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Speaker 1: Cults, Sex, Hollywood, and crime kind of sounds like a

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Speaker 1: multi season series on Netflix, right, But in this case,

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Speaker 1: it's a true story of what happens when young, beautiful,

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Speaker 1: vulnerable people. In this case, all women look for I

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Speaker 1: don't know, sort of a life coach, but wind up

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Speaker 1: with a monster. I mean, you're just looking for guidance

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Speaker 1: from this guy and you end up with his name

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Speaker 1: branded on your body. I'm Patty Steele Nexium. How the

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Speaker 1: sex cult leader Keith Rinier reeled in his well known

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Speaker 1: and wealthy victims. He even owned daycare centers, perhaps to

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Speaker 1: lure in the next generation. That's next on the backstory.

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Speaker 1: The backstory is back Hollywood has always celebrated new, outside

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Speaker 1: the box ideas and personalities, so cults always have an

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Speaker 1: interesting home there. And it didn't just start with Charlie

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Speaker 1: Manson and his devoted followers. What's interesting is that at

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Speaker 1: the dawn of Hollywood, doctors in the East were recommending

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Speaker 1: their young, troubled patients moved to SoCal, both for chronic

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Speaker 1: health problems as well as mental health issues, a fresh start, sunshine,

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Speaker 1: blue skies, the ocean, not to mention a lot of gorgeous,

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Speaker 1: happy young people looking to reinvent themselves. It's the perfect

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Speaker 1: setup for a charismatic individual who claims to offer a

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Speaker 1: new and better way of living your life. What could

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Speaker 1: be better? A magnetic individual is leading you toward a

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Speaker 1: spiritual awakening in which you see everything in a whole

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Speaker 1: new light. At first, you feel ecstatic, and you'll do

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Speaker 1: just about anything to maintain that heightened sense of joy

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Speaker 1: and transformation. Among these groups, of course, there was the

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Speaker 1: Manson family, which went horrifyingly off the rails with their

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Speaker 1: murders of actress Sharon Tate and at least eight others.

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Speaker 1: There's the Children of God, which got underway in the

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Speaker 1: mid nineteen sixties and had devotees like the parents of

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Speaker 1: River and Water King Phoenix, who raised their kids in

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Speaker 1: the cult. The Children of God still has thousands of followers.

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Speaker 1: Earlier in the century, in the mid nineteen twenties, a

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Speaker 1: guy called Paramhasa Yogananda founded the Self Realization Fellowship. He

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Speaker 1: had devotees that included Elvis Presley and George Harrison of

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Speaker 1: the Beatles, And these cult leaders weren't all men. There

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Speaker 1: was a gorgeous young woman named Amy Semple McPherson who

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Speaker 1: arrived in Hollywood. In nineteen eighteen, she founded the International

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Speaker 1: Church of the Four Square Gospel. She claimed to have

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Speaker 1: healed thousands of people of all kinds of illnesses. She'd

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Speaker 1: speak in tongues and allegedly healed people in front of

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Speaker 1: her congregation. Her followers so loved her they built her

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Speaker 1: a huge temple what's considered the world's first megachurch, and

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Speaker 1: she was the first preacher to use mass media on

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Speaker 1: the radio in nineteen twenty three, in that medium's earliest years.

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Speaker 1: Historians say she was as popular in the nineteen twenties

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Speaker 1: as Princess Diana was in her time. While there was

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Speaker 1: plenty of dramas surrounding Amy back in the nineteen thirties,

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Speaker 1: there are still almost nine million members at well over

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Speaker 1: sixty six thousand of her churches. And of course there's Scientology,

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Speaker 1: which is billed by many as a religion and many

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Speaker 1: others as a cult. Scientology has a whole lot of

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Speaker 1: Hollywood members, most notably Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Elizabeth Moss,

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Speaker 1: Nancy Cartwright, who of course does Bart Simpson's voice, and

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Speaker 1: even journalist Greta Van Sustern, but Keith Rainier and Nexium

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Speaker 1: took the whole cult thing in another direction. For Rainier,

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Speaker 1: it was all about sex. When he formed Nexium in

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Speaker 1: the late nineteen nineties, he said it was all about

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Speaker 1: helping people achieve executive success through self improvement. He made

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Speaker 1: it look like a mashup of Tony Robbins's self help

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Speaker 1: Empire and a business coaching seminar, but the organization was

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Speaker 1: more like a Pyramids scheme. If you took part, you

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Speaker 1: had to recruit new members in order to move up

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Speaker 1: the ranks yourself. Ranier called himself Vanguard. He claimed to

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Speaker 1: have an IQ of two hundred and forty. Einstein's IQ,

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Speaker 1: by the way, clocked in at a mere one sixty.

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Speaker 1: Nier attracted some high profile followers, like Smallville actress Alison Mack,

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Speaker 1: who became one of his top recruiters and enforcers, luring

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Speaker 1: other women into the cult. There was also another recruiter,

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Speaker 1: Nicki Klein, one of the stars from the TV show

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Speaker 1: Battlestar Galactica. They also attracted wealthy heiresses like Claire and

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Speaker 1: Sarah Bromfman, the daughters of the billionaire owner of the

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Speaker 1: Seagram's Liquor Empire. The sisters financially backed the cult's growth.

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Speaker 1: But on top of that, there was a secret society

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Speaker 1: within Nexium called DOS. The letters stood for the Latin

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Speaker 1: words dominus, obsequious, serrurium or master over slave women. Arnier

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Speaker 1: created it Alison mac ranit. The female recruits had to

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Speaker 1: hand over collateral, which included damaging personal secrets, nude photos,

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Speaker 1: or incriminating info as a way to keep them loyal.

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Speaker 1: They were basically blackmailed into obedience and forced to serve

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Speaker 1: as Raynier's personal slaves, and they all had to go

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Speaker 1: out and find slaves of their own and listen to this.

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Speaker 1: On top of that, all members had to strip naked

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Speaker 1: and be branded with Raynier's initials. Most frighteningly, Rainier and

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Speaker 1: the Nexium cult owned and operated eleven day care centers

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Speaker 1: around the world, perhaps to feed his child porn addiction

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Speaker 1: and to target the next generation of his slaves. How

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Speaker 1: did they get away with this for so long? Well,

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Speaker 1: Nexium had wealthy, powerful defenders. Journalists trying to take a

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Speaker 1: deep dive into what they were up to were hit

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Speaker 1: with lawsuits. Former members who spoke out were stalked, to

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Speaker 1: rast and threatened. But finally, in the late tens, it

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Speaker 1: started to crumble. Some of Nexium's highest ranking members left

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Speaker 1: the cult and they started talking. Then The New York

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Speaker 1: Times published a wild expos in twenty seventeen. It talked

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Speaker 1: about the branding rituals, the blackmail, and the psychological abuse.

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Speaker 1: Folks in Hollywood and in the business world freaked out.

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Speaker 1: The FBI got involved, and Keith Renier fled to his

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Speaker 1: Mexican villa with Alison Mack and Nicky Klein. Nicky then

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Speaker 1: blew their cover by posting on Instagram and accidentally showing

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Speaker 1: FBI investigators where they were. Ranier was arrested, along with

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Speaker 1: Alison Mack, Claire Bromfman, and other high ranking Nexium members. Finally,

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Speaker 1: after some pretty wild testimony, Rnier was convicted of a

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Speaker 1: racketeering conspiracy charge, also sex trafficking, possession of child porn,

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Speaker 1: and other crimes. He was sentenced to one hundred twenty

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Speaker 1: years in prison. Alison Mack pleaded guilty and got three

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Speaker 1: years in prison, while Claire Bromfman got six years for

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Speaker 1: bankrolling the whole thing. Nexium was finished, but reneered Today well,

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Speaker 1: he's locked up, likely for the rest of his life,

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Speaker 1: but similar to Charles Manson and even Amy Semple McPherson.

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Speaker 1: He still has a hold on a bunch of his followers.

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Speaker 1: They even rally outside his prison from time to time.

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Speaker 1: Nexium and Keith Rinier's story tell us something about the

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Speaker 1: need for vulnerable people to feel like they're wanted, that

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Speaker 1: they're part of something, even when it makes no sense

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Speaker 1: to the rest of us. Hope you're enjoying The Backstory

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Speaker 1: with Patty Steele. Follow or subscribe for free to get

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Speaker 1: new episodes delivered automatically, and feel free to dm me

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Speaker 1: if you have a story you'd like me to cover.

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Speaker 1: On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.

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Speaker 1: I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia,

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Speaker 1: Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions.

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Speaker 1: Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We

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Speaker 1: have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to

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Speaker 1: reach out to me with comments and even story suggestions

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Speaker 1: on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at

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Speaker 1: Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele.

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Speaker 1: The pieces of history you didn't know you needed to

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Speaker 1: know