Transcript of S5 E4 - The Buyer New

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I looked at him and I said, Do you ever worry that people come in here for the wrong reasons? And he goes, Oh, no. The Holy Ghost knows right away whether they're here for the right reasons or not.

Jeff Peterson was married to the woman we're calling Carla when she ran off to join the Zion Society and took two of their children with her after selling the others back to their dad for $10,000. During her six years in the cult, Carla's thirst for power and superiority propelled her up through the ranks until she sat at the right-hand of its leader, Arvind Shreeve. Throughout those years, Jeff didn't know the extent of the cult's abuse, but it was obvious to him that something was off and that it was not a place he wanted his kids to be. He was able to buy temporary custody of some of his children, but Carla still had certain visitation rights. Twice a month, they'd leave Jeff to go stay with their mother in Northwood.

The kids would come back, and there was just a lot of weird going on. I still didn't know much.

For nearly six years, Jeff could only stand by as his children were taken from him by people he knew were hurting them.

Because it's visitation. So you send your kids down to a place like that and the kids are mistreated, and they come home. And you know how kids are. They've been mistreated. They're going to act out. But it was every other weekend, they'd come home, and It'd take about a whole week to get them re-arranged. It was literally hell living with that. But then what do you do about it? Nothing you can do. You got to prove it. And I still didn't know how weird they were.

He tried talking to his kids about what happened when they were with their mother, but he says whenever he did, they weren't very forthcoming, and they never said anything that could qualify as evidence he might be able to use in court to get them back for good. Jeff had gone to the police and tried to pursue legal action against Carla. He even met directly with Weber County attorney, Reid Richards, who we've heard from in previous episodes. But the county attorney's office received tons of custody complaints, most of them inactionable. Remember, Richards had heard credible complaints of weird things going on in Northwood for years. But just being weird isn't illegal. It was Aaron Anderson's admission of child abuse that activated a criminal investigation, but Jeff had no knowledge of anything like that going on there. So when they spoke together, Richards heard Jeff out but told him that Without proof of a crime, there really wasn't anything he or his office could do.

I mean, he didn't necessarily not believe me. He says, Well, we can't do anything. You got to prove it. I thought that was your job. He goes, No, you have to bring it to us. Well, how do you do that?

Jeff had an extremely difficult needle to thread. He kept in regular contact with Carla to keep his foot in the cult's door and stay close to them. Maybe they'd slip up and he'd be there catch it. He also continued to try to get information out of his children, but he had to be very careful that no matter what he did, Jeff never gave anyone any reason to suspect his real motives. Otherwise, they'd shut the door on him for good.

So nothing happened because we couldn't prove it.

So how is Jeff going to get the evidence he needs to keep his children safe? Well, the Zion Society, as it turns out, had an Achilles heel. They call it the root of all evil: money.

It's all about power and money. That's all it was, power and money. Join our group, bring your money. You give them everything. You give them all your money. You give them everything. Everything you've got belongs to them.

Anything you came to the cult with got sold. Family heirlooms, wedding rings, anything. And that money was given to Arvin. Some of the cult members had jobs out in the community, and their paychecks went straight to Arvin. Another major source of income for the group was its numerous side hustles vehicles, overseen by Arvin's loyal Lieutenant, Carla. But the cult's coffers were beginning to run dry. So the Zion Society embarked on a new business venture, sewing and selling sexy lingerie, Under a brand they named Sweet Things. I've already talked about Sweet Things, though not by name. The first time anyone from the Zion Society cult crossed paths with Erin Anderson was while Erin was working at her aunt Judy's Beauty Salon in late 1989.

We started to do what was called Body Wraps in the salon.

That's aunt Judy. You heard a little bit of this in episode 2. Body Wraps was a beauty treatment Judy's Salon offered that involved rubbing a supposedly cellulite melting cream on areas her customers wanted to firm up, usually the hips, thighs, or buttocks. Then she'd wrap them in plastic wrap, and while the cream worked its magic, the women would lie down on toning tables.

They were like an exercise table. There were six of them, so we'd lay them on there and let them cook whatever they did.

But Judy ran into a problem. How can I say this? Judy found herself competing with the fabric from more traditional fullback undergarments when attempting to apply the alleged fat burning bomb to her customer her's backsides. She told the woman who sold her the cream, she was having a hard time getting it everywhere she needed to get it.

She said, Well, I know where you can get some G-strings, which will help the bottocks. I said, Okay. So she gave me a number. I called and ordered probably a dozen, and they were delivered by Carla.

Those G-strings came from the Zion Society's new Sweet Things' Lingeria business. And delivering that order was the reason Carla stepped into Aunt Judy's salon in the first place. Though Carla and the other women eventually set their sights on Aaron Anderson, Judy says Aaron was not their initial target.

It was not Aaron that they wanted. They wanted my salon. They wanted me and my salon because they had all these little businesses. They wanted my license to buy their shampoo.

Auntie Judy had a business license that enabled her to buy beauty and wellness products at wholesale, and Carla wanted access to those cheap prices so she could resell items at a greater profit. Now, Judy caught a whiff that something was off with Carla and her associates almost immediately, so she wasn't interested in striking any deals with them, and she never did. But Carla was determined to build up her fledgling lingerie business, so she took out print ads and local publications and tried networking with other business groups around Ogden, but nothing seemed to get the results she was hoping for. So one day, in the fall of 1990, Carla called her ex-husband and asked him if he knew anyone who might be able to help. And that is when the years of keeping the lines of communication open finally paid off, and Jeff Peterson found the window of opportunity he'd been waiting for. I'm Aaron Mason, and this is Gardens of Evil: Inside the Zion Society Cult. Episode 4, The Buyer.

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Philip passed on November 15th of 2015, but he was the brains behind all of it.

Meet Sheryl Nogle. She is the wife of former private investigator, Philip Nogle.

He was a really amazing individual. He was raised on a farm in in Kansas, and he solved his first crime when he was nine years old.

People were placing coins on the railroad tracks along young Philip's walk to school, which, while generally harmless, was technically illegal, and Philip began to notice the same pickup trucks parked around where this was all happening. So he jotted down their license plate numbers and took them to the cops, who ran the plates and caught the perpetrators.

Of course, the Sheriff's office in Kansas took all the credit for it, but he's the one that led him to it. So that was his first investigation.

Sheryl and Philip met in their home state of Kansas when she was 30 and he was 36.

But before that, he had lived in Las Vegas. Of course, I say BC before Sheryl.

One of the jobs Philip had in Vegas was working undercover for the casinos.

And also At the same time, he worked for the IRS undercover to check on the casinos. So he was in a precarious situation.

That's putting it mildly. Vegas doesn't like it when you play both sides. Philip had an associate who, while out drinking one night, let it slip that he and Philip were both double agents working with the federal government, which was not a smart thing to do. Not long after, the associate went to meet up with someone.

And they killed him. And then his wife got a call and said, You tell Mr. Nogle, I hope he gets the message.

He did. Loud and clear. So they left Sin City and headed back to Kansas, where Philip started a business doing something called skip tracing, which basically means you find people who don't want to be found. He was hired by an attorney for a big organization and worked with him while Sheryl stuffed envelopes and did more of the office work. They eventually got married and decided to move to Utah, where Philip started his own private investigator business. Sheryl handled the administrative duties. Meanwhile, Jeff Peterson's divorce from Carla was finalized. He remarried, and he and his second wife, we'll call her Kate, had been trying to figure out what was going on in the cult behind closed doors for years, trying to find evidence of anything illegal he might be able to use in his custody case. But he was having a hard time.

Because nobody's talking, really.

Jeff tried everything, the police, social workers, news reporters, everything he could think of to get his kids out of there. But it all went nowhere. Until that day when he was contacted by his ex-wife, Carla.

She comes to me and she says, We want to manufacture lingerie. We want to sell it. Would you help us find a market? I thought, Boy, I sure would. Absolutely. I told her, Yeah, I'll help you. I was like, Oh, my gosh, you got to be kidding me. That's when the PI comes in.

I don't know who referred Jeff to us, but they asked if they could come talk to Philip, which they did.

Jeff told Philip all about the Zion Society, Sweet Things Lingeria, and how Carla had asked Jeff if he had any leads to drum up some business. They were going broke.

My husband came up with the idea that we needed a female investigator to go in. And Jeff asked, Well, do you have a female investigator? And he goes, Yes, I do. And I looked at him and I said, No, we don't. He says, Yes, we do. You. And I'm like, Whoa. No, no, no, no. I do not. You do the investigations. I'm just the Girl Friday. So I'm like, I don't know where to even begin.

But Philip had a plan. He told Jeff, Call Carla and tell her you ran into an friend in Vegas who had some contacts in the casino business. So Jeff did just that. He called Carla and told her he couldn't promise anything, but she should expect a phone call from someone in Vegas soon.

Philip always said there's two things that will pique people's interest, sex and money. I would be a buyer from Las Vegas for the topless bars and the strip clubs to come in and buy their lingerie, which they bid on immediately.

Sheryl could almost hear Carla salivating over the phone at the prospect of selling large quantities of their linger to the flourishing exotic dancer industry in Las Vegas. It was exactly the windfall they were looking for.

And of course, I was going through a tragic divorce, and he had a lot of money.

Not only was Sheryl playing the perfect business partner, she was also pretending to be a woman in a troubled relationship, a type of person the Zion Society frequently targeted. And if that wasn't enough, Sheryl also mentioned that she stood to walk away from her impending divorce with a sizable quantity of cash. But Carla and Arvin's greed blinded them to the truth. The woman they were talking to was not at all who she said she was.

A person, when they are going in as an alias, or undercover, needs to have something that they can recognize, because if someone said another name and that's not your name, you wouldn't respond. So we came up with, My middle name is Suzanne, and my maiden name is Barons. So I would probably recognize those two names if somebody spoke, especially in this situation. So I went in as Suzanne Barons.

Suzanne, quote, unquote, said She had a layover in Salt Lake City the following week, but if Carla was available, she'd move her flight and rent a car from the airport to come check out the operation in Ogden. Carla readily agreed.

And so we made the appointment. I asked that I could video them because I needed to show my buyers what they were selling.

No problem, Carla said. Sweet Things was going to put on a fashion show just for her.

And so they said, Oh, yeah, we'll set up a show for you. And I said, Great. So I was allowed to bring in the video recorder and the still camera after I got in the door.

After Sheryl, a. K. A. Suzanne Barons, made her appointment with Carla, her husband, Philip, got to work legitimizing her cover story, and the two of them really went the after a mile. He booked a round trip ticket from McCaren International Airport in Vegas to Salt Lake City International. The day before their meeting, Sheryl actually drove the 400 or so miles to Las Vegas, booked an airport her hotel room for the night, and the next morning, boarded a Delta Airlines flight to SLC. When she landed less than 90 minutes later, she headed straight for the rental car counter.

We ran at the car from the airport so that if they ran the tag or they saw that it wasn't from Utah County. And Philip told me, Don't take anything in with you, like your purse or anything, to identify you, because These are the type of people that could snatch it and go through it just to find out who you really are.

Something Sheryl did keep with her was her boarding pass. She stuck it in her notepad and planned that it may just fall out at some point during her visit and show the correct date and time to support her story. She left the airport and drove the rental car up to Ogden for her meeting with Carla. This was it. There was no turning back. And no room for error. Were you scared going into this?

Well, yes and no. I knew I was there for one purpose and one purpose only, and it was to get those kids out. And so I was going to do whatever it took to do that. But my husband, I said, Well, what happens if something goes wrong? But he was sitting just around the corner, and he said, All you have to do is just leave, and I'll be right there. Just run out the door, and I'll be right there.

But we already know the Zion Society was super paranoid. They had lookouts and connected security systems, and always seemed to know when someone from outside was in the neighborhood. I asked Sheryl about her late husband. How did he not get seen? Because from what I hear, they were pretty-Oh, you got to know, Philip, he was Mr. Sleuth.

He could follow you and you would never know you're being followed. He was just good. In fact, he and I were co-following somebody one day, and I was behind, and he was ahead of the guy because he could sense where he was going. He just had that neck.

Philip was already in place when at around 4: 00 PM on November 16, 1990, Sheryl Nogle drove her rented car into the Northwood subdivision.

Of course, driving into the neighborhood was interesting because I had not been up there before, so you didn't quite know what to expect. But it was just such a clean area because of the landscaping business that he had and his female slaves to take care of everything. I mean, everything was so pristine and quiet. And, of course, you never saw any children at that time running around.

She pulled into the driveway of one of the sister council houses.

When I drove up, there were all these girls on the front step, and like I said, they are all smiling and waving like the Stephord wives, glassy-eyed. It was something else.

Sheryl put the car in park, shut off the engine, and was just beginning to gather her things, like the still and video cameras she brought to capture evidence, when an older man in coveralls appeared suddenly right outside her window.

And that's when I was starting to stuff stuff under the seat so that they didn't find my purse and all the maps and stuff I had on the seat. And as I'm doing that, I'm rolling down the window and I'm like, Oh, hi. Am I at the such and such address? Yes. I said, I'm looking for Carla. I'm here from Las Vegas as a buyer to check your lingerie business out. And he goes, Oh, yeah. Well, I'm Arvin.

What were your first impressions of Arvin?

Just your normal, average, older man. He looked very clean in his coverallss. He wasn't dirty at all for a landscaper, but he just looked like one of the gardeners. I said, Oh, okay. Well, it's nice meeting you because I act like I didn't know who he was because that was part of the ploy. He was, of course, checking and asking questions. But I passed the test and he opened the door for me and had me go up to the front and help me carry things in.

Sheryl, or should I Suzanne Barons, walked past several women who were out working in the yard, and she met Carla at the front door. Carla escorted her inside and introduced her to a couple of the women who would be modeling some of the sweet things offerings during the fashion show.

Of course, they were all running around very skimpy. They had not many clothes on because their purpose was, A, to put on a good show for selling, B, to try to recruit me to stay.

But when she looked around, Sheryl noticed something.

The home was pristine. I mean, I don't think there was a speck of dust in it. Not a speck.

It was alarmingly clean, not just tidy, completely and totally spotless. Not a loose item out on a table, not an off-kilter plate in the China cabinet, nothing. Apparently, Arvin's perfectionism wasn't limited to the immaculate landscaping. Remember, Carla had told Erin Anderson when she first arrived, Zion is a place of order, cleanliness, and beauty. Their homes are pleasant, orderly, and clean. Their yards and gardens are well maintained, beautiful, and productive. Sheryl was a stranger in Arvind Shreve's inner sanctum, his lair, and he had complete and total control over everything in it, everything Everything was exactly the way he wanted. Anyone who was there was because Arvin wanted them to be. Carla showed Sheryl to her seat across the living room as two of the models came into the room completely naked, looking for their bodysuits. Now, I'm not sure who those two were. Sheryl doesn't remember, so I don't know how old they were exactly, but I do know the models were a mix of adult women and under age girls, including then 16-year-old Andrea.

Well, I started sewing when I was young, and so I already knew how to sew pretty well when I was 12.

That is Andrea, one of the Zion Society survivors we met in episode 2. She lived in the cult from ages 12 to 17.

I don't know at what point during that time we started Sweet Things, but when he was chastising us one time about how we weren't sewing it fast enough or getting it going fast enough, I essentially just offered to run production. I just came up with a production schedule where everyone could participate. So he just knew that I was a go-getter, and he just let me have it.

Andrea was not the only child whose labor was used in the manufacturing of sweet things, by the way. But even though she was basically the one in charge of making the lingerie, she was worried she might be left out of the show because of the rigid physical standards Arvin required of all the women and girls of the Zion Society.

I remember being on the edge of what was considered my goal weight, and me really, really wanted to participate in the fashion show we were going to provide for the rep.

We'll talk about goal weights in the next episode.

And wanting so badly to be part of it and feeling special that somehow Arvin decided that, okay, you're a few pounds overweight, but we'll allow it.

All Andrea wanted to do, all anyone in the Zion Society wanted to do, was impress Arvin. He took every opportunity he could to use that desire, a desire he had brainwashed into them to control them. It reminds me of human traffickers who get their victims addicted to a drug and then withhold that drug until they do what they're told. Only in this case, it's not heroine, it's Arvin's approval. Securing this deal for the business, for Arvin, was guaranteed to get them their fix.

We were super duper excited and considered it to be just a gift from God that he had gifted us with this rep that was going to help us. We're golden. We got this.

We got this.

Obviously, we had no idea she was undercover. No clue.

Showtime was approaching.

Carla and I sat down and talked, and I got my camera and everything ready to tape. Then the fashion show began.

Erin Anderson, in what would end up being her last few months in the cult, stood off to the side of a temporary curtain that had been built in the back of the living room at a hallway opening to the rest of the house. Erin's outfit was very professional, business-like. She wore a light blue, half-sleeved sweater with a white shirt collar that peaked out at the neck and a navy blue pencil skirt. She began with an introduction.

I like to welcome you to the Sweet Things Fashion Show.

I have their fantasy client, Bonjolais.

This company was designed to help them keep the home fire burning and their relationships alive and growing. As you can hear, the audio quality isn't very good. After this intro, Aaron presses play on a boombox and becomes quite difficult to hear over the soundtrack of fun, upbeat '80s pop and country songs. This is Shelle, the youngest singer on this ship. She's modeling a since-growth fantasy. But as the music played, the models, both underage girls and young adult women, came out one by one from behind the curtain as Erin commented on each outfit, narrating like it was a runway fashion show.

Explaining the costumes, and they'd come out like they had a cowgirl one that had a hat and a a cowgirl-looking linger with boots and a lasso, and they really acted it up. Then they had a pirate, if I remember right, and they had a sailor.

We had some crazy designs, man. I think I was wearing sheer light pink lace, and it had some a top section and a long, flowing lace thing.

A few things stood out to me as I watched this video. The models all wore flesh-colored bodysuits, like one-piece swimsuits, under their linger. I don't know why. My guess is they planned on using these fashion shows to pitch their product to legitimate businesses, so they toned it down for outsiders. I do know it meant that there was technically no actual nudity in the evidence Sheryl, aka Suzanne, was collecting. But there was another thing that really surprised me. I've been working on this podcast for nearly two years and have known known about this fashion show since the beginning, but I hadn't seen the video until recently. Everything I'd heard about it aligned with Arvin's teachings about being flirty and daring and overtly sexual. These women and girls were groomed to be exhibitionists, so I was expecting a pretty salacious scene. But I was taken aback by their demeanor. They all looked really nervous. Not exactly a lot is riding on this nervous, like they wanted to close an important deal. It just felt more like gun to your head, forced fun. Like they knew if they messed up, something really bad would happen. Maybe someone else would have a different interpretation, but that's what it seemed like to me.

I feel like Carla's daughter was involved, and she was, I believe, one year younger than me.

Carla's 14-year-old daughter was involved.

She had this skimpy top on and this thong. And that's when I took the still pictures.

As Carla and Jeff's daughter danced around, Sheryl knew that the footage she was capturing was proof that at minimum, Jeff's underage daughter was being sexualized. But she could tell there was more going on there behind closed doors. It was only the tip of the iceberg. This was no longer just about Jeff's children. Sheryl realized there were dozens of kids there who were in serious danger, and Suzanne Barrens was going to have to gather more evidence and go even deeper into the Zion Society to save them. After the fashion show, while Sheryl was packing up her things, Carla invited her to see the warehouse where Sweet Things made their lingerie. It was only a few minutes away.

It was like a sweatshop with all the women in there and kids sewing and cutting and putting together. It was just like you were in a sweatshop.

It was nearly time for Suzanne to head back to Vegas. When Carla mentioned she registered for a booth at an upcoming women's business expo in Ogden and was going to put on a fashion show. Carla hoped they'd be able to sell some product and develop a few local connections, and she invited Suzanne to come visit. Sheryl had a way back in. She told Carla she'd be happy to join them, and did a few weeks later. During her stay, she and Carla went to grab some lunch.

She was, of course, trying to recruit me and telling me about everything. I was asking questions, and they had an alarm system set up that if any of them got in trouble or somebody tried to get in the homes that weren't supposed to be, that this alarm would go off and everybody would come with their guns to protect and that type of thing. She said, We are all taught to use the guns, and we're not taught to maim. We're taught to kill.

Even the kids?

Even the kids.

Were you ever afraid of being found out?

I don't think I ever stumbled over myself, except at the women's expo. There was a gentleman that just happened to be there from Las Vegas. Of course, he started questioning me where we lived and all this. I'm just there. I got a little… He said something about Campbellback Mountain. How far are you from that? I'm like, Well, we're a long ways. We're just a long way. I did stumble over that. But other than that, I did pretty good.

With her multiple returns to the Zion Society, Sheryl's alter ego, Suzanne Barons, was becoming less of a stranger and more of a trusted face. She was shown around the neighborhood and even invited to have meals in their homes.

This was the fourth time I've been in. I've eaten there three times, and they always brought the food from the other house, and it was Arvin's wife that would bring the food over. Then she would serve it and act like the waitress, and and everything. Then she would leave while we were eating. Then we would get up, and that's when I toured the other homes, and then they would take all those dishes back to the other home. So nothing was ever cooked in this home. Nothing was ever clean as far as food, dishes, that type of thing. I doubt that there was any food in the refrigerator or cupboards in this home. It was like a model home.

Sheryl was more or less being wined and dined by the group, but that came with some major risks. If she ever slipped up or was found out somehow, there's no telling what might happen. But it also came with some perks. She was given extraordinary access for someone who wasn't a member of the cult and was one of the rare outsiders who ever got to see what things were like on the inside. In fact, one day, she went inside the children's dormitory.

Those poor kids, they were just like puppets. They had no expression on their face except the same look. They weren't allowed to speak. Their beds, you could have flipped a nickel like this army on them because there wasn't a wrinkle in them. They were dressed very properly. Everything was, Yes, ma'am, no ma'am, that type of thing. They all had certain things that they were doing to show me, I guess, that they were okay, but I could tell that they were under control. Of course, I taught school and raised a family me. I know kids, and they weren't normal, unfortunately. It was very sad.

Why did they let Sheryl see so much? The Zion Society was notoriously tight-lipped and closed off. Jeff Peterson, remember, had spent nearly six years trying to get anything out of them. I think the answer is simple. Greed. Cult leaders seem to always want the same three things: power, sex, and money. And Arvin's greed clouded his judgment, blinded him to the risk of allowing a non-member so much access. But money was only one of the things Arvin was after. He wanted power and sex, too. And he wanted Suzanne Barons to join the Zion Society. So Arvin Shreeve, the decorated persuader, master orator, and former LDS missionary, called upon all the skills and techniques he'd learned and sat Sheryl down after dinner one night for a recruitment presentation he'd developed. It had flip charts and visual aids, all the bells and whistles. Cheryl Well, asked if it would be okay for her to record the presentation. That's fine. I have nothing to hide, said Arvin.

So they were recruiting me to come in. Now, Carla was sitting across the room in a chair from Arvin and I who were sitting on each end of the couch. Of course, we're going through this, Phil, and all of a sudden, I looked at him and I said, Do you ever that people come in here for the wrong reasons? And he goes, Oh, no. The Holy Ghost knows right away whether they're here for the right reasons or not. Now, that's where I about lost it because I'm like, You fool. You have no idea. Your Holy Ghost is totally broke.

In total, Sheryl Naugle visited the Zion Society four times and was privy to things no outsider had seen. She spent nearly all of her time there alongside Carla, and while she never witnessed any physical or what might be legally considered sexual abuse, she did see and was able to document children in clearly inappropriate and lewed sexual situations. Each time she returned from spending time with the cult, Sheryl and her husband, Philip, would sit down together and write down everything she had learned. When their investigation was over, Philip compiled all of the information into one final report.

So he wrote the poured up when we finalized everything and gave them the tape and the pictures and everything to Jeff. And so then he took it from there.

Jeff took the evidence and immediately contacted Carla. He told her he wanted custody of their two remaining children right now. And Carla told him the same thing she told him every time he said that, basically, screw you. But this time was different. Jeff told her he now had proof of the abuse and exploitation that was happening in the Zion society, specifically with their daughter, and that if he didn't get what he wanted, he was going straight to the authorities. Carla, She said she'd get back to him, and within hours, called Jeff with an offer. She said she'd turn over the children, but Jeff had to sign a legal document saying he wouldn't talk to anyone about what he knew. Jeff was aware his kids weren't the only ones being abused, but what else could he do? They knew he was on to him now, and if he didn't grab them while he could, this might be his last chance. So they made the deal. Jeff and Carla went to an attorney's office and signed the custody transfer with the condition that Jeff would not talk to law enforcement or anyone else.

So I go down, North aug, and I pick him up.

Jeff went to Northwood to get his teenage daughter and his son, who Carla was pregnant with when she left to join the cult. His son, who Jeff had only met once before.

He thought Arvin was his dad, so she didn't want him to know who I was. I did meet him once, and I was warned not to tell him who I was.

By the way, Carla was the one who arranged that meeting, and to this day, Jeff doesn't know why. She was given visitation rights to their kids who lived with Jeff, but Jeff had no legal right to see the two who lived with Carla.

I'm thinking, he's five. You take a five-year-old away from his mom, what's he going to do? Scream? He grabbed my hand, walked off like he knew me from forever. Not a tear on him. And he didn't know who I was. I met him one time before, and he walked away with me, walked away with his suitcase, dry-eye'd. He had no attachment. That's unbelievable.

After knowing his father for only four days, Jeff said his son told him he never wanted to go back to living with the group and made his dad promise he'd never send him back there. Jeff and his wife, Kate, felt very strongly that sexual abuse had happened and was happening in the cult. And after only two weeks, the young boy confirmed their worst fears.

I took him shopping, and we were running around together.

This is Jeff's wife and the boy's stepmom, Kate Peterson.

And he started to basically vomit. Everything that happened in there, it just started coming out of his mouth. And he described the king and the queen. I asked him, What on earth does a king and a queen mean to you? And he told me, Exactly. And he said, The King made him dressed like a girl. And I said, Okay, did you feel like a girl? He says, No, I'm not a girl. I said, Okay, did this make you uncomfortable? He says, Yeah, it made me sad.

He had recurring nightmares about being chased by rats trying to eat him and by a monster with Arvin's face until he could turn into an eagle and fly away. Jeff promised his son he would never let anything like that happen to him again. Then, he and Kate set about trying to show their son what home and family was supposed to be.

We threw a birthday party for him. He'd never had one. He didn't know there was such a thing. He was in heaven. He'd never had a family dote over him because those kids, they're just herded down there. So it was totally for him.

Jeff now, finally, had the legal authority to keep his kids away from the Zion Society for good.

No more visitation. Yeah, it was wonderful. We finally got our lives, and it straightened a lot out. The kids will never be right. None of them. They're all damaged from it. But at least we got our family back, and we didn't have to deal with that anymore.

We've got two main stories happening simultaneously, and I want to talk about the timeline for a second because everything is about to collide together. Story one is Jeff Peterson's fight for his children. Story two, Aaron Anderson's interviews with Detective Mike King and the ongoing police investigation into the Zion Society. Aaron stayed in the cult for another several months after the fashion show until she fled Northwood and reunited with her aunt Judy, sometime in May 1991. Only a few days after that, Aaron joined her aunt to give her testimony in a deposition for Jeff in his case against Carla. Now, This is slightly before the noggles wrapped up their investigation, so Jeff was still compiling any evidence he could and wasn't yet bound by his agreement to stay silent. Then two months after that deposition, in July 1991 was when Aaron first walked into the Ogden Municipal Building and introduced herself to Detective Mike King. Aaron is telling law enforcement everything she knows, but they need evidence to back up her story. And Jeff has evidence but isn't allowed to tell anyone his story as a condition of his custody arrangement.

Because we were so concerned that children were being injured in this cult, we were moving quickly. We were working 18, 20-hour days, and we were trying to find other witnesses that might corroborate what Erin was talking about. Because, again, just because we have some eyewitness testimony of what happened without the corroboration of other pieces of really important evidence, it becomes really hard to prove. I don't think at that point I doubted anything that she was saying any longer. It was more about corroborating and bringing it all together.

During one of their interviews, as Mike and Detective Dave Lucas were listening to Aaron talk about some of the children who were being abused, one particular child's name stuck out to Mike. A 14-year old girl with the last name, Peterson. Mike had read that deposition Aaron had given a few months earlier and recognized the girl's name as the daughter of Jeff Peterson. So he excused himself and went down the hall to speak with Weber County attorney, Reid Richards. Again, Jeff's earlier pursuit of legal action against Carla included a visit with Reid Richards, but the county attorney's office got complaints like that all the time.

It's usually, in fact, nearly always not one that involves criminal activity. Sometimes it's things like, She's taking my kids, or, He's taken my kids without permission, and it was against the custody order. Well, is that a kidnapping, or is that something that ought to be handled in the civil court? It's a close question, but for the most part, probably 80% of those that come into a county attorney's office with those type of complaints are ones that are sent back to the civil arena.

But Mike King was hoping the Peterson name might ring a bell with the county attorney. So he told Richards what he'd just learned.

He said, I do remember that name. And thankfully, he was a fellow who kept a lot of records, and he went right to his filing cabinet. I remember his filing cabinet was against this big window that overlooked the city parks.

The same parks Arvin had transformed decades before.

And as I stood next to that thing, looking and admiring the beauty of the parks, he was thumb going through volumes of Manila envelopes, and he finally pulled out a file folder, and on there he had Jeff's name.

As I looked at that file, it looked like I'd sent him away just the same way I had the saying, You've got to get more evidence before there's any crime that we can look into here. I'd suggested to him that maybe you ought to get a private investigator.

That's what was the stepping stone to then go and look into Jeff and Kate Peterson.

Mike returned to his office, and after that day's conversation with Aaron wrapped up, Detective Lucas went off to verify some of the things they'd learned that day, while Mike tracked down a phone number for Jeff Peterson.

When I made the phone call to Jeff, he was very willing to have some superficial conversation. But as soon as I started prying more into anything that he might know about a private investigator or anything else happening, he said, I'm in a real jam here because I can't talk to you about this thing.

Jeff told Mike about the arrangement he'd made with Carla, about exchanging his children for his silence.

My response to that was, If you free of any legal encumberments, would you be willing? And he said, Oh, would I ever?

Within 24 hours, Mike had an affidavit signed by a judge in his hand and Jeff and Kate Peterson in his office. The Petersons signed the document, which gave them complete immunity from any challenges against their speaking out. So they opened the floodgates.

They had been through this rodeo enough times in the civil courts that they came in with documentation to back up what they had to say. I was handed the videotape taken by the private investigator, showing the sexualization and the exploitation of the children.

And he was put in contact with the private investigators, Philip and Sheryl Naugle, who cataloged and detailed every step of their investigation and were able to corroborate Aaron's testimony with hard evidence for the first time. Over the next days and weeks, detectives Mike King and Dave Lucas worked tirelessly and in secret.

We were interviewing round the clock, trying to do this and keep it all contained because of the fear that there might somehow be information leaked out and we'd lose our victims or our witnesses.

They got what they hoped would be enough evidence to approach a judge for warrants to be able to enter the Zion Society's homes in Northwood, rescue the children, and arrest their abusers, including Carla and the so-called Prophet, Arvind Shreeve. Aaron had drawn maps of all the homes and who lived where and what happened behind those closed doors. But with all the interconnected security systems and stockpiles of weapons and ammunition, they weren't going to just be able to walk up and knock on a few doors. If the alarm was sounded, children could be taken away and evidence destroyed. This would have to be done quickly without warning, all at once. The clock was ticking, and after a judge granted him the warrants he needed for eight of the cult's twelve homes, Mike set about making a plan. Only 24 days after Aaron Anderson gave law enforcement its first glimpse into the Zion Society, they would be exposed to the entire world. A raid at dawn. If you or someone you know is experiencing sexual violence, contact the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network at RAINN. Org. That's R-A-I-N-N. Org. Or call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656 Hope.

Both services are free, confidential, and available 24/7. Gardens of Evil: Inside the Zion Society Cult was written, narrated, and audio-produced by me, Aaron Mason. Original music by Allison Leighton Brown. No generative AI was used in the writing or production of this podcast. My sincere thanks to the entire Gardens of Evil editorial team. Your feedback was invaluable. Gardens of Evil is based on the book Deceived: An Investigative Memoir of the Zion Society Cult by Michael R. King, available at profilingevil. Com on Amazon or Ingram Spark. Mike donates all of his proceeds from the book and this podcast to fund child advocacy efforts and criminal justice scholarships. Check out Mike's podcast, Profiling Evil, where he explores unsolved criminal cases from around the world and dives deep into the minds of predators. Find Profiling Evil on YouTube or wherever you get podcasts. Executive producers, John Goforth and Jeremy Seynen. Gardens of Evil is a production of the Gamet Podcast Network.