Robert Evans and Miles W. Gray expose the Elan School in Maine, a "troubled teen" facility founded by con artist Joe Ritchie that exploited insurance fraud after a 1974 fire to fund an abusive regime. Leveraging connections with psychiatrist Gerald Davidson, Ritchie marketed the school while enforcing a secret police force of "expediters" who subjected students to psychological torture, mass spankings, and forced confessions. This system, rooted in the cult-like origins of Synanon and Daytop Village, transformed minor behavioral issues into justifications for incarceration, creating a gladiator ring designed to shatter self-esteem rather than heal children. Ultimately, the episode reveals how capitalism incentivizes mislabeling youth as dangerous to facilitate abduction and institutionalized violence under the guise of therapy. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Clayton Eckard's Twin Hoax00:01:31
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Goespie and Michael Mancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired, city hall building.
Did this ever happen in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
New York City Political Murder Mystery00:15:38
He's going to get what he deserves.
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This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
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I'm Robert Evans.
This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast that I just started with a tonal yelling, I guess.
Oh boy, we are already behind the eight ball.
Normally, I mean, this is a podcast where we talk about bad people, the worst people in all of history, and the bad things that they do.
One of those bad people is me for not knowing how to start my show, despite this being my only job, to help pull.
I don't think that you were bad.
Why would you say you were bad?
You're all professional.
Thank you, but it's your job to keep me from spiraling into.
You were great at being unprofessional.
You were great at it.
You know who's great at being professional?
Is my guest today, Mr. Miles W Gray?
See, that's how you, that's the kind of A-tonal shrieking.
Thank you for having me you used to start a podcast.
God damn it.
Why can't I do it that way?
No, you did.
I mean, I merely just did my own rendition of the sort of work you put in tonal, though.
I was like, Miles says the W in your name stand for winner.
Hee The W in my name?
Yeah.
Miles W Gray.
What?
Where's W come from?
Well, I'm just trying to set you up for success in your future political career.
Oh, wow.
Thank you so much.
I mean, look, we know I'm not going to be.
I maybe I probably eventually would end up as a politician, but first, you know, I'm going to be a motivational speaker.
Oh, we talked about this.
Yeah.
I will first create a fucking, you know, a gaggle of mindless stooges and just turn them into my political base.
That's very appropriate, Miles, that you're talking about creating a gaggle of mindless stooges, kind of a cult.
Because we're talking about a cult today, but we're also talking about a school.
We're talking about a cult that's a school.
Miles, how do you feel about kids?
Why the oh man, dude, last time it was so fucking brutal.
Okay, yeah, how do I feel about kids?
I think kids are our future, and we need to nurture them and protect them at all costs.
Now, when you say nurture and protect, does that mean train them to operate an internal police state based on violence and sexual assault in order to control their own behavior and the behavior of their peers?
What the fuck did you say?
Miles.
We have fun.
We do have fun.
We're not going to have fun today.
Today's a horrible episode.
Have you ever heard of the Elan school?
No.
How do you spell it?
E-L-A-N, like the French word, you know, Elan.
Oh, no.
I feel like it maybe sounds familiar.
Are there ones in LA at all?
Oh, good God.
No.
No.
They're not any of these anywhere anymore.
Oh, but no, you never knew it existed.
This was the kind of school that could only exist in the middle of nowhere, Maine.
And if you've never been to Maine, middle of nowhere, Maine is about as middle of nowhere as you get, right?
Yeah, I've been up there for hockey.
Yeah, but in middle of nowhere, yeah, like that's like for people that are trying to be like, dude, get the fuck away from me.
Yeah, and people who don't want too many prying eyes over the school that they're running because it's actually just a series of horrible crimes.
Now, Miles.
A series of horrible crimes.
I think we can all agree.
Kids can be problematic, right?
You know, their little brains are still developing.
All kids are going to do shitty, harmful things to themselves and to other people because they're just kind of learning how to be functional human beings.
Pretty normal process of growing up.
You're going to say things that hurt your parents.
You know, you're probably going to punch your little brother or sister.
You're going to do something shitty, right?
Every kid does.
Just part of being a kid.
And it gets, you know, kind of taken up a level when you're a teenager, right?
Teens lash out, say horrible things.
They maybe get involved with substances that are going to be bad for them.
They, you know, steal a car.
Kids do dumb shit, right?
Yeah.
Teenagers do.
And I think any reasonable person or organization that's trying to take care of teenagers in particular will acknowledge that they're going to make mistakes because their brains aren't finished.
And so even if those mistakes are pretty serious, right?
Things that might normally land an adult in prison, if it's a child, you have to approach them with an added level of compassion and understanding because their brains aren't done yet.
Exactly.
Now, I think reasonable people can admit that some kids have behavioral issues that make them dangerous to themselves and others.
I've had to work with some of those kids.
I've had colleagues who got their bones broken from some of those kids.
There's a necessity for specialists and even special facilities to help kids that have behavioral problems that make them a danger to be around, right?
That's just a thing that is going to occur when you get to people in a country.
Yeah.
Now, unfortunately, Miles, this is the United States of America.
And when you start with the firmness that, yeah, okay, maybe sometimes we need a special facility for troubled kids, you open the door for a whole new industry.
And because capitalism is what it is, when you have an industry for taking care of troubled kids, you also have an industry that has a vested financial interest in making sure as many children as possible are placed in those facilities, whether they need the help or not.
So see where things get off the rails here is when you attach the profit motive to dealing with kids with behavioral problems.
Hey, now we need a side business mislabeling these kids so we can turn them into customers.
Yeah, we're going to start having to bribe some judges and bribe some healthcare workers to force more kids into our.
Yeah.
So the best way, if you're in the business of running a facility for troubled kids, the best way to improve your business is to convince parents, judges, the legal system, and the mental health system that a wide variety of behaviors, from talking back and smoking weed to getting into fistfights at school, justify incarceration in such facilities.
Like the kid I know who got sent to a facility, and it wasn't one of these facilities because he was, there was other stuff going on, but it was a facility where he was in full-time residential care.
He broke his one of his parents' arms.
He broke one of my colleagues' jaws.
He gave me a concussion.
Like it was like a problem.
The kid needed really dedicated help, right?
Eventually the school was like, we cannot take care of this kid.
Right.
It's like he just farts at the wrong time during class.
Like, no, this is, this is, we're talking something different.
And I want to make it clear when I talk about like, yeah, I think there is a need for special facilities for certain kids.
That's the kind of kids like, so, you know, you're fucking stabbing people with like scissors or stuff.
Right.
I understand it.
Yeah.
And that has nothing to do with the thing you were telling about this new business you were opening that was like a facility for organization.
What would you think if I was going to tell you I could turn a $10,000 investment into $100,000 of profit as long as you're able to get two or three judges to just to just shotgun some children my way.
See, my idea, Miles, is what helps improve your character as an adult?
Operating a rare earth magnet mineral mine.
So what if we take troubled children and we force them to mine in order to produce the materials needed for our cell phones?
The industry already works off of slavery.
This is slightly better than slavery.
Go on now.
And how much do I need to invest now?
I just need to create some compromat for these judges.
Oh, Miles.
Well, I'll send you the prospectus later.
Send you the deck later.
But yeah, so the problem with this is, right, there's a need for some facility like this, but when it the profit motives gets attached to it, you have these people who decide who like the there's a vested interest in convincing parents and the legal system that like, no, no, kids don't just need to be put in special facilities if they're a danger to the life and limb of other people.
If they're smoking weed, that's dangerous enough.
You know, if they punched a kid in school one time, that's bad enough.
Let's get him in the program, you know?
That's how it happens with all of these troubled teen facilities.
Now, at the same time, if it's your business to treat kids in this kind of a facility, the reality of capitalism means that your priority is never, ever, not one single solitary time as a business at least.
Not to say that every individual who works there feels this way, but as a business, your priority is never going to be rehabilitation or education or even basic health and safety.
It will always be maximizing profit.
And one way to do that is to hire people who will work for less money than such a complicated job should rightly pay.
And the people who are willing to take that pay cut generally find other than financial motives for the work, like the opportunity to beat and molest children.
This is how the troubled teen industry works, right?
This is what it's colloquially called, troubled teen facilities, the troubled teen industry.
And these different facilities, they run the gamut from like wilderness facilities where you're dropping kids in like the woods, basically, ranch-style offerings with like working on a farm, military school style things, and institutions that are harder to easily quantify, like the Alan School, which we'll talk about in a minute.
Now, when she was a teen, Paris Hilton was sent to one such institution called Provo Canyon, which I think was more kind of on the wilderness side of things.
It might have been more of a ranch.
But Provo Canyon is in Utah.
And Utah, by the way, is like mecca for schools that can legally abuse children.
That's where most of these facilities are.
Utah makes a lot of money off of systematically abusing children for profit, which is why the legal system in Utah is set up to enable these schools.
So Paris Hilton credits Provo Canyon, the school she was sent to as a teen, for quote, the most vivid and traumatizing memories I've ever experienced in my entire life.
One particular memory helped fuel what has become a side career for Paris Hilton in exposing the teen treatment industry.
Quote, I continually experience a nightmare where two men come into my room in the middle of the night and kidnapped me.
It has caused me severe trauma, and I know it is a tentpole of this industry that has caused millions of survivors to suffer the same nightmares throughout their adult life.
Now, that experience that she had of people coming into her house in the middle of the night and kidnapping her, that's really common.
It happens to conservatively tens of thousands of kids a year.
Some numbers are 50,000.
Not all of them get kidnapped, but a lot of them do.
That's the standard, right?
Because you decide as a parent, I'm going to send my kid to this horrible facility where they'll be isolated and like abused until they stop misbehaving.
Well, I don't want to sit down and say, because I caught you with weed, I'm sending you to the woods, right?
So how do you avoid that awkward conversation?
You hire men to abduct your child in the dead end.
Spatch him up in the night.
Yes.
Sets him up in the night.
Because you're already such a good parent.
I mean, I'm guessing in the cases for kids who are the people who are nailing them.
Yeah, like for the normal troubled teens, not sort of people who actually need it, like you're saying, a special care facility.
But like, let's say just a kid who's smoking with you, like, that's it.
We're having people disappear him in the middle of the night because we as parents aren't willing to have a conversation at all that will go through all these lengths to just avoid any form of being an adult in this situation.
Like, holy shit.
Yeah, it's outrageous and horror.
And it's just horrific.
And yeah, so, and there's companies that the service the company provides is like they'll send a handful of psychopaths to kidnap your child and like handcuff them or tie them up and throw them in the back of a van and drive another like industry, where they're like hey, do you need kids snatch dedicated guys.
But yes, there's companies that just snatch kids for profit and their parents it's.
It's very legal.
You're paying, like as the parent, you sign away permission for this.
Um, so if they get pulled over by the cops, they can say no no no, we're not abducting this, we are abducting this child.
But the parents said okay, oh no, here's the permission slip, here's my badge, i'm a licensed child snatcher.
No, so yeah, i'm a professional child abductor officer like and that's terrible bar chat too when you meet somebody like ask you for a living children in the dead.
There's actually a kid tied up in the back of my van right now.
Yeah, he's good, I hosted so in the front seat though.
Oh, that's okay I, I was, I just need to take your order.
Oh so it is a crime, thankfully in 20 states to send children to gay conversion therapy, but it is perfectly legal to send your child to a treatment sitter center for anything else a parent regards as a flaw.
So gay conversion therapy is illegal in a bunch of states.
It's not illegal really anywhere to send your child to a treatment center and the The treatment center doesn't have to be for like an actual problem that like a, I don't know, a psychiatrist or someone saying like, oh, yeah, this kid has this serious problem that needs special treatment.
Anything you're not happy with that your kid does counts, right?
Because as a parent, you're the dictator of your child because children have no rights.
Yeah.
Like effectively, not if the parent like wants to do parents can do a lot of fucked up shit to their kids perfectly legally.
Yeah.
There's a lot of people who will fight in Congress for their right to abuse their children systematically because this nation was, I don't know, a large chunk of the population of this country believes that parents are the biblical sovereigns of their children and should be able to do anything they want to them.
It's good shit.
Now, as a parent, you have the power to sign over physical control of your child to an organization, one of these teen treatment facilities.
And every year, parents of around 50,000 kids do.
So if you listen to our two-parter on Synanon with American hero Paul F. Tompkins, you know that the troubled teen industry got its start with that particular cult.
Have you did you listen to those episodes, Miles?
No, I haven't heard that one.
Cynanon was a, this will be useful for people who haven't listened to it yet, although it's a pretty good two-parter.
Synanon was a drug, the first drug rehab program in the nation, like focused on like dope as opposed to alcohol.
And it was kind of based initially off Alcoholics Anonymous.
Like snowball.
Like sinning?
S-Y-N.
Yeah.
Okay.
I thought it was like super Christian, like for sinner sinning anonymous.
It wasn't.
And it was, it was founded by this guy, Charles Dederick, who was an alcoholic and not a drug addict himself.
And he was, he became a cult leader.
This, this thing went from like people kind of living together in this compound and like doing hard labor.
And, you know, they had all these different things that they thought would help keep you off drugs.
One of them was called the game, which was this therapeutic tool invented by Charles Dederick, where everyone would sit around in a room, all these addicts, and they would scream abuse at each other.
They would just like insult each other, talk about what they hated about each other.
And it was this, the idea was that, like, oh, addicts need extra accountability because they're so good at lying.
Synanon: The Cult Leader's Rise00:05:37
So you have this, you know, this regular thing where you get to like, you get abused for like the shitty things that you do.
Yeah.
And it's a way to blow off steam, too.
Yeah, right.
It was, Cynanon was hugely popular for a while.
Judges were so enthusiastic about the practice that they started sending children who'd been caught with dope to Cynanon.
And because these kids, most of the people who went to Cinnanon and got involved, like wanted help, like were addicts.
But these kids didn't, like, generally weren't serious addicts, but also didn't want to be there.
So they had to develop these really brutal rules for like punishing them and cracking down and stopping them from escaping and keeping them in line.
And it became physically abusive too, and mentally abusive, obviously.
But that was not why Cynanon got in trouble, right?
Synanon eventually got in trouble because they tried to assassinate a lawyer with a rattlesnake after building their own army in California.
Oh, that was a good idea.
That's quite a story, Miles.
I mean, so passe that assassinating a lawyer with the army.
I mean, come on.
So, Cinnanon is where the troubled teen industry gets its start, right?
This is the first time that judges are like, oh, we don't have to just throw these kids in prison, which is admittedly the wrong thing to do with a kid who you've caught with weed or something.
But instead, they're like, we just hand them over to this weird cult, and the cult will abuse them until they don't smoke pot anymore.
And this will solve our problems forever.
Okay.
Just freak the fuck out of them.
Yeah.
By the early 60s, Cynanon was a bona fide phenomenon, and it inspired a dizzying variety of imitators who used variations of their methods.
One of these imitators was the Daytop Village in New York, which is actually the second ever drug rehab program in the United States.
It was created in 1963, just five years after Cinnanon started.
And the Daytop Village followed what they called a therapeutic community style of treatment, which is where the actual work of rehabilitation is done by other addicts counseling and holding each other accountable.
This is the same thing Synanon did, and part of what they mean by that is, again, you all sit in a room together and yell abuse at each other.
Some people said this helps, but I've never gone, I've never been addicted to heroin.
Maybe, maybe it helps.
I mean, yeah, you know, don't knock it too, try it, I guess.
Yeah.
And it's worth noting: Daytop Village has not been accused of the same kind of abuse as Cinnanon, and they never tried to build their own Marine Corps or assassinate a lawyer with a rattlesnake.
Obviously, right?
A lot of problematic things about Daytop.
They didn't go as over the goddamn top as Synanon did.
For our purposes, Daytop Village in New York is noteworthy because in the late 1960s, a troubled 18-year-old named Joe Ritchie was sent there.
Joe would go on to create the Alan School, which might be the most abusive, troubled teen institution to ever exist.
But to properly tell that story, we've got to go back in time again and give Joe's backstory.
So I had to talk about where the troubled teen industry starts.
Let's talk about Joe a little bit.
He was born in Port Chester, New York in 1945 to parents who were deeply troubled.
They split up, and we don't know why, but a hint as to why may come from the fact that his father, Frank, was nicknamed Bamboo because he was so good at bouncing back after getting punched in the face during the near-constant bar fights he had at local bars.
Like, his nickname in town was big.
He's like, that guy could get, wow, he's really good at getting the shit punched out of him.
What the fuck is Bamboo?
Bamboo.
They call him Bamboo because he's so good at getting punched.
I mean, that's a weird foot.
Those the vibe of those people who just take shots and are like kind of sad immortal, like bar fight immortals.
Oh, yeah, I can only imagine the energy swirling around that kind of person.
I'm not surprised his marriage didn't last.
Yeah.
He's like, yeah, I don't even know how to respond to physical stimulus, no less verbal to adjust any kind of great emotions guy.
He was a day laborer and known locally as quote a kingpin of bar fights.
He was violent, but also charming, which is probably how he snared Ann Santoro, Joe Richie's mother.
Now, the Santoros and the Richies were both Italian-American families, but the Santoro family hated the Ritchie family because the Ritchie family was newer to the country and didn't speak English very well.
When Anne and Frank split up, she signed over custody of her son, Joe, to her parents, Michael and Angela.
And Joe was raised by his maternal grandparents and several other relatives.
So from the beginning, this kid doesn't have, you know, his mom, when she splits up with his husband, like signs over custody to his grandparents, which is kind of an odd move as well.
But this is also a period in which single motherhood is really, in some cases, like even legally penalized.
So like, I guess it makes a degree of sense as to why this happened.
The Santoro family, where Joe was raised, they were poor but proud, and they regularly attended Mass at the Holy Rosary Church.
As a young child, Joe was an altar boy.
He spent time at the community center where he learned to box and play basketball.
One of his friends at the time, Vic Donato, remembered him this way: quote, We called him Joe Rich.
He was a good guy, but I've never seen anyone as wild.
Joe was really tough.
If you were nice to him, he'd be your friend.
But you didn't want to mess with him.
He was always looking over his shoulder, and if you did something to cross him, he'd never let you forget it.
Joe Rich was sharp, knew how to survive.
I used to think he had nine lives.
If he did something really wrong, he'd get out of it.
Someone else would take the heat.
He always had himself covered.
It seems Joe Rich knew where to go.
He was definitely ahead of his time.
When we were involved in basketball games, he was thinking about stealing cars.
I really figured he'd eventually be successful, either that or dead.
Joe Rich's Poor But Proud Upbringing00:04:49
Wow.
That's a wild thing to say.
He's also got a little bamboo DNA too to him with the nine lives.
I just like when you first said it, like while we were playing basketball, I thought you were saying like he was like, he like in the middle of the basketball game.
He's like checked out.
He's like, how are we going to steal these cars?
And then he gets hit in the head.
The basketball is going to be a good thing.
I think that's what he said.
Come on.
Sorry, man.
You think about stealing cars again?
Fuck.
Dude, we're going to lose.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry.
Now, Miles, you know who else likes to steal cars?
These advertisers?
Yep.
We are entirely sponsored by a ring of car thieves and chop shops.
Oh, so if you're looking for a nice new stolen car, check out one of these sponsors.
Yeah.
If you're looking for that catalytic converter that I took out, check out one of these ads.
I mean, look, we're podcast hosts.
So when we're not recording, we're both actively out and about stealing the catalytic converters.
So just like Joe Richie, when some people are thinking about podcasts, all you and I are thinking about is how we're getting more catalytic converters out of Hondas.
Yeah, that's my whole life, man.
You should have seen me, man.
It was the 20s.
I was podcasting, stealing catalytic converters out of jets.
He's in coat made out of catalytic converters.
I walked down the street.
People said, oh, that's the cat king of Portland.
There he is, Catman.
Here's some ads.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired.
City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did.
July 2003.
Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's docks.
A shocking public murder.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
Oh my god, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
Dating the Same Prolific Con Artist00:15:32
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy.
Really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Groban.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Shari, stay with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ah, we're back and we're thinking about stealing catalytic converters.
The new business for...
It's the new Furby.
Yeah, it's the new Furby.
Look, the economy's heading for another downturn.
Can you afford not to learn how to steal catalytic converters?
That's all I'm asking.
Siphoning gas, catalytic converters.
Oh, yeah.
You gotta know how to siphon.
Now, the good thing about siphoning is the sucking skills that you use while siphoning are useful in a variety of other endeavors.
Absolutely.
Especially other quasi-legal endeavors you're going to have to engage in to make a living when the economy collapses.
Which is unclogging toilets with a hose.
I don't know what you were thinking, folks.
Get your mind out of it better.
Come on.
Don't be filthy.
Don't be filthy.
Picture someone sucking shit through a hose from a toilet.
Where have we got?
Why did you have me back?
Oh, Miles, because we got to talk about some really profound childhood stuff.
Oh, that's right.
See, I always do this.
I'm like, yeah, let's have a little bit of a good time.
You're like, wait, now.
Remember this show?
I had you on once to talk about the Trump University, and after that, it's just been bleaker and bleaker.
But you know, I like it.
I like it.
Yeah, that's good.
So Joe Ritchie is one of the kinds of guys we deal with from time to time on this show.
He's famous enough that we have pretty good texture on his early life, but he's obscure enough that there's also a lot of unanswered questions.
Because like, you're talking about a guy like Hitler, there's like a bunch of really good biographers who have all covered his childhood and you can get different, you can find the answer to pretty much every factual question about his early life in one of those books if you read enough biography.
We only have one biography of Joe Ritchie, and pretty much all of my info about his early life comes from the book Duck in a Raincoat by Mara Curley.
And I think it's a very good book, but there are moments like the one I'm about to quote where you know there's a deeper story lurking.
Quote, Donato said Richie dated his social science teacher in junior high, a tall, dark-haired beauty just out of college.
Now, that sounds like statutory rape to me, right?
What the fuck?
Junior high?
Yeah, yeah.
And his friends just are like, oh, yeah, he was dating one of the teachers.
And it's like, 13-year-old is with someone who's maybe 14, but yeah, that's 13, 14, and 22?
23?
Like, that's the youngest she could be is 22.
Oh, that's like Doogie Hauser.
And it's like, oh, yes, if Doogie Hauser was fucking him, I guess it's fine.
But I don't think that was the case.
Jesus, and that's it.
It's just merely like, hey, he was real cool.
He was also fucking a teacher when he was like 14.
Yeah, no, that's how it's.
What was going on?
I don't know.
I don't know.
Did he have a lot of weird abandonment issues because of the thing with his mom and older women?
I don't know.
I mean, we could talk about that.
And it seems like his friends, it was one of the stereotypic things with, well, she's hot.
It's cool.
Right.
Like, I think that's the attitude the other kids had about it.
Obviously, this is rape, even if it is something that he went to his grave thinking was like fine.
Yeah.
Like, it's that doesn't make it.
That's why it's statutory rape.
That's what that is.
Now, hearing that, hearing that he had this like relationship with a teacher much older than him that he thought nothing, apparently didn't think anything about.
I can't help but wonder if like, well, he's an altar boy, too.
Did anything like you know, like you can't not consider that given the prevalence of abuse in the Catholic Church?
And I actually did look up a comprehensive report on sexual assault allegations against priests in the Archdiocese of New York.
It's 125 pages because fuck the Catholic Church.
And while there are four molester priests who were stationed in Port Chester where Joe lived, the earliest left in 1944 and the others didn't start doing their thing until the late 60s, 70s, and early 80s.
So there's not even circumstantial evidence to suggest anything happened about this.
I just wanted to let you guys know I did look into it because I wanted to see where there's whatever the truth.
Joe grew up into a troubled adolescent.
He skipped school constantly.
He and his friends would regularly steal pies from a neighbor for pie fights, which is an adorable sort of child crime, right?
Wait, what?
Like down the sill cooling?
Yeah, that's how it sounds, right?
It sounds like some Andy Griffith level.
It sounds like the kind of crime you'd send Barty Fife out to deal with.
Right, exactly.
It's a stealing pies, Barn.
What's that guy?
Like a Norman Rockwell painting of like, you know, future cult leader stealing pies for pie fights.
Unfortunately, it didn't stay cool.
Cute.
When he was 15, Joe went joyriding with some of his friends.
You have to assume they were drunk, but we're not, we don't know that.
Sure.
They crashed and he was flung from the car.
Seatbelts were just a fevered dream in 1960.
And he spent months in the hospital and then more months in physical therapy.
He had to learn how to walk again.
Which is like, that's like a level of injury severity is like you have to relearn how to walk.
Like, yeah, it's a bad accident.
I got scrambled a little bit off of that one.
Yeah, I got a little bit.
Yeah, scrambled is a good word for it.
So some of Joe's family later told Mara Curley that this accident was a negative turning point in his life, possibly because he was given a lot of drugs while he was recovering and he got addicted to the drugs.
There's debate over this.
That would make sense, right?
A lot of people's painkiller addiction starts because they are in some sort of horrible accident where they get painkillers.
Now, about a year after he got out of the hospital, his family sent him to a residential treatment facility for difficult boys called PINS or persons in need of treatment.
So, and again, we don't have as much texture about why as I would like to have, but it seems like he recovers from this and his parents decide he needs to go to a facility.
And it may have been just because like, oh, he's been joyriding.
He was like stealing cars or whatever with his friends.
They were joyriding.
This is clearly a problem.
Once he recovers, let's send him to a treatment facility.
That may have been.
As he recovers from a horrific car wreck that rendered him unable to walk, that he had to relearn again, then let's just send him away.
Then send him away.
Questionable parenting, I would say.
At that point, you're saying his parents are his maternal grandparents.
His parents are his grandparents.
So nothing is.
Making sure I'm following along.
Yeah, yeah.
But they're the ones who raise him.
Right.
So he stays in this treatment facility for two years and then returns to high school in 1963, where he stayed until he left without graduating in 1966 at age 21.
So he's in high school at age 21, which sounds like a nightmare.
Shit, what?
Which also shouldn't be allowed.
Wait, what's the what's the how does the time work?
He was 15 when he got in the car wreck, yeah, 15, and then he's like 17 or 18 when he gets back from the treatment program, and then he stays in high school for three more years.
Oh, so he was like starting sophomore year at like 18 or something?
I think so.
I think he like he what a that's a weird vibe to yeah, that's what he wanted to do.
That's a weird vibe, especially since at 14 he's fucking a teacher, and then at 21, he's still in the school.
Like, that's real weird.
He's like hungover, and then they're like, well, what?
It's not illegal.
And this is a school in the 60s.
So I have to assume all of the kids were drunk 100% of the time.
Right, right.
As were the teachers.
As were the teachers, God willing.
And everyone was chain smoking.
So it's less weird than it would be today.
Right.
Now, the same year, the 1966, when he leaves high school.
So he leaves, he doesn't leave high school because he's like, I'm done with school.
He leaves because he hijacks a mail truck or at least tries to rob it.
The details around the crime are a little bit uncertain.
But as best as I can determine, it seems like he and his lawyer decided to claim that he'd done it because he was a heroin addict and was desperate for money.
Some sources, some of his friends, well, some of not his friends, some sources, like usually when you find his life reported on in articles, they'll say he was a heroin addict and that's why he robs this mail truck and gets sent to the facility he's sent to.
That's not what Mara Curley, his only biographer, thinks.
And she doesn't think that because people she talked to who were friends of Joe Ritchie's during this period of time don't think he was a heroin addict.
Like he did a little bit of heroin, but he wasn't like a hardcore addict.
He wasn't like, he was robbing shit, but he wasn't robbing shit because his heroin addiction was so bad.
Right, right.
Some of his friends.
Because he liked the thrill of the robbery.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He wanted shit.
I don't know.
I didn't know the guy.
But this was a really good time in American history to try to go to a judge and say, hey, I did it because I'm a drug addict and I need to go to a treatment facility rather than prison.
Because as we just talked about, Cinnanon was at the peak of its fame in the late 60s.
And so it had just become popular for judges to send people to programs like this rather than sending them to prison.
Straight to jail.
It's funny how he went first like this full circle of being like, yeah, and like we want to have some little bit of compassion, even though it's tied to some really fucked up organization to mass incarceration that people again be like, yeah, let's do some rehabilitation before incarceration again.
Okay.
Okay.
We're back there again.
Yeah.
So it's not the wrong thing from the judge's point of view, I guess.
It's also possible that he lied about the addiction because it's a lot better to go to one of these facilities than fucking right.
Now, whatever the truth, Joe goes to the Daytop Village in New York and he thrives there.
He's really good at the game, these sessions that he participates in with other addicts where you're like telling each other about your faults and flaws and stuff.
He's really good.
He's very good at it.
Like there's like a raker rankings.
It's like, have you seen Joe in the game?
It's a social thing.
So everyone is supposed to take turns kind of picking an individual and like talking about the things they don't like about that person.
That's like kind of how it goes.
Some people are good at directing those sort of group conversations.
They're good at controlling them.
They're good at getting other people to gang up on someone.
They're good at avoiding being the focus of negative attention themselves.
And this is a thing that's been observed by psychologists and stuff about sociopaths in particular are very good at group therapy.
Like they, they're good, they're good at manipulating people.
It's what they do.
Right.
And so they know how to take advantage of these places.
And kind of one of the dangers, and this is, we talked about this in the Synanon episode, and I found a study on this.
It's been noted that a number of cults have come out of different alcoholics anonymous groups.
And this is not like me shitting on AA.
I know people who swear by it, but it's a problem that has been noted with AA: that sometimes these kind of group therapy sessions, individuals within them gain a level of mental control over other people in them and they turn into cults.
It's happened a handful of times.
That's how Synanon started.
Oh, so it's like it's the material for star formation is present at a cult formation is present.
And if with the right ingredients, it may lead to it.
It can happen, which is, it's more, this is, again, less of a flaw in AA and more of just like, this is how people work.
AA, this is one of the things they're vulnerable to because of the, you know, other things.
Churches are vulnerable to this thing too, right?
It's not shitting on AA here, but it's a known quantity in these kinds of organizations.
And Joe is very good at the that's what I mean when I say that he was good at the game.
He's right manipulating people in this way.
I was being stupid and acting as if they were like the game all-stars.
Richie is killing it.
He brought up his, you know, his paternal abandonment issues.
It's fantastic.
He's like, I do kind of now want like football announcers like covering group therapy.
Oh, we just talked about the fact that his dad used to hit him.
Oh, he went there.
He went there.
You didn't think he was going to go there this early on.
And I think he's going to counter with something about his mother's inability to say that she loved him.
Yep, okay.
Oh my God.
He just brought up the time.
He left the gate open and the dog got out and was hit by a car.
Uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
She's bringing out pictures of the sister.
She's bringing out pictures of the sister.
We have not seen this in a long time.
Richie usually does what you're doing.
He just emailed me.
They're giving us $42 million to make this show.
Great.
And the algorithm just deemed it so.
Thank you, Netflix algorithm.
So, yeah, I guess this is what we're this is.
Sophie, let's cancel the show for the day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm pretty sure that eventually they're going to be like, this is what we're thinking, Robert.
We're noticing how big Pokemon is and how big your podcast is.
What about Behind the Bastards Mon, where it's you got to catch them all, okay?
And it's this anime series and it's a little bit of everything, huh?
What do you think about that, huh?
Salt.
Yeah, the algorithm says it's going to be a fucking hit.
I mean, look, I'll do anything for enough money to buy an armored vehicle.
Yeah.
Now, there's new merch for you.
Got to just all your bastard monsters.
You got to catch them all.
Yeah.
Got to catch all of the route clearance vehicles.
So he's really good.
He goes to daytop.
He's really good at the game.
He learns.
He starts.
This is really when he learns like that he has a gift for actually kind of like manipulating people.
And at first, he's doing it in such a way that he's trying to like, I think, I don't know, I don't know how much he sees it this way, but other people see it as like he's helping them deal with their addiction issues, right?
Like they don't see it as like, oh, he's doing cult leadership.
They see it as like, oh, this kid is charismatic and understands people and is good at getting them to see their own flaws and their faults and like help them work through and process their addiction.
So he gets a lot of praise within Daytop and pretty soon he becomes like their most prominent member.
He's giving speeches and raising funds for the organization and becomes their number one fundraiser.
So he's like going outside of the group to like raise money for them and other and to talk about like how good they are at like stopping people from being addicted and stuff.
And he later recalled that previously, quote, I'd done the therapy bit, but this blew my mind.
In other words, he'd done therapy before, but therapy didn't give him the chance to like manipulate a bunch of people.
And he really likes manipulating a bunch of people.
Yeah.
It's like an all-you-can-manipulate buffet in there.
I can't believe that.
That's exactly the case.
So he's happy at Daytop.
This is an influential moment for him, but he doesn't agree with all of their therapy.
For one thing, they all had to shave their heads, which was something that Synanon did, and he thought that was weird.
Dartek: Medical Professionals and Addicts00:04:51
He also butted heads with the administrators when they told him he wasn't ready to graduate, and eventually he ran away from the program.
I think they wanted to keep him there because he was so good at raising money, right?
Right.
Like, yeah, well, you want to give that guy up.
Now, at the time, like, right around when he runs away from Daytop, he starts dating a woman named Sherry in New York.
Now, Sherry was working at a travel agency, and she fell for Joe in part because she was that her parents were alcoholics, and he understood the issues she faced as a child of alcoholic because he understands abuse or not abuse but drug abuse really well, right?
He's just been counseling people, he's actually able to like talk with, like, obviously, that's a thing that would like draw you to someone.
You have this horrible experience, he understands it.
Makes sense why they get together.
When Richie left Daytop, he moves right in with Sherry and her roommate.
And at first, she says things were great.
He cleaned the house, he would bring her little gifts.
He successfully wooed her so well that she canceled her plans to move to New York City and train as a stewardess.
The two were engaged to be married, but early on, there were unsettling signs about the man that he might really be.
Quote, and this is from Duck in a Raincoat.
Richie sued Sherry's insurance company for injuries he said he sustained during a minor traffic accident.
Sherry had run a stoplight and hadn't thought he was more and hadn't thought he was even injured, but her insurance company settled the claim.
Richie used the money to buy her an engagement ring.
So he sues her insurance company in order to get money to buy her a ring.
Wow.
This guy, yeah, this is some 4D scumbag shit for sure.
That's kind of a sign.
Oh, this guy might be a little bit, that's that's a little slimy.
Yeah, but hey, the ring's beautiful.
I mean, it's an insurance company, right?
If that is the only thing, I wouldn't judge a guy for that necessarily because, like, yeah, I get whatever money you need to do.
No, no, but the thinking involved is clearly that someone's like.
I find ways to extract things with very little effort, and I don't care how underhanded it is.
Yeah, that's what this says about him.
Now, Sherry seems to have been fine about this, but this bit of insurance fraud would prove to be the beginning of a fairly long career in insurance fraud.
The two were married in December of 1969.
They were both 24.
Richie needed a job, and since his only real-life experience was either crimes or manipulating institutions, he decided to get a job working at the kind of place he'd been sent as a kid.
He heard about a pilot program being launched for drug addicts in Connecticut.
It was called Dartek, and it was one of the first programs to include both medical professionals and former addicts working side by side to counsel people, which seemed like a much better idea than the synonym method of addicts mentally abusing other addicts to keep them sober.
The founder of the program, Dr. Donald Pett, hired Joe Ritchie after a phone interview because he seemed persuasive.
Quote, Joe had a very unusual way of getting many of the street people to follow him.
He often got people to rally around him, kind of see things his way, do his bidding.
Again, some cult leadership, you know?
Wow, the street people.
Is that what they said?
Yeah, yeah.
They're talking about homeless people there.
Now, one of the other staff members at Dartek introduced Richie to a Massachusetts psychiatrist named Gerald Davidson.
The two weren't co-workers long before Richie and Sherry moved again to another job at a drug counseling center called Survival Inc., but Joe clearly made an impact on Dr. Davidson, one that was out of step with his actual skill in treating addiction.
Evidence for this is that Joe brought three Dartek staff members with him to Survival Inc., and all three of them were fired soon after because they were caught using drugs while working as drug abuse counselors.
He may not be good at anything but manipulating people in reality.
Yeah.
Now, Joe is the one who fired them, and he made a statement to the press saying their behavior was unacceptable.
And it seems like the incident had an impact on him.
Not long after that, in 1971, the couple decided to open a therapeutic community of their own.
Joe reached out to Dr. Davidson, who he'd worked with briefly, and because he was a smooth son of a bitch, convinced the older man to be their business partner in starting a new facility.
Because Dr. Davidson is a psychiatrist and he has money, you know?
Mm-hmm.
You gotta love it.
And you got a license, probably too, right?
Yeah, he's got some licenses.
There's a lot of reasons it's a good call.
Now, Miles, you know what's an even better call than convincing a psychiatrist to fund your child abuse company program?
This seminar we're giving on how to unload catalytic converters on Craigslist using ambiguous miles.
That's right.
And pick up Miles and I's new book, The Catalytic Converter-Driven Life, which is all about how stealing catalytic converters called Welcome Converts.
Oh, what a good cult this is going to be in 2023.
Former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
Stealing Catalytic Converters for Fun00:03:42
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Some lights the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach: murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did.
July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
A shocking public murder.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one: never mess with a country girl.
If you play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two: never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield.
And in this new season of The Girlfriends...
Oh my god, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Lori Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
From power to parenthood.
Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
AI Guardrails for Kids and Teens00:15:31
From addiction to acceleration.
The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop.
Even if you did a lot of redistribution, you know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
And it's a multiplayer game.
What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
Find out on Mostly Human.
My highest order bit is to not destroy the world of AI.
Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
We're back.
Oh, I'm just fondling a couple of cats and catalytic converters, that is.
That's what we call it around here.
That's what we call it around here in the verder biz.
So, by 1971, which is when Joe decides to start his own facility, Synanon was a full-on cult, but public awareness of that fact was not high.
People were aware that drug abuse rehabilitation centers could save addicts, and such facilities had exploded in popularity.
Now, at the time, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts all had very stringent laws about what kind of professional qualifications you had to have to work in such a place, right?
Those states have like considered it basically a hospital.
If you're trying, if you're saying, I want to open a residential treatment facility for addicts, you have to like have medical, serious medical credentials in order to work.
What if I just really want to do it?
Well, then you move to Maine.
Then you do what Joe, Joe Ritchie, and Sarah and Sherry do, which is you move to Maine because Maine does not give a fuck about anything.
Now, at the beginning, the program was owned by Dr. Davidson and another man, David Goldberg, who actually had the money necessary to start the business.
The Richies used their money to lease a former summer camp in Naples, Maine, which they turned into their facility.
From the beginning, Dr. Davidson's role in all of this was to be a doctor, right?
Not to actually do medicine, but to be a doctor who was professionally associated with the organization.
So you could put his name on advertising material, and they can use it to claim that their facility has a basis in clinical therapy.
And since Dr. Davidson was the associate director of the drug clinic at Boston City Hospital, he had a lot of professional weight to throw around.
But again, he's never there.
He's not actually doing anything.
He's giving money.
He's like funding this, but like, yeah.
So from the start, it was agreed that Dr. Davidson would not work on site.
He would stay in Massachusetts working at a hospital and using his position as a psychiatrist to refer patients to the new business he'd started, which is not at all a conflict.
Oh my God.
Okay.
It's fucking rad.
Oh, man.
So good.
So good.
Oh, yeah.
You need some help.
You know, actually, I know this place, actually.
Oh, yeah.
It's out in Maine, you know?
Yeah, it's run by this guy who has no qualifications other than being a guy.
But hey, he really wants to do it.
He really wants to do it.
Yeah, he's moving.
He's got a heart.
No expertise, though.
All heart.
No expertise.
So Richie and his wife were supervisors working for free room and board and a cut of the profits.
But when one of their other partners, a guy who invested with a doctor, was caught embezzling, Richie and his wife bought their way into a full partnership by selling $8,000 worth of stocks that Sherry had inherited from her grandma.
So Richie becomes a partner because of money that his wife has, right?
Now, the early years of this business are hard.
The Richies were very poor, and by all accounts, Joe was obsessed with getting rich.
From the beginning, the Alan school, as they came to call it, was not about helping people.
It was about making Joe Richie a fortune.
Still, it does seem to have started as, I don't know, somewhat genuine.
It doesn't seem to have initially been horribly toxic, at least within the standards of the industry.
And I'm going to quote from Duck in a Raincoat again.
They lived on the top floor of the rustic building in Naples with residents on the second floor.
Everybody shared the ground level.
They seldom had any private time, never went out to eat or to the movies.
Every activity centered around the therapeutic community and making lots of money.
Sherry said her husband would often lie awake in bed thinking aloud about how they were going to make their first $100,000.
Becoming rich was definitely an obsession that seemed to drive Joe, recalled an early staff member at Alan.
Money was extremely important to him when he was earning $10,000 a year and driving an old Oldsmobile.
It represented the power to be somebody important who would be accepted by everyone around him.
And that meant a lot.
So from the beginning, his motivation here is to get rich off this, not necessarily to determine any new method of actually helping people.
Right, right.
And even if it wasn't toxic at first, it seems like he probably felt some kind of momentum beginning with his ability to grift and manipulate.
Yeah, and when I say I don't know that it was toxic at first because we don't have a lot of details about the early times of the school.
Now, at the beginning, most of the money that they made was put right back into the business, but it gradually started to make a major profit because they started drawing in, and Joe would actually go out and like recruit people to join the facility, particularly troubled teens from wealthy families.
So they would like, Joe and Dr. Davidson would go out and like talk to rich parents whose kids had like were in legal trouble, had like serious problems with addiction.
Like because Davidson is a psychiatrist, he knows which rich parents have are able to pay for serious help for their kids.
And Joe will go out and like, because Joe's good at convincing people of things, will convince them to send their kid over to Alan and pay $1,200 a month for treatment in 1970s money.
You know, that's a lot of cash.
Yeah.
So the Naples facility relocated to the former Potter Academy, a landmark in the town of Sabago.
And another secondary site was established in Waterford, Maine.
So they expand very quickly because going after rich kids is good business.
Throughout the mid-1970s, Joe Ritchie expanded his methods from, you know, he started off just kind of ripping off the daytop school and sent it on to building something new.
And this happens gradually.
We don't know the exact timeframe in which this occurs, but it happens, you know, in the early years of the facility.
So initially, all the therapy, you have these group talk sessions based off the game.
You have various forms of labor.
People are asked to like do physical labor outdoors as part of like their kind of like a punishment in a lot of cases.
And Richie designed Alan's culture around a series of work crews.
Each member started as a worker and was assigned a job in the kitchen, the business office, the communications office, or on the grounds based on what was considered to be their weakest area.
So you get a job doing grunt-level labor in whatever thing you're worst at.
In a 1979 article for Corrections Magazine, Dr. Davidson claimed this was, quote, to teach them to function under adversity and learn to accept failure.
Now, from worker, which everyone starts as a worker, you move up to Ramrod or Foreman, which is like in charge of a small group of workers.
After that, you move up to department head and then up to coordinator.
Joe felt that structure and communal living were both necessary in order to treat addicts.
But while he was experimenting with new ways to counsel drug addiction, he was also experimenting with insurance fraud.
So in January of 1974, a fire destroyed his academy at Sabago.
Thankfully, no one was there at the time.
Davidson and Richie were in Chicago recruiting residents.
The building's owner told the press that he didn't have much insurance.
But Richie bragged that the Alan school itself was, quote, adequately insured due to the extensive remodeling his residence had done to the building.
Now, there was no evidence that his residence had remodeled anything because the building had burned down.
But he was able to successfully argue that this increased the insurance value of the property, and he makes a lot of money off of the insurance building that gets conveniently burned down.
Yeah, don't worry about that.
Don't worry about the no insurance, you know, because I'm looking at about probably what, four, five, six hundred thousand dollars worth of remodel work that I'd insure anyway.
So it's all good.
It's all the insurance covered.
It's really money.
It's fine.
No problem.
So Sherry would later claim that the fire was a turning point for Richie and the Alan school.
They purchased a new permanent location in Poland Spring, Maine, with seven large buildings that would each act as separate communities within the increasingly complex society Joe Ritchie was building.
Now, at this point, I haven't given a lot of detail about what happened at Alan because we don't really know about the early 70s all that much.
It seems fair to say that early on, there was little to differentiate Alan from other programs based off of Cinanon and Daytop.
They practiced the game, which tended to be regularly scheduled therapy sessions.
And yeah, the idea, like, so it seems like they're kind of doing the same thing: 71, 72, 73.
At some point, though, it starts to change.
And it changes in part because Alan is very centralized from the beginning.
There's this strict hierarchy, these different jobs everybody has, and you move up or down if your behavior is bad.
That seems to be kind of everything else is spawned from this idea.
So one of the first things that Joe develops that's different from what other facilities has done is he takes the game and he changes it into something different.
So the game, two or three times a week in these other communities, everyone sits down to play the game, right?
And that's the way the game works.
Joe replaces it with something called a general meeting.
And rather than being a regular scheduled part of the week, a general meeting was unpredictable.
Instead of it being a thing everyone does together, it's often an unpleasant thing, but everyone does it together.
A general meeting is something that's done to you.
If your behavior is bad, Joe or one of the other supervisors will call the general fucking meeting against you.
And it's usually done because like Joe or a supervisor decides this person has done something bad.
So in the game, every individual pretty much is going to get called out for some sort of bad behavior, right?
You go around the circle and everybody spends some time getting, you know, shit talked, basically, right?
A general meeting isn't like that.
Only one person is getting yelled at and they're getting yelled at by everybody.
Wow.
So it's just like, all right, feeding frenzy.
Here we go.
Just for this person.
Yeah.
The term they used for this was get your feelings off, right?
So everyone's called and it's like, get your feelings off on him.
Get your, like, how has he hurt you, basically?
How is his behavior?
His, he fucked up at this thing.
Like, how did it affect you negatively?
And obviously, you can't not say something.
I found one recording of audio that is purported to have been recorded secretly during the late 1990s of a general meeting at Alan school.
And Alan graduates have said, some people argue that maybe this was staged, but either way, they say this is accurate to how it sounds.
So here is a general meeting at the Elan School.
So the game is it's kind of debatable as to how therapeutically useful it was.
A lot of criticisms of the game.
This is just abuse.
Like, I mean, the game was pretty abusive in a lot of cases, but like, this is just pure abuse.
Like, that's just straight screaming.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You can argue, even though there's abusive elements to the game going around in a circle, everybody like there's elements of that that could be helpful.
This is just abuse.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's just a screaming meat grinder.
And like also that, what the fuck?
The person's inhalations too were like so flavorful.
One of my points that former students will make is that you learn how to yell in a specific way unique to the Alan school because of the way in which you are trained to yell at people and abuse people.
There's like a specific cadence, specific kinds of terms that you use.
You know, also exhaust on a Harley-Davidson man.
Yeah.
You know the sound.
You can tell when it's an Alan scream.
Yeah.
I mean, that's, yeah, that's what former inmates will say.
So one of the difficulties in preparing this episode is that the system of abuse that Joe Ritchie crafted for Alan was extremely complicated.
In a way, what he built over the first few years was like an engine designed to be self-perpetuating and maintaining.
We don't have a good data on the order in which it all came together, but we do have bits and pieces of that story.
One of these comes from a 1971 interview with Dr. Davidson from News and World Report in which he claimed, quote, therapeutic communities largely are run by ex-addicts who have become extremely sanctimonious, like all converted heathens.
They shave their patients' heads, make them wear diapers, hang degrading signs on them, things like that.
In our therapeutic community, we do not do this.
Our approach is to build self-esteem and regard for others.
Now, this is a lie.
At least it runs counter to what we know Alan was doing in this same period of time, but also Dr. Davidson was never there.
So maybe he just didn't know.
That same year, Joe Ritchie did an interview with a local TV news station where he claimed that the goal of Alan was to instill self-reliance, self-respect, and a capacity for love.
Quote, we tailored the program to fit the individual, not the individual to fit the program.
This was also not in line with what we know was going on at Alan, but it was consistent with Joe Ritchie's desire to market his school to the parents of rich kids.
In the early years, he did a lot of direct sales to these parents, and he would even offer to fly his private plane out to them to pick kids up.
He called Alan the Rolls-Royce of Adolescent Treatment Centers.
So again, I can't tell you how this all came together exactly, but I can tell you that by 1979, when Corrections Magazine did a profile on the Alan school, it had already developed a number of unsettling characteristics, including an internal secret police force.
Quote, there are no clinical offices at Alan, no 50-minute see you next week couch sessions.
Six days and nights a week, each Alan residence is a hotbed of raw, supercharged emotion.
When the house is functioning, working at therapy, the expediters are at work, keeping a written record of negative behavior.
They have a lot of status, like a secret police force, says one resident.
They take attendance all the time and book incidents, like if you talk back or fight.
Each book is a strange collection of names or narratives.
At 11.10 today, Diane was called out for obnoxious behavior.
Incidents are collected, reviewed, and dealt with appropriately, and appropriately usually means severely.
You're not dealing with your feelings at all, screams a diminutive girl to a massive boy in Elon 7.
He has talked back to a coordinator.
Why don't you grow some guts and brains instead of just balls, you blockhead?
And just as quickly as it began, the confrontation is over.
Both peacefully shuffle off to work again.
So you have this, you have these people keeping track of everyone, writing down in a notebook every bad thing they do, so that it can be there can be a meeting at some point in the day where you yell at this person over it, like where every single piece of behavior you do is being monitored at all times.
And this is true of everybody, including the people who are giving out punishment.
They're also always being monitored.
So anyone, if you have status, you can lose it for bad behavior.
And if you don't have status, you can report people who might be above you and get them in trouble.
Institutional Abuse at Alan School00:14:59
Like it's this whole gen of abuse.
Right.
And it's not necessarily like when you said internal police force, I thought like they're ordaining people to be these snitches, but it's just the ecosystem operates in such that it self-polices to be able to gotcha each other at the generals.
That's part of it.
There is these, this is a position.
Expeditor is a job.
There's just always kids with notebooks taking down what everyone does.
But then can you all talk about it?
Can you come for an expediter?
Yeah, you have, I mean, you would have meetings throughout, like, once a day, you're going to be like called into a room with kids above you and to talk about your bad behavior.
And you're also generally asked if you saw anyone else doing anything.
And you also have these slips of paper that you can write down a bad behavior you saw from someone else and put it in a little like basically like a notebook and it those get read and people get punished for that sort of thing.
Like a snitch suggestion box?
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
So all of this stuff, like again, the whole goal here is to create, is to make the kids lock each other down so much that no one can misbehave, that the program runs just based on all of these kids trying to either get back at each other or avoid punishment themselves.
And the only way to do that is to punish other people.
Like live in some like panopticon where they always feel like they're also, they can never hide either.
Yes, that's a huge part of it.
Now, in Cinnanon, people who broke major rules were given haircuts, which was initially just like a dressing down, but was turned into literal haircuts.
Like eventually they would start shaving your head for bad behavior.
At Elan, the haircuts were metaphorical, but somehow much more abusive than forcibly shaving someone bald.
Haircuts were basically lesser general meetings.
They could take the form of a blast where one person would scream at you for bad behavior, or a round robin where a dozen people would do it, or a 21-gun salute, which involved two dozen people berating you.
These lesser reprimands were called for by kids against other kids rather than being doled out by any kind of administrator.
In 1979, when Corrections magazine covered Elan, so-called experts touted this as one of the things that made Elan revolutionary.
That article quoted the headmaster of a Montessori school who claimed, It works.
The kids disciplined themselves with haircuts.
The result is that there are no discipline problems in school.
It would be more accurate to say that Alan successfully transformed most discipline problems into institutionally supported abuse, because the only way to have any kind of control over your life at Alan was to play along and raise through the ranks, at which point you would be able to give haircuts or eventually call general meetings.
The system was built to encourage kids to join it in order to dish out the abuse they'd had to suffer for months and to suffer less abuse themselves.
Elan punishments included signs, which listed the perpetrators' supposed sins.
And again, Davidson had said this is one of the things that makes us different from other.
We don't hang signs from people's necks.
They totally did.
Kids were forced to make signs themselves, but the wording was created by the student students who were punishing them and by employees of the school.
I found one example online, and I'm going to...
Miles, you want to read the sign that young woman's care is holding around her neck?
Okay, this is.
My name is Phyllis Cohen.
I behave like an emotional cripple.
I consistently seek people's attention and try to get them to prove they care about me.
I play games and continually usurp people's emotions in order to make myself feel special.
Please confront me because if I don't change, this attitude will always, I don't know, it says, well, always something the same thing.
Scared and lonely.
What the fuck?
It's pretty bad shit.
So this is someone they're like, okay, this, okay, we figured you out.
You're an emotional cripple who's just what the that's not.
You have to wear this around your neck.
Yeah.
And this sign is massive.
It's got to be what, two and a half, three feet by three.
It's fucking a poster board.
It's bigger than her almost.
But also like, like, why is it like colorful, too?
Like, there's like a weird level of flare to it.
Well, she had to make it.
Somebody wrote that down for her.
I don't think it's handwritten.
I think those are like cuts.
Stickers or something.
I think they're cutouts or stickers.
Yeah.
But it's like rainbow.
Yeah.
Unnecessary flair for such an abusive sign, though, also.
Yeah, it had a lot of flair.
They had the whole school.
One of the things you would have to do constantly is like write posters and stuff that they would put up everywhere.
So there's always these posters with like batshit motivational slogans over all the walls.
It's just the worst.
Stop playing emotional cripple.
Fuck face.
Fuck you.
But it's like a rainbow and like a pot of gold.
Yeah.
I kind of want one of those actually from my own office.
So I'm going to quote from that Corrections magazine write-up again, Miles.
Where's your sign?
Get that sign on or I will break it over your head, barks Mark, the staff member running the general meeting at Alan 5 or at Alan 4 in Parsonville, in Parson Field.
Alan 4 is the residence for the toughest of the tough.
It is the only locked facility.
For over a week now, Alan 4 has been in a tight house, all privileges suspended because of a poor house attitude.
Mark zeroes in on a few offenders as 60 pairs of cold eyes look on in the cafeteria.
Paulson, get up here, he screams at a 13-year-old with a tussle of brown hair.
You know why you're up here, don't you?
Well, after this morning, you're never going to not do your homework again.
You're going to want to be dead.
Where is your dunce cap?
Get him a dunce cap that will touch the ceiling, he says.
And again, they would like give these people like dunce caps as big as their bodies and stuff.
Like they would make people wear costumes.
They made one kid dress up as Jesus, I think it was like a horse.
They like chained his feet to a ball and like dressed him up as an animal.
Like it would get fucked up.
Damn.
And you're saying this is in Corrections Magazine where they're like, check out the work they're doing here.
It's actually pretty critical, to be honest.
Okay.
I was making sure the spotlight wasn't like, you know, like this is just a magazine for like sophisticated teachers.
It's not as critical as it should have been, maybe, but it was 1979.
They didn't know.
I don't know.
We'll see.
They could have been more critical, but it's like not positive.
Like it's a picture of the picture.
Maybe the fascists who read Corrections Magazine were like, this sounds rad.
But like, I thought it was a pretty dark portrayal of this facility.
Yeah, no, for sure.
You just never know, like, considering the audience are like, wow, did you see that write-up?
I love it.
At one point, the article discusses encounter sessions, and these are a result of one of the weird programs Joe Ritchie developed for his school over the years.
In encounter sessions, students are so students are required every day to write little, fill out slips of paper admitting their guilt, which is like every day you have to write what rules you violated during the day that you didn't get caught for.
And then you would have to come in and talk to a group of your fellow students and a staff member about the different things that you'd done that you weren't supposed to do.
So fucked up confessional?
Yeah.
And when I'm talking about rule breaking, Miles, I'm not talking about like, well, it's horrifying, actually.
I'm going to read you a brief, non-comprehensive list of the different guilts.
And guilt is called, do you have guilt, right?
Like, that's the term they would use.
It, like, have you done something bad?
Talking too loudly, talking too quietly, talking to someone without authorization, talking to a non-strength while being non-strength.
So, eventually, one of the this is one of the they keep adding like different sort of rule, like different sort of classifications.
So, it starts with like workers or ramrods, and eventually they add in strength or non-strength.
So, all of the low-ranking students are non-strength, and all of the once you reach a certain point, you're strength, and then there's high strength.
And so, certain jobs only open up once you become strength or high strength.
When you're low-strength, you can't talk to anyone else who's low-strength.
You can only talk to high-strength people or listen to high-strength people.
So, you can get in trouble for listening to someone who's also low-ranked.
It's this weird, there's a lot of weird shit with the system.
Yeah, so in these rules, like who's who's defining like what's too quiet and what's too loud and what's too much and what's too little?
Like, what, what are the, is there like some kind of like ranking system?
No, no, no, no, all subjective, cool, yeah, yeah, uh, talking too much, not talking enough, uh, talking about subjects that are not alan related.
This is called being loose, uh, sex, and this doesn't just mean talking about sex, this means looking at someone of the opposite gender.
So, they would make you write down and confess if you were attracted to anyone else in the school.
And then, if you did that, they would bring it up.
They would call everyone together and say, Hey, so-and-so thinks Susie is hot.
Like, like Susie, you don't think he's hot, right?
You think he's fucking hideous, yeah?
And like, they would do that in front of the whole school.
Like, you have to admit that you have a crush on someone so they can make fun of you about it in front of everyone else.
Quite literally, like, the nightmare you have as a junior high kid.
Yeah, is like you can't nightmare is the whole school comes around and goes, and they and they make the person who has a crush on you tell you that they think you're disgusting.
Oh, my, yeah, it's really bad, right?
Um, you could get in trouble for looking at someone of the opposite sex, but you could also get in trouble for avoiding looking at someone of the opposite sex because that clearly means you have a crush on them.
How does that math at all?
It's so fucking good.
Um, yeah, you could get in trouble for basically anything.
Uh, yeah, my looking outside, but you can't all, but also the next one is looking at the floor, yeah.
You have to be in a constant state of observation, yeah, constant state of observation, always looking at your fellow inmates.
Yeah, Robert, what does being sideways mean?
Um, okay, when you sip too much lean, that's what I was thinking.
I think it just basically means like not following uh, some sort of like not being on the program, right?
Like, the whole thing, the only thing you're supposed to talk about with each other is the program is like either what a disaster your life would be without it, uh, how it saved your life, or like how someone else needs to do a better job of following the program.
Anything else is being loose, right?
And you're not, you're not supposed to be doing that shit.
Um, every day, God, there's the rest of these are, I think these are worse than the first couple ones you read, to be honest.
Which ones?
Having negative body language, reacting to insults, slouching or yawning, looking at it.
Not falling asleep or sleeping for too long.
Like, so you can't be a person.
No, they keep you sleep-deprived and they don't feed you enough because that's a great way to have a culture.
It just says drawing.
You can't draw.
Oh, I'd be done.
You can't read books either.
I am, I am done.
What?
Or red?
Yeah.
How do you okay, whatever?
Yeah, go on.
I mean, it's a fucked up nightmare.
You do eventually, if you get to a high enough rank, there's a library and you can even read books if you get to a high enough rank, which you get to by abusing your fellow students and maintaining this order.
So, again, that's part of the like you're after a couple of months of fighting back, you're so fucking desperate to have a single like privilege that lets you feel like a person that you will destroy the people around you to get that, right?
Right, right.
And yeah, you've just made it a gladiator ring.
Yeah, exactly.
For just the slightest bit of stimulation that isn't total abuse.
It's cool and good, Miles.
Cool and good.
Everyday inmates would participate in encounter groups.
These were smaller, more focused versions of the game, where three to four higher-ranked inmates would sit down with a worker or ramrod and discuss their flaws.
In 1979, the author of that Corrections Magazine article claims some sessions focused on building up the self-esteem of inmates and having peers discuss their good qualities.
This seems to have occurred at some periods, and I've even found former Alan students who will say that there were specific employees who were decent people.
Most of the accounts I found do not report that building up self-esteem was as common a task for encounter groups as the opposite, which is breaking down people's self-conception of themselves.
This was evident even in 1979.
Quote: Encounters can run for 10 minutes.
They can also go on for half a day.
There are other, less frequent group sessions whose purpose is to build up self-esteem rather than tear it down.
Tears often flow in these sessions where residents talk about their good qualities.
It is moving to watch.
Tears flow in encounter sessions, too.
You want a knife, Bruce?
You want to kill yourself? asks Alice matter-of-factly.
Bruce's lower lip is quivering.
Someone get me a knife.
There is a rattle of a drawer, and someone hands Alice a silver blade.
Here, Bruce, kill yourself.
Bruce whimpers.
He cannot shout as the others do.
No, I don't want to change.
I don't know why.
I just don't want to change.
His eyes redden.
Alice seizes the chance to toughen this newcomer.
Let me rip your stomach out for a second, okay, Bruce?
You don't think anyone likes you, do you?
That's because you don't think you're worth being liked.
She turns to the group.
How many people feel that Bruce has an insatiable desire to be loved, but won't let that be because he hates himself?
Six hands grow up.
If you're crying now, Bruce, you should be.
If you aren't crying now, Bruce, you should be.
He is.
It's just like, what the fuck?
Fucking mind game shit.
Absolute torture.
And again, Alice is just like another kid, right?
Like readiness to like be, yeah.
Physical abuse was also like, yeah, that's so weird.
Like you're just sort of nurturing these same fucked-up skills within everyone.
And it's just becoming this like a petri dish of dysfunction that you're just watching all the bacteria like replicate and grow and yeah.
I mean, past a certain point, all of the staff pretty much are people who went to Alan as kids because like they can't do anything else.
You know?
Physical abuse was also extremely common in Alan.
At its lowest levels, it involved spankings administered by other students via ping-pong paddle.
Administrators and employees were not supposed to partake in corporal punishment, although whether or not they did is something that seems to have varied from person to person over time during the decades the school operated.
Now, I was spanked in school, and when I say students were given spankings, depending on your background, that may not sound too horrible, right?
At Elan, spankings were administered the way therapy was in groups.
Sometimes as many as a dozen students would spank a single person, taking turns until the child's buttocks was bruised and often bleeding.
I found one account from an Alan alumnus, Gregory Coleman, who actually gave this account during the murder trial of another former Alan student.
At the time he gave this statement, Coleman was in maximum security prison for criminal trespassing, which might be a hint as to how well the program really worked, but that's a story for another day.
And you're saying he was testifying at the murder trial of Alan?
Yeah, he sure was.
He sure was.
Student Spankings with Ping-Pong Paddles00:02:29
Yeah.
Holy shit.
Now, back in the 70s, Gregory had been sent to a lawn for stealing a TV.
He was one of many students who participated in the mass paddling of a female student.
Decades later, he could not remember what she'd done to earn the punishment.
Here is how his testimony on that was described in a federal court document.
She was paddled so violently with opened hands and a wooden mallet that she had to be taken to the hospital.
Coleman nonchalantly testified that the assault was so horrific that she went into shock and lost the ability to retain her bowel movements.
Pretty bad stuff, Miles.
So fucking.
In the beginning, I was like, oh, yeah, man, this dude was just a grifter insurance.
And then I'm like, yeah, here we go.
Now we're getting to the bastard part as I turn away because I can't even focus on it.
Yeah, from the, it's like, it's not enough of all the psychological shit.
And now we're talking about creating, you know, generations of kids who probably needed actual, you know, professional help that was more centered around their humanity rather than some dude getting off on creating like the thunderdome of abuse.
Yeah.
It's a lot.
So, Miles, how are you?
How are you feeling today after all this?
Good?
I'm sweating.
Sexy?
Yeah.
I'm just trying to focus on my catalytic converters.
I'm not going to lie right now.
That's the only thing.
The only thing I got going on.
The beauty of a catalytic converter.
Catalytic converters don't abuse kids.
They would never spank a child.
All they do is get stolen by us in order to make profit.
And that's beautiful.
I think that's beautiful, Miles.
We sell them for 15 roses on Craigslist.
All right.
Well, we're going to talk more about Alan School in part two, including its most notorious therapy, the ring.
But that's going to have to wait till Thursday.
Oh, Miles, you are not going to have a good time.
Yeah, it's real bad, buddy.
I hate these fucking like WWE event names.
They're like, you know, Harry Krishna.
Ring, a general, like, okay.
Well, it's all right.
If it helps, it's a lot worse than the WWE.
No.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's true, I guess.
That doesn't help.
It doesn't help me.
Yeah.
Well, that's the episode, Miles.
You got any pluggables to plug?
The Notorious Ring Therapy00:02:53
420 Day Fiancé.
You know, if you like, if you like nicey, nice stuff where I just get high and talk about trash reality TV like 90 Day Fiancé.
Check out 420 Day Fiancé.
Also, Sophia Alexandra, somebody you have here on the time.
That's my co-host.
So that's where we do that.
And daily site case.
Please check out 420 Day.
Check it out.
Check out 420 Day and check out catalytic converters by crawling up underneath a Toyota Prius with a set of bolt cutters and just start cutting.
Just start cutting until you get the good shit.
There you go, cutting for gold.
That's how it works, baby.
All right.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Oesby and Michael Mancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
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10-10 shots five, city hall building.
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He's going to get what he deserves.
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Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
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This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
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