The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as the FLDS, was a polygamist offshoot of mainstream Mormonism that operated for decades along the Utah-Arizona border. By the early 2000s, its prophet was a man named Warren Jeffs. Under Jeffs, the FLDS tightened into something closer to total control. He assigned wives, expelled men, and arranged marriages between adult followers and underage girls. In 2006, the FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. Two years later, Texas authorities raided the Yearning for Zion Ranch. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson traces how a fringe religious community became one of the most abusive cults in modern American history.

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Walt Disney didn't just build a theme park. He built a system of total control, and convinced the world to call it magic. Employees aren't staff, they're "cast members." Uniforms are "costumes." Guests who step out of line are escorted by plainclothes security to unmarked holding rooms. Beneath the park, a nine-acre tunnel network houses a command center monitoring over 70,000 functions per second. For 56 years, Disney ran its own government in Florida, with its own fire department, building codes, and laws, after promising the state a utopian city of 20,000 residents living under permanent corporate rule with no voting rights. That city was never built. The theme park was. Walt himself was a documented FBI informant. And then there are the myths: a frozen body beneath Pirates of the Caribbean, secret Masonic geometry, the truth about Club 33. In this episode of Conspiracy Theories, Cults, & Crimes, Vanessa Richardson separates the myths from the documented conspiracies, and asks why the most controlled environment in America keeps generating stories that sound like fiction but aren't.

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If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free and released a day early, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Conspiracy Theories, Cults, and Crimes is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.

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Three tropical destinations, three true crimes: in Aruba, 35-year-old Robyn Gardner vanishes from a beach with a travel companion who later tries to collect her life insurance... and is never charged. On Thailand's Koh Tao, British backpackers Hannah Witheridge and David Miller are found murdered at dawn, and the convictions that follow are disputed worldwide. In Bali, nine young Australians are arrested for heroin smuggling after their own government tips off Indonesian police, leading to two of them being executed by firing squad. This is episode 1 of Deadly Destinations, a special four-part series on Conspiracy Theories, Cults and Crimes hosted by Vanessa Richardson. Four exotic locations that should have been a dream vacation, but ended in a nightmare. New episodes drop every Sunday, and all four are available now, ad-free, on Crime House Plus. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page.

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