December 12, 2018 • 44 mins
In 2007, a new father in the small Czech town of Kurim installed a baby monitor only to find that, instead of picking up the feed from his own home, he was receiving a camera signal from his neighbors’ house. The feed showed two young, filthy boys locked in a cellar, being tortured. This was only the beginning of the strange and twisted tale of the Kurim cult.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is They call me Ben. We are joined as
always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decade. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Before we begin today's episode,
we want to include a very important disclaimer or call
(00:46):
it a trigger warning, call it what you will. It's
important for us to say at the offset of today's
episode that this this show will contain descriptions of graphic
child abuse, very dark and true things and psychological horror.
Really and if this is something that personally you you
(01:11):
feel that you should not be listening to, then now
is the time. Just wait for our next episode to
come out. Use our old adage turn back now. Yes,
exactly man, exactly as you can. Yes, that's part of
the adage as well. Yes that's true. That's exactly true. Uh,
this this topic existed on our show. First is a
(01:35):
video series back when we're doing YouTube, roughly four years ago. Yeah, well,
over four years and long time listeners, you know that
we have covered many things on the audio podcast that
we never made videos of and the we have also
covered many things on video that we've never made an
audio podcast. Lest you think that this is just a
(01:59):
rehash of the video, we would like to let you
know that this episode is much more in depth and
it includes some pertinent updates. Our story begins in a
small town with a population of a little over ten
thousand people called Kurum in the Czech Republic in May
of two thousand seven. Yes, and in this small town
(02:22):
there was a new father named Edward T. Mr Edward T.
And he did something simple that almost every new parent
has done are many new parents have done. He installed
a CCTV camera baby monitor so we could watch the
new baby in the nursery room or nursery area of
their house. But there was a malfunction. Matt instead of
(02:46):
seeing his own uh we little tyke and the camera feed,
he picked up a different signal, and in this signal
he saw two children too young boys covered in filth,
change or hied up and restrained, locked in a cellar
and being tortured by two women. One of the boys
was naked on the floor, his hands were strained behind
(03:08):
his back, and he was being forced as Mr Edward
T watched who was being forced to eat food from
the floor like a dog. Yeah, and you can find
video stills like Ben found, and we would not recommend
looking at them, but if you need to understand it,
you can find them. And if you so choose, they're
(03:28):
they're not there's nothing that would be problematic as far
as like having on your computer or something like that. Yeah,
just kind of vignettes. They're sort of like the side
of a face, and there's nothing graphic overtly graphic about them,
but they are they are chilling. You can see you
can see the force feeding and the Yeah, and that's
(03:50):
I mean, that's a really good point. No, I'm glad
you brought that up, because I'm sure several of us
listening we're thinking, wait, is this something that shouldn't be
on my computer. It's like three or four of them,
and they, you know, they immediately make you feel repelled
and disgusted, but they're not inherently um graphic, right, and
(04:10):
so we can only imagine what is going through Edward's
mind as he watches this is this some odd malfunction.
Is this some hallucination? What he quickly realized, most likely
based on the details of the seller that he could
see in the background, was that this house seemed fairly
(04:33):
similar to his own, and he deduced that this was
indeed a camera feed from a similar baby monitor in
his neighbor's house. Naturally, not being a monster himself, Edward
called the police, and here's where it gets crazy. Very quickly, yeah,
(04:55):
very very quickly. So the police proceed to the neighbor's home,
which is is occupied by Clara and Katerina Marova. There
their two sisters who are living at this house where
they believe the feat has been coming from. And the
two boys that were on the camera that we're seeing
were Andres and Jacob. These are Clara's sons, So Clara's sons,
(05:17):
Andres and Jacob. But those weren't the only people they
found at the house, that's right, that's right. Police found
two adults and three children. The third child was an
adopted daughter, the adopted daughter of Clara Morova, thirteen year
old named Annika or Anna as alternately called both. She
(05:39):
ran into the arms of the police, sobbing about the
terrible and horrific abuse that she had endured. She directed
the police to the boys in the seller. They had
serious grievous wounds. One of the boys died in the hospital,
and evidence indicated that the adults had been slowly uh
(06:05):
skinning him and either eating parts of him or forcing
him to eat parts of himself. Let's let's pause there.
Let's rewind two years. How did we get to this situation,
because up until two thousand and five, Clara Morova was
a single mother of two and her two sons Andredge
(06:27):
and Jacob or as we talked about off air, perhaps
pronounced Jacob j k U b and Andredge O n
d r e J. These two kids lived pretty good lives,
you know. They went to summer camp, they were they
had a knack for language, They loved to play outdoors.
But things began to change when Clara's sister Katerina visited
(06:50):
the house and she brought along this thirteen year old
orphan sometimes called Anna, sometimes called Anika and Anika at
the time, she would have been eleven. At the time,
she would have been eleven, that's right. A Nika had
a terrible, terrible story. She had escaped and abusive, possibly
(07:12):
a child trafficking ring uh in Norway, and now as
a result of this escape, she is under the protection
of a secret organization, and Clara, being a very good
hearted person at first, almost instantly becomes a nurturing maternal
(07:34):
figure to Anna. And apparently Anna is suffering from various diseases.
She has leukemia, her kidneys are failing, she's going blind
and deaf, and she's spending a significant amount of time
in the hospital because of all of these things that
are going wrong with her. And it's important to note
that it's always Clara's sister Katerina who takes Anna to
(07:57):
the hospital. Clara is never allowed to accompany her, but
she is in contact with Anna's doctor. She starts receiving
instructions via text, message and email from this mysterious doctor
who is, as far as Clara knows, the only person
who knows how to fully treat Anna or Nika for
(08:19):
both her psychological and her physical trauma. And these treatments
get very weird, very quickly. One of the treatments that
Clara Morova later mentions in court was that the doctor
instructed her to rub Anna's body, especially her crotch part
for several hours and then this would improve her quality
(08:43):
of life. Keep in mind, again, this is as far
as Clara knows at this time. This is an eleven
year old. Yeah, you know, shaking my head, dark stuff, Claia.
Claria never meets the doctor at all except one time. Yeah,
in the car in the dark, so she couldn't actually
(09:04):
see this person's face at all. Um, But this is
still a doctor, so the trust in some way in
the institution that he represents, it's still there for her.
And he also was a diplomat. Yeah, he showed Clara
(09:24):
diplomatic passport, and he also passed along what he said
where Anna's medical files. And later Clara said, I know
it sounds naive, but the fact that he was a
diplomat and a doctor was a guarantee of authority for me,
and so I trusted him. Okay. So when Anna was
at home she would describe these horrifying stories about sexual
(09:48):
abuse that she experienced while she was in Norway. And
during the days when she's hospitalized, when she's constantly there,
Clara was supposed to talk to her on the phone
several times a day, and this person, this doctor, would
mediate Clara's messages to Anna so she can hear mommy
while unconscious, so she would be at the hospital and
(10:10):
stay unconscious for periods of time, at least according to
what Clara knew. Yeah, And by two thousand and six,
Clara paid less and less and less attention to her
own children, and her sons spent more time at their
grandparents house UM than they did at home. And Clara
was still trying to help Anaka recover from her traumatic
(10:30):
experiences UM in Norway and ultimately decided that she wanted
to adopt her, but the doctor said there would be
huge problems with this. He told Clara that an adoption
would not be possible the authorities would never approve it
because her sons were being abusive toward Anika. So the
(10:53):
doctor told Clara she needed to cure the boys to
remove the evil spirits inhabiting them by instituting a regiment
of therapy, and he said the appropriate therapy was hard
discipline and physical punishment. Clara began beating the boys repeatedly,
(11:16):
often for very minor perceived in fractions. She would use
her bare hands, a belt or a wooden kitchen spoon.
She would also lock them in the closet her bathroom
for punishment for a kind of time out situation where
often they were forced to stay there overnight. Eventually, the
doctor decided that this therapy was inadequate and will return
(11:40):
after a word from our sponsors. So when we left,
we heard that the doctor decided that this physical punishment
that was being enacted on these boys was not enough.
And Clara is told then by the doctor to stop
(12:02):
behaving as their mother, and she's ordered to take the
boys and move to this other town. It's a small
town in a different district. Okay. So the doctor then
advises a stronger type of therapy, not just the physical stuff,
at least the kind that he had prescribed before. And um,
in this place, in this new this new house, Clara
(12:24):
meets with Yon Skirla a different person, and Yon Turik
both spelled j a n uh. And they also meet
with Hannah Basova, and of course Katerina also joins them,
the sister. Yeah, and so this escalation I guess that
was recommended involved the following and this is big, big
(12:47):
time trigger warning territory, I would say. So the boys
were kept in dogs cages and they were not allowed
to communicate with each other at all, nor to have
any of the comforts of being physically held by their mother.
Um Clara helped simulate drowning them in a bucket, waterboarding
essentially while Katerina held their hands. Yeah. In addition, they
(13:11):
were burned with cigarettes, scratched with forks and cutlery, hog
tied for long periods of time, forced to recite quote
vulgar sentences. We don't know what those are. But they
were also made to beat one another, and Jacob was,
on at least one instance, forced to pretend he was
dead and lay in a hole that had been dug
(13:33):
in the grounds of the compounds. So the Yawns were
connected with the doctor. They were his like acolytes and
yawn and the Yawns and Hannah Um as well as
Katerina were members of something, and that that's something still
remains mysterious today. But they were, Yeah, they were affiliated.
(13:56):
They weren't just random people. And there's there's pretty compelling
evidence that Clara actually knew or had been familiar with
at least Yan Turk and Hannah Basova before on some level.
Have you seen the French film Martyrs, either one of you.
I believe it's a very extreme, like horror kind of thing,
but it involves a cult situation that's very similar to this,
(14:19):
where it's all about breaking people down to find who
they truly are, to like expose their ideal selves by
torturing them or whatever to get them closer to God. God.
I mean, this seems like the ideology that's at play here.
It's very twisted and sick, but it reminds me of that.
I'm wondering if that movie was inspired by this case
(14:39):
at all. And that movie, while very punishing movie, is
actually very well done. It is. There was an American
remake that wasn't good, but the French one is is
quite good, and if I'm remembering the correct one, that
ending that stays with you. So probably the most extreme
escalation of violence here occurs when Yon scary Allah and
(15:00):
Yan Turic cover the children's heads with bags, tie them up,
burn them with more cigarettes, and then they focus a
lot of their abuse on and Dredge. They rip off
a piece of tissue from his buttocks and they burn
the wound. According to some sources, he was forced to
eat it and to prevent the screaming and yelling from
(15:23):
this torture, the group regularly taped the children's mouth shut.
All while all of this is happening. By September of
two thousand and six, Clara begins the adoption process with Antika,
and she does so with the doctor's approval. The mysterious
doctor from the text messages again. But surprise, surprise, more
(15:44):
shady stuff occurs. First in the Czech Republic, when you
are adopting a child, the court requires a d N
A test of the child. The doctor said this could
not happen. Full stop the pause. According to the doctor,
it might reveal Anna or Anika's leukemia, which for some
(16:05):
reason he didn't want to have have happened. I mean,
I guess Clara was told that that would make the
child unadoptable. The child So to make things even more complicated,
when Anna or Anika is supposed to go to court
for this adoption, hearing do you want this person to
(16:27):
be your adopted mom? Etcetera, etcetera. You're not being forced
to do this all the all the basic questions one
would ask. Clara's sister Katerina instead contacts a local actor
named Victor Scala, and Victor Scala's daughter impersonates Anna or
Anika in front of the court, and at this time
(16:50):
neither the daughter of Victor Scala, neither her name nor
her picture have ever been published. Somehow, this whole, this
whole con job worked. The court approved the adoption, and
at that point the doctor has Clara Andredge, Jacob Briaco
(17:10):
and Anika move into a new house in that town
in Kuram. Anika has a normal room from descriptions, it
had quite a few toys and it was painted a
um a happy yellow color. The boys are tied up
and the abuse continues, and a seller and this is
when Edward T, who I have been trying very hard
(17:33):
not to call Mr T over the course of this episode,
discovers the abuse. So let's let's just let all that
sink in for a second. Um, okay, we're back up
to the point again where it's been discovered. Let's talk
about the sisters, Katerina and Clara and what is going
(17:54):
on with them, because none of this makes sense. Let's
start somewhere right. So these sisters both were apparently exhibiting
some signs of mental disorders, and they believed that they
had received some kind of spiritual visions, uh, something that
is giving them higher than regular instructions basically like martyrs. Yeah,
(18:18):
but they did say that they had been duped. They
did so. They said that there when when the police
were discussed had discovered this event, and when it eventually
went to trial, they said that the kids were beaten,
sexually abused, shocked and more. Because the adopted daughter, Anika
was the mastermind behind it, and because thirteen year old
(18:40):
girl a Nika and the mysterious text message email only
doctor they said had brainwatched them, police were not sure
how to proceed. The three children were being held at
a foster home kind of situation, but then Anna or
Anika escaped, and as it turns out, Anna or a Nika,
(19:00):
whatever name you want to call this person was not
a child at all. You see, her real name was
Barbora Skirlova and she was thirty three years old. Wow,
that's a twist, Yeah, it really is. And if you
look at pictures of her, you can find pictures over
her online from various stages in her life, some family
(19:21):
photos from early on when she was with the new family,
as well as later photos of her, and she definitely
almost passes as a thirteen year old girl and we're
talking Christian Baiale levels of physical fluidity, changing of appearance. So,
according to Clara Moarova, Barbora had incited this torture, gradually
(19:47):
convincing the mom and her sister that she was being
victimized by these boys, that they were being unfair, that
they needed discipline, and she said, you know, my doctor
saved my life. This is the only person who can
advise them. And as the investigation unfolded, police realized they
(20:08):
were dealing with more than an isolated case. They realized
there were multiple people involved, so the so called friends
of Anika's who were a party to this torture, such
as the yawns Yon Turrek and Jan Scria, who by
the way, uh turned out to be Barbara Skorlova's brother,
(20:28):
Jan Scria, that is also had known each other previously.
And law enforcement began to really get the picture, um
that there was more at play here than met b I,
and that they may actually be on the hunt for
some kind of cult. And we'll get to that right
after a word from our sponsor, we returned. I guess
(20:58):
this segment of the episode could be called We're going
to use gallows humor, where in the world is Barbora Skirlova.
First she goes to Denmark, but the heat is catching
on to her, so she flees Denmark. And this is
right after this, right after she escapes the foster, and
(21:20):
she was eventually found later in Norway and Oslo, where
she had purportedly originally come from. Right when she visited
this house, she was living with other members of this
organization or cult, and she was living as a thirteen
year old boy named Adam. You can see pictures. She
shaved her head. She went to school for three or
(21:45):
four months. The only class she didn't go to was
p and her teachers didn't want to push it on her.
Apparently she did such a good job that even um
later people who taught her would still refer to her
as Adam. Least believe that Barbara's father, a man named
Joseph for Joseph Scala, maybe the mastermind behind the torture. Uh.
(22:08):
He was suspected by several sources to be the doctor
behind those text messages, but it is not confirmed. But
it is not confirmed. Yeah, so let's look a little
bit more into the character of Joseph Scala. So this
guy is believed to be the head of a group
called the Amps A N T S and these uh.
(22:32):
This group allegedly began as just a hiking collective and
then it ended up later evolving into some offshoot of
this strange, enigmatic, controversial thing called the Grail movement. Yeah,
if we want to pause just for a second there
to explain what the Grail movement is. It started in
(22:53):
Germany in the late nineteen forties and it was the
if follows the teachings of a guy named Oscar Ernst Bernhardt,
who is also known by his pen name Abd Rushin.
He was a self proclaimed messiah and he did not
establish this organization himself. The movement was organized by people
(23:16):
who followed them. They primarily want to disseminate and spread
the work of the book he wrote in the Light
of the Truth, the Grail Message. They're all around the world.
They live in different areas, sixteen countries across Europe. They're
also in twenty two African countries worldwide. They're they're somewhere
in the neighborhood of ten thousand members. But they, for
(23:40):
their part um, were largely considered maybe maybe a little
out there, a little off the beaten path, but not harmful,
you know what I mean, certainly not as harmful as
organizations such as say the Catholic Church, shots fired and
other things. Uh, yeah, it's it's one of those kind
(24:03):
of I don't know, it's just a little more eccentric
new version of religions that you know ends up being
called a cult because that's how we describe cults, right right, Um, So,
from what we understand about this story, this group, the
Ants was part of a larger organization similar to a
scouting group in the US, like Girl Scouts or boy
(24:25):
Scouts or I think didn't boy Scouts change their name
now they're just scouting? Right? I didn't know that. Yeah,
they I think now they will admit um female children
as well. Wonderful, we'll see. I mean the Girl Scouts
are still around. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know.
Tell us what you think about it. Too much money
in those cookies, man, that's true. That's true. Anybody who
(24:48):
ever had to be in the Boy Scouts, you'll understand,
cool understand exactly what I'm saying when I say that
man peddling popcorn just did not compare. Well, those cookies
just sell themselves through popcorn. You gotta have a really
slick line. Yeah, popcorn, you gotta, you've got to work
the angles, sell popcorn. But this this organization, this kind
(25:11):
of scouting organization, they met up regularly. They would go hiking, camping,
maybe twice a month or so. In Boy Scouts, groups
of kids will be organized into smaller groups called troops,
and troops are often going to be named after animals,
like just almost any animal. You can imagine. Rabbit troop. Yeah,
that's great, the rabbits blows. That was one of mine.
(25:34):
You had a troop of boy Scouts called the wee Blows. Yeah,
it wasn't that, just like the many boy Scouts like, yeah,
I know, it was awesome. Just below cub right, um,
I can't remember, is it cub Scout? We blow boy Scouts?
But right, a coveted eagle like Dr Buzz Rendezvous. Isn't
(25:58):
there also life life? Yeah, there's life after eagles the
top one, and then you get life before that, gotcha,
I think? And then after that there are all things
like Order of the Arrow, and then do you want
to be a Scout master? And that's cool, it's interesting.
You know our one of our coworkers and producers Ramsey
(26:20):
junt is an Engel Scout. Yeah, and you're not. I am.
I was gonna say, yeah, I just wanted to in
another life and another life, I paid my dues in
the woods. I came out way more cryptic than I meant.
I meant that I had to go get orienteering, marat
batches and stuff. That's fair. So so this group, the Ants,
was just kind of like one of those yeah, the same,
(26:43):
but kind of like it. They were just called the Ants, yeah,
like the Rabbits to Knowl's examples. So even now, we
don't know very much about the internal escalation that led
this group, that led Joseph Scala and as followers to
go from being a hiking enthusiast group to possibly an
(27:05):
offshoot of this other new spiritual movement. But we do
know that psychological experts studied Barbara Scarlova extensively while she
was in custody, while she's under supervision, and this again
is going to be a situation where we do want
to give a warning about the graphic nature of their findings.
(27:27):
So in their investigation, the way that the trial went
is that the trial didn't really focus on the mysterious
doctor because they couldn't find that person, couldn't prove who
it was, so instead they looked at Clara and Katerina
as the instigators along with Barbara or Anika, and according
(27:53):
to the psychologists, Barbara was the main initiator and manipulator
of the situation. She initiated the abuse by getting the
grown ups quote unquote grown ups, because let's not forget
she was in her thirties to abuse these children. And
when she was arrested in Oslo, Norway, living as thirteen
(28:15):
year old kid named Adam, police also found her diary,
and in her diary, she allegedly described all the details
about her various identities, including how she prepared herself, and
experts said that beyond a shadow of a doubt, this
woman does not have schizophrenia or a similar disease. She
(28:37):
knows what she's doing is wrong, and she can differentiate
between good and evil. And she's wearing multiple identities just
to manipulate people. Yeah, it's not multiple personality disorder anything
to that effect. It's I'm doing this to get something,
and she's obviously successful at it. I mean this, The
amount of effort that's going into these schemes is outrageous,
(29:00):
Like you said, Ben Christian Bale method Meisner kind of
like levels of yeah, prap. Well, and here's one of
the craziest things. You'd think someone like this is a criminal,
mastermind of some sort of genius level of person. Yeah,
but her her i Q levels were tested multiple times
and she consistently came back as around nine, which is
(29:22):
not not a genius. It's I mean, it's it's fine,
it's functioning, but it's you know, I don't know what
do you guys know what your i Q s are,
at least from the tests. I don't know what mine
is either. I'm hoping I'm in the hundred something range
your way up there. I honestly have no idea. We
(29:42):
should all take one. I don't know we have to
go one, two, three. Also, the i Q tests, I'm
sure several folks listening along with this one point out
is just cartoonishly flawed. Well, oh yeah, and here's the
here's the thing. The big question, right she kept scoring
(30:05):
is that because she wanted to score around a good question,
is it an affectation? Right? Because what they also found
was that the experts believe that this person had consciously
chosen to live as a child on all levels on
you know, like we said that like a misner Daniel
(30:27):
day Lewis level where production never wraps in the movie
never ends. This allows her to avoid taking responsibility for
her actions, and they say at the same time, it
allows her to get the attention that she desperately seeks,
because they said she had what's called a histrionic personality
(30:48):
and a strong inclination to manipulative behavior. They also had
sexologists study her. I didn't realize they were called sexologists.
You know, it may be an error of inslation on
my part. I hope not. It's a very straightforward name
for a profession. It's it's a legit thing, psychology, scientific
studies of course. Of course. Um, so the people in
(31:11):
this profession um proved that she definitely has sada massochistic predispositions,
which I could see that as being very clear from
the from her actions and with lesbian and pedophilic orientation,
UM also pretty clear. Yeah. In other words, she means
(31:32):
this means, I guess or kind of tells us that
she is excited by the exploitation and torture of children.
She is sexually stimulated by that, which is that's the
horror that we were talking about at the top of
the show. That's what they call a bad combo. Yeah,
a monster made flesh. I have you know this is
(31:58):
this is the kind of thing that you would maybe
here associated with very monstrous serial killers. Yeah, you know,
like Albert Fish or something. Well, and it gets us
into some of the most most basic but controversial and
difficult to discuss uh topics, which is the whole nature
(32:19):
versus nurture thing of when you you know, when you're
when you're born um or what happens to you what
creates something like that in someone. Generally, my opinion would
be that something happens to you that that person has
made that person is um Things happen to that person
to create that kind of orientation, in my opinion. And
(32:40):
you know, when you think about the doctor, whoever that
person was, if it was, in fact, you know, the father,
you think may before it to be that specific, such
a specific hang up, a specific fetish, I guess, is
a lack of it for lack of a better term, Yeah,
I don't know. It's just a lot of a lot
of serial murderers have either a history of abuse or
(33:05):
a history of brain injury though, absolutely that triggers them.
And then I guess if we're looking at um, maybe
a mental condition like schizophrenia. You know, there have been
people who have committed murders because they have a break
But this sounds so calculated on this person's part. You know. Yeah,
(33:26):
in the in the show I work on outside of
this one um about the killer Keith Hunter jesperson, he
had a head injury. He also had a very manipulative,
abusive father that he kind of cow to owed too
when he was a child. And he also just had
a predisposition to violence, and so it was kind of
(33:46):
a combination of nature to sort of the shows about
is like kind of like pinning down where that divide is,
and you see that in all these cases. But I
agree with you, Matt, that the more abhorrent and um
kind of out there that the predilections are for these people, like,
the more likely that part is they experienced something something
was done to them that they carried with them. That's
(34:07):
that's chilling. And that podcast is Happy Face available now
where you find your favorite shows. We've got a couple
episodes left and we took a break off for the holidays,
but um, it's it's back a strong as me. Twelve
episodes total, so it's look to me, thanks dude. And
as these details emerge. When we first did this video,
(34:28):
we didn't have the benefit of this expert analysis, right,
We didn't find that the first time around, So the
video is much shorter, but we have some additional details
as well as the different specific aspects of this case.
In this horrific event, horrific series of events emerges, the
(34:53):
Grail movement themselves deny any involvement with this sect or
the group, or this community or this dare I say,
this cult known as the Ants, And they also denied
any involvement with other offshoot sets of the movement, sort
of like how um, sort of like how a mom's
(35:13):
in the Muslim world will deny the nation of Islam.
I'll say, that's a different religion. We're a Muslim. There's
something else, you know what I mean? Well, And the
other thing here is the quality and the amount of
filming the cameras that were set up to monitor this abuse.
(35:34):
They were of such a level that it's thought that
perhaps this was something bigger than just uh Barbara up
there as Anika watching it for her own pleasure, or
you know, could it have been somebody else also watching it?
Was there? Yeah? Was there more to this story? And
that I think is the most frightening aspect of this
(35:57):
because that is largely the question shooting upon which our
story ends. Publicly, no one really knows what happened. Somehow
Joseph Scarla escaped. He was never charged with a crime,
just like Kaiser Soz disappeared. His whereabouts are unknown as
(36:21):
we record this. We don't even know if he was
actually the doctor, which I wanted to ask ask everyone,
do you do We think it's possible that, in addition
to impersonating these different people, Barbara herself could have been
the doctor, like with a hidden phone sending text messages
or something. I don't know, because then she did meet
(36:44):
Clara did meet somebody in the car, right, Yeah, so
you have to wonder. We do have good news of
a sort of all the people who are charged in
this trial, Clara, Katerina yan Turak, Hanna Bosova, Yon Scarla,
and his sister Barboris s Glova. All of them were
found guilty and they were all sentenced, but they have
(37:08):
all served their sentences already and they live free somewhere
in the world, at least as far as we could find.
Barboris Skalova was released from prison in two thousand twelve,
and now people believe she's either been living in South
Moravia or a place called Berno, b r and Oh.
(37:29):
The most recent reports show that she is living under
a new name. Uh No longer plays the piano. She
was noted as a talented pianist. She's under the monitoring
of the Probation and Mediation Service or Medication Service. According
to the psychiatrist who observe her, she has severe mental
(37:52):
difficulties and she often appears to switch between one or
more of her previous young male personalities. Here's another thing
to add to that troubling possibility, that breadcrumb of a
larger ring people. She has more more young personalities than
(38:14):
a Nika and or Adam. She exhibits multiple ones, and
is that because she has been she's infected other families
in the past. Earlier we said that she was analyzed
and there were no signs of multiple personalities schnzophrenia. So
is this like calculated? Even more, there is this like
a project monarch thing where something is placed upon her
(38:37):
psyche good god. This story is um the stuff of
nightmares really is. And I know this sounds really messed
up to say, but I would be interested to see
this handled very artfully in a in a film. Maybe
it's too I don't know. Maybe it's almost like giving
(38:57):
short shrift to the victims to even consider making this
into some kind of work of you know, fictionalized account
or whatever like that. But it's just got all the
intrigue and the twists and like you could, Oh my god.
I think there was some I want to say, when
we were working on this few years back, there was
some film that maybe it borrowed aspects of the story,
(39:19):
but I think maybe it was just they were borrowing
the idea of an adult impersonating a child so successfully
for so long. It's the it's called orphan or that's
what it is. It was available like not that long
ago at least, and I don't think it came out
that long ago either. Two thousand nine, Yeah, two thousand nine, Okay,
oh god, that's it's over nine years ago. Uh, we're
(39:44):
all yeah, yeah, but you know, maybe we're aging like
wine or a good cheese, like fine wine, like fine
fine cheese. Tann those tannins are really shown up. So
at this point, unfortunately, this worry is is probably not over.
But this is where the path drops off. We don't
(40:05):
know much else about what's happened. We do know that,
according to the psychiatric reports, while Barbara has stopped playing
piano near as much, she does spend a lot of
time drawing quote very morbid pictures. As for what happened
to this group as possible cult whenever you want to
(40:27):
call them, where the leader is, if the leader exists,
if the so called doctor exists, what their plans are
for other children or other families. For now, it's something
they don't want you to know. It's a it's a
relatively successful conspiracy, and it's something that I'm perfectly happy
to close the book on for today, because geez, the police.
(40:50):
I remember the feeling in when I finished the video.
I didn't ever want to think about this ever again.
And here we are, and here we are. Pull you
back in, Matt, uh, Well we got through it. You're
an intrepid traveler, my friend. We've made it through. Guys,
all of us. We can end on a on a
(41:11):
completely unrelated different note that's not near as depressing Okay, scary, Uh,
here it is. We want to thank Spencer see Schloter,
who dropped by our community page Here's where it gets
crazy and hipped us to an amazing story that I
did not believe it first, even though it's in Time magazine.
(41:33):
It's titled the US military believes people have a sixth sense.
That's that's cool. Yeah, intuition. They the Since two thousand
and fourteen, the Office of Naval Research apparently has embarked
on a four year, three point eight five million dollar
research program to explore premonitions, intuition or what we have
(41:57):
on this show before called Spidey sense. That's right, and
specifically they're looking at it for I was going to
say for use, or looking at it in application to
to apply to sailors and marines, people who are actually
in the fighting force, and or people who are surveilling.
We should do an episode on this. What do you think? Yes, agreed,
(42:18):
a sense that we may that's the word joke. Well,
thank you so much for listening, everybody. Uh, enjoy is
the wrong word. But we hope you have found this
as strange as we have this story. Let us know
if you have any updates on the Korom case or
the case of the ants. Uh, and let us know
(42:42):
if you have found stories in your neck of the
woods that are similar. I know this goes with that saying,
but if you suspect a child, you know, a friend
of of one of your children, perhaps is being mistreated. Anyway,
there are resources for reporting this beyond just calling the police.
I mean, there are you know, people that can help
absolutely in the US and Canada. You can contact the
(43:08):
Child Help National Child Abuse Hotline. Its staff twenty four
hours to day, seven days a week, with professional crisis
counselors and interpreters that can provide assistance and over a
hundred and seventy languages. That hotline is one eight hundred
for a child or one hundred four to two four
four or five three. But if you feel a job
(43:29):
is in imminent danger, you know, call call the police. Yeah,
don't hesitate, Okay, And if you want to call us,
just as a little turn there it was weird after that, Yeah,
and just tell us something maybe a little more lighthearted. Uh,
(43:49):
you can you can call us right now and leave
a message. We are one eight three three st d
w y t k Man. I got out on the
tail in on that nice work. And if you don't
want to do that, you don't want to find us
on Twitter and Facebook and all the other places where
we're mostly conspiracy stuff sometimes conspiracy stuff show. You can
write us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy
(44:12):
at how stuff works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is They call me Ben. We are joined as
always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled decade. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Before we begin today's episode,
we want to include a very important disclaimer or call
(00:46):
it a trigger warning, call it what you will. It's
important for us to say at the offset of today's
episode that this this show will contain descriptions of graphic
child abuse, very dark and true things and psychological horror.
Really and if this is something that personally you you
(01:11):
feel that you should not be listening to, then now
is the time. Just wait for our next episode to
come out. Use our old adage turn back now. Yes,
exactly man, exactly as you can. Yes, that's part of
the adage as well. Yes that's true. That's exactly true. Uh,
this this topic existed on our show. First is a
(01:35):
video series back when we're doing YouTube, roughly four years ago. Yeah, well,
over four years and long time listeners, you know that
we have covered many things on the audio podcast that
we never made videos of and the we have also
covered many things on video that we've never made an
audio podcast. Lest you think that this is just a
(01:59):
rehash of the video, we would like to let you
know that this episode is much more in depth and
it includes some pertinent updates. Our story begins in a
small town with a population of a little over ten
thousand people called Kurum in the Czech Republic in May
of two thousand seven. Yes, and in this small town
(02:22):
there was a new father named Edward T. Mr Edward T.
And he did something simple that almost every new parent
has done are many new parents have done. He installed
a CCTV camera baby monitor so we could watch the
new baby in the nursery room or nursery area of
their house. But there was a malfunction. Matt instead of
(02:46):
seeing his own uh we little tyke and the camera feed,
he picked up a different signal, and in this signal
he saw two children too young boys covered in filth,
change or hied up and restrained, locked in a cellar
and being tortured by two women. One of the boys
was naked on the floor, his hands were strained behind
(03:08):
his back, and he was being forced as Mr Edward
T watched who was being forced to eat food from
the floor like a dog. Yeah, and you can find
video stills like Ben found, and we would not recommend
looking at them, but if you need to understand it,
you can find them. And if you so choose, they're
(03:28):
they're not there's nothing that would be problematic as far
as like having on your computer or something like that. Yeah,
just kind of vignettes. They're sort of like the side
of a face, and there's nothing graphic overtly graphic about them,
but they are they are chilling. You can see you
can see the force feeding and the Yeah, and that's
(03:50):
I mean, that's a really good point. No, I'm glad
you brought that up, because I'm sure several of us
listening we're thinking, wait, is this something that shouldn't be
on my computer. It's like three or four of them,
and they, you know, they immediately make you feel repelled
and disgusted, but they're not inherently um graphic, right, and
(04:10):
so we can only imagine what is going through Edward's
mind as he watches this is this some odd malfunction.
Is this some hallucination? What he quickly realized, most likely
based on the details of the seller that he could
see in the background, was that this house seemed fairly
(04:33):
similar to his own, and he deduced that this was
indeed a camera feed from a similar baby monitor in
his neighbor's house. Naturally, not being a monster himself, Edward
called the police, and here's where it gets crazy. Very quickly, yeah,
(04:55):
very very quickly. So the police proceed to the neighbor's home,
which is is occupied by Clara and Katerina Marova. There
their two sisters who are living at this house where
they believe the feat has been coming from. And the
two boys that were on the camera that we're seeing
were Andres and Jacob. These are Clara's sons, So Clara's sons,
(05:17):
Andres and Jacob. But those weren't the only people they
found at the house, that's right, that's right. Police found
two adults and three children. The third child was an
adopted daughter, the adopted daughter of Clara Morova, thirteen year
old named Annika or Anna as alternately called both. She
(05:39):
ran into the arms of the police, sobbing about the
terrible and horrific abuse that she had endured. She directed
the police to the boys in the seller. They had
serious grievous wounds. One of the boys died in the hospital,
and evidence indicated that the adults had been slowly uh
(06:05):
skinning him and either eating parts of him or forcing
him to eat parts of himself. Let's let's pause there.
Let's rewind two years. How did we get to this situation,
because up until two thousand and five, Clara Morova was
a single mother of two and her two sons Andredge
(06:27):
and Jacob or as we talked about off air, perhaps
pronounced Jacob j k U b and Andredge O n
d r e J. These two kids lived pretty good lives,
you know. They went to summer camp, they were they
had a knack for language, They loved to play outdoors.
But things began to change when Clara's sister Katerina visited
(06:50):
the house and she brought along this thirteen year old
orphan sometimes called Anna, sometimes called Anika and Anika at
the time, she would have been eleven. At the time,
she would have been eleven, that's right. A Nika had
a terrible, terrible story. She had escaped and abusive, possibly
(07:12):
a child trafficking ring uh in Norway, and now as
a result of this escape, she is under the protection
of a secret organization, and Clara, being a very good
hearted person at first, almost instantly becomes a nurturing maternal
(07:34):
figure to Anna. And apparently Anna is suffering from various diseases.
She has leukemia, her kidneys are failing, she's going blind
and deaf, and she's spending a significant amount of time
in the hospital because of all of these things that
are going wrong with her. And it's important to note
that it's always Clara's sister Katerina who takes Anna to
(07:57):
the hospital. Clara is never allowed to accompany her, but
she is in contact with Anna's doctor. She starts receiving
instructions via text, message and email from this mysterious doctor
who is, as far as Clara knows, the only person
who knows how to fully treat Anna or Nika for
(08:19):
both her psychological and her physical trauma. And these treatments
get very weird, very quickly. One of the treatments that
Clara Morova later mentions in court was that the doctor
instructed her to rub Anna's body, especially her crotch part
for several hours and then this would improve her quality
(08:43):
of life. Keep in mind, again, this is as far
as Clara knows at this time. This is an eleven
year old. Yeah, you know, shaking my head, dark stuff, Claia.
Claria never meets the doctor at all except one time. Yeah,
in the car in the dark, so she couldn't actually
(09:04):
see this person's face at all. Um, But this is
still a doctor, so the trust in some way in
the institution that he represents, it's still there for her.
And he also was a diplomat. Yeah, he showed Clara
(09:24):
diplomatic passport, and he also passed along what he said
where Anna's medical files. And later Clara said, I know
it sounds naive, but the fact that he was a
diplomat and a doctor was a guarantee of authority for me,
and so I trusted him. Okay. So when Anna was
at home she would describe these horrifying stories about sexual
(09:48):
abuse that she experienced while she was in Norway. And
during the days when she's hospitalized, when she's constantly there,
Clara was supposed to talk to her on the phone
several times a day, and this person, this doctor, would
mediate Clara's messages to Anna so she can hear mommy
while unconscious, so she would be at the hospital and
(10:10):
stay unconscious for periods of time, at least according to
what Clara knew. Yeah, And by two thousand and six,
Clara paid less and less and less attention to her
own children, and her sons spent more time at their
grandparents house UM than they did at home. And Clara
was still trying to help Anaka recover from her traumatic
(10:30):
experiences UM in Norway and ultimately decided that she wanted
to adopt her, but the doctor said there would be
huge problems with this. He told Clara that an adoption
would not be possible the authorities would never approve it
because her sons were being abusive toward Anika. So the
(10:53):
doctor told Clara she needed to cure the boys to
remove the evil spirits inhabiting them by instituting a regiment
of therapy, and he said the appropriate therapy was hard
discipline and physical punishment. Clara began beating the boys repeatedly,
(11:16):
often for very minor perceived in fractions. She would use
her bare hands, a belt or a wooden kitchen spoon.
She would also lock them in the closet her bathroom
for punishment for a kind of time out situation where
often they were forced to stay there overnight. Eventually, the
doctor decided that this therapy was inadequate and will return
(11:40):
after a word from our sponsors. So when we left,
we heard that the doctor decided that this physical punishment
that was being enacted on these boys was not enough.
And Clara is told then by the doctor to stop
(12:02):
behaving as their mother, and she's ordered to take the
boys and move to this other town. It's a small
town in a different district. Okay. So the doctor then
advises a stronger type of therapy, not just the physical stuff,
at least the kind that he had prescribed before. And um,
in this place, in this new this new house, Clara
(12:24):
meets with Yon Skirla a different person, and Yon Turik
both spelled j a n uh. And they also meet
with Hannah Basova, and of course Katerina also joins them,
the sister. Yeah, and so this escalation I guess that
was recommended involved the following and this is big, big
(12:47):
time trigger warning territory, I would say. So the boys
were kept in dogs cages and they were not allowed
to communicate with each other at all, nor to have
any of the comforts of being physically held by their mother.
Um Clara helped simulate drowning them in a bucket, waterboarding
essentially while Katerina held their hands. Yeah. In addition, they
(13:11):
were burned with cigarettes, scratched with forks and cutlery, hog
tied for long periods of time, forced to recite quote
vulgar sentences. We don't know what those are. But they
were also made to beat one another, and Jacob was,
on at least one instance, forced to pretend he was
dead and lay in a hole that had been dug
(13:33):
in the grounds of the compounds. So the Yawns were
connected with the doctor. They were his like acolytes and
yawn and the Yawns and Hannah Um as well as
Katerina were members of something, and that that's something still
remains mysterious today. But they were, Yeah, they were affiliated.
(13:56):
They weren't just random people. And there's there's pretty compelling
evidence that Clara actually knew or had been familiar with
at least Yan Turk and Hannah Basova before on some level.
Have you seen the French film Martyrs, either one of you.
I believe it's a very extreme, like horror kind of thing,
but it involves a cult situation that's very similar to this,
(14:19):
where it's all about breaking people down to find who
they truly are, to like expose their ideal selves by
torturing them or whatever to get them closer to God. God.
I mean, this seems like the ideology that's at play here.
It's very twisted and sick, but it reminds me of that.
I'm wondering if that movie was inspired by this case
(14:39):
at all. And that movie, while very punishing movie, is
actually very well done. It is. There was an American
remake that wasn't good, but the French one is is
quite good, and if I'm remembering the correct one, that
ending that stays with you. So probably the most extreme
escalation of violence here occurs when Yon scary Allah and
(15:00):
Yan Turic cover the children's heads with bags, tie them up,
burn them with more cigarettes, and then they focus a
lot of their abuse on and Dredge. They rip off
a piece of tissue from his buttocks and they burn
the wound. According to some sources, he was forced to
eat it and to prevent the screaming and yelling from
(15:23):
this torture, the group regularly taped the children's mouth shut.
All while all of this is happening. By September of
two thousand and six, Clara begins the adoption process with Antika,
and she does so with the doctor's approval. The mysterious
doctor from the text messages again. But surprise, surprise, more
(15:44):
shady stuff occurs. First in the Czech Republic, when you
are adopting a child, the court requires a d N
A test of the child. The doctor said this could
not happen. Full stop the pause. According to the doctor,
it might reveal Anna or Anika's leukemia, which for some
(16:05):
reason he didn't want to have have happened. I mean,
I guess Clara was told that that would make the
child unadoptable. The child So to make things even more complicated,
when Anna or Anika is supposed to go to court
for this adoption, hearing do you want this person to
(16:27):
be your adopted mom? Etcetera, etcetera. You're not being forced
to do this all the all the basic questions one
would ask. Clara's sister Katerina instead contacts a local actor
named Victor Scala, and Victor Scala's daughter impersonates Anna or
Anika in front of the court, and at this time
(16:50):
neither the daughter of Victor Scala, neither her name nor
her picture have ever been published. Somehow, this whole, this
whole con job worked. The court approved the adoption, and
at that point the doctor has Clara Andredge, Jacob Briaco
(17:10):
and Anika move into a new house in that town
in Kuram. Anika has a normal room from descriptions, it
had quite a few toys and it was painted a
um a happy yellow color. The boys are tied up
and the abuse continues, and a seller and this is
when Edward T, who I have been trying very hard
(17:33):
not to call Mr T over the course of this episode,
discovers the abuse. So let's let's just let all that
sink in for a second. Um, okay, we're back up
to the point again where it's been discovered. Let's talk
about the sisters, Katerina and Clara and what is going
(17:54):
on with them, because none of this makes sense. Let's
start somewhere right. So these sisters both were apparently exhibiting
some signs of mental disorders, and they believed that they
had received some kind of spiritual visions, uh, something that
is giving them higher than regular instructions basically like martyrs. Yeah,
(18:18):
but they did say that they had been duped. They
did so. They said that there when when the police
were discussed had discovered this event, and when it eventually
went to trial, they said that the kids were beaten,
sexually abused, shocked and more. Because the adopted daughter, Anika
was the mastermind behind it, and because thirteen year old
(18:40):
girl a Nika and the mysterious text message email only
doctor they said had brainwatched them, police were not sure
how to proceed. The three children were being held at
a foster home kind of situation, but then Anna or
Anika escaped, and as it turns out, Anna or a Nika,
(19:00):
whatever name you want to call this person was not
a child at all. You see, her real name was
Barbora Skirlova and she was thirty three years old. Wow,
that's a twist, Yeah, it really is. And if you
look at pictures of her, you can find pictures over
her online from various stages in her life, some family
(19:21):
photos from early on when she was with the new family,
as well as later photos of her, and she definitely
almost passes as a thirteen year old girl and we're
talking Christian Baiale levels of physical fluidity, changing of appearance. So,
according to Clara Moarova, Barbora had incited this torture, gradually
(19:47):
convincing the mom and her sister that she was being
victimized by these boys, that they were being unfair, that
they needed discipline, and she said, you know, my doctor
saved my life. This is the only person who can
advise them. And as the investigation unfolded, police realized they
(20:08):
were dealing with more than an isolated case. They realized
there were multiple people involved, so the so called friends
of Anika's who were a party to this torture, such
as the yawns Yon Turrek and Jan Scria, who by
the way, uh turned out to be Barbara Skorlova's brother,
(20:28):
Jan Scria, that is also had known each other previously.
And law enforcement began to really get the picture, um
that there was more at play here than met b I,
and that they may actually be on the hunt for
some kind of cult. And we'll get to that right
after a word from our sponsor, we returned. I guess
(20:58):
this segment of the episode could be called We're going
to use gallows humor, where in the world is Barbora Skirlova.
First she goes to Denmark, but the heat is catching
on to her, so she flees Denmark. And this is
right after this, right after she escapes the foster, and
(21:20):
she was eventually found later in Norway and Oslo, where
she had purportedly originally come from. Right when she visited
this house, she was living with other members of this
organization or cult, and she was living as a thirteen
year old boy named Adam. You can see pictures. She
shaved her head. She went to school for three or
(21:45):
four months. The only class she didn't go to was
p and her teachers didn't want to push it on her.
Apparently she did such a good job that even um
later people who taught her would still refer to her
as Adam. Least believe that Barbara's father, a man named
Joseph for Joseph Scala, maybe the mastermind behind the torture. Uh.
(22:08):
He was suspected by several sources to be the doctor
behind those text messages, but it is not confirmed. But
it is not confirmed. Yeah, so let's look a little
bit more into the character of Joseph Scala. So this
guy is believed to be the head of a group
called the Amps A N T S and these uh.
(22:32):
This group allegedly began as just a hiking collective and
then it ended up later evolving into some offshoot of
this strange, enigmatic, controversial thing called the Grail movement. Yeah,
if we want to pause just for a second there
to explain what the Grail movement is. It started in
(22:53):
Germany in the late nineteen forties and it was the
if follows the teachings of a guy named Oscar Ernst Bernhardt,
who is also known by his pen name Abd Rushin.
He was a self proclaimed messiah and he did not
establish this organization himself. The movement was organized by people
(23:16):
who followed them. They primarily want to disseminate and spread
the work of the book he wrote in the Light
of the Truth, the Grail Message. They're all around the world.
They live in different areas, sixteen countries across Europe. They're
also in twenty two African countries worldwide. They're they're somewhere
in the neighborhood of ten thousand members. But they, for
(23:40):
their part um, were largely considered maybe maybe a little
out there, a little off the beaten path, but not harmful,
you know what I mean, certainly not as harmful as
organizations such as say the Catholic Church, shots fired and
other things. Uh, yeah, it's it's one of those kind
(24:03):
of I don't know, it's just a little more eccentric
new version of religions that you know ends up being
called a cult because that's how we describe cults, right right, Um, So,
from what we understand about this story, this group, the
Ants was part of a larger organization similar to a
scouting group in the US, like Girl Scouts or boy
(24:25):
Scouts or I think didn't boy Scouts change their name
now they're just scouting? Right? I didn't know that. Yeah,
they I think now they will admit um female children
as well. Wonderful, we'll see. I mean the Girl Scouts
are still around. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know.
Tell us what you think about it. Too much money
in those cookies, man, that's true. That's true. Anybody who
(24:48):
ever had to be in the Boy Scouts, you'll understand,
cool understand exactly what I'm saying when I say that
man peddling popcorn just did not compare. Well, those cookies
just sell themselves through popcorn. You gotta have a really
slick line. Yeah, popcorn, you gotta, you've got to work
the angles, sell popcorn. But this this organization, this kind
(25:11):
of scouting organization, they met up regularly. They would go hiking, camping,
maybe twice a month or so. In Boy Scouts, groups
of kids will be organized into smaller groups called troops,
and troops are often going to be named after animals,
like just almost any animal. You can imagine. Rabbit troop. Yeah,
that's great, the rabbits blows. That was one of mine.
(25:34):
You had a troop of boy Scouts called the wee Blows. Yeah,
it wasn't that, just like the many boy Scouts like, yeah,
I know, it was awesome. Just below cub right, um,
I can't remember, is it cub Scout? We blow boy Scouts?
But right, a coveted eagle like Dr Buzz Rendezvous. Isn't
(25:58):
there also life life? Yeah, there's life after eagles the
top one, and then you get life before that, gotcha,
I think? And then after that there are all things
like Order of the Arrow, and then do you want
to be a Scout master? And that's cool, it's interesting.
You know our one of our coworkers and producers Ramsey
(26:20):
junt is an Engel Scout. Yeah, and you're not. I am.
I was gonna say, yeah, I just wanted to in
another life and another life, I paid my dues in
the woods. I came out way more cryptic than I meant.
I meant that I had to go get orienteering, marat
batches and stuff. That's fair. So so this group, the Ants,
was just kind of like one of those yeah, the same,
(26:43):
but kind of like it. They were just called the Ants, yeah,
like the Rabbits to Knowl's examples. So even now, we
don't know very much about the internal escalation that led
this group, that led Joseph Scala and as followers to
go from being a hiking enthusiast group to possibly an
(27:05):
offshoot of this other new spiritual movement. But we do
know that psychological experts studied Barbara Scarlova extensively while she
was in custody, while she's under supervision, and this again
is going to be a situation where we do want
to give a warning about the graphic nature of their findings.
(27:27):
So in their investigation, the way that the trial went
is that the trial didn't really focus on the mysterious
doctor because they couldn't find that person, couldn't prove who
it was, so instead they looked at Clara and Katerina
as the instigators along with Barbara or Anika, and according
(27:53):
to the psychologists, Barbara was the main initiator and manipulator
of the situation. She initiated the abuse by getting the
grown ups quote unquote grown ups, because let's not forget
she was in her thirties to abuse these children. And
when she was arrested in Oslo, Norway, living as thirteen
(28:15):
year old kid named Adam, police also found her diary,
and in her diary, she allegedly described all the details
about her various identities, including how she prepared herself, and
experts said that beyond a shadow of a doubt, this
woman does not have schizophrenia or a similar disease. She
(28:37):
knows what she's doing is wrong, and she can differentiate
between good and evil. And she's wearing multiple identities just
to manipulate people. Yeah, it's not multiple personality disorder anything
to that effect. It's I'm doing this to get something,
and she's obviously successful at it. I mean this, The
amount of effort that's going into these schemes is outrageous,
(29:00):
Like you said, Ben Christian Bale method Meisner kind of
like levels of yeah, prap. Well, and here's one of
the craziest things. You'd think someone like this is a criminal,
mastermind of some sort of genius level of person. Yeah,
but her her i Q levels were tested multiple times
and she consistently came back as around nine, which is
(29:22):
not not a genius. It's I mean, it's it's fine,
it's functioning, but it's you know, I don't know what
do you guys know what your i Q s are,
at least from the tests. I don't know what mine
is either. I'm hoping I'm in the hundred something range
your way up there. I honestly have no idea. We
(29:42):
should all take one. I don't know we have to
go one, two, three. Also, the i Q tests, I'm
sure several folks listening along with this one point out
is just cartoonishly flawed. Well, oh yeah, and here's the
here's the thing. The big question, right she kept scoring
(30:05):
is that because she wanted to score around a good question,
is it an affectation? Right? Because what they also found
was that the experts believe that this person had consciously
chosen to live as a child on all levels on
you know, like we said that like a misner Daniel
(30:27):
day Lewis level where production never wraps in the movie
never ends. This allows her to avoid taking responsibility for
her actions, and they say at the same time, it
allows her to get the attention that she desperately seeks,
because they said she had what's called a histrionic personality
(30:48):
and a strong inclination to manipulative behavior. They also had
sexologists study her. I didn't realize they were called sexologists.
You know, it may be an error of inslation on
my part. I hope not. It's a very straightforward name
for a profession. It's it's a legit thing, psychology, scientific
studies of course. Of course. Um, so the people in
(31:11):
this profession um proved that she definitely has sada massochistic predispositions,
which I could see that as being very clear from
the from her actions and with lesbian and pedophilic orientation,
UM also pretty clear. Yeah. In other words, she means
(31:32):
this means, I guess or kind of tells us that
she is excited by the exploitation and torture of children.
She is sexually stimulated by that, which is that's the
horror that we were talking about at the top of
the show. That's what they call a bad combo. Yeah,
a monster made flesh. I have you know this is
(31:58):
this is the kind of thing that you would maybe
here associated with very monstrous serial killers. Yeah, you know,
like Albert Fish or something. Well, and it gets us
into some of the most most basic but controversial and
difficult to discuss uh topics, which is the whole nature
(32:19):
versus nurture thing of when you you know, when you're
when you're born um or what happens to you what
creates something like that in someone. Generally, my opinion would
be that something happens to you that that person has
made that person is um Things happen to that person
to create that kind of orientation, in my opinion. And
(32:40):
you know, when you think about the doctor, whoever that
person was, if it was, in fact, you know, the father,
you think may before it to be that specific, such
a specific hang up, a specific fetish, I guess, is
a lack of it for lack of a better term, Yeah,
I don't know. It's just a lot of a lot
of serial murderers have either a history of abuse or
(33:05):
a history of brain injury though, absolutely that triggers them.
And then I guess if we're looking at um, maybe
a mental condition like schizophrenia. You know, there have been
people who have committed murders because they have a break
But this sounds so calculated on this person's part. You know. Yeah,
(33:26):
in the in the show I work on outside of
this one um about the killer Keith Hunter jesperson, he
had a head injury. He also had a very manipulative,
abusive father that he kind of cow to owed too
when he was a child. And he also just had
a predisposition to violence, and so it was kind of
(33:46):
a combination of nature to sort of the shows about
is like kind of like pinning down where that divide is,
and you see that in all these cases. But I
agree with you, Matt, that the more abhorrent and um
kind of out there that the predilections are for these people, like,
the more likely that part is they experienced something something
was done to them that they carried with them. That's
(34:07):
that's chilling. And that podcast is Happy Face available now
where you find your favorite shows. We've got a couple
episodes left and we took a break off for the holidays,
but um, it's it's back a strong as me. Twelve
episodes total, so it's look to me, thanks dude. And
as these details emerge. When we first did this video,
(34:28):
we didn't have the benefit of this expert analysis, right,
We didn't find that the first time around, So the
video is much shorter, but we have some additional details
as well as the different specific aspects of this case.
In this horrific event, horrific series of events emerges, the
(34:53):
Grail movement themselves deny any involvement with this sect or
the group, or this community or this dare I say,
this cult known as the Ants, And they also denied
any involvement with other offshoot sets of the movement, sort
of like how um, sort of like how a mom's
(35:13):
in the Muslim world will deny the nation of Islam.
I'll say, that's a different religion. We're a Muslim. There's
something else, you know what I mean? Well, And the
other thing here is the quality and the amount of
filming the cameras that were set up to monitor this abuse.
(35:34):
They were of such a level that it's thought that
perhaps this was something bigger than just uh Barbara up
there as Anika watching it for her own pleasure, or
you know, could it have been somebody else also watching it?
Was there? Yeah? Was there more to this story? And
that I think is the most frightening aspect of this
(35:57):
because that is largely the question shooting upon which our
story ends. Publicly, no one really knows what happened. Somehow
Joseph Scarla escaped. He was never charged with a crime,
just like Kaiser Soz disappeared. His whereabouts are unknown as
(36:21):
we record this. We don't even know if he was
actually the doctor, which I wanted to ask ask everyone,
do you do We think it's possible that, in addition
to impersonating these different people, Barbara herself could have been
the doctor, like with a hidden phone sending text messages
or something. I don't know, because then she did meet
(36:44):
Clara did meet somebody in the car, right, Yeah, so
you have to wonder. We do have good news of
a sort of all the people who are charged in
this trial, Clara, Katerina yan Turak, Hanna Bosova, Yon Scarla,
and his sister Barboris s Glova. All of them were
found guilty and they were all sentenced, but they have
(37:08):
all served their sentences already and they live free somewhere
in the world, at least as far as we could find.
Barboris Skalova was released from prison in two thousand twelve,
and now people believe she's either been living in South
Moravia or a place called Berno, b r and Oh.
(37:29):
The most recent reports show that she is living under
a new name. Uh No longer plays the piano. She
was noted as a talented pianist. She's under the monitoring
of the Probation and Mediation Service or Medication Service. According
to the psychiatrist who observe her, she has severe mental
(37:52):
difficulties and she often appears to switch between one or
more of her previous young male personalities. Here's another thing
to add to that troubling possibility, that breadcrumb of a
larger ring people. She has more more young personalities than
(38:14):
a Nika and or Adam. She exhibits multiple ones, and
is that because she has been she's infected other families
in the past. Earlier we said that she was analyzed
and there were no signs of multiple personalities schnzophrenia. So
is this like calculated? Even more, there is this like
a project monarch thing where something is placed upon her
(38:37):
psyche good god. This story is um the stuff of
nightmares really is. And I know this sounds really messed
up to say, but I would be interested to see
this handled very artfully in a in a film. Maybe
it's too I don't know. Maybe it's almost like giving
(38:57):
short shrift to the victims to even consider making this
into some kind of work of you know, fictionalized account
or whatever like that. But it's just got all the
intrigue and the twists and like you could, Oh my god.
I think there was some I want to say, when
we were working on this few years back, there was
some film that maybe it borrowed aspects of the story,
(39:19):
but I think maybe it was just they were borrowing
the idea of an adult impersonating a child so successfully
for so long. It's the it's called orphan or that's
what it is. It was available like not that long
ago at least, and I don't think it came out
that long ago either. Two thousand nine, Yeah, two thousand nine, Okay,
oh god, that's it's over nine years ago. Uh, we're
(39:44):
all yeah, yeah, but you know, maybe we're aging like
wine or a good cheese, like fine wine, like fine
fine cheese. Tann those tannins are really shown up. So
at this point, unfortunately, this worry is is probably not over.
But this is where the path drops off. We don't
(40:05):
know much else about what's happened. We do know that,
according to the psychiatric reports, while Barbara has stopped playing
piano near as much, she does spend a lot of
time drawing quote very morbid pictures. As for what happened
to this group as possible cult whenever you want to
(40:27):
call them, where the leader is, if the leader exists,
if the so called doctor exists, what their plans are
for other children or other families. For now, it's something
they don't want you to know. It's a it's a
relatively successful conspiracy, and it's something that I'm perfectly happy
to close the book on for today, because geez, the police.
(40:50):
I remember the feeling in when I finished the video.
I didn't ever want to think about this ever again.
And here we are, and here we are. Pull you
back in, Matt, uh, Well we got through it. You're
an intrepid traveler, my friend. We've made it through. Guys,
all of us. We can end on a on a
(41:11):
completely unrelated different note that's not near as depressing Okay, scary, Uh,
here it is. We want to thank Spencer see Schloter,
who dropped by our community page Here's where it gets
crazy and hipped us to an amazing story that I
did not believe it first, even though it's in Time magazine.
(41:33):
It's titled the US military believes people have a sixth sense.
That's that's cool. Yeah, intuition. They the Since two thousand
and fourteen, the Office of Naval Research apparently has embarked
on a four year, three point eight five million dollar
research program to explore premonitions, intuition or what we have
(41:57):
on this show before called Spidey sense. That's right, and
specifically they're looking at it for I was going to
say for use, or looking at it in application to
to apply to sailors and marines, people who are actually
in the fighting force, and or people who are surveilling.
We should do an episode on this. What do you think? Yes, agreed,
(42:18):
a sense that we may that's the word joke. Well,
thank you so much for listening, everybody. Uh, enjoy is
the wrong word. But we hope you have found this
as strange as we have this story. Let us know
if you have any updates on the Korom case or
the case of the ants. Uh, and let us know
(42:42):
if you have found stories in your neck of the
woods that are similar. I know this goes with that saying,
but if you suspect a child, you know, a friend
of of one of your children, perhaps is being mistreated. Anyway,
there are resources for reporting this beyond just calling the police.
I mean, there are you know, people that can help
absolutely in the US and Canada. You can contact the
(43:08):
Child Help National Child Abuse Hotline. Its staff twenty four
hours to day, seven days a week, with professional crisis
counselors and interpreters that can provide assistance and over a
hundred and seventy languages. That hotline is one eight hundred
for a child or one hundred four to two four
four or five three. But if you feel a job
(43:29):
is in imminent danger, you know, call call the police. Yeah,
don't hesitate, Okay, And if you want to call us,
just as a little turn there it was weird after that, Yeah,
and just tell us something maybe a little more lighthearted. Uh,
(43:49):
you can you can call us right now and leave
a message. We are one eight three three st d
w y t k Man. I got out on the
tail in on that nice work. And if you don't
want to do that, you don't want to find us
on Twitter and Facebook and all the other places where
we're mostly conspiracy stuff sometimes conspiracy stuff show. You can
write us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy
(44:12):
at how stuff works dot com.
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