Deborah Layton
She defected from the People's Temple, Rev. James Warren Jones, and Jonestown on May 14, 1978.
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Laura Johnston Kohl
INTRODUCTION TO LAURA JOHNSTON KOHL
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Laura Johnston Kohl was a teen activist working to integrate public facilities in the Washington, D.C., area. She actively fought for civil rights and free speech, and against the Vietnam War throughout the 1960s.
She was devastated by the assassinations of so many courageous leaders while in high school and college and tried to make the world around her more humane. After trying to effect change single-handedly, she found she needed more hands. She joined Peoples Temple in 1970, living and working in the progressive religious movement in both California and Guyana.
A fluke saved her from the mass murders and suicides on November 18, 1978, when 913 of her beloved friends died in Jonestown.
Soon after this, -
Sam Brower
Brower is known as the man who cracked open the secretive world of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). His work led to the arrest and conviction of prophet Warren Jeffs, who is currently serving a life sentence plus 20 years in a Texas prison for child sexual assault.
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Brower details the investigation in his new book, Prophet's Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints. -
Brent W. Jeffs
Brent W. Jeffs is an author, advocate, and member of the influential Jeffs family in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church).
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Jeffs wrote the memoir Lost Boy along with author Maia Szalavitz, which was released on May 19, 2009. The book is a depiction of life within the FLDS Church and his ostracism from the organization at a young age. The title of the book comes from the term "the lost boys", which refers to the many young men expelled from the FLDS Church. Jeffs is grandson to FLDS prophet Rulon Jeffs, nephew to FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs, and his mother is the daughter of another non-FLDS prophet as well. -
Sarah Berman
Sarah Berman is a journalist and the author of Don’t Call It a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM.
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Jeff Guinn
Jeff Guinn is a former journalist who has won national, regional and state awards for investigative reporting, feature writing, and literary criticism.
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Guinn is also the bestselling author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including, but not limited to: Go Down Together: The True Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde (which was a finalist for an Edgar Award in 2010); The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral - and How It Changed the West; Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson; and The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple.
Jeff Guinn is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. He appears as an expert guest in documentaries and on television programs on -
Rick Alan Ross
Rick Alan Ross is the founder and Executive Director of The Cult Education Institute. He is an internationally known expert regarding destructive cults, controversial groups and movements and author of the book Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out. Since 1982 he has been studying, researching, and responding to the problems often posed by controversial authoritarian groups and movements.
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Rebecca Musser
Rebecca Musser is a highly sought-after motivational speaker and agent for social revolution. She empowers women around the world to escape from bondage in all its forms, because as she has said, “I was once owned, too.”
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Born into the FLDS, an extreme, isolated, polygamist sect of the Mormon faith, as a teenager she was forced in marriage to the 85-year-old prophet; destined to be his 19th wife of sixty-five. After enduring years of violation, upon her husband’s death she escaped from his son, Warren Jeffs, when he tried to force her to remarry. On behalf of her little sisters and other voiceless young girls trapped within that culture, Rebecca testified over 20 times against cult leaders to bring evidence to light, and freedom to her peopl -
Alan Alda
Full name: Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo
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Son of actor Robert Alda
Husband of children's book author Arlene Alda
Alan Alda is an American actor, director, screenwriter, comedian and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he played Hawkeye Pierce in the war television series M*A*S*H. -
Julia Scheeres
I was born in Lafayette, Indiana and now live in the Bay Area. I'm the author of the memoir "Jesus Land," which was a New York Times and London Times bestseller and of the award-winning "A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown," which is being developed into a feature film. I teach memoir and creative nonfiction, online and in San Francisco, and work with private clients on book projects. For more information, please see: www.juliascheeres.com
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Vincent Bugliosi
American attorney and author, best known for prosecuting Charles Manson and his followers for the murder of Sharon Tate and others.
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In his books he claimed that O.J Simpson and Lee Harvey Oswald were guilty of the crimes they were accused of.
In his latest book he states that George W. Bush should be prosecuted for murder.
Bugliosi lived in Pasadena, CA. -
Casey Sherman
Casey Sherman is a New York Times Bestselling Author of 13 books including The Finest Hours (now a major motion picture starring Casey Affleck & Chris Pine), Boston Strong (the basis for the film Patriots Day starring Mark Wahlberg), Animal & Hunting Whitey.
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Sherman is also the author of 12, Search for the Strangler, Animal, Bad Blood, Black Irish, Black Dragon, Above & Beyond and The Ice Bucket Challenge.
Sherman is a contributing writer for TIME, Esquire, Washington Post, Boston Herald and Boston Magazine and has appeared as a guest an analyst on more than 100 television news programs.
Sherman is a graduate of Barnstable High School (Cape Cod), Fryeburg Academy (Fryeburg, Me.) and Boston University. -
Alan Alda
Full name: Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo
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Son of actor Robert Alda
Husband of children's book author Arlene Alda
Alan Alda is an American actor, director, screenwriter, comedian and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he played Hawkeye Pierce in the war television series M*A*S*H. -
Candace Fleming
I have always been a storyteller. Even before I could write my name, I could tell a good tale. And I told them all the time. As a preschooler, I told my neighbors all about my three-legged cat named Spot. In kindergarten, I told my classmates about the ghost that lived in my attic. And in first grade I told my teacher, Miss Harbart, all about my family's trip to Paris, France.
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I told such a good story that people always thought I was telling the truth. But I wasn't. I didn't have a three-legged cat or a ghost in my attic, and I'd certainly never been to Paris, France. I simply enjoyed telling a good story... and seeing my listener's reaction.
Sure, some people might have said I was a seven-year old fibber. But not my parents. Instead of calli -
Jeff Guinn
Jeff Guinn is a former journalist who has won national, regional and state awards for investigative reporting, feature writing, and literary criticism.
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Guinn is also the bestselling author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including, but not limited to: Go Down Together: The True Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde (which was a finalist for an Edgar Award in 2010); The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral - and How It Changed the West; Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson; and The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple.
Jeff Guinn is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, and the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. He appears as an expert guest in documentaries and on television programs on -
Howard Dully
Dully was born on November 30, 1948, in Oakland, California, the eldest son of Rodney and June Louise Pierce Dully. Following the death of his mother from cancer in 1954, Dully's father married single mother Shirley Lucille Hardin in 1955.
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Neurologist Walter Freeman had diagnosed Dully as suffering from childhood schizophrenia since age 4, although numerous other medical and psychiatric professionals who had seen Dully did not detect a psychiatric disorder. In 1960, at 12 years of age, Dully was submitted by his father and stepmother for a trans-orbital lobotomy, performed by Freeman. During the procedure, a long, sharp instrument called a leucotome was inserted through each of Dully's eye sockets 7 cm (2.75 inches) into his brain.
Dully took -
David Talbot
David Talbot is an American progressive journalist, author and media executive. He is the founder, former CEO and editor-in-chief, an early web magazine, Salon. Talbot founded Salon in 1995. The magazine gained a large following and broke several major national stories. It was described by Entertainment Weekly as one of the Net's "few genuine must-reads".
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Since leaving Salon, Talbot has researched and written on the Kennedy assassination and other areas of what he calls "hidden history." Talbot has worked as a senior editor for Mother Jones magazine and a features editor for The San Francisco Examiner, and has written for Time magazine, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and other publications.
Talbot was born and raised in Los Angeles, Californi -
Carolyn Jessop
Carolyn Jessop is a former Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints member who wrote Escape, an autobiographical account of her upbringing in the polygamist sect and later flight from that community.
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She is the cousin, by marriage, of Flora Jessop, another former FLDS member and advocate for abused children.
Carolyn Jessop now lives in the Salt Lake City area with her children.
As of July 2010, Carolyn is engaged to Brian Moroney, who asked her to be his wife in front of her children who are very excited.
After accepting Brian's proposal Carolyn quoted on her Facebook page "Choice is a beautiful thing!" -
Elissa Wall
Elissa Wall detailing her childhood in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and subsequent later life outside of the church. It was first published by William Morrow and Company in 2008.
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Wall was born into a polygamous family in Salt Lake City and grew up attending the FLDS-run Alta Academy. She describes her living situation as tense; familial relations were further complicated when her mother was reassigned to marry another man in Hildale, Utah.
FLDS leaders orchestrated a marriage between Wall, then 14, and her 19-year-old cousin, Allen Steed, an arrangement she claims to have vehemently opposed. During their four-year marriage, Steed allegedly abused her sexually and psychologically, and Wall eventually b -
Flora Jessop
Flora Jessop was born and raised in Colorado City, Arizona. She was raised in a polygamous family, with two mothers and twenty-seven siblings, all members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS).
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When she was sixteen years old, after years of abuse, including being impregnated by her own father and being forced to marry her first cousin, Phillip Jessop, she fled her family and faith. After many years as a vagabond in Middle and Southwest America, Jessop finally sought legal justice, and was awarded $10,000 in a lawsuit against the State Of Arizona for failing to protect her from the abuse she suffered.
Jessop finally settled in Galena, Kansas where she soon met a man named Tim and created a family unit with h -
Brent W. Jeffs
Brent W. Jeffs is an author, advocate, and member of the influential Jeffs family in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church).
Buy books on Amazon
Jeffs wrote the memoir Lost Boy along with author Maia Szalavitz, which was released on May 19, 2009. The book is a depiction of life within the FLDS Church and his ostracism from the organization at a young age. The title of the book comes from the term "the lost boys", which refers to the many young men expelled from the FLDS Church. Jeffs is grandson to FLDS prophet Rulon Jeffs, nephew to FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs, and his mother is the daughter of another non-FLDS prophet as well. -
Sam Brower
Brower is known as the man who cracked open the secretive world of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). His work led to the arrest and conviction of prophet Warren Jeffs, who is currently serving a life sentence plus 20 years in a Texas prison for child sexual assault.
Buy books on Amazon
Brower details the investigation in his new book, Prophet's Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints. -
Jenna Miscavige Hill
Jenna is the niece of David Miscavige, current leader of Scientology. She grew up as a member of the Sea Organization, and was disconnected from her parents at a young age. She left in 2005, and is now happily married, living a fulfilling life outside the church. Jenna has been an active opponent of Scientology abuses, and hopes that her work can help educate others about the dangers of Scientology and the Sea Org. Her grandfather is author Ron Miscavige.
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Rebecca Musser
Rebecca Musser is a highly sought-after motivational speaker and agent for social revolution. She empowers women around the world to escape from bondage in all its forms, because as she has said, “I was once owned, too.”
Buy books on Amazon
Born into the FLDS, an extreme, isolated, polygamist sect of the Mormon faith, as a teenager she was forced in marriage to the 85-year-old prophet; destined to be his 19th wife of sixty-five. After enduring years of violation, upon her husband’s death she escaped from his son, Warren Jeffs, when he tried to force her to remarry. On behalf of her little sisters and other voiceless young girls trapped within that culture, Rebecca testified over 20 times against cult leaders to bring evidence to light, and freedom to her peopl -
Mitch Weiss
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
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Mitch Weiss is a New York Times best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist for The Associated Press covering subjects ranging from the Vietnam War to corrupt real estate appraisers to the British Petroleum oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. He is the coauthor of The Yankee Comandante: The Untold Story of Courage, Passion and One American’s Fight to Liberate Cuba, Hunting Ché: How a U.S. Special Forces Team Helped Capture the World’s Most Famous Revolutionary, No Way Out: A Story of Valor in the Mountains of Afghanistan, Tiger Force: A True Story of Men and War, Countdown Bin Laden. The Untold Story of the 247-Day Hunt to -
Sarah Edmondson
Sarah Edmondson is a Canadian actress and playwright who has starred in the CBS series Salvation and more than twelve films for the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime. She is also a well-established voice-over artist for popular series such as Transformers: Cybertron and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. She is featured in the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM and The Vow, the upcoming HBO documentary series on NXIVM.
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Emily G. Thompson
Emily G. Thompson is an author and freelance writer based in Northern Ireland.
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Her first book, Unsolved Child Murders, was published by McFarland in 2017, followed by three more books published by Dorling Kindersley: Unsolved Murders: True Crime Cases Uncovered, in 2019, Cults Uncovered: True Stories of Mind Control and Murder, in 2020, and Mysteries Uncovered: True Stories of the Paranormal and Unexplained, in 2020.
Thompson is also the founder of the true crime website and award-winning podcast, Morbidology, which won the "Best International" podcast at the iHeartRadio Podcast Awards in January 2022. The weekly true crime show takes a look at cases from all across the world, and highlights systemic failures in various systems.
In addition to -
Sarah Berman
Sarah Berman is a journalist and the author of Don’t Call It a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM.
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Sarito Carroll
In 1978, nine-year-old Sarito traveled to India with her mother for what was meant to be a summer adventure—only to be swept into the infamous Osho Rajneesh movement, where she would spend seven years of her childhood deep inside the cult’s inner circle.
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Her debut memoir, In the Shadow of Enlightenment, exposes the dark truths hidden beneath the façade of free love and spiritual awakening. What the world saw as liberation, Sarito experienced as neglect, sexual misconduct, and indoctrination. With unflinching honesty, she traces her journey to reconcile a past shaped by both trauma and a fierce longing to belong—navigating attachment, rage, and the complex bonds of a cultic childhood.
Drawing from her rare perspective as someone raised inside -
Sarah Edmondson
Sarah Edmondson is a Canadian actress and playwright who has starred in the CBS series Salvation and more than twelve films for the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime. She is also a well-established voice-over artist for popular series such as Transformers: Cybertron and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. She is featured in the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM and The Vow, the upcoming HBO documentary series on NXIVM.
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Susan Wicklund
Susan Wicklund has worked in the field of women's reproductive health for more than twenty years. For much of that time she has been on the front lines of the abortion war, both as a doctor and as a spokeswoman for women's rights. She has been interviewed by numerous leading media outlets, including 60 Minutes and "Fresh Air."
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