Part Two: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

Robert builds to the thrilling conclusion of the other Kevin Smith's story: the mass slaughter of his own flock. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Robert Evans?

  Oh, we're back. Welcome back to the story of a guy that I swear is going to end in unimaginable bloodshed. But at this point, he is a sex pest who has fled Canada for Jamaica in order to start a new evangelical church. Yeah, many such cases. We are back with our guest for this week, Molly Lambert. Molly, welcome to the show. Back to the show.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah. How we feeling as we come back into part two?

• 0:38Speaker 01

  I'm ready to see what's gonna happen.

• 0:41Robert Evans?

  Okay, you wanna drop any plugs at the start here for your new podcasts?

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah, I will have a podcast out later this year called Jenna World, Jenna Jameson, vivid video in the valley about the history of the porn industry in Los Angeles. And yeah, check it out when it comes out.

• 0:59Robert Evans?

  Excellent. Well, that gets us back into part two and closes out our cold opening.

• 1:09Speaker 02

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• 1:13Robert Evans?

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• 2:17Robert Evans?

  So we're back. As I noted last episode, the bad Kevin Smith had founded KOS Deliverance International around the year 2000. And when he fled to Jamaica, violating the terms of his probation, he brought it with him. Now, that Canadian magazine, The Walrus, reported that he'd been going back and forth from Jamaica for a while at this point. So he had some sort of an established presence there at different evangelical churches. And once he was on the run, he established a permanent base of operations in downtown Montego Bay. He reconnected with a childhood friend there from Jamaica College named Charlton, who had remained in the country when Smith went off to Canada and had become a pastor himself in the era, area. Charlton served as a useful early source of connections while

• 3:00Robert Evans?

  Kevin built up his flock. But he also had a sizable head start by the time he moved there full times, thanks to his years of international work. Charlton later claimed that Smith told him early on, he'd started ministering to Porsha Simpson Miller, the Prime Minister. And he would also sometimes add vaguely that he talked to with other government officials. So he's from a very early state claiming to be ministering personally to like, high level politicians in Jamaica, and have a lot of connections in the local government. And there's some evidence this is true, including the fact that he really does not get investigated for any of his inner, like, criminal history, to the degree that you might expect of somebody who starts, who kind of comes into Jamaica, out of Canada,

• 3:42Robert Evans?

  and immediately starts up a large and influential church. His flock grew rapidly, and in 2012, he began affiliating his church with a larger Pentecostal organization in Jamaica called Pathways International Kingdom Restoration Ministries. Or Picrim? I think Picrim would be the acronym there.

• 4:02Speaker 04

  I like that.

• 4:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah, there you go. It sounds like a Pokemon. It was not like a Pokemon. Unless I've really lost the plot on that game over the last few years. One regular talking point in Kevin's sermons while he's in Jamaica is that he hadn't left Canada because he had committed sex crimes and had to flee because he didn't want to do probation. He had rejected Canada and his comfortable first world life there to return home to Jamaica because he was so loyal to the Jamaican people, right?

• 4:32Speaker 04

  I like that he's like, he's like, it's not, it's not you, it's me, Canada. Bye, Canada.

• 4:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  He's reframing it. You guys didn't get forced out of Los Angeles. You just, you chose to go to Portland.

• 4:45Robert Evans?

  Right, right, right. And he's choosing to go to Jamaica because he's so loyal to the Jamaican people, um, which is just also a really fucked up way of pretending you didn't sexually assault a guy. Like, there's no non-fucked up way to do that.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 4:58Robert Evans?

  But I guess this is particularly fucked up. Um, I'm gonna play a clip from a revival that he did six or seven years ago, where he talks about why he left Canada for Jamaica, both so you can, again, get an idea of like the personal charisma, like hear the reaction of the crowd when he talks about this stuff, because they're buying it. And also so you can hear like, how he is framing why he wound up in Jamaica. Now, in this specific part of the sermon, he's discussing a conversation he had during a brief trip back to Canada with one of his Pentecostal mentors in Canada. So this is like, a Canadian guy asking like, why are you going, why'd you leave? Why'd you go to Jamaica? Right? That's the, the context of this part of the speech.

• 5:38Speaker 05

  Talk to me now. He said, what takes you over? Is that genuinely Holy Ghost and Monday? He said, the other people think they have to help God and go get powers. And that's why the church always splits and divides. But for seven years, God has given you seed, and your seed remains. All I see happening to your ministry is God adding more and more. He said, let me teach you. Wait a second. Let me teach you. He said, don't you know Jamaica? He said, don't you understand? You see, look at you. You're coming here and

• 6:21Speaker 05

  you're buying all this candy. So take back to Jamaica. Do you know what you're doing? I said, no, tell me. He said, you're watering the seed. I said, what do you mean? He said, because you love your people. I know to sell and comfort of a be away from more than three days. Because that is the people that God gave.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  The like music and like breathing combo. Very off.

• 6:55Robert Evans?

  And man, but you gotta hear like the reaction he gets. People are, that is, you, you, you can't fake a crowd like that. People are down.

• 7:03Speaker 04

  They're into it.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna, I'll play Kevin's advocate for a minute here.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  He's just doing some preaching. You know, he's talking in a preacher style.

• 7:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  It's sound, it's, it's stylized.

• 7:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's the, you, you can really like, yeah, you can hear, it's fast, it's fascinating to me how international that like American Pentecostal preacher voice is. I used to be, you know, down in the depths of hell, but then I got risen up by God. Like, it's a very like.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  He's like doing a lot of mouth breathing and as a podcast producer, that's my worst nightmare.

• 7:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah, well, I mean, so that's why you're never gonna make it as an evangelical minister. You know, I say this all the time, unlike me.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  I'm a fucking bishop, god damn it.

• 7:47Robert Evans?

  That's my back plan. I, part of why I keep recommending the movie Marjo, and I know I talk about it all the time, because it's great, is because he really explains like why that voice works and how you can like kind of see it evolving. He was like one of the, one of the key figures in like making that be a thing. And it's just fascinating to watch in real time, but it's interesting how universal that is, at least among like English speaking parts of the world, right? Like even when it's kind of a different dialect of English, the same basic cadence of voice works really well.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Well, Marjo looks fascinating.

• 8:23Robert Evans?

  Oh, it fucking rules. No, that movie rips, rips like a son of a bitch. Like, you'll love it. Yeah, you'll love it. Yeah.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Sorry, just didn't, didn't really, I don't know anything about Pentecostal preachers or

• 8:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  child, you know, preacher.

• 8:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah. And what's interesting about Marjo is he kind of, he, he started out before the religious right was a thing. And then he kind of breaks good, like he decides that the Pentecostal movement and its alliance with the religious right is kind of evil and a grift, and he decides to like leave and film undercover. During like his last year preaching within it. So it's, it's just a fascinating picture of the start of the movement that has really taken over American politics, right at, at its kind of like gestation period, you know?

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but don't you think it goes back even further all the way? That's just

• 9:15Robert Evans?

  Elements. Sure. Yeah.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  We love, we love a charismatic grifter.

• 9:19Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Like the national character.

• 9:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  All right, go on.

• 9:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Go on, keep telling me.

• 9:24Robert Evans?

  Certainly that part of it has existed for a long time. Yeah.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Amy Sumpel.

• 9:29Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:31Robert Evans?

  Of course, the unstated truth here is that Kevin left Canada when he was on probation for sexual assault. And he is a registered sex offender at the time he's giving the speech. There are allegations that his government connections helped him smooth this over. It's unclear whether Pathways knew when they accepted him into the broader umbrella organization. He was eventually disowned by the group after all the killings. But initially, the sheer amount of money he brought in seems to have kept everybody quiet. The Reverend Adonair Jones of the Church of God in Jamaica would later accuse Pathways of, of exactly this, of basically ignoring the obvious evidence that this guy was dangerous because there was money in him. And I'm going to quote from an article.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Okay, and not to play Kevin's advocate again.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  But that's my role on the show, I think.

• 10:16Robert Evans?

  No, no, no, sure.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  But it also sounds like I haven't heard about the throat slittings yet. So imagine, you know, I'm coming from a place of innocence.

• 10:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah, not knowing where he lands.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  It sounds like perhaps this child was brought into this preacher thing without sort of his consent. You know, he was told all this stuff about himself, about being special.

• 10:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah, about being a prophet.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  And maybe there are some issues with his sexuality being repressed, coming out of a culture, both the Christian culture and, you know, growing up in Jamaica where there's just a culture of homophobia. Maybe he's just a troubled, a troubled dude, you know?

• 10:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  And it's almost, almost not his fault. He got forced into this line of work because, you know, I don't know, he was, he was chosen sort of without his, uh, his choice.

• 11:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah, there's always a degree with all of these guys where you wonder like, where does the complicity start, right? Because there is, there is often a case where like someone is like a victim in this period of time, right?

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Well, it sounds like he's a victim of his own circumstances. Like, don't, you know, it's obviously, it's not okay that he sexually assaulted somebody, but it does sound like he could have had a different life if he had been raised under different circumstances. It sounds like he was really groomed into this position of being

• 11:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  a religious leader and also in a religion where there's a lot of homophobia and sounds like he might be queer.

• 11:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  So I'm feeling bad for Kevin at this point. I feel like his life sucks and he's trapped in it.

• 11:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I, I feel both.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Let's see.

• 11:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Let's see if I change my mind.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  I mean, he is a registered sex offender.

• 11:59Robert Evans?

  He's a registered sex offender at this point.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  My empathy is non-existent.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  No, but I mean, he, I'm saying like coming out of a super, like, he may have, things may have happened to him as well, is what I'm saying.

• 12:11Robert Evans?

  And he alleges things happened to him. He was sexually assaulted as a kid. He was abused as a kid. So like, there is a, there is a-

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Not that it excuses it, but there's a cycle in place, obviously, and-

• 12:22Robert Evans?

  He's certainly part of a cycle and he's part of a cycle of like child abuse wherein young charismatic kids are adopted into this movement.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, the charismatic child preacher thing also just seems like that's very exploitative.

• 12:35Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Would, would fuck you up no matter what. There's no way to be well adjusted from that.

• 12:40Robert Evans?

  Which is a big part of like what the documentary Marjo goes into is like him being like, I know I'm robbing people and I know that what I am doing is bad and perpetuating this movement. And also because of how I was raised, it's literally all I know how to do. Like it's my only marketable skill.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  But also, isn't it sort of like, it's a little bit consensual robbing, right?

• 13:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Like, if somebody, if somebody wants to give you money for some nonsense, you're not stealing it from them, you're not forcing it out of them. There's other things you could give people money for the same worst. Sorry, I'm really playing Kevin's advocate.

• 13:15Robert Evans?

  No, well, here's, here's where, here's what gets me fucked up about that is I can see that logic and I can make that argument, but I can also see that logic leading you into gradually becoming a cult leader. Like, it starts with the little steps, like I-

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Do you take Patreon for your podcast?

• 13:31Robert Evans?

  I, I don't, but I don't have a problem with it, right? And like-

• 13:35Speaker 01

  But if somebody wanted to pay you for like your charismatic ramblings on a microphone,

• 13:40Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  You don't see that as exploitative. You're like, they just want to give me money because they appreciate me.

• 13:46Robert Evans?

  I, I don't see it as inherently, but I do see it as potentially, right? In that, because I've watched this happen, right? There are some cults where it starts out as like, okay, this is just a person who is like a content provider online. And then the like level of like adoration and fame and the weird parasocial relationships, they get, they take it in really abusive directions. But like, we've all seen plenty of cases of like white men in media who wound up with like very aggressive, like aligned fanbases and went increasingly insane. It's not a, it's not detached completely from this. Like, we're talking about this kind of psychological, like this like wheel in the case of like evangelical

• 14:29Robert Evans?

  Christianity, but it also, it's not detached from like celebrity culture, right? Like, it's, it's, it's not really great for people, especially when they're really young. I think if this, if this starts to happen to you when you're older, you have, you can have more of like a defense against it. If you've got a family, if you've got friends, if you've got a good number of people who know you and have known you-

• 14:50Speaker 01

  I think being famous makes everybody crazy. I don't know that it matters when it happens. I think being a child, it's a form of abuse and it is like making a child do any kind of job, you know?

• 15:01Robert Evans?

  Sure, that's what I'm saying.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Any kind of work is like, no- Kids shouldn't be working.

• 15:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  But it's kind of in the Michael Jackson family of things where it's like, oh, are we supposed to deny this child's incredible abilities that, you know, the world should be deprived of the greatest performer of all time?

• 15:21Robert Evans?

  Do you stop them from playing? Yeah.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  I was thinking about this the other day because there are kids with podcasts now and I was like,

• 15:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah, oh, that's just a bad idea, but also.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  But I was also just like, oh, that's sad for them. They're making content. They should be like, you know, you know, yard. Yeah, like playing.

• 15:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's messy. And I don't know what the actual solution is here.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  What I'm saying is we're all complicit.

• 15:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah, let's, let's agree on banning children from being advertised to. Can we at least start there?

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we can start there.

• 15:54Robert Evans?

  Maybe that'll start fixing some of the problems.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 15:58Robert Evans?

  And I don't know, maybe have a government agency dedicated entirely to watching the parents of child actors.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Okay, but if you got like a million dollar contract to advertise Galaxy Gas to 11 year olds.

• 16:11Robert Evans?

  Mm hmm. Sure. Absolutely. Get them hooked. Get them hooked. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think, I think kids need to be doing way more drugs. Look.

• 16:21Robert Evans?

  I mean, look at what they're getting up to. Have you seen this Minecraft movie shit? Like, it seems like if the kids were getting a high, they'd be a lot healthier.

• 16:31Robert Evans?

  No, don't do drugs, kids. Or do.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Don't do Minecraft. Okay.

• 16:34Robert Evans?

  Don't listen to me.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Back to the other Kevin Smith.

• 16:38Robert Evans?

  Back to the other Kevin Smith. So yeah, the Reverend Adonair Jones of the Church of God in Jamaica would later accuse Pathways of basically ignoring the other Kevin Smith's criminal history and problematic history in order to make money. The Jamaica Gleaner writes, Jones said that congregations have been too accommodating of virtually anyone bearing a Bible who could deliver soundbites using charisma and flair to flourish as did Smith. And initially, KOS fits in with the rest of the Pentecostal churches in the country. Its website claimed, "Our divine mandate is to transform the people by the power of Jesus Christ," and stated that the mission of his church was to "win souls to the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ and deliver the lives of people from the snares of darkness."

• 17:19Robert Evans?

  Pretty standard stuff. However, while most pastors within Pathway's affiliated churches went by the title "pastor," which is normal, Smith showed an early flair for the extreme. His website listed him as "the president and founder of KOS Deliverance International, as well as chief special advisor of the King's Oracles," and he ordered his followers to refer to him in person as "Excellency, His Excellency, or Your Grace." And I think we can see where problems are starting here now, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's unclear to me, number one, who the King's Oracles were. I have not come across that, an explanation of that title, so I don't know what that is exactly

• 18:01Robert Evans?

  supposed to mean. It's also unclear to me when the prosperity gospel preachings got into Kevin's sermons, right? Is this something that he's really talking about before he lands in Jamaica? But during his first five or so years on the island, he becomes increasingly enmeshed in prosperity gospel preaching, which is a major part of kind of the charismatic Christian evangelical movement. The prosperity gospel started out in the United States. And the way this works, it basically, you're preaching that God works like a high-yield savings account, or a really good 401K, right? If you put money into God, and by God, I mean the church that you go to and its pastor, by tithing regularly, giving the church a

• 18:45Robert Evans?

  percentage of your income, and then handing out additional seed offerings on a weekly basis. And seed offerings, kind of the key is that it hurts, right? Every week, you're supposed to give more money than you can afford to the church, right? And the promise is that if you do this, if you give all you can, to the point where it like damages your financial stability, God will reward you with miraculous financial gifts. So again, it really is like a 401K that works on a much faster time period. If you give God more money than you can afford now, God will give you back many times that amount of money, you know, at some point in the near future. That's, that's like the literal premise upon which prosperity gospel is predicated.

• 19:28Robert Evans?

  Now, it's probably worth taking another aside here to discuss prosperity gospel in more detail, since it is one of the root problems with American evangelical Christianity as a whole. The gist of it is that in the late 1800s in the US, there are two different strands of revivalist Christian thought that come together and they cross-pollinate. On one hand, you've got the holiness movement, who believes prayer works the same way the force does in Star Wars, right? It allows people with sufficient faith to like heal the sick and do magic, because all illness and discomfort come from sin, right? So if the Holy Spirit is in you, you can wipe sin away from people, and it makes them able to either heal or even perform superhuman acts. Now, the holiness movement kind of opens the door to a really theatric church-going experience, which is a key aspect of revival

• 20:13Robert Evans?

  culture. You're not just telling people they're healed, you have people play-acting as healers and the sick, right? And this provides kind of an emotional and social outlet. People can come in barely able to move, and then start jumping around and dancing, and they'll get this like huge surge of applause, and this kind of like, it's a performance, right? So there's this two-way relationship between the performers and the people reacting to it, that has this kind of catharsis in it. And there's a degree of forced cognitive dissonance here, as Associate Professor of Religion Jonathan Baer writes for nine marks dot org. "The key was to believe, pray and hold on to it, believe that it is yours, and act out the healing even if lying symptoms persist." Right? So even if you know you're

• 20:57Robert Evans?

  not cured, those symptoms, because you've been cured, are a lie, right? If you feel like you still have cancer, you have to just ignore that, because that's the devil trying to trick you into believing that you're still sick. So there's a lot of like, you know, there's a lot of victim-blamey stuff around illness in American culture, period, but this is one of the places in which it manifests, right, is in this kind of movement. Now, there's, there's still an, this is still, the holiness movement, kind of an underlying pillar of charismatic evangelism today, and it's why all of these churches are such fertile hunting grounds for guys like the other Kevin Smith. Now, the other movement that collides with the holiness movement in the late 1800s to create prosperity gospel is the New Thought Movement. And the New Thought Movement isn't an explicitly Christian movement.

• 21:42Robert Evans?

  It's it's kind of a precursor to the self-help movement. It's related to Scientology. Dianetics is involved in this. And it's also the root of stuff like The Secret, right? And the basis of the New Thought Movement is that you can radically alter your mind, body, and situation through purging negative thoughts and reinforcing positive ones, right? And kind of the main semi-secular figure we get out of the New Thought Movement is Norman Vincent Peale, who's booked The Power of Positive Thinking in the 50s and 60s, is a big influence on young Donald Trump. And all this stuff kind of collides together and gives us the prosperity gospel, which is based on a merger of the two and starts to spread overseas in like the 80s and 90s, right, to a lot of countries that have exploding evangelical movements in the post-colonial era.

• 22:27Robert Evans?

  And Jamaica, which has a lot of impoverished people who are desperate for hope that feels actionable, is a particularly fertile breeding ground for prosperity gospel to start taking over, right? And so it really does. And that's kind of what what provides, what tills the soil for the church that Kevin is going to start here in the early 2000s. He begins hosting almost daily prayer sessions. I think they're three or four times a week, and those come with expected daily donations. So you're supposed to give a tithe of your income, and then you're supposed to pay every day, give a seed donation. And then he has one-on-one courses, right? He's he's still operating as a psychotherapist, so like you can pay him for therapy, too. Basically, the idea is all of your money goes to Kevin and the church, right?

• 23:12Robert Evans?

  Like, every dime that you get goes here. And if you're spending money on anything else, even spending money on like food or rent, you're kind of not putting your faith in God. And that's a sin, isn't it?

• 23:25Robert Evans?

  It's a very abusive way to look at the relationship between like a pastor and his church. Speaking of abusive relationships.

• 23:37Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 23:37Robert Evans?

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• 23:39Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 23:41Robert Evans?

  The shoe fits.

• 23:44Robert Evans?

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• 24:43Robert Evans?

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• 25:23Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So Kevin starts offering free and discounted services to the odd male member of the flock that he wants to get closer to. And this is, there's allegations that he basically starts kind of whenever a young man will come in to the church. He'll start by offering that guy's family like benefits, free services or breaks on, you know, the money they're already spending on the church in order to get that young man closer to him, you know, to make him his assistant, to have him work for the church. And there are some allegations that he basically starts operating a male harem through these kind of tactics, right? Pulling in young men this way.

• 26:04Robert Evans?

  This is not something we have a lot of detail about in part because in Jamaica, admitting that you were abused in this way, like there's a lot of consequences to it. Not that there's not in the United States, but it's, it's hard to get people talking directly about this kind of relationship. Right? It's not clear how much of this is like just psychological and how much of this is actual physical sexual violence. But there are direct allegations that he used these kind of relationships to engage in what was at least adjacent to human trafficking. The Gleaner, a Jamaican investigative news site with very good reporting on Smith and maybe the worst coded website I've ever used, which is not their fault. I know what budgets are like right now. It's just, it's just rough. They interviewed a former member of the church named Jevon.

• 26:49Robert Evans?

  At age 17, Jevon was taken, that's his word from his parents by Smith and used as an errand boy for the church. Now it's unclear to me, does Kevin force this guy's parents to give their kid up or does he bribe them in some way? Or is it a situation where they just feel like, well, this guy's the prophet and we can't say no to him? Jevon claims that at the start, he sees Kevin as like a foster father and he feels chosen, like he's maybe the prophet's adopted son. Right? But this quickly gets disabused because Kevin takes advantage of this position of trust to have Jevon handle intensive time consuming tasks like counting the money given at offerings every week and do them for free. And this is not an easy or a small task because a lot of money is coming in. Per Jevon, there were four different types of offerings.

• 27:34Robert Evans?

  You have the hundred dollar offering that starts the service, the thousand dollar seed offering, and then the regular offering, and then another offering where you make covenant with the word. So by the, the mid aught, some people are donating four times a day with services three times a week, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. There, there's also, you know, again, these kind of one-on-one sessions where he's making money, sometimes up to like $350 for what's called a deliverant session where he has like a one-on-one spiritual encounter with the person. And since Jevon's doing a lot of the counting of money here, he's able to give the gleaner an educated estimate for how much the church is pulling in. And he claims that a single night could bring in a quarter of a million US dollars or more,

• 28:15Robert Evans?

  which means Kevin's church is pulling down three quarters of a million a week just from services. But he also offers up a bunch of side sessions, as noted earlier, which brings their estimated weekly income up to around a million. And just what we know objectively about the assets, the number of properties the church held, this is a pretty credible estimate for what they're kind of making, bringing in at their height.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  So much fucking money.

• 28:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah, this is, they're making a ton of money.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  That's so crazy.

• 28:42Robert Evans?

  But they're also almost always, he's expanding so rapidly, he's buying so many new properties, that the amount of money it costs to keep the church operational is pretty close to the income they're bringing in on a weekly basis. So there's always this level of like stress of like, we really need to continue to squeeze our members for as much as we possibly can. Otherwise, this house of cards is going to fall apart. Now, the Jamaica gleaner goes into more detail about the different grifts that Smith built into the foundation of his church. Quote, "Members of Pathways Christian Cathedral," as the church was sometimes called, "were charged a fee of $500 for adults and $100 for children for the monthly miracle covenant seed for the church's ministerial upliftment.

• 29:23Robert Evans?

  They also paid tithes, offering covenant seed or other special contributions as requested by Smith. Membership cards also came at a cost, with adults and children paying $500 and $100 respectively, while widows were charged $200. 'The more one gives, the more God gets happy,' one church member told the Sunday gleaner in defense of the numerous payments they would make. The leader would help a lot of people in need, but nobody's talking about that." And that is an aspect of this too, is like, people are seeing there are actual community services that are being operated. Now, not to the extent of costing a million dollars a week, but there's also enough that people can be like, well, the money's clearly going to a good cause, right?

• 30:05Robert Evans?

  Members were expected to volunteer time to help, you know, staff these different sort of community organizations. And also to show up at regular festivals for which they'd be expected to pay like $200 or $500 for a ticket. And while there is aid for parishioners, this is also often a grift. For example, Smith offered loans to members of the church at a 15% interest rate, which is not exactly charity, right? We can say that about that?

• 30:32Speaker 04

  What does he want with all this money, though? Like, I don't understa-- it's so much money. What is he doing with it?

• 30:38Robert Evans?

  Well, he's got, he's building his empire, right? He's operating, as we'll talk about it, like, he's operating businesses in the community now. He's trying to start, like, other churches, and he's like, he's like, building, getting into real estate, you know? There's, there's always places to spend this kind of money.

• 30:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, because now he's got so much money that he can't keep, he's putting it into real estate like they do.

• 30:59Robert Evans?

  And the other thing is that, like, there's bribes that have to be paid to local politicians. Like, he talks about it as if he's, like, ministering to these guys, but there's always bribes to be paid, right? So, you know, that, that's not a 0% of the story here, too. Jevon describes his own role within the church in unsparing terms. "We were like slaves. I was not allowed to go around my parents or any relatives or friends outside of the church."

• 31:25Robert Evans?

  And he works for both the church and for Smith's psychotherapist business, which is how a lot of these one-on-one sessions were marketed. He had to get permission if he wanted to do anything besides work, even to go get a haircut. He describes it, yeah, as essentially like he's in prison. KOS Ministries does open a food bank with some of the money that Kevin makes, and they establish a program to help poor students pay their school fees. They pool donations to help fund medical care for small children and elderly parishioners. And this is done in part because it's like a really good recruitment tool, right? Like, this helps bring more people in, and he's also able to, he's able to take in donations for himself and also take in donations to fund these different organizations, so it's not cutting as much into his bottom line.

• 32:10Robert Evans?

  The primary appeal of the church is always Kevin's personal charisma. Per reporting in The Walrus, one former attendee, Sharice, happened to pass by the church one day and heard Smith's voice. "That voice sounds powerful," she remembers thinking. She went inside. Sharice immediately felt that Smith wasn't a typical pastor. He insisted on being referred to as His Excellency. He spoke eagerly about the gospel of prosperity. Sharice and former members say Smith regularly brought up the fact that he was a Canadian citizen, a point of privilege he leveraged to suggest that he could help get others visas to work or study in Canada for a fee. Smith charged for consultations or prayers, attendance at workshops and other events. One event in 2013, a wealth transformation summit entitled Money Come To Me Now, promised

• 32:52Robert Evans?

  explosive prophecies to help participants break the cycle of poverty forever.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 32:58Robert Evans?

  You see, like, the, yeah.

• 33:00Speaker 04

  There's just no end to the grifting, like, he's doing every playbook, every single playbook.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Okay, it's getting depressing now, I understand.

• 33:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's getting depressing, and there's so much of this that is, like, predicated on, well, he got out to Canada, so he must have some connections. He can get me out, like, the, just how much poverty provides the opportunity here? Because there's, like, no easy way out of poverty. And people are desperate to believe there's hope, you know?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a bummer.

• 33:31Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's bleak as hell. Now, the good news is that Sharice has the presence of mind to evaluate the promises Smith is making, based on their impact on her real life. So she's able to see, I've been given money to this guy, and I am not getting it back in any way, right? And you're not supposed to think this way. Remember, at the root of all this is that you have to ignore your lying symptoms if they tell you that handing over money to the church hasn't made anything better, right? You're not supposed to feel like that, you're not supposed to think that way. And Jevon eventually comes to the same conclusion as Sharice. But because he's not a normal congregant, but someone raised in the church whose whole family buys into Kevin's BS, the task of leaving is a lot harder for him.

• 34:16Robert Evans?

  He attempts to flee for the first time in November of 2015, and this would prove to be the first of ultimately six attempts to flee Kevin Smith's church over the years. Per the Gleaner, "Each time I ran away, the church members blamed me for being disobedient," he stated, adding that the last time he ran off, Smith placed a death prophecy on his head, saying that his head would return on a platter. "Once you try to leave, they instill fear within you." Jevon said many people refused to leave Pathways International out of fear for their lives, and in fact, they believed he was a prophet. And Kevin kind of cultivates this reputation for prophecy in the same way any other grifter of this kind does. He makes these constant, big predictions about like, there's gonna, war and natural disaster are coming, right?

• 35:00Robert Evans?

  But he doesn't say where? And like, if you say, there's gonna be a war that breaks out soon, or a natural disaster, you'll always be right, you know? Sure. Yeah. I predict in the next six months, a major natural disaster will strike the United States. I'll guarantee you that prophecy is correct, because you can say that at any point in time, and it will be true in the United States, or most other countries, right? Like, that's just the way the world is, you know? The most compelling prophecies that he would lay out, though, related to individual members of the church. Jevon recalled one that stuck in his mind when Kevin told a female congregant about a vision he'd had of her future. He prophesied, saying that he saw her son in a pool of blood with the name Baby Killer,

• 35:43Robert Evans?

  and about a week later, the same incident happened and was on the pages of The Western Mirror. And, I don't know, this specific case, but it's one of those things, especially if you get to know, you know, your flock, if you have members of your church who have like, family members in gangs, it's not such a big prediction to be like, one of you is going to lose a loved one soon, right? Because like, you know, that's just how it happens when people are involved in gangs. So it may just have been a situation like that. But this causes the fact that he seems to have this ability and that people believe it, it makes people afraid of Smith, right? You don't want him to prophesy negatively about you and your family because you believe that this can have an impact on you. And it's

• 36:28Robert Evans?

  also hard to leave if you're someone like Jevon who started to question, you know, the actual power of this guy, because everyone you know and love is still in the church, right? And so you can be cut off from your whole support network by leaving. It's a fairly normal cult thing. And this is why Jevon keeps coming back time and time again. He's gonna leave like five times before it finally sticks. And things only change when he falls in love with a member of the congregation and tries to start a relationship with them. This enrages Smith because again, Jevon hadn't asked for permission and Smith, along with a number of other very young men, kind of wants to keep this kid chaste and close to him. Jevon claims the prophet told him, "If you think I'm going to marry you and her,

• 37:13Robert Evans?

  you make a big mistake," right? As in, "Perform the marriage," right? Like, "I have the ability to determine who in this church can get married and I'm not going to prove that." And you get the feeling it's kind of out of like a sense of jealousy on his part, that he really doesn't want this kid escaping his orbit in any way. But that is what gets Jevon out, right?

• 37:33Speaker 04

  So crazy.

• 37:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty, pretty normal deal. Jevon ultimately leaves and stays gone, which may have saved his life, given what comes next. But in the immediate term, it causes him tremendous pain because Smith does command family members to cut off their loved ones. And this is not just a thing Jevon has reported. The Jamaica Gleamer reports, "A young woman said she was kicked out of the church after two years as a member because of fornication. They don't speak to me. I have two uncles, an aunt-in-law, and three cousins still there." And yeah, it's-

• 38:05Speaker 04

  He's doing the Scientology.

• 38:08Robert Evans?

  He's doing the every cult, right?

• 38:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  He's doing the Scientology.

• 38:12Robert Evans?

  He's doing Scientology.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  He's doing the Elrond.

• 38:15Robert Evans?

  He's doing the Elrond, you know? He's doing the Elrond. He's not throwing people off of boats, making them search for gold, but he's got a lot of that playbook to him, right?

• 38:22Speaker 04

  I mean, he's doing the child labor, the-

• 38:25Robert Evans?

  Oh, definitely that, yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  The, uh, the, uh, cutting off family members.

• 38:30Robert Evans?

  Uh huh.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  The, uh, stealing everybody's hard-earned money. Yeah, he's got the holy trifecta of-

• 38:36Robert Evans?

  Yep, yep, yep, yep.

• 38:37Speaker 04

  Elrond-ing.

• 38:38Robert Evans?

  Uh, yeah, it's, it's, he's, he's El Ronning. He's Hubbarding hard.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  It's bad.

• 38:44Robert Evans?

  Now, one thing Hubbard would never have done that Smith does that I don't fully understand is in 2017, he returns to Canada and he hands himself over to the Toronto Police.

• 38:52Speaker 04

  Why?

• 38:53Robert Evans?

  It's unclear, but reading between the lines, I think he works out an arrangement with Canadian authorities, using his Jamaican government contacts as an intermediary, right? Because he doesn't go to prison and he basically gets set up in a situation where he's pleads guilty on probation violations, but he's allowed to return to Jamaica and then travel internationally more easily. He's not like dealing with the fact that he's wanted in Canada anymore. Over the next 18 months, as long as he like finishes his probation.

• 39:25Speaker 04

  Canada, why? Why Canada?

• 39:28Robert Evans?

  Well, he, he does have to make a $500 donation to a rape crisis center.

• 39:32Speaker 04

  Oh, okay. All good then.

• 39:35Robert Evans?

  And they also require that he engage in sexual behavioral counseling, but only if he stays in Canada for longer than a month. So as long as he like leaves Canada, never stays more than like a week at a time, he doesn't have to do any counseling.

• 39:50Speaker 04

  None of this math adds up. This is, that's, that's, seriously. That's fucking despicably embarrassing, Canada. What are you doing?

• 39:58Robert Evans?

  We're missing a part of, but again, it's definite that like some of the money he brings in is bribing local politicians. And my suspicion is that those local politicians have connections in Canada and there's a less direct kind of bribe going there, right?

• 40:13Speaker 04

  Sure, they're still fucking despicable.

• 40:14Robert Evans?

  You know, there's ways to influence politicians in countries that where that is looked at more that are still effectively a bribe, where maybe you're getting invited to speak at an event at like a resort in Jamaica or something like that, or like a permit that you need because you've got some sort of business over there, it gets a little bit easier. I don't know exactly what's happening, but clearly something sketchy happens here, right? This kind of sweetheart deal, it just seems unlikely that it would be handed out otherwise. And yeah, but we don't exactly know why Canada agrees to let this guy off with just the slappest on the wrist of slaps on the wrist for a multi-year-long probation violation after a sex crime.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  I mean, again, he's Hubbarding. He's Hubbarding. He's blackmailing and paying off the government.

• 40:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah, although Hubbard would never have turned himself into the authorities.

• 41:03Speaker 04

  Absolutely not. He would fucking go out to sea.

• 41:06Robert Evans?

  Not RRH. Yeah, he would have set, he would have set to sea.

• 41:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's that, but he, so the understanding here is that he's doing this so that he can travel easily?

• 41:16Robert Evans?

  Yes, I think it's so that basically he gets like, you know, there's holds and stuff on his documents. Yeah. Um, and now he's allowed to travel easily as long as he periodically like contacts his probation officer back in Canada.

• 41:29Speaker 04

  Bad job, Canada.

• 41:30Robert Evans?

  Yeah, not great, not great work, Canada.

• 41:32Speaker 04

  Bad job, Canada.

• 41:34Robert Evans?

  Bad job, Canada. Not the only time we've said that on this podcast and not the last time. But you know who's not, Canada?

• 41:42Speaker 04

  Well, we don't know that.

• 41:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we don't know that.

• 41:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, we don't know.

• 41:45Robert Evans?

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• 41:52Robert Evans?

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• 42:51Robert Evans?

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• 43:29Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So in April of 2018, Smith holds an elaborate public party for his 36th birthday, which I think also kind of doubles as a celebration of the fact that he's about to be done with his probation terms. Police escorted hundreds of his followers as they marched through the streets of Montego Bay, and he follows them in a silver stretch limousine. He goes on a spending spree, buying a large rural compound with stables and livestock, several luxury homes on the coast, sports cars, and several businesses. On the land, he begins constructing a new church called The Ark, which is meant to be self-sufficient and able to survive in the event of an apocalypse, right? So he's, he's built, he's bought his compound, he's building a church called The Ark, and they're like growing food to try to get

• 44:14Robert Evans?

  ready for the end of days. And so, you know, things seem to be going well for the other Kevin Smith until 2020. Now, if anyone listening is old enough to remember back then, a virus called COVID-19 started spreading through the global population. Governments around the world entered panic lockdowns with very little understanding of what might actually happen, or how long any of this was going to last. It is a, you know, we all remember, right? Now, given the severity of the disease, it made total sense that you would lock down. But as you might recall, about a third of the population lost their minds over this, right? Like, people do not react well to this. And the other Kevin Smith is one of them. He seems to have fallen down a conspiracy

• 44:57Robert Evans?

  rabbit hole himself, first by listening to and watching American COVID denialists online. So, again, we really, we've got our part to play in this. He starts spending way too much time on YouTube while things are closed up, and that's not good for anybody. And based on the reading I've done, he really starts to go over the edge. Once the vaccine becomes a reality, and governments around the world start talking about a mass rollout. Since he's got this big platform, he starts using both his church's social media and his actual pulpit to howl to the masses that the COVID vaccines have microchips in them. And per the walrus, "Ingredients linked to the devil," which I, I love as a description. Enough like vaccine.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Ingredients linked to the devil.

• 45:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah, they're linked to the devil. Like what? Like sulfur? Like, what is linked to the devil?

• 45:44Speaker 01

  You put it in under a microscope and you see little devil heads.

• 45:48Robert Evans?

  Yeah, little Satan faces.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Little Satans, like little pitchforks.

• 45:52Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, I like that. I also just like the idea of like the devil is an international crime syndicate. And like, you're like, yeah, Satan's fingerprints are all over this vaccine. We can see bits of them in here.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Well, we've got shooters everywhere.

• 46:07Robert Evans?

  Yeah, that is, that is something the devil's famous for.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Famously, the devil has shooters.

• 46:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah, absolutely. Now, he describes wearing masks and getting vaccinated as taking on the mark of the beast. And I think we've all heard a lot of rhetoric like this since COVID broke out, right? Like, I can remember when certain, and this is not, this goes back before COVID, by the way, right? The idea of describing certain things that are just sort of like marks of modernity as taking on the mark of the beast. I remember back in the 90s, when there were certain conspiratorial Christian pastors, warning people that like barcodes on products, which were new at the time, where the mark of the beast, like barcodes are going to allow the government to track everything that you do. You know, this is the devil coming to like, take this country down.

• 46:55Robert Evans?

  Now, I will say a barcode makes more eschatological sense than a vaccine as a mark of the beast. Because the book of revelations does describe followers of the Antichrist as having a mark and that, quote, "No one can buy or sell unless he has the mark that is the name of the beast or the number of its name."

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 47:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah, no one's really stopped from buying and selling goods based on vaccination status, right? That doesn't actually happen, but that's immaterial to guys like Smith, right? The fact that, well, this doesn't, like, fuck, man, and anti-vax people are running the United States now. Like, maybe this is not the mark of the beast in any way. That doesn't really like factor into these people's thinking. As it is, the fact that the beast, I like, all of this like apocalypse narrative is very funny to me, just given the actual like text of the book of Revelation, right? Because the beast is not at all described as, you know, any, anything like what you hear in the kind of popular fiction that's often inspired by the book of Revelations. The beast in

• 48:01Robert Evans?

  the actual book of Revelations has 10 horns and six heads with 10 crowns on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads. It has, it's like a leopard, but its feet are like a bear's and its mouth was like a lion's mouth. I don't know what that has to do with the COVID-19 vaccine. You can twist that, I'm sure, into making it, but it just sounds like, it sounds cool. Some guy was tripping and described a rad monster, you know? I've seen something like that on Enough Acid, and I'm sure it was someone on Ergot Poisoning who wrote the book of Revelations, you know? Many such cases. Smith also described the vaccine as a plan for population control, which also doesn't really make sense with the mark of the beast thing, because the marked are followers of the beast, and if

• 48:44Robert Evans?

  the mark kills them off, it's kind of the Antichrist shooting himself in the foot, right? Like, the Antichrist, like, why would you want to kill these people, right? You want them-

• 48:53Speaker 04

  He just-

• 48:54Robert Evans?

  As your foot soldiers.

• 48:55Speaker 04

  None of his math adds up over and over.

• 48:57Robert Evans?

  None of this math ever adds up.

• 48:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 49:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Now, the walrus has like done a deep dive into where a lot of Smith's, like, where he is online, what stuff he's sharing, and where his beliefs kind of come from, and a lot of it traces back to Glenn Beck, particularly his website, TheBlaze, which I, is just the least surprising thing in the world, but it's so frustrating that that motherfucker continues to have the kind of penetration that he has.

• 49:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:25Robert Evans?

  One of the stories that Smith shared that seems to have really radicalized him was the arrest of Canadian pastor Arthur Pawlowski, who was fined in December of 2020 for failing to wear a mask while having an unpermitted anti-mask protest. Now, I wouldn't even call this a slap on the wrist, right? He gets fined for breaking- Covid lockdowns and having a protest at the early stages of the pandemic, barely a slap on the wrist. And in fact, just getting charged with this is a huge boon to this guy's career because suddenly he's a victim of religious oppression. Right? This guy goes from a nobody to one of the most famous pastors in the world and other religious leaders like Kevin Smith start screaming that he's a victim of state repression.

• 50:08Robert Evans?

  Pawlowski kind of decides to let this shit ride and so he holds another rally in February of 2021 during which he carries a tiki torch despite it being daylight for reasons that have absolutely nothing with signaling his support to the fascists who used said torches to beat people in Charlottesville back in 2017. Right? Clearly nothing suspicious about the fact that this guy does a tiki torch rally during daylight in February of 2021. Nothing to do with that.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  Fucking weirdos.

• 50:35Robert Evans?

  Proving that he was the one trickiest of one trick ponies, Arter has continued this grift up to the present day and has been locked in basically constant litigation as a result. You know, every time things will calm down, he'll try to commit some other public crime in order to get charges against him so that he can fundraise off of that. He has never been locked away or, you know, disappeared by the state, which you might see as evidence that he's not in any way being persecuted. Right? Nonetheless, this con works perfectly on guys like Smith. It either works on them or they see it as useful to share themselves. Right? And when Smith first hears about Pawlowski's first charges, which resulted in nothing but a fine, he posts on Facebook, "This is abomination persecution of the church in Canada.

• 51:20Robert Evans?

  The world is watching and mouths are closed. We must know it's coming to Jamaica." Now, it absolutely was not. Jamaica is not gearing up for a crackdown on these people. And in fact, thanks in large part to Kevin Smith and other anti-vax, the other Kevin Smith and other anti-vax religious leaders, less than half of Jamaicans have been vaccinated against Covid-19 at any point, a significantly lower rate than most of their neighbors. By summer of 2021, though, Smith is totally pilled and Covid-19 became the sole focus of most of his sermons. For an article in the Jamaica Gleaner, in one of the entries declaring his mission, "Smith, who appeared to be obsessed with titles, declared himself 'His Excellency Dr. Kevin O. Smith, Crown Bishop and End Time Nabi of Him, Conqueror, Lion of the Tribe

• 52:04Robert Evans?

  of Judah, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Iesos Christos, the One and True Living God, Yahweh 999," which is the opposite of 666.

• 52:14Robert Evans?

  Uh, yeah, and also hard to fit on a business card.

• 52:17Speaker 04

  Molly, you should totally take that title.

• 52:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, we need, we need more King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

• 52:26Speaker 04

  Conqueror, lion of the tribe of Judah, podcaster, writer.

• 52:32Robert Evans?

  I think Yahweh 999, that's basically a fucking, uh, you could get that as like a, a license plate.

• 52:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, sounds good.

• 52:40Robert Evans?

  Y H V H 999, sounds good. Um, he makes posts like forced vaccination in law is rape. Uh, a man forcing something into another man is buggery. A man forcing himself into a woman is rape. No prime minister can change common law and common sense. We don't need to go into all of the different things that are wrong about that. That's the kind of rhetoric that he's, he's putting out at this period of time.

• 53:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, his math doesn't add up.

• 53:06Robert Evans?

  No, none of it adds up. In a post responding to a recent statement by Prime Minister Andrew Holness, in which he stated that unvaccinated Jamaicans should not expect the government to prioritize them for bed spaces, Smith prophesied, "We will be pushed out of the hospital and supermarket and the airports and the businesses." Again, this doesn't happen. He began preaching that the police and the military would soon corral Jamaican citizens into camps and force them to take fatal vaccines. Anyone who yielded to the state and took the vaccine would be killed by God, not necessarily literally, but a kind of spiritual death. Meanwhile, Smith promised, "If you give up your life for Christ Jesus, you will save it." So he starts to insist that by October 22nd of 2021,

• 53:48Robert Evans?

  the Jamaican government will use fictitious legislation to make the COVID vaccine mandatory. "The end game will be to try and deceive us or force us into quarantine concentration camps. Prepare to stand your ground."

• 54:00Speaker 04

  And I'm just like, how are we going to get to the throat cutting?

• 54:04Robert Evans?

  I mean, you could see it started to happen here.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I heard forced march to concentration camp.

• 54:09Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Womp womp.

• 54:10Robert Evans?

  Here we go. Right. Like, the government is coming for us on this specific date. We need to be ready, right? That's going to set up a confrontation.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  The Jim Jones situation to come?

• 54:21Robert Evans?

  Yes, exactly. He predicts a series of natural disasters around the globe that will coincide with this, which is all pretty standard end time stuff, but it's married to a marked invisible degradation in Smith's mental health state. Quote, "Smith's behavior in person became noticeably stranger over time. He became more adamant that his congregants donate as much money as possible, telling them that if those who had money resisted giving, the member would crash and die, and that Smith would send his wrath out to the member's family." So he's like, "If you don't give me everything now so that I can get ready for this, I will make sure God kills your relatives in a car crash."

• 54:56Robert Evans?

  Ten days before his predicted date for Jamaica making the vaccine mandatory, Smith told his followers that anyone who gets vaxxed now would be excommunicated from the church. He posted a video to Facebook two days later insisting, "My job is the apocalypse," and that an unveiling is coming soon. His followers were shortly thereafter ordered to prepare their photo IDs and church membership cards and gather at the ark on October 16th. Never a good idea. Never a good idea.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  I'm really starting to wish this was about the mall rats, Kevin Smith.

• 55:26Robert Evans?

  The mall rats. Yes. Oh, if only it was the mall rats, Kevin Smith.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  It's like, and it culminates in like, he made Jersey Girl and it was bad for everyone's careers.

• 55:35Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I just go on like a 15 minute rant about Jersey Girls and Tusk. Yeah, alas.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're like, the view askew prophecy is coming.

• 55:44Robert Evans?

  No, very different. And for an idea of how Smith's sermons leading up to October 16th, this day of prophecy sounded, I'm gonna have Sophie play another clip.

• 55:54Speaker 05

  I have been sent to this nation to declare from America, Canada, Europe, and the world here for the hours come, when your dead bodies will be burned in your houses, when your streets will be spewed with blood. And you see, I come from the key of death, to death. I am the resurrection. I am the one.

• 56:22Speaker 04

  It is a sight. Oh.

• 56:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 56:28Speaker 04

  Sir.

• 56:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah, so he's, you know, really amping people up. You're not getting people into a logical state of mind when you're doing that shit.

• 56:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's he's committed to the to the to the grift.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. The bit.

• 56:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and it's unclear to me how much of this is he has really started to spiral and his mental health has declined as a result of getting caught in this conspiratorial media loop, you know?

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Also, like, look, who was doing well mentally?

• 56:55Robert Evans?

  No one's doing great.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  In 2020 to 2022.

• 56:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Who was like functioning?

• 57:00Robert Evans?

  Who's doing good now?

• 57:01Speaker 01

  Nobody. Yeah, who's doing good now?

• 57:04Robert Evans?

  Right. So early on the 16th, members of Smith's Church start showing up outside the Ark wearing all white.

• 57:12Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 57:12Robert Evans?

  There's a sermon and service that follows that he's not conducting. He's got like lieutenants who are conducting the sermon and service, which goes on until around 1 a.m. the next morning, right? So they're doing like a marathon session. Smith's lieutenants manage the festivities up to this point, and he seems to have spent these hours, like where people are gathering and like this is going on, in a frenzy of social media posting, mostly to Facebook, where he ordered everyone to show up at the Ark without their cell phones, wearing white, saying, "The Ark is loading now. The flood is coming. Go now. Run." He tells everybody that the Ark is going to leave on the 18th. And in case there's any doubt about what that means, he posts that in order to be saved, everyone at the

• 57:55Robert Evans?

  Ark has to participate in what he called a, quote, "Roman Catholic sacrifice that will have no survivors."

• 58:03Robert Evans?

  The cops don't get called as a result of this? Nobody's like, well, this guy's telling everyone to come and there's going to be a sacrifice at this Ark that no one lives through, probably not worth caring about, right? Must just be some like religious bluster. Dozens and dozens of his congregants take this seriously enough that they spend more than a day in prayer. Smith doesn't show up until the 17th, and his first command is for everyone to throw out the canned goods that they'd brought, expecting to need food to survive the apocalypse. Then confusingly, he ordered them to empty soda bottles and fill the soda bottles up with water. One member who showed up that day at the ark was Michael Brown, who had been hospitalized for severe kidney issues and had forcibly discharged himself from the hospital after Smith had ordered everyone to show up at

• 58:48Robert Evans?

  the church. We'll discuss Michael later, but this is a guy with a life-threatening kidney problem who like, leaves his hospital bed where he needs to be to stay alive in order to be at this thing, because he considers it more important. Outside the church, Smith made congregants bow down on their knees before entering, giving them judgment, and writing their names in the Lamb's Book of Life, a biblical register of those chosen for salvation. The walrus reports, "As congregants entered the church, Smith wrote the names of each person in a book. When Tanaka Gardner walked through the doors, Smith turned to her. 'Is your blood clean?' he asked. 'Do you believe that I am the resurrection and the life?' Gardner replied, 'Yes.' Smith then said that her blood had to be cleansed in order for her to be resurrected. 'I will have to cut your

• 59:31Robert Evans?

  throat,' he told her. She allegedly again replied, 'Yes.'"

• 59:36Speaker 04

  Oh, no.

• 59:38Robert Evans?

  I don't know, does she believe this is literal? Are they, does he talk, does he kind of?

• 59:42Speaker 04

  Is he explaining that this is actually like, or is it just metaphorical? Do they really think, I don't know?

• 59:49Robert Evans?

  So, so much of his rhetoric is like, talking in terms that are apocalyptic and violent, but what you mean isn't literal up to this point? Maybe people are like, well, he can't possibly mean he's kind of literally cut people's throats, right? That'd be nuts, you know? So spoiler, that is exactly what he means. So at this point, members are ordered to lay on the ground and throw away any cleaning or sanitation supplies, like antibacterial soap or wipes that they had on them. While this was going on, someone throws a wine bottle onto the floor, and Smith orders a follower to use one of the shards to slit the throat of a congregant who happened to be seated near where the bottle had landed. He told another male- Follower that in order to be worthy of heaven, he would have to let one of Smith's lieutenants cut his throat with a knife.

• 1:00:33Robert Evans?

  This guy got so far as to lay down in front of a dude who had like a knife. When he realized like, oh my God, this guy's gonna actually cut my throat and he fucking runs. He like, he like bounces. He's like, oh shit, you meant this? This isn't just some sort of a fucking thing we're doing. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. And Smith's follower with the knife, a guy named Plummer, chases both of these guys who like, both of these guys flee the ark at this point when they're like, oh, fuck, we're actually gonna get our, no, no, no. He chases both of them out and he stabs them both in the back, wounding both of these men. Meanwhile, back inside the ark, Smith finds Michael Brown, the man with kidney failure, who had left the hospital on his orders. And the pastor told him, you have to die, but you will rise again because I am the resurrection

• 1:01:18Robert Evans?

  and the light. Now, this guy is still wheelchair bound and is still taking IV medications. And Smith pulls the tubes out of this man, causing him to bleed to death. While this is happening, he turns his attention next to Tineka Gardner, who had already agreed to have her throat cut earlier. Per the walrus, Smith then handed a knife to a 17 year old follower named Billy, who he instructed to cut Gardner's throat. But Billy hesitated, later saying that he remembered that one of the 10 commitments states, thou shalt not kill. Smith's right hand man, Andre Rodeck, stepped forward and at Smith's urging, allegedly cut Gardner's throat. She died shortly thereafter.

• 1:01:54Speaker 04

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:01:57Robert Evans?

  So at this point, two people are dead inside the church and two more have been stabbed outside. Some parishioners have gotten the fuck out, right? Other people flee when it becomes clear, he's actually going to be killing us all. And they call the cops, right? Although I should also note, one of the people here is a police officer, one of the parishioners, and I don't think it's him who calls the cops because he might have been down. It's unclear precisely who ordered what, but when the cops show up, members of Smith's church opened fire. Some of them have guns and the police start shooting back and we get a little bit of a Waco situation on our hands here.

• 1:02:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:34Robert Evans?

  Plummer charges the cops with his still bloody knife and is shot and killed by the police, who themselves have to call for backup from the military because they're just not prepared to deal with this whole situation. The church crowd is fully split at this point. A lot of people have fled in sheer terror, but a number of them charged the police. Billy, who'd cut Tanaka's throat, also gets shot in the chest trying to rush the cops, but he ultimately survives. Um, Smith is eventually arrested, along with one of his higher ranking lieutenants, and the police begin searching his properties to try and figure out like, what the fuck happened here? Right? From the perspective of the cops, think of how wild this is. You know about this church. It's a normal, like evangelical church. And then one day you show up and

• 1:03:16Robert Evans?

  there's people with their throat slit and like stabbed out in front and you show up and people start shooting at you and charging you with machetes. And you're like, oh my God, what the fuck is happening here? Um, it's just like completely disorienting to everybody. So, less than two weeks after this goes down, you know, Smith is in custody and incarcerated. And while he's being driven to Kingston with police escorts, the officers driving him take a detour that lengthens the drive. And then his vehicle crashes into two oncoming vehicles. Smith dies at the scene, along with a 26-year-old officer in the car with him, and two other officers are badly injured. There is a lot of immediate speculation like, oh, okay, so he was murdered. This is a setup because of what he knew

• 1:04:00Robert Evans?

  or whatever, like something shady has gone down here. A postmortem revealed that Smith had basically taken off, like, like grabbed the driver's shoulder and pulled him to cause the accident? Yeah. Yeah. That's the official story. I don't know. Like it's, there's some weird stuff here, although if the, if the state orchestrated this, they also got a cop killed with him. But, you know, I don't know. I, I don't know what happened. I don't necessarily need to believe that anything sketchy happened, but this guy, like, probably a lot of people who don't want him testifying also because of some of the shit that he's done. So it's not like inherently weird to be like, well, maybe something went on here. I don't know. Um, but yeah, that's the story of the other Kevin Smith.

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  Fuck me.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:04:46Robert Evans?

  Wow. Yeah, that escalated quickly, huh? That really got out of hand fast. Yeah.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  I had to grab Truman at the end.

• 1:04:53Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  I was like, this is bad. I need a dog.

• 1:04:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah, this is like fucked up and then like right to throat cutting very quickly.

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  Making the guy in the wheelchair bleed out and then have trying to get a 17 year old to slit a woman's throat. It's bad.

• 1:05:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and you really feel for like Jevon, who has to be thinking this whole time, like.

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  What happened to all the fucking money is my question.

• 1:05:19Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I, I mean, you know, that's an interesting question. Obviously, a lot of it gets bribed out. They do find he has a property listed for like 330 grand after he dies. There's a number of other properties, like several million dollars in real estate that get auctioned off. But it looks like based on the, the cost of maintaining everything was not all that far from what was coming in. So there may be a degree that like, maybe as he had gotten crazier and more focused on anti COVID shit, right? It's possible that like, maybe there was a decline in the number of members and the amount of money that they had. And he was losing the ability to like, fund.

• 1:06:00Speaker 04

  Gotcha.

• 1:06:00Robert Evans?

  What he was doing, right? And so maybe there was.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  The big, uh, the big grift, I guess.

• 1:06:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, timed, timed for a swan song, perhaps.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:10Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:06:10Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:11Speaker 04

  Well.

• 1:06:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 04

  That ruined my day. Thanks.

• 1:06:14Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks. Great. Have a wonderful weekend, I guess.

• 1:06:18Robert Evans?

  Have a great time, everybody. Yeah. Maybe, I, I don't know, like, a lot of, all of this is so downstream from like, what happened to everyone during COVID?

• 1:06:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:30Robert Evans?

  Um, or a lot of people during COVID, like the, the, the fact that like the lockdowns really supercharged the spread of a lot of propaganda that really damaged a lot of people's, like, like, cause you see, like, th- this guy is a significantly different logical actor in a lot of ways after that happens, you know? Um, I don't know. Uh, it's bleak.

• 1:06:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:53Robert Evans?

  Yep.

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:06:55Speaker 04

  Molly, what's the name of your book one more time for our listeners?

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  Double Axon Pop.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  Check it out and get it commercial type.com and some bookstores.

• 1:07:06Speaker 04

  Sweet.

• 1:07:07Robert Evans?

  Excellent.

• 1:07:07Speaker 04

  Listen to Away Days podcast wherever you get your podcasts. That's by Jake Hanahan and touch grass after listening to this one.

• 1:07:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm gonna go touch so much grass.

• 1:07:17Speaker 04

  Or, you know, pet a, pet a dog if they want you to.

• 1:07:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah, pet a dog if they want you to touch some grass if you think the grass wants you to.

• 1:07:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Robert Evans?

  And check out, check out Molly's new podcast, you know?

• 1:07:29Speaker 04

  Yeah. When is it? When is the podcast coming?

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Coming out this fall.

• 1:07:34Robert Evans?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Stay tuned.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  Super exciting. All right, guys.

• 1:07:38Robert Evans?

  All right, everybody.

• 1:07:39Speaker 04

  Bye.

• 1:07:45Speaker 04

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

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