glory be to Triple M and praise be to Bojangles groomer, rebuker of plaque, and you are listing the time suck.

Hail Nimrod, Hail Luciferina, Glory be to Triple M and Praise be to Bojangles. I have a new stand up special coming out. I want you to know about. If you're listening to this the day of the release tomorrow night, I'm having a viewing party Tuesday, April 28th, get out of here, devil. My third one hour stand up special, seventh widely released stand up album is coming out via comedy dynamics. Film just outside Detroit at the Crowfoot Ballroom this past October.

And I'll be on Instagram live at Dan Cammie's comedy. 4.45 pm for about 15 30 minutes to kick off a way to check it out for only 99 cents. Normal price 4.99 to rent 12.99 to buy, but for a limited four-hour window from 5pm to 9pm Pacific time, April 28th, you can rent it on Vimeo for just 99 cents, just a buck. Also available on all other platforms, including Apple TV and Amazon for buying or renting a regular price, following the IG Live to kick it off. Please watch it. Then I'll be back on Instagram live at Dan Cummins Comedy for a Q&A starting at 6.30 pm Pacific time. That's this Tuesday night, the 28th about talking about the special link to the Vimeo discount in the episode description. Again, 99 cents only on Vimeo, 5 pm to 9 pm. Hope you

love it. And up now at BadMagicMersh.com, the very futuristic liquid dreams time sucked tea in several color options, very different to 80s meets a sci-fi future look. Super cool, so much interesting, imaginative stuff at the BadMagicMersh.com store. And now let's get so fucking weird. Going to be a bit of a slow burn to start this one. Taylor was a good boy, is a kid, and we cover a lot of that, and then he becomes a bad, bad man, a very crazy bad man.

The contrast between his childhood and his adulthood is intense. This is such a wild tale. So let's tell it, let's get it up, Sasferilla! Yeah, yeah, yeah! [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT Alright, this is one of those sucks where the best way to really get into the context and just tell it is just to dive into a timeline narrative. So we are just quickly going to go from that little transition directly into this week's time suck timeline. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time suck timeline.

Glenn Taylor Helzer born on July 26, 1970 to Jerry and Karma Helzer to devout Mormons both living in Pacheco, California. Pacheco is a small town that's not really a town in Contra Costa County. It's a census designated place of a of around 3600 people five and a half miles north of Walnut Creek 19 miles northeast of Oakland and 27 miles northeast of San Francisco. Glenn was the couple's first child and karma would come to believe that her new baby boy was God's gift to the earth. And boy would she turn out to be very, very wrong just a bit outside without prediction. She didn't believe that in the way that nearly every mom believes that she believes it in a more literal sense.

She believed that Glenn, you know, was a conduit for the word of God. He was born to be a spiritual leader that God had a very special plan just for him. And this belief would warp Glenn in ways she could never expect. The Glenn who had quickly become known primarily by his middle name of Taylor was a perceptive outgoing boy who had an innate charm and self-assuredness

that drew people to him beginning at a young age. Taylor's father, Gerald Jerry Helzer, was an insurance salesman, who would also in time become an expert whitewater raft guide and operator. He said to be a good kind man, dedicated to his family's well-being, dedicated to his faith, and a good provider. Taylor's mom, Carmel Lee Helzer, was an especially devout Mormon who was primarily a housewife, but did sometimes also work as a therapist of sorts, not an actual licensed therapist. More of a, I can see your aura and I can feel that,

you know, in my soul shockers that God wants you to cleanse yourself of negative energy and really focus on your, you know, vibrational frequency and raising it kind of therapist. Karma grew up surrounded by her family, her religion, and the fruit orchards and rice farms of a little town north of Sacramento and California Central Valley.

Her father, Taylor's grandpa, was a nut, real zealot. He had a commanding presence and he prayed in preach frequently and often to his large family. He put the P in patriarch and would be a major. And I think unfortunate influence in Taylor's life will learn more about him in a bit. Karma's mom who bore the more than a dozen children struggled with depression and was at times suicidal. I had to wonder if being depressed and often suicidal had something to do with having a dozen kids. I feel like a dozen kids would drive almost anyone to break a suicide. I love my two kids, but if I had 10 more, I would probably for sure be suicidal.

Based on what we'll learn about Taylor's grandpa and this little thing about his grandma being depressed and what we'll learn about a fair amount of other family members, it does seem as if mental illness ran rampant throughout Taylor's family tree. And while he would later successfully, you know, sorry, I'm sorry, and while he would not later successfully plead and sanity to his murder trial, he wasn't the very least, I feel, you know, more prone to delusions of grandeur and more mental stability than the average meat sack. As the age of 19, Carma married Jerry, November of 1968, the immediately got started

on their families. Jerry began to climb his way through the ranks of the insurance industry. Then on February 12, 1972, just 18 months after the birth of Taylor, after moving the family to Helena, Montana, Justin Allen, Heuser, Taylor's little brother was born. Helena man, beautiful little Montana town if you've never been. Did you know that in 1888, Helena had more millionaires per capita than any other city in the whole world.

And a million dollars in 1888 is equivalent to just over 27 million in today's spending power. About 50 different miners had made a million plus dollars in gold back in 1888 to over $3.6 billion dollars of gold was extracted just inside the city limits in the first two decades after it was founded in 1864. The entire territory of Montana was founded because of gold mines. There are enough random Montana trivia. I just have always liked Helena.

Justin was shy and very polite. He seemed awkward compared to his dynamic and charismatic brother. Certainly lived in the shadow of Taylor from the beginning of his life until the end to his severe detriment. Having Taylor for an older brother was the worst thing that would ever happen to Justin by far, truly.

Growing up, Justin worshiped his older brother like only a younger sibling can. He quickly became Taylor's greatest admirer, best friend. The two would play together constantly riding their big wheels around and later riding their bicycles around on journeys of exploration, building elaborate scenes with their plastic toy soldiers and dashing around the house pretending to be superheroes, wrestling each other using sticks to stage mock fights, you know, typical kid stuff. There was no early signs that the two would, you know, grow up to be a gruesome murder buddy duo, a couple decades later, later.

1974 Justin will become the middle child after their youngest sister Heather was born two years after him. Now it would be it for the family three kids. The elders were a close-knit family and also a very religious family where dreams and visions were taken seriously and religious scripture was part of their daily routine. Visions were taken seriously.

Uh oh. Man, at this point in my life, unless I was also seeing this exact same visions, I could not take someone telling me seriously who's saying that they're having spiritual visions. Think I had known in my family talks about their spirit visions. I also think that Taylor and Justin had they not grown up in a family where people took that kind of shit seriously. I don't think they would have became murderers. This taking vision seriously plays a lot into Taylor's psychology and I believe also plays

a lot into Justin being willing to follow his brother and to just just the weirdest fucking reality. When Taylor was young, for the most part, the hellsars led a typical middle class Mormon life, a church, family, and responsible living. They also moved around quite a bit. After Montana, the hellsars moved to Louisiana and then to Georgia. 1978, while living just outside Atlanta,

eight-year-old Taylor was officially baptized into the church of Jesus Christ, the latter-day Saints. Eight is the traditional age. You know, Mormons born into the church are baptized. The age of accountability. And Taylor's dad, Jerry, was filled with fatherly pride, hugging his tall skinny son with a mop a straight dark hair, you know, holding him to his side with a lot of pride.

Family's next move, again spurred by promotional opportunity for Jerry was back to Louisiana. There in 1980 Justin was baptized into the church in another proud moment for everyone, but probably a less proud moment. After getting a feel for Taylor's childhood, it becomes quickly apparent that everyone loved Taylor more than Justin.

So however, you know, proud, you know, Jerry was a Taylor. I feel like when he hugged Justin, he probably squeezed, probably squeezed him like 10, 20% less tight than he had previously squeezed Taylor. You know, just, oh, he hug Justin, he probably squeezed, probably squeezing like 10, 20% less tight than he'd previously squeezed Taylor. You know, just, oh, yay, Justin, good for you doing stuff, man, gosh dang.

Taylor did it and then you did it. That's, that's cool. Man, it seems like, remember when Taylor did it? It seemed like he was really filled with the spirit when he was baptized. And then, you know, just now it's like, you know, you did it and it was, it was all right.

You know, you held your breath and stuff. Justin didn't hourly seem to mind being in Taylor's shadow. He was a much more reserved child than his older brother. Usually seem content just to watch and listen. His Taylor took center stage. Justin would remember Taylor as being a great big brother growing up. Once when Justin got beat up by an elementary school bully Taylor stepped in the next day, beat the kid up enough to make sure that his little bro Justin wasn't going to get hassled

again. A little sister Heather would also later recall Taylor being a good protective older brother, which meant a lot to her because she couldn't always turn to mom or dad for problems. For a portion of their childhood, Jerry worked a lot, just wasn't available. And he was a, he was old fashioned. He firmly believed that men provided for their families, women raised the kids, you know, I can dealt with the kids. For several years, their childhood, mom, karma couldn't be bothered because of a variety of health issues. Throughout the siblings childhood,

it seemed to Heather that their mom always had some kind of illness that prevented her from doing any real mothering a good chunk of the time. Heather said that she began to realize that she grew up that karma suffered more from emotional issues than physical ones, perhaps some type of mental illness such as depression, more mental health struggles and Taylor's family tree. When karma was ill, Heather and the boys would play together, exploring whatever area they were in, becoming a really tightly knit little trio. When karma felt okay,

Heather did remember her as being an attentive mom who loved playing and listing tour kids. 1981, Jerry and Carmen decided that they were done moving from city to city and state to state for his job and wanted to live closer to family. And they came back west to California, settling back in the Bay area in Berlin game. Berlin game is about 45 miles southwest of Pacheco. Just south of the San Francisco airport actually buttoned up against it just north of San Mateo on the bay. An easy Bart subway ride in San Francisco or into San Francisco, you know, Oakland or Berkeley from Berlin game. The hellsers immediately

settled in became very active in their local church ward. In August of 1982, Taylor was ordained into the Aaronic priesthood a week after he turned 12. The Aaronic priesthood is the preparatory priesthood for male Mormons. It's where young Mormon males learn to levitate, hone various cyanocabilities, perfect spellcasting, and fight the forces of darkness by the power of grayschool. Uh, JK. No, it's a preparatory priesthood for male Mormons and it contains several offices of the church to which members can advance. It's modeled after the priesthood of Aaron the

Levite older older bro of Moses, the first high priest of the Hebrews and his descendants. The erotic priesthood is a preparatory priesthood, a appendage of the male Kizadek priesthood, the big boy priesthood for adult priest who have mastered spell casting eyeball lasers and shooting fireballs from their hands and so forth. That is not of course what the Melchizedek priest do. They have all kinds of responsibilities. Mostly involves a lot of prayer, scripture memorization, and paperwork. Probably put in more hours at the local ward than the non-priest.

Once you pass through the eronic priesthood and become a member of the Melchizedek priesthood, you're assigned to one of five offices, each with varying rights and responsibilities like the office of Apostle. You have to be married and be a Melchizedek priest for that office. An Apostle can ordain persons to all other offices and callings in the church. The president of the LDS church must be an Apostle or he can belong to the office of 70. Don't have to be married for that one. You can work under the direction of an apostle. You can preach the gospel. You can be in the office of the elder. Have to be at least 18 for that one. Confir the gift of the Holy Ghost. Give blessings by the laying on of hands and there's several other

offices and the offices are organized into forums groups to priest assisting each other, teaching each other, delegating responsibilities to people and committees, et cetera. There's the quorum of the 12 apostles, a quorum of the 70 and others. There's a whole, you know, somewhat complicated and layered hierarchy to LDS leadership. And at the age of 12, Taylor becomes a part of it. He first becomes a Deakin, helping to pass the sacrament or in Sunday's services and collect donations for the less fortunate. His family's pumped. Taylor takes it seriously. He does a good job. collect donations for the less fortunate. His family's pumped, Taylor takes it seriously. He does a good job. He does such a good job.

His family feels like he can also handle a secular job. And he and his brother Justin take on a paper route that year too. And the boy shared the route for a few years until Justin earns enough money to buy a bike. And then he quits, down with the route. And then Taylor quits as well. Must've been some kind of bike.

If it took him a few years to save up for it. Taylor on the other hand, never saved for anything. Money would slip through his hands almost as soon as he earned it. It was, you know, as my grandpa would tell me when I was a kid, as if the money was burning a whole in his pocket. I get it. How can you save? And there's candy bars and walkmans and aerosomist cassettes

and copies of the X-Men and Mad Magazine to buy. I have a saver and a spender. My daughter Monroe socks her money away like she grew up in the Great Depression. My son Kyler blows his money on things he needs. He needs them. He loves them for about a week and then he forgets about them. Taylor blew his paper route money but he wasn't irresponsible. He was described as kind, a respectful kid, full of excitement and energy.

He was bright and charming and good looking. It seemed that as he got older, life for everyone in his family began to revolve around him. He especially threw himself into church duties, was especially good at absorbing and reciting scripture, like a lot of future religious leaders, also like a lot of future cult leaders. In 1982, the Helzer boys, they were good kids, really good kids. They weren't chasing girls, they weren't getting in trouble with the law, weren't sneaking out to drink, didn't even use profanity.

They were fucking great kids. 1983, financial set-back set-to-family, you know, to live with Carmen's parents near Ubersity California, close to where Carmen grew up. Ubersity just over a two two hour drive from Berlin game, if there's no traffic, North there, probably up to double that, if there is, it's 140 miles north, North of Sacramento by roughly 40 miles.

Home of over 160,000 people, also, randomly, home of a B-52 crash in a 1961 that was carrying two nooks. Luckily neither detonated or Ubicity would be a lifeless fucking crater instead of a town right now. Uh, Ubicity also home of serial killer Juan Corona. Have you heard of that, dude? I had not.

How was Juan Corona not much more well known? Dude was arrested a dozen years before the Hellsars arrived in 1971 charged with 25 counts of first to remurder. 24 of the 25 men he killed were killed with a fucking machete, a machete. Most victims, all men, almost all migrant workers have been sexually assaulted before he macheteed them. Corona, one of the most prolific serial killers in US history, just died in prison last year and almost nothing appears to be written about the guy. What the shit? Man, to suck this dude one day if we can find enough info.

Anyway, 1983, the Helgers moved to Corona's old stomping grounds, where their mom had also grown up. The kids enrolled in school in the fall and Tater spent a lot of time with its craziest shit maternal grandpa. He became a willing student of his grandfather's lessons and LDS doctrine soaking in more scripture than those his age. It were usually taught the preaching and prayer and grandpa swords and household was constant. Even family home evenings and nights set aside once a week for togetherness and fellowship that was supposed to be fun and lighthearted which is turning to hour and a half orations on scripture and Taylor loved it.

Loved here in grandpa talk about the LDS interpretation of the spirit world and God. Grandpa Doyle was a very religious man and crazy. Yes, fellow Mormons considered him to be on the very outer fringes of the LDS faith. On one infamous occasion, Doyle claimed that he had seen Jesus Christ in his front yard. And not at some barely saw him out of the corner of his eye flickering kind of way. Not in a, oh, he gave me a quick thumbs up, told me you're doing great, Doyle. Jesus loves you. And then he'd vanish his kind of way.

No, Doyle would insist for the rest of his life that what he witnessed was not just a vision. Nope, he told his family, and he would tell her anyone else who would listen, that Jesus was there in his yard in the flesh, and that he went outside to talk with him, and he said that they talked in the yard for several hours.

So it was the only time in his life you'd felt such a level of excitement and joy. So he hugged and kissed Jesus and held his hand. And you know what, I was in there, maybe did, but probably not, but maybe, to say that definitely 100% for sure that never happened would mean that I think I would have to also say that all religion is 100% for sure, not true, right?

Because all religion begins by accepting that someone seemingly impossible, preposterous, crazy sounding vision or interaction with the divine is actually true, right? So maybe he held hands with Jesus in the yard, maybe like one in a trillion chance, much more likely, he's fucking crazy. And if you think I'm being an asshole, saying that, imagine if anyone in your life, anyone at all told you that they just chilled with flesh and blood Jesus in their yard for a couple hours.

Would you think, oh, that's awesome! Oh, I for sure believed that. That must have been fun. Or would you think, huh? And then debate whether or not you should contact some kind of mental health service. The sources don't say what Papa Doyle and Jesus talked about for a couple hours.

I wish they did. And what were they talking about? What were they discussing for a couple hours. I wish they did. And what were they talking about? What were they discussing for a couple hours? So Jesus, hey, heaven's real, right? I mean, yeah, I mean, of course, I believe that. I believe that, know that I believe that. I just thought it'd be cool to hear from you. And then, hey, well, my wife, when we die,

like when my wife and I die, are we really gonna be together like forever? Like just her and me, forever and ever. Just two of us. Huh. Man, no other women ever for infinity. That's intense. But that's what's great. It's great. It's perfect. Hey, sure. Hey, if you wanted to, could you shoot fire at your hands? I just figured you could probably shoot fire at your hands because you can do anything. You know, I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm nervous. I don't even know what I'm talking about. really. Jesus Christ, I just never thought I would get to talk to you. Hey, I don't know.

Hey, what do you think of the yard? I put some new seed over there this spring. I just feel like it's extra thick. I feel like it's pretty even, you know, not right now if you like that. Taylor loved Grandpa Doyle. Didn't think he was crazy. Admired his spirituality and the year he spent

with Grandpa Doyle would be highly influential on him. Grandpa's influence led to Doyle. Didn't think he was crazy. Admired his spirituality and the year he spent with Grandpa Doyle would be highly influential on him. Grandpa's influence led to Doyle, you know, or led to Taylor spending even more time throwing himself into the faith. He memorized large chunks of the book of Mormon, one of the local bishops predicted great things for him. The following year in 1984, the family was financially back on their feet and karma and Jerry gathered their children, moved them into an apartment and concord back in the Bay Area. Just over 20 miles east to Oakland,

just three miles from Pacheco, back where they were 14 years ago when Taylor was born. 14 year old Taylor became a teacher in the ironic priesthood, which allowed him to help prepare the sacrament and visit families to share scriptural, scripture lessons. His outgoing nature and boundless energy made him a natural, disnew position, popular popular, his new ward. As he grew older, Taylor's influence within his family and his church grew in ways

uncommon for someone his age. It was dynamic, charismatic, force commanding every room he entered. He continued to study scripture, knowing so much of it inside and out now and he used it to make or defend whatever points he felt needed to be made. At 14, he really was already becoming a spiritual leader. His family treated him like their spiritual leader at 14. His cousin, Charney Hoffman, had a lot to say about Taylor a years later after his arrest. He would say in court, that Taylor was like his mentor.

A lot of people wanted to be like him. We live with them for some time when I was young in Georgia, as we got a little bit older, we continued to meet. I stayed in touch with Taylor. I absolutely loved him. We live with them for some time when I was young in Georgia, as we got a little bit older, we continue to meet. I stayed in touch with Taylor. I absolutely loved him. He was very influential in my life and a lot of other people's lives. He was never, ever judgmental towards my family, though my family is definitely not an example of how the Latter-day Saints Church would like people to live.

Taylor was very accepting, regardless of the fact, that's not always the case with people who are very religious. But Taylor always sought to foster a lot of love and understanding in all of his relationships. I remember going to Marriott's great America and somebody said something to make me think they were stupid. I remember being sarcastic to that person and Taylor stopped me. He had insight to know that I was being cruel to somebody else because somebody had been cruel to me. He said, wait a second, do you understand that you probably hurt that person's feelings? Taylor was always the light in the group.

You were always having fun as long as Taylor was there because he brought people together. Man, 14 year old Taylor, hells are good kid. Kid who want to do right, a religious kid who wanted to make the world a better place, trying to must have been shocked by who Taylor turned into. The following year in Concord, 1995, girl named Ann met Taylor at Ignatio Valley High School. Even though Taylor didn't play sports, wasn't involved in student government and realized that almost everyone in Ignatio Valley

high knew Taylor. She said later there was something charismatic about him. You noticed him for a time after high school and in Taylor would go on their separate ways, but she wouldn't forget the charismatic young man and their paths would unfortunately cross again. On July 26, 1996, when Taylor turned 16, he gained the authority to administer the sacrament to perform baptisms within the LDS faith. His love affair with his religion continues.

On December 7, Taylor receives one of the most important affirmations of his life, his patriarchal blessing. Every Mormon can ask for and receive such a blessing, blessing, which usually includes recognition of special gifts or talents, as well as how they should use them to serve others. Patriarchal blessings are given only once in a lifetime and members treat them as sacred. The patriarch, a Mormon high priest, gives the blessing in person. It's recorded, so it can be transcribed and stored in the church's records. A copy is given to the recipient, and Mormons are encouraged by the church not to share their personal blessings with others. From the church, from the church of jesus christ.org, it says every worthy baptized member

is entitled to and should receive a patriarchal blessing, which provides inspired directions from the Lord. Patriarchal blessings include a declaration of a person's lineage in the House of Israel and contain personal counsel from the Lord. As a person studies his or her patriarchal blessing and follows the counsel it contains, it will provide guidance, comfort, and protection. And I got to say, this kind of stuff is why some other Christians view Mormonism as being a bit cultier than the average Christian examination. Whoever is giving the patriarchal blessing is claiming to be a conduit for God's word,

which I interpret as being, you know, a kind of a profit, really, if you break it down, right? They're delivering a personal prophecy from God to whoever is receiving the blessing. I would think this kind of spiritual atmosphere would lead to a fair amount of grandpa Doyle's people claiming to see all kinds of spiritual stuff Because you have to believe that God is talking directly to all kinds of different humans to believe this and Soon Taylor will believe that God is talking directly to him What he believes God is telling him will lead directly to five murders Taylor's blessing acknowledges already known leadership, is those talents and place them in a very important light. The patriarch confirmed what Taylor

already knew about himself when he said, you were among those in the spirit world who were chosen to be great leaders. Now you have the opportunity in your mortal life also to serve as a leader and an exemplar in the great work of God in bringing to pass the immortality and internal life of his children. Your valiancy in the spirit world prepared you for a special place in this short, but important phase of mortality

as part of your internal progress. After this, Tator climbed up onto the roof of this family's home, he raised his arms to the heavens and he screamed, I am a golden god! Bow before me, let's are mortals! By the power of grayscale! No, maybe he didn't do that. But he probably did have, you know, more pep and step.

Right, hearing all this good shit about himself, walking around now, thinking about how he's destined to be this great spiritual leader. Tater was told to be called upon to take up significant leadership positions within the church and to counsel others about their problems. You'd receive the special guidance of the Spirit as you completed these tasks. Said, you've been blessed with special spiritual gifts.

You have the gift of discernment of spirits that permits you to distinguish that, which is good from that, which is bad in its ultimate effects. You also have the ability in this gift to understand the thoughts and the minds of other persons and to understand their needs and their underlying attitudes. This gift will aid you greatly in rendering counsel and advice to those who come to you to see guidance in their lives. Man, he has a gift to read minds. Know the hearts of men, what could possibly go wrong in telling a 16-year-old that they

have that kind of magical power? The blessing continued with, you also have the special gift of revelation whereby the Lord will reveal to you his mind and his will, both in a general way and in a detailed and specific way. You may feel his guidance and his presence and he will give you answer to your questions and to your prayers and will give you specific instructions and how to proceed in some kind of, in some of the more difficult matters with which you may deal. Awesome.

He's told that God is going to speak to him directly and give him detailed instructions for his spiritual mission. How could that possibly fucking backfire with anyone? He's a chosen Mormon Jedi and he can talk to God. Fuck yeah, bro. Taylor was on the fast track when he came to spiritual matters and he thought he should be with his education now as well. No chosen God Jedi.

She had to wait until his 18 to graduate from high school like a common heathen. He decides to withdraw from Concord's Ignatio Valley high school and finishes schooling through independent study with the full support of his family. He thought he could finish, you know, a lot quicker this way and he did not do that. He ended up getting through his coursework at about the same time, uh, as if he would have just stayed in school. As God obviously intended, sure, hey, my look like it kind of fucked up here. That's only because your old stupid regular old brain can't possibly begin to understand the higher path he's clearly on. Uh, Tater leaving early meant that he never attended Ignatio Valley with his little

brother Justin. Carman to home school Justin for eight to ninth grades when he entered school his sophomore year tater was already gone. Well, he still worshiped his big bro Justin wasn't able to follow in his footsteps one of the tallest and skinniest kids in school. It wasn't nearly as popular as Taylor had been often ridiculed by fellow students where his Taylor seemed to have made countless friends in school when he was there, both male and female female Justin had almost no friends Painfully shy especially around girls and he became more and more introverted Justin was committed to church life much like his brother did well there But he was socially drowning outside of the church

This wasn't able to navigate secular life free well. He never would have really figured out his parents Carmen Jerry We're oblivious to their son's plight. It sister, Heather, did, however, worry about him. Family life seemed to continue to be good during Taylor's teen years overall. The Hellsars would often take camping trips, go out and watch movies, go to the library, do other family activities. Taylor continued to preach the Mormon word of God to everyone around him. He was a teenager and his family was proud of him for doing so. His mom, Carmen, especially proud.

She continued to believe that her baby boy Taylor was special and destined for great spiritual things. She was convinced that her eldest son was an actual prophet of God. She do it on him. Even had her other children defer their questions about mortality and faith to their older brother. Before the age of 18, Taylor had, you know, he was a spiritual leader by far of a very spiritual household. And that, of course, just reaffirmed with Taylor already believed about himself. He was a spiritual Jedi destined for great things. Secretly unbeknownst to his family, Taylor begins to struggle with his spiritual expectations.

It starts feeling guilty. He's lust and after girls, not talking about anybody. He's jerking off and he's feeling guilty about masturbating to his lustful sin thoughts. Become so consumed with guilty contemplates suicide. And I'm not surprised. Right. He's been told that God expects, you know, him to live up to these ideals and that defy his natural physical and animal impulses.

He's been told is instinctual urges and thoughts that he's been hardwired to have as a mammal or now fucking sinful. He will also later admit that he'd been here in voices for a few years now. Of course he's hearing voices. You know, he's been told that God is going to talk directly to him with specific instructions. God's talking to everybody around him. Years later, a psychiatrist, Dr. Douglass Tucker will say, Taylor was early as 14, was experiencing ideas that were unusual and inappropriate.

He was receiving inaudible messages by the age of 14. Taylor was told he had the gift of revelation but he didn't know if the messages he was receiving were from God or Satan. Man, this poor kid. His family expects him to be an important LDS prophet and he wants to fulfill those godly expectations but he also wants to jerk off the thoughts of Sally's

cleavage from chemistry class. He wants to worship Jesus and Lucifina because he's a human being. And so, he's gonna find that, you know, Lucifina is a pull on him is stronger. November of 1987, 17-year-old Taylor decides to join the National Guard. However, he's still underage. They want to initially let him sign up.

Relative Jill Tinge later recalls, they, he and Karma, came down because he was going into the National Guard. Karma and Taylor were there, kept running into red tape problems, so they were off and on at our place for six weeks. Taylor was so sweet and wonderful. My children loved him, he was cooperative, he was helpful, we were doing various projects, gardening and painting the fence and stuff, he was awesome. I wished he was my kid.

So that's him in 1987, still amazing kid. By the next summer, 1988, he was able to join and Taylor was transferred to the guard in Utah. In 88, he also joined members of his mother's family on a survival trip into the wilderness. It would be a mock-up trip of the apocalypse, right? Like a fake apocalypse or survival training program. Totally normal, family, apocalypse, preparation trip with Papa Doyle. The sources believed that the last days were near and they were training for it. Because, you know, because Jesus probably told Doyle to get ready when he swung through town and children's fucking yard that one time.

They believed that they needed to be prepared for the collapse of modern technology. They would force them to survive on their own and Tader believed this infatically. And it was right for them to prepare because we are clearly way less dependent on technology now in 2020. I mean, we're in 1988. Wake up, sheeple. I can't remember the last time I used a computer other than right now at this exact moment,

and almost every moment earlier this day, and most of my days. Bucking arm are getting preppers. Millions of hours of wasted time and counting. So many bunkers built, so many plans formed, so many plans, so many drills ran. Exactly zero of all of it has amounted thus far to literally anything useful.

Taylor ran his problems with the service National Guard in 1988. He was sent down to Texas for training and he was alarmed by the stuff he heard his fellow soldiers talking about. Just boy, howdy. Gosh dang, what the flip are those sinners up to? I'll tell you exactly what, talking about drinking, swearing, and sex, yikes, heavens to Betsy. Get out here, loose the penis.

Stop making my dick hard. I'm trying to focus on the Lord. I only want to be hard for God. Wait, that's no. That came out wrong. You know what I mean? Uh, Taylor's eyes were opened by the drinking, the swearing, the swearing, you guys.

The chasing after women by his fellow unit members. And he began preaching to them about the error of their ways Which I'm sure made him super popular and I doubt anyone told him to shut the fuck up at any time Despite his exposure to all this sin his faith remains strong after his National Guard training was down He moved back to his grandfather's house Papa Doyle. Oh, thank God He's back in Papa Doyle's loving embrace JC's close-kn and personal friend, right? His yard buddy, and he enrolls in the U of college.

He last exactly one semester before growing sick of all the sinning and the cursing. And he decides that someone has evolved in destined for greatness as himself. Clearly, he doesn't need to waste her time in community college. And he decides to do what most more men do when they turn 19, go on a two year mission for the LDS church. For young Mormon men and women going on a mission is

one of the highlights of their lives. Excuse me, they're sent to another area or country, teamed up with a partner sent door-to-door dress like 1940s accounts, bringing the book of Mormon and the LDS church to anyone who happens to be at home and bored enough to entertain a long conversation. And Taylor is pumped. Uh, this sort of thing was right up his alley. Took a job with the construction company, started saving his money, not knowing where the church was going to send him July 26, 1979, Taylor turned 19 and soon after his birthday, he was ordained as an elder in the church and important step towards entering the Melchizedek priesthood. As an elder, Taylor could now do some of the things he believed he was put on this earth to do. Bless the sick.

Others in need participating in the sacred ordinances of the temple and preach the gospel. Healing the sick. It's pretty awesome. And hearing about that right now makes me pretty pissed off at Mormons. What the flip Mormons? Come on. There were 15 million Mormons in the world right now, at least several hundred thousand to be priests.

So why are any of us sheltered in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic? Get out there and fix this stuff. LDS meat sex. Come on. Stop ducking around. Stop counting and recount your three month supply dry goods and rebuke the power of the COVID. And yes, LDS suckers. I know it's not that simple. I read all about it on the official church website. I JK sometimes. Before we left for missionary training, there was a farewell party held in Taylor's honor, honor about two dozen family and church members showed up to wish him well, cousin Charney would recall the party year's layer,

saying the main meeting is actually given to the family members and the departing missionary to deliver some type of message. The message of the meeting from Taylor and from his parents was after other people spoke. And the things people said about Taylor were to the effect of, he had a good effect on them. Taylor, according to what people said, read scriptures with virtually anyone who raised their hand. Most of the people talked about insights that Taylor brought, which is actually unusual. Usually people give their own comments, but in that ward, he had a lot

of clout. People were very, very proud of the interactions they had with Taylor. People were excited to share insights about life, about scripture, about anything, the positive influence that he had in their lives was immense. Right, the church leadership meant right there. They're all about this kid. They decided to send Taylor to Brazil, AKA a boner town. Oh boy. Oh, shico sideways in Brazil.

Luciferous presence is strong in Brazil. Birthplace of the Brazilian wax, honed in many of the world's curvy as sexiest women, queues so much masturbation guilt. Years later, yeah, the effects of Brazil are really gonna linger on Taylor as you will find out in as the suckos forward. Before heading out, Taylor would need to be trained in the art of Mormon salesmanship at the missionary training center in Provo, Utah, before he left, he recalled being disappointed that his mom didn't cry when he left.

That speaks to his sense of self-importance. Taylor entered the language immersion program in Provo and intense schedule of instruction six hours a day, six days a week. He'd speak almost nothing but Portuguese at the encouragement of his teachers. Taylor's time at the center made him a leaner, meaner voice for the Mormon faith.

He gave many well-received talks that were praised by his peers and his teachers alike. He credited the Holy Spirit for his success. He kept records of his achievements, proudly in his journal. He was eager to use his gifts to head south and save some souls. In 1990, he bounced.

He wrote in his journal that he needed to work on everything. He said, I can't disobey the slightest whispering of spirit. He added that he needed to follow through on everything that the spirit told him. No way this kind of pressure was ever going to backfire. Tate was so excited to begin preaching on the very flight to Brazil. He later said that he saw a tomb in on the plane and noticed that they looked unhappy.

He smiled at him. And they didn't give him a response. They didn't smile back. So he knew they must be unhappy. He smiled at him and they didn't give him a response. They didn't smile back. So he knew they must be unhappy. There was no way that they didn't just want to get sucked into a conversation with an obvious Mormon missionary, someone wild-eyed and on fire with the spirit of God. A little while later, his companion came back with one of these two guys' autographs that it was the pop duo erasure on a world tour. Taylor shrugged and said, I hope I always remember that it's not money, fame, or any amount of worldly things that make

a person truly happy. I hope that my priorities are always straight, clear, and in order. Side note, I think the erasure guys were pretty fucking happy, 1988. Between 1986 and 2007, the British synth pop duo cranked out 24 consecutive top 40 hits in the UK 1988 they had a new album that would go platinum in the US and the UK They were huge in Germany Denmark Sweden Argentina Brazil Chilean Peru as well Right now they're still averaging around two and a half million listeners on a month on Spotify alone They're currently multi-millionaires tailors currently in prison. So yeah, I think it's pretty safe that their parties ended up being a little bit better than it But anyways Taylor dove right into his new job in Brazil

One morning while on a bus shortly after arriving he spoke to a captive foreign audience as he would record in his journal He said in broken Portuguese attention, please everyone attention, please. All right. He's standing up on the bus My name is Elder Helzer. I am from California and United States. This is my first week in Brazil. I only studied for two months, the Portuguese language before I arrived here. I and my companion are going to,

mirror Sema de Norte, to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are missionaries. My language is bad, but my message is beautiful and powerful. It is about our Savior and His love for us for we are His children. And the bus was silent. Every eye was upon him. And then he said he said, uh, we are the first two missionaries to go to mirror SEMA. I am so excited about being in Brazil and

mirror SEMA. God has given me a love for the people of Brazil and the children I love too. He said this looking down a little girl he'd made friends with early on the bus ride. He paused the smile and touched her head and he's a politician. Turned back to his new congregation. It is because of my love for my Savior and His children on earth that I have left my family, my friends, my work, my education in the U.S. to come to Brazil to share the gospel of Christ. If you see me and my companion in the street, do this, he said, pausing to wave. And call us. We would love to talk with you. I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior. I know that God is much love for us. And this love to talk with you. I know that Jesus Christ is our savior. I know that God is much love for us. And this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen. And incredibly,

the pastors began clapping and cheering according to his journal. Right? Not sure if you would get that reaction on an American bus if he did that today. I'm guessing there would be a little less clapping. Possibly zero cheering and probably quite a few shots of shut the fuck up, it's sit down. So isn't your boss dickhead? I'm trying to watch fall compilations on YouTube. God dammit. This would be the beginning of a very successful mission

for Taylor. He would quickly learn to love the Brazilian culture, especially the food. I get it so much meat, I love it too. He also loved the way Brazilians honored their parents, even their teenagers, and vowed to do better with his own family. The only thing he really didn't care for, or at least what he told his fellow missionaries in his family he didn't care for, was all of the fucking.

Gosh, dang it! A lot of dick sneaking into all kinds of holes down there. He spoke of how common it was for unmarried women, unmarried women to live openly with men and made him so sad when he wasn't furiously masturbating to thoughts of having sex with those very same women, which will become clear later in the timeline. The mission goal was to have 20 discussions a week with prospective converts down in Brazil and Taylor took his mission seriously. One week in his companion accomplished 17, you know, conversations or discussions, whatever. And leadership was fine with 17. It wasn't 20, but they were fine with it. Taylor was not fine.

He was disappointed. After four months in mirror, Seema, Taylor was sent to a different location with the native Brazilian companion. Hopefully, you know, this new guy wouldn't just fucking phone it in with a measly 17 discussions a week. Taylor was pumped. He hoped that his new guy could help him with his Portuguese. He hoped he'd be more committed and excited about his faith than his fucking previous partner.

Elder, that'll do. Elder close enough. Elder, let's call it a day with the new native companion and an increasing handle on the language Taylor continued to spread the good word in different areas of the country Surely after he began his second assignment another missionary Jonathan Taylor would show up as part of Taylor's four-man heathen conversion team Jonathan left home for his mission at the age 19 in 1990 and he would later recall his time spent with Taylor saying I met Taylor Helzer on my second day in the country.

I met him in a small rural city about 60 miles outside the mission headquarters in a town called Occidental. There were four missionaries assigned to the area. We all lived in a very small house. When I first met Taylor, he was energetic, passionate, seemed to really relish the mission experience. He also struck me as very intelligent. I liked him immediately.

He was not my official companion initially, but he kind of became my de facto companion. I felt that he was particularly effective in teaching. People seemed to like him, and he had a very, very capable man or about him. We would spend a lot of time studying scripture, and that's not a typical of a missionary. Helzer was more skilled at it the most.

I think that's one of the reasons we became good friends. There was almost a mania and Taylor's reading and interpreting of scripture however. Sometimes he would stay up all night reading scripture from the book of Mormon and dwelling upon what was written. He would go off on tangents, trying to discern thoughts beyond the surface meaning. It led him into some strange interpretations of scripture. Taylor had a hard time sleeping at night. He would write in his journal hour after hour.

Some of the main topics were about the last days, faith, miracles, and his future family. He said, I have been feeling the fruits of spirit. It is impossible to turn my mind off. I have never felt the spirit of the Holy Ghost so strongly before. Here we go! Cult, cult, cult.

Now his brain's really starting to work like a cult leader, right, the scripture is speaking to him. He's beginning to understand how and when the last days will come. He's solving mysteries, cracking codes. Codes that his fellow elders aren't spiritually fucking woke enough to understand. Taylor did really well in Brazil. Some of his friends would later brag about

him breaking records and conversions. His ability to charm people made him a big fish and a small pond amongst his circle of influence. Jonathan Taylor started to notice a change in Taylor's demeanor several months into their time together. He later said, the changes in Taylor were fairly abrupt. Some of the conclusions and beliefs he began to draw,

he'd state them more infatically. Our relationship became a bit more strained. We would end up button heads on issues where I would say, you know, hell's, I think you're taking that a little too far. You're lacking certain pieces of information in order to make that conclusion. He sends to you, been given additional inspiration to kind of understand how these things were connected. Coat, coat, coat. And also carried over into our teaching. When we would teach together, he began to teach these things, he was studying, and the church has a very set curriculum

that you're supposed to teach people who are interested in hearing about church doctrines. Hells are dwelled upon certain cataclysmic events in the latter days, quote, quote, quote. These were a particular interest to him. He would talk about his opinion that there would be the elimination of technology. He thought technology would be rendered useless in the last days.

And the church or religious leadership would really fall into groups that would be led by warrior prophets who would defend the people in their faith. Yikes! Guessing all this focus was probably helped along by Papadoyal. You know, as probably some more stale that Jesus told Papadoyal when they were out in the lawn. Just, you know, when Jesus liked, oh, and oil, one more thing, my son. Yes, Jesus. Tell Taylor to prepare a group of warrior prophets to fight Satan when technology collapses and the final battle begins in a couple of years and great job on the extra seeding.

Your lawn looks great, it's very thick and even. Taylor Helzer was now envisioning to post-apocalyptic world with bands of people led by war, your priest, he would adopt a fortress mentality, they would practice survival skills and fight against the forces of darkness, like some shit straight out of Stephen King's stand or Mad Max or Lord of the Rings or something. Johnathan Taylor said, I struggled with these concepts and he started to take these ideas to our mission president. Helzer started to debate scripture with the mission president.

Taylor would come out from these meetings and say, well, you know, I brought up such and such and he doesn't know anything about it. Taylor just seemed increasingly frustrated with our mission president. He started to view the president as not being a spiritual leader. Coat, coat, coat.

The church leaders don't know what they're talking about. Only I know the word of God. Taylor would soon begin to begin to view the word of God. Tell you what soon to begin to, begin to view the entirety of Mormon leadership this way. They just didn't get it. Meanwhile, back home, Justin followed his big bro's footsteps by himself joining the California National Guard, signing up just two days after his 17th birthday in 1989.

In the summer of 1993, days after graduating from Ignacio Valley High School, Justin reported for a nine week military police training course at Fort McClellan in Alabama. In the summer of 1990, three days after graduating from Ignacio Valley High School, Justin reported for a nine week military police training course at Fort McClellan in Alabama. And he did well. Qualified as a marksman with the M16 rifle, qualified as a sharp shooter with a nine-millimeter pistol and as an expert with the 45 caliber pistol. He was now qualified for what the Army needed, which were MPs and a number of places.

The 870th Military Police Company, with Specialist Justin Helzer, shipped out to Kaiser Schlottern, Germany, in December to support Operation Desert Shield, which is the next month turning to Operation Desert Storm, the US campaign to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. The 18-year-old Justin was surrounded by a bunch of guys who had definitely not been raised in the Mormon church. They would drink and swear, and they would talk talk about sex and it peved him the frick off. What the H.E. double hockey stick is going on around here gosh dang Justin tried to avoid

such talk and that earned him a reputation amongst his fellow fellow soldiers as being a super cool dude. They started calling him Opie like the kid on Andy Griffith show. I love to Andy Griffith by the way, Matt Locke, it holds up. Justin's bunk mates played pranks on him, like slipping pictures of naked women in his soldiers manual and I would have absolutely been that guy. Halo's to Fina, young me would have for sure set a lot of inappropriate shit around Justin if I knew he hated it. Dude, come on, you only want to get it like a little bit wet.

You know a girl can sit on your face and you can still be a virgin, right? You know that, right? Come on. You know that Mary Magdalene used to sit on Jesus face, right? Come on, just fool adjusting. Calm down, OP. Don't get your panties all up in a bunch.

June of 1991, Justin, although Dean by surprise was being too nice when it came to handing out tickets as an MP, received the standard national defense medal when he was released from active duty. He returned to his parents home and conquered, begin to prepare his own LDS mission that no one really cared about because compared to Taylor. He just, you know, he wasn't as good. September of 1991, he was sent to serve the church in Texas, packed his white shirts and black ties and headed off to the Utah missionary training center. Not long after this, Taylor is due back from his mission in Brazil.

Carmen is beyond excited to see her favorite son return. She shared her son's openness to new ideas, right? She was Doyle's daughter after all. She was excited to share her most recent discovery with Taylor. She wanted to share a kind of psychological training program that she'd recently undergone that she really enjoyed. And this shit would further change Taylor's life for the worse. Taylor Helser came home from his mission on November 20, 91, cocky dude who thought he knew more about God's will than anyone, more than even the highest ranking church leaders. But still outwardly, a good kid, fall in 91, he and Justin

still don't drink, dude, they don't do drugs, they're virgins, law abiding. Don't use profanity, outwardly very good kids. Inwardly, Taylor's beginning to crack up a bit more. He knew that the end of days were just around the corner, right? He's one of those guys. He believed that he for sure was in direct contact with God.

Because in Charney Hoffman noticed a big change in Taylor when he got back home. Charney later said, Taylor believed that because of the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible, he believed that the paradigm of good and evil was something brought to us or given to us by the devil. One needed to reject the false paradigm

in order to be saved. A kind of Buddhist type take on Judeo Christianity. And talking to him, he would become very upset, very irritated if you didn't agree with his perspective. It was hard for him to communicate with people who couldn't see things the exact way he saw them. To anybody else, it would just look really weird. Right?

All right, there's no good, there's no evil, there just is. Do you not understand the will of God? Code, code, code. November 21, 1991, just a day after returning to the US, 21 year old Taylor and his little sister, Heather, began the four-day group training seminar that their mom had recommended. Karma had no idea the seminar would center a son down a path that would twist his mind and lessons of their faith into something unrecognizably evil.

The classes would begin to fill holes that Taylor believed existed in LDS doctrine and form a new faith that was something different from the traditional confines of standard Mormonism. The seminar was a type of workshop commonly termed large group awareness training. It took people through a step-by-step process, which some attendees reported first humiliated and degraded them in front of their classmates, then built them up again with positive imagery. Once they had broken through the emotional walls and found their inner child, the class usually started on Wednesday evenings and went into at least midnight. The next night would be the same. Then Friday and Saturday were all day and all night sessions. The programs seemed to sound to be deliberately designed for sleep deprivation and emotional exhaustion.

Of course it was. It's how people brainwash you. Participants who had paid hundreds of dollars for the privilege of being there, for being abused, were shown into a windalous room where their trainer would begin to scream at them. Staff members would line the walls staring quietly watching the abuse, not helping, according to some of those who deviated from the rules, not paying attention, not volunteering quickly enough for activities, et cetera, were berated mercilessly. There were a number of cruel games meant to lessen the individual's self worth after encouraging people to share their deepest secrets

The training would make fun of those secrets and shame the person in front of everyone else People's physical disabilities financial troubles backgrounds feelings nothing was off limits sound super fun and worthwhile boy Howdy, I can't believe I haven't signed up for something like this yet The trainer would call people everything from the sluts to thieves, is they stood trembling before the group. Anyone who talked back or tried to leave, you know, was cheating the group and considered worthless. Once participants knew everything about one another, they began to use that information against their fellow attendees, just like the trainers were doing.

So ramping up the verbal abuse, participants would highlight what they saw as negative aspects of the targeted person's personality, what they looked like, you know, as secrets that have been shared, they called it feedback. Many of these people had known each other only for a few hours, right? They're tearing each other apart. The creators of the seminar seemed to know how there are many mind games would turn out. They had sad music and mood lighting, number of trash cans on, you know, at hand for people to puke in once they became overwhelmed emotionally. This fucking, this is ridiculous.

The trainer would ask each of their participants, which people in their lives were holding them back the most, who was keeping them from being who they wanted to be. They were encouraged to rage out of scream. You know, get mad about everything they identified as limiting. By the end of this exercise, the class was filled with young people, you know, old people, everyone in between to fucking screaming, crying, literally beating on walls, throwing chairs around, collapsed on the floor. According to some, they also filled those garbage cans up with puke. It was quite the scene. Fucking ridiculous. All this was supposed to break down the barriers that had formed throughout these trainees'

lives. Walls that prevented them from knowing their perfect inner child. Despite the mental torture, people learned all sorts of woo, woo, wackadoodle cycle, babble horse shit that made them feel better in the end. At least they thought they did. Taylor and Heather walked away from the weekend feeling great. They loved it. Heather equated it with what it must be like to have a near-death experience, something horrible that makes you appreciate life more afterwards.

Can't believe people can paid to put these on. Of course, of course you feel better at the end, like they just bring you down to a horrible low point, just beat on you and beat on you and you're like, you know, what you feel at the end is fucking a leaf. You're not being beat on anymore. Taylor loved it so much. He started recruiting friends to the program. He loved this high he would get from these seminars.

He'd go through a lot more session throughout his life He would put his future children and thunder members through the courses just like this and then in 1992 21-year-old Taylor finally has sex and He loves it. He loves it. Hey, Luciferina one night of the movies in 92 at the the 21-year-old Ran into an old classmate and from Ignatio Valley high and was pretty with light brown hair and an oval face. Taylor fell for her heart, but there was a problem. She didn't have a vagina and her boobs were on backwards.

No way, that can't be right. Oh no, that was not the problem. The problem was she wasn't Mormon. Yes, yes, that's right. Luckily for him, she was willing to convert. And by September, she agreed to join the church and tailor immediately proposed. He wanted a wife and then a family. It was important, very important if he was to progress at the ranks of the LDS,

pre-suit that he, you know, started to think he was destined to lead that he had a family. He knew how to interpret scripture better than anyone else, so only made sense that he would lead the church someday. His mom, karma, especially happy to see her special boy get married. Dad, Jerry overjoyed. Right. All of them were now indulged in Jerry's new hobby and part-time job, river rafting. Jerry would become a river rafting guide. Would travel the American river almost every Saturday. The American river is a 30 mile long river in California that runs from the Sierra Nevada mountain range to its confluence with the Sacramento River. April, 1992, Taylor and Ann get married at the Mormon Temple in Oakland.

Taylor got a new job after this wedding that would lead him years later to the literal front door of two of his future murder victims. He'd recently quit a telemarketing job to work for Anne's uncle, Anne's uncle worked for a brokerage firm, and he arranged an interview for his nephew. Taylor did great, and he was hired as a financial advisor trainee.

The job was all about salesmanship, and this motherfucker had that shit in spades. He had an abundance of energy and a clean image, and he killed it. Taylor was super happy with his new marriage. He had a great job. He was happy with that for a little while. He was free to do more with his time,

and he'd been at any point in his life thus far, and he used that time to start watching a lot of TV, and then after that, started watching, you know, playing a ton of video games and watching a lot of porn. Oh boy, howdy. Here comes a sin you guys. Buckle up. Taylor constantly watched TV late into the night obsessed with everything he'd grown

up, you know, missing, you know, when his religious parents wouldn't allow him to watch it. He told his new wife, there's just always interesting stuff on. It just never ends. There's always something great. I couldn't go to sleep. Soon all this TV and porn and video game time began to negatively affect his new marriage. He didn't understand why his wife didn't want him to just sit and watch TV and play games and watch porn whenever he's home. And you know, and fuck several times a day like the people in the porn those did and basically not do anything else. Suddenly she didn't know who she was married to.

What happened to the nice clean living virgin Mormon guy? Around this time, Tater's little bro Justin returned from his mission to Texas. He didn't like missionary work the way his brother did, but he did select the church and he plunged back into church activities. His brother Taylor then talked him into taking those same psychotic group training brainwashing nonsense classes. He and his sister Heather had taken Justin lived with his parents upon returning home and took advantage of the rent-free situation to attend classes at Diablo Valley College and also volunteer for a physical therapy program at a local hospital. He seemed to enjoy what he was doing, even considered a career in working with physical therapy patients. Meanwhile, Taylor grows further and is interested in married life. He doesn't

like his job anymore either. His new life doesn't fulfill him the way missionary work had. He's not, he's not a special anymore. His sexual desires are not being fulfilled. He was, he was too special for this dammit. He knew that this ordinary existence was not what the Lord had intended for him. The Lord wanted him to get so much pus. God wanted to drown in it. Peter goes more and more to satisfy with the church. He sees the church leaders more and more as being false prophets, leading the church away from Joseph Smith's visions. He returns the thoughts that only he can save the Mormon church only he can lead the Mormons. And only he will be the true heir to Joseph Smith and mostly he wants to fuck more. It was also that. He had this dual sense of wanting to fuck Sony women and also want to be God's leader here on earth. And he would keep this, you know, kind of duality going the rest of his free life right

up until his murder arrest. And the fall of 1996 and watches helplessly is her still new husband and former goody two shoe stars, starts to become not such a nice guy. Start to shrug off his religious and family responsibilities. They don't have married a little over three years. She pleased with him to go to counseling. He finally agrees. In therapy, Taylor basically tells the counselor that he is pissed off because he felt that his

wife had tricked him into thinking she was way more into adventurous sex than she really was. He believed that she wasn't holding up her into the deal. He wanted what he was watching in the pornoes and Anne wasn't having it. And this is, in my opinion, one reason why it is often not a good idea to wait until marriage to have sex. There are plenty of men and women who are into kinky shit and a lot of people who are not into it. And you just don't know for sure what kind of person you are until you fool around a

little bit. If you're looking for the freaky open-minded, sexually liberated partner who wants to bring a bunch of toys into the bedroom and get wild, you can find them. But waiting to have sex until marriage, probably not the best way to find them. It's not logical. Not a big fan of what religious folks on sexual shame does to people and their sexual relationships and identities.

I feel like a religious focus on sexual chastity that worked a lot better in the world of the past when people, you know, their dating options were limited to a handful of other single people and their families that their families had introduced to them, not in their families, that their families had introduced to them, or... Well, I guess kind of in their families, you know, cousins.

But really, it was like, you know, like your dating options, you know, a couple hundred years ago, were generally probably like cousins and neighbors, you know, maybe the farmer, you know, the neighbor farmer's daughter, that kind of thing. And today's world of seemingly infinite dating possibilities and easily accessible online porn, Settling for Sally, the daughter of the farmer who ran the farm, 10 farms down from your folks farm, I just don't think it plays out as well.

Mine have stayed with Sally back in the days when the two of you lived and died the same county you were born in, but you know, probably not as likely to work out now. And things are a lot more socially and sexually competitive. During his five sessions with the therapist, Taylor admits that he was thinking about other ways to satisfy his needs. He explained one plan, so outlandish, it led to the doctor, or led the doctor to diagnose him with the narcissistic personality features. This plan of Taylor's is fucking amazing.

You're gonna hear about even crazier plans as this episode goes on. These plans are my favorite part of the set. They're one of my favorite parts of anything I've ever researched. Taylor's crazy plan is so good. This is his first one. Taylor explained to the therapist

that what he wanted to do, what he felt like he needed to be happy, ideally. Was he wanted to find a bunch of women who would have sex with him every day. And to do this, what he wanted to do what he felt he needed to be happy ideally. Was he wanted to find a bunch of women who would have sex with him every day. And to do this, what he wanted to do, he wanted to advertise in Brazil to find these women. And he wanted to get a pool together of summer between 80 and 100 women, right? He was lusting after those Brazilian beauties all this time. From his pool of 80 to 100 Brazilian fuckbodies, Taylorwood, after sampling all of them narrow this field down to 35 women.

That's all to 35. And then he would continue to have sex with these 35 women on a regular basis, daily. You know, for a while, in order to determine which one of them, you know, which one of these women, like they weren't tricking him. And then he would offer several of the women women two-year daily sex contracts, right? So we go from like 80 to 100 down to 35. And then from the 35, you get a handful of women to each sign up, like literally sign a contract, saying that they would have sex with Taylor every day, for sure. No questions asked for the next two years. Who says something this fucking delusional

to their marriage counselor in front of their wife? Oh, I know. Someone who has been raised to believe that God has extra special plans for them. Someone who has pushed down all of their normal sexual impulses during their sexually formative years because they thought it was sinful and they never learned what a normal

sexual relationship actually looked like when it was important to learn that. Someone who is sexually living in their head, right? During their horny teenage years, building up ludicrous sexual fantasies, fantasies accelerated by combining lots of porn with limited real world sexual experience just a couple years later, fantasies that were very unlikely to pan out in the real world. I love that he thought that he could round up 100 women to agree to this weird fucked up version of the bachelor where every woman fucks him.

And then there's 35 winners, right? Like a semi-finalist. And then they fuck up a bunch more. And then out of those 35, there's several additional, you know, like grand prize, I guess, tie winners who sign agreements to have sex them every day for the next two years. And what are the women get out of this?

I mean, other than this, I guess this one guy fucking them all the time, like a small piece of his financial planning money, he wasn't making that much money. He was living in a rented apartment with his wife and daughter. After revealing what he thought was a very logical solid sex plan, Taylor noticed that the doctor wasn't quote, getting it. And neither was his wife in. So he quit therapy and he And neither was his wife in. So he quit therapy and he decided to divorce his wife. Tater's family not happy about this. Golden boy,

it's just publicly slipping for the first time. Divorce not supposed to happen in Mormonism. Of course it does, but it's not supposed to a big deal. Tater doesn't care. He don't with his marriage. He's done being a Mormon too. At least the kind that other Mormons would recognize. He suddenly wants to cut loose. He wants to try alcohol cigarettes, other drugs. He wants to fuck a whole bunch. He wants to try alcohol, cigarettes, other drugs. He wants to fuck a whole bunch. He wants to put this phony church with full of fake leaders behind him.

He starts smoking weed and cigarettes and drinking booze. He starts to, you know, he keeps going to those weird group wearing his training sessions. By the summer of 1996, his wholesome clean cut Mormon Taylor Helzer, you know, that Taylor Helzer was gone. And he would never

return. And this feels like a good place to stop and take a quick sponsor break before the crazy in this story really starts to ramp up. Well, let's take a quick little break and thank you all again for continuing to use our sponsor URLs and discount codes when offered. So sponsors know that you're listening to this show. And now we're back into this story. And if you're on YouTube, we never left.

In June of 1996, Taylor walked out on Ann and their one year old daughter. And it seems to be a real presence in his daughter's life. At the age of 26, he moved back in with his parents. Now both of Carmen, Jerry's boys, back to living with them. I'm sure they were thrilled. I'm sure they felt like they've been super successful parents who really did a good job preparing their kids to be kick ass adults.

A little over six months later, Taylor moves out and his little brother, Jobless and Drifting, leaps the chance to join him. Another six months later, when Heather returned from her own mission in the spring of 97, she said she noticed the darkness growing in both of her brothers. She had heard that Taylor had started to engage in sinful behavior and that her reserved and kind brother Justin had followed suit She took Justin aside and said can't you see Taylor's turn mean Can't you see he doesn't treat you very well?

Justin said no, I have so much to learn from Taylor quote quote quote To pay Hina's brother's rent Taylor. I got a job working as a stockbroker from Morgan Stanley Dean winner and For a brief time. He did well. He was talented crazy, I got a job working as a stock broker for Morgan Stanley Dean winner. And for a brief time, he did well. He was talented, crazy, but smart and talented. As a peak of his career, he had about 150 clients. And he was considered a rising star in the conquered branch, but he wasn't happy.

At one point, he told a coworker that he'd rather be flipping burgers. He began to avoid people. And the work that went with that job, at one point, he would even apparently turn off the lights and hide under his desk when a client would stop by. So, you know, things were changing. Step one to work for his paychecks.

He started to think about committing fraud to make money, like maybe like a fake, you know, slip and fall scam, but then he realized he'd eventually heal. Then he had to go back to work, so that's no good. And then he figured out that a mental disability would be easier for him to fake, and that, you know, he wouldn't be expected to heal as fast. So, he reached out to a mentally ill cousin.

Seriously, that's where he's at now. Figure out how to pull off a mental health insurance scam. Taylor had a cousin named Chi, who is already on disability for mental illness. Chi was a self-diagnosed as bipolar, but with reportedly suffering from schizophrenia personality disorder, had been hospitalized in several mental health wards So more mental illness in his family tree Taylor under everything he could from chief and moved in with the brothers and Taylor questioned him about his hospital stays and other patients What is fun? What's going on with this guy? He leaves the church because he thinks he knows more about script than anyone else

Things he should lead the church and then within a few years He's focused on scamming his job out of more money or out of you know, you know, money by committing insurance fraud. Oh, he starts getting high with she, telling him about his plans to save an apocalyptic world. He knows he has the power and skills to stop, you know, the dissent of mankind, but he needs a place where he can work unfettered by existing laws and governments. He starts thinking that he needs his own nation state. And this is going to take some money to do that.

So how's he going to get that money? You know, he's not going to work for it. You know, even an insurance scam, you know, that's not going to get enough money. He's going to figure out something else. And what can he do? What can he do? And he comes up with the idea to have an escort service. Uh-huh.

Now he wants to be a Pimp. He's combined his lust with his desire to be God's warrior. He's merged his two driving motivations into one insane plan. And this plan isn't even close to how insane his future plans are going to be. Taylor tells his cousin, she, that she's going to be the muscle for this operation. He's going to be the brains. He's going to hand pick and, of course, sample the girls to make sure they have the best escorts.

And really, this isn't a new plan. It's a variation of Taylor's Brazil plan. Except now the girls wouldn't be signing sex contracts to just have sex with him. They would also have sex with other people for money. They're gonna have sex with him for free, and they're gonna fuck out of dudes for money, and then they're gonna give that money to him.

Easy, peasy. How can it not work? It's a solid plan. It's crazy, it's crazy that this guy's in prison right now with no chance to ever get in out, and not sit in the huge mansion on a private island only accessible by yacht. Taylor asks this cousin if he'd ever killed anybody and when she tells him no, he asked if he will do whatever it takes to protect to protect their new escort business.

And then when she doesn't answer, Taylor goes on to explain that he had learned from his group awareness classes that right and wrong did not exist. And he said, people get in the way. I wouldn't have any problem killing someone who got in my way. Alrighty, the Mormon missionary in 21 year old version is now a 27 year old hopeful pimp who is ready to kill to protect his investments. March of 1998, Taylor,

although separated from Anne still sees her enough to get her pregnant again, and they will have another daughter together. Awesome. Her parents must have been pumped to hear about this. Taylor will not help raise either daughter. Around this time, Taylor's mother karma after 30 years of marriage files for divorce from Jerry, who is shocked. Karma tells Jerry that she is no longer, you know, she just doesn't have time to be married.

She's not interested anymore. She decided to dedicate all her free time to help her son start his new business and she opens up a brothel to house Taylor's escorts. Then she and her son begin a sexual relationship that leads to Taylor's first son and second brother. They named Little Boy the Beast for Taylor received a vision that told him that he could bring about the apocalypse. If only he could bring a brother son into the world and raise him into brothel. And that's not true, but it just, it fucking feels like it could be true at this point in the story. As a story gets crazier.

Karma does not have a son with her son. She does divorce Jerry. She doesn't give a reason for their divorce. Taylor moves forward with his plans for a sex service kind of he tries to. He has business cards made up. Actually, has Pimp business cards made up. I so wish I could figure out what he had printed on them. Can't find him anywhere. Taylor Helzer, contract provider, sexual mentor

to young attractor Brazilian women. Raising money to help God change the world. His first recruiting effort happens when he stops for dinner at a restaurant in Concord. His waitress is a very pretty blonde, chillier type. She's not Brazilian, but you know, it's what you have to do. He'd come from work, he was still in a suit and tie.

He looked very successful. This young woman's name was Carrie Furman, and she'd go have to do. He come from work. He was still in a suit and tie. He looked very successful. This young woman's name was Carrie Furman. And she'd go on to pose for playboy later under the alias of charisma fair. I verified that by doing some additional research. She was 21 when she met Taylor. Five foot eight, her measurements were 34D, 2633,

her breast or fake. And she was in this September 2000 playmate centerful. Just I just like to be thorough. Taylor told Kerry, he liked to take her out incredibly. She said, no, he's super cool. And then when he pays his bill, he leaves her as credit card, tells her to buy something special for herself.

Power move. Definitely not the move of an insane weirdo. Kerry's intrigued. She looked at the credit card and business card. He left behind, she wondered, who would do that? I'll tell you, Kerry, a madman who wants you to sign a sex contract. That's not what Kerry thought. She thought it was an older, 27, almost 28 now, good looking, charming, financially confident

dude. She gave him a call, they made plans to go out. Despite the fact that Taylor was not an anyway financially successful, not in a crazy extreme way, his rules worked on Kerry. She moved in with him that summer, Taylor quickly talked her into taking part in his new favorite thing. You know, really, I guess wasn't really his new favorite thing. His favorite thing, group awareness training, he's still doing it. He also gave her one of his new favorite drugs.

Now we're getting to the new and favorite, ecstasy. He told her it was aspirin. He just keeps getting cooler. Justin is starting to worry about his big bro now. Justin wasn't into drugs like ecstasy. He'd smoke weed from time to time, but that was it. He definitely wasn't into meth, which Taylor also started using in the summer of 98. Fuck yeah, bro. Meth. Every story gets better with meth. Add meth to the tale of a mentally unstable sex crazed religious zealot in the

story is sure to get better. Meth, making tragedy more entertaining since whenever the first person started smoking up a lot of meth. And meth for sure will make the story crazier. You already know how mentally unstable and delusional Taylor is, and he gets way more delusional thanks to meth. Justin had taken a job at a black Angus steakhouse and took it more seriously than Taylor was taking his brokerage career at the time.

Taylor and his drug and escort rantines and his desire to lead the Mormon church are starting to stress Justin out. And he starts working lots of hours of black, black angus to stay away from. I love little details like this in stories. Like this one just makes me think about how much we don't know about the people around us in life in general. Like how many people ate at that black angus steakhouse while Justin was working there? None of them having any idea that one of the waiters was living with the brother who was

doing meth and planning to open an escort business in the hopes of making enough money to create a new nation state or he and his escort Heram could live like he thought Joseph Smith wanted people to live. Justin and Taylor sister Heather gets married that summer. Taylor makes quite the impression everyone at her reception. At least one family member, his aunt, suggests that he's see a mental health professional. Heather's worried about him too.

She writes some letters to local church leaders about what her brother Taylor has been up to. She tells them about the meth, about Taylor wanting to build a new nation state. I'm pretty sure that Taylor didn't mention the escort plan to assist her, but maybe he did. The church responds by ex-communicating, Taylor. He's kicked out now. And Taylor doesn't mention the escort plan to assist her, but maybe he did. And the church responds by ex-communicating, Taylor. He's kicked out now and Taylor doesn't give a shit.

And his mind, they're fake church anyway. And his mind, he's building the real LDS. It continues to study in large group awareness programs. He's becoming an expert now manipulating people or as he sees it instructing people on how to be authentic. In August of 1998, after being excommunicated from the church, Taylor Stamps, working for his brokerage firm,

goes on disability after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he been practicing acting mentally with his cousin who initially laughed at his attempts, but by the end, thought he was pretty convincing. And now he's done it. He's committed insurance fraud. Or did he commit insurance fraud?

I mean, did he think it was a good idea to get disability money by faking being mentally ill because he actually was mentally ill? I think that's possible. So, September 1st, he starts to meet with psychologists, Dr. Jeffrey Kay. Taylor convinces him after several meetings in the fall and winter that he was indeed bipolar.

Taylor acted so disorganized, and Dr. Kay finally offered to help him with his disability paperwork, without which Taylor would not get his checks. Dr. K warned him that he needed to stay on his drug therapy in order to keep his financial benefits. Unfortunately for Taylor, who would much rather have stuck with XZ and methamphetamine and nothing else, this means that he now has to take additional medication.

He has to take actual medicine like antiststicotics and valium or lithium. Lithium was a real problem. Had to be monitored with blood tests to ensure that he wasn't getting too much. So while it was easy to tell someone, so while it was quite easy to tell someone that you weren't following treatment, they could find out. If they just test your blood.

So he actually has to take lithium because they will test him. So he does. Side effects of lithium can include impaired memory and trouble constant trading. And that's that's when you're not adding lithium to meth and ecstasy. Who knows how all that interacts. While Taylor was fake, he meant to illness to raise money for an insane religious nation-building plan.

His brother just in his fighting his own demons. He wanted to experience more in life like his brother. He was 26 years old now. He had never even had a girlfriend. He didn't want to die a virgin. He actually went to his church leaders in the fall of 1998 to have his name removed from the records. So, he would not be held to the higher standard that Mormons are held to when it comes

time for judgment as far as, you know, where, which afterlife you go to. Despite doing that, he doesn't pour himself into drugs and plans for an escort business. He tries to improve himself. He starts eating better, reading self-help books, starts looking into new age, exercises, and meditation. He also keeps a journal where he scribbles down mantras about stuff like not judging and expanding his mind. And the midst of all this strangeness, Carrie, the waitress and future playboy centerfold

Tater Met, is still Dayton Taylor. She's working two jobs, bringing in decent money. She's gorgeous, but she's not enough for Taylor. She's not one of 35 women having sex contracts with him. So we start looking for other women. He meets a pretty 18-year-old at an awareness training seminar. He attended with Kerry. Her name was Lena, and he immediately starts to call her constantly.

Shows up her to her apartment, unannounced several times, leaves this card in her door. Lena, Kerry and Taylor all go out dancing after this. I guess he kind of wears her down. And then one night, Taylor invites her to go out with them again, but only he shows up. They stop to eat before going to the club. And when they're finished, they wander outside

and sit on a curb Taylor's excited. He's speaking fast. Of course. He's talking fast Cracked out on lithium and meth. I can't imagine how fucking fast I would talk about son on meth He starts talking about spreading peace and love Even confides at her that he's defrauding the government with his fake disability He's in love all you know immediately. He spends that night at her place. The next morning she tells me, no, Taylor, I can't be around you. Your energy's dark. Your energy is in many ways.

Really evil. It's just the color black. Nailed it, Lena. So the two part ways for now. Taylor decides he's done for the moment fucking around with American women, you know, at least others don't carry. We still, you know, with somehow.

He and his cousin, she drive down to Mexico to try and recruit some women into his non-existent escort service. They get exactly zero. He is way better at dreaming of sex contracts than he is at actual real life pimping. On the way back, after having no real luck, you know, down there, he stops to visit his aunt,

the aunt that thought he needed to seek mental health at Heather's wedding. He pushes his aunt and uncle's buttons by talking about buying drugs and wanting to get drunk in the exchange. He did words and then he and she take off. And Taylor doesn't give a fuck. He doesn't care what anyone thinks about him now, not even family.

Anyone who can't see his superiority, you can't handle his take on universal truths can fuck off. Few weeks later, he runs in D'Lena again at another group training seminar and they start to hang out again. Taylor convinces her that the darkness she thought she saw in him was actually a dark energy that she was concealing within herself She just wasn't evolved enough yet to see it nice The old I'm not crazy. You only think so because you're crazy

Once your brain starts working right you'll understand that I'm perfect. Coat, coat, coat. The two start to see each other again. Tater talks to Lena continuously, preaches intensely at her for hours at a time. She grows so weary of his lectures that she starts to fake being asleep just to get him to shut up.

He would act out at home, these group training exercises and cry and shake and throw things around in the room, almost puke all over himself. Why is she sticking around all this? Well, because she's also a regular at these training classes. So she's clearly a little bit crazier yourself. Tater keeps going on and on about trust and loyalty when he's talking to Lena about how he needs complete faith from his inner circle.

He stresses that he needs total faith over and over, even saying at one point that if he killed someone and brought home the body, he would expect Kerry to cut it up and hide it without asking a single question, fuck yeah. I need to have that talk with my wife, Lindsay, right? She told me if I ever killed anybody, she would turn me in. Why would she say that? Why didn't she just get it?

Well, talking about chopping up bodies is too much for Lena. She leaves him for good, good choice. She might not be alive today if she hadn't have made it. Right after Lena leaves him, Taylor gets more bad news to kick off 1999. His psychiatrist, Dr. K, he's decided that on March 1st, Taylor will be fit to return to work and Taylor is not having it. Working again is going to fuck up his mess time. It's going to make it hard for him to have multiple girlfriends or drive to Mexico to try and find escorts. Why is everyone against him? On February 23rd, 1999 Taylor puts on a big show at a local hospital and an attempt to be committed. He fake flips out. Which doesn't seem like it'd be hard for him. Yellow's a bunch of gibberish makes the big scene and it works. He gets his return to

work date push back at least six months. Meanwhile, within his own mind and tiny circle of influence, he officially declares himself a prophet. He's now a prophet, according to himself, and he develops a list of maxims. He calls the 12 principles of magic by which he expects his followers to abide. If he only had followers, that's the fucking, that's the one thing! His call is missing right now. It's any followers. He develops a new plan, and this plan, oh, this one reeks of meth, this one's any followers. He develops new plan and this plan, oh, this one, reeks of meth.

This one's my favorite. He plans to kidnap and train Brazilian orphans to assassinate Mormon leaders. I shit you not. So that he can take over the LDS church and start a self-help group called Transform America, which he will then use to create a state of peace and joy. Genius. God, I picture him in an office explaining this plan to potential crew state of peace and joy genius.

Got a picture in an office explaining this plan to potential crew, you know, cult members. Guys, guys, what is so hard to understand about this plan? Look at my whiteboard. It's not complicated. There's six steps, okay? Step one, I divide you into team one and team two, Alpha and Omega.

Step two, team Alpha members members kidnap and or adopt Brazilian orphans stay with me Team Omega members kidnap and or convince hot Brazilian women to sign sex contracts two years with me to work in my Escort business Step three, okay team alpha members raise orphans here in America train to be a sassans It's not hard team Omega members keep an eye on my sex girls. Step four, team Alpha members drive Brazilian orphaned assassins to Salt Lake City to kill LDS leadership, team Omega members, keep watching my sex girls.

Step five, team Alpha members announced to Mormon faithful, I am their new leader, God prophet, team Omega members, organizing, launching massive self-help group called Transform America and don't let the sex girls go anywhere In step six team alpha members makes you know kills me Especially not the Brazilian orphan assassins. It's what they're very good at Team Omega members get your asses back down to Brazil and find me some new sex girls. Can I make it more clear than that? six fucking steps Well, I want my ass a lot a lot hear him, this is simple man-profit. Trying to assassinate LDS leadership with some Brazilian orphan assassins.

Well, having sex with a lot of hot Brazilian women. Huh! He was unbelievably out of his mind. It is amazing that this shitty low-rent co-leader was able to ever get even one follower. And he gets fucking crazier as this tail goes on. On May 31st, 1999, Taylor attends a murder mystery dinner hosted by a Mormon congregation Walnut Creek with his brother.

He meets Don Godman, first cult member. Yeah, let's get this party started. Don was from the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the rural stretch in Northern California, dotted with tiny towns and abandoned mines, sometimes known as gold country. She'd grown up in a devoutly Pentecostal family that lived an hour from the nearest school.

She was socially awkward and she was used to crazy. Perfect. She didn't have any friends, had often been bullied for her being overweight, she was desperate for attention and Taylor would give that attention to her. She had joined all kinds of organizations trying to make friends. The local volunteer fire department, a teen,

anti-drug and alcohol program, her high school student council. She transferred from her high school to a continuation school. It graduated 1991 at age 17. Moved out of her parents' home with their approval and filed for emancipation. She wanted to become a registered nurse, went to school. She got a job as a certified nurse assistant at a convalescent facility in the small Foothill town of Jackson, discovered that she enjoyed the work.

Then those plans were altered when she got pregnant in early 92, overjoyed with the idea of being a mom, have an unconditional love. Then it was devastating to her when the baby girl died soon after birth. Two months after her baby's death, 18-year-old tries to find love in a different way. Patrick Godman was tall with brown hair and brown eyes. He was five years older, and he stood beside him in the quicky wedded chapel in Lake Tahoe just before Christmas. She was positive that he was answered all of her longings. Don almost immediately gets pregnant again. Don's second child born late summer, 1993, but family life is not idyllic. They fight Patrick with threatened to take the child if she ever left him.

Eventually after some incidents of domestic violence, they'd get divorced and then Don would start smoking meth. Meth! That's what the story needs. More meth. Don would end up living out of her car because meth, and then she'd soon end up attempting suicide and spend three days in mental hospital before doctors were sufficiently assured that her suicidal thoughts had diminished enough that she was not in

immediate danger to herself. After that, she went from living in her car to living in a homeless shelter after doing more meth. She didn't know what she was going to do next, and then she found God. February of 97, she was baptized into the LDS church, moved in with her grandma. She immersed herself in the church. She still struggled financially as she worked minimum wage jobs

and lived in the expensive Bay Area. But after a year living with grandma, she was able to afford her own place with a roommate who was also named Don, Don Kirkland. Things were looking up. And then she met Taylor Helzer. She thought Taylor asked her on a date when they first met, but instead of taking her on a date,

he took her with a group of other potential cult recruits to you. Guest it. A large group awareness training program. And she enjoyed it. She wanted a police tailor. And soon he was indoctrinating her in his own new religious teachings, including his 12 principles of magic. Let's talk about those now.

Here are those 12 crazy ass principles. One, I am already perfect and therefore can do no wrong. Two, there was no such thing as right and wrong. It's kind of, okay, eliminate someone. Three, I am all powerful and therefore the creator of an accountable for everything that occurs in my life. Four, life is always right. I embrace all my results. Five, all my results I've created to learn from at some level. Six, I know nothing, I believe

nothing. I simply perceive without fear. This shit is crazy. Seven, it is of no concern to me how accurate or inaccurate my perceptions are and therefore I am always right. Eight, unconditional, fearless love is the most powerful force in the universe. Nine, spirit knows. Alright.

Ten, I gain total control by losing all control. Let's feel like a fourth greater brother. Eleven, life is such a precious gift. And when I give back to life, immediately life gives more back to me. And therefore I am forever in this debt. What goes around comes around. Twelve, there was a higher power than mine, and that is my savior, Jesus Christ, the son of my father.

Okay, interesting twist into rule 12 there, right? He kind of throws in Jesus at the very end, but before that, it's just fucking meth nonsense. I'm perfect. I can do no wrong. There is no wrong. I just, I can just be. And whatever I think is true,

but that doesn't even matter, because it doesn't matter what you think, just is, goes around, coming that doesn't even matter because it doesn't matter what you think just is, goes around, coming around, stuff, you get it. And Don doesn't bump on any of this. She doesn't even care going forward when Taylor would change these rules around, you know, you know, because God told him to.

That's all gibberish. Don wasn't the only person on Taylor's list to potential followers for his new children of Thunder Colt. His household was expanding. He was establishing himself as his head. He, Justin, Carrie, she's still around. They move into a house on Oak Grove Road in Concert with another man named Brandon Davidson. Taylor makes it clear that his 12 principles of magic are the house rules and they must be followed. He makes Brandon and his

girlfriend go through group awareness training. And just like in the program, he gives everyone the benefit of his feedback. He breaks them down. If people do not agree or had independent thoughts about what Taylor thought they were wrong, wake up. He'd say, oh, pride in arrogance. Go back and look at that. And you'll get it. And you probably would smoke some more meth. Sometimes you literally send carry to her room during sessions like a child. Maybe you should come, maybe you should be by yourself to think about what I've told you and tell you come into agreement with me, he'd say. He told people repeatedly that he was the only one who cared enough to give them the real truth.

He overwhelmed those around him with his unshakable confidence. He warmed down. His con artist talents worked especially well on women after their emotional defenses were wrecked by group trainings. He had no trouble manipulating them further. He started to focus on raising $20 million down to kick off his big takeover of the church plan. Not sure how much he was talking about Brazilian orphan assassins around this time.

I can't overemphasize how crazy this guy was. It's incredible that anyone would have listened to him. He kind of has a code now, but not really. They're living with him. They listen to him most of the time, but they're not totally sold. He's got a chosen profit. Don is. Don is sold, but not the rest. Taylor now starts to deal ecstasy to raise money for his nonsense plan. His girlfriend carry

loans him to seed money. He sells e at raves and on good nights, he makes a thousand dollars. He tells his followers that nothing will stop him and his plan to become the true LDS leader. He tells them he's happy to break all sorts of laws and kill for God. By the spring of 2000, his brother Justin has started to spend a lot of time with Don Godman. In April of 2000, Don moves in to live full time with them on the Hells or Compound. He's become Justin's girlfriend. His first, his only girlfriend, Justin, who was still working in a normal job, traded in

his job in food service for a job as a cable installer. He's continuing to explore new age spirituality stuff. He would meditate for hours at a time. These sessions would often end with him screaming obscenities. Because while not as crazy as his brother Taylor, he is also super fucking unhinged. New members continue to be recruited into this madness. Most of them leave right away, but you know, pop it in here and there. One young woman named Kelly Lord

fell briefly into Taylor's trap. He met her at the same dinner theater as Don. He sent her through his group training, told her he was God's prophet. She wasn't totally sold, but she didn't leave. Taylor also started to try to recruit members from local Mormon churches. He interrupted a sermon at one

and the bishop who had never seen it before asked Taylor to basically shut the fuck up. He and Justin started holding meetings and that church is parking lot after that, where they would preach to the 15 or 20 people who would gather around them instead of attending the church of Sunday school. The church was not happy about that,

you know, they have them get out of there eventually. Don Kirkland, Don Godman's former roommate, saw one of these meetings that was concerned. She warned her friend to be careful. Kelly lowered also at concerns, but ignored them. She was captivated by Taylor. Then Kelly took a new age seminar with him, karma, Justin, and Don. So mom is still around on some level for some of this. During one session, she was startled to find Don wearing a tiny shirt made out of sea through a netting. How are you doing? She asked a friend who used to be the picture of modesty. And Don said, Taylor is teaching me to embrace my sexuality and be okay with everything.

Another night at a seminar, Kelly and Justin are hanging out when Taylor comes up to our Justin, and sit and kneels down, sticks a coffee cup in his brother's face and says, just look at that, look at that. Do you see that dirt? You waved the cup which had dried liquid in the bottom, I brought this cup from home. This is why the roommates don't like you. It was deliberate humiliation in front of a bunch of people. Justin just hung his head and took it. Taylor was constantly pushing people, testing them to gaves or loyalty. He was always measuring Justin, Kerry and Don.

And now he wanted to see where Kelly stood. One day in the LDS parking lot, he asked Kelly, what would you do if you saw my picture on the front page of the newspaper? And I was in jail for something that they said I did, but I didn't do it. Would you come get me? Absolutely, Kelly said, good. Taylor said, then he walked over to a fast food restaurant to eat and after they got their food, Taylor started talking about car jacking people and robbing businesses.

If we did something like rob a small place like this, would you be open to it? He asked, Kelly didn't know what to say, but she knew that she was fucking out. She'd had enough of this shit. Future model, Kerry Furman somehow still in. She continued bringing in money through waitressing other jobs. Then she got a job stripping into San Francisco,

strip club and Taylor loved it. All part of God's plan. He loved the fast lifestyle. He loved the status, kind of, you know, he got from having a girlfriend with a stripper body. His new line of work inspired him. Now he thought he could use his carry contacts

with other dancers to start a new business plan since his Mexican Escort service and his Brazilian orphan assassin venture had yet to get off the ground. His new plan is a modified Escort plan where he thinks he can lure some of Kerry's colleagues into working his prostitutes at high end parties that he would arrange. After fucking him to make sure that they were top quality, of course, he was going to call it the feline club.

But Kerry never got around to recruit anyone because she was busy figuring out how to escape from Captain Crazy pants. She would though later say it tailors murder trial that the two of them drove down to Tijuana to buy some Rehipnaal AKA Rufis, the date rape drug to use to drug girls in order to somehow convince them to become prostitutes. So he's again, super cool guy. Soon after this, Kerry submissed photos of herself to playboy. Taylor took the pictures. Initially, it was super supportive. But as 1999 was coming to an end, their relationship began to fade. carried in, bind to his 12 principles or any of his other bullshit philosophies. He was sick of the stupid group, brainwashing, you know, training seminars, and she left

him in their little group behind. Taylor's devastated. He writes her a five and a half page letter. Part of that letter, red, you are ungrateful. You are selfish and self-centered. You are fake and superficial. You are delusional. You are blind and you are grateful. You are selfish and self-centered. You are fake and superficial. You are delusional. You are blind and you are weak. You are a victim to everything and everyone around you. Mass amounts of people in this world are literally struggling and dying from exposure, hunger or war.

And you are in the mirror 24-7 freaking out, despondent about your zits and other comparatively small things. And three pages letter he wrote, you are a good person. You are intuitive. You are creative. You are gentle. You are fun. You have such a bright,

sun-shiny, natural personality. You are warm. And when you love it as like a blanket, I want to wrap myself in forever. And you are stunningly, amazingly, perfectly beautiful. You are so gorgeous. So maybe he wasn't entirely faking

his bipolar diagnosis. Once carried left, Taylor reluctantly focused on his most devoted disciple. Really, he's only true cult member, Don, to help him in his work. He's done focusing on open up a brothel for the moment. He wants to focus on, you know, bringing about the second coming of Christ

and preventing the chaos and darkness of the apocalypse. Inspired by Jesus naming his inner core of apostles, according to some biblical translations, the sons of thunder, Taylor decides to call his cult members the children of thunder. He has a shitty cult, but a great name, the children of thunder, way better than people who don't know what Taylor is talking about most of the time,

or the kind of Mormon methods, or the Brazilian orphan assassin recruiters. Actually, that last one's kind of cool. If you only had more than one thunder child though, some random people, not named in sources, came and went. His brother was in and out. Really, Don was the only one consistently all in. I just love he has a cult of one.

A cult of one and sometimes two for the most most of them. He never had more than three devoted followers at any given time, including his brother. This fight, this story is so fucking weird. In early 2000, Taylor's brother Justin moves out, rents the room at a house and conquered. He continues to have his meditation temper tantrums and closed door screaming sessions and doing weird exercise with the door open. And eventually his land lady tells him to stop. So he's killing it. Life is going very well for him. Meanwhile in Taylor's warped mind, he decides in order for his new cult that only Don is currently into succeed, they're going to have to kill some people.

He justifies it with scripture and talks about how a few deaths are going to save billions of souls. He also moves in with his brother's girlfriend Don, who had an apartment in Martinez, city right next to Concord. She actually has a job, she's paying rent, and she even helps them sell XC. You think she can make a million dollars a year doing this, but he never makes more than a few thousand dollars a month because all his ideas are super dumb,

especially as Escort Ideas. Years after first thinking about an Escort business, he's still thinking about it, still hasn't gotten a single Escort. He calls his new Escort plan Intimacy, as in Intumey, C, no more feline club. That was fuck that guy got you here. That was so 1999. He and Don actually write out a questionnaire asking potential members 70 questions that are apparently goofy and prime that unfortunately

are not listed in any of the sources. God. I wish I knew with those 70 questions. I can only imagine how crazy they were. Question 14, how good are you are training at assassins? Question 45, do you speak Portuguese? Question 58, how would you like to help us with a hostile takeover of the LBS church? Question 68, would you be interested in signing a two year sex contract? Guarantean daily sex for God's one true chosen profit, Glenn Taylor, Helzer. This new Escort plan is based on a point system. The Taylor thought would really help, you

know, like, luring girls. So generous. And he thought I would help, you know, the girls lives in addition to helping himself. He's going to be a nice generous pimp. And he decides that for every dollar, one of the girls brings him, they're gonna get a point. And the girls could get medical, dental, vision, and retirement plans for themselves and their dependents. Once they earned just 3,500 points, if they made it to 7,500 points, they would receive their choice of permanent makeup, electrolysis, or breast augmentation. If they got 10,000 points, they get a salary. They become salaried intimacy models.

And and get an annual paid vacation for two. And of course, this half-cock plan never came to fruition. I got to say, 3,500 points for medical dental vision and retirement. It doesn't seem too bad. Based on googling, how much does a blowjob cost? It seems, according to various threads that I found, that you can get a pre-sweet blowjob cost? It seems according to various threads that I found that you can get a pretty sweet blowjob in the United States for $75. So doing some quick math. You could get to 3,500 points by sucking 47 dicks.

Or you could suck one dick 47 times, or you could suck somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. So I figure if you put it in an eight hour shift, all right, I feel like you could suck six a dix a shift easy, right? And that's like 10, 50 minutes top for each dick on average. I bet it only takes two, three minutes for a lot of these dicks and Then six to eight dicks. That's taking into account time. You need to make a you know make it to the next dick You got to have lunch smoke breaks check Facebook that kind of stuff. So suck in six dicks., six decks, yeah, sucking six dicks a day. I don't even want to tell you what, that'll be to say you're getting 3,500 points in just eight days,

eight days. And now you have health, dental, vision, and some kind of pension. I mean, that is pretty generous, right? Taylor wasn't good at becoming a pimp, but had he become a pimp. It seems like he would have been a very generous pimp and oh, I hear something. Oh, I hear resident pimp expert chicken Joe. Oh boy. Bob, Bob play boy. Bob, Bob. How'd they even want to flip man?

Taylor Helz will want to be a pimp but all he got is a limb. Limp mine, lame plan. His illusions got more scams than a bottle of spray tan. Point system in the questionnaire. Same for one case of Wall Street. It's a screed affairs. Back alley plays and beating me.

He's supposed to have his mind on his money, and his money on his mind. Instead, meth got him thinking funny. Got his head in his behind. You in the Bay Area and you can't even pimped. This a home of two short and film more slip. Gimp, let's go Scott Fawther, the game shrimp. Give up on a hustle you don't him. He crazy ass.

So thirsty. He always drip. Aiming for fame but never getting another machine. Always a new plan but the results the same lame. Chicken Joe would have stopped your damn plans with one quick hit for the back of one of his hands. That was chicken Joe's way of saying that, well, he just thinks Taylor's an idiot and an embarrassment to both

himself and the pimping world. Old character, no listener. Now back to our story. Around this time, Taylor's most dedicated follower, Dawn, gets into witchcraft because fucking why not? And because meth. On the spring of 2000, she learned some witch stuff from an old friend named Deborah McLellahan, from McLellahan.

And Deb saw no problem with practicing witchcraft while being a member of the Mormon church while also being one of the children of thunder. What is happening in this story? Don learned a number of rituals, protections and love potions from Deborah and introduced her to Taylor, and then Deb becomes a member of the cult. Deb has a one-night stand with Taylor.

Makes sense, he's a cult leader, right? They're supposed to sleep with followers. Hopefully not their brother. You know, Taylor can't convince Dave to be an escort though. Damn it, his escort business plan are still not working out. He does get some women to fill out his escort questionnaires around this time though, but none of them sign up for his very generous deal. Still pissed off that I don't know what those questions were.

Number 27, have you ever kidnapped a Brazilian orphan before? Number 60 every day. You would have sex with me every single day, right? He ditches his ass court plan, comes up with yet another incredible, can't fail idea. You know, he's an idea guy. You know, leave the planning and figuring out how to make these shitty ideas come to fruition. Leave that to somebody else. Leave it to Taylor to come up with one super great idea for another. Taylor decides that making money through extortion and blackmail is going to be easier than pimping. And he knows just how to find people with deep pockets. The

clients of the former brokerage firm that used to employ him. I got to say as far as criminal plans go, this is the only one that doesn't seem insane to me. He's come up with. The Taylor actually just come up with a somewhat reasonable criminal plan. Of course not. It starts to be reasonable, but then he fleshes out the plan and he makes it super crazy. He thinks he's going to recruit underage girls. He's going to recruit underage girls to open accounts with male stock brokers at the firm, right? Because that's a common thing, just, you know, 15 year olds opening up stock accounts. And these girls are going to convince these guys that they're of legal age. And then these girls are going to seduce these guys and they're of legal age. And then these girls are gonna seduce these guys

and they're gonna videotape the whole thing. And then Taylor is gonna claim that the broker forced these girls to have sex them, right, they're not gonna have sex under age girls are ripin' them. And then he's gonna get the firm to pay a large sum of money to keep the whole thing quiet. And then the girls are gonna take the money,

they just got and they're gonna donate it to him to help him with his transfer of America plans so we can get the fucking Brazilian or Venice assets going. Of course he hasn't given up on that. This is a tailor we've come to know and understand. The guy who can't make a rational plan to save his life and still not done this plan gets crazier. He also decides that he should personally train these underage girls how to be good at sex before sticking them on the stock brokers.

Boom! Incredibly, this rock solid plan never makes off the ground. This guy is the king of shitty convoluted plants. No one thinks there's new plans any good, right? So he's bummed about that. And then to make it even harder for Taylor to set his Transform America plan into motion, Don quits her job at the alarm company. And Taylor's pissed.

She didn't ask him permission. And the alarm company money is his tiny cults, primary source of income at this point. Fucking Don! She is his worst follower and sometimes his best, since she's often as only one. Now I need to sell some more E to buy food and stuff. In early April, we'll add a rave

while selling ecstasy under the alias Jordan, Taylor meets Selena Bishop. She's 22, she's bubbly. She's not sure if Taylor is actually named Jordan, but she likes him. He seems fun. They start to hook up and then random trivia. I didn't mention this before.

Selena daughter of Elvin Bishop, famous Bay Area Blues musician. Elvin was a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues band. It was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member, also a member of the Blues Hall of Fame, had a big radio hit 1976 with fooled around and fell in love, still tours at the age of 77. And now back to his daughter, Selina, showing up in today's tale to her severe detriment. On April 29, 2000, orders secure a proper headquarters for the children of Thunder, Justin, the only one of the four current

cult members, including leader Taylor, who was still employed, signed to one year lease on three bedroom, two bathhouse and conquered. Their Taylor and Don would smoke a shitload of meth and talk about how to transform America. They'd have meetings to bring Justin up to speeds and he'd been doing his own thing for while I'm sure those meetings were a lot of fun. They had the fourth cult member, the witch. She also goes to the meetings. It feels like a setter night life sketch,

more than a real story. After four weeks, all four of them believed that Taylor is part of the divine. Uh-huh. This is the most low rent cult ever. Four morons. Two of them smoke and methe all the time. In Concord, having meetings about how some Brazilian orphan

assassins are gonna pave the way for Taylor to take over the Mormon church and transform America. These four people make QAnon believers and flat authors look like fucking geniuses. How much math do you have to smoke for this stuff to make sense? I would love to hear audio recordings of the meetings they had at the Concord House. No, no, no, Justin, Justin, no. You know, pay attention, dude, we don't. We don't get the orphans. We hire professionals to find and take them, okay? We pay them with the money we make from a very lucrative escort business

of underage girls, sex slave extortion rack stuff to get the money. Don't, God damn it, give me some more meth. Give me some more meth. Give me some more meth. Don's gonna be in charge of that. I need you to train the assassins. You have military training.

I run quality control in the girls. I also continue the great job I've been doing of recruiting cold members. Listen, look at my numbers. Hey, hey, pay attention. Give me some more meth. Membership has quadrupled since this cold start. Quadrupled.

At first it was just me. Now a fucking look at us. It's me and you and sometimes Deb and always Don. Run stoppable. I just, hey, do we just run out of meth? Seriously, where's the fucking meth? How am I supposed to transfer America? I'm not gonna have enough meth! These idiots, they didn't just talk about all this stuff and conquered, they started to actively put together a plan. They get a hold of a 9mm pistol, Taylor figures out a way

to get rid of the bodies of the people. He's planned on killing to raise money. This story right when I think I forget about how crazy it is costly. I've been living in this for days. Taylor thinks he can get away with the burgers by feeding victims of his bodies to dogs. So he has dawn build a dog run in the backyard and then they adopt three dogs from a county animal shelter. A rotwiler, a border collie, an Australian shepherd. And he starts training them to dispose of bodies. Yes. They adopt three dogs for the very specific purpose of eating human bodies. Meth.

They feed the dogs, huge bones with the meat they'll attach to dogs love it. But Taylor decides that these three dogs, they're just not eat enough meat, right? They're not eat enough meat for their hurry up and eat a whole person dog plan to work. So they let two of the dogs go and then Don keeps the rotwiler and names it Jake. This is unreal. How could this dog plan not work out? What were the odds? They would end up with the only three shitty dogs on earth, not smart or beading enough to quickly eat entire human bodies. Man, bad luck. Bad luck is the one and only reason none of Taylor's awesome plans ever work out.

By July of 2000 Taylor is sick of trying to raise money, but not actually raising money. He's sick of his plans not working out. So what does he do? He makes another plan. He develops a scheme to extort money from five of his former clients at the brokerage firm, including Ivan and a net Steinman, a well-to-do elderly couple. He knew how much they're worth and he sends dawn to scour each of his targets live. He decides not to fuck any underage girls in this new planet hiss and he's pretty bound about that. This new plan is to kidnap one person, force them to turn over, you know, their assets

under the threat of being murdered and then to murder them. Then he's going to launder the money through Selena, who will then deposit the money for him, and then he's gonna kill Selena because she knows too much. And what she's gonna do with the bodies, he doesn't know yet. He hasn't gotten that far with this planning. He only knows that he's not gonna feed him to Jake, the raw wilder,

because Jake fucking sucks at eating people. God, why couldn't they've gotten better dogs? Bojangles, you know, if only they had blood. Shortly after coming up with this plan, we'll let his family reunion, Selena tells her cousins that Jordan was inheriting hundreds of thousands of dollars and he needed to hide it from his wife,

he was divorcing, and that's why he's gonna give the money to her. And this is part of his new plan, make people think he's about to get a lot of money and a legal way. Now, you know what to say? This is the best plan he's had so far. Selena would deposit the money in her bank account

and exchange for hiding it, Jordan would give her a cut. Why did he need her to do this? He didn't know exactly. She wasn't asking a lot of questions about his scheme and neither did her family. June 30th, 2000, Selina opens a new account at a local cow fed bank branch. Meanwhile, Taylor comes up with a plan for body disposal.

He wants a chaff of the bodies, toss him into the delta, the tangled web, rivers, and islands that drain into the San Francisco Bay. He even takes Don and Selina out on a boat to check out where he plans to of the bodies and toss him into the delta, the tangled web, rivers and islands that drain into the San Francisco Bay. He even takes Don and Selena out on a boat to check out where he plans to dump the bodies. Extra fucked up. He brings Selena since he's planning on killing her and dumping her in the water. He's currently showing her.

So you know, things are really coming together for the children of the thunder. Taylor starts to stress that if anyone betrays him, they will get hurt. And by anyone, he means, you know, any of the three people, they're listening to him. He threatens Debra with her daughter's death one night as a child sleeps in a nearby chair, weird. Weird that a guy doing a lot of meth, who thinks God wants him to use Brazilian orphaned assassins to take over a church, is gonna be paranoid.

And yes, he is still doing a lot of meth, lots and lots, every day, don is to. Taylor thinks that meth is helping him concentrate and stay awake. Sounds right. He's very excited. He thinks his first big payday is right around the corner. Late July, right before initiating his extortion plans,

he decides to make sure he has to be certain that God wants him to do this. So he calls an old friend of his moms. He tries to convince her to invest $5,000 into some random stupid business idea of his. And he tells himself if she agrees, he's gonna call off the murders. She agrees to invest $1,000 and it's some random stupid business idea of his. And he tells himself if she agrees, he's gonna call off the murders. She agrees to invest $1,000, but no more.

Not enough. He takes this as a definite sign that God for sure wants him to move forward with his plan. July 30th, a children of thunder meet in their conquered home as they had done so many times before, but now this time, they officially declare war on Satan out loud like people who are not crazy. Oh man, get ready, devil. You done just it fucked up.

Taylor's gonna teach you to be evil backstorting money from wealthy innocent senior citizens and then killing them. Ha ha, I'll teach you to be. That's gonna teach. I'm not sure if that's teaching Satan. I feel like the meth is taking over, most of the planning now. After telling Satan that they're coming for him, these four dipshits get to extorting. Don Pax or Bosses briefcase, with what they thought he was gonna need for the day.

Handcuffs, gun, taser, stun gun, and a pair of gloves. And then also she throws in a pipe, pre-packed with meth, and a pencil torch. Of course she does. I feel like Taylor was mostly concerned with the meth more than the other stuff, you know, when she was getting things ready. Did you pack the meth for me?

I mean, you packed it right, the meth? Tell me you packed the meth. Say the word meth again. Show me the meth. Let me have some of the meth to make sure it's meth. Taylor sets up an alibi for the cult with Deborah, asking her to see the new X-Men movie and buy four tickets for 810 PM.

So she can say that they're all there. Don then swings by an adult novelty store in the neighboring town of Pleasant Hill picks up a $90 pair of leg irons. They stop at a liquor store where she buys some cheap cigars and Merlot and a $50 bottle of Chateau Saint-Michel wine. The wine was a prop for Taylor's planned con. He wanted to start things off by talking his way into the house of his target.

My elderly man used to be one of his brokerage clients by offer of celebration. He planned to go to the door with the wine and the briefcase, spin a story, just be like, hey, I'm with a new company. I just made a bunch of money, yeah. This bottle of wine was for a customer down the road that I was just seeing.

After they decided they didn't want it, thinking maybe you'd have a drink with me and celebrate and I'll tell you all about it. I'll tell you all about it. Oh my god. Taylor's got this line. We work to get him adjust in the door and considering how fucking insane he's become.

It's not bad. The children of Thunder then leave their rental. I mean, World Headquarters and head out in two separate cars. They chosen a man named Bob White to be their first target. Justin and Taylor dressed in dark suits, long straight hair, carefully pulled back into ponytails. They had the briefcase and wine and Taylor's saturn as they pulled up to a house and a quiet residential neighborhood. Don follows and Justin's truck parking a short distance away. The brothers get out, walk up to Bob White's front door.

They agreed that they would be able to subdue up to five people. If there are more than five in the house, they will walk out and leave without implementing their extortion and murder plan. They knock on the door, adrenaline's flowing, tailors, meth filled blood, pumping, Justin ready to back up his big bro, and then no one answers the door, son of a bitch, they knock again, nothing. So now they start walking around the house, just call it out, Bob, hey, Bob, Bob, not a, another failure. Luckily for Bob, he's not home. Unfortunately, Bob is not their only target. They have a backup. Ivan and a net Steinman, these poor people, Taylor and Justin hop back in the car, drive to their house, don follows and parks nearby again. She parks on the corner so she can keep

a lookout. Justin and Taylor park the Saturn just down the street, walk up to Steinman's front door. Taylor walks about 10 feet ahead the street, walk up to Steinman's front door. Taylor walks about 10 feet ahead of Justin moving quickly, smoking, his brow, throat, and deep thought. Probably think about meth. Stopped in front of the off-white two story with a little balcony over the garage and shade trees in the front yard. Taylor was sure the Steinman would let him in.

Got in a long well with them in the past when he was their financial advisor. He'd even taken them a river rafting once with his dad Showed off his daughter just after she was born. Remember her remembers daughter Right this piece of shit has two daughters. Why haven't I brought them up since they were born? Because he never sees them the guy who he thought he was God's chosen profit didn't give a shit about his kids There was a car on this diamonds driveway titter was hopeful. They were home. He knocked in this time door opens. And the poor diamonds welcomed them inside. Taylor and Justin engaged in a bit of small talk. And then the gun comes out to nine millimeter. As the shock diamonds try to process what is happening. Taylor and Justin handcuffed them at

gunpoint, escorted them into their own minivan. Taylor calls Dawn cell phone to tell her that they're coming out. And then they drive the diamonds away. Before following Taylor and Justin back to headquarters, Dawn, who had noticed some people on their porch, who had become, she became convinced that the spirit wanted her to talk to them so she walked over and told them that her friend had been down the street by some weed and asked her to keep a lookout. That's why she's wandering around. And this explanation seems very weird to the neighbors. This is not a street that people sell weed on. So this, you know, definitely not going to look suspicious to police when the diamonds go missing.

These people are so stupid and insane. It's amazing they're able to kidnap anybody. With the elderly couple now in their home, the kidnappers cancel and that's hair appointments. They have the couple tell their daughters that they're going away suddenly on a mini vacation, then Taylor and Don do some more math to help to figure out what to do next,

not even making up that detail. That's when you know you are for sure, making a lot of awesome decisions. When you feel like you need to smoke more math to figure out what to do next, not even making up that detail. That's when you know you are for sure making a lot of awesome decisions. When you feel like you need to smoke more meth to figure out what to do next. Taylor decides to have Don call the Stymons brokerage and pretend to be a net on the phone. They stay up literally all night with him coaching her on how to say, you know, uh, what she's going to say. The next morning, Don does her best old lady impersonation. She explains to a brokerage manager that she has a family emergency and wants to liquidate

her entire portfolio. She makes it sound urgent. I've been up all night. I've got to catch a flight. She says hurriedly. The manager believing he is actually talking to Mrs. Stymon, explains that cashing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in retirement funds would mean stiff early withdrawal penalties. Don tells him to do it anyway.

She tells him, just take care of the trade. Liquid AT account, I have to go. She hangs out the phone, not suspicious at all. Now Taylor wants the diamonds to write some checks so we can deposit all this retirement account money. But first, he decides he needs to drug the diamonds for two or three days because, well, because of meth, I guess.

He gives Ivan and Annette each six ripen all pills, right? He roofies them. Then Taylor has Annette shackled with leg irons and handcuffs in the kitchen. He takes Ivan back into his bedroom, making him hobble down the hall. He hands Ivan his own checkbook, tells him to make a check out to Selena Bishop for $33,000 and Ivan does. Taylor then decides and needs Annette to sign some checks too. But since she can't write them out because he roofed her

You know he tries to wake her up To wake her up. He first tries just to get her to take a puff on the on the meth pipe somehow But it doesn't work because she's unconscious. It's dumb idea So then he takes a hit from the meth pipe and he blows a smoke into her face. That doesn't work either because it's also a dumb idea Finally is able to shake her awake and she signs a check for $67,000 over to Selena. Again, not suspicious at all. This is not gonna raise any red flags at their bank until all of a sudden they liquidate their retirement accounts

and right, two checks for total of exactly $100,000 to somebody that they've never written a check to before. And then Taylor decides to kill both of them. Both Ivan and Annette are still conscious, or unconscious, excuse me. They're unconscious, he has them laid out on the bathroom floor, right? They're still tied up, he orders Don

and his brother Justin's strip that are underwear to avoid a mess. He does the same. They give them more roofies, hoping it will OD and kill them, but it doesn't work. So then they try to smother them with plastic sheeting and for some reason that doesn't work either just because they're, they're fucking incompetent

and basically everything. Then Taylor bangs the net's head against the floor over and over until her skull cracks still doesn't kill her does wake her up and she starts to struggle. Justin begins to bang Ivan's head against the floor. He wakes up too. Both of them are now awake and struggling. The thud and scrapes the fight bouncing off the walls of their little bathroom. Taylor then lifts a net up, slings the upper half of her body over the side of the bathtub. He takes Justin's honey knife and he slits her throat, but not

badly enough to kill her. He messes up. She continues to struggle against him. Taylor now picks her head up, holds it so that instead of having her blood flown to the bathtub, the blood running out of her throat now flows back down and into her lungs. This does kill this poor 78-year-old woman by slowly drowning her. Don stands motionless in the doorway. She can't believe this is actually happening. Justin is still fighting with Ivan.

He's beating the 85 year olds head against the floor again. Ivan is still fighting back. Don comes over to help and sits on the old man's chest as Justin keeps pounding his head. And then Ivan has a heart attack and dice. His 85 year old heart just couldn't take what was happening anymore. My God, this poor couple, they had done nothing to these idiots. They follow their commands, they sign the checks and this is how they die. Right. So sad they'd live great lives. They made a lot of money, saved a lot of money and joined their final years

together and then this. And also how sloppy are these murders? These idiots are bad at everything. This entire episode is starting to feel like a PSA about meth. Meth will make you bad at even murder. Taylor was almost as bad a murder as he was at pimping. I hope someone, you know, he's in prison with, here's this podcast, and tells everyone else in prison.

So that everyone else exactly would have fucking pieces of shit and idiot disguise. When it was all over, Taylor and his three stupid followers feel great. They thought they had just done God's work. They had won their first battle against Satan. Now they have to get the checks cached. So Taylor, thanks about the money again.

He has an idea. He should have come up with before he killed the Stymons. He wants to distract the police by first riding a decoy check. And he wished he would have had a net right at check to Ivan. And then he wanted to have it deposited in their regular savings account. I'm not sure how this would have distracted the police exactly, but it's what he thinks they should have done. And since the net is now dead, he has dawn, grab a pen, and, you know, forge it. And he has her right out of check for $10,000 making, and she makes zero attempt to

disguise her handwriting. And she also doesn't even bother to look at the pre-printed Steinman name on the check itself. She writes a $10,000 check to Ivan Stinman, signed from a net Stinman. These are some of the dumbest motherfuckers we've ever talked about here on Time Suck. Taylor then tells her to get dressed, right? She's only wearing her bra and panties during the killing. She heads out to a branch of the Stymons Bank and Petaluma. A town about 50 miles away across the San Francisco Bay, North of City. While Don takes off with her check, Taylor and Justin start figuring out how to dispose the bodies. Dressed in their underwear, they set up a reciprocating saw in the bathroom. They decided to cut up Ivan first.

They grab his right arm, tear it out by the sockets. Ugh. Apparently it took him forever. They decided to cut off the second arm instead of just basically ripping it off. There's blood everywhere. Once Ivan is all cut up, Justin opens black trash bags

and Taylor puts the body parts inside. Man, things have changed considerably. Since they were little kids, wholesome little kids, playing together, and Helen and Montana riding those big wheels. After Ivan, they started on a net, they cut her in half, then removed her liver and testons in a kidney, then they dig into her chest cavity and take out her heart and lungs, neatly packaging

them in separate trash bags. Why would they do this? Because meth. Meanwhile, Don has no problems depositing a net L. Stinman's $4,000 check in returns home. The next day Taylor decides to use Don to deposit their money into Selina's account instead of the original plan of having Selina do it. Why is Don making this huge deposit in an account she has no association with? Who knows? The equities come up with a story about how Selina needed surgery and had no insurance. The Stinman's aka the Stiamans were grandparents, and we're going to pay for the operation,

which was why their checks needed to be deposited in Selena's account as quickly as possible. Dawn was just a friend running an errand for them. Well, the bank clerk is suspicious, probably because Dawn is out of her fucking mind on meth and twitching around, and after taking the checks, it doesn't allow the deposit to go through. So after all this, after two murders, it doesn't look like they're going to get any money. So what do they do? They decide to kill Selena. On August 2nd, three days after kidnapping the Steinman's, Selena comes over to the house, the children of Thunder House,

Justin shaken by the earlier murder of Ivan, he had looked into the man's eyes while killing him in this really shook him up. He decides to use a hammer to kill Selena because he wants to do it from behind. First a drug Selena's wine with Rufy's hoping that she'll just overdose, but Justin dumps so much Rufy's into her wine glass that's all like cloudy and she notices it and then Taylor has to quickly snatch it away. Rufy plan is aborted. Later, Taylor offers to give Selena back rub. She lays down on some blankets on the floor, then Justin brings the hammer down onto her head. Selena survives the initial

blow and cries out. She tries to turn, bring her left, brings her left hand up to shield further blows. Justin keeps swinging. He strikes her over and over again, breaking her hand, you know, crushing her skull, but not thoroughly. Because then Justin and Taylor used to blanket to carry her into the kitchen, trail of bloods, left in their way, says, blood everywhere. Taylor tells Don to start cleaning it all up, and take a saw horse and an extension cord and a saw into the bathroom to cut her, and then Selena wakes up. They hadn't killed her. She's pushing around now.

Taylor slits her throat, pushes her head under water in the bathtub. The world's sloppiest murderers, these moronic pieces of shit drown this poor woman. They then cut her up, put her body parts into bags, burn the rest of the bathtub. The world's sloppiest murderers, these moronic pieces of shit drown this poor woman. They then cut her up, put her body parts into bags, burn the rest of the evidence. Also, extra creepy. Tater cuts off a tattoo from Selena's body that he's worried will help identify her and he feeds it to Don's dog. Then the children of meth cult leader realizes that Selena's mother can identify him. Selena lived with her mom. He had met her mom once before. So you know, now they have to go find her and kill her. Taylor and Don drive to Selena's apartment

where her mom, Jennifer, Jennifer Valeran, 45 years old, is stained. When she answers the door and lets them in, Taylor shoots her and then shoots her friend. James Gamble, 54, using a gun registered to his brother Justin. The police are never gonna be able to crack this case. So now they've killed five people.

They haven't made a dollar. Taylor is the least successful co-leader we've ever talked about. The following day in August 3rd, the discovery of two people shot to death and has secluded Marin County, California, studio apartment, says police on a scramble to find who killed them. Detective Fred Marziano would later recall for the first few hours, it was kind of a what the heck possibly happened here. With the 22 year old Selena Alcourt from the scene, we knew we had at least a missing person. We weren't sure if perhaps she was

involved with this murder, or if she herself had been a victim of foul play. That same August morning, authorities also learned of a missing elderly couple. The daughter of Ivan 85 and Annette Steiniman at 78 hadn't heard from her parents in several days and found things amiss when she arrived at her parents' home. The minivan, you know, would be reported abandoned and of course a more gruesome find was coming. Four days later on the seventh, the bodies of Valerian and Gambler discovered a man riding a jet ski in the Malkullami River or Malkullamy. There we go. The Malkullamy River in Sacramento County spotted a

duffle bag in the water. Inside there are various body parts, rocks, rocks, you idiots. Why would you not put rocks in the duffle bag? You know, I don't know. Maybe weigh it down. So it doesn't just float back up at the top of the water. Detective Marziano would later say in an interview

that you had older male parts mixed with younger female parts and older female. Eventually a total of nine duffel bags with dismembered remains will be recovered. Marziano said it was just bizarre and every day something worse would surface. Investigators searched the Simon residence. They find a note written by Ivan Steinman

mentioning Taylor Helzer. Taylor didn't think to take any mention of himself out of the time at home when he left with them. I mean, they didn't know he was coming. So clearly they wrote a note, I guess when they got here, you know, or like when Taylor and his brother showed up, and then when he takes him to the band, he doesn't think to take the note.

Friends of Selena Bishop were showing a photo of Helzer, whom they identified as Jordan. Quick DMV check revealed that he owned a 1998 Saturn sedan Justin owned at a white 1995 Nissan pickup both of which matched descriptions of vehicles believed to be connected to the murders Investigators also found that Justin had recently purchased a 9 millimeter burretta same kind of gun used to kill Valeran and gamble weird and Shitload of fingerprints belonging to Justin and Don Godman are found in the Simon's van, which have been stolen and abandoned. Crazy.

They didn't think to wipe it down. Also on the seventh, just eight days after kidnapping the Simon's police arrest Justin Helzer and Don Godman at their concord home at the headquarters of the children of Thunder. When police pull up to the house, profit of God, Taylor Helzer flees to a nearby house where he threatens a woman demands money a gun in a car and he doesn't get any that because he's allergic to accomplishing anything illegal other than selling ecstasy or buying meth or very sloppy murders uh... he does cut off his ponytail he runs out the back door and he is quickly caught by police and uh...

what a tragic and gruesome dark comedy of errors. After covering the case on the Times, uh, Contra Costa County court speed, Claire Booth, author of the false prophet, awesome main source book for this sucks spent two years scouring documents conducting in-depth interviews to show how former conquered resident Glenn Taylor-Helzer twisted scripture to convince his brother Justin and friend Don that bloodshed was necessary. If he was gonna reach the highest escalons of the Mormon church,

and ultimately stop in Apocalypse. Who said, as I was covering it, I was thinking this has got to be a book someday. Yeah. There was just too much information. They could never fit one news article. Everything about the case was unusual. From the types of people targeted

to the people responsible. It was so unusual to have grown up the way Taylor Hellsard did in a devout Mormon family and turned so far from the church using all of his teachings and gifts for swaying and inspiring people he went the wrong way. The story needs to be written and needs to be brought together in one place. The trial did that to a large extent by publicly airing his plans, the tolls on the victims and how justice was served. Claire said, the interesting part of my job was sitting

down with people afterward and having them walk through what happened from their perspective, then taking those perspectives and putting it into an narrative. I hope people read it as a cautionary tale. You can't throw away all of the world's moral codes to get what you want. They are there for a reason and it's to help guide human behavior. To me, the main lesson from this cautionary tale is to stay away from meth. Don't smoke meth with someone whose main life plan revolves around, you know, escort businesses and kidnapping Brazilian orphans and training them to become assassins so we can transform America and stop the apocalypse. In August of 2004, California jury recommends death for Justin Helzer, 32, rejecting his attorney's claim that he was under the spell of his older brother.

Before this, Taylor entered a surprise guilty plea to the murders just before he was to be tried alongside his brother. Don Godman, 30, agrees to testify for the prosecution under a deal that sent her to prison for 38 years to life. Don's which friend, kind of cult member Deborah McClanahan also testified against Taylor Justin and Don and receives no prison time. She bounced after agreeing to go to the movies to get them that alibi for the kidnapping. Interestingly, she testified barefoot while wearing a jacket that had sewer service written

on it and spent most of her time on the witness stand talking about her beliefs in the quote energy aspect of giving massages About being a good witch and about her ferret named Cosmo story is so consistently ridiculous Herald howled you at the county prosecutor made frequent references to religion and philosophy as he argued that Helzer took advantage of fellow Mormons fear of the apocalypse when he claimed to be a prophet and religious warrior. At the same time, Jiu at sought to show that Taylor's belief that he communicated with God was

not delusional or insane. It didn't open up the door for him to be not guilty by a reason of insanity. He said that is a tenant of the religious faith that millions of people believe it. Jiu at said Helzer's attempts to evade capture showed he understood that what he was doing was wrong. The prosecutor also outlined the sheer depravity of Helzer's actions, which included feeding a piece of human flesh to a rot-wather.

This is not a movie, Jewett said. The most chilling aspect of this case is that it really happened. It's hard to process that it really happened. It feels more like a movie. On December 15th, 2004, during closing arguments and Hellsar's death penalty hearing, prosecutor Jürt at times choked back tears

as he described the savage murders in the victim. At other times, Jürt raised his voice and anger as he pointed at Hellsar. At one point, while talking about the bonds between the victims and their family members, Jürt turned on a reciprocating saw, similar to the one that Hellsir and his younger brother Justin used to cut up three victims before

tossing them into the river. Over the noise from the saw, Jewett shouted, what did the defendant do literally and figuratively? He cut them apart. Defense attorney, Suzan, Shappett then made her closing argument.

She said that Glenn Taylor Hellsir should be spared the death penalty because he was a sick person driven to kill by mental illness, drug use, and participation in intense self-awareness seminars that he used to justify his incredibly bizarre ideas. On March 12, 2005, Judge Mary Ann O'Malley sentenced just to now 33 and Taylor 34 to death. 33 and Taylor 34 to death. God had been now 34 was sentenced to 38 years to life in prison. Eight years later on April 14th, just at the age of 41 committed suicide by hanging while incarcerated at San Quentin. Taylor and Don remain incarcerated, and I have to imagine that Taylor awaits word from God and you know when he'll be busted out of prison and can get back to his plan of transforming America.

Now let's get out of this time suck timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. So what a tale, huh? How has a movie not been made about this story? It does feel like a movie. I think it could be a good, you know, dark thriller comedy.

In the end, Taylor Justin and Don killed five people got away with nothing. They brutally murdered an elderly couple for $100,000 and didn't get the money. They cut people into pieces with a saw through the mixed body parts and the nine duffel bags tossed them into the river but didn't think to weigh the bags down

and they did a lot of fucking meth. nine duffel bags, toss them into the river, but didn't think to weigh the bags down, and they did a lot of fucking meth. And now Justin's dead, Taylor and Donner and prison, Taylor showed so much promise early on. He was such a good kid, such a straight arrow for so long before the drugs and depravity, Taylor was on his way to becoming an important part of the Mormon church, but his narcissistic delusions got in the way.

Taylor was told by everyone, from his mom to leaders in his church. He was special. Got a special plan for him. And it wasn't true. God didn't plan any what Taylor did. Taylor made his own plans. Really, really shitty, complicated, horrible, and insane plans.

Time now for today's top five takeaways. Time, suck, top five takeaways. Number one, Taylor Helser wanted to raise money through various escort-based businesses to then have enough money to raise Brazilian orphans and train them to be assassins and then have them assassinate Mormon leaders so we could take over the church and transform America. He focused on this plan for years. Number two, Taylor told his marriage counselor

that he wanted to have sex with 100 Brazilian women and the mayor that fielded down to 35 women. We then have more sex with, then get several of those women to sign to your contracts with him agreeing to have sex them every day. He said this out loud in front of his wife. What was he thinking, but not saying out loud? Number three, meth, Don't do it.

Number four, the brutality of the children of Thunder's crimes is especially hard to fathom. When you think about how just a few years before, they were still dedicated to being good law by adding Mormon citizens. Oh my heck! Can people sometimes take a seriously dark turn for the worse? And people sometimes take a seriously dark turn for the worse. And number five, new info. In 2012, journalist Nancy Malayne became the first reporter in a decade permitted inside California's death row to interview prisoners. And one inmate's story disturbed her more than any of the others. And that inmate was Justin Helzer.

This was the year before he died. She said that there was a visually impaired sign hanging outside his cell door next to a wheelchair. When she spoke with them, he told her that he had tried to kill himself in his cell with big pens. He was still haunted by looking into the eyes of Ivan Steinman when he killed that man, just in a taking those pens and jam jam them into his fucking eyes. His self-harm had left him blind and somehow partially paralyzed. One last insane detail in this insane story. Malayne will be the last journalist interview Justin before he killed himself the following

year. His brother Taylor has not given interviews since being put on death row, at least not that I am aware of. Time, suck, tough, five, take away. What a story, huh? Holy shit, so dark. But to me, in moments so darkly funny, just his plans. Taylor's so many, so specific and sane plans. I hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks again to the time stock team. A. Thanks again to the time stock team. Big thank you to the time stock team. The Queen of the Suck Lindsey Cummins, Reverend Dr. Paisley, Zach Flannery the Scripkeeper, also a producer in this episode, the Biddelixer app design crew, Logan and Kate at Spicy Club,

running badmagicmerch.com and more now. Next week, we get mine, Bendy, here here on the suck and try and break down the multiverse theory. What if there are multiple or even an infinite number of universes, including the universe we consistently experience, that together comprise everything that exists, the entirety of space, time, matter, and energy, as well as the physical laws and constants that describe them. In this context, multiple universes are often referred to as parallel universes, because they exist alongside our own and something that could be an infinite amount of them very stranger things in a way. What is going on in these other universes to alternate versions of ourselves live in these universes could we create a portal to move in and out of these other parallel universes are the universes where Taylor Helzer lives where he never made crazy escort and murder plans.

So we're going to switch things up and keep it in our scene next week. And now let's check in with the call to the curious on today's time sucker updates. First update today coming in from super sucker will Red, who got Cummins Law, it's so hard it almost literally killed him. Will writes, to the Suck Master, Lord on High, you got me with Cummins Law, sort of. After my city was shut down in quarantine, I decided to go back to live with my mom for the duration of lockdown, because it's in a rural area. Before shit got serious, I was working on my grandparents farm doing odd jobs. Well one day I was cutting a brush with their chainsaw,

and I was listening to the pandemic suck via my Bluetooth headphones. As you got to your interview, I turned the chainsaw off and started cutting vines and smaller limbs with my crocodile dundee. This is a knife, size knife. Right as you said, the line about more injuries due to masturbation, I had the knife angled towards me

like I've done a thousand times before, but when you asked me about more injuries from masturbation, I've done a thousand times before, but when you asked me about more injuries from masturbation, I laughed so hard and jerked and I fucking stabbed myself in the chest like an idiot. I then had to go drive myself to the doctor with the knife still in me, randomly, chuckling in my idiocy, which would cause blood to spurred out my God. When I called my mom from the hospital, she didn't believe me because it was April 1st. This bitch made me send her Snapchat of the doctor's tissue me up before she, before she

believed me. When I finally told her how it happened last night, she said, I had to write into the show and tell you. Now the story is going to be my go to example when I spread the suck. Thank you for everything you do. People can always use a laugh in these trying times. Thanks for providing me, providing me with an almost life ending laugh. Hail Nimrod, praiseful Jango, it was glory to triple him,

sincerely, free will. Holy shit, well, I'm glad you're okay. And I'm glad you and your mom got a good laugh out of all this. Oh my God, hope you get more laughs. Hope you got some laughs from today's suck. Hail Nimrod, dude, That is a crazy story. I'm glad it wasn't worse than that. Next up, kick ass sat Cassidy Schrock has some COVID-19 food for thoughts. She writes, dear Dan, I can very easily make this an emotional plea to consider my humanity because I am considered high risk and I have a kid and stuff, but I do also understand the need to think

of the greater good even when that puts me squarely on the death list. So let's put that aside and look at some numbers. Cold, logical numbers, these are all US figures. Population, 327.2 million. Population under 60. 68.7 million. I feel like there'll be more than that.

Maybe that's over, maybe that was a little typo. Maybe it's a big population over 60 is 68.7 million. People with autoimmune disorders, 23.5 million diabetes, 100 million, what? 100 million? As with 25 million. Some of these numbers overlap. However, that is not nearly all of the conditions

that put a person at risk. Let's just run with that. It's a very rough estimate. That's 217.2 million people in the at risk group in some way or another. The fatality number that's getting thrown around is 1 to 3%, but that's overall for all people. Let's say for our risk group is 3%. That would be 6.5 million deaths.

For scale, that's like if 9 and 11 happened roughly 2,200 times. Most of those people do have jobs, pay taxes, etc. Furthermore, most people that fit into these high-risk groups that do work are usually educated or skilled workers because if you're sick You can't exactly do manual labor. So now you've lost those skills. Right now everyone is talking about overwhelming the healthcare system But what about afterwards when we can overwhelm the death funeral burial, burial industries, not to be crass, but what are we going to do with all those bodies? Also children will lose parents, which will lead to a lot more negative outcomes, such

as lower grades, lower graduation rates, higher rates of drug abuse, higher rates of mental illness, etc. Which have been positively correlated with losing a parent during childhood, except now it's going to be on a pandemic level. It will be easier for the nation to recover with fewer corpses. The economic problem is inevitable and global. We can either come out of it physically healthy or literally overflowing with dead bodies. It's an everyone's self interest to suck it up and say the fuck home.

The Doomsday Preppers can think of this as a test run. The rest of us can either help each other because it's the right thing to do or because we don't want to live in a dystopian hellscape later, whichever, Cassie's rock. You know what later, whichever, Cassie Schrock. You know what? Thank you, Cass. I needed this today. I'm getting super worried about the economy.

And I was getting close mentally to feeling like I should join the protesters who think this is all an overreaction. This has been warped from my mind a little bit lately. It's very confusing. Constant news articles coming out that go against previous news articles. Your argument in favor of sheltering in place because that is also helping the economy I do think it's a good thing to think about and I'm glad you shared it with us all Sorry if I messed up the numbers there

Definitely gives me something more to think about just the premise in general I don't think the numbers the exact specifics are as important as the overall argument you make I still don't know what the right thing to do is, as far as when and how we should reopen the economy. And I don't feel like anyone else knows that either, not for certain. But info like this, I do feel like helps our search for that and other answers. So, hail, Nimra, to you, and thank you for sharing that. More COVID-19 food for thought coming in now from Awesome Stuck or Dan Freer. Dan writes, hey, suck master. In the COVID-19 episode, you spoke Coming in now from Awesome Sucker Dan Freer. Dan writes, hey Suck Master. In the COVID-19 episode, you spoke briefly

about the economic cost versus the cost in human lives. The nuance is not as callous as putting a dollar value on human life, but if you want to do that, we can look no further than the insurance industry. And I don't say that with malice. The nuance is that economic cost went large enough and widespread enough manifest as a decrease in the quality of life for large parts of the population if not the whole.

This means long-term unemployment, retirement, deferred, educational opportunities missed, homes lost, businesses closed, permanently, etc. Is a human life worth a million dollars? Maybe or maybe not. Is it worth a million happy birthdays, 10 million Memorial Day BBQ? 100 million family dinners entire towns going upside down when communities Take decades to recover This is where the discussion of mitigation costs can earnestly be put on a similar footing as lives lost I'm not saying that I have a calculation for this

But rather wish to clarify the discussion is one where people are trying their best to react to this and put emergency measures in place Based to model a whole lot of unknowns while trying to balance the equation above mentioned. It's all pretty bananas and based upon what we're seeing I'm feeling positive by and large about the results. I've got my gripes, but in terms of the entire fucking world responding to something, humanity has so far exceeded my expectations. Though maybe mine were low from the start. Thanks for reading, thanks for all your work.

Thanks for all the good shit you and the team and the cult have put out into the world. So glad I got to see your show and Sacramento to start the tour and I'll be there in San Francisco when you get around to it. Keep on sucking, Dan Freer. Well, thank you, Dan, man. What a great note about being positive

about how humanity has come together to save lives in this pandemic. I mean, that really is a nice thing to think about. It's a nice perspective. I had not thought at all about. So I do thank you for that. Thank you for helping me feel positive about something that, you know, thus far, I have definitely primarily viewed as being a negative thing.

So hail Nimrod and you know what? I'll see you in San Fran, whatever, whatever shit gets back to some new version of normal. Funny message now coming in from critically thinking sucker, Cameron, Jacques, Cameron writes, hello there to the great and powerful one who sucks. I've got a funny story for you. So strap in obviously we're in the middle of a pandemic and we shouldn't be going to see our family.

So my grandma set up a family zoom and got various aunts and uncles and cousins taking it up from their homes. Now anyway, my grandma is a little weird. She thinks that everything causes cancer and half of everything causes autism. Yes, she's one of those. What I did not know was that she was completely batchy crazy. She started talking about how she sent an email to a few people in her family, containing an article about how 5G weakens your immune system, and that's why the virus is spreading

so quickly. She said, it's too scientific for me to understand. Maybe one of you can help me figure it out. My uncle then chimes in and says, oh, was that the one you sent us by David Eck? I panicked and had to mute myself and stop my webcam from broadcasting because I had to laugh and yell so hard.

Took me a few seconds to realize that they were talking about longtime wackadoodle suck subject, David Eck. To be clear, my grandma was 100% serious in believing in this quote unquote scientific article as she called it. She even told my cousin to try and read it because he has a scientific mind. Just figured I'd share this with you because you'd get a kick out of it and he's trying times I did.

Thanks for the last of the knowledge. Long time sucker. Hopefully soon to be space is her Cameron. PS I called my parents after this. Use it as an opportunity to rope them into the cult of the knowledge. Long time sucker, hopefully soon to be space lizard Cameron. PS, I called my parents after this. Use it as an opportunity to rope them into the cult of the curious. I sent them to link to your podcast so they could know just how crazy my grandma is.

Wow Cameron, Nana is an Ike believer. I wonder if she thinks that lizard illuminati is really behind it all, right? If you trace it back, the lizard illuminati, they created the 5G, the weekend in our immune system so they could kill us and then feed off of our fear as a minor monotomic gold inside the year's crust. How lucky are you to have such entertaining family members? I hope your parents listen to enough of a time stuff to try and convince Grandma that

Ike is none other than squirrels shit. Hail, Nimrod, and I'm sure she's a sweet grandma. I hope you at least get some more entertainment out of her if you can't change your mind. And one more kick ass sucker Jacob Shapiro wrote one hell of a message. Here it is. Dear sucker of all time, just like many of the messages you receive in a daily basis, I was trying to think of a way to convince you to put my message into the time sucker updates for all to hear. I went back and listened to the time-soccer updates portion of the past couple episodes and realized there was only one way to increase my chances of achieving this goal by providing something of value

to the time-soccer community. Thus below, you'll find Jacob's tips to increase your chances of a time-soccer update reading. Rule number one, don't use confusing vocabulary and write clearly. We all know Dan's mouse. I have to imagine that the team choosing which message to make it to the final recording are looking for clearly written text so that Dan's lizard brain can process it. Use a healthy dose of commas, avoid semi-colons as they can confuse Dan.

That's fair. Rule two, don't worry about length of your email. Every time Dan reads an amazing message, they always start with, sorry about the length of the message or end with sorry for how long that was. And yet it still makes it on the air. While brevity may be the soul of wit, it's clearly not the soul of time suck.

Dan may be witty, but he's in no way brief. I love Dan for that. And I'm sure we'll love your message too. Dan, don't worry about the length, just worry about the quality. Rule number three, uphold the values of time suck. I have never heard a message on the air that was closed-minded or lacked consideration

for the opposition, though I'm sure the time suck teams received many of these. Yeah, we do get so. Be kind and respectful of the learning environment that Dan and the time suck team have created and be sure to make fun of Dan whenever possible. Yeah, that's fair. Rule number four, if your message is time sensitive, send your message

far in advance of when you'd like it to be read. All caps, the time-soaked team owes you nothing. They don't have to read your message and they're doing you a favor if they do. Don't expect your message to get read this Monday if you send it in this Sunday. As I write this, it is April 11th. Yeah, take a few weeks. Rule number five, make sure to thank the time-soaked team. Know that Dan is not the only one needed to make this podcast come to life. Is Dan reminds us every week giving the thanks. So thank you to the many people behind every episode. I would like you all to know that my partner and I have spread this suck to people all over the world on our travels to South Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Middle East, and North Africa. I'm so jealous

your travels. Nice. As I'm sure you already know, the suck is spread far and wide. Now, you may be wondering, why does he want his message read aloud in the first place? Well, the time suckered update is arguably my favorite part of time suck. I thoroughly enjoy hearing other people's perspectives on Dan's ideas from the weeks past. I always love how I come out of one week's episode,

super convinced of Dan's position, only to hear next week's updates where another time sucker makes an insightful counterargument. In a world with a level of debate debate can sometimes be tragically poor. It gives hope to hear from thoughtful time suckers across the political spectrum. But this is not my main reason for writing and my main reason for wanting to be on the air is also number six. Always make sure to give a shout out to your loved ones who introduced you to the suck.

This is the case for my amazing partner Taylor, whose birth date is on May 1st. She is the one who introduced me to this wonderful community and I do not take podcasts for recommendations lightly. As everyone else who has chronicled their journey with Dan, Taylor had me listen to one episode. I was immediately hooked. Taylor and I have an unofficial tradition of riding each other long and heartfelt letters

and reading them aloud on birthdays, holidays, and special occasions. So to my love, Taylor, the past two and a half years have been the best of my life, and I know the rest of our lives will be even better than that. I love how time sockets brings us closer together, how our conversations about the episodes contribute to our vision of our future. I'll love you till the day I die and don't you ever forget it. Dan, if you do decide to read this on air, then thank you.

If you don't, I'll just read it to her in person. And regardless, thank you for all that you do. Cheers, Jacob Shapiro. Ah, that is too sweet, Jacob. Well done, man. Well done. That was amazing. I love it so much.

And yay to Taylor, happy birthday, Taylor. It made it in time for that. Love that you too, or so much in love. And it looks like you're cherishing it. Cherishing it and protecting it. Your rules are pretty spot on. Keep on sucking. You beautiful bastards. Stay curious is right and hail Nimrod.

Thanks, time suckers. I need a net. We all did. That's all for today. Don't forget about my new standup special. Check the info in the episode description. Get out of here, devil, the viewing party. All right, I'll be on Instagram live at 4.45 pm,

Tuesday, April 28th, for about 15, 30 minutes. Kick it off as a way to check it out for 99 cents. Normal price, five bucks to rent, 13 bucks to buy, but for a limited four hour window, 5 pm to nine pm Pacific time, April 28th, you can rent it on Vimeo for $0.99. Just a buck. It is also available if you would rather watch another platform, including Apple TV and Amazon. Following the Instagram live before the little window, please watch the special.

I'll be back on IG live at Dan Cammie's company for a Q&A, starting at 6.30 p.m. Pacific time about the special. Now have a great week. Don't do any fucking meth and keep on sucking. Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit. Hey, oh, hey Zach, can you come in here for a second? Hey, I know I would joke around a lot, but, uh, do you have, do you have any meth?

Yep. Alright, meth. You coming here for a second? Hey, I know I would joke around a lot, but do you have any meth? Yep. All right, man. MASS!