Hey weirdos, it's Ash here, ready to share a little secret.
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You're listening to a Morbid Network Podcast. cost. My name is TJ Raphael.
I'm the host of Liberty Lost, a new podcast about who gets to be a mother and the control of young women hidden behind the veil of faith.
Binge all episodes of Liberty Lost ad -free right now on Wondery Plus.
Hey weirdos, I'm Alayna.
I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
morbid darling there it is you know one time we were like we're gonna stop singing and then we said we never will yeah it's just we never have it's who i am it's who we are yeah i wouldn't want you to change thank you so much you're welcome i never will although i have changed a lot i realized recently how fucking old i am yeah i mean we're all in that space you hit 29 i don't know what anyone's talking about anymore than these young kids saying words it's it's a little blissful though it kind of is because you're just like i don't know what that is yeah i don't want to um it's such a difference
though from when we started this but i was 21 when we started this that's crazy which is i was like just about to turn 22 but yeah that feels like a whole other person entirely different people what an evolution listening to this must be yeah people have said that before like they're like wow i get comments a lot that are like i feel like i've watched you grow up i'm like yeah pretty much i'm like i feel like you all have as well um but yeah it's crazy i stayed up really late last night and i'm feeling it today yeah you know the part of being old that's what i mean yeah i used to stay up until
like two o 'clock in the morning and then come record and be like yeah let's go i'm like hey weirdos i have a headache and i didn't even drink anything and my sleep thing says i didn't get Get optimal sleep.
My Oura Ring sleep score is 68 today.
Yeah, we're not sponsored by Oura Ring.
Maybe you should be.
Maybe we should sponsor us.
Because we both have one.
Ash convinced me to get one because I've been trying to fix my sleep habits because I'm a good sleeper when I sleep.
Me too. But I don't have good habits about going to bed at a normal hour and waking up at the same time.
It's actually so beneficial to your body and like your hormone balance to go to sleep and wake up around the same time.
Yeah. Even on your days off, which on my days off, I'm out.
I'm sleeping in. I'm staying up to like two o 'clock in the morning to watch TV, but then I'm sleeping in.
Oh yeah. And that's so bad.
But then I feel, and then it's hard to like when you get back into the week, it's hard to recal, yeah.
Yeah. And I just need to like, I've been wanting to like make sure, cause actually my kids came home and they have health class in their curriculum, obviously.
obviously and so um shout out to their health teacher because they fucking love their health teacher they do we're not gonna name them but no like that person is great uh so but they came home one day and they were like mama guess what i learned today and i was like oh boy what and they were like sitting is the new smoking and i was like whoa i've been telling you that i know and that hit yeah that hit when they said it i was like oh they're like teaching that like that's a a real thing now and we sit so much we're fucking podcasters because we're recording sitting here or taking meetings taking
meetings sitting down or researching sitting down or like i'm writing sitting down like i'm i was like oh i gotta change this shit so i think the again not an ad no the aura ring i think is helping um well like uh just make me understand where my my times of sediment living are sitting in the middle of my day so that I can kind of change it up and be like you know what take a walk around the neighborhood I just like it better than some other things I've tried in the past too this really does feel like an ad it stays charged like so much longer it's not an ad we just like it a lot this is an organic
just like we dig it it's also like not it's an investment but it's not crazy expensive for what you get out of it definitely but again again not an ad so if you want to buy one do it if you don't don't no skin off of my nose yeah anyway it's just organic um I'm trying to think of anything else fun that that has occurred we're planning a fairy birthday party for ma oh yes it's my mom's 79th birthday and 79 or 78 79 fuck yeah you're sure I'm positive are you sure you know how old your moment god damn i mean i don't know how old my mom is she was 379 damn and uh we decided we're gonna throw her a total
she loves fairy she's like a woodland creature like she would yeah live in a fantasy realm the fairies um she's always believed in fairy she's always told me about fairies she used to take us out to talk to the fairies we made fairy gardens all the good stuff so i was like she's so cool we gotta do a fairy theme so i'm going full yeah very theme for this and i'm excited about it i'm making an enchanted fairy cake which i will share with you um when i make it.
I'm going to be up to my ears in cake this weekend.
It's also my nephew's third birthday and I'm making his Blippi cake.
Oh fun. So I got a fairy cake and a Blippi cake going on.
Fairy cake and Blippi cake.
And I just did a recital cake too which I made a Barbie cake.
That was fun. That was amazing.
I've been caking in these streets.
True. But yeah. That's what's up with us.
Horror rings and fairy parties.
There was another thing I was about to talk about but I forgot.
What were you going to say?
Oh. Oh, this is just a quick little recommendation.
I think it's coming out in September.
But I'm reading Richard Chismar's new book that's coming out in September.
And it's called Widow's Point, The Complete Haunting.
It sounds really good.
This, I mean, I'm going to, I'll post it and everything like that.
But guys, pre -order this book when you can because I'm telling you this book is so fucking good.
It literally, first time since reading Salem's Lot when I was like literally 12 that I could not sleep one night.
I couldn't fall asleep.
Oh damn. If you felt that way, I'm going to be scared shitless.
I felt like super, it's so spooky.
Oh, I love that. It's like the perfect vibes for like, you know, summerween vibes and like, you know, it's got, it's just got the right ghost story feel to it.
Just to be all creeped out.
Yeah. I'm telling you, it's called Widow's Point.
It'll be out in September.
Look for it. again this is also not an ad it's just these are just organic things that are real yeah um but yeah that's that's one of my little this is what i'm doing right now i love that yeah and i guess we should get back into this story yeah i already told you everything i'm doing right now i told you all the things okay yeah i'm old i don't have that much going on anymore none of us do all right wait but this is part two and actually i have something to say i have something to say We recorded the part one at like the end of the week and usually like sometimes we'll record them like closer
together Yeah, I have been thinking about this and wanting to know what happened.
I actually love to hear that Yeah, no for real.
Yeah, this is a very interesting one really sad, but really interesting you left on such a cliffhanger Yeah, we when we last spoke we were talking about Glenn Taylor Helzer just talking about who he was his life before all of this We discussed the disappearance of Ivan and Annette Steinman.
And we talked about the murders of Jennifer and James in Marin County.
Yes. And we were just kind of backtracking to talk about—we were referring to him as Taylor, just to make it easy, but Glenn Taylor Hauser.
So we talked about his marriage.
We talked about how he was, like, super into the Mormon church. church he had a very radicalized grandfather that he lived with for a while that he was feeling a lot of anxiety about not living up to the standards a lot going on he also happened to work at Morgan Stanley as a financial advisor and that was something that was mentioned in the beginning as well it came full circle at the end it did so you know that was just my little quick little summary of the first part but go listen to the first part if you haven't listened and do it because otherwise you're going to be a little lost. So in Concord
now, after this, after the murders in Marin County, investigators continue to struggle to find any evidence that can indicate what the hell happened to Ivan and Annette Steinman.
Yeah. At this point, they're just, like, lost. A few days after their disappearance, police in Oakland, California, located their minivan.
It had been abandoned in a pretty bad part of the city, but there was no signs of Ivan and Annette, That's eerie.
Which, not good. Just desperate to make progress, a spokesperson for the Concord Police Department went on a local news program, or a few of them, really, and made a plea to the public.
They were just asking for anyone to come forward if they knew anything that could help find Ivan and Annette.
They were desperate at this point.
Vicky Sexton, who was a manager of CalFed, was watching TV, happened to be watching TV the night that they made these pleas, and recognized the photo of Ivan and Annette immediately.
In fact, just a few days before that, Vicki had a strange encounter with a customer at work that involved the Steinmans.
So she called the Concord Police and she reported everything she knew.
Now, on the afternoon of August 1st, Vicki was working in her office when one of the tellers asked if she maybe had a minute to just speak with a customer.
Vicki said she did, but she was not really expecting what was going to happen.
According to Vicki, the customer was what which she described as a larger blonde woman in a wheelchair dressed in a bright lime green pantsuit, large cowboy hat, and black driving gloves.
Sounds like a motherfucking sleigh.
Interesting. The woman introduced herself as Jackie and immediately launched into a very strange, very convoluted story about two of Vicky's customers, Ivan and Annette Steinman.
According to Jackie, the Steinman's granddaughter, daughter, Selina Bishop, was in desperate need of, does that sound familiar?
Yeah. Selina Bishop was in desperate need of medical attention in San Diego and the elderly couple had agreed to pay for the surgery, but they needed to put the money into Selina's account.
At that point, Jackie presented two checks drawn on the Steinman's account, one in the amount of $67 ,000 and another another in the amount of $33 ,000, both had been signed, allegedly, by Ivan Steinman.
That's weird. Today is the worst day of Abby's life.
The 17 -year -old cradles her newborn son in her arms. They all saw how much I loved him.
They didn't have to take him from me.
Between 1945 and the early 1970s, families shipped their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes and forced them to secretly place their babies for adoption.
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My parents had me locked up in the godparent home against my will.
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Where powerful men, emboldened by their faith, determine who gets to be a parent and who must give their child away.
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To Vicki, who had worked at various banks for more than a decade, this was bizarre, to say the very least. The Steinmans had been customers of the bank for years, like forever, and had always done their own banking.
Yeah. So it was pretty strange that they would just send a stranger to deposit the money into an account of a person she'd never heard of.
And a stranger in a lime green pantsuit, no less.
And cowboy hat. Yeah, it's like, and black driving, like, it's a little cray cray.
This is a lot to take in.
And like, again, putting in the money into an account of a person that Vicky had never heard of before.
Yeah. And Selena's not their granddaughter.
No. At all. So Vicki explained to Jackie that the situation was unusual and said she would need to call the Steinmans to get their approval.
However, when they called the number on the account, no one answered.
Weird. Jackie said, oh, they just moved and handed Vicki a different phone number.
So Vicki placed the call to the new number and a man answered, but it did not sound like Ivan Steinman.
It sounded like the voice of a young man.
Right. Both Jackie and the man on the phone repeated that it was very important that the money get into the account and cleared as soon as possible, as time was of the essence.
I'm like, guys, you've got to be a little less sus.
And also to, like, prey on people like this is so fucked up and disgusting.
To make Vicki feel like she's, this poor girl could possibly die.
Yeah. Yeah. Vicki was sympathetic, obviously, and was feeling some type of way about this.
But she has a job to do.
Yeah, she explained to Jackie that she needed to speak with the account manager at Morgan Stanley.
but like this is too weird and this was probably way above her at this point so that call proved equally unsuccessful since vicky didn't have the couple's social security numbers and nobody else could give them she explained as much to jackie who said she would get the numbers and be back as soon as possible okay as she wheeled herself out of the office and then out of the building it occurred to vicky that jackie had left through the front door the bank had no ramp at the front door and customers using wheelchairs always entered via an elevator from the second floor parking lot leaving through
the front door jackie would have had to navigate 16 stone steps down to the street which would have been um impossible pretty difficult dangerous for someone to do in a wheelchair what the impossible is probably the better word for it also good on vicky though for having like such a strange situation take place like obviously that would be pretty confusing and you'd just be sitting there like what the wherewithal to be eagle -eyed about the whole thing and observe because somebody else frankly like i might have missed that because you might have just been like what the fuck and like not paid attention yeah
good on her yeah vicky sexton's story connected the steinman's case now to the murders in marin county right because selena is jennifer's daughter this is a strange case bro and now those two cases are also connected to the missing persons case of Selena Bishop because we don't know where she is.
Right, right, right.
But it was only the beginning of a much stranger story somehow.
I had a feeling. Back in Marin County, sheriff's officers had received a warrant for Justin Helzer's gun.
Justin is Glenn Taylor Helzer's brother.
Yes. Which they suspected had been used in the murders of Jennifer and James a few days earlier.
Because he had recently bought a nine millimeter.
A nine millimeter. When they arrived at the small house on Saddlewood Court, detectives were first met at the door by Justin, who let them enter.
Once inside, they also met Justin's brother, Glenn Taylor Helzer, and Justin's girlfriend, Don Godman.
Now, Justin was presented with the warrant, but he claimed he no longer had the gun.
No matter what, they were going to search the house, so they did.
And they found a number of surprising and very alarming things.
Oh, good. In addition to a large amount of ecstasy found in the home, they also discovered rope, leg irons, a taser.
Yeah. Yeah. A taser and several documents that appeared to belong to Ivan Steinman.
Oh, fuck. Based on the discovery of the drugs alone, investigators placed the homeowners, Justin and Taylor, under arrest, but before they could get the handcuffs on Taylor, he broke away and ran, wearing only his underwear.
No. Mm -hmm. So the team of investigators spread out across the neighborhood trying to search for him, but he didn't appear to be anywhere.
In the meantime, Taylor found himself in the the backyard of a neighbor who spotted him in the yard thinking the young man was you know just one of her son's friends she opened the door and was like do you need help friend like what's going on as soon as he was inside the house he grabbed a large kitchen knife and took the woman hostage oh shit talk about escalation never help people after could never help like just lock your door lock your door and go about your business and call someone yep uh after cutting his hair in in their kitchen and stealing some of her son's clothing, Taylor left the house and began to
run again. Without her now?
Without her now. Okay, what the fuck?
He hadn't made it more than a few hundred feet when he ran straight into two sheriff's deputies who were able to take him into custody without incident.
Dude. So went through all that just to run straight into two sheriff's deputies.
What a dumbass. So that afternoon, an announcement was made about the rest of the Helzers and Don, but detectives were careful careful not to reveal too much information to the press, as they often are, including whether Taylor was Selena Bishop's boyfriend, because remember, that's who we're connecting him to, previously known as Jordan.
Remember, we found out he was being referred to as Jordan, found out once they figured out who he was and they looked into it, it is Glenn Taylor.
It is, okay. That all changed later that afternoon, though, when a horrible discovery was made in Sacramento County.
Oh, no, is it Selena?
on the afternoon of august 8th the manager of willow berm marina bolton linden was riding his jet ski on the sacramento river delta when he spotted three large duffel bags floating in the water linden dragged the bags back to shore because he was thinking they're you know i don't know what's in these they're duffel bags but maybe something inside will tell me who these belong to yeah so we opened them up inside the first bag linden discovered a human head and what he He described as, quote, a lot of body parts.
Oh, Christ. Lyndon ran to the nearest phone immediately and reported it to the authorities who arrived at the scene very quickly.
Lyndon's wife, Rachel, said it was creepy when they lifted up the canvas bag.
You could see blood mixed with the water.
We knew right away this was trouble.
Oh, wow. And he was just out on his jet ski.
Yeah, just having a nice time.
Yeah. Investigators assembled a large dive team, and by the end of the day, they had recovered nine duffel bags.
What the fuck? All containing human remains wrapped individually in plastic.
Oh, so is this everybody?
So the duffel bags themselves had been slit along the sides, probably to allow water inside and sink the bags.
In the statement to the press, Sacramento County Sheriff Sergeant Dennis Arnall said, this is an area that lends itself to the disposing of evidence of bodies.
It's remote, it's dark, and if you want to dump something here, you're not likely to get caught.
Maybe you word that differently.
maybe don't tell everybody yeah maybe don't make that unless you're gonna make that uh now a heavily guarded area for real um according to arnall it was most likely that the bags had been dropped off the side of the highway 12 bridge about a mile and a half away and they floated to where they were discovered it didn't take long to identify two of the bodies as those of ivan and annette steinman oh that's awful but the third body was more challenging to identify identify it appeared that a portion of skin had been removed from the shoulder of the third victim which was where selena bishop was known
to have had a tattoo yeah but detectives didn't want to jump to conclusions of course still the discovery of the bodies broke the case open and investigators were finally willing to disclose some more facts about the case to the press including that the man previously referred to as jordan was in fact glenn taylor hauser finally when the mug shots were shown to Vicki Sexton from CalFed she confirmed that the woman who introduced herself as Jackie was Don Godman.
Yeah not wheelchair bound.
Nope. From the moment they were arrested Taylor refused to speak to police about anything but when the discoveries of the bodies were made and the identification of Selena Bishop's remains was made a short time later Don and Justin now facing very serious charges suddenly began cooperating.
Imagine that. Based on their count of events, the entire scheme sounded like a fairly straightforward extortion and murder case.
While still working at Morgan Stanley years earlier, Taylor had been the Steinman's account manager.
Wow, what a piece of shit.
And knew they had a decent amount of money saved in their account.
On the night of July 31st, Taylor and Justin visited the Steinman's at their house, where they were spotted by the couple's neighbor, who thought they were Mormon missionaries.
That night, they kidnapped the couple and brought them back to Justin and Taylor's home where, with the help of Dawn, they tortured them for days in order to get them to sign the checks that Dawn eventually tried to deposit into the account in Selena's name at Calfed.
What the fuck? Once they got what they wanted from the Steinmans, they murdered the couple.
According to the coroner's report, Annette's cause of death was a large knife wound across her throat.
Oh. And Ivan died from blunt force trauma.
And these people just lived like a beautiful life together, had children, were enjoying their retirement.
And Ivan had died from blunt force trauma, apparently after Taylor had repeatedly beat the man's head against the floor.
This is an elderly couple.
This is horrific. Now, according to Justin and Dawn, Selena Bishop had nothing to do with the kidnapping, murder or extortion plot.
plot Taylor had met Selena a few months earlier and recognizing that she was somewhat naive and eager to please he lured her into the scheme by pretending to have a romantic interest in her so fucked up Selena's function in the plot was basically limited to opening the bank account in her name yeah but she was under a totally different like what she thought was actually happening here was had nothing to do with this yeah she thought she was just helping him as like Because his ex -wife, like, he didn't want his ex -wife to get, like, his new fucking...
Money or whatever. Yeah.
Now, again, she intended it was just going to be to hide that money from his ex -wife, but once her function in the plot had been served, Selina was killed with a single blow to the head from a hammer.
Holy shit. Yeah, these guys are brutal.
They're brutal. When it came to the deaths of Selina's mother, Jennifer, and her boyfriend, Jim, their connection was even more tenuous and their deaths somehow even an escalated version of tragic.
Taylor had gone out of his way to avoid meeting Selina's friends and family specifically because he knew there was a chance they could link him back to her once he committed the murders.
Right. He had been mostly successful in this, but then Jennifer was determined to meet him and had managed to do so about a month before the murders.
And a few times over.
Because remember, she stopped by.
Right. Knowing that she could easily trace him back to her daughter, Taylor and Justin went to Selena's apartment in the early morning hours of August 3rd. There, they shot and killed Jennifer in order to prevent her from identifying him later.
Wow. Jim Gamble was murdered simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That's horrific. Based on the statements from Don and Justin, it was as investigators basically assumed, an extortion and murder plot, like very cut and dry.
The problem, though, was that while the evidence collected at Taylor and Justin's home, including significant blood evidence, by the way, matched their statements, detectives still didn't have the physical evidence inconclusively linking the three suspects to the victims. Fortunately, that all changed.
When detectives in Marin County received a call from a woman named Deborah McClanahan.
As it turned out, McClanahan had exactly what investigators were looking for and so much more.
Tell me everything.
Like Dawn, Deborah met Justin and Taylor several years earlier when they were all attending the LDS church in Danville.
Although she had been raised in the Mormon church, Deborah considered herself to be more of like a free spirit and associated as much more of like, she decided like being a Wiccan and like the new age movement.
Hell yeah. She was more into that than she was the church. Retweet.
Not long after meeting, Debra began a brief affair with Taylor, which soon came to involve Dawn and Justin from time to time.
When she heard about the murders and, you know, read that investigators were asking for the public's help in finding more information, Debra came forward with what proved to be key pieces that brought the case to focus.
According to Debra, about a week earlier, Taylor and Justin had visited her apartment and asked if she could store a small safe there for a few weeks.
No. Always no. No, period.
Knowing that Taylor occasionally dealt drugs, she assumed he was keeping his product inside and didn't want it to be found.
You know what they say about assumptions.
Yeah. In light of the murder charges, however, she thought it would be best to hand the safe over to authorities, which is very smart.
She later said, I didn't feel good about having that safe in my house.
It took some time, but eventually detectives were able to get it open.
And inside, they found the Steinman's photo identification and financial records.
and the 9mm handgun used to kill Jennifer and Jim Gamble.
Stop it. Can you imagine realizing that you had all of that in your possession?
You had a murder weapon in your possession and had no idea.
That's why you don't help people.
No, don't help people.
That is the perfect example of why you don't help people.
The evidence was exactly what the investigators needed to secure an easy conviction and hope they might even be able to get the accused to accept a plea deal.
But it turned out that Debra had a lot more to say about Taylor Helzer than anyone expected.
Debra McClanahan confirmed that the Steinmans had probably been killed for their money, but the money was just a means to a much more elaborate and bizarre end.
Although Taylor, Justin, and Don didn't trust Debra enough to tell her all of their plans, they did impart some details on her.
According to Debra, the group, who referred to themselves and their movements as the Children of Thunder, believed that Taylor was a prophet it who communicated directly with God.
God's never going to tell you to murder people.
Nah, he's not. I mean, at least in my opinion.
He's not. I feel like that's not your God being an awesome God.
No, exactly. And like, your God's supposed to be an awesome God.
The actual, there's a whole song.
Yeah. And there's, that's the opposite of awesome.
The only reason I know that's a song is because I listen to Sexy Unique Podcast, and they put a bonus episode out the other day that's Our Pod is an Awesome Pod.
Our pod is an awesome pod.
And they sang this song.
I love it. But yeah, no, that's not, no, your God is not going to tell you to kill people.
No. That's just not going to happen.
No. So they believed, though, that Taylor had been instructed by God to travel back to Brazil where he would convert others to his cause and train an army of Brazilian orphans to become assassins working on the group's behalf.
That's some drug -fueled thought.
That's also. That's some drug -fueled thought.
These things are always so fucking complicated.
Yeah. Nothing in life needs to be this complicated.
Just go about your business.
Stop worrying about other people.
Stop doing bullshit to other people.
What are we doing? Don't train Brazilian children to become assassins.
Brazilian orphans. Orphans, yeah.
What the fuck? What the fuck?
What the fuck is correct?
The ultimate purpose of the Children of Thunder was for Taylor to lead them in overthrowing the Mormon church in what they referred to as the Days of Thunder or the Second Coming of Christ. the mormon church is fucking huge it's everywhere you're not overthrown it's omnipotent all you have to do here's a great way to not deal with the mormon church don't deal with the mormon church just leave that's the end i know it's i know it's hard to leave the mormon church i'm not like i'm not making light of that but it's much harder to uh come up with an entire murder plot in fact and go to prison for murder
charges and again we're not saying it's easy to get out of any religion no never i myself have not been in a religion that i had to tear myself out of or Or deal with like the consequences of that.
So just know that right now.
Yeah. There's no reason to say it because we know it.
I'm not, nobody's saying that.
No, no, no. It's awful.
I can't imagine. Yeah.
But if you're coming up with, is it harder to do that or to travel to Brazil and train an army of Brazilian orphans to overthrow a church?
Yeah, I would say the latter.
Or is it on the same level?
I don't know. But either way, it's hard. I would say the latter.
No pun intended. No pun intended.
and that's it's no matter what this is very over complicated and it's and this is very not okay it's also just very like this guy was like staying up all night yeah doing drugs doing ecstasy like doing crazy shit i'm like this is not good thinking this is not like solid this is not clear thinking this is not any of that and it's like it's so scary this kind of stuff it is like like where do you get to that point like that's also just I can't imagine like my parents being killed for that purpose and finding that out yeah after they lived their whole lives and were just enjoying retirement poor Selena just
yeah I think she meets this nice guy and it's wants to help him of this guy to use his former job as like a financial advisor to do this because I'm like like first of all you're a piece of shit and two you're so fucking easily traceable right of course they're going to connect it back to you but that's why it's so you got to be fucking dumb that's why it's so obvious that it's not clear thinking like he thought he was this mastermind i'm like no you're a fucking idiot they can easily trace that back to you you had access thankfully you're dumb right away someone's going to trace it back to you
wow it's ridiculous i was wondering where the children of thunder yeah here it is wow uh so the group functioned basically like you know your run of the mill cult uh the children of thunder was like you know most cults that you hear about in the sense that it's built around one single very charismatic uh very bullshitty leader yes you know always uh in their case taylor developed a list of beliefs that you know they were all supposed to adhere to and again very cult -like behavior um which he referred to as the 12 principles of magic magic okay i'm not sure where magic comes into this whole thing
but here we are um i can paraphrase them here and please dave uh helped me very much paraphrasing these because wow um one he meaning god is already perfect so he could do no wrong okay uh two there was no such thing as right or wrong wrong no wrong contradicting ourselves already uh three he was all powerful And the creator of everything in his life.
So then he created the Mormon church, and you don't have to overthrow it.
Yeah. Four, life was always right.
I thought there was no concept of right or wrong.
But okay. Life was always right, and they should embrace all the results of it.
This whole thing is contradictory.
Five, all the results of life, they created for themselves.
But I thought God created it.
Six, we believe nothing and perceive the world without fear.
Demar, are you making rules if you don't believe anything?
Seven, our perceptions are always right.
okay i thought there was no concept of right and wrong eight unconditional fearless love was the most profound in the universe overthrowing a church doesn't sound like unconditional love no and killing people doesn't really make me think you're a loving person nine spirit knew everything ten one gives total control by losing control oh that's just cults eleven what goes around comes around i believe that karma i'm also like so you're gonna kill three people yeah those excuse me that's coming around my friend yeah 12 there was a higher person than taylor jesus christ the son of the father isn't
that just the bible pretty sure i don't know i don't know so there's that uh according wild ass principles that literally contradict themselves from the second from the second right from the jump like hello uh like starting line just there's no right or wrong I'm right.
Okay. Sounds good. According to Deborah McClanahan, in the weeks before the murders, Taylor and Justin had tried to find the money to fund their movement from family members and associates and had wildly been unsuccessful.
When they failed at that, Taylor began devising a new plan where he would just extort the money from his former Morgan Stanley clients, Ivan and Annette Steinman, and from there, the scheme continued to spiral out of control until it came to include killing Selina Bishop, Jennifer, Valeron, and Jim Gamble.
Okay. All to fund the Children of Thunder and their belief that they could somehow bring the Second Coming and overthrow the Mormon church. Okay.
Now that they had, you know, the full story, investigators took everything to the district attorney who started drafting up plea agreements.
And the district attorney said, what the fuck is all this?
He said, what have you brought me?
But before they could put any deal on the table, Dawn and Justin decided to stop cooperating with the investigation.
Okay, cool. So then you don't get a deal.
In terms of Dawn Godman, detectives decided she had been too heavily manipulated by Taylor and would require psychological deprogramming before her testimony could be of any value.
Oh, wow. Yeah. This runs deep.
Taylor and Justin, on the other hand, decided they would rather take their chances with trial.
Good luck, boys. Good.
With all the delays and motions put forth by Justin and Taylor's lawyers, nearly five years passed before anyone saw the inside of a courtroom.
Five years? That's a long time.
We've seen delays, but five years is wild.
In that time, the bizarre claims of, because then it started coming, like, it took on a life of its own.
The terms, like the phrases, Wiccan sex cults, satanic rituals, all fueled the local tabloids in that five years.
It just went nuts. Who's going to ever get sick of that?
Exactly. At the same time, Dawn Godman had changed her mind and accepted a plea deal from the District Attorney.
What'd she get? In exchange for a guilty plea and agreeing to testify against Taylor and Justin, she would receive a sentence of 38 years in prison.
Okay, I'm glad she still gets a lot of time.
25 years for the murders and 13 for the extortion and the additional crimes.
Good. In a pretrial hearing leading up to Justin's trial, Dawn told the story of the murders and their plan to extort the Steinmans in graphic detail.
to um she said he looked at me and he said spirit says you get to know this isn't a dream and then he cut her throat talking about in that yeah don said that's what don told investigators um she also confirmed that the extortion and murders were all part of taylor's plan to raise one million dollars to form a self -help group called transform america the goal of which was to quote hasten In Christ's return to earth.
No, thank you. We just want to speed him up.
No, thank you. Now, maybe sensing which way the winds were blowing just before the trial was about to begin, Taylor Helzer changed his plea from not guilty to guilty on all counts.
Probably smart. Yeah, and he was going to be sentenced to death.
Justin, on the other hand, maintained a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, and the case went to trial in the spring of 2004.
four. Over the course of the six weeks, the prosecution called more than a hundred witnesses and presented a mountain of evidence linking Justin Helzer to the murders of all five people.
Not as a passive member of the group, but as a very active participant in their deaths as well.
In his opening statement to the jury, Deputy District Attorney Hal Jewett presented what he called a tale of religious fanaticism replete with declarations of war on Satan and dreams of a utopian paradise.
Imagine that being part of the opening statement.
I would be locked. I would be sat. Like, let's go.
And that's what he presented as their motive.
But in the end, Jewett argued it was Taylor's quest for money and power over others that had really led to their deaths.
And he couldn't have achieved that without Justin's help.
On June 15, 2004, the jury deliberated.
After just two days, they returned five guilty verdicts for each charge of first -degree murder faced by Justin.
Also, each charge included special circumstances on multiple counts of murder, kidnapping, robbery, burglary, and extortion.
The jury also determined that Justin was sane when he committed the murders, and he received the death penalty as well.
So him and his brother.
On the charge of possessing methamphetamine with intent to sell, he was found not guilty.
Okay. So there's that for him.
Justin and Taylor were sent to San Quentin to serve their sentences where in 2010, Justin attempted to end his life by stabbing two ballpoint pens into his eyes.
He thought that was going to end his life?
Yeah. Like, that's just going to really fucking fuck up your eyes.
It was unsuccessful.
Did result in blindness in both eyes and brain trauma though.
Oh. So I guess, you know, I guess that one tenet was true.
What goes around comes around, I suppose.
Giving Oedipus. No. In 2013, Justin Helzer made a second attempt to end his life by hanging, and that time he was successful.
In a statement to the press, Justin's former defense lawyer, Daniel Cook, told a reporter he was, quote, sorry but not surprised to learn that Justin's profound and apparently progressive mental illness had manifested itself one last time.
Yeah. Now, in 2024, Taylor's case came up for automatic review by the Supreme Supreme Court of the state of California, in which he argued that he should have been allowed to withdraw his guilty plea, and should receive a trial, based on his claim that officers had violated his fourth amendment rights, when they seized items from his home, and if they hadn't had that evidence, he wouldn't have pleaded guilty.
Okay. After considering his argument, the justices wrote, quote, we reject defendants claims, and conclude blanket suppression of the evidence is not warranted.
The court further concluded that probable cause existed, the The warrant was not a general warrant and the search did not exceed the scope of the warrant.
Fantastic. Ultimately, the court upheld the lower court's ruling and the death sentence imposed by the jury.
Well, there you have it.
And that is it. He's still...
He's on death row. Yep.
He's on death row. His brother is dead.
Yeah, and Dawn is still serving out her sentence.
All I can think about is ballpoint pens in my eyes.
Yeah, that's a lot.
That's gnarly. So that is Glenn Taylor Helzer in The Children of Thunder.
That's a wild story that I had never heard even a single detail about previously.
It's wild. Yeah. I actually didn't know about this either.
That's crazy. Yeah.
And really sad. I feel so, so sorry.
Completely innocent people.
That's the thing. Like, completely innocent.
It had nothing to do with any of this.
Completely innocent people and, like, people who are so tenuously connected to this guy.
Oh my god. Yeah. This fucking crazy motherfucker.
He just, Because he used, which like, thank goodness there was a connection with like the Morgan Stanley stuff.
Like this idiot was a, was a financial advisor and then decided to go after his clients.
Like, hello. Boom. Connection right there.
Yeah, that's wild. Thank goodness he was dumb as fuck for that.
And he was seen too.
Yeah, he was seen. Shout out to neighbors doing neighborly shit.
Right? That's why you want a good neighborhood.
A lot of good Samaritans though who like did their part here.
Vicky coming forward. Deborah.
Deborah, yeah. At the end being like, whoa, what the fuck was this?
Yeah. that's great that's a that's a crazy and selena being totally duped by this guy i know that's really heartbreaking yeah it's awful oh yeah and now and jennifer had to die because she cared about her daughter and who she was seeing right like that's and jim just james just was just there yeah like that all of it is so fucking avoid and like what an asshole this fucking yeah he's awful the hellzers are and don like fuck all of them yeah sometimes i do believe in the death penalty and this is one of those instances yeah he's the worst wow well we hope you keep listening though and we hope you
keep it weird but not as weird as this man's because what the fuck yeah truly dang dang Thank you for watching.
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