Episode 1: Did Swayze Start the Fire?

The Devil You Know with Sarah Marshall

CBC

True Crime

4.6 • 751 Ratings

🗓️ 20 October 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1988, a young arts educator drove into a small town in Kentucky with a camera and a directive to teach photography to school kids. But she never got a chance. Instead, a full blown hysteria connecting her presence with other dark rumours swirling around about widespread ritual child sacrifice prompted a mad dash escape for her life. The truth behind the drama? Well, it involves Patrick Swayze and an environment where cops, social workers, teachers, parents and reporters were being primed to see Satanic crime everywhere.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Listen, friend, if you don't have time to watch the Grammy Awards this year, do not worry because commotion can catch you up on everything that you need to know.
0:08.0	I'm Elamene Abdu Mahmoud, and this week on the show, we are bringing together the group chat to talk about the big winners, the surprises that no one saw coming, and the snubs that people are upset about.
0:18.4	Find and follow Commotion with Alameen Abdul Mahmoud
0:21.0	on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:28.3	This is a CBC podcast.
0:36.2	I didn't have any clue what that was all about, but our teacher made it clear that I should get the hell out right away.
0:45.2	This is Diane. She's a photographer.
0:49.5	Diane is not her actual name, but what I've given her for her privacy, and also in honor of one of my
0:56.2	favorite women of the 80s, Diane on Cheers.
0:59.8	I'm an artist, photographer, designer, art educator, digital designer, and more.
1:06.8	Diane was telling me about a project she was working on in the late 1980s.
1:12.2	I planned, and I arrived in the fall.
1:15.2	It had her traveling around Kentucky.
1:18.1	I wasn't staying permanently then, but I was there to kind of establish the program, find a place to live, and kind of get things going.
1:27.4	She was photographing locals and also teaching them photography. find a place to live and kind of get things going.
1:31.5	She was photographing locals and also teaching them photography.
1:38.4	The first time I went, we had this little after-school club of girls who were really interested in photography and very enthusiastic. And they went home and told their families, and their families were really friendly, and they
1:46.6	were inviting me over for dinners and stuff. So when I left there the first time after a two-week
1:52.3	residency, I left with a really warm place in my heart for the town and its people. She worked with
1:59.2	people of all ages, including local high schoolers.
2:03.7	That's what brought her to this particular small town.
2:07.7	So it was a pretty old town.
	...

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