Fear Her (The Zodiac Cult Killer)

Interlude: Exhibit A

U.S. District Court, District of Nevada

EXHIBIT A

TRANSCRIPT: EPISODE #19 OF "TEMPORARY INSANITY" PODCAST

POSTED: 24 JULY 2017; 6 PM

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT]

HOST #1: Yo, yo, yo, welcome to TEMPORARY INSANITY, your one-stop shop for everything real, criminal, and criminally inane. I'm Hamilton Teller.

HOST #2: And I'm Schuyler Alexander, and we've got something low-key real crazy for y'all tonight.

TELLER: A little birdy sent us a message, said a certain Zodiac Cult Killer-you know the name!-is about to make early release from juvie.

ALEXANDER: Just in case you don't remember the case, let me recap. This kid was brought up in the Divine Zodiac Disciples out of rural Wyoming.

TELLER: Isn't that just Wyoming?

ALEXANDER: Do I look like an atlas? Y'all can Google that. Moving on, the DZD was a cult composed of a few thousand, led by a man by the name of Coleridge Coleridge.

TELLER: For real?

ALEXANDER: That's what it says, I shit you not. Anyway, that's the dude and the DZD believed the end of the world was coming and that the constellations, the stars, and astrology, could tell us when it would come and how we should prepare. They were so dedicated they named their children after the signs of the Zodiac: Leo, Scorpio, Aries, all that.

TELLER: Bet nobody ever asked what their sign was.

ALEXANDER: Bet they didn't. So, they lived in seclusion at a compound known as the Stargazer Congregation Community for twenty years. In 2011, one of the children of the group was assigned to serve homemade iced tea to a meeting of the Temple elders. Shortly thereafter, all of the elders in attendance complained of stomach pain and died.

TELLER: We're talking about 40 or 50 people, right? This was no small party.

ALEXANDER: It was all the big wigs. Swoosh, gone. Like that. It was crazy, but it gets crazier, trust me.

TELLER: She ain't kidding, folks. Get your tablets out. Google this ish. It's real.

ALEXANDER: It was a couple of hours before the rest of the compound realized something was up, but by then they had bigger problems. Somebody had started setting fire to the grounds and it was spreading.

TELLER: Wyoming is hot as the ass crack of Satan during summer. Brush fires are common and all it takes is a spark.

ALEXANDER: This was an inferno. All told, 62 people died. Forty-eight from the original poisoning incident and fourteen from the fire.

TELLER: And get this, the girl-it was a girl, all of eleven years old-met the fire trucks at the entrance to Stargazer. She let them right in and showed them where to start battling the blaze. She knew exactly what she'd done.

ALEXANDER: She knew why she did it, too. She said, 'They broke the rules and they had to be punished.'

TELLER: What rule's worth all that?

ALEXANDER: Your guess is as good as mine. The girl didn't say another word about it for six years.

TELLER: But she must have said something if they're letting her out early.

ALEXANDER: They let her out for good behavior.

TELLER: How good's a kid gotta be to get out early after that?

ALEXANDER: She'd have to be a born-again saint.

TELLER: Not sure that would do it either. Maybe she put a spell on them.

[A loaded silence follows.]

TELLER: Should we say the name?

ALEXANDER: Dunno, Ham. She's still a kid.

TELLER: They probably have her going by another name anyway. That's what they do for serious cases like this when there's a minor involved.

ALEXANDER: Guess so.

ALEXANDER (continued): Sis, whatever made you angry enough to kill, I hope you made peace with it. God rest your soul.

TELLER: And God bless whoever meets you next.

ALEXANDER: In other news, what the hell is going on in Florida?

TELLER: America's been asking that since they joined the Union.

[END EXCERPT]