Prelude: Gardens of Evil

American Nightmares

Gamut Podcast Network

True Crime

4.5 • 10.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

NEW True Crime Series from Gamut Podcast Network.

Gardens of Evil: Inside the Zion Society Cult begins February 3rd.

It was just another quiet neighborhood in small town America. At least, that's how it looked. But the immaculately groomed yards, trimmed hedges, and brightly colored flower gardens hid an insidious secret.

More than a hundred residents were members of a cult called The Zion Society. Hiding in plain sight, they hoarded guns and ammunition. They created, sold, and modeled sexy lingerie. They took children away from parents and groomed them for sexual abuse.

Their beliefs were centered around satisfying the perverted desires of one man - their leader: an unassuming, soft-spoken landscaper. Neighbors knew something was amiss, but it wasn't until a brave young woman broke away from the secretive group and confessed to authorities that everything began to unravel for this dangerous cult. This is the story of that unraveling told by the people who lived it.

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Transcript

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1:17.7	Gardens of Evil inside the Zion Society cult is a seven-episode audio documentary that tells the
1:24.3	unbelievable true story of a cult that operated in plain sight in an otherwise
1:30.1	ordinary American suburb. It wasn't a cult up in the mountains with 500 acres of land around
1:37.8	them. These were people living in a developed area and they were getting away with it for more
1:43.5	than 10 years before it finally was able to come to light.
1:47.2	You'll be introduced to the Zion Society in its early days through the eyes of a young couple who moved into the new neighborhood sub-development of Northwood.
1:56.7	And I remember coming home from work one day and bushes were planted and half my lawn was already in and I'm like, what?
2:03.1	And the heck is going on.
2:05.2	We had a little alarms going off, but not a lot.
2:08.0	And we didn't communicate.
	...

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