You're listening to Cover Up The Conspiracy Tapes. Before you dive in, if you want to listen to the whole story uninterrupted, you can. Unlock the entire season ad-free right now with a subscription to The Binge. That's all episodes all at once. Unlock your listening now by clicking subscribe at the top of the Cover Up show page on Apple Podcasts or visit getthebinge. Com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. The Binge. Isaac Bonowitz was a young man with round wire-rim glasses, an unruly brown hair that flared out past his shoulders. He'd been a minister of Anton Levet's Church of Satan at the age of 18 and authored the book Real Magic. At just 25, he'd become a leading voice in another type of witchcraft known as neo-paganism. For the past 2,000 years, the major religious forces in the West have been actively trying to stamp out the people and the beliefs of indigenous pagan religions throughout Europe and wherever they went in the world. This is why Isaac Bonowitz had started one of the first civil rights organizations to actively defend people who were receiving this persecution. He called it the Aquarian Anti-Defamation League, or AADL.

Their logo was fist enclosed in a pentagram with the slogan, Never Again, the Burning, in reference to the traditional method of executing witches, burnt at the stake. Two years after starting the AADL, Isaac received a call from a fellow pagan who was in trouble, the owner of an occult bookstore in Dayton, Ohio. He told Isaac he was being mistreated treated by local police officers. They were accusing him of heinous and outrageous acts. He said that he feared for his life. After Isaac got off the phone, he promptly typed up a letter to the Dayton field office of the FBI to inform them about the man's allegations. In the letter, he said that the owner of the occult bookstore went by his religious name, Lance Collins. But during their phone call, the occult bookstore owner told Isaac his real name, John Todd. Yes, the same John Todd who'd been saved and repented against witchcraft. John's call to Isaac Bonowitz came only a year after John had been testifying in churches, evangelizing on television, hosting a book burning, and appearing in Christian comic books. In his testimony, John Todd told Christians he'd left witchcraft for good. Now, he was back at it again.

And this time, he was teaching others, too. This bizarre chapter in John Todd's already bizarre life is one that's often conveniently glossed over by his believers. But it both paved the way for his meteoric rise while also being the thing that ultimately led to his downfall. From Magnificent Noise and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Cover Up, The Conspiracy Tapes. I'm Paul Murphy. Episode 2, Backslide. Everyone who'd ever heard John Todd's riveting story of his Christian salvation from witchcraft knew that he'd been saved by a man repairing a Coke machine when he renounced witchcraft and became a devout Christian. But by early 1975, something had changed. He was no longer speaking at churches about the evils of witchcraft and how he'd been saved. Instead, John was traveling by Greyhound bus to Dayton, Ohio, and he was destitute. Traveling with John was his new wife, Sheila. She was 20 years old, five years younger than her husband. During that time, she joined him as he continued to speak at Christian churches in Colorado and then New Mexico. But suddenly, interesting John's story had fizzled out. By the time they were heading to Ohio, they were desperately in need of food and work.

They returned to Sheila's hometown of Dayton. Between them, they had just two suitcases and three boxes of clothing. During the 1970s, Dayton was known as a model city, the type of middle class, midwestern town where companies would test new products to see how they might appeal to average Americans. By the middle of the year, John secured some stability in Dayton, a job in a bookstore. But this wasn't an ordinary bookstore. It was called the Witcher's Cau and specialized in occult items like books, perfumes, candles, and potions. For the man who'd been telling Christian audiences for the past three years that witchcraft was the devil's work and that a network of witches were planning to take over the United States, it was an unusual career choice, albeit one he claimed to be well qualified for. When Jack Chick heard the news, he immediately called John. They'd formed a strong bond when they collaborated together on the comic book, The Broken Cross. He wanted to know why John had gone back to witchcraft. John said he'd felt betrayed by Christians, that they'd stopped listening to him and wanted nothing to do with him. Well, now, John wanted nothing to do with them.

As Jack would later recall in a letter, he repeatedly urge John to come back to Christ. He blamed himself for John's backslide into the occult, feeling that the pressure John faced after they published the broken cross must have somehow contributed to things. Jack called John my brother, and John asked him to stop calling him that. John didn't want to hear any of it. Instead, he tried to persuade Jack to become a witch like him. After that, they stopped speaking, but Jack continued to worry about John. By the fall of 1975, John had fully embraced his new old status as a witch and had big plans for Dayton. As he had in San Antonio, he secured some attention through the local press via a columnist for the Dayton Journal Herald named D. L. Stuart. In his column called Off the Beat, D. L. Interviewed a number of local characters like Mushmouth Pachete, a pizza eating champion, and a chimpanzee named CoComo Jr, billed as the world's wealthiest chimpanzee. For his next column, D. L. Was visiting this strange new shop on North Main Street called the Witcher's Cau, where he'd arranged to interview John under his new alias.

I was introduced to a man who called himself Lance Collins, who said he was not a witch, but a lizard. That's a male witch. So we did the interview, and I was treating it as a lightheart thing because my knowledge of witches basically was limited to the Wizard of Oz.

Lance told DL he'd been practicing witchcraft for most of his life. He estimated there were over 5,000 witches in Dayton and had ambitious plans for the region. More covens, a witch museum, maybe even a college. Lance, who claimed to be the grand magnus of a local Wicken coven, was already conducting classes on witchcraft, but admissions were very exclusive. He proudly showed DL some of his wares, mostly occult books and mystical paraphernalia. But according to John, who, again, was going by the name Lance in Dayton, most of his inventory was linked to sex.

Sex Apparently, it was a big deal as far as witches were concerned. Lance said, Sex is about 50% of witchcraft. There's no such thing as a virgin witch. That's why we don't have any cranky witches.

Some branches of witchcraft did use sex as part of their rituals, though it was often simulated or symbolic. John went on to claim that the store had experienced some hostility from the local Christian community, but assured DL that witchcraft was a peaceful practice. They don't go around sacrificing animals. It had nothing to do with Satanism. John dismissed this perception, the same one that he'd helped to spread for the past three years as a smear campaign by Christian preachers who objected to his beliefs. For a man who'd staked his entire reputation on leaving witchcraft, it was quite an audacious flip. I mean, what if someone found out? Was he even worried about getting caught? And beyond that, it makes you wonder, did he ever really believe the things he said about witchcraft? Or was it something else entirely that drove him? Either way, according to DL, At that moment, no one really seemed to care.

Despite what he said after the column ran in the paper, did not generate any publicity, any negative publicity at all.

It's hard to know what John's motivation was to be interviewed for DL's column. Perhaps he wanted the harassment to stop. Perhaps he wanted to legitimize his witchcraft practice. Or maybe he just wanted some publicity for his shop or some attention for himself. Regardless, it didn't work at first. But just a few months later, the Witcher's cauldron would become a lightning rod for publicity and scandal. As John was about to learn a valuable lesson from the Christian Bible, you reap what you sow.

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The Hargan women seem to have it all. We were blessed. My mom was amazing. But detectives would soon discover... Inside the house, there were the bodies of two women. A story of betrayal you would struggle to believe if it wasn't true. I am just praying to God, this is a sick joke.

From 48 Hours, this is Blood is Thicker, The Hargan Family Killings.

Listen to Blood is Thicker, The Hargan Family Killings, wherever you get your podcast. According to an account given by John, the real trouble had started after his wife Sheila wrote a bad check. It was October 1975, and one day John and Sheila were visited by a debt collector. He warned that if John didn't pay him twice the amount of the check, he'd have him arrested. And he could do this because as it turned out, the man was a police officer who was running a private collection business on the side.

That certainly seemed to be misconducted by me. I just could not understand why this had not been referred to local prosecutor because it appeared to be the real potential abuse of power.

This is Wes Hills, who was a reporter for the Dayton Daily News.

For police officers to be out there doing private collection would be so intimidating and would lead to the appearance of, You don't pay the bill, you're going to jail. That just seems to me to be a serious abuse of color. So this gave Todd at least some credibility in terms of his claim of harassment.

John had contacted Wes in January 1976 to report that he had been regularly harassed by police for the past few months.

When I dealt with him, he did not appear to be that far out of me. He didn't demonstrate any terribly erratic behavior. I thought he was a bit odd, but he meet those type of people every day.

It was after John reported the two police and they received a light punishment of one day suspension that John started to become what he perceived to be a continued target of police harassment. His store was regularly robbed at gunpoint. On one occasion, John exchanged gunfire with an intruder, wounding him in the leg, but no one was ever arrested and charged. John's work and home had been searched multiple times, and according to him, sometimes without a warrant. During one of these searches, John said that a detective had gone down into the basement of his home, only to find John's ceremonial altar. The detective proceeded to break items around the altar, including his chalice, throwing brass candlesticks against the wall, and scattering salt and incense. The warrant said to seize any, documentary evidence concerning witchcraft. After the police left with eight pieces of paper containing writing of witchcraft and a knife with symbols on the blade, John was later quoted, I'm surprised they didn't bring along a wooden steak and hammer. Beyond just caching bad checks, the police were accusing John of committing much more serious crimes.

Claims against Mr. Todd, that his coven was hiding out run aways and having orgies with girls, with narcotics present, and even sacrificing girls in blood rituals. That seemed to me to be pretty far out there.

While Wes might have found it incredulous, John Todd made no secret of the fact that his brand of witchcraft involves sexual acts. Regardless, John strongly denied the police accusations and said they were, Christian propaganda to discourage membership.

They Again, it's a Bible Belt city in many ways because of its huge Appalachian population, and there would have certainly been a lot of Christian prejudiced. Yet I did see where it would be possible that police and law enforcement would give them a lot more attention than may be warranted simply because of prejudice toward people who claimed to be witches.

One of West's articles published under the headline, Witches Embroiled, received an immediate incendiary reaction. Within hours of the article coming out, John's garage was engulfed in flames and destroyed.

So I thought perhaps somebody tried to send him a message. Mr. God claimed that the attack was typical of the religious persecution of his followers that they had suffered in the past.

Upon inspecting the scene, firemen discovered a gasoline can inside the garage garage with holes punched in it. The firemen told John that they suspected he'd set the fire himself, which John denied. But what if John had set the fire? If he set the fire to his own property to garner sympathy, what was he seeking? There was little doubt that John was being harassed by the debt collecting police officers, but why would he push it further? Was he just desperate for attention? An ego-maniac willing to lie, just be noticed? Maybe there was no further harassment at all. This also wouldn't have been the first time John had created a spectacle around the powerful imagery of fire. He'd learned that fire was an easy way to draw people into what he was doing. Just four years earlier, he'd attracted similar news coverage by burning occult items in a parking lot outside San Antonio. John continued to insist he was not involved in the garage fire. However, he did use it to add a sense of urgency to his harassment complaints. In Wes's follow-up reporting, John said that he'd contacted the Aquarian Anti-Defamation League for assistance. Its President, Isaac Bonowitz, was quoted saying that John's mistreatment was a, quote, common pattern of citizen opposition to witches and wizards while police closed their eyes.

In response, John announced he was organizing a witches rally in Dayton and expected more than 400 attendees, including some of the biggest names in neo-paganism. It seemed John Todd had landed on a bit of a formula. Come to town, stoke paranoia over the perceived threat of outsiders, whip people into a frenzy, and then organize a rally to unify them with him at the center. It was Operation Jesus trek all over again. John even had an advocate, someone with credibility just like Jack Chick, in this case, Isaac Bonowitz. However, this time, things took a significant turn. On Tuesday, February 10th, 1976, John Todd was arrested. Have you ever felt like escaping to your own desert island? Jane Gaskin did exactly that, trading in the family home to begin a new life in the tropics. But she soon discovers that paradise has its secrets. I'm Alice Levine, and this is the Price of Paradise, the island dream that ends in kidnap, corrupt, corruption and murder. Wish you were here? Follow The Price of Paradise now wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to True Spies, the podcast that takes you deep inside the greatest secret missions of all time.

Suddenly out of the dark, it's appear bin Laden.

You'll meet the people who live life undercover. What do they know? What are their skills? And what would you do in their position? Vengeance felt good seeing these People paid for what they'd done. Felt righteous. True Spies from Spyscape Studios, wherever you get your podcasts. When John Todd first reached out to Isaac Bonowitz, Isaac sought the help of another leading figure in the neo-pagan community, Gavin Frost. Gavin, like Isaac, was an activist who was troubled by the treatment of Wiccans in society. And after hearing about John's arrest, both men agreed they needed to travel to Dayton together to investigate the situation for themselves. They may have seen the potential of John to become a post a child for this persecution. Gavin Frost had established the Church and School of Wicca with his wife, Yvonne, which was among the first Wiccan churches in the United States to receive federal recognition. Just two weeks before John's arrest, Gavin had ordained John Todd as a minister in the Church of Wicca and given a charter to John's coven, acknowledging them as an official part of the Church. When Isaac and Gavin arrived in Dayton, They traveled to the Witcher's cauldron to chat with John and Sheila.

The two men were hoping to expose the prejudices of the local police, assist John in his legal troubles, and spread word to their members that this religious persecution was real and unacceptable. That night, John, Sheila, Isaac, and Gavin went out for dinner together to discuss the matter. Very little is known about the specifics of what Isaac and Gavin discovered that night from John. Whatever it was, it initiated an astounding reversal. Shortly after, Isaac and Gavin issued a very different statement to their members. They found no evidence of John's claims of police harassment. And not just that, they said that his rituals, Bore no resemblance to the church. John was immediately ousted from the Church of Wicca. Before leaving Dayton, Isaac and Gavin visited the local FBI offices, where Isaac withdraw his earlier complaint. They described John as psychotic and recommended that he, quote, needs to be investigated by as many different federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies as possible. What could have caused such an intense reaction from Isaac and Gavin? Was he doing something dangerous or toying with things he didn't understand or couldn't control? Did his use of witchcraft frighten them? Or perhaps was he using witchcraft as a cover for other acts?

On July 22nd, 1976, several months after Isaac and Gavin's visit, John pleaded guilty to one charge of contributing to the unruliness of a 16-year-old. In Ohio, unruliness is a legal term that could refer to anything from truancy or disobedience to endangering a young person's health or morals. It would be years later before the charge was revealed to be more sinister than unrulyness. The witches rally that was planned outside City Hall in response to the alleged police harassment, that was canceled, and John Todd was sentenced to six months in prison. While John was in prison, his wife Sheila placed a call to Jack Chick in California, begging him for help. She said John wasn't doing well, but she was happy to tell Jack that they'd recently returned to Christ. It was was once again, a miracle. When one religion abandoned him, he found salvation in the other. As it turned out, God didn't hold a grudge, and neither did Jack Chick. Jack was convinced that John's reconversion was sincere and that his imprisonment was a conspiracy pulled off by Isaac Bonowitz, Gavin Frost, the Dayton police, and even journalist, Wes Hills. He helped Sheila get a lawyer to argue for John's early release.

This led to John only serving two months of his sentence. Upon his release, place, John called back Jack. John wanted to ask Jack for one more favor. John and Sheila were jobless again and eager to warn churches about witchcraft one last time. That's when Jack remembered a church in Southern California. He'd spoken with the pastor, an outstanding man, who'd become increasingly concerned about the occult. Jack picked up the phone and placed a call to recommend John as a speaker. It was a call that would ultimately lead to what would be known as the Todd phenomenon, the catalyst for John traveling across the United States, spreading his message far and wide. Becoming one of the hottest speakers in the evangelical speaking circuit, and ultimately lead to the recording of the influential John Todd tapes. The next time John stepped up to a pulpit to speak to a congregation, He took the lessons from everything he'd learned in Dayton and shared a new version of his story, a new vision for his worldview. John's moment of backsliding had given his story something it never had before, an element of truth. Because here's the thing. I'm not entirely convinced John Todd ever had been a witch before 1975.

If he had, it wasn't any mainstream version of witchcraft. But now, he'd been an ordained Minister of Wicca. He knew the finer details of witchcraft. After all, he'd run an occult bookstore.

My wife, when she was saved, owned the biggest occult store in the United States, the witches called it.

And he'd learned how to sound like a witch, how to behave like a witch.

There were many things that I learned in witchcraft, and many things I taught as a standard teaching in witchcraft. I realized that many things I say are strange to Christians. When I say things, to me, they're everyday things.

He could also claim to genuinely know some of the higher ups in witchcraft and add them to his list of characters while at the same time getting payback for being kicked out of Wicca.

In fact, the leader of the Council 13 and his enforcer, Isaac Bonowich, both members of it, Gavin Frost and Bonowich, came to me and said, We know that Christians don't believe half of what you say. We don't mind to talk about witchcraft because they still think we fly on broomstick. They believe in human sacrifice and Lucifer being God. They believe that peace will only be achieved, as one leader said, Isaac Bonowit said, When the churches are in ashes and the Christians are against the wall, then our God will give us peace.

Sure, he'd have to fudge the dates a little. He'd already said that he was saved in 1972, and he couldn't exactly take that back. But so long as no one discovered his little moment of backsliding, he could pull it off, and the results would be both wildly fantastical and deeply frightening.

There is a mass army within every prison from Coast to Coast. They have been promised weapons, military weapons. The figure at the present is that in the first year, one million people will be butchered. I use that term because that's about how to describe what will happen. I can leave it to your imagination and your prayer life as to who's scheduled to be killed.

Don't want to wait for the next episode? You don't have to. Unlock all episodes of Cover Up The Conspiracy Tapes. Ad free right now by subscribing to the Binge podcast channel. Just click subscribe at the top of the Cover Up show page on Apple Podcasts or visit getthebinge. Com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. As a subscriber, Remember, you'll get binge access to new stories on the first of every month. Check out the Binge channel page on Apple Podcasts or getthebinge. Com to learn more. Cover Up The Conspiracy Tapes is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom of Magnificent Noise for Sony Music Entertainment. Our production staff includes Josie Holtzman and Isaac Kestenbaum, with help from Julia Nat and Tuck Woodson. Sound designed by Sam Baer. The series was fact-checked by Kelsey Kudack. For Sony Music Entertainment, executive producers Katherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. Our show's executive producer is Eric Newsom. I'm your host, Paul Murphy. If you're enjoying the show, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening. There's just so much noise out there right now, and we don't want to add to it.

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