Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Cult Leader Early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today.

Hello and welcome back to Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader Spencer Henry and I'm back with your weekly weirdness, your spooky fix. I was laughing. I got an email this morning with a suggestion that my episodes be longer and listen. I'm not against it, but my episodes are the way they are for a reason. One, I'm here alone. Okay, there's no one to bounce off of. There's no co-host here. I also just want to give you the goods. I feel like there's so much

so many podcasts that are like 40 minutes of talking about other things 20-ish minutes of the actual story, which I love when I'm in that mode. But my brain capacity and attention span cannot handle more than 30 minutes on most days. I also was laughing because I saw a comment yesterday on the post for the last episode that was like, did Spencer talk more about Ed and Lorraine or did I miss that? And then I was like, oh yeah, I definitely said I would talk more about them at the end of the episode and I just never did. So here's the quick rundown.

They were this dynamic duo of paranormal investigators who actively participated in a lot of really infamous stories. They were part of the Amityville horror, Annabelle.

All the stories related to the conjuring universe and I just really like them because when you watch interviews with them, you can tell how into their work they are.

Ed, the husband was a demonologist and his wife Lorraine was a medium. So together they investigated over 10,000 cases. They also ran the, what's it called?

I think it's just called like the Warrens Occult Museum. It was out of the back of their house in Connecticut and I always wanted to go. I don't think it's there anymore or open to the public anymore, which is where the real Annabelle doll lives.

I guarantee some of you up in there. So please share your experiences with me. I don't know. They just seem like a cool spooky couple and they definitely had a pretty fascinating run and a lot of good stories.

And you guys, I cannot believe we're halfway through December. What a weird year. That means we only have two more episodes after today for 2020.

And I got a lot of really nice messages during this pandemic so far from you guys. The most constant one that I've heard was just thanking me for keeping you company during a hard year.

And I cannot always reply but just know that like same I could not have done this year without this cult. But that's that's enough of that as you probably know from the title of today's episode. It's gonna get gross. That's your warning. We're talking about a man named Daniel Rackowitz and boy did he suck.

I'm surprised this story isn't honestly more well known. This was definitely one of those episodes when I was doing research. I kept pausing because I'm like I need to tell somebody what is happening.

So like Olivia would call me and she'd be like do you think this frame looks good here and I'd be like yeah for sure. Also listen to this and she she hated hearing it.

So I know you guys will love it. Daniel Rackowitz was born on December 24th of 1960. How appropriate. A Christmas Eve baby. No wonder he had such a god complex. You'll see later on. Maybe it's a Sagittarius thing. I don't know.

He was the third son of Anthony John Rackowitz and Velma Jean. His mom Velma. She wore an orange turtleneck and glasses. She was part of this gang.

They rode around in a mystery van. I'm just kidding. Do you see what I did there? I just prank you into thinking that Velma was the Velma from Scooby-Doo which is just not the case. All right.

Now Velma, his mom had actually been married once before in 1951 and her and her first husband called it quits and she got married to Anthony a year later in 1952.

And then they went on to have their first son Anthony Jr. and then their second son Julian Roy and then of course their grand finale Daniel.

Yet a pretty interesting childhood. The family traveled a lot. The dad Anthony was in the military and worked in the army's criminal investigation division.

So his work brought them all around sometimes internationally. We see some tragedy pretty early on. They were in France in October of 1963 when Daniel's mom Velma had a heart attack and died in their hotel room.

Relatives later said that Daniel who was only three years old at the time witnessed his mother's death and that it definitely played a role in his later wrongdoings.

Which I mean sure, there's trauma. But when you hear what he went on to do, I don't think it's relative.

...