Interview: Branden Morgan (The Devil Within)

[00:00:04] Hey everyone, welcome back to The Evidence Locker. Sonia and I recently sat down with Brandon Morgan, the brilliant mind behind The Devil Within. If you haven't checked his podcast out yet, Brandon's show is a masterclass and immersive, narrative-driven true crime, covering cases like the Michael Taylor exorcism and the Night Stalker killings with haunting detail and serious depth. We've gotten into some fascinating territory, from satanic panic to the storytelling choices we make as podcasters.

[00:00:32] This one's packed, let's get into it. All right, Brandon, I've been diving into The Devil Within and it looks like you're still going strong, man. The latest episodes were released pretty recently, yeah? Are you still in the thick of producing this current season? Yeah, The Devil Within actually. We are halfway through season four. So basically, I do weekly episodes that connect full seasons like once a year.

[00:01:02] Like once a year, I do a deep dive into one specific case. Um, and that's about a usually between eight and ten episodes. And then in the intervening weeks, I just do quick little 20 to 25 minute episodes just to kind of, you know, keep the feed going. So yeah. And what are you working on at the moment? Are you releasing as you go or do you? Yeah.

[00:01:25] Yeah. So season four is done and we're, uh, so with the main episodes, I'm covering, uh, the Night Stalker killings in Los Angeles in the 80s with Richard Ramirez. And then, uh, we release once a week, every Wednesday. And then on Fridays, uh, I do bonus episodes with other true crime hosts, uh, where we kind of dissect the episode and just talk about more interview banter style.

[00:01:52] Yeah. Whereas the main episodes are all scripted and with interviews and full sound design and all that. Yeah. Nice. And I, I do see that we share some interests like, uh, the case we did on the Devil Made Me Do It in Yorkshire where Michael Taylor killed his wife after a, you know, after a night of exorcism.

[00:02:10] That was my second season. Yeah. That was full. I did a full season on that. That was when my show was still at Wondery. And, um, that was a very, very interesting case. And I, I enjoyed it because of there, there was some local connections to Los Angeles with, uh, with, with a specific church. Um, and then, uh, but yeah, that was a crazy, crazy case. What did you think about that one? About the Taylor? That was insane. I mean, they, the fact that,

[00:02:40] uh, the poor wife, Christine really, she was quite, she saw what was going on and she tried to save him from it and she took him home and she said enough already. And then he ended up killing her and the family dog. I don't know if you always find with these true crime cases, even the listeners, you get desensitized about the human murders, but everyone, you know, if it's the family dog, it's, um, hits a different cord.

[00:03:05] I'm a big animal person. And that bothered me more than anything. It's funny. Like I'll sit with my wife and we'll watch the craziest, most brutal shows with terrible things happening to humans. But if there's even a hint that something might happen to a dog, my wife freaks out, turns the TV off. I can't watch this. This is crazy. Yeah, I know. I'm the same. It's funny. I can handle watching almost anything in a horror film, but the second the dog's in danger, I'm out. Yay. And I, I, I agree.

[00:03:33] There's even a website that tracks animal deaths in films, but, uh, you know, I digress. Can you tell us what drew you into the Michael Taylor case?

[00:03:40] The Michael Taylor case was very interesting to me. Uh, I was desperately trying to get an interview with him because he's still alive. Um, but he wouldn't talk. He doesn't talk to anybody. He's gotten in a little bit more trouble since then. Also, unfortunately. Yeah. He had some, some, uh, some weird stuff, uh, that he got arrested for again, but, but I, I was, because I was really taken by the fact that.

[00:04:11] He was, in my opinion, incredibly just taken advantage of by people, you know, that he was obviously in, uh, a compromised emotional state, um, dealing with this crazy unrequited love for the pastor who was, in my opinion, again, very obviously leading him on. Um, and then she ceremoniously breaks up with him in front of the entire group and just humiliates the man.

[00:04:40] Okay. And then when he starts acting out, they say, Oh, well, you must be, you must be possessed. So we're going to force this exorcism on you. And they basically torture the guy for eight hours. And, uh, and then they tell him, and this is the craziest thing about it. It was the most English thing ever. They had to stop for tea. Right. In the middle of the exorcism. And they told him, we're going to lure you and go home.

[00:05:05] But we didn't quite finish the job. The murder demon and the mayhem demon and the violence demon are still in you. So just be careful. And so he goes home with a head full of that. And what is it? What do they think he's going to do? Yeah. And then he turned, yeah.

[00:05:23] And the way that they just took absolutely no responsibility. They, they were trying to help him in the name of the Lord. He was, it was the, it was absolutely his possession that got the better of him. And, uh, it's, uh, you know, we, we, we, we just help really.

[00:05:39] Right. And there was no accountability. There's no accountability anywhere. And that, that's, that's too much for, you know, that's too much for me, regardless of the validity of the claims of demonic possession. I don't know whether it's true or not, you know, um, but the fact that, uh, that it was just not really swept under the rug, but that, that the Anglican church was just completely, they didn't even, weren't even really investigated. Yeah.

[00:06:07] And no, and no, no, no blame. The woman, any of them, any of them, uh, just, they all just escaped accountability. And that's very similar to season one of the show of the devil within how it started with a murder in my hometown when I was 14 in New Jersey. And it was a kid, my age who lived down the block from me, who, um, no one saw it coming. This was a great kid by all accounts. He was an athlete. He was a straight A student. He was a wrestler. He was a altar boy at the Catholic church.

[00:06:37] And then one night he murders his mom with his boy scout knife and then kills himself in the woods. And the investigators found, uh, a bunch of satanic writings and drawings and a contract that he had written out between himself and the devil to kill his whole family and all that. And nobody saw it. And he was involved in the satanic cult.

[00:06:56] And, uh, and, uh, and the Catholic church swept in and they're like, Oh, demonic possession. Sorry. We missed it. Nothing to see here. Like move on. And we're all left just kind of shell shop by this, you know, with again, just no accountability, no investigation. No, there was nothing. So it was a really.

[00:07:16] Obviously cases like that are very disturbing beyond the brutality of the murders and the inhumanity, you know, shown towards our fellow man. But, um, just how the case is adjudicated in the, in the aftermath is, is generally really disturbing to me. and how people prey on people who might be, I don't know, lonely or new in an area and they really want to make friends and how they use an organization as a church that is really honestly supposed to be helping people and taking people in.

[00:07:46] That's how it all starts, right? It comes from a good place, but somehow if you get a rotten bunch of people. There was also a case in Australia. I don't know if you're familiar with the Joan Vollmer case. So her husband, Ralph, she had diagnosed mental health problems, right? It was just too much for them to deal with. So she would be out dancing naked in the rain and planting flowers around the house. Next day, pull them up.

[00:08:17] He couldn't cope with it. So they joined this church and they were all praying for her, but she wasn't taking her meds, right? Because they believed that salvation would come. So they really diminish mental health issues because they believed so firmly that salvation will come. So how they explained the exorcism to her husband is that she needed to die in order to come back healed.

[00:08:44] So how her body was found was him sitting in the kitchen waiting for her to resurrect. He firmly believed that she would be resurrected. See, but it's weird. You get into the realm of these different branches of Christianity, like Christian scientists that don't believe in medication at all.

[00:09:06] They'll let their kid die for a medicine that you can get at the pharmacy across the street because they think God will save you or if not, it's God's will. And that's, for me, obviously, child endangerment, child abuse, murder, say whatever you want, you know. But you're right that, especially in the case of Michael Taylor, or at least along these lines, was that they were in crisis as a family. You know, the 70s was like a lot of places on the globe.

[00:09:36] There was a recession going on in industrial UK, and he'd lost his job, and he had a family to feed, and friends just said, Hey, listen, even if it's just for the fellowship and tea and biscuits once a week, right? Come to this church. But you never know. You might meet people, and someone could say, Oh, I know this person who was hiring or whatever. Just start networking, you know? And at the very, very least, you'll make some new friends, and we'll read some stuff from the Bible, and you'll meet people, okay?

[00:10:06] And then that's what started it. And there always seems to be some strings attached, you know? There's always a power-hungry person or someone who likes the influence or someone who is a little too enamored with their standing in front of these people,

[00:10:24] that they have some position of leadership that gets abused, and you never know what's going to happen with an emotionally susceptible person like Michael Taylor, right? Absolutely, because he was spiraling too, right? And they even had reports of him with a full moon. He'd be outdoors howling in the street and things like that. So he did have issues, whether it was possession or if there was some kind of mental health issue.

[00:10:53] But at the time, also, fair enough, they didn't investigate mental health issues as clearly as I'd hope they would today. At least people, I think, are a little bit better in feeling today, and there isn't such a huge stigma to asking for help. Back then, if you admitted, Oh, I think we might have a mental health issue, you'd just be locked away in an asylum, and there you go. And I think that's maybe what family members would try to avoid by saying,

[00:11:22] Oh, maybe I had too much strength or something. But if there is a real mental health issue, I certainly do hope we are better informed at this day and age. But back then, it was really hard, because where do you go? Ideally, you do go to a church, because you seek counseling. You seek community. And then the last thing you think is that your husband will form a crush into the female pastor.

[00:11:51] I agree completely with what you were saying, that during that time, mental health was not as widely discussed. There were, I mean, a tiny percentage of the avenues to get treatment, especially for children. Oh, my gosh, right? So, again, with season one, with the Tommy Sullivan case, this 14-year-old kid, I get a lot of questions when I do interviews, and people ask me, they're like,

[00:12:19] Well, do you believe that he was possessed by the devil? Do you believe that? And I kind of hedge a little bit, but my answer is that I think what actually happened is much more terrifying than the prospect of demonic possession, just as a parent, because this kid was obviously in crisis, okay?

[00:12:43] And all of the people that really should have given a shit, from his parents to his coaches to his teachers to clergy, all of them missed it. Now, one of these people said, Hey, are you okay? Like, what's going on? You seem like you're struggling. Because they just saw him as the perfect student, the athlete, the altar boy, the kid who's going to get a scholarship, like whatever.

[00:13:10] No one saw him as a 14-year-old kid who had an obvious emotional and mental break, okay? And as a parent, that scares me, like terrifies me. So, the good news is that, gosh, more than 30 years ago now, at one of these big Catholic, like, I don't want to call it a symposium, but it's a very, there's a word for it that's escaping me right now,

[00:13:37] where they basically, led by the Pope and all of the cardinals and everybody who's of high standing in the Catholic Church, they look at the rules governing Catholicism, basically, and change things or alter things where necessary. And one of the big changes that they made had to deal with demonic possession. They didn't eliminate it as a Catholic rite. Exorcism is still a Catholic rite. It's still in the Ritual Romanum, and they teach you how to do it.

[00:14:06] But what they added to it, the biggest addition in this, it was a conference. That was the word I couldn't really think of, sorry. What they added was that before exorcism would be authorized, okay, the father, the priest, the cardinal in charge of each specific case was required to follow every mental health requirement from the area where you're in.

[00:14:36] Like, the person had to be interviewed, had to have CAT scans done, they had to completely avail themselves, every avenue of modern medicine. And exorcism was the last resort. And that is one of the few things in the Catholic Church where I'm like, all right, good job. You're getting dragged into the modern times. You're evolving. You are actually admitting that there could be other problems.

[00:15:03] Let's just tick all the boxes before we immediately go essentially into a night of torture and waterboarding. And it was even that, how is that your first protocol? I mean, there's that malice. It's crazy. And it's sort of that, I think it's, what do they call it? It's like folio deus for two people. And there's also that madness of a group. So the group sort of believes that this is the right way.

[00:15:33] They kind of bounce off each other. And it begins because there was another one that we did. At one time, we almost became the podcast for the exorcisms gone wrong, I felt. Each Halloween, we had an episode of botched exorcism. But Noel is a huge horror fan. And I think that sort of sits in his pocket of interest. Yeah, it's digging up the creepiest, most questionable, anyway, exorcism stories out there.

[00:16:01] The Irina Kornici case, that's one that stuck. You know, Irina Kornici, I don't know if you heard of her, she was a nun. It was like a real-life horror film, only with the, kind of like a real-life horror film without the ending credits, you know? And same thing, she had no family, she had nowhere to go. And these people took her in, and she, I think she was gay, which at that time was a problem. Mm-hmm.

[00:16:28] Which, for sure, if you're gay, you have to be possessed. That is just the mindset of these extremely narrow-minded people. Just someone, she told one of the other nuns that she had fallen in love with, let's run away. Okay, therefore, you are possessed, and you are be exorcised to death. And she was exorcised to death. I mean, there's so much to unpack just there.

[00:16:58] When did that happen in Romania? When was that? I think, I want to say it was the 90s. I can, you know, for Irina Kornici. We did a case on that. Well, one of the big pushbacks from within the church on that new decree about mental health evaluations was one of the, you know, to hear people tell it,

[00:17:25] one of the drawbacks to that is now that if you have taken any vows whatsoever as a priest, as a nun, and you're diagnosed with, like, a brain tumor or something, you get defraud. You have to leave. Wow. You have to leave the church because what they're afraid of are false visions from God that could be just a symptom of a brain tumor that you mistakenly believe is the Lord speaking to you.

[00:17:54] So to avoid any confusion, they kick you out. Yeah, I know. I wonder what you see. Again, I think, I still think it's a net gain. It's like a job after that. I've been a nun. Yeah, I know. Reminded out of this tune. Look, I'm addressing it. It's under control, but can I piece it? I don't know what. It's crazy. It's crazy because we're, so I got super lucky with my show.

[00:18:19] The first season of it got picked up by a big streaming network to be made into a documentary, right? And so we were out there now. A lot, what I found out is a lot more people will talk to you for a TV show than for a podcast. Okay. Right. So we were interviewing a lot more people for this. We're, the story, we're not just retelling season one. It's kind of evolved into like a bigger thing now.

[00:18:45] Um, because one of the really interesting things that we're trying to kind of unpack was that, so the victim was a, a young mob. She was 37 named Betty Ann Sullivan. Okay. And she had a younger sister who was in her early thirties at the time, who was a teacher. And the fact that, you know, effectively her nephew killed her sister and then killed himself.

[00:19:12] That affected her like really in a very severe, heavy kind of way. And she wanted to be involved in the investigation. She wanted to see all the evidence. She wanted to read all the witness statements and see the crime scene photos. And, you know, and law enforcement was like, I'm sorry, you can't, you're not authorized for that. You've got to, you know, there's children involved and you got to go through all, jump through all these hoops. So she did it. She went back to school.

[00:19:40] She got a degree in like criminal law, you know, in minor whatever, and, and took her a couple of years. And, but she would, she got the credentials necessary and recontacted law enforcement and said, okay, I'm ready now. And we were talking to the head detective on the case. And he told us, he's like, there was nothing we could do. We had to show her everything. Okay. He goes, and I remember at the police station, here's the interview room where the box of evidence was.

[00:20:09] And I'm standing outside the door and I'm talking to her. And I said, please don't, you don't need to see this. Okay. I know you have a curiosity. I know it's your sister. I get it, but just trust us. You don't want to see it. She's like, no, you can't stop me. She goes in the room. She's in there for 20 minutes. Okay. She comes out. She doesn't say a word to anybody. She leaves.

[00:20:32] And the next thing, the detective gets a letter like two months later that she'd become a cloistered nun in a convent outside of Philadelphia. That it just basically like you were right. I shouldn't have looked at any of that shit. And now I'm just, it's just going to be me and Jesus in a small room for the rest of my life. Yeah. So now I'm like, any other human. Like, yo, what's it? I'm in a cloister. Right. I'm like, what's in that box? Like, now I want to see what's in the box, to be honest.

[00:21:03] Like, there's got to be some crazy stuff in there, you know? But so we're trying to find her now and, and to, and just to kind of figure it out. So it's, it's, listen, it's, I don't claim to have all of the answers, obviously. I like a good story. I'm not a journalist. Right. So I don't, I'm not bound by those ethical standards. I like, I try as hard as I can to tell the truth everywhere I go, but I also like a good story, you know?

[00:21:29] So I'll follow what the interesting path is, even if I don't get corroboration on everything, you know, and I get some blowback for that, but it's okay. I don't mind. You know, I like a good story. It's also just great to hear stories firsthand. Right. And that people's perception of effect sometimes. Although if you look over, this wasn't legally correct or whatever, that is how a victim's family observed the thing. This is how they felt.

[00:21:58] They felt that law enforcement didn't speak to them. They didn't communicate or something. Law enforcement has a different story on the thing. They said, we tried to heal them from it because they did not have to know all of this. So it is good to just hear everyone's story. And as you say, to follow a story. Yeah. But it's about providing someone with a microphone and a place to speak where it's interesting to just at least get both perspectives and then they can hash it out. But it is interesting.

[00:22:28] And I find it really interesting the way you do it and, you know, hunting down people who is part of the story. Right. Well, here is where she went. And I'll follow that trail. Let's see what she has to say and what was in that box ultimately. And speaking of that detective who's still alive, he's in his 80s. And I knew him as a kid. He was the youth detective in my town. And funny, actually, there's an Australia connection, believe it or not.

[00:22:57] He wasn't looking to become this, but he reluctantly became kind of the face of teen satanic murder because of this case in town. And so he wound up traveling all across the United States and training specific law enforcement precincts on what to look for and, you know, what the signs are and how do you handle it and how do you deal with parents and all that.

[00:23:27] And then that expanded and he wound up spending quite a bit of time in Australia kind of doing the same thing. He was on Australian 60 Minutes. He was interviewed there. And he became like this pseudo celebrity with regard to the satanic panic and teen satanic ritual abuse. And like he was on the Geraldo Rivera special and he availed himself really, really well of all of it.

[00:23:56] And then quietly retired to a farm in the desert, trying to look for some peace and quiet until I start knocking on his door again. Hey, you want to do an interview? And he did. He was happy to speak, I'm sure. He was. He was. And it was good. See, you know, just an old, you know, because I left, I left New Jersey 30 years ago. He left longer than that. You know, so a lot of it was just, you know, talking about old times. Right. And what happened to this kid? And who's this? And what's going on here? How's your mom?

[00:24:26] I mean, like, because my mom was a teacher in the school district and everything. So, yeah. But then when, when the subject turns to this case, he gets really, really serious because it affected him. And, and he was, uh, he got close with some of the family members. And, and so he's very, he treats everything very respectfully when it comes to, when it comes to this case. So, um, yeah, it was season one and that all happened really just, just by accident.

[00:24:55] I wasn't even a podcaster when, uh, when, when I wrote and narrated season one. So, uh, it was like a mid forties career change for me. So it, and it's been great ever since. Yeah. It's been great. So Brandon, tell us about your fourth season and where can people find you? So season four of the devil within it's called Satan's shadow. It's a deep dive into the night stalker killings in Los Angeles in, uh, 1985, 1986, um, follows, um, it's an interesting path.

[00:25:25] I like to just for myself to make it interesting for me to research it. I, I like to, um, add an element of literature to it that might not make sense all the time. Like in season one, it was a lot of the poetry of Robert Frost. Like all of the episodes were titles of, of poems. Season two was Michael Taylor. So it was all a lot of Shakespearean kind of illusions. Season three was, uh, the son of Sam in New York city.

[00:25:53] So we saw Billy Joel songs, weird or not that, that we, and so for season four, um, every time that I was interviewing people about that summer in Los Angeles, they would always say that it's like they were descending into hell. And so, uh, I just thought of, of Dante's divine comedy. So each episode there's nine episodes, each episode, we, uh, explore that circle of Dante's

[00:26:21] hell and how it very strangely relates almost exactly to what was going on with Richard Ramirez in that summer. So I'm having a lot of nerd fun with the episode, with the season. And so it's, uh, the devil within wherever you get your podcasts. We also have a very new YouTube channel relating to the network that I'm on. The new network is called Evio. So E-V-I-O, um, on YouTube and you can get full episodes there and there's little clips

[00:26:49] and, uh, all the first three seasons are available to binge wherever you get your podcasts. And there are about a hundred, uh, shorter, uh, weekly episodes that I'd appreciate if you went and checked out. Now you have it folks tune into the devil within while you're in between evidence locker episodes. We'd like to thank Brandon Morgan for his time. And we're looking forward to connecting again in the future.