Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: This show follows the investigation of serial murders and contains
Speaker 2: material that may be disturbing. Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 3: In May of twenty eighteen, the case against Cecilia Stein
Speaker 3: and Electus Perdeis was moved from district to High Court.
Speaker 3: Since the group's arrest in twenty sixteen, nearly two years
Speaker 3: had gone by. In that time, Ben Boysen had to
Speaker 3: reassemble case files from six years prior and piece together
Speaker 3: all that had happened since twenty twelve in order to
Speaker 3: connect EPD to the murders and get them convicted. Back
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen, John Barnard turned state's witness. He'd agreed
Speaker 3: to testify against EPD, which got him out of a
Speaker 3: life sentence he would serve twenty years. LaRue was also
Speaker 3: now a fitly a witness for the state. His testimony
Speaker 3: against Cecilia, his mother, and Zach Valentine is how the
Speaker 3: prosecution tied EPD to the twenty twelve murders. LaRue and
Speaker 3: John Barnard's statements, paired with all the evidence gathered by
Speaker 3: detectives Susette Canose and Captain Johann ban Vick, made epd's
Speaker 3: involvement plausible beyond a reasonable doubt, not to mention the
Speaker 3: guns in Mirinda's classroom and the blood found on her carpet,
Speaker 3: blood later discovered to be that of Anthony Schofield. Psychologist
Speaker 3: Rosalind McNabb was hired by the state to advocate for Marcel,
Speaker 3: who was under age when the crimes were committed. Like
Speaker 3: all those who heard Marinda's accounts of the murders, McNabb
Speaker 3: recalls being deeply disturbed.
Speaker 4: On the stand, she lied blatantly to save Cecilia. I
Speaker 4: killed Reginald, and I enjoyed every minute of an antit
Speaker 4: it because I want to and I wanted to feel
Speaker 4: the power, and went into great GORYGGI detail about how
Speaker 4: she did it and saying it had nothing to do
Speaker 4: with Cecilia.
Speaker 3: Marinda Steyne was served eleven life sentences and one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifteen years for eleven murders. The two years that
Speaker 3: LaRue spent behind bars provided him ample time to consider
Speaker 3: the sting of his mother's betrayal, her many betrayals, but
Speaker 3: especially the altering of her will. On the stand, Marinda
Speaker 3: claimed she was the mastermind behind all the murders and
Speaker 3: implicated l Ruin Zach in her statements, she excluded Cecilia
Speaker 3: and Marcel from this testimony. In a rare act of
Speaker 3: motherly love. For his testimony, LaRue was offered a reduced
Speaker 3: sentence of twenty five years. Ben Boysen remembers the verdict
Speaker 3: against LaRue.
Speaker 5: LaRue Croit when found guilty and in front of his mother,
Speaker 5: he said, thank you captain for sending this pitch to
Speaker 5: jail and pointing at his mother. So yeah, I think
Speaker 5: at that stage he made peace with himself that his
Speaker 5: mother actually forced him to commit murdered.
Speaker 3: Cecilia, Zach, and Marcel all pleaded not guilty. Cecilia to
Speaker 3: this day claims she knew nothing and had nothing to
Speaker 3: do with the murders. She told me herself when I
Speaker 3: spoke to her in prison.
Speaker 6: No one can force you to do anything. There's no
Speaker 6: such thing as the devil made me do it. There's
Speaker 6: no such thing as God made me do it. We
Speaker 6: make our own choices, we act on our own impulses.
Speaker 6: And Marchelle and LaRue has the reasons they did what
Speaker 6: they did. And yeah, there's nothing anybody can say to
Speaker 6: change someone else's mind.
Speaker 3: From School of Humans and I Heeart podcasts This is
Speaker 3: Queen Havoc and Her Murder Cult. I'm your host Kurt Kupachek,
Speaker 3: Episode ten, Court for the Queen. In twenty eighteen, the
Speaker 3: year following the initial sentencing of Mirinda and LaRue, the
Speaker 3: state called fifty two out of about two hundred witnesses
Speaker 3: to testify against three members of Electus Perdais.
Speaker 7: The three that eventually winter trial was a Celia Zak.
Speaker 3: And Marsell Ben told us about how he had to
Speaker 3: be careful when choosing who to call to the stand.
Speaker 3: Anyone who believed Cecilia had ties to Satanism could have
Speaker 3: confused the judge. Way back in the first episode we
Speaker 3: talked about how the judicial system does take Satanism seriously,
Speaker 3: but as we now know, her Satanic past was nothing
Speaker 3: but a tool Cecilia used to convince her followers to
Speaker 3: commit these horrendous crimes. Any connection to the devil was
Speaker 3: contrived with no bearing on the murders themselves.
Speaker 5: At the end of the day, what is the dud's
Speaker 5: going to believe in? What he is not going to believe?
Speaker 5: You understand? So we needed to choose our witnesses to
Speaker 5: prove our cast and not to damage our case.
Speaker 3: Even so, considering all that EPD had gotten away with
Speaker 3: up to this point, faith in the judicial system was
Speaker 3: hard to come by.
Speaker 5: Even when we started going to courte there was doubt
Speaker 5: in the family's eyes that these people eventually going to
Speaker 5: be found guilty.
Speaker 3: Jana Marx, working as a courtroom journalist at the time,
Speaker 3: was used to watching trials. Yanna kept a keen eye
Speaker 3: on all the witness's behavior and body language. She noticed
Speaker 3: that Cecilia appeared completely unfazed by the proceedings. She Zach
Speaker 3: and Marcel, at least at first, stuck together like a
Speaker 3: little clique, hiding behind their witty rapport.
Speaker 7: They started as a very chetty group, a lot of fun,
Speaker 7: fun and games. Celia is very now, she's very lively,
Speaker 7: and she tells jokes, and that happened in court the
Speaker 7: second They made little personal jokes and they pointed and
Speaker 7: stayed at people, and that's.
Speaker 2: How it started.
Speaker 3: One of the key witnesses they mocked was Ria Grunivald,
Speaker 3: epd's first victim, at least in a psychological sense, and
Speaker 3: Cecilia's apparent motivation for the revenge killings. In twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: It took weeks for state prosecutors and police to convince
Speaker 3: Rhea to come out of hiding and appear in court.
Speaker 3: She did so only under the condition that no photographs
Speaker 3: be taken of her. Her testimony brought her into the
Speaker 3: same room as Cecilia and EPD for the first time
Speaker 3: in five years. Yanna reported that Rhea addressed the room,
Speaker 3: stating Ria Grunivald is dead. She no longer exists. I've
Speaker 3: lost everything when they died. I died. Ria's written testimony.
Speaker 8: Read it was a very difficult time, and I was
Speaker 8: not able to discuss it with anyone, fearing that Sea
Speaker 8: could be punished for speaking out. I had to be
Speaker 8: strong for her. She also isolated me from everyone I knew.
Speaker 8: She lied about everything. I couldn't do anything without them
Speaker 8: knowing I believed her. I then decided to end my
Speaker 8: commitment to see and I set up that appointment with
Speaker 8: her where I was threatened. They raised his history.
Speaker 3: With eleven others killed. Rhea managed to escape from the
Speaker 3: board texts of Cecilia Stein with her life. However, she
Speaker 3: is still paying a high price. Rea lost her home,
Speaker 3: her livelihood, she lost contact with her children, and the
Speaker 3: rest of her family existence. As she knew it ceased.
Speaker 3: It's like her life was murdered, but she went on living.
Speaker 5: She didn't even admit to me where she went into.
Speaker 5: Stay till today, I Tilda and don't speak to her
Speaker 5: a grand till Duncia. So she's still in hiding today,
Speaker 5: Someway in South Africa.
Speaker 3: Some of the witnesses that took the stand included members
Speaker 3: of Cecilia's outer circle, folks involved in the Know Your
Speaker 3: Enemy classes she held for a time back in twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: Neighbors of the murder victims and members of the task
Speaker 3: team also testified. Here's Detective Hert Krueger.
Speaker 9: There was the witness. They were having a party next
Speaker 9: to the house where mister McGregor was staying. They said
Speaker 9: it was a white female where had a very funny
Speaker 9: She was walking funny. They described it like almost like
Speaker 9: walking like a duck and that was Merendo.
Speaker 3: Even Luke came out of witness protection to testify against
Speaker 3: them and report on his chilling time around the group.
Speaker 3: As Cecilia, Zach and Marcel witnessed their damning testimony, they
Speaker 3: became increasingly less chummy. Their body language began to reflect
Speaker 3: the degradation of Cecilia's mind control.
Speaker 7: As more testimony came forward, more evidence came forward, as
Speaker 7: if the group literally a physically moved away from one
Speaker 7: another on the bench.
Speaker 3: The more Cecilia allowed everyone else to take the blame
Speaker 3: for her, the more Zach and Marcel recoiled.
Speaker 7: See how it was in the middle still just you know,
Speaker 7: observing writings. She took notes.
Speaker 3: That's right, Cecilia took notes. She had I had to
Speaker 3: keep her story straight.
Speaker 7: And you have Zach Valentine. Zach would literally sit on
Speaker 7: one butt cheek like he's going to fall off the
Speaker 7: bench at any moment. He was so far away, just
Speaker 7: to say, away from her, and Marcel the same.
Speaker 6: On the other.
Speaker 3: Side, Marcel was in a dark place throughout the proceedings.
Speaker 3: Each time she was called to the stand, she denied
Speaker 3: everything which implicated her brother and made way for her
Speaker 3: mother to continue to sacrifice her own life in exaltation
Speaker 3: of Cecilia.
Speaker 7: So Mosel obviously grew more and more depressed as she realized, okay, well,
Speaker 7: see you set up the whole trial. She planned the
Speaker 7: whole trial in advance, and Marcel went with it.
Speaker 3: Ben tried talking to Marcel, but she was reluctant, even
Speaker 3: to the point of self sabotage.
Speaker 5: Marcel from the beginning told me to go fuck myself.
Speaker 5: That was her wit, her father, a real father, Rainstel lawyers,
Speaker 5: a good advocate, and she said no, she doesn't want them,
Speaker 5: and she's not guilty.
Speaker 3: Remember, the primary charge was racketeering. This was used as
Speaker 3: a pathway to prove their involvement in the murders. This
Speaker 3: risky and unprecedented strategy turned out to be a clever
Speaker 3: move on Ben's Park.
Speaker 5: This is the first guise in the history of South Africa.
Speaker 5: Were murderers our charged with with racketeering and was found
Speaker 5: guilty in the I court.
Speaker 3: So, even though each EPD defendant had their own lawyers,
Speaker 3: allegations against one implicated them all as.
Speaker 7: The trial progressed, and obviously they had their own legal representatives,
Speaker 7: and every legal council obviously wants to exonerate their own
Speaker 7: client and they would throw the others under the bus.
Speaker 3: Zach held fast to the story that he didn't remember anything,
Speaker 3: even the day that his car caught on fire, but
Speaker 3: Marinda describing his direct involvement while on the stand revealed
Speaker 3: suspicious inconsistencies in the narrative. This prolonged the trial over
Speaker 3: the course of three years from twenty sixteen through twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: Electis Perdaeis only spent a total of sixty days in court,
Speaker 3: but prosecutors were relentless in their pursuit of the truth.
Speaker 3: The most critical testimonies, though, were the ones given by
Speaker 3: LaRue and Barnard. Again, Jana Marx noted LaRue's physical and
Speaker 3: emotive language.
Speaker 7: LaRue not a small boy coming into court, but he
Speaker 7: grew more confident during his testimony. I remember him not
Speaker 7: being able to say the word murder or killing.
Speaker 3: He had been brainwashed and pressured by his own mother
Speaker 3: in Cecilia since he was just a kid.
Speaker 7: I think the too first two to three days off
Speaker 7: his testimony, he would just say yeah and then it happened.
Speaker 7: Then that happened, assuming a murder, or then I was
Speaker 7: strangled the guy, and then it happened. So it was
Speaker 7: very interesting to see how he evolved during his testimony.
Speaker 7: I think getting freeing himself from the bondage of his mother,
Speaker 7: the bondage of Cecilia being in their service.
Speaker 3: LaRue's striking neck tattoo of a large marionette puppet took
Speaker 3: on a symbolic new meaning throughout the course of the
Speaker 3: trial as he found his footing in court. LaRue's confidence
Speaker 3: may have been boosted by his budding friendship with journalist
Speaker 3: Murtzka Kotsare. LaRue confided in Mritzka about all the ways
Speaker 3: he was abused by his mother and Cecilia.
Speaker 10: His mother beat him up because how dare he questioned Cecilia.
Speaker 10: You know, and as really said, he said to me,
Speaker 10: the one time his mother hit him more than thirty times,
Speaker 10: she hit him so hard he waved his bed.
Speaker 2: And this was when he was sixteen years old.
Speaker 3: Even behind bars, LaRue feared Cecilia's spectral wrath.
Speaker 10: There's actually one time where he was in jail, he's
Speaker 10: been sentenced.
Speaker 2: We asked me about Eestro travel.
Speaker 10: He actually genuinely asked me if I thought it was real?
Speaker 10: And do I think Cecilia can get to him and HARMI?
Speaker 10: And I'm like lyuy, you know, this is a bunch
Speaker 10: of shit, Come on now, But it just shows you
Speaker 10: how long he's been manipulated. You know, sitting in jail
Speaker 10: is like, what if Cecilia can sneak into my cell
Speaker 10: and come and hurt me?
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 3: What the public didn't know, however, was that Maritzka and
Speaker 3: LaRue's relationship had evolved from journalists and suspect to a
Speaker 3: friendship and then to a fully fledged romance. When that
Speaker 3: lasted for two and a half years. They were already
Speaker 3: an item before the Rue was even officially sentenced. In
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, me the day before you.
Speaker 2: Were sentenced, will I be his girlfriend?
Speaker 10: And at that point, you know, I kind of like froze,
Speaker 10: because like the half of me thought, what's the arm
Speaker 10: of being someone's girlfriend in jail.
Speaker 2: I'll never get.
Speaker 10: Involved like that, And the other half of me felt
Speaker 10: sorry for him, you know, like, how can I say
Speaker 10: no now, knowing that tomorrow is getting sentenced for let's
Speaker 10: say twenty or twenty five years, so, you know, and
Speaker 10: I just said yes.
Speaker 2: You know, but I did like him. I had a
Speaker 2: crush on it. But can you I.
Speaker 10: Imagine the first day that this is now my boyfriend,
Speaker 10: I'm standing in court looking at how he's being sentenced.
Speaker 2: That was really a very sad, you know moment.
Speaker 3: Maritzka was married at the time, and the couple had
Speaker 3: a young daughter. By twenty nineteen, with the case mounting
Speaker 3: against Cecilia Zach and Marcel Zach got wind of their
Speaker 3: relationship and tried to use it to his advantage.
Speaker 10: Zach was the only one that had a private attorney.
Speaker 10: Everyone else had to state attorneys. Zach's parents by that
Speaker 10: lawyer over two million rangers to you know, help him
Speaker 10: get away with murder. So one of their plans was
Speaker 10: to get me subpoena to tell the court that the
Speaker 10: police was using me.
Speaker 3: Zach's attorney aimed to get LaRue's testimony stricken from the record.
Speaker 3: He argued that Maritzka was working with Ben and the
Speaker 3: task team to influence Laru's story. While Maritzka's behavior is
Speaker 3: indeed a breach of journalistic ethics, Zach's attempt to leverage
Speaker 3: her in LaRue's love for his own gain caught her
Speaker 3: off guard.
Speaker 10: I've never in my life loved the story like this,
Speaker 10: like the drama, the one that I'm sitting there and
Speaker 10: the investigating officer phones me and he's like, listen, yeah,
Speaker 10: and I want to scare you, but you might be
Speaker 10: called to court.
Speaker 2: I'm like, for fucking what, you know, because I'm covering this.
Speaker 10: He's like, no, Zach's attorney is trying to say that
Speaker 10: the police is using me to manipulate LaRue.
Speaker 3: Early in twenty nineteen, in a desperate act of self preservation,
Speaker 3: Zach Valentine and his lawyer tried to sell the story
Speaker 3: that Maritzka was a pawn used by the police to
Speaker 3: convince LaRue to stay on his confessional track. If this
Speaker 3: were true, it would discredit LaRue's testimony and further complicate
Speaker 3: the case against EPD. Maritzka fought to stay off the stand.
Speaker 10: I'm like a hell to the notice because now can
Speaker 10: you not imagine I need to appear in court. I'm
Speaker 10: a journalist. Now I need to go explain. So I
Speaker 10: was like, this shit is not going down, you know.
Speaker 3: The judge recognized that there were more important issues at
Speaker 3: stake than an accused killer's girlfriend and rejected the requests
Speaker 3: from Zach's attorney.
Speaker 2: And luckily the judge threw it outside.
Speaker 10: Was like, whew, I dodged the bullets, okay, But little
Speaker 10: did I know I did not dodge a bullet the
Speaker 10: whole I don't know, like nine yards were coming from me.
Speaker 3: But Zach and his lawyer didn't quit.
Speaker 10: After that failed, Zach's girlfriend went to a Sunday newspaper.
Speaker 10: So it's basically the place where I worked, the sister publication.
Speaker 3: Can we pause? Are you telling me Zach had a girlfriend?
Speaker 2: It was actually his fiance.
Speaker 10: How can that woman date Zach? Isn't she Scaredy's gonna
Speaker 10: murder as well? But anyways, back to how I saw
Speaker 10: my ass.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: That same week, Maritzka's life began to crumble.
Speaker 2: When I rapped at work.
Speaker 10: My boss phoned me and she said to me, from
Speaker 10: this point on, I'm not allowed to speak to anyone anymore.
Speaker 10: I'm not allowed to speak to my colleagues. I'm not
Speaker 10: allowed to go out on stories.
Speaker 3: By the end of the week, she lost her job.
Speaker 10: By the friday that I arrived at work. As I
Speaker 10: got to the entrance, the h old lady was waiting
Speaker 10: there for me. I didn't even enter that building. They
Speaker 10: took my laptop, they took my access card, and they
Speaker 10: suspended me.
Speaker 3: Although her marriage had been falling apart for a while,
Speaker 3: she was still living in the house she shared with
Speaker 3: her husband and their young daughter.
Speaker 10: I'm a married woman, so now I'm finding my husband.
Speaker 10: Then my favorite police contact, right, I may said, you listen, hear, colonel,
Speaker 10: I need to tell you something.
Speaker 2: And then she said to me, yes, she saw online.
Speaker 2: I'm like what.
Speaker 10: So while I was driving home, they already put out
Speaker 10: a press release saying that I've been suspended in connection
Speaker 10: with the murders.
Speaker 3: Maritzka could be charged with obstruction of justice in connection
Speaker 3: with eleven murders. Serious charges.
Speaker 10: So now you must know, like everyone like suspects what's
Speaker 10: going on here. But that's still nothing, because this is
Speaker 10: the Friday Sunday morning I wake up. I wake up
Speaker 10: not only to the news of my a fay everyway,
Speaker 10: but I mean on the lamp.
Speaker 3: Pulls Maritzka's face next to a picture of LaRue the murderer,
Speaker 3: plastered all over krueger'storf on the lampposts.
Speaker 10: It says journalists madly in love with Jilbird. That was
Speaker 10: the craziest feeling in the world, you know, like becoming
Speaker 10: the front page story.
Speaker 3: It often feels like we could dedicate an entire podcast
Speaker 3: to just one of the many subplots orbiting around Cecilia
Speaker 3: and EPD. This is certainly one of those times. LaRue
Speaker 3: and Meritzka's relationship would survive this. In fact, it would
Speaker 3: last until the COVID nineteen lockdown in twenty twenty. Maritzka's
Speaker 3: insight into LaRue, however biased, did help us to understand
Speaker 3: him as a person in a big way. She shared
Speaker 3: with us many of the details of their relationship, introducing
Speaker 3: a side to LaRue that we hadn't seen before. A
Speaker 3: young man with a big heart, a human being desiring
Speaker 3: a relationship, the comfort of a partner, something he never
Speaker 3: had before. She also told us that he was experiencing
Speaker 3: a new level of paranoia in prison. He could not
Speaker 3: shake the profound fear that had been nurtured and reinforced
Speaker 3: in him for years. Maritzka, looking at this some three
Speaker 3: years later, was insightful as she reflected on how we
Speaker 3: all build walls around ourselves, cult or no cult.
Speaker 10: And I remember the one day arriving at Rome, and
Speaker 10: as I stopped in front of the gate, I thought
Speaker 10: to myself. Everyone has their own prisons, you know. And
Speaker 10: as I opened that gate, I thought to myself, larit
Speaker 10: doesn't have a key to East prison, but I've got
Speaker 10: my own key.
Speaker 3: Which brings us to Marcel, a young woman living inside
Speaker 3: the prison of her own mind.
Speaker 7: Masel was was a bit different. I think the whole
Speaker 7: country's sympathy lie with Marcel.
Speaker 3: On the stand. Two years younger than LaRue. Shy and quiet,
Speaker 3: Marcel came across as docile and played up her innocence
Speaker 3: behind big glasses, her style a stark contrast to the
Speaker 3: high goth get ups of the rest of EPD. She
Speaker 3: looked almost demure, her hair neatly pulled into a French braid,
Speaker 3: almost as if she grew up in a pastoral setting.
Speaker 3: She'd grown accustomed to saying as little as possible so
Speaker 3: as not to defy her mother in Cecilia's orders, and
Speaker 3: hoping against hope for her mother's affection. Here is psychologist
Speaker 3: Rosalind McNabb.
Speaker 4: Marcel still did not really, She still wanted to believe
Speaker 4: in her mom somehow until the eleventh hour, so there,
Speaker 4: unfortunately didn't go too well for her.
Speaker 3: News accounts of the true paint Marcel as clearly subject
Speaker 3: to profound manipulation, A fearful child, I.
Speaker 7: Think, and I obviously see their mom adoring Cecilia.
Speaker 6: So you can.
Speaker 7: Imagine this young little girl. I'm going to call it
Speaker 7: that little girl because she was so young when she
Speaker 7: started to live in Celia's house.
Speaker 3: Marcel was ten when her mother met Cecilia and thirteen
Speaker 3: when she moved in with her and took responsibility for
Speaker 3: all of Cecilia's needs and those of Cecilia's two young children.
Speaker 7: I think she was also thinking she was doing the
Speaker 7: right thing, because the adults all had consensus on this,
Speaker 7: so this had to be the right thing.
Speaker 3: Marcel confided in Rosalind that she had looked up to Cecilia.
Speaker 4: Marcel speaks about how she really adlass Cecilia. I mean
Speaker 4: she thought that this woman was her hero. She trist
Speaker 4: like she heard it most of the members of that group.
Speaker 4: She thought that whatever she said was amazing. She was
Speaker 4: her role model. She spoke about her in a speech at.
Speaker 3: School, especially after witnessing Michaela's murder. Marcel had no female
Speaker 3: role models in her life, but just like her brother,
Speaker 3: Marcel grew up right there on the witness stand in
Speaker 3: front of the world.
Speaker 7: Marcelle was a little shy girl coming into the court.
Speaker 7: You could definitely see her youthfulness. I don't want to
Speaker 7: say innocence, because I mean, after killing, I don't think
Speaker 7: I have any more of that left. But she was skid,
Speaker 7: and I remember seeing this little girl with the big
Speaker 7: eyes behind the glasses sitting in court, and as the
Speaker 7: trial progressed, it's as if she evolved herself.
Speaker 3: After an entire year of watching the trial unfor and
Speaker 3: lying on the stand it protect Cecilia, Marcel started to
Speaker 3: reconsider the implications of staying silent.
Speaker 4: She realized there was in a whole moment because she
Speaker 4: still believed, but there was a long period which the
Speaker 4: prison wardens showed her luck. This doesn't say that in
Speaker 4: the Bible, and that was the trigger for her.
Speaker 3: Marcel started thinking about coming clean to the judge. Despite
Speaker 3: being consistently threatened by her mother in Cecilia.
Speaker 4: She actually said to me, my mom said to me
Speaker 4: that if you stand up and you tell the truth,
Speaker 4: we will kill you. In Sun City prison, Cecilia and myself,
Speaker 4: we will kill you.
Speaker 3: Given the conflicting testimony, prosecutors struggled to gain traction on
Speaker 3: murder charges against Cecilia. No one say seemed to tell
Speaker 3: the same story of what had gone down inside the
Speaker 3: walls of EPD. According to countless witnesses, Cecilia was said
Speaker 3: to be in charge, but where was the proof? Here's
Speaker 3: Detective Susac canotse Ceelia.
Speaker 11: Is the one that's got no blood in her hands.
Speaker 11: She wasn't involved in any killing actual killing. She used
Speaker 11: the people to do it for.
Speaker 3: The judge pointed out that money had clearly been given
Speaker 3: to her, or as she claimed donated to her. Zach
Speaker 3: Valentine and John Barnard said they thought the money they
Speaker 3: were giving her was going to an orphanage, but her
Speaker 3: accounts didn't balance out. Cecilia argued from the witness stand
Speaker 3: that this was not evidence of her involvement in the murders.
Speaker 3: When the judge pressed her for answers to why others
Speaker 3: were donating money to her, Cecilia would calmly, dispassionately reply,
Speaker 3: you have to ask them. Is the Catholic Church to
Speaker 3: blame for donations it receives from a mob boss. This
Speaker 3: was essentially Cecilia's legal argument. It may not have been
Speaker 3: legally sound, but it was effective. It confused the question
Speaker 3: of culpability and guilt. According to Cecilia's recollection, people just
Speaker 3: did things for her. That was their choice. Another reason
Speaker 3: it was hard for prosecutors to assign blame to Secilia
Speaker 3: was that there was no clear structure in EPD. There
Speaker 3: was no clear chain of command, no contracts between them
Speaker 3: and no evidence of direct kill orders, and so if
Speaker 3: someone testified that Cecilia told them to kill for her,
Speaker 3: she simply refuted it. That is until the puzzle pieces,
Speaker 3: which had so stubbornly refused to come together, were picked
Speaker 3: up by Marcel.
Speaker 2: Do you realize the mistake?
Speaker 7: Mettrial and she decided to actually come.
Speaker 4: Forward with the truth.
Speaker 3: When Marcel Stein took the witness stand in May of
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, she laid the pieces of the puzzle out
Speaker 3: for the courtroom with the breathless ease of someone who'd
Speaker 3: seen it all before.
Speaker 5: She was supposed to testify. Stepmother phoned me and said
Speaker 5: that Marcel wanted to change to plea and I said, no,
Speaker 5: it's too light now to chimes to plea. The only
Speaker 5: thing she can do now is going to tell the truth.
Speaker 3: She painted a clear picture for the judge. It was
Speaker 3: a remarkable moment in the proceedings.
Speaker 7: And I don't want to call it testimony because it
Speaker 7: wasn't really a testimony. It wasn't planned, it wasn't a
Speaker 7: confession like a form of confession. She just decided she's
Speaker 7: going to tell the court now what she knows.
Speaker 3: Once again, observing Jana Marx noticed the change in Marcel
Speaker 3: as she mustered up the courage to speak her truth
Speaker 3: in front of the judge.
Speaker 7: I remember two three days prior to that, started to
Speaker 7: apply some makeup. Suddenly, this little girl with the big eyes,
Speaker 7: the scared eyes, scared of the ccenia are definitely scared
Speaker 7: of her mother, evolved into a woman making up her
Speaker 7: own mind.
Speaker 3: During Marcel's riveting speech, her brilliant mind was on full display.
Speaker 5: She tried to play the child caught to get a
Speaker 5: lesser sentence, but the judge didn't fall for that because
Speaker 5: when she started fighting with her own advocate in court,
Speaker 5: in front of the judge and telling the judge what
Speaker 5: the advocate was supposed to do, the advocate saw that
Speaker 5: this school is very very clever.
Speaker 3: By advocate Ben Means, Marcel's lawyer, not to be confused
Speaker 3: with Roseline McNabb, the child advocate we've been hearing from.
Speaker 3: It was clear Marcel had read up on the law
Speaker 3: and knew her rights.
Speaker 4: It was quite difficult to convince the judge that this
Speaker 4: was someone with a hi IQ at very low.
Speaker 3: Eq IQ being logistic intelligence and problem solving, and EQ
Speaker 3: referring to emotional awareness being able to identify, evaluate, express,
Speaker 3: and control emotions, and.
Speaker 4: That she really was emotionally manipulated, and that she really
Speaker 4: believed in this astral travel and everything that Cecilia had
Speaker 4: told her, and she felt as if she couldn't get away,
Speaker 4: and that she was being watched and then also doing
Speaker 4: everything that her mom wanted.
Speaker 3: The judge then had a choice after observing how smart
Speaker 3: she was. He could take her savvy as a sign
Speaker 3: that she might be able to work her way out
Speaker 3: of the victimization she'd suffered, or he could use it
Speaker 3: against her. He chose the latter, claim she had ample
Speaker 3: opportunity to reach out to an adult at school during
Speaker 3: her time spent living with Cecilia, and that she had
Speaker 3: the option to come forward as her brother had, but
Speaker 3: she chose not.
Speaker 5: To and that's why I also sentenced her to life imprisonment.
Speaker 3: Electis Perdeis was found guilty on June third, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 4: This Wasn't Elebret Conspiracy.
Speaker 3: About six weeks later, on August nineteenth, they were sentenced.
Speaker 12: Timurd up Natasha Perga, timurd up, Choi Panzaya, tim murder
Speaker 12: of Reginal Pendixon, timurd up Mikaela Valentan Peter Mayer, John Mayer,
Speaker 12: Jera Jackson, Glenn McGregor, Anthony Scholfield, Kevin mcgalpan, Jana Latochan,
Speaker 12: all the disease were innocent and did not deserve to die.
Speaker 3: Cecilia Stein was given thirteen life sentences plus one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty two years for eleven murders. Zach Valentine eight
Speaker 3: life sentences plus sixty six years for seven murders. Marcel Stein,
Speaker 3: now twenty one years old, was served seven life sentences
Speaker 3: plus one hundred and forty four years for eight murders.
Speaker 5: At the age of that, I've got thirty nine life
Speaker 5: sentences and more than two thousand years in prisonment for
Speaker 5: these people.
Speaker 3: So, while the judge took into consideration her age and
Speaker 3: all the manipulation, Marcel coming forward with the truth didn't
Speaker 3: really do her much good in terms of sentencing. After
Speaker 3: an entire life of being conditioned to not trust yourself
Speaker 3: and your own instincts, the courage that Marcel must have
Speaker 3: had to find in herself is staggering.
Speaker 7: I do know that's Marenda.
Speaker 2: She didn't really love her kids.
Speaker 7: You can see that from her just giving Marcel to
Speaker 7: Cecilia as some sort of prize.
Speaker 3: I asked Mirinda about this, her upbringing and a relationship
Speaker 3: to her own children. Again, the noise inside the prison
Speaker 3: visiting room was so bad that this is an actor
Speaker 3: reading her response.
Speaker 2: You know, we grew up.
Speaker 1: We grew up in a generation where our parents, my
Speaker 1: parents never until to day ever told me that they
Speaker 1: loved me, ever wagged me or anything like that. They
Speaker 1: would kiss you, allow goodbye, you know, but that's it.
Speaker 1: So I think I was maybe over loving and overprotective
Speaker 1: with my children, but they knew I loved them and
Speaker 1: I was a good mother.
Speaker 3: Throughout our conversation, Marinda spoke highly of Marcel, told me
Speaker 3: that her daughter was good and had no part in
Speaker 3: any of the crimes. The judge honored Marcel's fear for
Speaker 3: her life and her wishes not to be anywhere near
Speaker 3: her mother in Cecilia. He sentenced Marcel not to Sun's city,
Speaker 3: but to a prison in Pretoria. Whether Marinda admits it
Speaker 3: or not, her self proclaimed affectionless upbringing has been passed
Speaker 3: down well. I think it's safe to say that Marcel
Speaker 3: and LaRue's experience was quite a bit more severe than
Speaker 3: Marenda's circumstances growing up. But all of this seems to
Speaker 3: be the product of a corrupt and broken system, old
Speaker 3: antiquated traditions, ones that victimize and suppress. They're dangerous. Forcing
Speaker 3: human beings into social constructs will cause them to lash out.
Speaker 3: Here is our resident scholar, doctor Niki Falkoff.
Speaker 13: We could even speculate that, you know her character as
Speaker 13: this kind of idealized mom teacher, perfect suburban white lady.
Speaker 13: There's something fundamentally flawed in that characterization of white South
Speaker 13: African women. I mean, it's possible that her identity, rather
Speaker 13: than protecting her from this kind of manipulation, actually made
Speaker 13: her even more vulnerable to it.
Speaker 3: Belonging to belong is a very basic, primal impulse, one
Speaker 3: of protection and self preservation. We need each other to survive.
Speaker 3: This was even true for the followers of Queen Havoc.
Speaker 7: Didn't feel that they belonged anyway, didn't feel wanted by society,
Speaker 7: and then they meet this woman and she just say
Speaker 7: you will welcome. Everyone is welcome. Yet if no one
Speaker 7: wants you, I want you. And I think that was
Speaker 7: extremely satisfying for everyone. They wanted to be part of
Speaker 7: a group, They wanted to stay part.
Speaker 3: Of a group. By the time LaRue was grown, he
Speaker 3: was thoroughly conditioned to be rewarded for demonstrating brutality. His
Speaker 3: self worth became tied to how savagely he could kill
Speaker 3: another person.
Speaker 10: You would think the one side of him would rebell
Speaker 10: and run away, but yet Ezaki surrenders. He submerges, you know,
Speaker 10: and he wanted to prove himself. That's why he did
Speaker 10: the murders in Eduay. He wanted to show that he's worthy.
Speaker 10: And it's actually said, you know.
Speaker 3: All this is to say that it's important to consider
Speaker 3: the walls that each of us have created around our
Speaker 3: hearts and minds, and who we choose to reside within them.
Speaker 3: Cults are scary, sure, but they are not altogether rare
Speaker 3: or really even counterculture when you think about it. It's
Speaker 3: right there in the word culture. It's in our nature
Speaker 3: to cultivate community. These concepts came alive in Cecilia's own
Speaker 3: story when on the stand she claimed psychological and physical
Speaker 3: abuse as a child, and when my producing partner Jennifer,
Speaker 3: and I went into the prison again to meet Cecilia,
Speaker 3: she elaborated, this was a moment I had been thinking
Speaker 3: about and anticipating for over two years, I have to
Speaker 3: admit I wanted to meet Cecilia Stein. Remember, prison in
Speaker 3: South Africa differs greatly from the United States. There were
Speaker 3: no shackles, no cuffs, nothing really protecting us from the
Speaker 3: prisoners in the room. Even Ritzka described how she and
Speaker 3: the rue sneak kisses during the visiting hours when the
Speaker 3: guards turn their backs. We'll go into more detail in
Speaker 3: our bonus episode about what it was like being in
Speaker 3: Cecilia's presence, but for the moment, we'd like to just
Speaker 3: share with you some of Cecilia's reflections. In an attempt
Speaker 3: to answer some questions posed at the beginning of this podcast,
Speaker 3: what drives our inherent human need to belong to something
Speaker 3: and how do our relationships serve to satiate this primal desire,
Speaker 3: We asked her to share her thoughts on the human
Speaker 3: condition and our need for connection. To be clear, what
Speaker 3: you're hearing this time is not an actor Celia Stein's
Speaker 3: actual voice.
Speaker 6: I think the only people that really love you unconditionally
Speaker 6: is your children, the way they look at you, the
Speaker 6: way they trust you unconditionally, the way they would hug
Speaker 6: you and and wait for you to go with them.
Speaker 6: Because if you're scared to walk down a dark hallway,
Speaker 6: or you know, truly feel unconditionally loved is by your children.
Speaker 6: You can say your parents or whatever, but you look
Speaker 6: at some people's parents' parents can be vindictive.
Speaker 3: Colonel Christelle Boisen share this anecdote from Cecilia's childhood.
Speaker 14: What we've been told is that Cecilia was actually one
Speaker 14: of a twin boy twin he died in Vitra. So
Speaker 14: when she grew up, her mother blamed her for the
Speaker 14: death of her twin. So she grew up with this
Speaker 14: I have the power to kill. I started killing when
Speaker 14: I was in my mother's womb.
Speaker 3: Growing up under such serious maternal blaming, plus whatever else
Speaker 3: might have happened to her as a young person read
Speaker 3: a deep distrust of others. She shared with us a
Speaker 3: terrifying memory from when she was only fifteen.
Speaker 6: I was fifteen, Me and my girlfriend at a time
Speaker 6: were at a friend of ours brother's twenty first birthday
Speaker 6: party about two o'clock in the morning. We decided, okay,
Speaker 6: stunt for us to go, and everybody was drinking, so
Speaker 6: we said, you know what, we can walk on our
Speaker 6: way home. We went through a shopping center's parking area.
Speaker 6: The guy came walking up to us, asking me for
Speaker 6: a lighter. So I bent down, obviously going through my
Speaker 6: pockets looking for a lighter. And as I looked up,
Speaker 6: he was standing there with a knife. So this guy's
Speaker 6: robbing us. Without thinking, I grabbed the blade of his
Speaker 6: knife my hand, bring to my pocket. Next thing I know,
Speaker 6: my knife was in my hand, and the next thing
Speaker 6: it was in his throat.
Speaker 3: It's hard to believe the things that Cecilia says. Still,
Speaker 3: if this first murder did in fact happen when she
Speaker 3: was fifteen, it looks like it created a butterfly effect
Speaker 3: that would show her just how fragile a human life is.
Speaker 6: When everything was done and he was lying in the
Speaker 6: parking lot and I'm sitting on the sidewalk, I'm looking
Speaker 6: at this guy and thinking this is impossible. It can't
Speaker 6: be that easy for a human being to die. Obviously,
Speaker 6: all the emotions you go through afterwards, your body goes
Speaker 6: in to shock, your nauses, you want to pass out,
Speaker 6: you want to throw up, all at the same time,
Speaker 6: your scared, you're confused, and you realize how easy it
Speaker 6: is for someone to die, how easy it is for
Speaker 6: you to take someone's life.
Speaker 3: Based on what Cecilia shared with us about her perspective
Speaker 3: on humanity, it seems that she was she is bereft
Speaker 3: of hope.
Speaker 6: I personally think that that humans is I don't know,
Speaker 6: specie that does not deserve to survive. If you look
Speaker 6: at the way we act, the way we behave towards
Speaker 6: each other, I would think twice about killing a spider
Speaker 6: or something like that. A spiders the it does its job.
Speaker 6: It doesn't judge you, it doesn't lie to you, it
Speaker 6: doesn't steal from you. It just does what it has
Speaker 6: to do and then goes on its merry way. Insects,
Speaker 6: animals completely natural. It's humans that are unnatural.
Speaker 3: It also seems Cecilia's longing to belong was so strong,
Speaker 3: her need for a ten time so robust, and her
Speaker 3: sense of connection so lacking early on, that she created
Speaker 3: an environment in which those around her would never leave her,
Speaker 3: a kind of emotional symbiosis to make sure they'd stick around.
Speaker 3: In her mind, she was making them feel welcome and
Speaker 3: feeding their desire for some kind of greater purpose. She
Speaker 3: prayed on that I.
Speaker 6: Think we all want to belong somewhere, you know, feel
Speaker 6: like you're part of something feel like you have a purpose.
Speaker 3: And Mirinda learned a lot from her. That two have
Speaker 3: a deep reverence for each other. Even today, Mirinda especially
Speaker 3: still idolizes Cecilia.
Speaker 1: God put in my heart that she loves me just
Speaker 1: as much as I love her. It's like we are
Speaker 1: twins that type of connection, not the same person like.
Speaker 3: Soultai twins. How's that for Irony?
Speaker 6: Me and Mironda close? You know, we're good friends.
Speaker 2: We have a relationship where we can tell each.
Speaker 6: Other anything, and you know, just by a look, you know,
Speaker 6: in what mood someone is. She's the first person I
Speaker 6: tell when something's wrong. She's an amazing person. She's really
Speaker 6: an amazing person.
Speaker 3: Marinda's love perhaps went a bit further.
Speaker 13: I joked about it.
Speaker 1: I joked about it, you know, like I'm discovering that
Speaker 1: I'm also gay. It's a pity we couldn't have gone
Speaker 1: for each other. But it would feel like incest just
Speaker 1: because I think she's the perfect person. You know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of if we could date, that would have been
Speaker 1: the perfect thing, but sadly it would just be wrong.
Speaker 3: While this information does ground these two terrifying people for us,
Speaker 3: it does not, by any means excuse their actions, neither
Speaker 3: exhibits a scrap of remorse.
Speaker 1: I felt this compassion with these people. I felt very
Speaker 1: sorry for them, But what can I say. I'm not
Speaker 1: sorry that I killed them.
Speaker 3: Four years into her thirteen life sentences, Cecilia still denies
Speaker 3: any involvement with the murders.
Speaker 6: I'm not a person that really regreates things easily. I
Speaker 6: regret what I put my children through. I regret the
Speaker 6: impact it has on them. But I think I've learned
Speaker 6: a lot in that.
Speaker 4: You know, so.
Speaker 6: I don't have a lot of regrets in my life.
Speaker 3: Through everything, this case, these people, this story that has
Speaker 3: been a part of my life for over three years.
Speaker 3: I keep coming back to this hard but simple truth
Speaker 3: that good people can do horrible things, and that bad
Speaker 3: people are capable of good. That's not to oversimplify the
Speaker 3: lives of the victims and their families. The sheer destruction
Speaker 3: that Cecilia Stein and Electus Perdaeus caused is staggering, but
Speaker 3: the fact remains. We all have a dark side, two
Speaker 3: wolves that live inside each of us. Whichever one we
Speaker 3: feed takes over. The choice is ours. We get to
Speaker 3: choose how far will go for belonging to quote the
Speaker 3: Great Joan Didion. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
Speaker 3: Cecilia Stein told her followers' stories in order to kill.
Speaker 3: She fed them these stories in order to shroud them
Speaker 3: in a sense of purpose. She used these stories to
Speaker 3: satiate the primal need to belong. Stories have power, They
Speaker 3: feed the wolf. They are the way we navigate our world.
Speaker 3: So I suppose this forces the question, what stories are
Speaker 3: you telling yourself? Thank you all for joining us on
Speaker 3: this adventure. It has truly been an honor to be
Speaker 3: your host. Be good to each other and yourselves. Join
Speaker 3: us for our bonus episode. You'll hear more unbelievably candid
Speaker 3: moments with Cecilia Stein herself and an update on the
Speaker 3: current investigation against the corrupt cops, as well as behind
Speaker 3: the scenes conversations about our adventures in South Africa. Queen
Speaker 3: Havoc and Her Murder Cult is a production of Schooly
Speaker 3: Humans and iHeart Podcasts. Queen Havoc is hosted and created
Speaker 3: by me Kurt Kupachek, produced and written by Jennifer Takeny,
Speaker 3: Julia Chriscau, and Kirk Kupachick. Lead producer is Julia Chriscau.
Speaker 3: Story editor is Saren Burnett. Senior producer is Amelia Brock.
Speaker 3: Production manager is Daisy Church. Original music composed by Claire Campbell, Editing,
Speaker 3: sound design and scoring by Jesse Niswanger. Additional editing by
Speaker 3: Miranda Hawkins. Associate producers are DaShan Moodley and Jermaine Kriher.
Speaker 3: Additional producing by Ben Melman, fact checking by Dennis Webster.
Speaker 3: Recording engineers are Graham Gibson, Clay Hillenberg, and Josh Hook.
Speaker 3: Brenda Stein was read by Angelique Pretorius. Ria Grunovald's testimony
Speaker 3: is read by Madeline Page. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, L. C. Crowley,
Speaker 3: Brandon Barr, Jennifer Ta Kenny and Kurt Kupachick. We want
Speaker 3: to thank all of those who so generously welcomed us
Speaker 3: in South Africa and shared their stories. We're incredibly grateful
Speaker 3: to you all. We also want to acknowledge how traumatic
Speaker 3: these events are for the victims and their families. Please
Speaker 3: respect their privacy. If you or someone you know has
Speaker 3: been affected by cult behaviors, there are resources available, including
Speaker 3: Voices for Dignity at Christine Murray dot com