Original subtitles

7-Adam-15, we're code 6 at the 911 call location.

Any further contact from the distressed individual?

Negative.

Do you want me to start additional units?

No. Give us a minute to scope it out first.

- You ready? - Do I have a choice?

That's the spirit.

We've received a distress call from this location.

We are making entry.

Ooh.

Do you feel that?

Feel what?

Something evil's in here.

Well, sure smells like it.

I can't die.

Won't let me die.

Police. Show yourself.

I can't die. It's inside of me.

- It won't let me die. - Don't touch that, all right?

Just... call this in. Call it in.

I need an ra to my location for a stabbing victim.

So I usually sit right next to camera

to keep the eyeline tight.

Then I'll just sit on the other side.

No, because then you'll split his look.

- I don't think it matters. - Hey. Hi.

Thanks... thanks again for sitting down with me.

- Us. - What? Right, us.

Why are you filming?

I just wanted to document the new partnership.

Abigail was very excited.

- It's not a partnership. - It's totally a partnership.

- The judge was very clear. - The judge?

My name is Abigail Tierney.

I'm currently trapped inside a secret lab

at west view psychiatric.

All attempts at escape have proven fruitless.

I may have inadvertently used some of Abigail's footage

in my last documentary without gaining the proper permissions.

Translation, he stole my intellectual property,

I sued, and the judge gave him a choice...

pay me 200 thou in damages or give me equal partnership

in his next project.

He never said equal, but you know what?

Never mind.

Let's focus on the story that we're here to tell.

Have a seat.

Perhaps the most shocking case of murder

and mayhem we've ever seen.

Would you say that's a fair assessment?

No, no, stay... stay back. Stay back. Stay back.

- You don't understand. - Ok, relax.

Ok, we're trying to help you. Who stabbed you?

I stabbed myself.

It's inside of me. I've tried everything else.

I can't kill it.

I can't die. See?

No, don't pull that... don't pull it out!

God.

He died instantly.

I mean, the wound was fatal.

You can't stab yourself in the heart and survive.

But the way the knife was lodged, he wasn't bleeding.

Once he pulled it out...

- it was blood fountain city. - Not exactly, but...

as shocking as that was, it was far from

the most shocking thing you found.

We should get him to say that

to set up the opening credits.

That's not... we... we don't put words

in people's mouths. It's a documentary.

Yeah, it was, straight-up crazy.

- You don't think... - there's a body in there.

May have finally found it.

Please don't kill us.

We will join your cult.

God.

You arrived on scene as the sergeant's supervisor?

Yes.

I got there before the ambulance,

not that there was any aid they could have rendered.

Is there a reason you didn't want us

to interview you with Tim?

What?

No. We're just... just shaking it up.

Let's... let's... let's stay focused.

Were you the first to recognize the victim?

Sort of.

I thought I knew his face, but it wasn't until

we ran his prints that we got a name.

Rich rowley was retired LAPD.

He had been with the department for 30 years

and was a little bit of a legend,

mostly because he made a series of training videos

from the mid-'90s till his retirement in 2015,

which by modern standards, are a little cringe.

Hey, everybody. Rich rowley here

with another installment of...

Now, today, we're gonna be talking about

proper cuffing technique.

Excuse me, officer?

I hurt my shoulder at the gym.

Would you mind cuffing me in front?

Pretty lady like you,

what's the worst that could happen?

- Thank you. - You're welcome.

Rich was a trip.

The life of the party, at least early in his career.

Then as the years went on, he became a little, crazy.

Crazy how?

He was deep into conspiracy theories.

He had a real thing for cults and cabals.

To be fair, Los Angeles does have a pretty dark history.

But rich took it to the next level,

and his training videos got more

and more intense because of it.

We finally got around to updating the videos

this last year, but that caused quite a controversy

with some of the older officers.

They said we were being insensitive.

Why would updating training videos be insensitive?

Even three years on, a lot of his friends

were still mourning his death and saw the videos as a way

- to keep his memory alive. - I'm sorry.

I thought rich died six months ago.

- Yeah. - He did.

I'm talking about the first time.

Divers are searching for any signs of retired.

Los Angeles police officer Richard rowley

after a sailing trip gone wrong.

Coast guard responded to a distress call

this morning from rowley's wife,

who says the 55-year-old fell overboard

after the sailboat he was captaining

was struck by a rogue wave.

Any time someone disappears from a boating trip,

it automatically sets off alarm bells.

Why is that?

It's just an ideal place to cover up a crime.

Throw a body overboard, weigh it down,

the likelihood of us recovering it before

it becomes fish food is low.

And circumstances were suspicious.

By all accounts, rich was a skilled sailor,

it was a calm day, and the only witness to his demise

was Darla Phillips, his on again, off again

girlfriend, who he married five days prior.

So you suspected foul play?

Not necessarily, but we couldn't rule it out.

Why wasn't rich wearing a life vest?

He never did. He was a strong swimmer.

He must have hit his head when he fell.

Why didn't you jump in after him?

- I'm scared of dark water. - Dark water?

Water you can't see the bottom of.

Just blackness with god knows what lurking below.

You stand to inherit rich's entire police pension.

That's quite a bit of money.

How dare you?

I just watched the love of my life die in front of me.

We don't know that for sure yet.

They haven't found his body.

Unless you know more that you're not telling us.

Go to hell!

This interview is over.

Did it ever occur to you that rich might still be alive?

As we said, we couldn't rule anything out,

but there was no evidence that he'd faked his death.

Until he turned up dead again.

Needless to say, we had a few more questions for Darla.

Helping someone fake their death isn't a crime.

- I checked. - You're right,

but profiting off of that death,

collecting rich's pension and his life insurance,

that's fraud.

Not to mention the resources that were wasted

trying to recover his body.

You could be facing some serious charges.

So tell us.

Why did rich want to fake his death?

After rich retired, he kind of fell apart.

His drinking got worse, and his paranoia.

He was always a little intense,

but it started to get scary.

He covered all his windows with newspapers,

started writing down the license plates of passing cars.

What was he so afraid of?

He said there was this group, like,

a secret society of dangerous and powerful people.

He'd been on to them for years.

He said that they found out about him,

that he was in danger because of it.

It was too much for me, so I broke up with him.

And then a year later, he showed up on my doorstep

and asked me to help him fake his death

in return for his pension.

I needed the money.

So we got married, and we did the deed,

and I never saw him again.

So you have no idea why there was a coffin in his garage?

We'll probably hold this piece of the puzzle

until the end of the first act, you know,

hit the audience with a twist when

- it's dramatically expedient. - Yeah.

Seems manipulative.

All good storytelling is, so.

Just tell us about finding the coffin.

So once I arrived, and we secured the crime scene,

we cleared the rest of the house,

and then we moved on to the garage.

You don't think there's...

that there's a body in there? I absolutely do.

Ok, are we gonna open it? 'Cause I don't wanna open it.

What do you think?

I mean, it's clearly been dug up.

Given the state of the coffin, it's clearly been

underground for a few years.

If there is a body in there, it's likely long dead.

- Unless... - unless what?

Unless he put a fresh victim in an old coffin.

Ok, got it.

- Got it? - Yep.

God.

The body belonged to a 54-year-old truck driver

named Marcus Ford,

who was the victim of an unsolved homicide

back in 2020.

How was he killed?

He was stabbed in the heart.

Just like rich.

Wait, rich murdered Marcus Ford.

- Did I just solve the case? - No.

We were able to alibi rich out.

He was hospitalized with double pneumonia the day Marcus died.

Medical records say he was so weak that,

he could barely get out of bed.

Or that's what he wanted you to think.

Moving on.

Digging up a body's no easy task.

Why would rich go to all that trouble?

Initially, we thought it was simply

the demented act of a clearly disturbed mind,

and in some ways, it was.

But then we found the tattoo.

At first, it was a little bit difficult

to make out exactly what it was.

A half a decade of decomp does a number on the skin.

But when we look back at the case file,

there was a photo of it taken during the original autopsy.

That's actually kind of sick.

I wonder if there's a way to track down the artist.

I've been meaning to start the sleeve

on my other arm, like a... to my collaborator's point,

lots of people have tattoos.

What was it about this one that jumped out at you?

Well, something about it was familiar to both of us,

but we couldn't place it.

So we started asking around, and the answer couldn't come

from a more unlikely place.

I watched the rich rowley training videos

more than any person alive,

so I recognized the symbol immediately.

Sometimes, citizens panic when

they can't get in touch with their friends or loved ones.

That is why we always advise the public

to wait 24 hours before reporting someone missing.

While most missing person reports stem

from a lapse in communication,

every once in a while, you'll encounter

a true, workable case.

Officer, help. My sister is missing.

When's the last time you saw her?

Last night at the bar.

Her boyfriend said she never made it home.

You always wanna take a report like this one seriously.

So rich hid the same symbol in his training videos

that was tattooed on the body of a murder victim.

What did you think that meant?

I don't know.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but smitty was right.

In lesson 187, the tattoo symbol

was hidden in the background, although the instructions

to wait 24 hours before reporting a missing person

are wildly outdated.

Anyways, it got me thinking.

What if rich put messages in other videos?

What kind of messages?

I'm not totally sure yet.

I binged every single rich training video

I could get my hands on.

Yeah, it's been a fun few nights.

And I did find a few other possible leads,

but there's a problem.

The department's archive is incomplete,

and without all of the videos,

I can't be sure that I'm not missing

a vital piece of information.

So what happened to the missing videos?

So when the training topics and the videos

become outdated because of new laws or protocols,

the department has to make new ones,

and obsolete videos are supposed to be digitized

and archived for historical record.

But rich's were just gone.

Gone as in destroyed?

- Like a cover-up? - No one's saying that.

Most likely, it was a human error.

You know, someone got lazy, didn't archive them.

I tried reaching out to the production company

that made the videos to see if they had any copies left.

Bad news is they went out of business a few years back

and auctioned off all their equipment.

What's the good news?

Well, I managed to track down the auction logs,

and I actually know the person who purchased

the studio's old hard drives.

Careful, I'm very ticklish, like the pills bury doughboy.

Same.

I hear it's a sign of intelligence.

- Is that a fact? - Yep.

Then I am smart as the dickens.

So you purchased hard drives from speak now studios?

Yeah. Dropout was still in its infancy.

I was building the company from the ground up.

We had to be smart about how we were spending our money.

We bought a huge amount of equipment secondhand...

hard drives, cameras, wigs.

Wait, you bought second-hand wigs?

Give them a little shake before we put them on.

That's awesome.

Do you still have that wig connect?

'Cause I'd love a referral. My guy is... back on track.

The hard drives you bought contain police training videos.

Did you happen to watch any of them?

Of course. Rich rowley, right?

We were obsessed with those videos.

We probably watched them, like, a dozen times.

I'm rich rowley, and this is "survive the streets."

That's great.

Vic can do the best impression.

Do you think you'd be able to make copies for us?

I totally would, but I can't because

we wiped all of those hard drives

to use as servers months ago.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

You'll still feature this interview, right?

- Yeah. - Yeah, probably not.

Wait, you said you and the dropout crew

watched the video, like, dozens of times, right?

Yes, sometimes on an edible, mostly sober.

I have an idea.

Ok, so then he'd be like, don't forget to check

the closet or you'll die. So I don't know.

I think it's a little bit more like,

like, if you forget to check the closet,

Freddy, Jason, and Chucky will rip off your scrote!

Ok, I think there's less foot stuff.

I feel like he's like...

and then your crazy me thy ex-girlfriend

who's been hiding in the hallway closet

will chainsaw your face when you get home

because you forgot to clear the room!

- Clear the room! - Clear the room!

Check the room.

I think he was so close to pulling out his gun...

- what are you guys doing? - That's a great question.

They're reenacting the police training videos

since you guys wiped them off your hard drive.

The rich rowley ones.

- Those are so funny. - Right.

I actually stole one of the hard drives

so I could watch it when I'm in the tub.

You talking about your tub again?

- Say what? - A little self-care.

You know, trying to relax a little more.

- It's not working. - Can we have it?

If you want to borrow it, I could, you know.

No, I think this is actually working great.

- I mean, you could. Ok. - Keep this up.

- Riffing. - Clearing the room.

Help us.

Ok, I finally finished watching

all of the rich training videos, and there is a lot.

Take lesson 277...

my azaleas!

A cold case where victim azalea Robinson was found

stabbed near a ski resort.

- You're kidding. - No.

And in lesson 290, rich is holding a folder

with a post-it note on the back with a brown star

- drawn on it. - I'm lost.

Right, so I looked up the cold cases

to see if there were any victims with names

like star or Stella, and there was one hit,

Stella brown, also found stabbed in the chest.

In all, Lucy found clues pointing

to seven different cold cases.

But why was rich hiding the names of murder victims

in police training videos?

Based on what we could piece together,

he believed he had stumbled upon a conspiracy...

a series of connected murders committed by person

or persons unknown.

If that were the case, why not just report

his suspicion? He was a cop for 30 years.

Well, rich had a bit of a reputation

within the department for, shall we say, magical thinking.

So unfortunately, his theory was dismissed out of hand.

But why did he think the murders were connected?

Well, for starters, they were all stabbed

in the chest, but more importantly,

each victim was found with a penny

either in or on their person.

What do you mean "in"?

One had a penny in her stomach.

Another had one shoved up his nose.

Stella brown lucked out.

Hers was just clasped in her hand.

And when we re-examined Marcus Ford's corpse,

the me found one inserted into the heel of his left foot.

Why?

Did we mention that they were all minted in 1930?

Ok. Well, I just got goosebumps.

Rich's autopsy also revealed that he had swallowed

close to 50 pennies before he died.

Gross.

So at this point, was your theory...

I actually have no idea what their theory would have been.

Yeah, well, I would tell you, but we were way off the Mark,

which we were about to discover

when we got access to his cloud account.

Ok.

I may have finally found it.

I am so close to getting some real answers.

See that?

Whoa.

Ha!

My god. No! No.

For a guy pretending to be dead,

breaking into a secure military facility

doesn't seem like the best idea.

Well, he wasn't just breaking into any military facility.

It was area 67.

What does that mean?

That's where the government keeps the aliens.

So rich broke into a secret government base

on the hunt for a massive conspiracy,

then stabbed himself in the chest?

I mean, at that point, it's obvious what happened.

- Is it? - Come on.

Remember what rich said right before he died?

I can't die.

It's inside of me.

It won't let me die.

Yeah, I'm not following.

Rich was exposed to an alien parasite.

It was inside him.

Were you familiar with area 67?

I'd heard of it. Yeah.

There's this am radio station I used to listen to

back in Foxburg.

Kept me awake when I was working late.

The host was obsessed with ufos.

- "Val's velvet bunker"? - That's the one.

He was a little bit out there, but always entertaining.

Area 51 is theater.

Do you believe?

Do you really believe the most secretive

military installation in the world would let itself

become a tourist attraction?

No, no, no, no.

Area 51 is the distraction.

Area 67 is the real deal.

You know why California has all those earthquakes?

It's not the San Andreas fault, my friends.

It's the Sonic resonance from area 67's

underground testing chambers.

Did you believe in his theories?

No, no.

Like I said, just entertainment.

Let's hear from a caller.

Hi, name's John.

Longtime listener, fourth-time caller.

Hey, John from Foxburg. Welcome back.

What have you got for us tonight?

I swear to god I just saw a ufo.

John is such a common name.

I'm open to the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

- You are? - Yeah.

I mean, it's a big universe.

- Anything could be out there. - I don't know.

People who claim to have seen aliens tend to be a little off.

You were friends with a corpse, right?

Well, yeah, we were more than friends,

but fair enough. Ok.

Legally, is it necrophilia

if she only did over the clothes stuff?

- That's a great question. - I definitely believe.

In fact, I've been abducted by aliens.

- Really? - Multiple times.

Apparently, I'm a fascinating subject.

I remember the last time smitty was "abducted."

Turns out he partied too hard in Vegas

and woke up in Wisconsin.

Missing time,

one of the hallmarks of alien abductions.

- And binge drinking. - Point is,

the government had little gray men

in their secret labs for decades.

What are they doing with them?

They're implanting the aliens in unsuspecting hosts

and taking over their bodies.

You just never know who might be one of them.

Some people in the station believed rich stabbed himself

to kill an alien parasite, but I wouldn't say

that was a dominant theory.

It wasn't long before we figured out

rich believed something darker,

and it was connected to the seven murders.

Then why did rich break into the army base?

Yes, I remember the incident.

Rich rowley cut through a fence.

He trespassed on government property.

He was promptly apprehended and sent on his way.

Do you have any idea what rich was looking for?

As it turns out, he was looking for me.

But not because of any alleged aliens.

So why did he come?

This part is a... is a little bit embarrassing...

Before I found my calling in the military,

I thought that I wanted to be an actor,

and I was in a few dtv movies.

What's dtv?

You're so young.

Direct to video.

They made all these super cheap movies

back in the '80s and '90s.

You make them as cheaply as possible

and then hope that someone was drawn in enough

by the cover art to rent them.

- A guy can't have a side gig? - Totally.

How did you get into acting?

Some director scouted me when I pulled him over.

He said I had a bitchin' bod.

Well, he wasn't wrong.

But I gave it up 'cause the people of this city

needed a savior.

Yeah, you are the model of public service.

Right.

Anyway, rich became interested in this terrible

b movie that I was in. I played a monk.

It was called "300 days of hell."

Terrible b movie, that's what he called it?

"300 days of hell" is the scariest film of the 1990s.

Really?

"The ring", "scream," "Blair witch project"?

Which one of us executive produced a horror movie?

Trust me, "thdoh"

is true nightmare fuel.

It's not that scary.

She made me watch it at the beginning of our relationship.

When he was still trying to impress me.

You wanna watch it again tonight?

I would. Totally.

I do have plans, though.

Yeah I'm not watching that crap,

even if it is for a case.

I see enough horror on the job.

That being said, "300 days of hell"

was our first real window into the rabbit hole

that rich had gone down.

A rabbit hole filled with demons... or rather, a demon.

So rich believed a demon had killed all those people?

No, the killers were definitely human.

- Killers, plural? - Yeah.

There was different trace DNA on all the bodies,

all from different subjects, and none of them

- were in the system. - Meaning?

The murders were committed by a group of people

with shared beliefs.

A murder cult?

The cult believed a demon named malaphus

had been possessing people all across the city,

jumping from host to host, and it was up to them to stop it.

The legend of malaphus is centuries old.

The first mention we see of him is 1433's

"lesser grimoire of Solomon"

by Slovenian inquisitor terentius bruma,

a reference text of demons and their attributes.

- Gnarly. - Right?

He's also known as the deceiver, the infestor,

and demon of 300 days. Why?

Once summoned to earth, malaphus won't rest

until he finds a human host.

After possession begins, he incubates 300 days.

What happens after 300 days?

He reaches full strength,

and his power becomes uncontainable.

If malaphus was summoned to earth,

how would one stop him?

Bruma suggests killing the host might slow malaphus down,

forcing him to regenerate before he can find a new host,

a process that also can be slowed

by the use of copper.

- It was the pennies. - The pennies.

It all came back to the pennies.

Before 1984, U.S. pennies were 95% copper.

So the copper in the pennies was meant to bind the demon,

but what about the 1930 part?

Are you familiar with numerology?

Some ancient peoples... and Taylor swift...

believed there was a mystical connection

between letters and numbers.

Using the chaldean method, the name malaphus

becomes a digit, 1930.

- So you're saying... - we had a theory.

Whoever killed those people believed the victims

were possessed by malaphus.

They had to reach malaphus's host before

he reached his true form.

A 1930 penny was the perfect tool.

Yeah, rich's talk of, "it's inside me",

"it won't let me die," he thought he was infested

by this demon, too, and that's why he killed himself.

Wait.

I thought rich didn't believe in malaphus.

Isn't that why he was trying to stop the cult?

Well, yes, but, I mean, years of obsession and paranoia

can do a number on a person's psyche.

I mean, it seems as though, in the end,

rich could no longer distinguish fantasy from reality.

And you got this theory from rich's files?

Well, I mean, we actually got it from Lopez.

And they say watching old horror movies

isn't a good use of time.

I never said that.

Are we safe, brother?

Is malaphus banished?

His sigil is drawn.

The rite is spoken.

We have sealed his last human vessel with copper.

Heaven forgive us.

Indeed.

For hell will not.

Midnight, the 300th day.

Our task was done none too soon.

Yeah, that was me.

- Do you guys want a glass? - No, I'm good.

You got anything stronger?

Fine. I'll just take a glass.

Ok, I'll, just... I'll have nothing, actually.

No fun for me.

Yeah, that was my first big movie role.

Well, my only one, really.

Rich was so excited when I told him I booked it.

He helped me run lines.

Did rich buy in to the malaphus mythology?

No.

Weirdly, given all the conspiracies that rich

believed in, he was a total atheist.

But I wouldn't have blamed him after everything

that happened on that shoot.

Like what?

Before production wrapped,

the dp was paralyzed driving to set.

A stunt person had his leg amputated.

There were divorces, bankruptcies.

Careers ended.

One of the actors even died in his hotel room.

People say the production was cursed.

What about you? What do you believe?

I believe the real curse was the director.

He was a reckless maniac that didn't know how to run a set.

Cut. Cut!

Arthur! Arthur!

Your strangulation, it has to be real.

I wanna feel the life draining from him.

You, you... you cannot move from your position,

not even an inch.

Guys, this ritual is extremely specific.

Ok? Let's go again.

Ok, I thought I was choking you pretty well.

I'm sorry.

Ok, I'm gonna choke you a little harder.

Ready?

Douglas was real touchy about the religious stuff.

I guess he had grown up in some sort of commune,

and this was all based on stories he was told growing up.

Ok, but what I heard is that they accidentally

summoned malaphus for real.

The director found some ancient Tome

and inserted the incantation and rituals verbatim.

Ooh, I love that.

And that's what got me thinking

about the penny killings.

We found the first victim just a little under 300 days

after the summoning ritual was filmed.

We knew rich was aware of the malaphus legends.

It was only natural to link them.

So rich thought the penny victims were killed by people

trying to stop malaphus.

Was he able to identify any of these killers?

We know he tried.

- Hi. - Hey. How are you?

- Jared. - Hello. Wow.

It's a... it's a pleasure to meet you, gentlemen.

Pleasure to meet you too.

Why don't you tell us about yourselves?

Yeah, we, co-starred on a TV show together

for 15 seasons called "supernatural."

Yeah, we played Sam and Dean Winchester,

brothers that, you know, tracked and fought

supernatural beings.

- Like "k-pop demon hunters." - No.

No, not like that.

I mean, kind of like that.

- No. - Yeah.

Ok, can you tell us about your encounter

- with rich rowley? - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rich rowley.

He came to a fan event we did last year at monster con.

Yeah, you know, most people show up,

and they just want an autograph or a photo.

But rich was a bit of a different beast altogether.

Yeah, yeah, he was... he was super

fixated on this one particular episode

- where we fought a demon. - Malaphus.

Yeah, that one.

Anyway he seemed to think we, like, knew more

about it than we were saying.

More about what?

Demon hunting.

He kept, like, asking these super pointed questions,

like... like he was, I don't know,

testing us or something.

- Did you have an answer? - No.

No, I mean, we didn't...

we didn't come up with these stories.

You know, we just did what the writers wrote.

It's called acting.

There's no actual demon hunters in real life.

Exactly.

That's not exactly true.

There is at least one.

And it actually connected to the movie.

We heard the director brought a priest named

father Simon McCabe to bless the set

every day before filming.

Well, it was either that or the whole crew

was going to walk.

Does that name mean anything to you?

About 15 years ago.

Lopez and I had just finished our rookie years.

We responded to a call at a house.

Priest doing an exorcism with a 16-year-old girl.

Had been going on for three days.

Father, no.

Police!

Help her!

Please!

Get away from her!

Father, forgive me.

Did you feel like you'd seen the devil?

The only thing in that room that belonged in hell

- was father Simon. - He kept saying he had to.

The whole way to the station, "I'm sorry, I had to.

I'm sorry, I had to."

Because he believed she was possessed?

She had a brain tumor.

That's what they found after the autopsy.

She needed a doctor, not an exorcism.

And he wasn't a man of god. He was a killer.

The courts agreed.

So father Simon was convicted of first-degree murder.

When we processed him, we found a penny in his pocket.

Nothing else, just a penny.

It didn't mean anything at the time,

but after rich connected those seven murders,

it seemed likely he was involved.

Involved like, he killed them?

No, Simon was already in prison when five

of the murders took place, and his DNA didn't match

any that was found on the corpses.

But he could have been part of whatever group

rich was so afraid of.

Which means he knew more than he had told us.

So we had to go back.

Officers, I remember you.

You... you were the ones who tried to stop the ritual.

Just wish we would have gotten here sooner.

Becca Scott might still be alive.

She was long gone before you arrived.

- The demon saw to that. - Malaphus?

Shh.

Do not say its name in my presence.

What, are you afraid we might accidentally summon it?

You may scorn me and my beliefs,

but I have fought this evil.

I know enough to fear its power.

What's more evil than murdering a child?

I took no pleasure in the act.

I'm grateful I had the courage to do what was necessary.

Courage?

Tell us about the penny that was in your pocket.

In the movie "300 days of hell",

malaphus is sealed inside his host with copper

before he can be killed... banished, not killed.

What's the difference?

The demon is a parasite.

It needs a host.

Once you kill the body that inhabits it,

it'll find a new one.

Becca Scott was just a single battle in a larger war.

If you're in here, who's doing the fighting now?

The knights of avila.

Los Angeles has a long history

of spiritualism, esoteric religions

that go back over 100 years.

So think aleister crowley, Jack Parsons,

- I. Ron Hubbard. - He freaking loves this stuff.

I do.

Anyway, a lot of these groups started out

as fraternal orders, similar to the freemasons,

where people would gather and... and... share...

- men. - Well, yeah.

Yes, and... and some women.

And they would share new ideas, explore philosophies.

They also liked partying, doing drugs,

and performing weird sex rituals.

Sign me up.

For the intellectual exchanging of ideas, obviously.

So the knights of avila is one of these groups?

It was.

Like a lot of the similar organizations at the time,

it fell apart when the founder died.

It hasn't been active in... 60 years?

Then what was father Simon talking about?

Based on Tim and Lopez's conversation with father Simon,

we began to believe that the group,

or at least the name,

had been revived sometime in the late '90s

to the early 2000s and re-branded

as some kind of demon hunting cult.

So rich was actually right.

There was a murderous cabal after him.

It seemed that way, and we were getting close

to discovering who their ringleader was.

I found him.

- Found who? - Doug Roberts.

I wanna feel the life draining from him!

You mean the director of the sad little demon porn?

Where?

I was going through some old industry trades

from around the time "thdoh" was slated to come out.

One of the articles mentioned that Roberts

was a client of Stewart wine cliff

at the golden talent agency.

The guy hasn't made a movie in 26 years.

I doubt they still rep him.

Not actively, no.

But I called their offices, and I bribed...

or like, I talked one of the assistants into giving me

the address where his residual checks are sent.

It's downtown. Let's go.

Hold on.

You just wanna go doorstep the guy?

If that means go knock on a door

while also filming, then yes.

Yeah, I'm not in the business of gotcha journalism.

What about the business of making that paper?

The guap?

Money, guy.

Come on, the doc business is over-saturated these days.

We need footage that p-o-ps,

and what pops more than blindsiding

a potential cult leader?

Come on.

What's the worst that could happen?

- This is it. - Ok.

Here. Here's your camera.

I don't operate.

Well.

Now, you do.

Let's go.

- What floor is it on? - Eight.

But there's an elevator. Don't worry.

- Are you sure it's that way? - Yep.

Nope.

You know, at the risk of being called a scaredy cat,

you do understand that this is inherently

neither a wise nor safe activity?

You're asking a woman if she understands

that it's inherently dangerous to go anywhere or do anything?

When you put it that way, I sound like an ass.

Yeah.

Maybe we should come back?

Hey. Hello.

Douglas Roberts, we're here to question you

about murders and demons.

That should get his attention.

I am just an intern.

So clearly we're not deceased, which means...

we saved you from certain death.

I'm not sure how certain it was, right?

It felt pretty certain to me.

Please don't kill us.

We will join your cult. Is there a membership fee

or a secret handshake?

- I love a secret handshake. - Ignore her.

She's not right in the head.

In fact, she has short-term memory issues.

So if you let her go now, she won't remember any of this.

Just shut up. No one's going anywhere.

I mean, technically, we're all going somewhere.

All right, let them go. Put your hands up.

Up against the Jeep, now. Let's go.

Hey.

Thanks for trying to save me, even though

I'm the one who put us in danger.

No problem.

I was about to do the same thing, but you just

beat me to it.

- I can be noble, too. - No doubt.

I get very claustrophobic.

Can I just point out how claustrophobic I get, please?

So when did you and Douglas meet?

In the movie.

He was, you know, so commanding and driven

and everything I wasn't.

When did he start talking about killing the demon?

It was, at least a year after that.

He would call me late at night

and talk about the demon and how scared

he was for the world,

and eventually it started to make sense.

And he told you that someone was possessed?

Correct. Her name was Cynthia.

She cried when I tied her up, and she kept saying

that she was not a demon.

She begged me to believe her, and...

at that point, he was very deep in my head.

And then tonight, you know, all the lies

he was spewing at the end,

it was like somebody turned on a light switch.

I could just see him for who he was.

So pathetic.

We'll need you to write up a detailed confession.

I would like to make a deal.

We have already located your co-conspirators.

You don't really have anything to offer.

You don't want to know what an alien spaceship looks like?

I am all that stands between the world and damnation.

So all of the people that you had targeted,

they had to die for the greater good?

Yes, and my heart breaks for each of them.

But I will not let innocents fall to perdition.

Ok, have you had your fill of bs?

God, yes.

Ok, me, too.

So, first victim, Cynthia green.

You dated for two years before she cheated on you.

Marcus Ford, he worked as a teamster on your movie,

then later sued you for nonpayment.

Pamela Jones wrote a scathing review of your movie.

Really? I... I had no idea.

All seven victims were people who wronged you in some way.

You don't even believe in the demon.

You just used it as a tool to get people with weak minds

to do your dirty work for you.

Exactly.

I was the director.

I think you'll find I never laid a finger

on any of the victims.

And I think you will find that man son died in prison.

All right.

Anything else?

No, I think we got everything.

Ok.

- That was a crazy one? - Tell me about it.

And look, thanks so much for all of your time,

and for saving our lives.

Anything for my favorite documentarian.

Actually, the only documentarian I know.

Not true.

- I'm a documentarian too. - Of course.

Yes... speaking of, how did this whole

working together thing go?

Is this the start of a beautiful friendship?

I don't know.

I mean, we have very different styles

and instincts and, well, basically everything,

but I'd be open to another collaboration.

It's just I...

I kind of signed an exclusive three-film deal with hulu?

What?

Yeah, I... I sent them a sizzle reel of this project,

just the me parts, and they freaked.

Said I'm gonna be "the new face of true crime."

- Their words. - Wow.

I mean, you'd probably be able to bring him along,

though, right?

Totally. Totally.

I gotta go, but thanks again. Hello.

No, I said Toronto and then cannes.

She'll probably call you.

No.

Damn it.