EP42: The Rulo Cult Tortures

Crimes and Consequences

True Crime, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 859 Ratings

🗓️ 27 July 2020

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the early ’80s, Michael Ryan was the leader of a small group of followers who lived together on an 80-acre hog farm in Rulo, Nebraska. All of the group’s decisions were determined by what they referred to as “the arm test,” which was a means for God to speak to them. Michael, however, didn’t need to use the arm test, as he claimed God spoke directly to him in his mind. By 1985, some of the members began expressing their doubts in the arm test, which Michael said angered God. For the next few months, Michael came up with creative ways of brutalizing and torturing the doubters. This led to the cruel death of 5-year-old Luke Stice. Although Luke’s death was horrendous, it cannot compare to the systematic torture, degradation, and humiliation of James Thimm. Over a period of a few weeks, James was forced into bestiality, starved, and shot. But Michael decided that wasn’t punishment enough for James. So for three days Michael and his followers brutalized James in ways unimaginable. Death had to come as a relief for James because the cruelty this episode discusses is beyond comprehension. Warning: this episode is extremely graphic.

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Sources: Court Records

https://www.oxygen.com/deadly-cults/crime-time/yahweh-nebraska-farmers-cults-slavery-torture-sodomy-murder
https://www.oxygen.com/deadly-cults/crime-time/former-cult-members-recall-grisly-details-of-sodomy-torture-murder-of-young
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-11-16-8603260250-story.html

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode may contain content of a graphic nature, including descriptions of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals.
0:09.0	Listener discretion is advised.
0:13.0	Hi everyone, I'm Tia and I'm Tanya.
0:16.0	And together we are T&T Crimes and Consequences, a true crime podcast. Hi Tanya, Tanya. Hi T
0:34.0	T
0:35.8	Tilio how are you I am great today. I really feel like that's gonna change. It always does when we record. This one is, how do I say it? This one is very
0:47.8	high on the gruesome scale. Everybody be worn. It's so high. Remember I told you I was reading about a cult case and it was just too graphic for me to go on?
0:59.0	Yes. Well, I did. It's this one? It's this one. Oh, no. I made it through it.
1:04.4	O, everybody, buckle up. Oh, buckle up. Now, normally I don't like cults. I'm just not, it's just not my thing.
1:12.0	But this was really interesting.
1:15.3	I'd like to ask everybody to take one second
1:17.3	to hit the little subscribe button.
1:19.5	Okay, so I don't know if you know
1:21.7	about a guy named James Paul Wickstrom.
1:25.0	Have you ever heard of him?
1:26.3	No.
1:27.3	Okay, well this story absolutely has to start with him.
1:30.2	In the early 1980s, he ran for various political offices in Wisconsin and he ran as an independent.
1:38.8	He taught from the Bible and he frequently advocated the mass murder of Jews.
1:47.0	Non-European Americans, homosexuals, drug addicts, and race traders.
1:53.0	Wow.
1:54.0	In accordance with the beliefs of what's called the Christian identity movement.
	...

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