Original subtitles

♪

Ties to a cult may have led to a fatal shooting

in Monroe County.

A woman is now in custody for shooting her boyfriend

in the head.

I swear, if Steve never met that girl, man,

he'd still be alive.

And I remember just looking at her pictures,

and, and finding it very odd.

And I was like, "She looks like a witch."

Rogers told police she and Mineo were members of a cult

headed by a woman named Sherry Shriner.

I'm not saying you wanted to do it,

but it wasn't an accident. You did it on purpose.

She told them 24 times that this was an accident,

and they refused to believe it.

♪ [electronic]

♪ [electronic]

♪

[voice echoing]

[chains clanking]

Did you kill Stephen?

Do you have anything you want to say to us?

Did a cult have anything to do with this?

[voice of Sherry Shriner]

[clicking & phone ringing]

[Automated message] This is a call from Pennsylvania State

Correctional Institution.

[Barbara] Hello? [Producer] Hi, Barbara.

- Hi. - How are you doing?

Oh, pretty good.

Where are we speaking to you today?

[birds cawing]

♪

♪ [instrumental]

I gotta get somewhere here. Give me a beat.

Tell me what key you're going to be in.

My name is Joel, and I am the ex-husband of Barbara Rogers.

♪ [ukulele]

Barbara loved alternative music.

She was a big Smiths fan. She loved Oasis.

She really liked Billy Idol.

We had a lot in common with music.

So, we would listen to the same music together.

♪

I met Barbara, the first time...

we were in military vehicle training.

And one of my friends said, "You should talk to Barbara,

she's real cute." And you know,

and so, that's, that's when it started.

♪

[laughs]

You know, to some extent, you know, I love her still.

Not in the same way, but I love her because

she's the mother of my kids.

He's amazing.

I've had all these years to practice.

He just came out of the womb playing the guitar or something.

I was with Barbara probably three or four months

before she told me that she had a daughter.

♪

My father's name is George.

My mother met George in Job Corps,

got married and had me.

I'm not sure which came first.

They separated shortly after...

and, my mother joined the army.

She left me with her mother.

She was in the army, she met Joel, my stepdad.

We've got a lot of fun photos.

I think you have all the ones from us overseas.

A lot of cool stuff.

And, they fell in love and wanted to get married.

And, she said, "Surprise, I have a daughter."

And he said, "No, are you kidding?

We have to go get her."

I think this is when we went to pick you up, actually.

Yeah, I must have been, like,

so happy to see her. This is a cute one.

[Joel] Yeah, "Barbara, Barbara." [Alena] "Barbara!"

[Alena] When Joel and my mom got married,

it was really fun.

[Joel] It was just exciting at the time,

as most marriages are at first.

And, and, you know, it was like the honeymoon period.

I remember specifically...

one time, we were out to dinner.

I just looked at her, and I thought,

"Wow, I really love her.

You know, this is my wife. I'm happy."

- Oh, she's pregnant with... - Oh, yeah, Gabriel.

Gabriel. That was the day of the beach, too.

[laughs]

[Alena] She gave birth to Gabriel, my brother.

[Joel ] And things just started getting darker.

She seemed a little bit broken.

I could see there was a darker, sadder part of her.

She would hear things at night.

She was dealing with psychosis.

And so, she would call the, the chaplain on,

on post and say, "I need you to help me.

I think demons are trying to get me."

♪

Clearly, she had some serious depression.

Depression to the point where she wanted to commit suicide...

and she made that clear.

And she wasn't messing around,

she really wanted to die.

[crickets chirping]

One night, I was laying down on the couch, taking a nap.

And my, my older son, Gabriel, he said,

"Daddy, something's wrong with mommy,

she won't stop crying".

♪

And so, I went in to see what was wrong and she's like,

"It's over. I took a bunch of pills, it's over".

[sirens]

And I said, "I'm going to call the ambulance."

As I call the ambulance, she grabbed a bottle of bleach

and she started drinking it, a lot of it.

[thunder]

They sent her to a military hospital nearby.

And that's when she was put on medication.

Then after that, she was given a medical discharge.

[siren]

We tried to be normal after everything in the army,

as much as we could, and...

things got worse.

[birds chirping]

[Alena] "I am proud to be Barbara.

The abused little girl who turned into a powerful,

strong person who is against evil.

There is nothing else but good versus evil in this world.

I am a human angel who is good.

There are demons all around me."

I found this diary from her,

after she and Joel got divorced.

She was raised Christian.

But I think she always had this strange interest or

obsession or relationship with God and the devil.

She considered herself to be, like,

an ally of God, you know, some angel.

She says, "I'm a human angel" and

there's demons all around her.

And I think she just thinks that she's this

glorious person who's so close to God.

With Sherry Shriner, I think she was just interested in

someone who was close to God.

And that's really what intrigues her.

♪

[thunder]

[laughing]

♪

Sherry's the one that told Stephen to go to the Poconos.

She told him it would be safe from martial law,

and the Poconos would be safe from...

New World Order machinations and,

he could kind of establish his base of operations there.

♪

♪

Whoa, this is pretty cool.

Steve would love all this, man.

He was a diehard, you know, I would say like a patriot.

You know, like, the whole concept of prepping, survival,

the gear aspect, military surplus,

that's how I connected with him,

'cause I had the same mutual appreciation for, like,

military memorabilia. Since I've known Steve

he's always talked about being a prepper.

He always felt that when Armageddon came,

that he would go to Pennsylvania,

and that's how he would survive.

That's what Steve felt.

Steve had a couple knives like this.

A lot of survival knives. A lot of camping gear.

The weird thing about Steve is, like,

he doesn't come off creepy or illogical.

He doesn't.

But, then he would start talking about orgone,

and this Sherry Shriner and, like,

shapeshifters, and you've got to protect yourself,

get right with God. I'm like, "That's crazy".

You know, there was times I would

challenge him on his theories.

And, I could tell, like, he never really wanted to

remove himself from those belief systems.

I always felt like, he would sometimes pacify me,

be like, "Yeah, maybe." But I knew in the end,

like, he really believed these things,

you know, and nothing was going to change his mind.

♪

Steve's insanity is what brought Barbara into his life.

Honestly. I feel like crazy attracts crazy.

♪

His family life, his mother left him when he was, like,

fucking 10 years old, right?

I feel like Steve had to latch onto something.

He had to latch onto an idealism.

He believed this stuff. And he believed Sherry Shriner.

So, Stephen and Barbara came here to establish a new life.

And, according to Stephen, they were

looking for houses that were off the grid.

♪

If you look over the house, you'll see the,

the woods that he used to shoot into.

People just shoot guns here and nobody cares.

You know, nobody was surprised.

The neighbors weren't, like, "Is that gunfire?", you know.

The neighbors were like, "Ah, I guess that was gunfire."

Just like usual, you know.

♪

[door creaking]

[humming]

I've never heard of a lizard cult until

I met Steve and Barbara.

That was the first that I ever heard of anything like that.

My name is Kevin Wade.

I'm an acquaintance of Barbara Rogers and Steve Mineo.

They... next-door neighbors.

The white door next door, the smaller apartment,

that's where Steve and Barbara lived.

And as you can see, they come right out.

The woods is right here. They come out and relax.

It's nice and peaceful.

Nobody to bother you.

We have deer come through the yard just about every night.

A bear probably once a week, once every two weeks

it comes through.

[gun shot]

He would shoot guns. Maybe a...

maybe a little fireworks once in a while and...

just come out here and relax and commune with nature.

I got to meet them and talk to them a few times.

I thought Steve was the boss.

It seemed like he knew the answers,

and she was just, okay.

Barbara was very quiet, very,

to me, seemed, like, subservient,

like, like, you know, she was waiting for Steve

to initiate a conversation, then she would answer.

There was little hockey puck-looking things.

He would scatter them around,

I guess it was to, to ward off the evil spirits or,

or the aliens...

whatever was coming after him at that given time.

I make something called orgone.

I have a belief that it does certain things.

It's not harmful, it's not flammable,

it doesn't hurt anyone.

If you're human, it won't harm you.

This is what orgone is, it's like a paperweight.

It's not a bomb, it's not harmful.

[Charles] As you can tell, Steve's very crafty.

[Steve] There's nothing wrong [Charles] A lot of tools.

[Steve] Yeah. There's nothing wrong,

there's nothing harmful about this.

[static]

Incoming transmission. How ya doing?

My name's Steve, I am Barbara's husband.

You know, as soon as they moved in together,

Stephen was, I guess, common-law wife-ing her.

♪ [suspenseful]

♪

The homicide rate, I would say,

is no more than two or three in a year in our jurisdiction.

[Producer] Have you ever been on a homicide call?

I never have been on a homicide call.

I'm Officer Bohrman with the Pocono Mountain

Regional Police Department.

I'm assigned to the patrol division.

[Dispatcher] [indistinct speaking]

67 to 85.

I'm right down the road, I'm going to stop over there.

On May 30th 2017, I got dispatched

to make a phone call to Stephen Mineo,

in reference to harassment.

I spoke to him on the phone.

He told me that he received several messages on Facebook,

the nature of which were disturbing to him.

"When we get you, we are going to

feed your wife to the queen Sherry.

The Queen Schaz needs to drink your pure blood.

Don't you know who Sherry really is?

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Don't you know who Sherry really is?

Ha ha ha ha ha. See you soon."

♪

In addition, he said that the accounts had sent him

photographs of his residence,

which was the most concerning to him.

♪

To me, they looked like images from Google street view,

so I went onto the street view website and I,

I navigated Laurel Drive, where Stephen lived,

and I found that the photos were the same,

and that's what the origin of those photographs were.

♪

In Mineo's case, it seemed to me more like somebody was

playing a prank, somebody was trying to annoy him,

somebody was trying to harass him...

trying to scare him.

But I didn't think there was any realistic possibility

that somebody was trying to drink his blood.

♪

I advised him to contact me if he received

any additional messages...

which he never did.

♪

When they started receiving the death threats, like,

Stephen pretended he took it well, but he,

he didn't take it well at all.

[text chimes continue]

When Sherry tells him that "Dad" is

sending angels to protect him, I think that

starts to make Stephen feel a little bit better.

[text chime]

And, it's like a little reminder to him that

Sherry is from God, and as long as Sherry

puts in a good word with God, he'll be protected.

[text chimes]

They did get a lot of support.

People would come in and say, "Oh, you know,

we're praying for you, Stephen."

But what I don't think ever occurred to Stephen,

was that the threat was coming from inside

Sherry Shriner's organization.

One day, Sherry Shriner saw

a post on Facebook that Barbara had made.

And the post was about steak tartare.

And, Sherry said, "Barbara ingests blood,

and that's something that witches do.

Barbara is probably a witch or a vampire,

and Stephen should leave her."

[static]

The troll culture in Sherry's organization

can't be underestimated.

These are vicious, vicious, vicious people who like to

hurt other people's feelings because they think it's fun.

♪

Steve Mineo was so enraptured with this cult

until they started going after Barbara.

[text chimes]

I think something clicked there for Steve,

where he had Sherry Shriner's crazy claims

up against something that he knew to be false.

He lived with this woman. They were in love.

He knew she wasn't a reptile.

I think that, in the beginning,

Stephen wanted to clear things up.

I think that he thought that there was a way out of it,

that this was just a weird misunderstanding.

[text chimes]

So, he tested her.

He gave Barbara the vampire test,

which is to get her to hold orgone rocks...

because they should kill vampires.

They should kill witches. That's what they're for.

And so, now, we have a real problem,

and Stephen has a real crisis of faith.

And then Stephen said, "That doesn't seem right to me.

You know, I, I checked her,

literally checked her, and she's not a witch.

Maybe you're a false prophet."

[text chimes continue]

And that was it.

And then Sherry went on the war path.

She kicked Stephen out of the club that's been

his entire life for the last decade.

[whistling]

This is a really big thing in my life right now.

I've never experienced something like this before

in my entire life.

I mean, I don't know what to think.

Oh, man. This whole thing with Sherry,

I am just, I am just blown away.

Stephen Mineo wasn't super quick with his fingers,

so what he would do is he would send voice messages

over Facebook Messenger.

So, the last three months of his life,

most of the things that he did socially,

he recorded.

[Stephen] Dude, I am so fucked up in the head right now,

it's not even funny, man.

And her little minions keep texting me...

on Facebook, they keep repeating all the

bullshit garbage they're saying on her.

"Oh, she eats raw meat or something.

Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

They lost their fucking minds.

[Kelly] Everybody he knew was saying,

"Why are you defending this reptile, alien witch?"

So, suddenly, to lose the only people

who didn't describe his beliefs as crazy,

you've got to imagine that's almost traumatizing.

I can't imagine what it's like

when your world just ends like that.

[Stephen] I don't even know what to think anymore.

Like, this whole Sherry Shriner thing was bullshit?

I mean, martial law's still real, right?

The economy's still going to collapse.

I know that's gotta be real.

Oh, man, I don't know what to think anymore.

[Tony] Almost everything Stephen believed,

he believed because Sherry told it to him.

[voice of Barbara Rogers]

[Stephen] My mind's just all over the place right now.

This is a real mental mess with me right now,

and I'm still having, like, every now and then,

I am breaking down a little bit. [sighs]

Sorry, I'm just a little emotional.

He was mad and he wanted revenge.

[Stephen] Wait till you see the video I make, man.

You see, wait till you see the video I made, I make.

I'm 'a embarrass the shit out of all of them.

For years, he had been making videos supporting

Sherry Shriner's beliefs.

And, after he had this falling out with the group,

he still stayed in that mode of,

I'm going to make a video that exposes the truth,

except this time it wasn't the truth of reptilians,

it was the truth of Sherry Shriner.

[Tony] And so, he reached out to this gentleman

named Richard Brown.

What's up, folks? My name is Rich Brown.

Richard Brown was practically a neighbor of Sherry's.

And Stephen was desperate to get Richard Brown to talk

to the camera and say, "Sherry is fat.

Sherry smokes cigarettes.

Sherry eats pork and shrimp,

and she violates all of these biblical prohibitions."

[Stephen] You're telling me Sherry Shriner eats,

wait, shrimp, right? That's, that's

You can't eat that, that's against the bible.

[Barbara] Yeah, that's not kosher.

[Stephen] And she's freaking giving you a hard time

about your food post? Bull. Isn't this crazy?

[Barbara] Yeah.

[Stephen] I know Richard has a lot more information that

needs to be exposed about Sherry Shriner.

[Tony] But Richard Brown doesn't,

he doesn't want to make a personal attack.

What Richard thinks they should do is expose Sherry as,

like, a plagiarist. She ripped off a lot of her theology

from pagan religions, like the Greeks.

When you show people where she's getting this,

"I'm the Queen of Fire. I'm Yahushua's sister,"

this is the most damning thing that you can do,

by showing her false teachings,

her dogmatic teachings to lure everybody in.

[Tony] But Stephen doesn't agree.

[Stephen] I don't give a fuck about

how Sherry Shriner does her stuff, her thing.

I have enough information and research to know

that she's a false prophet.

And the longer this information is hidden,

that's another day that goes by

of another Sherry Shriner victim.

[Rich] You are so eager to get even with her,

rather than do it the way the father--

the father is not about retaliation, okay.

Right toward the end, when Stephen was having

his final falling out with Richard, there are this

series of messages that are just mind-boggling.

[Stephen] I'm sorry for getting a little stressed with you.

Forgive me.

You gotta, you gotta put yourself in my shoes, man.

At one point, he was like,

"I just want you to make the video."

[Stephen] Let's just expose her. Tell us everything you know.

Let's get it out there.

And he keeps trying different approaches to

get Richard to acquiesce, which is just never gonna

I mean, it's so clear that it's never going to happen.

[Stephen] We're not committing a sin.

You're not gonna go to hell by getting

the truth out against her. It's common sense.

Stephen didn't get what he wanted.

He started looking elsewhere for help,

and that was... a problem.

That, that's where things, I think,

started to go really, really poorly for him.

[Stephen] I love Richard and all, but I'm not playing

this power trip with him here.

I believe the lord's giving us an opportunity to

push forward with this, you know.

He's given us the tools to finally finish this.

[birds chirping]

♪ [ethereal]

♪

[dial tone]

[Stephen] Hello?

[Bell] Hello, hi, this is investigator Bell calling

with Accurate Investigative Services.

I'm returning a telephone call.

How are you doing today, sir?

[Stephen] Uh, doing good.

[Tony] After Stephen had the falling out with Richard,

and he realized that he wasn't going to get the

hard evidence that Sherry was a hypocrite,

he decided that he was gonna try and hire

a private investigator.

There's this person that lives in Ohio, right?

[Phillip Bell] Uh-huh.

[Stephen] And I'm trying to get a picture,

a video, it can even be a minute long,

of this person. Her name's Sherry Shriner.

[Bell] July 6, 2017,

a gentleman called by the name of Steve,

and he had wanted for us to do some surveillance.

I would like a video of her, smoking cigarettes and,

if possible, to get her to confirm on video,

without her knowing that she's being filmed,

that that's her in the video.

If the guy just wanted a photo of her smoking so

he could post it on his bedroom wall, that's...

[laughs] That's his business.

[Bell] Do you know her location?

[Stephen] Sherry Shriner. Yeah, this is a PO box 531.

[Stephen] Say it for me. [Barbara] Carrollton.

[Stephen] Carrolton. [Barbara] ...R-R-O-L-L-T-O-N.

[Stephen] Carrollton, Ohio, 44615.

[Bell] I thought this would be one of the easiest things

I've ever done. I mean, I've putten trackers

on vehicles while the person was sitting in there.

♪

Something like this, I would say you would probably want...

at least about 20 hours.

20 hours of time will cost you $1700.

[Stephen] Hmm, uh...

what's the, uh, hmmm...

If you're an adult, you know it's probably, like,

an expensive thing, like, to pay someone to go

follow someone else around.

That's, that's going to cost you some money.

I don't think Stephen had any idea.

[Stephen] What's the lowest amount of time

you're willing to work with?

[Bell] The lowest amount of time we do

is four hours of time.

[Stephen] Ok, uh, we'll do that. [Phillip] Ok, ok.

[Stephen] We'll do that.

[Bell] When I did the report, I did, however,

find a physical address that was not a PO box address

for her, on Milo Road.

♪

It is one of those houses with a super long driveway

coming from the road,

that they don't even show the home on Google Maps.

It's just in the bushes.

When we travelled out there,

we made two trips, two attempts.

Neither one of us had seen any activity.

We didn't see her outside smoking,

catching a ride to work, or leaving,

going to work, so that we could follow her.

He did only purchase four hours of time,

at that time, so that's, you know, really not much.

The next call was a little more frantic.

It was regarding Sherry still.

He wanted me to look into her in general.

Maybe something about a cult,

or anything that I could find out about her.

Then I never heard or learned anything else about it.

The case just went dead.

♪

[fireworks crackling & popping]

[Tony] Stephen claimed several times that he was suicidal.

He was without... a tether.

There was nothing.

There was no ground for him to stand on.

There was nothing for him to believe in.

And so, that brings us to the night that Stephen... died.

[crickets chirping]

They are in this tiny studio together,

fighting the good fight against Sherry.

[email alert chime]

[voice of Barbara Rogers]

[gun shot]

[bang-bang]

[popping & crackling]

[crying]

Her life belongs to Stephen now.

What she's done...

I don't know why. I don't know the whole story.

I don't know if I even want to.

[Barbara crying]

[voice of Barbara Rogers]

[Alena] It doesn't make sense if it was cold-blooded murder

because, she's s-- I hear her, she's hurt.

She's hurting. Um...

[Barbara crying]

[voice of Barbara Rogers]

[voice of 9-1-1 responder]

[voice of Barbara Rogers]

[Joel] The night I heard about the, the murder...

I got a phone call and it was Alena, and...

she was crying. And she said, "Dad, it's Mom."

And as soon as she said that to me,

I thought that she'd finally done it.

She'd finally killed herself.

I was almost waiting for that. And...

then she began to tell me, she could hardly talk.

She could, she could-- She was telling me

what happened, and I was in disbelief.

I couldn't believe that she could do something like that.

And I, and I still don't.

♪

It was hard for my kids, telling my kids...

[to kids] Yeah, those are nice.

...Especially my younger son.

Xander was really hard to tell that to.

♪

[Alena] He shut down after he found out what she did.

He, he wrote on Stephen's profile

that he was sorry.

He just posted that to his wall.

He had nothing to say about my mom.

He was just really sorry for Steve.

I mean, we all were.

♪

[Reporter] Did a cult have anything to do with this?

[Alena] Sherry Shriner, really,

she just, like, ripped her open.

Yeah, with the name-calling, the bullying,

the harassing, encouraging other people to harass her.

[Joel] There was so much sickness, like,

mental health problems in this.

Stephen was losing it.

And, she was, already had lost it to some extent.

We want people to know that she is not

a cold, calculated murderer.

That's not how this went down.

This went down because Sherry Shriner...

manipulated Steve Mineo and my ex-wife, Barbara.

That's what happened.

♪

The thing that sticks with me, throughout the entire story,

is that I don't think Stephen Mineo's fate was

sealed when he met Barbara Rogers.

Sherry Shriner really fucked my head up.

[raises voice] I've been supporting her for 14 years!

I'm sorry, I'm just a little emotional.

[sniffles] The mental torture she gives people,

dude, I had suicidal thoughts.

I felt like killing myself over this.

I felt like killing myself because of her.

There are plenty of scenarios where Barbara

doesn't kill Stephen, but I don't think there are very

many scenarios where Sherry Shriner doesn't betray

Stephen Mineo and drive him to the edge.

Okay, God bless, end of transmission.

♪

Kelly was telling me she was becoming abducted

by reptilians and aliens, and they were doing

horrible things to her.

She sat in the snow and she took off her jacket.

And... the next day,

a couple of kids found her body.

Sherry Shriner is a predator...

and, like, the epitome of evil.

♪