Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of What We Do in the Shadows and Baskets. English Teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX. Stream on Hulu.
This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
The Lord Jesus Christ saved Johnny Todd out of witchcraft five years ago. And I have personally talked with Johnny Todd on the basis of Jack Chick's recommendation. Having known Johnny Todd now for more than four years, and my having known him for some six months, I believe that Johnny Todd is a genuinely converted man, saved by the grace of God out of the depths of Satanism.
An interesting phenomenon was sweeping across American evangelical communities in the mid-1970s. A series of home-recorded cassette tapes circulated among Christian homes and churches that featured the jaw-dropping spoken testimony of a late 20s recent convert named Johnny Wayne Todd.
Johnny Todd had re-enlisted after serving in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. He was stationed in Germany where he became addicted to drugs and ultimately ended up killing his former commanding officer during a two-hour shootout. Johnny was arrested on the spot. I was getting ready to be court-martialed. In fact, I had everything down pat. I was as good as gone.
One day, the door to Johnny Todd's solitary confinement cell opened. There stood a couple of army generals and a U.S. Senator.
Four hours later, Johnny Todd was on his way back to America. He had received an honorable discharge. His military records wiped clean and classified as top secret.
There was only one explanation. That's right. Johnny Todd was born into a legendary family of witches.
His real name was John Collins, of the Collins family that he says is credited with first bringing witchcraft to America. Todd claims he was initiated into the cult at 14 years old. By 18, he had become a high priest, which, as a religious leader, actually exempted him from the Vietnam draft. But Johnny says he decided to join the army anyway so that he could establish covens and military bases around the world, which, by his account, was a tremendous success.
Johnny assumed his mother, a well-known and extremely powerful witch, must have been the catalyst for his release. She must have cast a spell on his arresting officers and the senator to force their hand. "That's preposterous," his mother told Johnny when he returned home. "It wasn't witchcraft. It was the Illuminati. Johnny Todd, my son. You have a lot to learn."
John's mother handed him an envelope containing $2,000 cash and first-class airfare to New York. There, he met with high-ranking officials of the coven and studied witchcraft, Satanism, and karate for the next six months. The mysterious inner workings of society were revealed to Johnny Todd. We sat there and for six months I learned the political structure and the history of witchcraft. And then I was taken to Colorado and I was placed through initiation into the sixth realm.
And this initiation consisted of a blood sacrifice. Apparently Johnny Todd, a newly ordained 6th level witch, never learned the difference between witchcraft and Satanism, considering he uses the terms interchangeably, as does every subject in this episode, so don't hex the messenger. Nor did he realize that what he referred to as the original cult bible, the Necronomicon, which he repeatedly mispronounced as the Necromonicon,
was a complete work of fiction invented by sci-fi horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.
But let's not get bogged down in the details. What's important is that Johnny Todd learned the truth. The organization that I came out of is a cult in religion, not in purpose. Its purpose is political and financial power. Complete world rule through finance, which they believe would control the political atmosphere. It's been called by many people the Illuminati. The Illuminati, which Todd often referred to as the Illuminati.
Illuminati, was a group of bloodthirsty witches and Satanists that had infiltrated politics and business at every level. They controlled the most powerful corporations like Standard Oil and Montgomery Ward. They pulled the strings of the most powerful politicians like the Kennedys and the Carters. In fact, Johnny Todd claimed he had served as the Kennedy family's personal warlock. He claimed that John F. Kennedy hadn't actually been assassinated. Todd said he had just recently spent time with JFK on his yacht.
But that's child's play in terms of conspiracies. What truly alarmed Johnny Todd during his time as a high-level witch in 1972 was what he called the Great Conspiracy. It was the Illuminati's eight-year plan to take over the world, which was scheduled to conclude in December 1980. Johnny Todd had seen the flowchart with his own eyes. They had a chart that said in eight years, eight years, they would have the whole world.
And from remembering that chart, I haven't seen one thing through the news media not happen on schedule according to that chart. According to Johnny Todd, the Illuminati's first step to world domination was electing Jimmy Carter president in 1977. Why? Because Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer, was also the Antichrist. And his sister, Ruth Carter Stapleton, was actually a high-level witch that Johnny Todd himself had studied under.
Jimmy Carter, as the newly elected president, would sign laws prohibiting the personal storage of food in bulk and overrule the Constitution by confiscating the American public's firearms. Next, a false fuel shortage would be created, which would lead to an energy crisis, which would lead to World War III.
Meanwhile, an old friend of Johnny Todd's named Charles Manson, who had been assembling an army while in prison, would be released without warning to roam the streets to butcher American Christians whose names were stored on a list in a computer. All of these emergencies in concert would allow Jimmy Carter to invoke martial law, giving the Illuminati ultimate control and thus world domination.
According to Johnny Todd, the Illuminati's goal was economic chaos: bankrupt the global population until everyone becomes dependent on the state.
Because they would control the new one world government. Who are they? The Rothschilds, obviously. The Jewish banking dynasty. The founders and leaders of the Illuminati, who Johnny Todd claims were actually demons in disguise.
According to Johnny Todd, the leader of the Illuminati was Philip W.
Rothschild, who, according to the historical record, does not appear to exist. However, there was a Rothschild in Paris named Philippe who drove race cars and wrote screenplays, so I think it's safe to assume he's the evil incarnate in Johnny Todd's stories. According to Todd, Philip Rothschild is the person who developed the plan for the Great Conspiracy, and there was proof.
Philip had ordered one of his mistresses to author a secret book describing his ultimate vision. That mistress's name was Ayn Rand, and that book is Atlas Shrugged. The book is called Atlas Shrugged. Atlas, you know, Atlas supposed to hold up the world? Shrug, like you shrug your shoulders. Atlas Shrugged.
Johnny Todd had been given access to all of the grand plans because, as a male Collins, he was given a seat on the Illuminati's Council of Thirteen. According to the Illuminati's org chart, the Council of Thirteen was one level below the Rothschilds. Below the Council of Thirteen was the Council of Five Hundred, which consisted of the ultra-rich like the Rockefellers and the DuPonts.
Below them, politicians and plebeians ready to carry out the devil's bidding. He explained to me that since I was a male Collins, I was in the Collins family, that I had a position to take. And that there was a board of directors called the Grand Druid Council, which contained 13 of the most powerful witches in the world. And that my place was on that council. And I said, oh, you know, great.
But it wasn't all fun and games. Being a grand druid high priest in the Illuminati comes with certain middle management responsibilities. Johnny Todd was put in charge of overseeing 13 states, which included over 65,000 witches. That might sound like a lot, but considering there were at least 6 million witches on the East Coast alone, according to Todd, his position was relatively insignificant.
which meant that John Todd had room for other duties as assigned, which included managing Zodiac Productions, the entertainment arm of the Illuminati, which owned the majority of all three major TV networks. Without TV, the Illuminati would never gain control of the world. There's symbols on the TV sets that are hypnotic symbols.
John Todd claimed that Zodiac Productions also owned 95% of all rock and country music recording artists. In fact, the Illuminati even spent millions of dollars to invent Jesus Rock, or Christian Rock as it became known.
The endeavor was well worth the investment because music was essential to the operation. If you take it away, witches can't do witchcraft. They can't function without the music. It's a third of their power. Of course, movies also played a huge role, and almost everyone on camera and behind the scenes of a Hollywood blockbuster owed their soul to Satan. There were obvious hints if you knew what to look for. And witches don't call it witchcraft. They call it the Force. It's called Star Wars.
Funny enough, it was a movie that changed the course of Johnny Todd's life. 1970s The Cross and the Switchblade featuring Eric Estrada of Chip's fame. It's about a Pentecostal pastor who makes it his mission to save the souls of a Brooklyn street gang after reading an article in Life magazine. Johnny Todd found this movie so inspiring among other recent experiences that he says he gave up the cult life and converted to Christianity on Labor Day 1972.
Opting out of the Illuminati, much like a Brooklyn street gang, is not painless. Johnny Todd knew there would be a price on his head. $10,000 to be exact. And he says he had been literally dodging bullets ever since. But his intimate knowledge was too important not to share. That's why Todd started traveling around the country to different churches to share his testimony, he said.
He felt compelled to warn people about what was truly happening behind the curtain. But I hope to accomplish one thing tonight more than anything, that I will change your attitude, that I'll set new forms or patterns or whatever in your life, that you will walk out of here and when something happens, you'll go, now I wonder what they're really up to.
Johnny Todd also felt compelled to prepare Christians for the impending doom. He recommended collecting food and farm animals. He recommended collecting building materials. And he recommended buying a stockpile of specific guns and ammo and learning how to use them. What about the Ten Commandments? Someone in Todd's audience would inevitably ask. Doesn't it say, "'Thou shalt not kill?'
"It does," Johnny would reply, "but killing and defending are two different things. And if you don't kill them, they will kill you and take all the aforementioned things he just recommended you collect. Oh, and also, Johnny Todd recommended sending him money. It would be used to build a fortified wilderness retreat to which all the Christians were invited to make their last stand against evil."
It was going to cost about $35,000, Johnny said. The land had already been picked out. By the late 1970s, Johnny Wayne Todd's cassettes had traveled all over the country, as did the man himself, scaring the absolute shit out of every pious person that heard them. 1,000 people at a time would attend his in-person testimonies. Todd also appeared on several Christian TV shows and telethons.
But no one amplified Johnny Todd's message more than Jack Chick, the cartoonist and publisher of a popular Christian comic, who used Todd's stories as the basis for his series. Jack Chick may have been the only major Christian figure to support Todd, however. Many others denounced the conspiracy peddling former witch, claiming that Johnny Todd's Satan, as described, was "more powerful than Jesus." And so, the downfall began.
A major blow arrived in February 1979 courtesy of Edward Plowman, a journalist for Christianity Today magazine. Plowman's exposé, The Legends of John Todd, traced the man's troubled past and debunked some of his outrageous claims. For example, when Johnny Todd was 19 years old in 1968, he was a married storefront Pentecostal preacher in Arizona with a four-year-old child.
Plowman claimed Todd briefly disappeared from the scene but returned a single man, explaining that God had told him and Linda, his wife, to split and seek other mates. In 1969, Johnny joined the army after being arrested for malicious property destruction. He was never sent to Vietnam, as his famous speeches claimed. Todd was sent to Germany where he served for a total of 25 days before being discharged for psychiatric reasons.
According to the Christianity Today article, two separate psychiatric examinations revealed possible brain damage as a result of beatings he suffered when he was a child. A future ex-wife confirmed that Johnny had talked about a rough upbringing. One psychiatrist said Johnny suffered from emotional instability with pseudologica fantastica, meaning Johnny Todd had difficulty discerning reality from fantasy.
Johnny was homicidal and suicidal with no hope for improvement, the psychiatrist wrote. His discharge from the army was recommended and granted. That's when Johnny Todd returned to America with his made-up story about witchcraft that he started sharing in Jesus Movement coffee houses. Coffee houses from which he was soon barred after seducing multiple teenage girls.
Soon after, Todd and his new wife Sharon settled down in Santa Ana, California, where they hosted Bible studies at their home. Those sessions also ended in scandal for the same reason. Todd had preached his way into his students' pants, including both of his wife's sisters, one of whom became pregnant with his child.
Single again in 1974, Johnny Todd moved to Dayton, Ohio where he continued preaching but also secretly operated an occult bookstore on the side with his new partner Sheila. Again, Johnny Todd couldn't leave the little girls alone. This time he was arrested and charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor when he made a 16-year-old strip nude and performed oral sex as initiation into his witch's coven.
After serving only two months in jail, Johnny Todd was released early for medical reasons. His tapes were more popular than ever, but rumors of his predatory behavior were also making the rounds. Todd found himself abandoned by most Christian organizations. Then the Christian press and its exposés followed. In addition to the Christianity Today article, two ministers published a book titled "The Todd Phenomenon" that further debunked his claims.
In 1979, at 29 years old, Johnny Todd announced his retirement. "I tried to wake up the people in this country, but they didn't listen," he reportedly said. So he gave up the personal appearances and retreated to a 10-acre Montana hideout, where he continued to release newsletters and tapes and prepare for the end times.
After his location was exposed, Johnny Todd was on the move again. Over the next decade, he bounced from Montana to Seattle to Kentucky before ultimately ending up in South Carolina where he launched a new publishing company. He advertised for publicist and illustrator jobs at his company through the University of South Carolina Career Center. Two young women responded. Two young women were sexually assaulted. Johnny Todd was arrested again.
Investigators discovered that he was already on probation in Kentucky, where he had been convicted of incest. One of the last times anybody heard from Johnny Todd publicly was when he filed a lawsuit from behind bars demanding the return of his personal property that was seized during his arrest. Of most concern to him were the pair of pink panties and 64 pornographic photographs, his prized possessions, apparently.
Johnny Todd was released from prison in 2004. He died in a psychiatric facility three years later. And the American public learned its lesson of accepting as fact fringe conspiracy theories from mentally unwell loudmouths selling confirmation biases to those desperate to transform their anxieties into reality. Right. Well, maybe someday.
At least now we know what to look for before these things take root. There's usually a simple explanation. A single enemy. Good versus evil. Blood-sucking pedophiles. Surely it is they who are behind all the world's misery. Open your eyes. Don't be so naive. Johnny Todd tried to warn you.
And people tried to warn us about Johnny Todd, including Mike Warnke, a legit former Satanist and expert in the occult. In fact, at the time, many criticized Johnny Todd's testimony as being nothing more than a cheap parody of Mike Warnke's true lived experience. Their rising stars even crossed one evening, resulting in a confrontation where Todd accused Warnke of stealing his Illuminati material.
Mike Warnke was quoted in the foreword of the Todd Phenomenon Exposé. It compared Johnny Todd to Jim Jones. We as Christians have to be careful of those who take the name of the Lord in vain, Mike Warnke urged. Yes, yes we do. A former satanic priest launches into stardom as America's number one Christian comedian before being completely exposed as a fraud on this episode of Swindled.
The following is a paid advertisement for the Swindle Valued Listener Rewards Program.
Are you tired of hearing advertisements in swindled like this one? Do you wish there was more swindled content to distract you from your miserable existence? Don't settle for those other inferior podcasts with the annoying hosts who laugh at their own jokes. Become a swindled valued listener today to receive easy access to new episodes and exclusive access to bonus episodes that are not available anywhere else. Completely advertisement free.
It's fun for the whole family, but don't take our word for it. Becoming a swindled valued listener is a requirement to join the family. I used to make my flock shave their heads and chop off a toe and all kinds of other weird shit. Now, we just listen because she listens.
She's always listening. Millions of swindled fans have discovered the secret to becoming a valued listener. Try it in your own home today. Also, act now to receive the valued news for Valued Listener's Update Show at no extra cost. That's a $5,000 value for one easy monthly payment of $4.99.
Support for Swindled comes from SimpliSafe.
If you're like me, you're constantly thinking about the safety of the people and things you value most. After my neighbor was robbed at knife point, I knew I needed to secure my home with the best. My research led me to SimpliSafe.com.
I've trusted SimpliSafe to protect my home for five years now, and the level of security and customer care has been incredible. I sleep better every night knowing SimpliSafe's 24-7 monitoring agents are standing by to protect me if someone tries to break in and to send emergency help when I need it most.
I want you to have the same peace of mind that I and so many listeners experience every day, which is why I've partnered with SimpliSafe to offer listeners 20% off a system. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. What I love most about SimpliSafe is that it just keeps getting better. With exclusive live guard protection, SimpliSafe agents can act within five seconds of receiving your alarm and can even see and speak to intruders inside your home, warning them that the police are on their way.
As a SimpliSafe user, it's no surprise that SimpliSafe has been named Best Home Security Systems by U.S. News & World Report for five years running and the Best Customer Service in Home Security by Newsweek.
I'm a huge proponent of SimpliSafe, and I'm very happy with my security system. And you will be too. Protect your home this summer with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for Fast Protect Monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. That's simplisafe.com slash swindled. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.
Michael Alfred Warnke was orphaned when he was 11 years old.
His alcoholic mother had died in a horrific car accident in 1955 in which she was ejected from her vehicle. The mortician reportedly pulled an all-nighter, quote, "piecing her head back together to make her presentable for the funeral." Afterward, Mike Warnke's alcoholic father remarried for a fifth time and then died of a heart attack three years later.
After a brief stay with two different aunts in Tennessee, little Mike eventually went to live with his half-sister Shirley and her husband and kids in California. It was there that Mike Warnke was first introduced to the occult. I became interested through a lot of different things, like kids do, you know, games and fooling around and, you know, Ouija boards and seances at slumber parties and ghost stories at camp and junk like that.
And then I think one of the things that really sparked my interest is when the program Bewitched came on TV. Now I'm not saying that everybody that ever watched Bewitched is going to go out and get into the occult, but for me it was something, because of my, I guess, natural or supernatural curiosities,
It really struck my fancy and instead of just watching it as a situation comedy, I really watched it as a learning tool almost. In high school, Mike Warnke says he began hanging out with a rougher crowd. He started drinking heavily and committing vandalism following that common pipeline from watching Bewitched to burning cop cars. I burned my first cop car when I was 17 years old in riots in Berkeley, California.
But he still managed to graduate high school. He enrolled at San Bernardino Valley Community College in 1965. Mike's first day of class was September 13th. Admittedly, he had a difficult time fitting in. But luckily, his roommate Herb was a teenage alcoholic as well.
Mike Warnke drowned his painful childhood in booze. A lot of booze. I was drinking so much by now, it was starting to wreck my stomach, Mike said. And sometimes I would have to leave the classroom to get something to drink. Mike Warnke needed an alternative escape. And one day, Mike says, an acquaintance named Dean Armstrong offered him one. Marijuana. Mike liked marijuana. He also soon learned that he liked peyote and mescaline.
Mike liked drugs. He and his friends even volunteered for the LSD experiments that were conducted on the San Bernardino campus. Besides the trip, the money was nice. By then, Mike says, he had an expensive speed habit to maintain. In a matter of weeks, Mike Warnke had become a different person.
Mike Ornke said the first gathering he attended started out normal.
All of Dean's friends, including Mike, sat around talking and smoking. But later, things got sexual. The fellows were snuggling up with the girls. Cool looking, sexy girls too, Mike said. Yeah? And then what? And they split off into couples, Mike says. Nice. And they just started going at it or what? Sure did, Mike claims. Quote, these chicks were free lovers. Damn, the 60s were wild, huh?
They were just having sex with everyone? Yup. What kind of sex? Oh, you know, just quote, soft pink sex. Alright, well, now you made it weird. Needless to say, Mike Warnke was enjoying his new group of friends, and he was learning more about them at each successive gathering. For example, one night, the Smoking Circle's conversation turned to religion. That's when Mike Warnke realized, oh, these people are witches.
Not just witches, but witches with specializations. Satanists, demonologists, necromancers, vampires. Warnky's boyhood fascination had come full circle. But when I started doing drugs, it was like Satan used drugs as a key to unlock my...
Mike Warnke had found his people, and they were mostly normal, white, educated liberals, 18 to 30 years old, with otherwise normal lives and boring jobs, teachers, students, carpenters. They called themselves the Brotherhood.
They wanted Mike Warnke to join them. He was invited to the second stage. The second stage was another party, but this one was less of a drug-fueled pink fest and more of an educational seminar. This is where Mike Warnke learned the lore, the spells, the hexes, and the potions. Mike Warnke proved eager to learn more, so he became Dean Armstrong's errand boy.
Turns out the Brotherhood controlled a large percentage of the drug trafficking for the Inland Empire. It became Mike's job to deliver the goods and pick up payments. He was on call 24/7. He says he started taking even more speed just to keep up.
and he was constantly in danger. Mike says he had been pistol whipped five times. His jaw had been broken. His nose almost ripped off. Mike says he has bullet holes in both legs, the result of a gunfight at a pool hall with a local pimp named Ray.
Mike Warnke had all but dropped out of school by this point, but he had passed the Brotherhood's test. He was invited to attend the Black Mass, a celebratory, blasphemous, satanic celebration which would be held at some barn. When Mike Warnke entered the barn that night, he saw a nude girl lying in the center of the room on a granite slab supported by sawhorses. There was an inverted cross and a goat's head at the end of each altar. Fumes of belladonna filled the air.
The purpose of that black mass was to issue a hex on certain enemies of the Brotherhood. Dean Armstrong, the leader of that meeting, approached the girl and painted a pentagram on her stomach. "Let those with grievances speak now, that we may all bind together at this hour to direct the power of our father, Satan. As I will, so mote it be."
Mike Warnke claims that he could feel the presence of a demon spirit that night. He felt it float out of the pentagram. He could hear buzzing around until the noise dissipated and transported to its assigned target to embark on its mission of mischief. Mike Warnke couldn't believe what he was seeing. He wanted in so goddamn bad.
His initiation was scheduled for the next full moon about three weeks later. When that day came, Mike Warnke was asked to strip naked. Again, Dean Armstrong was the master of ceremonies. "Power of Darkness, let us have a sign that you will accept Mike to be called Judas and to the brotherhood of your slaves."
Dean dipped his hand into a chalice of holy water, which was actually urine, and slid a large silver ring onto Mike's finger. Repeat after me. I, known here as Judas, do hereby and now, forever and a day, submit my soul to the custody and care of His Highness of Darkness, Satan, Master of the World.
And with that, Mike Warnke's right wrist was sliced, his blood was collected in a cup, and he was handed a quill to dip into that blood to sign his new name, Judas Iscariot, into the book. And then he had to learn a special handshake or something, and that was it.
Mike remembers, "I was now aware of the fact that I was part of a deep and widespread organization operating not only in the U.S., but all over the world." And so I was recruited and I was groomed for just a very few months before I assumed the leadership of a coven in Southern California.
Mike Warnke was such a good little Satanist. He immersed himself in witchcraft and black magic. In short order, he was elevated to Master Counselor, a High Priest of the Brotherhood, which meant he was assigned his own coven and drug trafficking business. Warnke became the head of a three inland city region in California, and he soon grew the membership from 500 to 1,500 members.
And I had 1,500 people in my coven. And every time I'd snap my fingers, those 1,500 people just jumped like a whole bunch of frogs. I had cars, money, liquor, chicks, dope.
Being a master counselor of the Brotherhood also meant that Mike Warnke was in charge of leading team meetings. These ceremonies often include cutting himself so that his followers could mix his blood with wine and piss and drink it as a pledge of loyalty.
I have a three and a half inch scar on my wrist where my friends used to cut my arm four times a year and bleed my blood into a cup and mix it with wine and urine and drink it for communion to Satan.
On other occasions, followers were directed to chop off their fingers, which was usually followed by some mild cannibalism. We would actually eat the flesh off the finger bone. I mean, it'd be cut up in little pieces. I mean, nobody was just chewing it like a chicken leg or anything like that. It was ritualistically done. Other times, Mike claimed, the Brotherhood would sacrifice an animal or group rape a virgin.
Although Mike Warnke himself never participated in the actual rapes, he says he was far too fucked up on drugs to get it up, but he would orchestrate them for everybody else. There was this one young woman in particular named Mary. Mike says they cast a spell afterward to erase her memory of what happened to her.
One thing Warnky's brotherhood did not do is human sacrifice. They never killed anybody. In fact, Mike says, that hardline stance once ruffled the feathers of one Charles Manson who had attended one of their ceremonies but left disappointed. Probably went home and left a review or something. But you can't please everyone. Mike Warnky knew that. Mike Warnky also knew what pleased him. It was the two naked chicks on the white rug that came with his free brotherhood apartment.
The other perks of the job included an entirely new wardrobe of black and a car with a personal driver. Mike Warnke felt like a god, even though he kept his job flipping burgers as a cover. But he was constantly asking for time off because the Brotherhood kept him traveling. Mike Warnke was being exposed to the international elements of the Coven, the Illuminati, the Grand International Conspiracy,
Honestly, the details are a little hazy. Mike says he was completely strung out at the time. I came to a place in my life where I was so strung out on drugs, I was emaciated. I weighed 110 pounds soaking wet. I had hepatitis four times from shooting up with dirty needles. I had bleeding gums. My hair was falling out. My teeth were falling out of my head. Satan had promised to make me a god. And because people drank my blood, I thought I was.
During one memorable binge, Mike Warnke claims he stayed up for 18 days in a row until he basically fell into a coma for four days. When he woke up, Mike says he couldn't move his legs, so he dragged himself to the bathroom one fistful of carpet at a time. He managed to pull himself up to the sink and looked into the mirror. And looking back at me was this death head mask with, you know, yellow parchment skin and hair matted to the face and sores and bleeding teeth.
And I said, you're not a god. And when I said that, the picture in the mirror disappeared. And instead there was this deep, long, black hole. And this voice from the bottom of this pit said, and neither are you. And I said, what am I? And the voice said, you're a fool. And I have you exactly where I want you now. Believe it or not, this wasn't even Mike Warnke's rock bottom. That occurred a few days later when he was dumped naked on the emergency entrance of a hospital in the rain.
Warnky claims that his satanic girlfriend at the time, Sandy, slipped something into his drink that knocked him out, then injected a massive amount of heroin into his arm, and then broke off the needle. Clearly, the brotherhood no longer had a use for Mike Warnky. I mean, I got to be such a junkie that the devil didn't want to hang around with me no more.
After partially recovering from the overdose, Mike Warnke says he snuck out of the hospital and returned to his apartment to find it empty. No books, no furniture, no naked chicks on the rug.
Mike Warnke seriously considered ending his life. I tried to kill myself. I was sitting in a student union building writing a suicide note, had a gun in my waistband, getting ready to blow my brains out. Fortunately, a group of campus crusaders walked into the room and ruined Mike Warnke's plans. Their happiness annoyed Mike Warnke to the point where he decided that the best revenge was a life well lived. That would really rub it in the faces of both the Satanists and the Christians.
So, Mike Warnke decided not to kill himself. Instead, he joined the Navy. He had lost his Vietnam deferment when he dropped out of school. He figured he would beat the government to the punch and at least choose his own adventure. But before that, one last bender. Warnke says he took a bunch of barbiturates and let a woman braid his hair the night before he was to report, June 1st, 1966. Mike says he woke up on a bus headed for boot camp.
At boot camp, the worst case scenario, Mike Warnke was assigned bunkmates with two practicing Christians. Again, Mike was annoyed by the positivity that filled the room. Or maybe he was envious. Maybe Mike Warnke should give it a shot. Nothing wrong with sending a little prayer out into the universe. BCC, all the gods. You know, I walked at the end of that barracks and I went into my closet.
And I shut the door and I got down on my knees and I put my elbows up on a bucket full of dirty mop water. And I said, God, if this isn't a joke, make me like them. And the Lord, he honored that prayer. And he reached down into that closet. He touched me and he killed me. And then he raised me from the dead, a new creature in Christ. And I walked out of that closet, a child of the king.
After boot camp, Mike Warnke was sent to Hospital Core School in San Diego. He married Sue Studer, an old classmate and devout Christian.
By the time Mike reported to Vietnam in 1969, they'd moved to Crestline, California, and their first child was on the way. The brotherhood was watching his every move. In Vietnam, war was hell. Mike Warnke was a medic in a moving combat unit and was wounded twice. Fortunately, he made it home alive on March 1, 1970. Unfortunately, he quickly rediscovered drugs and drinking.
but eventually Mike Warnke snapped out of it and rededicated himself to the glory of God. His new life purpose was to start his own ministry, an anti-occult ministry, using his personal testimony as the basis. In early 1972, Warnke requested and received an early discharge from the Navy, in which he had recently re-enlisted. One of Mike Warnke's first forays into the religion business was helping an evangelical pastor in San Diego develop the Witchmobile.
It was basically a traveling collection of cheaply made witch artifacts like skulls and Ouija boards. But it provided an easy opening to proselytize. The Witchmobile was scheduled to embark on a 45-city national tour. Mike Warnke bailed after only a few.
Mike Warnke had something else in store. He had written a book called The Satan Cellar, which was going to be published. It's a detailed testimony of Mike Warnke's time as a drugged out satanic priest. Some of the names in the book had been changed to protect the individuals involved. Otherwise, as the back of the title page read, the events are absolutely as described. Support for Swindled comes from Rocket Money.
Most Americans think they spend about $62 per month on subscriptions. That's very specific, but get this, the real number is closer to $300. That is literally thousands of dollars a year, half of which we've probably forgotten about.
I know I'm guilty, but thankfully, I started using Rocket Money. They found a bunch of subscriptions I'd forgotten all about and then helped me cancel the ones I didn't want anymore. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings. With Rocket Money, I have full control over my subscriptions and a
and a clear view of my expenses. I can see all of my subscriptions in one place, and if I see something I don't want, Rocket Money can help me cancel it with a few taps. Rocket Money will even try to negotiate lower bills for you by up to 20%. All you have to do is submit a picture of your bill, and Rocket Money takes care of the rest. They'll deal with customer service for you. It's a dream.
Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's features. Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash swindled. That's rocketmoney.com slash swindled. rocketmoney.com slash swindled.
In just a minute, we're going to hear Mike Warnke talk about what it means to be a Satanist high priest and what devil worshipers do. But just remember, this is what Mike did a long time ago, years ago. The Mike Warnke of today is working full time for Christ, spreading love and joy and laughter wherever he goes. Listen closely now and you'll see what I mean.
Mike Warnke's "The Satan Seller" was released by Logos International in late 1972 to rave reviews. In less than three months, the book became a religious bestseller and Mike Warnke's calendar was filling up. Mike started sharing his testimony and these spoken word style performances at Jesus People coffee houses, churches, and Jesus music shows on the West Coast.
The details of his satanic rituals and drug abuse were a bit harsh for such settings. Mike Warnke realized this, so he started peppering in humorous observations and anecdotes to lighten the mood. A sugar-coated satanic conspiracy, if you will.
How exciting. As Mike Warnke's popularity as a Christian comedian was rising,
He decided to move Sue and his now two children to Stillwater, Oklahoma so that he could become an ordained minister at Trinity Bible School.
Oklahoma was also in the middle of the country, which provided much shorter drives to locations Mike would have never attempted to reach in his red Volkswagen Beetle. Mike Warnke's traveling ministry continued between Bible classes. Every weekend he was exercising the demons on stage, and then again later in his hotel room with recent converts, if you know what I'm saying. Mike's philandering ways eventually followed him home.
At Trinity Bible School, Mike Warnke met a woman named Carolyn Alberti. She said she was third-generation mafia. Her father operated gambling houses. Her mother ran a brothel. Carolyn claimed she still had connections in politics and the entertainment business. As a rising star, Mike Warnke's ears perked.
And that wasn't the only thing. Mike started courting Carolyn and spending more time with her outside of the classroom. When the Warnke family moved from Stillwater to Tulsa, Mike convinced Carolyn Alberti to tag along. She even lived with Mike and Sue for some time. Sue Warnke was none the wiser. After graduating from Trinity in the spring of 1975, the Warnkes relocated again, this time to Denver. And again, Carolyn Alberti followed.
Mike also allegedly had another girlfriend in New York City that he had met on the road. By January 1976, Mike and Sue Warnke were no longer living together. In fact, the married couple was not even living in the same state. Mike Warnke packed a U-Haul and moved to Nashville with Carolyn, who was helping steer his career at this point. The two rented an apartment together. Despite his growing popularity, Mike Warnke struggled financially. But,
That would all change very soon. One of his speaking engagements at the Adam's Apple Coffee House in Fort Wayne, Indiana was recorded almost accidentally.
Mirror Records, a subsidiary of Word Incorporated, heard the recording and agreed to release it as an album. It was called Mike Warnke Alive. It came out in May 1976. By September 1976, Warnke was on the cover of Harmony, a Christian music magazine. The comedy album was also receiving heavy airplay on Christian radio. By January 1977, Mike Warnke's Alive was the best-selling religious album in America.
That's because the biggest thing that ever happened to me in my life was not being a Satanist priest. The heaviest experience I ever had was nothing that happened with the devil. It's something I did nine years ago in a mop closet Navy boot camp. When I got down on my knees and said, Lord, be my personal savior. That's the heaviest one thing that's ever happened to me in 29 years. And I dig it.
Mike Warnke signed with the Dharma Artist Agency, a Christian management company that started booking his tours. That same year, Mike released a sophomore album titled Jester and the King's Court.
which solidified his spot as the country's top, maybe only, Christian comedian. I wrote The Satan Cellar and my last album was called Jester in the King's Court. And the distance between The Satan Cellar and Jester in the King's Court is the story of my Christian life as a Christian, growing and maturing. And the next one's called Hey Doc. It doesn't have anything to do with my testimony at all. It has to do with the time I spent in Vietnam.
No Satanists, no boogermen, no nothing. It's just me and the Lord trucking through the jungle. Now the stories that I tell, I tell them in a funny and humorous way. But yeah, all of them have happened to me. As a matter of fact, I have never preached about anything I haven't experienced. Ever.
Mike Warnke was a bona fide rock star, and he lived like one. On the road, the Christian comedian drank, smoked, and slept around. His entourage and the Christian musicians who performed with him were well aware of Warnke's lifestyle and winced at the sheer hypocrisy of his message. But the money was flowing, so they kept quiet. It's not very Christian to criticize a brother.
Besides, the man had been through a lot. Mike told his friends that he came home from a show one night and found his wife Sue in bed with another man. That's why they divorced, which was finalized in December 1976. Four months later, he married Carolyn Alberti and hit the road harder than ever before.
Put your hands together and please welcome to the stage the kamikaze of comedy, the wizard of wacko, the jester in the king's court, God's one and only voice of comedy,
Some old boy walked up to me in Kentucky and said, man, I got tofu. I'd say, hey, don't tell me. Get Dr. Shoals. Avocados and avocados make guacamole. That dog died. I've noticed something about black people.
How do you know when yogurt's gone bad? The answer's Jesus. You get up in the morning and say, "I need a cheese sandwich." Somebody say, "You show me the word cheese sandwich in the word of God." And I said, "Hey man, what are these pockets for?" And they said, "They're for guys that wear glasses." I said, "What? I mean, I wear glasses on my face, man. My pockets can't see." What is daylight savings time? And if we're saving so much of it, who's got it all? I chose Icy Hot 'cause I wasn't fixing to put nothing called Ben Gay on me.
Oh brother. Pretty sure that last one is a Gallagher joke. Maybe it's Pauly Shore. I don't know, it's one of those standard bearers of modern stand-up comedy.
Anyway, what else you got, Warnky? Airplane material? I knew it. What a hack.
Mike Warnke's appearance even screamed, "I'm so wacky." He wore thick glasses, loud clothing, a gold dangly earring, and he tied it all together with a shoulder-length mullet.
Obviously, Mike Warnke practiced what he preached. He would close out his sets with some traditional sermonizing, typically sticking to the common theme that God accepts everybody for who they are, no matter their past, no matter their appearance, no matter how truly awful they are at the art of stand-up comedy. What do the first two letters in the word God spell? Tell me again. What do the first three letters in the word Satan spell?
By the end of the decade, Mike Warnke had sold more than 200,000 copies of his comedy records and was selling out shows all over the country. He once calculated that he had traveled over 280,000 air miles in one year, only taking three days off a month. Unsurprisingly, his marriage to Carolyn suffered. Not only because Mike Warnke was never home, but also because he continued to cheat.
At a show in Hazard, Kentucky, Mike became infatuated with a woman he had met named Rose Hall. He started sending her jewelry and meeting her at different stops on his tour. When Carolyn found out about the affair, she said she confronted Mike and he became violent, shoving her into a wall and splitting her head open.
Carolyn says Mike threatened to kill her if she went to the hospital or turned him in. Carolyn got in her car and fled Nashville for Pensacola, Florida. Mike became apologetic. Over the next few weeks, Carolyn and Mike's relationship improved thanks to a few sweet notes and phone calls. Carolyn decided to return to Nashville, only to find their house empty with the "For Sale" sign in the yard. She never saw Mike Warnke again.
The divorce was final on November 29th, 1979. Mike Warnke told his friends and business partners that Carolyn drowned in a boating accident or was found in a ditch, bludgeoned to death. Obviously, none of that was true. "Mike is one of the greatest con artists I've ever known in my life," Carolyn later said. "And coming from my background, that says quite a bit." "I've never been a perfect man. I've never been a perfect husband.
a perfect father, a perfect grandfather. I've never been a perfect anything. I've made more mistakes since I've been a Christian than I ever did before I got saved. And now that I'm a Christian, I have less excuse for the ones I do make. I am not God's best servant. I am not the body of Christ's best speaker. I'm not the funniest man that ever lived. I've never been a perfect Christian. But even though I've never been the Christian I should be,
Jesus has always been the Jesus he promised he'd be. And the reason I stand up here tonight with victory in my heart and joy in my life is not because of my perfection, but because of the perfection of my Savior. Not because I have learned to trust in me, but because I have learned to trust in the love that he has for me. I have learned faith and I am a winner.
Mike Warnke married Rose Hall on January 2nd, 1980. It was his third marriage, her fourth. He eventually adopted her children and moved to the eastern Kentucky mountains, leaving Nashville's corrupting influence behind.
Almost every aspect of Mike Warnke's traveling ministry was brought in-house. They started booking their own shows, managing their own money. Mike even started incorporating Rose into his live events because she could play piano and sing. "She's a very talented everything and as this brother pointed out, the only thing that she hasn't done good in her whole life is pick a husband." This pairing resulted in some kind of Shatner-esque spoken word avant-garde post-punk output reminiscent of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
That's why I'm feeling a strong 7 out of 10. Transition. Mary, Mary, Mary and John. Watch the blood drop from the glorified one. Mary, Mary, Mary and John. Heard him say...
In addition to his art, Mike Warnke also started focusing more on his education during the 80s. He says he amassed two bachelor's degrees, two master's degrees, and a doctorate of philosophy by the decade's end. However, it could be argued that the Warnke's greatest accomplishment in the 1980s was the establishment of their own ministry.
Holy Orthodox Catholic Church in Kentucky doing business as Warnky Ministries, a nonprofit organization that specialized in counseling young people on the issues of Satanism and occult activities. Well, we handle between 45 and 50,000 prayer requests and counseling calls a month. We have prison ministry, we have a ministry to people in mental hospitals, and we have our anti-occult work. The people who come to us, some are homosexual.
Some are AIDS victims, some are suicidal, some are runaways. Some are young girls wondering about abortion because they have unwanted pregnancy.
Some are witches, some are warlocks, some are pimps, some are perverts, some are Satanists, some are junkies. Some are, quote, "vegetables," like Jeffy, a child so satanically abused in preschool that he became unresponsive. Mike Warnke would often talk about Jeffy during his shows and appeal to the audience. "Don't you want to help Jeffy? Don't you want to prevent this from happening to other Jeffys? Don't you want to defeat Satan?"
donate to Warnky Ministries. His name is Mike Warnky. Mike has been referred to as the jester in the king's court. He's a comedian evangelist. Mike uses humor to communicate the word of God. Mike has also written a book entitled The Satan Cellar, in which he describes his life as a Satanist high priest, a devil worshiper,
He also describes his encounters with the true God, the God of love, as revealed through the Lord Jesus Christ. Mike's conversion to Christianity is a remarkable story of God's transforming love. The 1980s were the most lucrative for the Warnkees. Mike and Rose traveled with security guards in private jets and limousines. They purchased a colonial-style brick office complex in Burgeon, Kentucky to serve as the headquarters of Warnke Ministries.
Plans were also in place to construct a large rehab and medical facility. Please, Mike would ask his audience, donate to the cause. Another boom for the business could be attributed to a renewed interest in Mike Warnke's satanic past, thanks to a phenomenon during this time period that, I think it's fair to say, Mike Warnke held.
helped create. Stories of devil worship and satanic cults corrupting young minds. Possibly satanic messages on some rock music recording. There's a widely held opinion that what happened at the daycare was the devil's handiwork. This is a 15-year-old boy who also wanted to be special. Before hanging himself, he wrote on his body, I'm coming home, master, and Satan lives, and 666.
Satanic panic was sweeping the nation and Mike Warnke was the certified authority on all things occult. In the mid 80s, Mike appeared on ABC's 2020, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, and other popular shows to share his expertise.
His story in the Satan Cellar was cited as proof and other influential works on the topic. People who are living for evil's sake have got to continually do things that are more and more evil even to be able to express to themselves that they are evil enough for their master. So now we have a lot of cases of children being sacrificed and the younger the better. In addition to becoming a widely sought after media expert on the subject,
Beginning in the 80s, Mike Warnke and his ministry began advising and consulting with law enforcement on satanic crimes.
Often Mike Warnke was the final authority in determining if a crime should be considered satanic or not. We investigate between 25 and 30 cases every single month and 98% of the victims are under the age of 12. The little girl, six months old, who was murdered by having her sexual organs cut out, by having her heart cut out. Three young men took one of their friends and beat him.
In 1989, Warnky Ministries opened a seminar department to teach police departments the facts about Satanism and what to look for. John C. Cooper, a former college professor, was hired as the department's director. He was fired from Warnky Ministries after only five months on the job.
So, John C. Cooper sued his former employer, alleging that he was wrongfully terminated and that the entire operation was a money-making scam. Cooper also claimed that shortly after he filed that lawsuit, his front door was blasted with a shotgun and a threatening note was left in his mailbox. Satan was at work. Not really. But you know who was? Cornerstone Magazine.
Cornerstone magazine was a Christian publication associated with Jesus People USA that lived and worked communally in a 10-story building in Chicago. In addition to the magazine, there was a Cornerstone roofing company, a Cornerstone painting company, etc. All 400 of its members wore many different hats and shared the revenue and expenses equally. Mike Warnke had been on Cornerstone's radar for a while.
The magazine heavily promoted his early material more than 20 years ago when they were both new on the scene, and there had always been murmurs about Mike's personal life and behavior. There had always been whispers that his backstory might have been a bit fabricated. But Cornerstone magazine never dug into the Warnky Ministries until it received a tip that its former seminar director, John C. Cooper, was suing them.
Two early 30s amateur investigative reporters at Cornerstone, named John Trott and Mike Hertenstein, wanted the story. "Even if something is uncomfortable to us or will be detrimental to us or our Christian cause," Trott later said, "we feel that as Christian journalists, we have to tell the truth about that."
For the next two years, John Trott and Mike Hertenstein tugged at every Warnke string. They found and interviewed his closest friends from high school and college, his relatives, his neighbors, and his compatriots in Vietnam. Every facet of Mike Warnke's personal life and ministry was probed in an attempt to answer three questions. Had Mike Warnke ever really been the high priest of a 1,500-member drugged-out satanic cult near San Bernardino?
Was his personal life really as messy as rumored? And lastly, what did Warnky Ministries actually do? What resulted was the longest article in Cornerstone Magazine's history, a heavily footnoted and sourced 24,000-word expose cover story called "Selling Satan: The Tragic History of Mike Warnky," published on June 27, 1992.
In summation, many a discrepancy was found. The statements made in this report are factual and verifiable. Anybody can read Mike's book, study its timeline, and see that there is no way for him to have done the things he claimed in the Satan cellar. Mike's former fiancée, his roommates, relatives, and cohorts in school emphatically contradict his claims on everything from hair length to drug use and from out-of-town trips to love slaves in his apartment.
Mike's own friends refused to sign an affidavit that his Satanism testimony was true. Let's start where Trott and Hertenstein started, the timeline. Mike Worke's first day of college was on September 13th, 1965 and he entered the Navy on June 2nd, 1966. So, over a period of about nine months, Mike Worke claims he became increasingly addicted to various drugs.
volunteered for the LSD experiments, joined the coven, rode a motorcycle to Mexico and back, been shot multiple times, marched to Montgomery with Martin Luther King Jr., even though Warnky was still in high school, hung out with Charles Manson, even though Charles Manson was in prison, plus all the kidnappings, sacrificial ceremonies, and rapes. On the surface, that seems like an impossible calendar to maintain.
But, analyzing the actual dates and full moons Warnky mentioned in his multiple books proved that beyond a doubt. Was Mike Warnky lying about everything? Not quite. Mike was indeed orphaned as a child, as he had claimed, but yeah, pretty much everything else was a work of fiction. For example, in his book, Mike claimed he became a bad boy in high school and was drinking a lot.
Every high school friend that Trott and Hertenstein tracked down contradicted that memory. They said Mike Warnke was a nerd, a class clown, a storyteller with a desperate need for attention.
Mike's college friends remembered him the same way, including his former fiancée, Lois Eckenrod, who was never mentioned in Warnke's books. Lois told Cornerstone that she was with Mike Warnke almost every day during the alleged time period of his satanic activities, and there was no way he was on drugs. None of Mike's college friends remembered anyone named Dean Armstrong. There were no LSD experiments on campus.
For heaven's sake, this is only a two-year junior college. Dr. George Zaharopoulos, a former professor at San Bernardino Valley College, Toad Trott, and Hertenstein.
Mike Warnke's appearance, as described in the Satan Cellar, was another point of contention among those who knew him. There were no facial scabs, no long hair, and no long fingernails. Mike was a pudgy dork with thick glasses and a conservative haircut who wore a silver cross around his neck. There was photographic proof. Lois Eckenrod and Mike Warnke had a friend's wedding 33 days before he joined the Navy.
Speaking of which, Lois also contradicted Mike's going-away party where he claims he woke up at boot camp with his hair braided. Lois told Cornerstone that it was she who had thrown a going-away party for Mike, which was nothing but good, clean fun. Quote, It said,
Predictably, Trott and Hertenstein found it more difficult to verify Warnke's Vietnam experience, which he described in books and records. However, the reporters did confirm that the Christian comedian's quote "year in hell" was actually more like six months. They also tracked down a former neighbor who confirmed that he told Mike Warnke a personal war story about a friend who was killed in action by a Vietnamese child while passing out candy.
Warnke adopted that story as his own in his second book, Hitchhiking on Hope Street. But in his version, Mike Warnke survives the betrayal. It was one of his two injuries, or five, depending on which Mike Warnke books you've read.
Everything about this man was in doubt, except for his immoral lifestyle. Mike Warnke's contemporaries in the Christian entertainment industry confirmed the cornerstone many of the salacious rumors, the drug use, the womanizing. Fame and fortune had only amplified Mike Warnke's wicked ways, but none of his fellow Christians ever stopped him because the ends justified the means. Who was converting more new Christians than Mike Warnke at the time?
Nobody. Which is kind of funny considering Mike had secretly been ordained as an independent bishop in an obscure Eastern Orthodox sect. In other words, he didn't even belong to the religion for which he was recruiting.
But what about Warnky Ministries? Wasn't that a Christian operation? Well, it probably would have been if it actually existed. Former employees told Trott and Hertenstein that it was only a ministry on paper. There was no church service, no rehab or medical center. There was no Jeffy, and any money sent in to save the Jeffys was collected and counted with any attached letter, usually left unread. Lies, lies, lies. Everywhere you look,
and most disturbing of all, noted John Trott and Mike Hertenstein, was that the satanic panic hysteria that continued to linger could be traced back to Warnke's 1972 book. "We believe the Satan Cellar has been responsible more than any other single volume in the Christian market for promoting the current nationwide Satanism scare," Trott later said. In reality, Mike Warnke was no more of a Satanist than Larry was a cable guy.
Yet people were being prosecuted, even executed based on fictional information about Satanism, imagined and provided to law enforcement agencies by Warnke Ministries. We were all living in the hell Mike Warnke created for us. But so many shared in the blame. The publishing companies who didn't verify his stories, the traveling companions who didn't expose his hypocrisy,
"Profit considerations line the stairway to heaven." Remember kids, it's much easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. "Guess who our special guest is? Mike Warnke. He's an ex-hippie, ex-drug addict, and formerly a Satanist high priest, now one of America's favorite Christian comedians. You're really gonna like him." Mike Warnke had been made aware of Cornerstone's investigation before its publication.
There's a bunch of people right now launching a campaign to drive me out of my ministry, he told a live audience. There's only one way I'm leaving this ministry. Jesus will tell me that he's finished with me and then I will sit down or you will have to pry my Bible out of my cold, dead hands. And that is the only way.
But after the article was published, Mike Warnke said he needed time to gather materials before he responded. The more immediate response came from others in the Christian community. Some dismissed the overwhelming evidence that was painstakingly laid out before them, choosing rather to blame the publication for trying to bring down Brother Warnke.
Others, like Dave Reese of Uniontown, Ohio, appreciated the exposé and understood the larger issue at hand. In a letter to the editors, he wrote, "The lesson which Cornerstone presented goes beyond Mike Warnke. It questions the very power and avarice inherent in any monolithic and unchecked Christian market. It's time to start earmarking our money back to those people from whom the Lord intended it, the forgotten and truly needy ones outside the limelight.
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that it will be all too easy for those inside the industry to resort to turf defense by defending Mike Warnke instead of admitting that we screwed up somewhere and lost the vista of what being a Christian community is all about.
Dave was right. When Mike Warnke did respond to Cornerstone's allegations in early July, he included letters of support and credibility from his publisher, his record company, and others. Warnke and others maintained that the story of his conversion to Christ as told in the Satan Cellar was absolutely true to the best of his recollection. Only names, dates, and locations had been changed.
Warnke denied intentionally misleading anybody. He denied ever perpetrating violence against women. He never did anything but try to point people to Jesus, he wrote. "I have made many mistakes since my conversion in 1966. I've almost never been the Christian I should be. I have failed as a husband, a father, and a friend. The low point of my Christian life was my association and marriage to Carolyn Alberti and my time in Nashville, Tennessee.
In a follow-up response dated July 15, 1992, Mike Warnke put forth an extra effort to dismiss Cornerstone's sources. He said the Brotherhood operated in the veil of secrecy. How would his fellow students even know if he was a Satanist or not?
Mike also claimed he didn't even remember Lois Eckenrod, who claimed to be his fiancée. And again he blamed Carolyn Alberti for holding a grudge. She was "instrumental in the breakup of my marriage to Sue" and "used her skill as a cold-hearted and calculated temptress to involve me in an ill-fated second marriage. It was a bitter marriage, a bitter separation, and a very bitter divorce."
Mike said he believed Carolyn's continuing bitterness persuaded others to join in a misinformation campaign against him, which included former employees of Warnke Ministries, who were spreading nothing but lies about the organization's operations and financial condition. Again, after a dozen more typed pages, Mike Warnke had failed to acknowledge any of the very specific evidence collected by John Trott and Mike Hertenstein. His plan appeared to be to forgive, forget, and trudge ahead.
But then, in late July, Warnke's hometown newspaper, the Lexington Herald-Leader, published a series of articles by Jay Grealin that shined a brighter light on Warnke Ministries. According to tax records, the Warnkes collected $2 million in donations and gifts per year at its peak, and more than half of that was paid to the family: Mike, Rose, Rose's brother, and her niece.
They'd purchased a $600,000 mansion on a plantation and Rose's mom's name and rented it to the ministry. It was filled with grand pianos, antiques, and expensive cars. All the while, the Warnke's continued to beg for donations on stage while contributing at most $900 annually to charity. Jay Grealin discovered that the IRS had actually revoked Warnke Ministries' tax-exempt status because of the family's excessive compensation.
According to the former employees who talked to the Herald leader, it was long overdue. Mike and Rose were, quote, Rose Warnke, in particular, had a spending problem. She used to ask the office for signed blank checks so that she could go shopping.
It makes you wonder if the handling of finances led to Mike and Rose's divorce in 1991. But then again, they continued to work together. They even wrote a book about their failed marriage called "Recovering from Divorce." Mike and Rose also continued doing interviews together, like the one that appeared in the November 1992 issue of Christianity Today where they became more aggressive in their defense.
When all this came out, I answered all the allegations and no one was satisfied. Now, the next time I respond, I'm going to level my big guns on everybody and I'm not going to quit shooting until I blow them all out of the water. They're going to be very, very sorry," said Mike Warnke, who claimed Cornerstone was part of a Satanic cult seeking to destroy his ministry.
The Warnkees also claimed they hired their own investigators to look into the publication. "As a matter of fact," Rose Warnke told the journalist, "if you write a story exposing them with the information we already have against them, Cornerstone will find out where you are and kill you." However, the Warnkees did admit that one of the magazine's claims was true.
There was never a 1500 member Satanist group, as Mike had always claimed, quote, to be accurate, there were only 13 people in the coven, but eight are now dead and Mike had no idea where the other five were.
The Warnke's were feeling the heat. Mike told a crowd that the ministry was weeks away from bankruptcy. His concerts were being canceled. His record company ended their working relationship. His four books and 13 albums were pulled from store shelves. His audience dwindled. Mike Warnke was ruined. As he lay prostrate, naked, and crying on his living room floor, he says he heard the voice of God once more, telling him not to give up. Telling him to fight back.
So that's what Mike Warnke vowed to do. He started his own record label and called it the "Mercy Corporation." And in January 1993, he assembled a tribunal of elders, mostly local Kentucky Baptist ministers, to whom Mike would submit himself for discipline and direction. After a careful review, that council accepted Warnke's repentance and ruled that Warnke Ministries was worth saving because Cornerstone had been "less than fair" in representing the truth.
John Trott and Mike Hertenstein would later receive a first-place award from the Evangelical Press Association for their investigative reporting on the story. An expanded book version of the article was also published in 1993 with the same title, "Selling Satan." The Council of Elders recommended that Warnke Ministries adopt more independent governance of its business operations and required a sincere acknowledgement of his marital failures.
In his response, Mike Warnke again stood behind his testimony of former satanic involvement, but did admit to some exaggeration and embellishment, but offered no specifics. Nor did he offer an apology or accept any responsibility for the hundreds of people who were incarcerated based on misinformation he'd disseminated about the occult. No criminal charges were ever filed against the Warnkes.
In the following years, Mike Warnke married for a fourth time to an old high school classmate named Susan Patton. He suffered a heart attack in 1997 but survived and used the health scare for the title of his 2005 comedy special when he finally returned to the stage. Mike also published another book called Friendly Fire, a recovery guide for believers battered by religion.
Today, Mike and Susan Warnke are still married. They live in California and operate Celebrations of Hope, a ministry that reported a net operating income of $20,000 in 2020. Mike is still selling his albums and still performing at small churches, even as recently as 2023. And if you're wondering, yeah, he's still got it. Because I discovered something, and it's oat milk.
I did not know that there was such a thing as oat milk. Oat milk, folks. Here's the question. How do you milk an oat? ♪
Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, a.k.a. Deformer, a.k.a. A Devil Worshipper. For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok at swindledpodcast. Or you can send us a postcard at P.O. Box 666-044-Austin, Texas 787-666-2. But please, no packages. We do not trust you.
Swindled is a completely independent production, which means no network, no investors, no bosses, no shadowy money men, no Jeffies. And we plan to keep it that way, but we need your support. Become a valued listener on Patreon, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify at valuedlistener.com. For as little as five bucks a month, you will receive early access to new episodes and exclusive access to bonus episodes that you can't find anywhere else. And everything is 100% commercial free. Become a valued listener at valuedlistener.com.
Or if you want to support the show and need something to wear to a black mass, consider buying something you don't need at swindledpodcast.com slash shop. There are t-shirts, patches, hats, hoodies, posters, coffee mugs, and more. swindledpodcast.com slash shop. And remember to use coupon code CAPITALISM to receive 10% off your order. If you don't want anything in return for your support, you can always simply donate using the form on the homepage. That's it. Thanks for listening.
What the fuck?
Thanks to SimpliSafe for sponsoring the show. Protect your home this summer with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for Fast Protect Monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash swindled. That's simplisafe.com slash swindled. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.