Latest podcast in ‘American Nightmares’ series explores The Zion Society cult

You know, there had been so many rumors swirling around the neighborhood. Most of those came from ex-husbands who were complaining about wives who had joined the cult, that they were keeping their children from them. And when they came to law enforcement, our response initially was that it was a civil kind of an action.

We encouraged them to go back and try to fight out custody issues in the courts. But over time, more things started to leak out. But again, they always seem to point back to civil and custody kinds of battles, until one day when a woman walked into my office and that kind of blew the whole lid off of this thing.

You know, I tried to walk away from the case, although I went on and became involved at the attorney general’s office leading a ritual crime task force. And so I ended up moving from the idea of being a property crimes investigator, which I loved at the time, to becoming a sex crimes and serial predator investigator. And so over the course of many years at the attorney general’s office, I had a team that did nothing but investigate ritual abuse and organized closed societies.

The thing about this case that I could never get rid of is that although we put 12 people in prison and broke up this group of 120 people, rescuing 32 kids, I mean, it was just crazy to think back on that. I was amazed at the number of people from that cult that went on to join other closed societies around the community or the state of Utah — some joining polygamous groups, others joining end of times doomsday cults and others. So I started to focus more on the mentality of someone who is sucked into this kind of ideology than just this case alone.

You know, we lay the groundwork of this thing, but we go back 10 years before I ever knew they really even existed. And we explore a young couple who went in and moved into the neighborhood, 22-year-old kids, and they were immediately love bombed by others in the community who came in and started finishing their yard off, helping them landscape, building out their basement to help hold storage for food items.

And they really capitalized on this idea of doomsday mentality, of preparing for the end of times, and how this couple didn’t talk to each other, how the husband said, ‘I just kept thinking my wife was really into this, and I love my wife.’ And the wife was thinking, ‘My husband must really think this. But this is the craziest group of people I’ve ever come across.’

And it wasn’t until months later, in fact, more than a year later, that the couple finally talked and said, what have we gotten ourselves into? And that’s where this thing lays out the groundwork, and what this self-proclaimed prophet who led the group, Arvin Shreeve, learned along the way, as he started initially building this group, and how he evolved as a predator.