2 – Lust
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In the weeks and months before youth pastor nick hack, ney's wife dawn, died in a fire in the couple's bedroom, may have been leading marriage counseling sessions with a net and crag Anderson, the couple could not have known at the private time they spent with nick would become the subject of a very public investigation less than a month after dawn died. And that says, nick came on door.

SHE resisted, but was sympathetic, thinking IT was awesome, inappropriate but understandable reaction to his wife's death over the next week or so. And that says, nick continued making subbed but suggestive comments to her, then came a day. And that says he will never forget he was wathin ck at the gym when IT happened.

he pulled me to attending her and .

kissed me.

and you kiss him back. And because, well, he changed his tone from from troubled person who was weak and sing stupid things, to talking about a plan that god had and how god was doing different things now. And that in his calling, he felt like god wanted us to be together intimately.

And that says, he told him that crazy and i'm married. He recalls nick responding that IT was what god wanted. The recently beef neck agony was using the almighty as owing man. And that says, eventually nick suggested they meet up in a hotel room.

He said that all god wants this one time.

That no.

not really. But I was kind of in a mode of, you know, taking this big .

risk degree.

right?

true. SHE had agreed.

even though he says he was not seriously attracted the nick and that her relationship with her husband craig was just fine. This was all about nicking what he needed, right? In this episode, you'll hear about surprising choices. He was able to .

get these women to do these incredible things, to break their marital bowls, to give him money, to do all sorts of things that that, that don't make sense. IT doesn't fit their personality, except he was so good at pulling them in .

the emotional damage that can come from keeping secrets.

There were several times when I just and I didn't want to be in this world anymore, that were times that you, i'd have sua cycle .

fox and a church member who could foretell the future.

But that, why would these people accept all these profits at face value? They are waiting for that earthquake going to come. Is onna decimate seattle? They still alter their lives with no proof, just faith.

I'm judge manics. And this is mortal scene, a podcast from date line. Episode two lost. Annett Anderson says a big component of the choices SHE made about nick had to do with the undeniable fact that his wife had just died, and then that felt sorry for him. Now he had agreed to take things to another level with her pastor.

so you meet me at the hotel. What's that like, fun, sexy, intriguing.

Biggest mistake of my life. I wouldn't characterize IT as any of those things. Things I was heavy. You know that it's started. Look back on and remember IT in any weight .

all but at the time you you talk yourself and door.

right.

how do you feel IT was .

the feeling of having jumped over a Cliff?

You know, you told me that was the only time you were going to do that, right?

But that wasn't the only time, right?

And that says their sexual relationship lasted the Better part of a year. At one point, he went so far as to give one of her children cold medicine to put them to sleep one evening so he could go see nick IT was, he says, nick idea. And that regrets IT.

That was a terrible, terrible moment. Yeah, that was, you know, part of the progression of disturbing things going on. Definitely.

if you're wondering how far next interpretation of god's plan went, know this. Nick didn't want IT made public, so a net did not tell her husband about any of IT. Hard to keep .

this secret. Terrible.

just terrible. What that do you IT react? Me IT completely destroyed me. IT took me down lower than really I would have thought I could survive. He had the spiritual wer. I consider IT to be a hindu spiritual abuse, yet was extremely destructive.

And IT wasn't alone. There was another woman in the congregation who had gotten very close to nick. And SHE was about the last person on earth you'd expect.

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At the same time, nick was involved with a net. He also begun a physical relationship with another church member, a com fison. This was in january of nineteen, nineteen ninety eight, the month after dawn died. And even as nick was with a net and the call, he was more quietly pursuing a relationship via email and telephone with a Young partition er named linsey Smith now nick was living very dangerously here as well because linsey was passed her bob Smith twenty year old daughter he had left for south africa a few days after the fire author greg olson.

she's a Young girl. He was going off on a mission trip SHE was is trusting .

and I ve that mails started working on her and the emails .

get more explicit perhaps because he was thousands .

of miles is away in south africa the relationship between nick and linsey never developed as busy as nick seemed to be juggling relationships. In early one thousand nine ninety eight, he somehow found time to stand touch with daw's family, including his mother in law, the apartment.

He was always there. We needed help with anything, you know, just practical things, like we needed a new garage door. So he was there, he installed because he had done that kind of work. And so he installed the new order door for us. He helped out with my middle son with darn and corey wedding.

So this is a guy who very much considered themselves .

to still be part 呀。

that must .

have felt great to have him sticker around.

And when nick wood stop by IT was clear to Diana that the pain of losing down was a onn.

they shared look into those big eyes of his and think that, you know, I was seen just the depth of his sadness. And as I and I, you know, wanted to be a comfort to him because I believed that dawn was everything to him.

just as he was to you.

Diana says he wanted to help nick through his pain, so this is what he said to him.

I told neck at the time. I said that I was hoping that I could be done for him, and he told me then in response, he said, no. He says, I don't want you to be done. I wanted to be yourself. And he said he wanted to love both of us.

both of them. You turned out nick method, literally and physically, he began a relationship with his dead wife's mother. Normally, mothers in law would be off limits for an affair. However, as you've perhaps sense already, very little of nick hat ese behavior at Christ community church might be classified as Normal.

You said earlier that after don die that you wanted to be a comfort tonne. I've do not doubt for a minute that you did want to be a comfort to make, but you ve got to helps me understand what form that took.

That's probably ly. The most guilt that I Carry now with me is my relationship with neck.

You know.

i'm not sure you should .

be feeling any guilt about this.

So i've been told, but still I do. Well, i've been told that I was the victim.

Well, let me ask you this trying to be a comfort to neck, you ended up being sexually intimate with him. Would that have happened if you'd known about all the other relationships that was having? I think not.

I asked .

Diana .

whether SHE made her choices because nick was a .

man of god. What happened between nicki IT had nothing to do with the fact that he was a man apart. No, even if he hadn't have been. I mean, just the fact that he was a man that had lost his wife, that I believe, you know, they were deeply in love, was very close to him and and the loss, and I was hoping somehow, just is a comforting thing that I could ease, ease that for him.

Diana came to deeply regret the relationship, SHE says. IT brought her to .

a blink .

and that were.

Several times when .

I just I didn't .

agree in this world anymore, I will admit IT there. Were times that i'd have sua cycle thoughts, even because of the lifestyle that I was leading. IT also lead to the end of my marriage because my husband had found out what I had been doing. So I finally said that he would give me a divorce, but he wasn't only, I mean, you know, that, of course, the divorce. And then and .

IT affected .

dance brothers as well, the loss, their .

sister greg.

thing about those women, none of them knew, know that he was going from place to place emain linsey about how much he was in love with her, or going over to seduce a net or be with me. Cole, I mean, IT was like one after another notes every day. He's off somewhere new.

But the truth is it's not about anything, but what he's giving them. So he makes feel great. He makes them feel loved special. And maybe, you know, headed for something more important than just being somebody wife. Maybe some spiritual importance of some kind.

Remember, even before dawn died, nick was spending a lot of time with other women from Christ community church. Supposedly, that was because they needed spiritual guidance, which he provided. One friend say he was aware of that, but seemed unaware of the depth of next involvement with them.

And and so well, nick was doing this while he was canceling these women and talking about sex and doing goodness knows what else done next wife was what? Babysitting this woman's kids. That's right. That's right.

SHE didn't know what what he was really helping. I mean, he did. They've caked up money to send these people way on a retreat.

Or SHE would watch the kids, as you would make food for them or bring them stuff. Pick up nick, do all that stuff. SHE had no idea, of course, what her husband was up to.

but he knew her husbands asn't home and what just didn't have the strength to say, no, that's wrong. I need you hear.

I think he was a good convinced. He convinced her that these people really need me on. She's really in a world to hurt. I ve got to go to her right now.

A good. Maybe that's why don continue to support her husband and why, after don died, IT never occurred to a net Anderson that nick might be stepping in the other marriages besides her own.

You don't look back and think maybe that was happening .

with somebody else too. No, I didn't think IT really could have. Because why would he need sex with me if he was getting sex with somebody else? But I was, you know, rapped up in a very small mindset rather .

than a larger picture of an unlikely lothario is another greg olson.

Oh my god, take a look out of. He is completely unlikely. Look, I mean, he he's not.

I mean, when people people asking all the time, was he handsome? What was IT that made him get all those women to come to him? And IT wasn't anything about this looks. IT was about what he could give them, which was maybe a shoulder to cry on, or maybe spiritual guidance, whatever is they really needed, that what he had, he was able to get these women to do these incredible things, to break their marital vows, to give him money, to do all sorts of things that that, that don't make sense. IT doesn't fit their personality.

except he was so good at pulling them in, or they were so ripe to be pulled in. I mean, all he had to tell them was that was in the name of the lord. And all of a certain, nothing else made any sense to them.

Nothing made any difference. Do you know the first guy to sort of use god's name to get his way? Actually, no.

And yet, in some way, this betrayal seems so much worse than what i've heard from other people in other stories, other cities, other places. You know, he wasn't just using god's name to have his way sexually with his woman. He was using the sympathy that they felt for him. So he was using their own goodness really against him.

Yeah, I mean, it's really heartbreaking because I know all of those women thought they were helping him and didn't know the depth of the betrayal until years later, and that, you know, they feel foolish and stupid and used, and it's no reflection on them. Many of those things they .

were taken in after daw's death. Nix involvement with multiple women is not, by itself, terribly suspicious. However, there was also a woman with whom nick had an affair before his wife died. Now that dear listener, well, that would qualify as suspicious.

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Nick acne has been hired as youth pastor at Christ community church back in the early nineties. That was shortly after he and dawn had been married by the church's founder, pater bob smith. Smith was much beloved by the church community.

Some felt nick was almost like a son to pass her bob one thousand eight ninety seven. But before dawn's death, another pastor had gained a lot of influence at Christ community, a biblical scholar and self proclaimed a postle named robbert Bailey. What does IT mean you?

You're in a possible well, that has to do with an office in the church and apostles have the primary responsible border to appalled the cannon of scripture to make sure it's understood correctly and taught and passed on from generation to generation when by lei .

first came to the church in one thousand nine hundred ninety, he says he just wanted to serve and attend services.

My attention in coming here was to be here a short time.

and you ended up staying .

IT seemed that that was what god wanted me to do. I was there for several years, probably six or seven, before they voted to make me senior minister of the entire Operation.

And that and crag Anderson said, cries. Community church was unlike any they had ever attended.

IT was charismatic.

Meaning, for the uninitiated.

charismatic would be an emphasis on signs and wonders, which literally signs and wonder. So god would manifest himself in something you could see a manifestation of speaking in tongues which would be batting IT would be supposedly a language that one should interpret but were speaking .

in yeah during .

your service um yeah .

and afterwards .

we'd have long alter calls where people would go to the front seeking healing or help um in some way support in some way and they were speaking in tongues up there.

There was something else about Christ community church members of the congregation believe that god spoke to them directly .

and pathetically yeah he would give them a word we call .

IT before you joined that church. You ever had a word .

from god before? I'd never really heard of that except, er, in the bible.

which brings us to a woman named Sandy glass. Sandy was a secretary a at Christ community church. SHE was in her thirties then, and lanky with shaggy Brown hair at a rice smile. SHE was married to Jimmy glass, a carpenter with whom he was raising four boys.

So interesting one. I mean, she's a quiet woman who as a, you know, he was self profest. Profiteers of the .

church profit us well to the members of Christ community. The gift of profit was accepted. Some people have IT, some did not. Sandy wasn't the only one at Christ community who been blessed with special for sight. So one of the charismatic .

gifts is the gift of propac's, where you hear an inspirational word from the holy spirit or from the lord. And it's talked about in the bible as a gift of the holy spirit, where you can hear a propac's or or instruction, or direction, or just encouragement or comfort from the spirit directly to you. And it's a bible teaching.

So we don't shut that down. We feel since it's in the scripture, you have to appreciate IT. So SHE had profits, and IT was a biblical thing for her to have.

And when this church secretary and visionary spoke, people listened like the time Sandy four told an impending earthquake. IT wasn't as out there as that seems. Seattle does sit on a major fault line. And other church members who also claim the gift of privacy had themselves predicted a quake. Church leaders took all of IT quite seriously.

We have a count meeting. We had a board meeting, we talked about, what do we do with this? Do we say nothing? And then if there is a major quake, people are onna say to us, why did you warn us? Or do we say something just preparatory, like get some food, get some water, what's the right course? So we decided collectively that IT was wise to tell people get some extra food, water. That's the print thing to do.

The Andersons and other questioners were spurred to action.

So you stock piled a ton of food waiting for this earthquake. That hasn't .

happened yet. Yeah.

how much that cost you? Oh.

hundreds and hundreds, thousands of dollars for sure, each family. yeah. But that.

why would these people accept all these promises that face value? They are waiting for that earthquake. The earthquake is going to come, is going to disseminate seattle.

Of course, none of that happens, but they still altered their lives. They change their commute habits. They make plans for a future that includes all this with no proof, no just faith.

And after it's clear that IT has an aben, certainly has an abon. The time table Sandy laid out, they still believe everything you said.

That's right.

The earthquake never did strike. Something else was going to shake Christ community. Surely no one could have predicted what what happened is nineteen ninety seven unfolded? No one. right? Here's the key .

to this church.

And all of these people I talk to, they are all nice, kind people, josh. You'd like them. You'd like every single one of them. They wanted so much to do right and do Better and be helpful that when their church told them things, they thought, well, they know Better. You know, this pastor knows Better than I do, so i'll follow their rule.

How could anybody today, these days.

read the stories about the sex canals and the catholic church, read about all sorts of transgressions that have occurred, sort of under the cloak of biblical authority, and think of themselves. I do not need to question anything that comes .

from my church.

It's like that frog in the .

cold water with a heat on high IT doesn't know it's happening. IT doesn't know to boil up until it's too late. That's what I feel happened with these people. All of them are in the moment they're singing their homes, they're saying their prayers and they're getting caught up in something just a noch at a time until IT seems like it's too late to turn back and i've got ta believe all of this stuff.

So the big sign of everybody in the church was that they weren't cynical enough.

Yes, right? They were trusting and they wanted to follow their leaders.

There's a photograph from the nineties of a net and another woman sitting on a park bench. They're relaxing next to each other wearing jeans. A Green trickle was in the background. Maybe they were at the park watching their children at play. This was back before dawn died, back when life made Better sense.

The woman sitting .

next to a net is Sandy glass, the church profiteers. By early one thousand nine hundred ninety seven, the year dawn died, Sandy glass at her husband Jimmy, had hit some bumps in their twelve via marriage. Nick at I was helping the couple down that rocky road.

By spring, Sandy and Jimmy were meeting with neck together. And separately, maybe half a dozen times over that summer, Sandy says he began to have feelings for nick and told him so. Then one day he kissed her in his office.

In the fall, when nick pulled off the road during a drive, their relationship became sexual. After that, they continue to meet in person at her home, in the church office, even in the church sanctuary. Their twisting place was usually a parked car.

Again, this was before don died, and therefore also before nick took up with a net. Anderson, the lovers were discreet, but perhaps not careful enough, there were whispers in the church community about nick and Sandy. Pastor robbert Bailey says he got a call from Sandy's husband's parents who were concerned that nick was spending a lot of time with her. Billy remembers the call, and what he made of IT IT .

could have been innocent. We weren't judging the fact of front that I was wrong on its face value, but IT was just not Normal and IT was upsetting people in a senior minister. I have an obligation to all the congregation. So I was trying to deal with this in a way that would hopefully call the situation and satisfy those that were involved.

How soon after that do you talk to a immediately next day, same day .

says he told nick and knock off and ny seem to agree, and that Anderson knew nothing about sanity's involvement with nick. So later, when he told next SHE needed some advice about handling their affair, and that didn't bat an eye when nick suggested SHE speak with Sandy glass, a woman with whom nick was having an affair. At that very moment, I knew Sandy.

we were friendly within the small body of people that knew each other, but I hadn't been a SHE, hadn't been a person I picked.

Talk to at all. But when you say a nick that you need somebody to talk to about the turmoil that you're experiencing as a result of the affair that he's gotten you into, right, he says i'll give you Sandy, Sandy.

He suggested that he was somebody that he could trust implicity and that he was going to give me this person to take care of me in this horribly state that I was now in that you now.

because you've been cheating in your husband with your pastor.

right? And that says he simply had not given any weight to the gossip at church.

I believed him, and I believed her SHE. You know, I considered red them to be super spiritual and really capable. Doing wrong? I don't know.

IT doesn't make a lot of sense to me to look back on that. But yeah, I didn't. I didn't think that .

they had anything. Why did you figure out that the .

years later .

he never told you?

no.

So how did a net find out? Sandy told her, and he was about to tell other people to four years after daw's death, Sandy went to the police.

Next time on model scene.

he actually arranged to come into the department and provided information about dance death.

At that point, this was a closed case. This was an accident.

cracked.

but saying the glass changed every night.

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