S4 E6: Learned to Fight Back in my Dreams

[0] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to something was wrong early and ad -free right now.

[1] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[2] I'm Dan Tversky.

[3] In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York.

[4] A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms, and spreading fast.

[5] What's the answer?

[6] And what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

[7] Hysterical.

[8] A new podcast from Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios.

[9] Binge all episodes of hysterical early and ad -free on Wondery Plus.

[10] Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences.

[11] Many episodes discuss topics that can be triggering, such as emotional and physical abuse, suicide, and murder.

[12] Please take caution when listening.

[13] I am not a therapist or a doctor.

[14] Opinions expressed by guests of the show do not necessarily represent the views of this podcast.

[15] If you or someone you know is being abused, please contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1 -800 -799 -7233.

[16] If you or someone you love is experiencing a suicidal crisis or thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1 -800 -273 -8255.

[17] Thank you.

[18] Thinking of me, you don't know me well.

[19] We ended up, we were most the way out.

[20] The parks went ahead of us because me and my sister could barely walk anymore.

[21] So they'd gone ahead and came out.

[22] Then they'd sent some locals up the river with some canoes.

[23] They'd gotten us.

[24] We came back out.

[25] Down there, if you just get a little scratch or anything else, you better get something on it quick.

[26] Infection comes real fast down there.

[27] And he didn't know at that point that we'd even been hit.

[28] No, I...

[29] That we came out.

[30] That's what he found out we'd been hit.

[31] Yeah, I didn't know.

[32] And it isn't exactly like you can do a lot of searching in the jungle.

[33] And it's just so vast.

[34] It could be anywhere.

[35] Tom and his sisters were finally rescued from the jungles of Guyana after two nights, three days, on November 20th, 1978.

[36] The Bogh family was ecstatic to be reunited, especially because neither group knew who had been.

[37] been injured at the Port Kaituma airstrip shooting on November 18.

[38] During the reunion, Tom learned that five people had died during the air strip shooting.

[39] Congressman Leo Ryan, defector Patricia Parks, a photographer from the San Francisco examiner, and two NBC news reporters were tragically lost during the shooting.

[40] Congressman Ryan remains the only U .S. representative to be killed in the line of duty.

[41] 12 others were wounded, including Tom and his sister Tina, both of which had been shot in the leg.

[42] The Boe family and the rest of the congressman's group learned of the mass murder at Jonestown from locals while staying at a small disco in town.

[43] Jim and Edith Bogg's daughter and Tom's sister, Marily, and 917 others died that fateful day.

[44] People use the term like, drink the Kool -Aid, but not everybody necessarily even drink it.

[45] Some people were held down.

[46] There's other ways that it happened.

[47] So certainly not suicide.

[48] It was...

[49] And I think some took it just simply because they were tired.

[50] You know?

[51] I've had enough.

[52] What do you think Jones wanted the most?

[53] Attention.

[54] Power and everything else to get the attention.

[55] Well, you know, it's kind of like, you know, when you see on the news about that neighbor who has all these people buried in their backyard and everything, right?

[56] And they're talking to the neighbors of that individual.

[57] And they're like, they were just the nicest person.

[58] I know, you know, I can't imagine that.

[59] That's why.

[60] That's who they are, right?

[61] So, right.

[62] So, so, so it's kind of the way it was.

[63] So, so you think about it, all this horrible stuff was going on inside the church.

[64] But with all this, this dynamic of goodness being shown to the public, right?

[65] They can't even begin to think that anything like that would be occurring inside.

[66] And that's what he did.

[67] And big time, it was just part of the control you had to have to make it all work.

[68] I'm Dan Tversky.

[69] In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

[70] I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad.

[71] I'm like, stop fucking around.

[72] She's like, I can't.

[73] A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast.

[74] It's like doubling and tripling and it's all these girls.

[75] With a diagnosis, the state tried to keep on the down low.

[76] Everybody thought I was holding something bad.

[77] Well, you were holding something back.

[78] Intentionally.

[79] Yeah, yeah.

[80] Well, yeah.

[81] No, it's hysteria.

[82] It's all in your head.

[83] It's not physical.

[84] Oh, my gosh, you're exaggerating.

[85] Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem?

[86] Or is it something else entirely?

[87] Something's wrong here.

[88] Something's not right.

[89] Leroy was the new date line and everyone was trying to solve the murder.

[90] A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios.

[91] Hysterical.

[92] Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[93] You can binge all episodes of hysterical early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

[94] She struck him with her motor vehicle.

[95] She had been under the influence that she left him there.

[96] In January 2022, local woman Karen Reid was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O 'Keefe.

[97] It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel and route to the next location.

[98] What happens next depends on who you ask.

[99] Was it a crime of passion?

[100] If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling.

[101] This was clearly an intentional act.

[102] And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia.

[103] Or a corrupt police cover -up.

[104] If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover -up to prevent one of their own from going down.

[105] Everyone had an opinion.

[106] And after the 10 -week trial, the jury could not.

[107] not come to a unanimous decision.

[108] To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is.

[109] Law and crime presents the most in -depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen.

[110] You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondry Plus.

[111] Join Wondery Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

[112] Freedom of the press has been a longstanding tradition in the United States.

[113] In today's political and social climate, the news is often labeled fake, alarmist, or biased.

[114] I think it's important to highlight that without the push of Congressman Ryan and journalists like Tim Riederman investigating Jonestown, the Bogue family, as well as the other defector families, may not have lived that day.

[115] Raven author Tim Riterman was also injured during the airstrip shooting when he was shot in the arm.

[116] He recounted, In all, 913 perished in his final white night.

[117] Very few people in Jonestown escaped death.

[118] Very few outside the reach of Jones' voice followed his orders.

[119] On that horrible Saturday, no one kicked over the vat of poison or turned guns on their leader to stop him.

[120] No one could stop him, not after he had manipulated his people into believing their fortunes lay only in the grandiose final statement, not after he had sealed their compact with the airstrip murders and the command bring the children first.

[121] The executioner had initiated an act of such enormity and tragedy that Jones Town, the life -sustaining symbol and dream for his followers, would become a degraded international synonym for unspeakable evil and waste.

[122] From the day of the Holocaust, outsiders refused to accept the interpretation Jones sought to place on the self -destruction of his movement.

[123] They viewed it as madness, cruelty, and later as deception by a satanic leader, is a political or social statement.

[124] The terrible images of poison being squirted down the tiny throats of babies, of screaming adults twisting on the ground in death throes, or being forcibly injected with poison, of entire families dying inside a perimeter of guns, crossbows, and jungle.

[125] The incomprehensibility of all of this caused the world to shudder in revulsion and disbelief.

[126] We ended up having to spend the night in the local bar there because they didn't where else to stay and the next morning they flew us out and then I was in the Georgetown hospital for a month recovering for my leg how did you pay for the hotel or did the...

[127] Well we didn't pay for the hotel and they charged I got a charge against me yet from the hotel the government paid for it as a primary and then dad was back billed for it from the government how lovely yeah yeah We stayed there, and they sent us some money to while we were there.

[128] My family did.

[129] In fact, my family bought all of our tickets to come back, and they wouldn't let us on the plane yet.

[130] And finally, they called, and they even called the president, I guess, my sister -in -law, and one -time sister -in -law.

[131] And they were working like crazy from San Francisco, and they was calling everybody.

[132] And then they finally led us on the plane to leave down there.

[133] Then we came back, and we got to the States, and we were interviewed several hours by the FBI and individual trailers, which was really strange.

[134] We went to this big warehouse, and here's all these trailers, and each one of us are sent to a trailer.

[135] So after several hours of that, we spent the night again, then we flew from New York to San Francisco for a whole other adventure.

[136] Did you feel relieved when you came back to the States?

[137] I don't know.

[138] I was thinking the same thing.

[139] Even after Jim Jones' death, the people's temple defectors continued to fear retaliation from the church's remaining members.

[140] And here's the scary part is Jones would always say that if anything ever happens, there are those who are to kill any survivors.

[141] okay when we left and i believe it was sometime within the first two years between 78 and 80 i believe it was that that moscone was killed here's the scary part about that is is at the meeting that moscone came to in the church and spoke and jones spoke very highly of them and everything else right showing all the support and everything after he left that meeting jones continued to speak about him and he said anything ever happens to us he's going to die so within the first two years of getting out he dies oh you think survivors weren't freaked out and then you hear about the Mills family getting shot but they tried to put it on the sun but they couldn't prove it so those were previous defectors I know I know I personally was very concerned after that for quite a while and not being of an age to really even build a to put the pieces together, but only to be able to have an emotional response to things that happen.

[142] You know, not a logical response, not a factual response.

[143] So it was, no, that was a scary time for me. We had to get it straight in our mind about America again and release all this crap out of our minds from down there.

[144] One of the biggest things that you deal with when you get back is all things.

[145] the people, the numbers of people.

[146] Have you spent time down there in that kind of seclusion?

[147] You actually make to that seclusion.

[148] And then when you, you know, so you develop a sense of being a naturalist in a sense.

[149] And then you come here and now you're dealing with all the commercialism, all the people, all the, you know, the fads and everything else going on.

[150] And you sit back and you question, what is the point of all this?

[151] hell it's better to be back to being somewhat secluded and to many levels I still filled that away and while people who know me say really you don't like being around all kinds of people and everything else well no but I've learned to be around people and to interact with them but inside I still want more of the seclusion so that is an adjustment you make and coming back here and that part never really leaves you of course I had to get things together and got Tina and Juanita and computer school.

[152] But were you all living together then?

[153] Yeah, in my sister's house.

[154] What did that feel like to finally be?

[155] I started realizing how my sister wanted to be Queen Bee.

[156] You do it my way.

[157] I mean, it wasn't do it my way or else or anything.

[158] You just do it my way.

[159] And I got Tom in computer school, but he learned more about girls and he did computers.

[160] And he kind of flunked out of that.

[161] When we first got back, I had to tell him one day, Tom, you've got to get a job.

[162] Could you had something like 12 jobs in one year?

[163] Every time I got bored.

[164] I had to say, I don't know.

[165] You're going to sleep in doorways or in the gutter or wherever you want to do.

[166] But I said, I'm taking you out of my wallet.

[167] I thought he was going to walk me one.

[168] Would you say that you had post -traumatic stress?

[169] They didn't even know what that was back then.

[170] I remember the nightmares of always trying to escape in my dreams.

[171] And over time, actually, it happened with such frequency to get it to stop.

[172] I actually learned to control my dream because it was just happening so much that I learned to fight back in my dreams.

[173] You know, who does that?

[174] You know, but yes, that's all part of what I believe to be the post -traumatic stress syndrome.

[175] And back then says they knew nothing about it.

[176] I mean, I got into drugs.

[177] I mean, the whole role.

[178] I became homeless, all that.

[179] And it actually wasn't until I met my current wife before I really started coming out of this mess.

[180] Were you interviewed right away by a bunch of people in the media?

[181] Like, was it in your face?

[182] Like, I imagine it would be now media on your doorstep?

[183] After getting back to San Francisco, within the first couple of years, yes, there was actually quite a few people trying to interview.

[184] I recall only doing one initially.

[185] And being a young man are not really knowing anything about theatrics, really.

[186] And I remember afterwards just despising that interview.

[187] and the people who control it.

[188] Because they had me doing stuff like, you know, like ringing my hands, like I was really distraught and stuff and...

[189] Gross.

[190] Yeah.

[191] Retramatizing you?

[192] Great.

[193] Right.

[194] Are trying to make me look more traumatized than what reality I was.

[195] From that point on, any next interview, I would tell them right off the bat.

[196] I said, look, you can ask your questions.

[197] I will decide what I'm going to answer, what I'm not going to answer.

[198] If I tell you I'm not going to answer it and you push, we're done.

[199] Not going to be a question.

[200] We're done.

[201] which I was going to tell you, and I forgot.

[202] So, yeah, but no, but from that point I learned I was going to control my interviews.

[203] Yeah.

[204] And what you want to share and what you don't want to share.

[205] And that's absolutely you're right.

[206] And anybody who would push you and make you feel uncomfortable, it's not somebody who deserves your story.

[207] No. And I just want to say, it's very refreshing to actually sit here and speak to somebody who wasn't just, as part of the research, wasn't just looking for the surface story as I've been contacted with so many times prior in all the interviews I've gone to and I've done well over a hundred of them.

[208] Okay?

[209] This is the first time that actually somebody, and I'm referencing you, has actually taken a moment to try to understand the actual mindset of what occurs as these things develop.

[210] because most of the interviews, you know, it's, it's very basic to me, but most of the interviews are.

[211] So what happened?

[212] Right.

[213] Oh.

[214] Well, and not once they say, well, why do you think that is?

[215] You know, it's more of, do you recall this and this and this and this?

[216] Well, yes, I do.

[217] Sure, I'll elaborate on that, but not once did they really go into the underlying story, the one that actually informs people of not only the, psychology of what occurred, but provides an outlook of what to be aware of.

[218] So I just want to take a moment to say thank you for that.

[219] Well, thank you.

[220] And it's very refreshing.

[221] And I honestly got into it with one crew.

[222] They were trying to get me to say something about my mother, but because I knew that society wouldn't understand it or having not been there.

[223] And just knowing one portion of it would really make.

[224] her look bad without understanding the other portion and most people tend to remember the first part of what they hear not the tell end of the explanation i read the headline i know the story okay so and because of that i was like you know i told her off the get no i'm not going to do that because i am not going to make my mother look like that when that isn't who she is and never was it was due to a circumstance at the time at that time it was one of the things of one of the ways they they kept the nuclear broke up is if you if it was one of your family members and they were in trouble and you didn't openly and strongly chastise them not only were you in trouble now but whoever that person family member was is now in double trouble so so by doing this open chastise and you were actually saving them from being in more trouble okay but that isn't the part that people tend to remember they don't remember the headline so they wanted me to to read this paper stuff and i told him i wouldn't do it.

[225] They started pushing and finally I got to a point where I just told me said look you know what remember what I said this is one of those times say one more thing try to push it and you with the camera get off from behind my shoulder because he was trying to film me holding the paper at least so they could use it later and that's when I got up and I turned around to producer I was asked him point blank would you do this to your mother and he said no then I said then I said get off of me or this interview is over.

[226] And that's when they all just kind of backed off like, oh, crap.

[227] Good for you.

[228] Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught.

[229] I'm Sachi Cole.

[230] And I'm Sarah Haggy.

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[232] We've covered stories like a shark tank certified entrepreneur.

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[234] He then began to prey on vulnerable women instead, selling the idea of a future together while stealing from them behind their backs.

[235] To the infamous scams of Real Housewives stars like Teresa Judice, what should have proven to be a major downfall only seemed to solidify her place in the Real Housewives Hall of Fame.

[236] Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[238] Do what I got afterwards, because let's face it, from growing up in that bubble, really having little to nothing to do with society as a whole, the last two and a half three years of my life I was living in the middle of the jungle with a group of people of that same bubble.

[239] And then to come here and have to learn about society all the good and the bad that goes with it was a challenge.

[240] It was a real challenge because these other things that, that other kids learned growing up, you know, from the first time they went to kindergarten at five years old, until they graduated high school at 17, 18 years of old, of age, I missed all of that.

[241] Yeah.

[242] So I learned none of these things.

[243] I didn't learn how cruel people can be.

[244] And I'm going to say, that is the one thing that still just amazes me to this day and just how cruel people can be for no other reason but to be cruel.

[245] It just astounds me. So as I've gotten older, I've analyzed a lot of my behaviors today.

[246] While I didn't think back then, I was being impacted or brainwashed into some of those beliefs.

[247] But as I went later on in life, I come to find out that in reality, even though I was the renegade, the troublemaker, openly and clearly defiant of everything, but still underlying, almost on a subliminal level, I was still taking in those lessons.

[248] I remember the first time I was scammed.

[249] I was probably 22 years old.

[250] I didn't even heard of a scam.

[251] I didn't know that there's people on the world that would do that.

[252] That would just, you know, take advantage of you just because they could.

[253] That was a huge lesson for me. Just like it was another lesson for me when I was like 19 years old.

[254] I mean, we're talking about a year and a half after I got out.

[255] And I'm walking through the neighborhood I lived in in San Francisco.

[256] with this young lady and this guy twice my age just comes up and slugs me in the face and keeps walking i didn't know i needed to be on my guard i didn't know i needed to be aware of my surroundings like that that somebody just come out of nowhere and and try to do bodily harm you know these are things you learned younger in life like high school right you know you're the bully of the school would come up jack you up right and and actually everything that happened to me growing up was all from the it was never from the commoners of the temple it was always the leadership that did these things to you so you actually learned to have an acute awareness of the leadership not from everybody who's basically on the same stature that you are so then to come out to a society where now you're dealing with that and racism I honestly didn't know what racism was I mean I knew what it was in in in in an almost a definition type sense But ever really being subjected to it?

[257] No. Even when we were in school here in the States, we were a unit.

[258] We were a group.

[259] So even on that level, for me, I never was really subjected to that type of mentality.

[260] Because, yes, I was raised in a very political organization.

[261] So we were acutely aware of all the things that were going on in the 60s, early 70s, civil rights, all that.

[262] So you might say, well, how could you subject to that, not really know?

[263] You know, well, you have to understand.

[264] I wasn't subjected to racism.

[265] Most of the people in our group, we didn't subject each other to that.

[266] So when you come down to now going into a society where that no longer existed, now you have to go into those words, you know.

[267] I grew up judging a person on their character, not on the color of their skin.

[268] A person is a good person or a bad person.

[269] And racism back then, even in the late, you know, the late 70s, 80s, 90s, was in many ways more profound than it is now, because it was kept in the closet.

[270] How does surviving an experience like that change you as a person?

[271] One thing it does, and I don't know if it affected everybody the same, but you always have a survivalist part of you in there.

[272] You never, that never goes away.

[273] Right.

[274] So it's almost like you're always preparing for something bad to happen.

[275] And you're not.

[276] content until you feel you're secured and you have a place to go or a way to escape or a way to survive that never leaves your personality it may seem like it has to others i remember several years back i forgot what it was now but it really triggered it i mean triggered it bad in me in such a manner that i went and made sure we had tents we had all this stuff to survive in the wilderness if we needed to and and i even knew it i even knew i was overreacted and still couldn't stop it.

[277] It took almost a week and a half to two weeks for it to start diminishing it all, even though I knew, I knew it.

[278] I was like, why are you doing this?

[279] Society is not collapsing.

[280] Things aren't going that crazy.

[281] I think it was like that's when, was it gas prices or something back then?

[282] I forget what it was, but I just remember so well thinking to myself, what your reactions are to this are not real but yet i couldn't stop making sure i'm i'm covered and and it was just i mean but that but that that was really probably the second time i realized that there had more had happened to me mentally than i'd even knew and it caused me to evaluate myself more and more and more of the way i look at things to my thoughts everything else is self -evaluating heavily.

[283] Next time.

[284] You think you know me, you don't know me well at all.

[285] You don't.

[286] Something Was Wrong is written, recorded, edited, and produced by me, Tiffany Reese.

[287] Thank you so much to the Bogue family for participating in this season.

[288] Music by Gladrags.

[289] Listener cover by Catwhite, catwhitemusic .com.

[290] Follow me on Instagram at Looky Boo.

[291] L -O -O -K -I -E -B -O.

[292] Resources mentioned on the podcast can be found linked in the episode notes or at something was wrong .com slash episodes.

[293] If you would like to help support the growth of something was wrong, please consider leaving a five -star review on iTunes, supporting the podcast on patreon .com, supporting our sponsors, or sharing it with your friends and family, or your gym coach, travel agent, stylist, neighbor, bestie friends with benefits if you know me but you don't know me if you like something was wrong you can listen early and ad -free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

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