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In 1977, a charming and passionate man named Rock Theriot garnered a small but avid following within the Seventh-day Adventist Church. However, unlike the remainder of the denomination, Theriot was consumed by one central idea: that the end of the world was at their doorstep.
He strongly believed that he and his followers needed to dedicate their time to preparing for the end of the world, which he insisted was about to collapse upon them. Theriot's doomsday predictions spurred the creation of his own movement and, with his followers, he aspired to build his own commune based around his religious ideals.
Using his convincing personality to the fullest extent, he persuaded his small group of followers to abandon every aspect of their lives: their careers, their families, their personal lives, their possessions, and their homes, to dive into his mission alongside him. Quebec is the largest province in Canada, engulfing one-sixth of the country's entire land area.
It has long been known as a unique region of the country, set apart by the French influence ubiquitous in the towns and cities of the province. To this day, French is the dominant language in Quebec, with most households using the language regularly. In Quebec, lush fields and forests, green from the regular rain, sweep across the land, morphing into harsher tundra regions as one heads toward the north.
A multitude of rivers, streams and lakes carve through the province, flowing beside and through towns and cities. It was on one of these rivers, in the quaint, quiet city of Sainte-Marie, that Thériault established his religious movement. Sainte-Marie is a small, largely French-speaking city that lies along the scenic Chaudière River in Quebec.
Now, it serves as a serene hideaway for those looking to experience French-Canadian culture in a small city. But in 1977, it was the birthplace of Thériault's new religious group. There, Thériault and his followers, excited to launch into a new way of living, began their foray into communal life.
What Theriot's followers likely did not expect was that the commune that was birthed in this pleasant city among the tranquil Canadian wilderness would eventually end in murder and many other chilling incidents that would ingrain the cult in infamy. Part 1: The Way of the Commune Becomes a Way of Life
The years of the 1960s and 1970s marked a time of great disruption of the status quo and the traditional. This countercultural wave first slammed into the United States as the post-World War II generation came of age and began to demand social change. The 1960s ushered in tumultuous political events, including America's involvement in the Vietnam War and the subsequent draft.
By the middle of the decade, anti-war protests had swept across college campuses and American cities, even reaching the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. in 1967. Burning draft cards became a widely practiced form of protest among young men, and college students against the war movement occupied buildings on various campuses to make their point known.
At the same time, the United States was undergoing a sexual revolution, and the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, spearheaded by influential figures like Martin Luther King Jr. Amid this period of rapid social change, many young people began to develop and express novel ideas for how they should conduct their lives and to what extent the government should be involved in them.
From this counter-cultural push in response to the political turmoil of the 1960s, the hippie movement was born in the United States. Hippies advocated a non-traditional lifestyle that permeated their fashion, their politics, and their beliefs. They stood out from the crowd with colorful, eccentric clothing, long hair, and sometimes widely unaccepted practices such as nudity.
When it came to their beliefs, hippies tended to oppose the status quo and social norms of their time. Often expressing their difference in beliefs through rejecting heterosexual monogamy, supporting social movements for minority groups, and welcoming illegal drug use, they rebuffed the conventional concept of government, opting for anarchy or alternate lifestyles over authority.
Although hippies were often identified by their unusual styles and behaviors, these young people were in search of something beyond a fashion statement or a change in legislation at the hands of the slow wheels of government. They sought an entirely new society in which they could employ their idealistic goals and live on their own terms, not on those of the government or big corporations.
to satisfy this craving for independence from authority. These young anti-traditionalists ushered in the Commune Movement. Alongside the Hippie Movement, it took the United States by storm in the 1960s and the 1970s. The nation saw as many as 3,000 communes take shape during these decades as young people searched for a new and, in theory, better way of life.
These communes intrigued people that were disheartened by political upheaval and those that were fired up by the protests and revolutions that marked the 60s and 70s.
For many of these young people, disoriented by yet another war and violence amid the fight for social justice, communes seemed like the perfect place to launch a social experiment and to employ their utopian ideals in order to see how they might pan out and pave the way for a brighter, more equal future, whatever form that took for each group. The idea behind communes originated from the concept of joint ownership,
Americans who lived in communes often shared food, labor, finances, and household responsibilities with the larger group. Often communes, dedicated to the concept of equal decision-making power in the name of fairness, would have few rules and no governing body. The hippie movement plowed forward, popularizing communes in the United States. However, hippies formed more than a movement.
it morphed into a culture that expanded far beyond the borders of a single nation. Communes existed in varying forms in other countries, such as China, where communities were organized around the idea of shared work and subsequent production. Although the hippie movement found its roots in American culture and politics, it worked its way to other groups through media, music, and emigration to other nations.
In part because of its shared border with the United States, Canada felt the ripple effects of hippie and commune culture more strongly than many other nations.
This influence was exacerbated by the flow of draft dodgers into Canada, who escaped mandatory service and potential arrest during the Vietnam War by leaving the United States behind for the wide expanse to the north. These draft dodgers might have left the United States behind, but they carried their ideals and counterculture across the border with them, altering the fabric of the Canadian culture of the time.
By the 1970s, the hippie culture was in full swing in Canada. Emulating its rise in America, communes began to sprout up across Canada, both in urban and rural areas. A commune centered around education even arose at the University of Toronto. The experiment, known as Rockdale College, took an unorthodox approach to higher education.
It did not provide students with degrees or organized classes. Rather, those in the commune taught informal courses and shared the responsibilities of running media, a library, a childcare center, a cafeteria, and a health clinic. It only lasted for seven years, shutting down in 1975 because of bankruptcy. Rural communes also became popular, with some seeking to return to the land, relying upon it.
These communes separated themselves from urban centers, creating isolated communities that, in theory, would sustain themselves independently of the government and the remainder of society. This anti-authority, commune-based culture inspired many groups to break away from larger society and head off into the Canadian wilderness to establish an alternative way of life.
It was in this climate, thick with the atmosphere of a countercultural revolution, that Theriot established his commune with his followers. When he and his followers first departed on their mission to start their own rural community, there was little reason for onlookers to bat an eye.
After all, these communes were nothing new and often were focused upon independence, self-sufficiency, and freedom of thought. To the average person living through the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s, these ideals were widely accepted and, oftentimes, even applauded. Yet those outside Theriot's commune, and even his followers in the commune, did not know what was to come.
Though it wasn't unusual during the time for a group to leave civilization behind to create their own community away from the noise of society, Terrio had a much more foreboding message than many other communes of the time. While other groups advocated freedom from the government machine and spent their time expressing this freedom with drugs, sex, and anarchy, Terrio was driven by fear, and he tried to pass his own paranoia along to his followers.
He was preparing for the end of the world. And to do that, he dragged his unlucky followers along with him. This episode is brought to you by Acorns. Imagine if every purchase you made could help build your financial future effortlessly. Thanks to Acorns, this
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Thériault was a Quebec native, born into a French-Canadian family, and grew up in Thetford Mines, a small city known throughout the 20th century for its success in producing and mining asbestos for building projects. There, Thériault began his journey toward becoming the young leader of his cult. Thériault later claimed that he experienced abuse throughout his youth at the hands of his father, though his father reputed his narrative.
In his early years, Terrio was already showing signs of being different from the other kids in his neighborhood. He was known as an intelligent child, but he rejected traditional education. When he was 13 years old, still in seventh grade, he pulled himself out of school and took a sharp turn onto his own educational pathway.
Rather than studying traditional school subjects such as arithmetic and social sciences, he threw himself deeply into the independent study of the Old Testament of the Bible.
As he dove deeper into his studies, his interest in the Old Testament escalated into obsession. He had two particular areas of interest that he focused on in his studies: the apocalypse and the concept of masculine authority and dominance. As he studied through his teenage years, Theriot became paranoid that they were teetering on the cusp of the end of the world. As he grew older, this fear grew with him.
His teenage years ushered in other alarming signs of who he would become. Issues that would plague him throughout his life flared up, including an alcohol addiction and signs of anger and violence, which expressed themselves when he lashed out at family and friends. Theriot abandoned Catholicism, his family's longtime religion which he had grown to despise, the same year that he created his cult.
Instead, he adopted the beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church and its rituals. After his conversion, he altered his lifestyle, deciding to abstain from alcohol, tobacco, and processed foods as dictated by the denomination. However, Theriot's paranoia, eccentric beliefs, and ambition within the Church clashed with the Seventh-day Adventist Church's core values and leadership.
His relationship with the church crumbled quickly, and he was kicked out of the church by 1978 after he tried to promote his extreme personal beliefs among members of the church and seize more power within the church. Still, even without the support of the church, Terrio had already attracted 13 followers that were dedicated enough to leave their lives behind to follow him. He no longer needed the church. With his followers, Terrio began his cult.
Part 3: The Commune Prepares for the End of the World When Theriot began his Commune in 1977, it took the form of what most people expected of such a group in 1970s North America. Though Theriot was clearly eccentric with ideas that flowed outside the mainstream realm of thought, he appeared to begin the Commune with many of the same ideals that spurred the emergence of so many other small societies during that time, only with a religious bent.
He claimed that he sought to build a society centered around equality and unity, in which his members would strive to live sinless lives. He seemed to champion free thinking and the development of individual thought, as he hoped his commune would allow his followers to immerse themselves in his motivational speeches and his messages, in many ways at the start.
Terrio portrayed himself as nothing more nefarious than a motivational speaker with some ideas that landed off the beaten path. A sort of guide on his followers' journey of self-development. Yet even as he preached a bright vision for the Commune, red flags lingered below the surface of Terrio's supposed value system. Once people joined his Commune, Terrio set stringent rules that cut members off from many aspects of ordinary life.
He immediately banned group members from staying in touch with their families and with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which had essentially excommunicated him. The system of rules in place pushed the commune members toward isolation, preventing members from nearly all communication with the outside world. Theriot told his followers that the world and those living in its system, including their family and friends, were part of the corruption he was leading them to escape.
As a result, he insisted that this separation was necessary to comply with the Commune's goals of freedom. Although Thériault pitched the Commune as a place where every group member would be able to stand on equal ground, his actions started to fall out of alignment with his core principles. He declared himself a modern-day prophet,
capable of receiving messages directly from God, and began to go by the name Moise, a version of the name Moses, a nod to his obsession with the Old Testament. The name he selected translated to "Savior," an indication of what role Theriot believed he occupied in the world. He viewed himself as the chosen one, placed on Earth by God to rescue the world from evil and to prepare for the impending apocalypse, which he felt looming ever closer.
From the start, Theriot's charming and manipulative personality allowed him to gain control over the other members of the commune with subtle precision and continuous deception. He indoctrinated them so thoroughly that they believed that he was a true spiritual leader sent by God to lead them. They completely adopted his interpretation of the Bible and lived in alignment with this interpretation.
Over time, it became clear that whatever Theriot said, they were to do, with no questions asked. In 1978, Theriot's grip on the minds of his followers was so great that it came as no surprise that when he claimed to have received a message from God that the world would end in February 1979, they believed him. Theriot claimed that a cosmic war between good and evil forces would occur, and that they had to be ready.
With Thériault's declaration that the world would end, fresh in the minds of the Commune members, the race was on to prepare for the approaching day. To get ready for the apocalypse, Thériault relocated his Commune, now composed of four men, nine women and four children. He led his people into the remote wilderness of Quebec, toward a mountain he dubbed "The Eternal Mountain", a location he claimed would allow them to survive the coming apocalypse.
now more isolated than ever, with only a tiny village nearby. The group began to settle and got to work constructing their commune, fueled by the doomsday paranoia of their leader that had now swept them up as well. Yet again, Theriot's actions appeared to clash with the founding principles of the commune he had espoused at the start.
As was typical in such a community, the members shared the labor of building the town, composed of tents and log cabins in the wilderness. However, as his followers were hard at work, burdened with the pressure of the apocalypse nearing with every passing day, Terrio avoided doing the work himself, apparently viewing himself as above such tasks.
As the commune materialized, he christened the group the Ant Hill Kids because his followers reminded him of ants working on an ant hill. As the commune took form, February 1979 loomed over them like a shadow, lengthening and creeping toward them at sunset.
The end of the world would soon be upon them. But, in the minds of the Ant Hill Kids, as long as they stood by their leader, who had a special connection with God, they would prevail. Part 4: The Ant Hill Kids Face the End of the World
After months of work to prepare for the end of the world, the doomed month, February 1979, came upon the Ant Hill kids. As the rest of the world went about their daily lives, the commune stood by their so-called prophet and the town they had constructed. They awaited the beginning of the apocalypse and the cosmic struggle between good and evil that Terrio had promised would come. Yet February in the Canadian wilderness, beside the Eternal Mountain, came and went.
Much to the surprise of the anthill kids, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly no apocalyptic events occurred that month. The world continued to spin on its axis. The media continued to pump out articles and information about international news and sports. And tabloids kept producing celebrity gossip for people to consume.
Television shows continued to air according to their scheduled programming, and sports fans settled down around televisions to enjoy the NHL and NBA All-Star games. For everyone except the Ant Hill kids, life went on as expected. Society did not crumble, and millions of people went about their lives, heading to work during the week and taking their children to school.
When March rolled around, the commune members were confused. Why hadn't the world ended as God had communicated to them through their prophet? Why had they left their lives and loved ones behind and dedicated all their time and energy over the past year toward preparing for a day that had not come? Naturally, the Ant Hill kids turned to the only person they believed could give them answers: their spiritual leader, Terrio.
As his followers expressed skepticism and questioned his leadership, Terrio had to pivot. Unsurprisingly, even though his prophecy had not come to fruition, he refused to surrender the power he had over the Commune members and would not admit that his belief system was flawed. Being an expert manipulator, Terrio responded to any questions that arose targeting his leadership and access to divine knowledge.
He used deceptive excuses that still framed him as the God-sent prophet he claimed to be. According to Theriot, his followers had nothing to worry about. There was a simple explanation for why the apocalypse had not arrived in February 1979. He pointed to something immeasurable as a reason: that time according to their earthly calendar was different from God's own concept of time, which allegedly resulted in his misreading of the prophecy.
Grasping at his roots of Old Testament beliefs with a twist, Theriot claimed that the Roman Catholic calendar contrasted with the Israelite calendar, leading to his error in judgment. By using his claims about differences in time, Theriot managed to successfully explain his mistake away. Even with the setback in the commune's doomsday goals, life for the Ant Hill kids proceeded in their small community.
But commune life began to change as Theriot's eccentricities and unusual beliefs became more severe. As he and his followers moved past February 1979, he tightened his grip on the lives of his followers. His need for control ushered in an even more peculiar and dangerous era for the Ant Hill kids. Part 5: Signs of a Maniac Emerge
Since his crucial miscalculation regarding the end of the world, Terrio had faced some skepticism and opposition from within the Commune as followers tried to come to terms with the fact that what he had predicted had not come to pass. Commune members began to doubt his divine wisdom and position as a spiritual leader and a prophet. For Terrio, this lack of faith was a major threat to the well-being of his community and, worse, his control over his followers.
To quell these doubts and ensure that the Ant Hill kids remained devoted to him and the commune, Terrio found new goals for the commune to set their sights on. To cultivate more devotion to the commune and more reliance on him among his followers, Terrio concocted a plan involving the nine women in the commune.
he decided that he should marry and impregnate all of the women. This way, the women would be more dependent on him and, at the same time, the size of the community would increase with the addition of children. Theriot's polygamous relationships called back to his obsession with the Old Testament early in life, during which he fixated upon several concepts, including masculine authority.
Within only several years, Terrio fathered 20 children by the nine women in the commune. Because of the influx of children, the number of followers jumped above 30 in the 1980s. Life in the commune was often difficult. Since the community had cut itself off almost entirely from the outside world, and Terrio had convinced his followers that the rest of the world was corrupt and evil, there was no external help for the anthill kids to turn to.
Beyond that, they had to battle the sometimes strenuous conditions of the Canadian wilderness, which experiences harsh, frigid winters. These challenges made life for the Ant Hill kids a constant struggle. On occasion, they would interact with the few locals in the area. Still in need of some money to survive, the commune members would make some money through transactions such as selling crafts and baked goods.
During Terrio's time as the leader of the Commune, the locals in the region had mixed views of Terrio and the secretive life of those in the Commune. Some people who interacted with Terrio saw his charm and felt pity for the Commune members as they struggled but, at the same time, the Commune made local communities and authorities wary and suspicious.
They were concerned about the huge number of babies being born in the commune and, even with the charm that Theriot used to mask his darker side, he could not completely conceal his true colors that lingered beneath his deceptive surface. His tendencies toward being controlling and violent made people suspicious of what actually unfolded within the commune.
The locals were right to be concerned, even though they had no way for them to see what daily life was like within the commune. As the years passed, traits that Theriot had not exhibited at the start of his cult began to emerge and consume him.
His beliefs became increasingly irrational and, though he had once followed a sober lifestyle as dictated by his Seventh-day Adventist faith, he abandoned sobriety and developed a drinking problem that worsened over the years, exacerbating his negative traits.
What he had once promoted as a community designed around shared religious beliefs and a motivational push toward becoming pure from sin had morphed into a microcosm of totalitarian regime with him at the helm. Using his dictatorial hand, Terrio squeezed his followers into submission with his wildly strict regulations.
By the 1980s, Theriot controlled, quite literally, every detail of his followers' lives, treating them like puppets whose every movement should occur according to his command. He dictated what they were to wear, say, and do all the time. All members of the Commune were required to wear matching tunics to signify their commitment to Theriot, and it set them apart from the rest of the world.
However, Terrio's domination extended far beyond what clothes the Ant Hill kids wore. Eventually, the members could not speak amongst themselves outside of his presence, and commune members were required to ask for his permission to have sex with each other. Though the regulations were oppressive, Terrio paired them with a much more horrific system of discipline. Those who breached Terrio's systems of laws faced punishments determined, of course, by Terrio himself.
Punishments handed out by Terrio became increasingly common as he spied on members to ensure they were adhering to his rules. Beating and whipping his followers became a mainstream form of punishment in the Ant Hill Kids Commune for various minor offenses. As Commune members suffered at Terrio's vicious hands, his mental and emotional manipulation allowed him to continue to do as he pleased.
Commune members did not question his judgment or the emotional, mental, and physical abuse. In fact, they viewed it as normal and necessary and did not see Theriot as being in the wrong for his part in inflicting pain upon them. Theriot also used his supposed unique connection with God to his advantage to convince Commune members that punishments were necessary and good.
when he would spy on his followers and later exact punishments upon them for their deeds. He would claim that God had informed him of the supposed sins they had committed. By crediting religion and God for the punishments he administered, the pain appeared to be justified in the eyes of his followers. From their perspective, the punishment stemmed from the divine. So how could they argue with the abuse?
Theriot toyed with his followers' emotions and religious beliefs to justify his actions. But ultimately, the abuse was becoming so irrational and extreme that it would soon seep out of the commune and into local communities. Soon, it would become impossible to hide from the outside world. Part 6: The locals get involved in the wake of alarming commune activities
Though harsh punishments were commonplace in the Ant Hill Kids Commune, the abuse was unknown to the outside world. It was thoroughly concealed by the tight lips of the Commune members and the thick shield of the Canadian bush. However, this delicate bubble of secrecy, with which Theriot surrounded himself and his community, burst in 1981. That year, a two-year-old boy who was a member of the Commune was having difficulty urinating.
As the totalitarian leader and so-called prophet of the group, Terrio acted as every form of authority figure for the community, taking on roles far outside his areas of knowledge and skills. In response to the young boy's ailment, Terrio performed what he called a surgery, though in reality, it was mutilation. He cut open the boy's penis. After the heinous mutilation, the boy began to cry incessantly.
As a result, Terrio ordered a punishment upon him, commanding one of the men in the commune to beat the boy because of his lack of control over his tears. However, the beating took an even more malicious turn as it left the boy with severe injuries, which ultimately killed him. To cover up what they had done, the commune members decided to burn the body of the young boy. Terrio dished out yet another punishment, this time for the death of the boy.
He castrated the man who beat the boy to death and, to cover up what he had done to the follower, Theriot commanded the rest of the commune to claim that he had been trampled by a horse. However, news of what had happened to the young boy at the commune leaked out beyond the tight community. Local police arrived and raided the commune, searching for signs of criminal activity.
There, they discovered the burned body of the young boy and arrested nine commune members, including Theriot, on the charge of criminal negligence that caused bodily harm. With the arrest of Theriot after the murder of the young boy, it seemed that perhaps his reign of terror over his followers out in the Canadian wilderness was winding to a close. Authorities had captured him, charged him, and had him in their custody.
Perhaps it was finally time for the years of crazed leadership, abuse, and torture to come to an end. Yet after a short period of incarceration, Thériault was released, along with the other Commune members who were arrested with him. He was free to go back to his Commune and to the followers who had remained faithful to him even while he was in custody of the authorities. After his run-in with the local police, Thériault decided that the Commune could no longer stay in Quebec.
Too much had happened there with the locals for the commune to continue as he planned without interference. As a result, in 1984, Theriot bought a piece of land in a remote area of Ontario, Canada, near a town called Burnt River, and he led what was left of his ragged commune to this new location. There, he intended to start from scratch, away from curious and suspicious locals who now knew too much.
Despite Theriot's close call with the authorities back in Quebec, he and the Ant Hill kids started to rebuild the commune. However, Theriot's trouble with the law had not reformed his ways or caused him to undergo any moral transformation. In fact, as his followers would soon discover, he had become more unhinged than ever. Part 7. Life in the Burnt River Commune, Unfiltered
To those living in the Burnt River community outside of the commune, Theriot and his followers once again seemed like an odd bunch that left the surrounding locals somewhat uncomfortable but also largely unaware of what was happening within its boundaries. As before, commune life remained a struggle. The group was constantly plagued by financial struggles, though they produced maple syrup, bread, and smoked fish and sold their goods in the nearby community.
On occasion, Commune members were caught shoplifting in the local community, but beyond that, they had no major run-ins with the authorities in the region. Within the Commune, though, the same issues that plagued the Ant Hill kids continued, but to an even greater extent. Terrio once again assumed his fierce grip on the lives of all those in the Commune, but now he squeezed harder.
His drinking problem, already a stressor before, became more severe, exposing an even more violent side of his persona than he had before the death of the two-year-old boy. He controlled the behavior of his followers as before, punishing them for even the slightest offenses.
they would receive punishments for a range of behaviors, from disobeying him and from not bringing in enough money to contribute their share of financial support to the commune. The punishments for offenses became increasingly severe, far surpassing beating and whipping with belts. The most abominable punishments included forcing followers to break their own legs using sledgehammers, consuming dead mice and feces, and sitting on the flames of lit stoves.
Terrio would force his followers to take part in strange rituals of his own creation. He instituted one event known as Gladiator Tournaments, in which he would pressure anthill kids to enter a dirt ring and fight each other, making commune life more harrowing. In some cases, Terrio did not perform the punishments himself, instead transforming them into opportunities for his followers to display their devotion to him.
He would sometimes require Commune members to harm each other, including shooting other followers in the shoulder, streaking feces across each other, or cutting off another Commune member's toes with wire cutters. The adults in the Commune were not the only ones who suffered at the hands of Theriot. The many children in the Commune, many of them his own, did not escape the cruelty and the abuse.
Terrio sexually abused many of the children, and they underwent punishments and torture such as being whipped while naked, being held over fires, and being nailed to trees as Terrio ordered other commune children to chuck rocks at them. As Terrio grew more irrational, paranoia set in, this time not about the end of the world, but now about maintaining his grip on the fabric of the community.
He became concerned that his followers would leave the commune, propelling him toward more violent outbursts. Terrio prevented those who wanted to move away from the commune with torture methods. He would not only beat potential defectors with belts and hammers, but also hang them from the ceiling, pluck hair from their bodies one by one, and defecate on them as a form of intense punishment for their lack of loyalty.
Members of the Ant Hill Kids Commune were essentially held hostage, both physically and mentally, by their fanatical leader. By that time, the followers had undergone so much abuse that they were too weak, both in body and in spirit, to flee the Commune. Even if they wished to do so, the adults and children of the Ant Hill Kids were trapped, stuck under Terrio's thumb, and there was little they could do to escape. Part 8
Rock Terrio, the so-called healer. Terrio concealed the horrors of what occurred at the Ant Hill Kids Commune with a quiet front.
But here, as with their last location, the truth was bound to escape into the community at some point. This revelation came about in the mid-1980s due to another tragedy. During one of Terrio's violent fits of rage, a mother in the commune placed her newborn baby outside in the frigid air alone during a blizzard just to protect it from potential abuse from Terrio. Amid the harsh weather conditions, the baby froze to death.
Word of the death reached beyond the territory of the commune, prompting an external investigation. Yet again, as with the young boy who was beaten to death by one of the followers in 1981, the death of a child began to arouse suspicion about the commune and what occurred within it. The authorities examined the death of the baby, and in 1987, they took action.
In response to the incident, the Children's Aid Society, responsible for social work tasks and foster homes for children, took 14 children from the cult and found foster homes in which to place them. Over time, they continued to protect the children, eventually removing all the children from the commune, 23 in total, and placing them in foster care because of the unsafe living conditions of the commune.
The Children's Aid Society was focused on looking after the children, but they did not concern themselves with looking further into the abuse and the crimes that unfolded at the commune. Investigating the commune beyond ensuring the well-being of the children was a tricky business because of the commune's claim to be a religious organization.
This religious affiliation allowed it to fall into a gray area for legality, making it more difficult to investigate, even as suspicions grew among authorities in the area. As the magnifying glass of the local authorities moved away from him once the children were saved and in their new homes, it appeared that Theriot had somehow dodged consequences for his appalling actions once more.
Though the children were now safe from his abusive reach, two men and eight women still lived under his control. After the children, many of them fathered by Terrio, were removed from the commune, Terrio became more angry and violent. His fits escalated, threatening and terrorizing those in the community. Because of the Children's Aid Society, the next generation of the Ant Hill kids and the growth of the commune were now in jeopardy.
His drinking worsened and, in tandem with his addiction, his delusions grew. Theriot had claimed to be a spiritual guide, an exalted leader, and a prophet sent by God to save the world from the apocalypse.
in the latter half of the 1980s, in a wild attempt to loop back to the quasi-religious roots of the Ant Hill Kids Commune, he made another bold claim. He revealed to the group that he had so-called healing powers, granted to him by divine sources, and that he was in fact a holy being.
To showcase these alleged healing powers, he began to perform mutilations masquerading as surgeries regularly on commune members who were ill or complained of aches and pains. Only, Theriot had no medical training or skills, as had become apparent when he performed a so-called surgery on the ill-fated young boy with urination problems years before. He also had no divinely appointed healing powers. As a result, the surgeries he performed did not go well.
With his so-called healing powers, he would conduct procedures such as performing circumcisions on group members and pumping nearly pure ethanol solutions into the stomachs of his followers. These surgical methods, along with others, often caused severe medical repercussions for those forced to undergo them. One night in the commune, he put a rubber band around the testicles of one of the male group members and left it there for hours on end, leading to swelling and infection.
Terrio used the infection to display his self-proclaimed healing powers. He severed the testicle, removing it, and proceeded to cauterize the wound with a hot iron, leaving the man with agonizing and irreversible physical damage. This new twist in Terrio's view of his own identity brought a new wave of grief and suffering to those living in the commune.
They faced the continuous threat of a controlling man, often drunk and violent, who could at any time try to perform unplanned and unnecessary medical procedures on them, leaving them with the physical, mental, and emotional scars of mutilation and the pain that accompanies it. The severity of Theriot's attempts at surgery came to a head in 1988 and fell upon one of his wives and followers, Solange Boilard.
One day in September, she complained about pain in her stomach. Theriot decided that he would perform an abdominal procedure, commanding Boilard to lie down on the kitchen table. He then stripped off her clothes and pinched her in the stomach. As usual, he employed absurd methods. He plunged a plastic tube up her rectum to perform an enema using olive oil and molasses.
With no concern for Boilard's pain level, Theriot plowed forward, slicing open her abdomen. He then seized hold of and yanked a portion of Boilard's intestine out through the incision in her stomach. As he clutched her intestine in his hand, he tore off a piece of it before stuffing the rest of it back into her abdomen. He then ordered the other women in the commune to stitch the incision back up. Through the night and into the next day after the barbaric surgery, Boilard writhed in agony.
Then, presumably due to digestive chemicals entering and filling her abdominal cavity, Boylard succumbed to the injuries. Terrio's delusions of playing doctor had now turned deadly. One of the commune members was killed by what he had done on his makeshift operating table. Still, Terrio was not finished with Boylard and disrespecting her body.
he took his already wild claims one step further. He now alleged not only that he could heal people with his God-given powers, but also that he possessed the power to resurrect people. With the assistance of his followers, he set out to display this newfound power
To bring about Boilard's resurrection, he commanded the commune members to take her uterus out of her corpse and saw open her head, removing a portion of her skull to expose her brain. Theriot claimed that if he ejaculated into her brain, he would bring her back from the dead. Unsurprisingly, this method of resurrection failed. Boilard still lay dead before him, disproving his claims.
As with his mistakes and failures before, Terrio was forced to pivot. Since his resurrection attempts had been unsuccessful, he forced the rest of the commune members to bury her body instead. However, he kept a memento of Boilard before they carried her away, taking one of the ribs from her body. For reasons that remain unknown, he began to wear the rib in a leather case like a necklace.
Even after he had so miserably failed with solving Boillard's minor stomach issue, Theriot did not stop administering his amateur surgeries. Unfortunately, Boillard was not the last follower to suffer irreversible bodily damage after Theriot's medical care. Only two months after the fatal procedure that took Boillard's life, another woman in the commune, Gabrielle Lavallee, suffered her own ailment. She mentioned that she had a toothache.
Once again, Terrio launched into another crazed medical procedure, using similar crude methods and tools for Lavalie's relatively minor medical condition. Using pliers, he tore multiple teeth out of her mouth, forcing Lavalie into a new level of mouth pain instead of taking her toothache away. But Terrio did not stop there. Later that day, he chased Lavalie with a knife and ended up stabbing her, severing a tendon in one of her hands.
Lavallee suffered other cruel forms of abuse as well, including burns to her genitals, a hypodermic needle becoming lodged in her back, damage to her breasts, and a blunt force attack to her head with an axe. For Lavallee, conditions in the commune reached a breaking point in the summer of 1989. Still suffering the long-term effects of the severed tendon in her hand, Lavallee experienced stiffness in the damaged area.
In response, Terrio stabbed her through the hand again, this time pinning her to a kitchen table with the knife. As Lavalie remained pinned there, trapped and in agony, Terrio grabbed a meat cleaver and repeatedly began to slash at her arm in a brutish attempt to amputate it. After a sickening period of Terrio hacking at her arm, he managed to cut it off.
After the violent amputation, he left Lavalie, bleeding and writhing in immense pain on the kitchen floor, until the next day, when the stump that was left of her arm was finally stitched up. In light of the amputation of her arm and the other string of abuses against her, Lavalie had experienced more than she could endure. Regardless of the risk and the potential torture that she could face for defecting from the commune, she decided to attempt to escape.
Part 9: The Daring Escape to Expose a Murderer In mid-August of 1989, Lavalie seized her opportunity and ran away from the commune. By hitchhiking, she found her way to a hospital outside of Toronto and got in touch with authorities, finally exposing the horrors of commune life under the control of Theriot's disturbed mind.
Now that direct evidence and testimony from a follower who had experienced life inside the commune had come into the light, the suspicions of the authorities were confirmed. They set out to arrest Theriot for the brutal assault of Lavallee. Theriot managed to evade the police for several days, but the authorities finally closed in on him and arrested him, charging him with aggravated assault and unlawfully causing bodily harm.
This time, unlike with Theriot's other run-ins with the authorities, the charges stuck. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in jail. After Theriot's incarceration, the remnants of the Ant Hill kids began to crumble. Without their leader to rule over them, the Commune members were finally free, and many abandoned Theriot and his cause.
Still, his manipulative reach remained active over some Ant Hill kids, and he even managed to continue to procreate while incarcerated. Through prison visits with remaining women from his commune, he fathered four more children. But Lavallee's testimony of the abuse she and others were subjected to in the commune spurred investigators to look further into Theriot's activities from when he was leader of the Ant Hill kids.
From that initial report, others spiraled out of it, bringing new insight about the cruelty and barbaric forms of abuse that occurred for years under Theriot. Finally, one commune member led investigators to the body of Solange Boilard. This breakthrough allowed the authorities to charge Theriot for yet another serious crime: murder.
Investigators had finally gathered enough evidence to accuse Theriot of his extreme violence and, in 1993, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. The new conviction cemented Theriot's fate. He would spend the remainder of his years in prison, serving a life sentence for his crimes against his followers. This final nail in the coffin permanently placed the Ant Hill Kids cult out of commission.
Now behind bars, Terrio would never gain the power he once possessed over his followers again. Part 10: The Chilling Legacy of the Ant Hill Kids Cult Although the Ant Hill Kids cult had disbanded, the disturbing memories of life in the commune haunted past members and, as news of the disturbing events that had occurred in the cult spread, it impacted others as well.
Lavallee, the woman who had initially broken the news of the horrors in the commune to the outside world, continued to speak out and share her story. Eventually, she published her own memoir in 2010, titled L'Alliance de la Brebis, which translates to The Alliance of the You. The media industry also grasped onto the story of the Ant Hill Kids cult, adapting the disturbing real-life tale to film in 2002 through the movie Savage Messiah.
As for Terrio, he remained in a medium security prison in Canada into the 21st century. He applied for parole in 2002, but was denied because of the high likelihood that he would fall back into his old ways and repeat his crimes. In the eyes of the court, he remained too dangerous to send back into the world. Years bled away, and the world and the former anthill kids that Terrio had tortured in his commune moved forward while Terrio remained stuck in prison.
Then, in 2011, an inmate by the name of Matthew Gerard MacDonald, who was held in the same penitentiary as Theriot, approached some guards with a shiv in his hand. Instead of using the weapon against the guards, MacDonald handed the blade over to them. Along with an unremorseful confession, he claimed that he had used the shiv to slash his cellmate and kill him. His cellmate was the then 63-year-old Rock Theriot.
Sure enough, Terrio laid dead in a cell with blade wounds to his neck. McDonald and Terrio had allegedly had a disagreement, and McDonald, already serving a life sentence for another murder he had committed, killed Terrio during their fight. McDonald received another life sentence for the murder, but the once powerful and villainous cult leader was dead.
Even beyond Theriot's death, he remains one of the most disturbing examples of how a manipulative man can twist religion to gain control over a group of followers in recent decades. The disturbing legacy of the Ant Hill kids serves as a testament to how commune life could go horribly awry under a violent leader and scar the lives of those who were deceived.
