A town can break twice: first when its jobs vanish, then when its story gets rewritten by fear. We walked through Fall River—slept in Lizzie Borden’s room, ate with locals, and then pressed into Bedford Street’s harsh past—to examine how a “satanic cult” rose from recession, predation, and performance. The headlines point to demons. The record points to control.
We lay out the players: Carl Drew, a runaway who learned power the hard way; Robin Murphy, young and feared, intent on ruling her strip; and Andy Maltese, an older predator whose “psychic dream” revealed a murder detail the public didn’t know. Three women—Doreen Levesque, Barbara Raposa, and Karen Marsden—anchor the timeline, and each case shows how ritual language can mask old crimes: grooming, trafficking, intimidation, and escalating violence. When the sentences landed, the meetings stopped. The “cult” dissolved with the arrest of its enforcers, a clue that belief was the stage dressing and fear was the business model.
If true crime is about more than shock, it’s about seeing the machinery behind the myth. We map the power pyramid, the plea deals, and the evidence that actually moved the cases—like that cinder block confession. Then we zoom back out to ask the harder question: how do we keep the next Bedford Street from forming in any city where money dries up and kids are left unguarded? Hit play, bring your theory, and tell us where you land on panic versus power.
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