Vampire Cult Exposed by Journalist Who Took on NXIVM (Part 2)

[00:00:00] You will die if you recall this. You have no memory. Take a deep breath. You will forget. Some voices you listen to. Some voices listen back. For years, people all around the world trusted one online healer with their money, their marriages and their kids. Then, the court records came out.

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[00:01:08] I'm Sarah Edmondson. And I'm Nippy Ames. And this is A Little Bit Culty, the podcast where we unpack cults, control and coercion. We woke up from a cult. The whole wild ride ended up in The Vow on HBO and in my memoir, Scarred. Now, after eight seasons of hearing every kind of culty story imaginable, we've modeled up everything we've learned into a book, also called A Little Bit Culty. It's available now in all formats on Amazon, Audible and where fine books are sold or get a signed personalized copy on our website.

[00:01:36] Better yet, ask your local bookstore or library to order it and encourage them to get on that cult awareness bandwagon. On the show, we break down the shame and secrets that make these experiences so destructive with honest conversations about how everyday groups can slide into the cultiverse. Each week, we bring in experts, survivors and whistleblowers to talk red flags, resilience and recovery. And yes, we still make time to laugh. Sometimes you have to or you'll cry.

[00:02:01] Want early ad-free episodes, live Q&As and exclusive extras? Join us on Patreon at patreon.com slash a little bit culty. Welcome to season nine of A Little Bit Culty. Welcome back to part two, everyone, with Chet Hardin.

[00:02:27] We're going to discuss the Vampire's Cult with Aubrey Trail because cults do exist in weird middle-aged men. Yes, they really do. And you might want to go back and listen to part one just to set this episode up. Although this, I think, will be a standalone episode talking about Chet's new book, Vampire's Cult, the untold story of obsession and control and a shocking small town murder. So, first of all... Can we read Chet's little... What? I love this line here. What? This is funny.

[00:02:56] Chet Harden is a journalist and author who specializes in reporting on bad ideas and worse people. I love that. I was like, damn! I gotta have one of those. That's a great tagline. It's such a great... Have you been invited, by the way, to CrimeCon yet? No, I haven't. No, I haven't. You should totally be at CrimeCon. Oh, my God. With this? For sure. Contact them. Yeah. I'll have my... I'll ask my publisher. It was a fun event. We met some really cool people there.

[00:03:23] We got three episodes out that I think are some of our best because of our CrimeCon event. It was great. Oh, cool. Yeah, it'd be really good for you to go there. And I think people would... Yeah. I mean, the true crime element of this. So how did you first hear about it? And why did you decide to start writing about this? And what was your connection? So I was at the trial for Keith Raniere. And when I got home from that, I was just sort of frustrated by everything. NXIVM, right? I was frustrated by Keith being...

[00:03:53] He wasn't for me. He wasn't like... I don't know. He was a villain. But there was something about him that bugged me. And I couldn't put my finger on it. And one day I'm driving around and I think to myself, I want a really bad person to write about. I want a person who's bad and knows they're bad, who accepts that they're a bad person, and will talk to me about it on that level, right? Like, you know, Keith never thought he was a bad guy, I think, right? I won't admit it. He's got a different... Psychology. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:23] Narcissist, delusions of grandeur. Right. And he's like a martyr, right? So like... But I was like, man, I want a bad guy and I want to talk to him about being a bad guy. That's what I want to write about. And so not a week goes by, and my wife sends me an article about Aubrey Trail cutting his throat in court. And my wife's like, I think I found your guy. And I was like, yeah, I think this guy... I think this is it. I think this is him.

[00:04:48] So I went to the trial of Bailey Boswell, which happened in 2020, who's Aubrey's accomplice. And yeah, I just got... I was riveted by the story. I was riveted by the location that the story took place, you know, in this very rural part of the Midwest in Nebraska. I just... Everything about it really spoke to me. And so Aubrey Trail was... When he was convicted of murder, he was 52 years old. He was an ex-felon.

[00:05:18] He spent his life in and out of prisons. He spent his childhood bouncing around juvenile detention facilities, you know. He spent when he was like from the age of like 15 to 17, he was in a notorious juvenile prison in Tennessee called Taft, where they would kind of... They got in trouble because they would chain the kids to like steam pipes and stuff. And they would encourage them to fight with each other.

[00:05:44] So Aubrey had just always been... Had always been a criminal, but he'd always been... He'd always experienced these sort of like the darkest parts of like humanity, right? When he's 49 years old, he gets out of prison. And he goes on a crime spree in the Midwest. And while he's on this crime spree, he meets up with a young woman named Bailey Boswell. She's in her early 20s. She's a sex worker. He hires her off a back page.

[00:06:15] And when he hires her off a back page, she's, you know, she's miserable. She wants out of this life that she's leading. The father of her daughter is abusive, according to her. He's a drug addict, according to her. And she just wants out. She wants to escape. And Aubrey offers her a way to escape. You know, he'll take care of her. He'll give her money. He'll give her safety. He'll... Sugar daddy. Yeah, he's going to be her sugar daddy. And it works. That's what happens. So they hook up.

[00:06:42] And that leads to all the craziness that follows. Quick thing. What's a back page? Back page was a website. It got shut down like, I think, 2017, 2018. In that area. It was like, remember when Craigslist had like classifieds for male seeking male, male seeking woman? Like, it was like for intimate encounters. It was... Back page was similar. And what you could do... What Bailey was doing is she was going online and off selling massages. And yeah, that's what it was.

[00:07:12] And that's what back page was until I got shut down by the feds. Okay. By the way, when you described Aubrey's life and his upbringing, you fortified my theory that these people, these cult leaders, these abusive fuckwads, whatever you want to call them, have poor attachment. I don't know how much you know about attachment theory with parents.

[00:07:36] And I, you know, he, you shared how he, his mom left and was gone for the first five years of his life and was raised by his grandparents. When she came back into his life, he just like hated her and resented her and made life living hell for her. And that's... Keith has talked about how, you know, his dad left and then he was resentful towards his mom who was sick. Like, we don't, you know, we don't know the details, but like same with David Koresh. And I believe also Manson, like there's these, just this through line of these little kids not getting the love and care that they need or some...

[00:08:05] From their mothers in particular. I think mothers in particular. Yeah. From my... I mean, Manson, Manson has that hilarious story about Manson's mother supposedly trading him for a pitcher of beer when he was a baby. So... That'll do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like these wounds, right? Like, I'm not excusing anything. I'm just looking at like the psychology of some of these people. No, it's important to explore the origin of why someone becomes like that so you can understand what you're looking at. Yeah.

[00:08:35] And I, you know, when I would talk to Aubrey about this, Aubrey would get so frustrated with me because he'd be like, Chet, nobody wants to hear about what I was doing when I was a baby. And I was like, well, you know, I mean, maybe that's true. But like also there are people out there who are fascinated by this question of nurture versus nature and what could lead a person to become like you. And, you know, he always thought it's funny because he'd always be like, you know what? I'm an adult. I make my own decisions. Nothing in my childhood caused me to be the way I am.

[00:09:03] And, but that was kind of Aubrey's, Aubrey's defensive whenever you start to get, you know, when you try to like... Yeah, he's well fortified. Yeah. How did you get that time with him? You visiting him in prison? Phone calls. I had 12 phone calls with him. Each phone call lasted two hours. Wow. Hmm. Yeah. So I spent, yeah, a good 24 hours just talking to this guy. Well, he was on death row at the time. Did he actually die? I didn't know this. No, he's still alive. Still alive. Nebraska won't kill him. I mean, Nebraska does not put people to death. It's been like a lot of states, actually.

[00:09:33] They have it on their books and they sentence people to it. But then there's this interminable amount of appeals they can do. I don't even think Nebraska can execute someone right now. I don't know if they have the means to execute someone. They can't use a drug cocktail they used to use. That's not... They can't get it anymore. I realize that even asking that, I'm jumping to the end. That's fine. Let's go pattern recognition. Let's go back. So you have the knowledge of Keith Raniere coming here. What do you... Yeah.

[00:10:01] So immediately I'm trying to frame this in my mind, at least. Where is Aubrey as far as Keith? And the thing that jumped out for me about Aubrey was that he's such a con man. Aubrey is a con man through and through. Everything about him, he's running cons. When I first started talking to him, it was a con. He wanted... He told me he talked to me, but he only wanted 50% of my... He wanted 50% of my royalties in exchange, right? For this conversation.

[00:10:31] And when I told him, you know, kind of like when I shut down Keith, I was like, no, I don't negotiate. This is not a negotiation. Aubrey comes back with how about 30%. And I'm like, Aubrey, this is not a negotiation. I'm not going to work with you. You're a specimen. I study you. This is how it goes. And he goes, all right, well, how about I just give you everything and I still get final say over the book? You know, so it was this back and forth constantly with him. And so he was such a con man. I don't even know if...

[00:11:00] I think he accidentally... Unlike Keith, who I think intentionally became a co-leader, I think he actually set out. That was his goal. I agree. I agree. I think Aubrey Trail accidentally became a co-leader. I think what happened for Aubrey is he's such a good con man and that the people around him started to believe him. And he was like, oh, I'll just keep going with this. And it just kept getting bigger and bigger.

[00:11:28] And he had to get it more and more extreme. I think he was just an accidental co-leader. I don't think he ever wanted to be that. He's just a con man. He just wanted money and sex. That's what he was looking for. Yeah. And then there's a through line too, money and sex. And sex, yeah. We didn't get into the specifics, but it seemed like in many ways Bailey was like the Pam Kaferitz of the operation.

[00:11:52] And both men didn't do a lot of the fishing, the flying monkey work to get other women. They got the women to do that and using women to lure and have women trust him. Epstein too. Yeah. So this is like... Yeah. Like a claim. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bailey is exactly that. Bailey was exact... Because she was, you know, young and very broken, a very damaged person when she got hooked up with Aubrey.

[00:12:19] And she would do anything for him at that point, do anything for the money and do anything for the security, right, that he was offering her. So yeah, she became... She was the face of this operation. They would catfish women online and they would use her photo to catfish. And Aubrey would do the messaging, right? He was... He would be texting back and forth to these women. And they thought they were texting with Bailey. If they meet her in person, of course it was Bailey. Yeah. She was like a Pam. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting.

[00:13:17] Loving the podcast? Because culty shit is everywhere. And it doesn't always look like people wearing matching robes in the desert. These dynamics show up in relationships, workplaces, wellness communities, churches, social media, anywhere someone claims to have all the answers. And we're pretty proud that the book has been endorsed by powerhouses like Leah Remini, Bethany Joy Lenz, Dr. Romani Dervasala, Tia Lovings, Evan Rachel Wood, Jessica Willis Fisher, and so many more. So whether you've been meaning to read the book or you just want to hear us tell it to

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[00:18:53] All right, everybody. That little break is over. Let's get back to our story. I want to get into some of the specifics of the through lines and the patterns. I just realize if someone's not yet read your book or knows the case, can you just kind of walk people through what eventually happened? Like, how does he end up in jail? And who's Sydney? Sidney. That kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So what happens is Aubrey starts this cult in Wilbur, Nebraska. It's small and it's kind of loosely a cult.

[00:19:20] But what they're doing is what it's based on is this obsession with murder and obsession with torture. And it gets into their sex play. There's a lot of torture fantasy and stuff like that during sex. And it just builds and builds this obsession with murder. And they find this young woman online named Sydney Loof on Tinder. And same situation.

[00:19:48] Bailey is presented and then Aubrey's doing the texting. And they catfish her. They convince her that Bailey is a young woman named Audrey, that she's very interested in going out on a date and maybe being girlfriends. So Sydney is 24 years old. She's working at a hardware store in Lincoln, Nebraska, which is not her dream job. She doesn't really actually know what she wants to do. I think at this point, she's kind of a like, you know, she's a little lost, kind of aimless.

[00:20:16] And so when she meets Bailey online, when she meets Bailey on Tinder, it seems, you know, it seems great. It seems like, oh, maybe there's girl and I can be friends. Maybe there's something more to it. Sydney's really, Sydney's kind of in a funk at that point in her life. And it seems like it was a thing that could pull her out of it. But anyway, they go out on a date. Sydney has a lot of fun. It's a sweet date. They kiss it a little at the end. And it was such a good date that they make a second date for the next night.

[00:20:46] This is Bailey and Sydney. So they make a date for the second night. And on the second night, Sydney's taken back to the apartment in Wilbur, where she's murdered and dismembered. And she's found a few weeks later, her body is found in cornfields about an hour or so away from Wilbur in 14 pieces. It's so horrific and gruesome. I can't even...

[00:21:14] I mean, the book is... It reads like a thriller in terms of, you know, finding all this out. But the heart of it is just horrific that this lives in people. And, you know, it must have been hard to write about and get this testimony. What was it like for you to learn these details? It wasn't easy. Talking to Aubrey... So I talked to Aubrey for 24 hours, like I said. And sometimes the man is funny. I mean, he is funny. And he is charismatic.

[00:21:44] You know, and people... I'm sure you've dealt with this all the time. And people are like, you know, Keith Raniere doesn't strike me as charismatic at all. But, like, you have to, like... You have to have one-on-one conversations with these people. And you have to be kind of like... And they do have a charm that is kind of hard to describe sometimes by looking at it from the outside. But Aubrey is charming. He's funny. And I would be talking to him.

[00:22:11] And he would be telling me stories about his time in prison, about, you know, some of the wild stories he did when he was in Tennessee. And then he would mention Sidney Loof's foot. And it would be just a... It would be... My stomach would drop out, right? I mean, I would be... Because I would have almost forgotten who I was talking to because he's such a good storyteller. And then some horrific detail. Yeah. Really just knocks me out. How is he when he's saying it? Is he...

[00:22:41] Like, no difference. Ordering a pizza. You know. You know, he's just telling the same stories. He could be telling a story about, like, getting into a fist fight in prison and then go right to what he did to Sidney Loof. And it's the same everything. Nothing changes with him. It's all the same thing for him. Jesus. Was there in the trial... Was there a psychologist or anyone who analyzed him or gave him a diagnosis? Not during the trial, no. No. No.

[00:23:09] I mean, I think that he's been diagnosed, but I'm not aware of any diagnosis. I mean, Lehman, I mean, he's definitely the old term sociopath comes to mind. I know that's been updated now. It's an antisocial personality disorder. Yeah. I mean, and there's so many... Your reporting is extensive and it's mind-blowing what you were able to piece together for the timeline. And it's not just Aubrey and Bailey. There's other women who are involved and...

[00:23:39] It's a culture. It is a culture that he created. And let's get into some of the through line, the patterns. And we've talked already about the hook, how he hooked the women and specifically Bailey being promising. Just like people know, it's not just money. It's like he gave her stability. He paid in cash for a home and furnished it for a year in full. Like for a woman like Bailey, I could see how that would just, given where she was in life, just be like a godsend. And so he's creating dependency.

[00:24:08] He's isolating her also from her family. By the way, we're going to send you this. That's our new book. I don't know if you know we have a new book out. Oh, yeah. I'd love to have a copy of it. Yeah. Sign it. Yeah, that'd be great. Yes, absolutely. We will. I'll get your address after. But we try to break things down, which is difficult. It's a non-linear thing in a linear fashion, like the love bombing and then the isolation and creating dependence. And he does all his textbook, really. He's sorry, Aubrey, you're boring. It's the same as everybody else. You're not special. Basic Aubrey. You're a basic cult leader.

[00:24:36] But he does all the things. He makes Bailey feel special, calls her his queen, finds these other women, does the same thing. I find that one of the questions in your reading group, guys, says, consider the relationship Aubrey has with the women around him. What were the rules? Why do you think these rules were in place and what makes the relationships harmful? I thought it was interesting. And correct me if I'm wrong, but the rules, Aubrey doesn't present these things to Bailey up front. She's fully hooked, fully dependent before these things start to come into place.

[00:25:06] And then she accepts them slowly over time, as we notice with cults. It's like the things become normalized over time. But as they get more into it, it seems like the women they recruited towards the end, the rules were presented more up front, like on the second date or so. Like, here's the deal. This is a sub-dom relationship. Interrupt me anytime if I get this wrong. But when you're with us, you have to be naked inside. You have to... What are the other two rules? You have to do whatever we say. You have to ask permission to do anything, right? Yeah.

[00:25:36] You have to ask permission. You have to be naked. If one of the women talks about if she's gone, she has to text every three hours. She can't talk to other men. Yeah. They have to give Aubrey a nightly massage. Did you see any through lines there with Keith Ranieri and Doss? Well, I mean, I did. The texting every three hours definitely jumped out to me. Because, yes, that's exactly what it made me think of when I saw that. I was like, that really jumped out.

[00:26:06] Obviously, the control over the women's bodies, you know, the being naked jumped out to me as a through line as well. I never... And you'll have to tell me this. I never... In my reading, I didn't know if people in Doss had to ask permission to do things as simple as getting a glass of water. Was that... Yeah. Yeah. Not for me. Not for me. I didn't have to. But I know other women did. And it would be...

[00:26:34] There was especially women who were trying to lose weight and were on the Doss diet, which I wasn't. But they had to ask permission to eat or drink or do like... And some masters were stricter. The only thing that I asked permission to do was to... The coach summit that we ended up leaving at before we knew we were leaving, I had a family wedding in Toronto and I asked permission to go to the wedding instead of being at the summit. And Lauren said no. That was the only thing that I had asked... That was a bigger thing that I asked permission to do. But other people were permission on everything.

[00:27:03] But the other through line is the, you know, you have to do whatever we say. Ask permission, be naked. And then the third one, you have to... Basically, you have to surrender. Like you have to... You can't... And that's... So the coercion is actually written out for them. Yeah. And so that made me wonder... And I don't know enough about like BDSM and sub-dom relationships. I'm sure we could do a whole other episode on that. But that... Those relationships, from what I understand, there's always a safe word.

[00:27:33] There's always like... You have to do whatever we say, but you have an out. Right? And here there is no out. And same with DOS. I don't know if you know this, but when Lauren asked me to join DOS and told me that that was the force. There was the brand. There was the life... It's a lifetime vow of obedience. And I remember saying like, but obedience to what? Like you're going to ask me to rob a bank? And she's like, no, these are things towards your own goals.

[00:28:01] I'm going to be giving you assignments towards what you want. Oh. Right. So, and actually, I don't know if I've ever said this publicly. I made a joke about like... Because when we were all nude, about to get branded, like that lifetime vow of obedience, are you going to ask us to like do sexual things? Like go down on each other or something like that? And she made a joke like, well...

[00:28:28] You know, like, and I was like, there was a red flag for me of like, is this where this is going? Whoa. You know? And I didn't know that that's what she had been... Like that's what she was doing. Right? Because that's what Keith was having all the women do. So, do you think that he like, he got more cocky? Like he was presenting the rules up front quicker? Like do you think... Because there were some women that were like, yeah, no. And they stepped out. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They definitely...

[00:28:58] He definitely presented the rules up front because he was honing the con, right? Like he was recognizing what was working and what wasn't. And Bailey was so in. She was all in. And so, you know, yeah, she was his first follower and his sort of test subject. And whatever was working on her is what he perfected to try to use on these other women. So, but he was getting caught up in it. He was really enjoying himself and what he was doing.

[00:29:27] And what do you think the women had in common? Like we've kind of touched on this already, but like what's... What made these women more susceptible to Aubrey and Bailey? I mean, that's such a great question, right? Because like it's so hard to identify what it is. It's like the example I used before was that it's like it's so hard to understand what attracts someone that's so like music. Why does someone like blink 182, right? I have never understood. I'll never understand. You get... Great example. You and I can have a whole episode on that.

[00:29:56] You could sit me down and walk me through every moment in their life that led them to like that band. And I'll never get it. And so, from an intellectual level, I can look at it and go, maybe these are the things that these women had in common. But I mean, I think the big thing was... It kind of... Again, you know, what you see classically in cults is they were in moments of transition. Moments of like where they had their guard down a bit, where they were off a routine, right?

[00:30:25] And they were looking for something else. And yeah, I think that's what... I think that was what gave them... That made them vulnerable at that moment, right? Which, you know, six months from then, maybe none of them would have been vulnerable, right? Right. If they'd gotten into a routine, found a thing, you know, that they wanted to do or a job or something, maybe they wouldn't have been. But it was just perfect timing.

[00:30:48] And that's another thing that I think people who haven't studied cults for a long time, seen them in person, is that these cults and cult leaders are not playing Operation. They're shooting shotguns. They're like... They're going out and they're going for as many people as they can. And they get maybe 2%, 1% of what they're actually fishing for. I was about to say, Keith used to say it's a numbers game. Yeah.

[00:31:17] And they have many of those people on lures at different times and they're nurturing them accordingly each time, right? So Chet might be all in, but I see that Sarah needs a little bit of nurturing. So I'll start reeling the line in again. What do you need? What do you need? And it keeps you on the lure and eventually you're in my inner circle. And then some people will never get there because they're not willing to do that. But that's kind of how it works, to your point. You just got a bunch of lures and he goes, where is this one in their indoctrination? Oh, still there.

[00:31:47] Yeah. Move some along. Treats them like projects. And I can't help but see also overlaps with the magical thinking, which I think... Vampire, dude. Yeah, I mean... We got to get here. Yeah, but also like, I don't think you touched on it in the program and I didn't really believe this or hear much about this until I left. But I understand that the inner circle with Keith thought that he could like change, you know, control the weather and the lights and had some sort of supernatural abilities.

[00:32:15] How do you think both Aubrey and Keith weaponized magical thinking to draw people in? Oh, boy. Weaponized is the perfect word for it, isn't it? Yeah. Like, there's nothing wrong with magical thinking. I mean, there's nothing wrong with like daydreaming and fantasizing and believing in things that necessarily are real. I believe in some things that like can never be proven, right? Magical thinking is fine. But it's the weaponizing it. It's like finding that desire to...

[00:32:43] One of the women in Vampire's Cult, Ashley, actually says, you know, I was... I always knew there was something bigger out there. I always knew there was something. And here's this man and he's telling me, this is the thing that you've always thought was out there. Here it is. And I can lay it out for you. I can explain it for you. I understand it because I am special.

[00:33:11] And when you're wanting something like that, and here's a person who's selling you that so convincingly, it's super effective. It's super effective. And it touches deep. It's really... It can really get deep into a person. It's touching on like things like fear and need and anxiety and desire. And it's just, you know, it's all wrapped up in magical thinking. But it's weaponized, like you said. Yeah. Well... I realize we haven't even explained this, that there was a harem of witches.

[00:33:40] There were witches that Aubrey referred to that would actually text with Bailey in different voices. And sometimes he would be... He would channel them and speak to Bailey in the voice of these witches. How do you think he did that? Like, what do you think that was? Well, that was the craziest thing Bailey told me, right? Yeah. Like, I'm talking to Bailey on the phone and she's telling me this story about Aubrey... About the witches texting. And I'm like, oh, that's Aubrey, right? Texting.

[00:34:10] Yeah. And then she goes... And then he would like... He would become them. And I was like, what? What do you mean he'd become them? And she'd go, yeah, he'd make this noise. Like a... And then he would be a witch. And I was like, wait, come on, Bailey. Yeah. Are you kidding? This is insane. What are you talking about? And she's like, you know, it sounds crazy. But after like, you know, six months on the road with the guy and like talking to these witches all the time, it's like, it becomes kind of like a comfortable like reality that I will just buy.

[00:34:40] I mean, also, she's constantly high at this point. I mean, she's smoking weed nonstop. Like the second she wakes up, she's smoking weed. So she's always high. She's under this guy's thumb. She's... Her food is being regulated off. Obviously, everything about her life's being regulated. And he says that these witches possess his body. And she starts to like, not only believe it, but like, she looks forward to these visits from these witches. One of the witches, Michelle, was her girlfriend.

[00:35:09] You know, she would have sex with Michelle in Aubrey's body. And she told me that it really came to be... She came to believe that it was like making love to a woman, even though, you know, it was Aubrey. And she really felt that way. So it's hard to wrap your head around, right? And so all I could do is just present it as she told me. Because like, I can't get there in my imagination.

[00:35:33] But she was there at that point when she's 22 years old and constantly high. And like, just living a strange life, you know? Time to pump the brakes on the culty talk for a minute. Let's hear about our sponsors. Nippy and I are so thrilled that Wayfair is our sponsor.

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[00:39:27] And that was a word from our sponsors. Let's get back to the show. Yeah. And the book is fascinating in that way. And we also should say, we'll say at the beginning of the episode, like super trigger warning. It's very gruesome. And also like the details of the sexual stuff that they did with each other is detailed. Let's just say that's all there in great detail. And it's, you know, it's the amount of information you're able to gather from these women. Ann Aubrey is staggering. And I'm blown away.

[00:39:55] I wanted to make sure, you know, about the gruesomeness of it and sort of like the bluntness about the sexual stuff. I felt it was my responsibility to like, to present all of that, that moved forward a narrative of coercion and manipulation. And I felt like, I always felt like there are things I left out. Trust me. Like, God, there are some things that Bailey told me that I'll never, I wish I had never heard.

[00:40:25] But like... Oh, really? Yeah. But like, the stuff that I put in there, I really felt like it was critical to understand the journey of the coercion and the manipulation. But it is, it can get pretty intense. Yeah. And how do you balance that as a journalist, like the true crime details of the crime, and then also the deeper story of psychological control and obsession, and then also the fact that like, Sydney's parents are still alive, like, and grieving for the rest of their lives.

[00:40:53] Like, how do you navigate that world? I don't, that is something I don't know anything about. Yeah, it's a really hard world to navigate. It's been very, it's very tricky. You know, I had rules for myself going into writing the book that, you know, I had access to the discovery, the trial discovery. So I had, I knew, I had access to information that never made it into the courtroom, right?

[00:41:16] So I had a rule that if I knew it from discovery, and it didn't make it into the courtroom, the only way I would introduce it to the book was if it was absolutely critical to understanding something. If it wasn't absolutely fundamental to understanding the journey, I wasn't going to put it in, no matter how shocking or graphic or interesting it might have been.

[00:41:44] If it didn't move the narrative correctly and sort of support the thesis I had writing it, then it wasn't going into the book. So that helps having those guardrails up immediately. You know, knowing... That's good. Yeah, and I think you have to have that. Knowing that Sidney's family and friends will read this, and I know they will. You know, that's hard. I don't know if it's...

[00:42:12] I mean, they've gone through the worst possible thing in life at this point. So I don't want to add to their grief. Neither do I. Right. But the story is so important, I feel like. I'm a storyteller, and I feel stories are important. And I can't really even put into words why I think stories are so important, but it's important to tell these stories. And it's important to have stories to shape how we view the world.

[00:42:41] And this is a tragic story. It's a super tragic story, but it did happen. And I think the details of it are important to know. So, yeah. It's a balancing act. It's really tricky. It's tricky. That is the question that keeps me... That is the question that actually wakes me up at night sometimes. Yeah. I can imagine. It's tough with something like this because it has such a salacious, almost...

[00:43:09] Could be exploitive, perceived as exploitative to hit the human note right and have the story serve as a warning and wisdom to other people rather than entertainment. Yeah. You know?

[00:43:22] But I do think when you look at this book and you look at the program, both books serve as, in terms of the story and the details that you included, it is education to the point where I'm going to make sure that our lawyers read the program because I don't know if they know what they're dealing with. You know? Yeah. And it's... It's funny. The legal versus what we know kind of conversations, they're in a very, what can we prove? This is like... Oh, jeez.

[00:43:52] The filters they have for just data points and bullet points and what they're willing to discount because emotional crimes don't have a justice system. It's more about physical, what you can prove. It's why, you know, it's why Capone got caught on income tax and not murder. Right. Exactly. You know what I mean? Our legal system has these loopholes that are just so, like, void of these kind of nuance of, these are coercive tactics. That's the abuse. That's the crime.

[00:44:20] But there's not anything in our legal system that can really pin that in consistently. Yeah, you're right. Right? Yeah. It's funny you said that about having your lawyers read the program because Tony would always say that whenever she'd get a new lawyer, it'd be like, it takes like six months just to get them. Right. Like, to start asking the right questions because it's so confusing. It's such a confusing situation. Also, there's a kind of a judgmental aspect, too. They're looking at it from a place of, this would never happen to me.

[00:44:48] You're a subject to them in a lot of ways. I felt it at times. But I also felt like it was handled pretty well. Yeah.

[00:45:25] Yeah.

[00:45:26] It's like, you know, it's like getting mugged.

[00:45:56] You know, the love bombing is real. If you ever feel, wow, this is the thing that Keith and Aubrey both do is they probe you and they see where you are willing to give. And they're listening always. Always. And they want to see where do your boundaries, where are your boundaries squishy?

[00:46:20] And if you're interacting with someone and they're making some part of you uncomfortable and you can't put your finger on it, you really should step back and think about that because that's probing. And once they find where they can keep pushing in, they do. They won't stop. And it's like you see that with the women in the vampires cult. Some of them respond to the need for a daddy.

[00:46:49] Some of them respond to the need for money. Some of them respond to this desire to kill. And it's just like he's pushing and finding his entry points with each of them. And then some of them are like, fuck, I don't want anything to do with you, right? But that's what they're doing. So, yeah, if you encounter someone that makes you feel uncomfortable in some way that feels like they're pushing a boundary that they shouldn't be, you know, listen to yourself on that. 100%.

[00:47:15] And big red flag if someone asked you to call them daddy, which you'd be surprised. How many groups we've covered that do that? Come up with a new one, guys. Daddy is definitely. A lot of daddies out there. That's hilarious. I mean, outside of like a Fleetwood Mac song, nobody should be calling anyone daddy. Yeah.

[00:47:39] So, as the only journalist that we know of who's played midnight volleyball with Keith Ranieri, you've seen cult leaders firsthand. Do you think that your understanding and studying Keith for so long set you up for success with understanding Aubrey? Did it affect how you looked at him? Did it deepen your understanding? Tell us about that through line. It did. 100%.

[00:48:01] Like, having that experience with studying Keith and also having the experience of talking to Tony and other people who had been in Keith's orbit and then weren't, that was super helpful. And what it really did was it helped me understand Bailey. Like, I feel like I understood Bailey on a level that I felt like I got Bailey and I really understood her. And I feel like I was able to capture what her journey was really effectively.

[00:48:27] And I think that's the most important part of this book is seeing the journey that Bailey Boswell went on from being just this, you know, basketball playing kid. Yeah. Broken. And then to becoming a, you know, convicted murderer who will spend the rest of her life in prison. Having that sort of experience with Naxxion really did prepare me for those conversations with Bailey. Yeah. Well, you're welcome. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:48:57] Thank you. Sarah's like another crime we solved. Happy to help, Chet. Happy to help. Anything else, Chet, you can help with? No, because they're great. Thank you. Need a publisher? That's amazing. Thank you. That's good. Trying to be funny. Trying to bring some levity to this darkness. Yeah. Anything that you wanted to mention about the book that we didn't cover? No, this has been great.

[00:49:27] I've enjoyed this conversation. I can't think of anything. You know, people can go out and buy it or check it out from the library. It's out now, right? Yes, it's out now. If you're in the mood for this kind of thing, I think you'll appreciate it. Is it on Audible? Did you narrate it? No, I didn't. This very talented narrator, Charles Linshaw, he narrated it. He is great. He sounds so nice. He's such a... I mean, he is a nice guy, but he also sounds nice.

[00:49:56] And it's so very... It's important. Yeah, it's very disconcerting because he's saying the most horrific things and he just sounds so nice when he's... Yeah, I can't imagine having to read some of that stuff. Oh my God. I've narrated a few audibles myself and it's... You've got to be careful what you say yes to if you have a squeamish stomach, which I certainly do. So kudos to him and you for writing it. And to you for reading it if you have a queasy stomach because this is not easy material. No, it was not. But it is important.

[00:50:26] But in the episode, I will say like both, you know, to reiterate, both books are very important. And if it just goes from the headlines and then disappears and nobody does what you did for both groups, both cults and sort of, you know, looks at the whole picture and all the parts and takes the time to do the investigative journalism and the interviews, you don't really see the full picture of how it happens. And, you know, you take one of those women's stories individually, you don't get it. And same thing with mine, like.

[00:50:56] If you just look at my story with NXIVM, you can't. My journey in and out of NXIVM is like a blip compared to what so many women went through, specifically Tony. So anyway, yeah, it's important. Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Chad. That was great. Thank you, Chad. So this is like my favorite kind of interview because we can just sort of shoot the shit and hopefully create some content that people find interesting. Interesting. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Me too. I was so excited to talk about NXIVM.

[00:51:24] So like I wanted, I was so excited to get to sit here and like hear you guys tell me about NXIVM. Like it's again, it was like a dream. It's like, oh, finally. Yeah. I get that. It all comes full circle. Yeah. It all comes full circle. And then, you know, it was fun for us too to remember things like, oh my God, I forgot about John Galt and Galt's Gulch and fucking Dagny Tag. I was sort of hearing what was going on. Like. Behind the scenes. Yeah. Wild stuff. Thanks so much for coming, Chad.

[00:51:52] See you next time on Little Bit Culty.

[00:52:28] I feel like we got to talk to Chet for hours and hours. There was just so much, so much juicy backstory that it's just nice to shoot the shit with someone who knew. Totally. And like also has the requisite understanding of how everyone's susceptible, even though he hasn't quote fallen for something like this. He's savvy enough to see how it can happen. Also, how about like how Keith and Nancy both wooed him? Yeah. And tried to. And like, yeah. You know what?

[00:52:54] Just when I go lenient on Nancy, you know, in my mind, she's just as bad. We'll pay you triple what you're made now. That thing is bullshit. And he never would have gotten that money. No. Right. He would have left his job, you know, career suicide. Anyway, it's just they're where they belong. Anyway, that was great. I could definitely hang with him. Keep that going. Yeah. I'm gone. I also just was like really thinking about how lucky we were that we had such an incredible judge in our criminal trial.

[00:53:21] And just like we after reading what happened to Tony Natale over the years and how vicious they were is just, you know, I feel lucky that we're able to be here and tell our story and that we got out when we did. Yep. Let us know what you think. Highly recommend both books are out now and both are available on Audible. And we'll see you next time. Deuces.

[00:53:46] If you're finding this podcast helpful, please do us a solid. Drop a rating, leave a review and hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:54:13] And if you're feeling extra culty, join our Patreon at patreon.com slash a little bit culty for early ad free episodes and all the bonus content. Even better, pass this episode along to someone who might need it. Maybe they're in a cult. Maybe they're just a little bit suggestible. Or maybe they just can't resist a good cult story. Oh, if you want the full download of everything we've learned over eight seasons, grab our new book, A Little Bit Culty. It's out now on Amazon, Audible and anywhere you can get books. By the way, we narrated the Audible. It's super fun.

[00:54:44] Your local bookstore or library can order it too. Share the love and spread the culty wisdom. Thanks for listening and catch you next time on season nine. A Little Bit Culty is a Trace 120 production. Executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames in collaboration with producer Will Rutherford at Citizens of Sound. Our co-creator is Jess Temple-Tardy and our production coordinator is Leslie Dinsmore. Writing and admin by Sandra Nomoto and social media marketing by Eric Skrasinski and Brooke Keen. Our theme song Cultivated is by the artists John Bryant and Nigel Aslan.