Hello everybody, Sam here. Before we begin, I just want to let you know that you're about

to listen to the finale of our mini-series on the Love Family, but season 2 of Family

Ghosts has only just begun. We'll have a new story for you next week and every week for

the next 7 weeks. Make sure you stay tuned after the credits of this episode to hear a

sneak preview of next week's show, and thank you for listening.

Welcome to Family Ghosts.

I first found out about the Love Israel family in May of last year from a woman named Posey

Grinner.

Posey told me that her parents had both been members of this commune, the Love Israel

family, in the 70s and early 80s. She was the first one to tell me that part of the deal

when you joined was that you gave up your old name and were given a new one, which the

group called Virtue Names. If you've listened to the first two episodes of this season, and

this episode will definitely make a lot more sense if you have, you've already met

richness. He was one of the key players in the rise and fall of the family, which is

the story we told in those first two episodes. In 1983, the Love Family went through

what they called the Great Divorce, and it was Posey's dad, Richness, who sued the founder,

Love Israel, to get his money back, leaving the few people who stayed with the group scrambling

to make ends meet. But Posey wasn't around for any of that, because

about a year before it all happened, her mom, Constance, decided that she'd had enough

of life in the Love Family. And so one day, she left.

And my mom just put her kids in the stroller and literally walked away.

Constance went back to using her birth name, Judy, and her daughters went through the

...