Pod Insights National Park After Dark Madness in McCarthy: Wrangell - St. Elias National Park & Preserve (Part 1) About this episode When the Pilgrim family ventured to the remote Alaska town of McCarthy, they were in search of a simple life free from the constraints of the modern world. However, it wasn’t long after their arrival that they began to clash with the National Park Service. What seemed to be a loving family would soon reveal some very dark secrets.*Content Warning: This episode contains domestic and sexual abuse.*For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodesFor the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to this week’s partners! Quince: Use our link to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Naked Wines: To get 6 bottles of wine for $39.99 and join the Naked Wines community, head to NakedWines.com/npad. Soul: For 30% off your order, head to GetSoul.com and use code NPAD. Liquid IV: Use code NPAD at checkout to get 20% off you first order.
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Transcript 17,751 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:03 Cassandra Yahnian? McCarthy, Alaska is famously known as a historic mining town in the remote wilderness of Wrangell St. Elias National Park. Its name was unfortunately seen across the country in 1983 when a deranged man went on a killing spree and murdered almost half the town's population. That event has never been forgotten by locals or foreigners. Despite its painted history, it's a beautiful tundra and serves as an escape from the technological world for many people. When the Pilgrim family arrived one day to make it their home, locals assumed they were here for the incredible landscapes and simple way of life. Unbeknownst to them, they were welcoming a man who ran his family like a cult,
1:45 Cassandra Yahnian? was linked to a possible murder, thievery, and abuse, and he was about to wreak havoc on the little town of McCarthy, Alaska and the National Park Service that governed there. Welcome to National Park After Dark.
2:22 Danielle LaRock? All right. So you are returning to a place you've already done an episode.
2:27 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, yeah, I am. We did. I did exactly that story that I mentioned in the intro. For if people remember, there was this guy, his name was Louis Hastings, and he went into McCarthy, Alaska, and he went there and was upset with how the government was running Alaska. And he decided to take it out on the people of McCarthy. And he went to the airstrip where they all go get their mail because there's very limited resources there. And he actually started shooting and killing people. And there, I did an entire episode on it, and it was a really, really devastating time for the area. And then I came across this story, which is also crazy that it happened in the same spot.
3:09 Cassandra Yahnian? I mean, it's totally different story, completely unrelated, but it's crazy how much stuff has gone down in this little town with almost no people in it.
3:16 Danielle LaRock? Right. Well, I'm excited to hear it, but before, I feel like you've mentioned, just when you've been doing your research on it, that it's kind of like heavier. So do you want to just like knock it into it?
3:28 Cassandra Yahnian? Hang out.
3:30 Danielle LaRock? I don't know. I mean, everyone's here for it, but just for like, just for a second.
3:36 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, I guess if you're watching on YouTube, you should know that I'm wearing glasses so you can see my ring light and I look like a cyborg. But my brain is not liking screens today, so I need my blue light glasses.
3:48 Danielle LaRock? It's fine. You look really cool.
3:50 Cassandra Yahnian? Thank you.
3:51 Danielle LaRock? Futuristic, almost, one would say.
3:54 Cassandra Yahnian? One would say. 2025 is almost here.
3:57 Danielle LaRock? It is. And when this comes out, yeah, December 9th, this comes out, we got big things coming. Tomorrow's my birthday.
4:04 Cassandra Yahnian? Sure.
4:04 Danielle LaRock? And.
4:05 Cassandra Yahnian? Sagittarius is.
4:07 Danielle LaRock? Oh, can I just say, I have been having such a good last couple of days. And I don't know if it's because I truly, truly unplugged from work, which is very rare. For us, but especially like, I don't know, you just do a better job of just saying no and like drawing that line and being like, no, today I'm not doing this. I will say that and then throughout the day I'll like login and do a couple of things here and there. So I very rarely have like true 100% time dedicated to time off. And that's what I did over the last couple of days and I just feel a lot better. But I really think it's because it's Sagittarius season and it's just my time to shine.
4:50 Cassandra Yahnian? It's your time to thrive. Well, first off, I'm proud of you. Work-life balance. You deserve it.
4:54 Danielle LaRock? Thank you. Yeah.
4:55 Cassandra Yahnian? And it is your time to shine. It is your birthday month, not just birthday, but birthday month.
5:02 Danielle LaRock? It's just like, I'm not even a huge birthday person. I just really feel the energy of this season. I just, I feel good. It's all about like new, fresh energy and like, yeah, out with the old and with the new. I just love it. And as a Sagittarius who is always looking for the newest, funnest, most exciting thing, I really feel this. Lots of fun things coming up in our lives. We are both going on some mini trips in the next couple of days. I'll be in Ireland.
5:32 Cassandra Yahnian? Not work-related, just personal?
5:34 Danielle LaRock? Personal only. I'll be in Ireland, you'll be in Death Valley.
5:38 Cassandra Yahnian? Yes. Then we're also going to Vegas, which will be my very first time in Vegas. So that will be interesting. Uh, what's that?
5:47 Danielle LaRock? What? The big sphere, the new, like, most high-tech? Are you kidding me?
5:53 Cassandra Yahnian? I don't pay attention to Vegas literally even slightly.
5:56 Danielle LaRock? Okay, I will admit, I'm gonna admit right now, I'm like on my high horse right now. I would have no idea what the sphere was if it wasn't for Jeff Larson of Tooth and Claw. I would have no, literally no idea. But it's actually really cool and I'm glad that now I know about it. It's just this huge, I guess it's-
6:16 Cassandra Yahnian? What is it?
6:17 Danielle LaRock? Is it like a stadium? God, I'm embarrassing myself.
6:19 Cassandra Yahnian? You don't even know what it is and you're telling me why I don't know what it is. It's a big- It's a building shaped like a circle.
6:28 Danielle LaRock? A sphere, if you would, if you will. Um, and it's has this amazing wraparound screen and they did, they did some big like MMA fight in there. They did um, a couple concerts, but they also will play these really immersive films like nature documentaries and like, this is our world type of thing. And it's like this really, it's really cool. You should try and go if you're there because I heard it's amazing. Yeah, okay. Well, what else has been happening? People are like, okay, just please shut up. Um, but we got our trees.
7:02 Danielle LaRock? And yours is crazy.
7:05 Danielle LaRock? Yours is insane.
7:06 Cassandra Yahnian? Mine is so crazy. I we
7:10 Danielle LaRock? Overcommitted is a good word.
7:12 Cassandra Yahnian? Is an understatement. So we went to this little Christmas tree farm near our house and we were walking around and we just knew that we wanted a really tall tree because we have tall ceilings now at the house. And we renovated the living room. Last year we couldn't have Christmas in the living room. This year we can. And I just knew I wanted a tall tree. So we're walking around and everything just feels short, but we're like outside. I don't know. And then we come across this tree that's so tall. It actually had like a, like a five foot trunk before the branches even started. And then above that was the actual tree. So I was, so Al saw it and he's like, what about this one?
7:54 Cassandra Yahnian? I was like, it's perfect. So we cut it down and I was also thinking that they would be able to put this tree through. You know, like when you pick up trees, they put it through that netting that
8:05 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, it just kind of squishes it down. Sucks everything in, yeah.
8:07 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. So they were not able to do that because this tree is six and a half feet wide and it is 11 feet tall. After we cut off five feet of it.
8:19 Danielle LaRock? But where there's a will, there's a way.
8:22 Cassandra Yahnian? We had to cut half of the tree off, the back of it, all the branches, so we could fit it through the door.
8:28 Danielle LaRock? But it looks great.
8:31 Danielle LaRock? It's so plump.
8:34 Cassandra Yahnian? It is even bigger in person than in photos.
8:36 Danielle LaRock? You know what I need actually is because you sent me the picture and it looks massive, but that's because I have a good idea of your house because I've been there. So I know the physical space. You need to stand in front of it, kind of like when I took a picture of you in in front of that giant sloth at the museum.
8:53 Cassandra Yahnian? Just to really get an idea.
8:55 Danielle LaRock? Perspective of. Of scale. Yeah.
8:57 Cassandra Yahnian? I'll have, I'll take a picture of me in front of it later. So.
9:00 Danielle LaRock? Okay. Yeah. Mine is the polar opposite.
9:03 Cassandra Yahnian? Yours is really cute. And your story of how you got it is cute, too.
9:06 Danielle LaRock? Oh, yeah. I got a permit for the White Mountain National Forest, $5 at the ranger station. You can go or you can get them on recreation.gov. By now, pretty much everyone probably has their tree, but maybe for next year. It's an idea. A lot of national forests do this. You can go get your permit for $5, either online or in the station. And the rules for the White Mountain National Forest were pretty much like you can go anywhere on national forest land. Just you have to be away from, you know, campgrounds, the roadways, like 100 feet, waterways, things like that. And there are certain rules about how big of a tree. Like, I couldn't be cutting down. I think.
9:48 Cassandra Yahnian? The tree I cut down.
9:49 Danielle LaRock? Size tree. Yeah. But anyway, so yeah, I just brought like a little bow saw and a red sled, like a $5 little red sled to pull it out. And yeah, so the tree wasn't huge because I had to be able to physically pull it out.
10:03 Cassandra Yahnian? Sure.
10:04 Danielle LaRock? And it's pretty sparse. So it's, it's like, it's between a Charlie Brown tree and your standard Christmas tree farm tree.
10:12 Cassandra Yahnian? That's a good way to describe it because it's not so sparse that it would be a Charlie Brown tree.
10:17 Danielle LaRock? Right. But it has that vibe about it.
10:20 Cassandra Yahnian? But it's really cute. I like it.
10:21 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. And then last year, yeah, last year, I looked up Victorian Christmas traditions and things like that and what the Victorians used to do to celebrate the holidays. And for their garland, they would, a lot of them would dehydrate oranges, like orange slices, And berries and use cinnamon sticks to thread on to garland. So I did that. And so now I have garland from last year that I saved for this year. And that's my
10:51 Cassandra Yahnian? Does it still smell good?
10:52 Danielle LaRock? Um, it doesn't really smell like much, but last year it smelled really good. And then the ornaments I have are just kind of the ones that we've collected through our travels. Like I have ones from different national parks. I have the hand blown glass that we made.
11:06 Cassandra Yahnian? Oh, cute.
11:07 Danielle LaRock? Where were we?
11:08 Cassandra Yahnian? We were in Yosemite.
11:09 Danielle LaRock? Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Just like, so it's kind of eclectic and weird and all over the place, but it's very fitting.
11:14 Cassandra Yahnian? Love it.
11:15 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. Okay, let's, it's been almost 15 minutes, I feel like.
11:18 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. Okay, we can get into our story. We just wanted, so I do before, one last thing before we jump into the story is I do want to offer a trigger warning because this is a pretty, this is a pretty hard episode. Um, when I was, I read two books for this and this has, we'll get obviously into the story more, but it, there's just a lot of domestic violence. There's some talk of suicide in it. There's also a lot of sexual abuse that happens, which I am not going to go into like grave detail about in this episode because I just don't think it's necessary. But I will be talking about it because it is very important to the episode and the story. And also I think that it is important to note
12:01 Cassandra Yahnian? that this story also has a lot of using religion to abuse family members. So I think that that's really important because I know that that can be a sensitive subject, especially right now is a, the holidays that is surrounded by a lot of religion. So I know it's a, it's a tough time for that. So just to go into that with a warning and also I'll just bring out my book recommendation from the get go for this. So I read two books. One of them is Pilgrim's Wilderness, A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier by Tom Kizia.
12:36 Cassandra Yahnian? And it is an amazing book. This author actually is a journalist who interviewed and was on site when all of this stuff was going down with the national park with this family and he One on one with some of the people involved, he knew the main person involved in this. So his story or this book is what I primarily used for my research for this episode, but along with that, I also have a second book that I had to read. This is the first episode I've ever read two books to do it. But also the other one I read was Out of the Wilderness, Escaping My Father's Prison
13:20 Cassandra Yahnian? and My Journey to Forgiveness by Alicia Baudrillard-Dorkinson. So it's a combined story of this man who went into Wrangle St. Elias National Park with his family. And the second book I read is his daughter's point of view of what went down. And it's very interesting from a journalist's perspective and more of a government, what's going on perspective and then her firsthand experience.
13:48 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
13:49 Cassandra Yahnian? So let's just dive into the story.
13:54 Danielle LaRock? Let's just get into it 20 minutes.
13:56 Cassandra Yahnian? Let's just get into it. This is going to be a really long one. This is a, it's a two parter. From the episode description, you probably see that this is a two parter. So hang tight because this episode is, there is so much to the story that just read the book. I mean, read the book. I have to say, listen to the, listen to this episode, please. But also read the book. It's so interesting and, and really heartbreaking. So going back to the town of McCarthy.
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14:58 Cassandra Yahnian? When you hear about the rugged, desolate Alaska, the last frontier, this small town of McCarthy, Alaska is pretty much the epitome of what you envision. Sitting at the foot of Wrangle St. Elias National Park, it's within the boundaries of the largest national park within the United States, being six times larger than Yellowstone. McCarthy is remote, largely uninhabited, and only accessible by small bush plane or an unmaintained 60-mile or 96-kilometer gravel road. While resources vary, the numbers can be kind of hard to calculate due to seasonal workers that come and go. As of right now, the population of this town sits around 100 residents, or maybe even less than that. This town is an old mining town with little more than a hotel, saloon, church, and gas station.
15:43 Cassandra Yahnian? It also sits just five miles from the historic Kennicott Mining Town that has the picturesque and unique place for tourists to visit that we see a lot. If you look up this national park, this town of Kennicott is pretty much the first pictures that will come up. And we talked about that town a lot in the last episode that I did. So I'm not going to go super into it this time, but the last one we did in Wrangle St. Elias, if you're interested, you can learn more about Kennicott. But this specifically takes place in McCarthy. And in the town of McCarthy, all of these people that have found themselves making it their home have something in common. And each of them have the want and need to be away from society, away from the government, to do as they please
16:28 Cassandra Yahnian? without the stress of the outside world, without the government involved, and to be somewhere that's beautiful. They're all hardy people living in modest homes with just the essentials. A lot of them live off the land. They rely on their own means for food and supplies. And every household knows how to hunt. They carry guns. They forged their own way through grueling winter conditions that bring temperatures far to the negative degrees with white-out snowstorms and unpredictable weather. So by no means is this an easy lifestyle, but it's more of people here are looking for a simpler way of life. And as you can imagine, Not a lot of people are willing to live this way. I mean, you're really living off the basics here.
17:12 Cassandra Yahnian? So there are a few people who commit to moving here full time. However, the summer season boasts tourists and there are a lot of people who will come live seasonally. There will be people in and out just coming to see the park and it can be more of a bustling area during the summertime. But the winter is very quiet. Besides the occasional bush plane in and out for supplies and mail, there's not a lot of traffic into the town or the park and residents are largely left to themselves during the winter months. So when the owners of the McCarthy Lodge, Neil Darish, was shoveling snow off of his roof in the midst of January 2002, saw two unknown trucks trudging through the unplowed road,
17:54 Cassandra Yahnian? he was surprised and intrigued on what was happening, but he realized something was off from the start. The trucks both had multiple people in the beds of them, which normally wouldn't be an uncommon sight, but that afternoon it was negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit or negative 28 degrees Celsius with wind chill. And his first thought as these trucks approached was who the hell would do that? But more than that, to enter the town, you actually had to cross a footbridge that didn't have access for cars. So in order for him to see these trucks coming, the way that they were coming, it meant that these visitors would have had to push their trucks over the river ice to cross into town.
18:35 Danielle LaRock? So he was like red flag.
18:38 Cassandra Yahnian? He's like, what is going? I don't know if he thought red flag right away, but it was like, what in the world is happening at this moment? So he watches them pull in and part and they park right in front of the lodge and he's standing on the roof observing them. And he sees eight young people in their teens and early twenties come out of the truck. The boys had long hair and old fashioned looking clothing of wool and leather. The girls were in tattered jackets and long skirts with floral patterns. And then the driver of the second truck emerged and this man was much older with a very long unruly beard. The man spotted Neil on the roof and he quickly waved his hand to what appeared to be to his children.
19:22 Cassandra Yahnian? And two of the boys grabbed shovels and scrambled up the ladder to help him clear off the roof. Neil tried to tell them like, please don't come up here. It's dangerous and I don't need your help. But they refused and they continued to clear off the roof until Neil himself climbed off the roof and invited the family to come inside. Once they were inside, an innkeeper that was there offered them coffee and they all sat down around a table, except for the younger people standing. They stood silently in the corner. So it was just the older gentleman that sat down while they all stood behind him and he introduced himself in a very southern accent as Pilgrim. And he said that he was with just some of his children.
20:05 Cassandra Yahnian? He said that he had chosen the name because, quote, "I'm a sojourner on this earth. The Bible says we're all strangers and pilgrims and we live by faith until our Lord returns." Which Neil kind of was like, okay, cool. Sounds good. And then Neil asked him, what brought them all out this way? Why did you just cross a river in horrible weather over ice and snow and an unplowed road? Like, what's going on? Which led Pilgrim into kind of a long-winded story of how they ended up at that point. He explained that they were a Christian family. They said him and his wife and their 14 children had traveled from New Mexico to Alaska three years prior, looking for a new place to make their home.
20:49 Cassandra Yahnian? He explained that his wife and other children were waiting back in Kenai for them to return. They had lived in the Rockies of New Mexico, but said in recent years it had become too civilized and they were looking for a place they could live in peace, undisturbed from the outside world. The kids had lived in the mountains, growing up riding horses, tending to their farm and being homeschooled. They had never watched television or had much experience with the outside world at all. Pilgrim explained that he was a midwife and he helped his wife deliver all 14 of their children at home. So he's really giving them like a whole backstory of who he is. He's like, and this is why I'm here. So he said- To Neil that God had spoken to him and told him that his family should go to Alaska.
21:31 Cassandra Yahnian? Over the past three years, they had explored Anchorage, Fairbanks, and the Kenai Peninsula, but were surprised at how modernized things were and how connected to the cash economy and government people were in those areas. It wasn't this last frontier he had imagined when he had heard of Alaska. It wasn't until recently, though, through friends that he had made, he had learned of McCarthy, and he knew immediately that the town had been exactly what he had been searching for. Now, all whilst he explained the story, his children, some of whom were in their twenties, remained completely silent, standing in the corner, listening to every word that he said. Pilgrim then proceeded to ask Neil if there were any properties for sale in the area.
22:14 Cassandra Yahnian? And this is when Pilgrim realized that he had really reached the jackpot here. Neil explained to him that there were, in fact, properties that were for sale in the area. While the majority of this land was national park land, there was an agreement made where the Park Service did not take land that was already in current use or previously owned by miners, not children, like the old mining families, who had kept the land in their families. So it's a historic mining town, a lot of families owned mines. The way I said that is like owned by miners, they're not children.
22:50 Danielle LaRock? Oh, I was, okay, I got confused when you went to clarify. I was like, wait, where are the children involved?
22:55 Cassandra Yahnian? The way I just read it, I just pictured like owned by miners, and then I thought of like children, but I'm glad you weren't confused.
23:01 Danielle LaRock? You might be the only one who was confused there. Well, it's okay.
23:06 Cassandra Yahnian? Thank you everyone for bearing with me.
23:07 Danielle LaRock? We now all know.
23:08 Cassandra Yahnian? You all now know for certain. So basically, there are pieces of land that are for sale, and the Park Service was actually trying to buy up these pieces of land because they're within, they're kind of within the national park boundaries, but there's just like these weird sections of land that the National Park Service is not a part of. So the National Park Service had been trying to buy them up and had been successful in a lot of instances, but there was still a lot of land that was up for grabs. People and families who didn't visit anymore. This talk about land was pretty quick. It was kind of like a passing. And Neil didn't really think too much of it at first because he didn't really expect Pilgrim
23:49 Cassandra Yahnian? to actually pursue moving there. He had seen a lot of tourists that had come in and dreamed about living in McCarthy, but there were very few who were willing to endure that actual lifestyle. So at first he kind of thought of it as just like a passing conversation. And Pilgrim didn't push it further at first. Instead, he told the children to go out to the truck and moments later, they returned with musical instruments, guitars, mandolins, fiddles, and a banjo, and they began to play for Neil. And they were surprisingly amazing performers. They played what Pilgrim called hillbilly music, but it was old time country gospel. They played each instrument fantastically. They sang, they harmonized, and they put on
24:30 Cassandra Yahnian? this show that felt like it would be something that you would buy tickets to go see them. Like, it really felt like a professional concert had just walked through the door at this lodge in the middle of nowhere, Alaska. So Neil, of course, this doesn't happen all the time, and they're so amazing and performing, that he gets on the phone and he calls all the local people and he says, hey, get down here. There's the live music if you want to see it. And stuff doesn't really go down in the winter. So shortly afterwards, a small crowd of locals from McCarthy joined to watch. Now, while they played, Pilgrim continued conversations and he explained that all of his children were self taught and had been
25:09 Cassandra Yahnian? performing at festivals for years. He then continued to inquire about the land. And Neil kind of realized this time, oh, like, oh, he seems a lot more serious. So he explains to him how difficult it would be to actually go out and survey this land to see if it was something he wanted to buy, because there were no roads and everything was snow covered that time of year. And really, the only way to get out there would be by a snowmobile. By the end of the night, Pilgrim announced that they would return in February with snowmobiles to explore the property and thank them all for a great night and left.
25:47 Danielle LaRock? Can I just give you one fun fact I learned?
25:50 Cassandra Yahnian? Yes.
25:51 Danielle LaRock? Really quickly. Do you know the town that's the quote unquote home of the snowmobile, the first snowmobile?
26:00 Cassandra Yahnian? I feel like it's in New Hampshire.
26:01 Danielle LaRock? It is.
26:02 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, I know New Hampshire. I don't know which town it is, though.
26:05 Danielle LaRock? Oscepe.
26:06 Cassandra Yahnian? Is it?
26:07 Danielle LaRock? I, when I was going to get the tree, I
26:10 Cassandra Yahnian? Saw that.
26:11 Danielle LaRock? I saw the sign and it was like home of the first, I don't know if it's at the first snowmobile or the snowmobile.
26:18 Cassandra Yahnian? Probably the first. I've seen that sign before because I did know it was in New Hampshire.
26:22 Danielle LaRock? I had no clue. No clue. I would have never, I would have lost that trivia round for sure. New Hampshire out of all the places?
26:31 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, New Hampshire was, or the east coast was the first like inhabited by settlers and they had to deal with winter first and then.
26:42 Danielle LaRock? But a snowmobile wasn't invented by settlers.
26:46 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, or it's not even, yeah, electric and motors and.
26:49 Danielle LaRock? I would have thought somewhere in the, um, the lakes region. Minnesota.
26:56 Cassandra Yahnian? Okay.
26:56 Danielle LaRock? Wisconsin. I don't know. I just, anyway. Okay, keep going.
27:00 Cassandra Yahnian? New Hampshire's claim to fame.
27:02 Danielle LaRock? There's a lot of claims to fame.
27:04 Cassandra Yahnian? New Hampshire does.
27:05 Danielle LaRock? Do they?
27:07 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, I mean, we have Robert Frost.
27:09 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
27:10 Cassandra Yahnian? The snowmobiles.
27:12 Danielle LaRock? What don't we have?
27:14 Cassandra Yahnian? That's the question.
27:15 Danielle LaRock? That's the real question.
27:16 Cassandra Yahnian? That's the real question. Yeah.
27:17 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
27:18 Cassandra Yahnian? Anyway, so all in all, this, uh, interaction that goes on with Neil and the pilgrim family is pretty interesting. For Neil, the family seemed unusual, but they also seemed like the type of family that would want to move into McCarthy. A lot of the families that moved in weren't exactly like normal. They were all a little eccentric or just different, wanted to live off the land, required a certain type of person. So he's like, you know, they do kind of seem like they would fit in here. And at the time, there were only 30 residents living in McCarthy full time. So his first thought goes to like, wow, we'd be adding another 16 people because they're 14 children, two adults. That would be. Half of the population in addition to it. So it really increased the population.
28:04 Cassandra Yahnian? So he was a little bit concerned about that, but at the same time, he was like, the family seems nice and seems like they just want to stick to themselves and have their own land and they're this religious family with very well behaved children and young adults and they seem harmless, basically. However, as Neil and the other residents of McCarthy would get to know them, the more concerning things would become with the pilgrims. Pilgrim was true to his word, and six weeks later, him and several of the children arrived with six old snowmobiles. They searched for land during the day and stayed at the lodge during the night. There were rumors of remote cabins on abandoned properties that they went out and searched for. They went miles and miles out into the remote wilderness in search of these often
28:48 Cassandra Yahnian? crossing and passing through other people's properties. And the way the family was behaving was certainly frowned upon. In such a rural area with few residents, there are some unwritten rules when you are trespassing on someone else's property. And if you show up unannounced to a cabin in the middle of Alaska to a family that is most likely heavily armed, you should stop and introduce yourself and explain while you're there, especially if the family actually sees you on their land. Just kind of like, all right, you're in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of armed people. You should be polite. But Pilgrim didn't follow this kind of common courtesy rule. Each time he came across a cabin with occupants that clearly noticed him and his family, they would stop, turn around, and head elsewhere without
29:33 Cassandra Yahnian? acknowledging them at all. And it was pretty odd behavior that McCarthy residents were noticing over the next several weeks while they searched for land they wanted to buy. So it wasn't like anything that was like really bad, but it was just like, huh, what are these people up to? They're not even.
29:50 Danielle LaRock? Like, something seems off about this.
29:52 Cassandra Yahnian? Eventually, their search led them to McCarthy Creek Valley and an old mine known as the Motherlode. It sat within private land that extended 420 acres. And this valley was absolutely stunning. It was beautiful and it was very remote. Along with that, it had several older buildings on it that with some fixing up could be livable. It was 13 miles from McCarthy with no real access to it, except for an old historic mining road that was largely overgrown. Getting there, even on snowmobiles, took a lot of time as it was filled with forests and steep inclines. When Pilgrim saw it, he knew that this would be perfect for what they were looking for. And he deemed this new location for his family, Hillbilly Heaven.
30:36 Cassandra Yahnian? With this new site on their minds, they left McCarthy and headed to Fairbanks, where the owner of that land, Walt Wigger, was. And when he got there and he spoke to him, it turned out that the National Park Service had been trying to buy that exact land for years. But Walt wasn't happy with what they were offering and wasn't a fan of the National Park Service in general. Pilgrim offered to pay double the price of what the Park Service was offering, and Walt was thrilled at this. He ended up selling the property to him for $450,000, with the agreement that Pilgrim would pay him $30,000 annually until it was paid off. So he must have not liked the Park Service so much that he was willing to take, like, install an installment plan
31:20 Cassandra Yahnian? versus actually paying the Park Service. But part of why the Park Service wanted this land so much is that it, directly, to get to this piece of land, you had to cross through Wrangle St. Elias National Park. From McCarthy or from wherever you were, it was basically this plot of 420 acres that was completely surrounded by National Park land. Minus like a border of some other land that people owned.
31:45 Danielle LaRock? I don't know if you're going to get to this, but what does Pilgrim do for? Or money.
31:50 Cassandra Yahnian? I love that you asked that. So Pilgrim doesn't actually do anything for money. He is, uh, he kind of lives off of different means like he gets, he has his family, like I mentioned before, they were performing at festivals and getting money that way. But what helped Pilgrim to afford this was actually the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend payments. So this is something that actually still is in existence today. This was in 2002. So the numbers might be a little bit different now, but Alaska will actually pay you to live there. And they do this by using some of the money that they make from the state's investment of oil revenues.
32:35 Cassandra Yahnian? So at the time, the state of Alaska was paying $1,963.86 each year per person. And since they had a family of 16 people, that accumulated very nicely over the three years that they had lived there. Cause they also live by very, very little means. So they don't grocery shop. They don't like.
32:56 Danielle LaRock? Okay, but do I have to do the math? Cause I feel like, okay, so what'd you say? Like 1,500? Did you say 1,500?
33:03 Cassandra Yahnian? 1,900. So we'll say 2,000 times 16 people. That's over $30,000 per year.
33:11 Danielle LaRock? That's 32 grand a year times three. Okay. So 96 grand.
33:15 Cassandra Yahnian? Yes.
33:16 Danielle LaRock? If you're taking every penny.
33:18 Cassandra Yahnian? Well, and their other thing is that they're also living off of government stipends for their family too, like family assistance.
33:25 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
33:25 Cassandra Yahnian? To help pay for the children.
33:27 Danielle LaRock? 450,000 dollars is.
33:29 Cassandra Yahnian? It seems overpromised for sure. It's like, yeah, I'll pay you $30,000 per year. In installments and I make 30,000 just off of Alaska. Yeah.
33:42 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, it definitely seems a bit.
33:45 Danielle LaRock? It just gives me anxiety. I don't like owing people things and I feel like Pilgrim is gonna owe a lot.
33:52 Cassandra Yahnian? Pilgrim's gonna get in some shit for sure.
33:54 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
33:54 Cassandra Yahnian? But anyway, this deal goes through. For whatever reason Walt Wigger didn't see this as a red flag and they returned to McCarthy to celebrate and this time they brought all of the children and they brought all of the children and finally Pilgrim also brought his wife, Country Rose. Now to the residents of McCarthy, this looked like a loving, traditional family. But Pilgrim hadn't been completely honest about his past in New Mexico. There was actually a much darker side to their story that he had left out. And I felt like this would be a really good time to get you a little bit acquainted to the whole family since there's a lot of them.
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35:43 Cassandra Yahnian? So I wanted to say all their names. I don't expect everyone to remember every single one and I will elaborate on who we'll be talking about as we talk about them. But I wanted to include the list of all the children and in this list, there is a 15th child who Country Rose gave birth to shortly after moving to McCarthy. So first, there is Alisha Ba and she is really the story that I'm focusing on. So she is the person that you're going to hear from the most from the children's point of view and she's the oldest daughter. So we're going to get into her story a lot. Her, his other daughters were
36:22 Cassandra Yahnian? Jerusalem, Lamb, Bethlehem, Psalms, and Hosanna. His sons were Israel, Job, Jonathan, Joseph, Moses, Noah, Abraham, David, and Joshua. All in all, six girls and nine boys that they had together.
36:40 Danielle LaRock? How old was the oldest?
36:42 Cassandra Yahnian? The oldest one, Alisha Ba, is 27 at this point.
36:46 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
36:46 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, so she's an adult and there are a few adults. She's the oldest. There's a few others that are in their early twenties and there's some that are teenagers and there's some that are children, children. So they really vary in age.
37:01 Danielle LaRock? Can you imagine being pregnant for like 15 years straight, pretty much?
37:06 Cassandra Yahnian? And with no, like, they don't believe in healthcare or anything like that. So they do everything from home. You're giving birth from home, like all your children are receiving care at home, like.
37:15 Danielle LaRock? I'm just hung up on the pregnancy thing.
37:18 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, giving birth.
37:20 Danielle LaRock? Not even that.
37:21 Cassandra Yahnian? And being pregnant for, yeah.
37:23 Danielle LaRock? It's a lot.
37:25 Cassandra Yahnian? It's a lot.
37:25 Danielle LaRock? For that long. I mean, and not even to mention the complications that could potentially.
37:33 Danielle LaRock? All right. I do you get, I don't know if that
37:35 Cassandra Yahnian? And they live a hard life, like.
37:37 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. It's not like she's kicking up, watching TLC or whatever.
37:42 Cassandra Yahnian? No.
37:43 Danielle LaRock? You know?
37:43 Cassandra Yahnian? No, definitely not. They do not watch any TV and I'll get, let me get into some of their background. So you can understand.
37:51 Danielle LaRock? Distracted by that.
37:52 Cassandra Yahnian? No, it's so distracting.
37:53 Danielle LaRock? Not crazy. Sorry if that's your thing. If you want to be pregnant for 15 years, go for it, but it's just.
37:58 Cassandra Yahnian? More power to you, but uh, no, they have, um, they have a really rough lifestyle. So Pilgrim met Country Rose. Her original name was Carino Rose Bressler, which he later changed when they uh, became a lot more religious. And they met at a hot springs in California when she was just 16 years old. At this time Pilgrim was actually 33 years old and he had been married three times prior. And he had four children outside of his marriage, outside of, in those marriages that he had no contact with.
38:32 Danielle LaRock? So yes, 19 kids.
38:35 Danielle LaRock? It's like, but I mean, Pilgrim did it before Nick Cannon.
38:40 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. Yeah, he sure did. And I don't know.
38:43 Danielle LaRock? How many children Nick Cannon has? I just know it's a lot.
38:46 Cassandra Yahnian? It is a lot. I just saw an article that he went to, I don't know if it's true or not. It said like he was being treated for narcissistic, narcissistic personality disorder or something. I don't really know.
38:57 Danielle LaRock? What?
38:58 Cassandra Yahnian? I don't know if it's true or not either. It was just a random article that popped up on Facebook. So don't quote me.
39:02 Danielle LaRock? Okay, well, oh, he has 12.
39:04 Cassandra Yahnian? 12. Okay. So he's getting there. Pilgrim's got him beat.
39:08 Danielle LaRock? And I just like, don't really get it. Like 12, okay, 12 children with six different women. And like, I don't know.
39:17 Cassandra Yahnian? I think he is doing it because he thinks that he has like superior DNA or something, which also don't quote me.
39:23 Danielle LaRock? Nick Cannon?
39:24 Cassandra Yahnian? Nick Cannon. Maybe Pilgrim do.
39:28 Danielle LaRock? Do you think?
39:30 Cassandra Yahnian? I think I read something that said that he was trying to like, he thought he had like this golden sperm and was spreading his, yeah, like.
39:40 Danielle LaRock? That fits into the narcissistic, whatever you just said. Okay.
39:44 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
39:44 Danielle LaRock? I don't want to hear anything about golden sperm.
39:49 Cassandra Yahnian? Unfortunately, that's not the worst we're gonna hear this episode. Anyway, so he meets Karina, Country Rose, when she's only 16 years old. But he later says that when he met Karina, the Lord appeared to him and told him that she would bear 21 of his children.
40:10 Danielle LaRock? I'm just keeping my mouth shut because I feel like this episode will be 10 hours long if I keep interjecting. I just have goosebumps, I gotta tell you.
40:20 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. I mean, all for a big family, I totally get why you would want a big family. It's just like 21.
40:26 Danielle LaRock? Just imagine you're 16 years old.
40:29 Cassandra Yahnian? And 16 with a 33 year old, like, we won't even get into the predatory side of that and how it's very illegal, but.
40:35 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, that aside.
40:37 Cassandra Yahnian? That aside.
40:38 Danielle LaRock? Um, imagine you're just minding your own business and this guy walks up to you and says, the Lord came to me and said, you're gonna have 21 of my children.
40:49 Cassandra Yahnian? I would instantly vomit.
40:50 Danielle LaRock? I would probably laugh because that's just my first. I always laugh at things. Yeah, I laugh when things are funny, when I'm uncomfortable, when like all the ranges, I've laughed. But that's just, did he say that or did he like have a different approach?
41:07 Cassandra Yahnian? I don't think he said that when he met her. I think he later, once they got together, said like, the Lord told me you're gonna have 21 children of mine.
41:17 Danielle LaRock? She's on the way, for sure.
41:19 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, she's, they're definitely working towards it. And when they first met, she was not, uh, they came from very different worlds. So when she eventually introduced her parents to him, where they lived in Beverly Hills is where she's from and her parents are from. They met pilgrim and instantly forbade them from seeing each other. They, I'm pretty sure they kicked him out of their house. They were like, get, what is this? You're 33 years old. She's 16, like, get the, out of here, you know? Uh, but instead of listening, Karina actually ran away with him where they ended up living in communes together and they did copious amounts of drugs together. Pilgrim was an angry man on drugs and after an incident where he threw burning hot campfire
42:04 Cassandra Yahnian? coals on both Karina and their newborn baby, causing third degree burns, they went back to Pilgrim's hometown in Texas and they found Jesus together. So basically they said like, we need, we need to start living differently and that's where they found religion. The couple lived on the mountains of New Mexico after that, paying a $10 a month per lease to a celebrity owner to take care of their land. And that celebrity was actually Jack Nicholson.
42:33 Danielle LaRock? Hold on a minute. I, this, wait.
42:36 Cassandra Yahnian? I know. And I didn't mention this in the commune thing, but he also, uh, had ties with Marilyn Manson.
42:46 Danielle LaRock? Pilgrim did?
42:46 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
42:48 Danielle LaRock? Okay, hold on. So they're in New Mexico and they're on Jack Nicholson's land?
42:55 Cassandra Yahnian? Yep.
42:56 Danielle LaRock? And who's paying him $10?
42:59 Cassandra Yahnian? They're paying him $10, uh, $10 a month to be able to live on his land.
43:07 Danielle LaRock? What an arrangement. Is this before Jack Nicholson was famous?
43:10 Cassandra Yahnian? No, Jack Nicholson was very famous when this was happening. This is 2002.
43:16 Danielle LaRock? No, no, no, no. This must be before.
43:18 Cassandra Yahnian? Oh, no. Yeah, you're right. You're right. This is not, this is before that.
43:22 Danielle LaRock? So I, I don't know, 80s, 90s, I'm guessing.
43:24 Cassandra Yahnian? I think it was, I didn't write down the date. It's in the book. I think it was early 1990s.
43:30 Danielle LaRock? That's still, how does that arrangement come to be?
43:36 Cassandra Yahnian? Well, so glad you asked. So Pilgrim had found this land and similar to the McCarthy story, he found it and said, wow, this is where we need to live. This is how I want to be. The Lord's telling me this is our, this is our home. So he finds out that Jack Nicholson is the owner and he actually gets his contact information and he writes him a letter requesting to take care of the land and details his family's nomadic lifestyle and the way, and their way of life, living off the land, raising farm animals, just how they wanted to live this quiet, out of the way lifestyle to live off the land and not through the government. And whatever he wrote, whatever it was. Jack Nicholson liked the letter and he responded and he agreed and invited the
44:21 Cassandra Yahnian? family to be there with the fact that they would pay $10 per month and that they would be kind of just watching over the land, making sure no one was trespassing and things like that. So, and I will say that there was actually no structures on this land when he had found it. It wasn't like, wow, there's a house here. I'm gonna live here. There wasn't any of that. They actually moved there. There's nothing on there. They move in the middle of winter. And when they get there, they weren't living in anything and they began living in something because there was a severe snowstorm and Pilgrim actually built a lean-to around the family during the, during the snowstorm for them to take shelter. And they started
45:02 Cassandra Yahnian? living in this small lean-to. Living in New Mexico was very hard living. The lean-to was, like I said, very small. The only light it had was an oil lamp. There was no electricity. And the family had to actually just snuggle up together at night to stay warm. There was no fireplace. There was no means of heat or anything. They're just living under this lean-to essentially. Despite the hardships, the family had found their unwavering faith in those mountains when the family was struck by lightning and survived. So they end up building like a bigger structure, not by much, but it's a bigger, it can house more people. They have more children and they still don't have electricity. There is very, very minimal
45:43 Cassandra Yahnian? means. But by this time, that when they get struck by lightning, they had been allowing this troubled man to spend the night and he just needed a place to stay. Some friends asked if he could stay with him, with them, and they said yes. And just as this man was beginning to complain of all of their talk of Jesus, they were struck by lightning.
46:05 Danielle LaRock? Ah, divine.
46:07 Cassandra Yahnian? Divine intervention.
46:07 Danielle LaRock? Intervention.
46:09 Cassandra Yahnian? So Country Rose actually died for a moment. She had an out of body experience hovering above her body. And in this, she watched as her husband resuscitated her, and she watched the man who was staying with them flee. When the chaos was over, they found that a wooden cross Pilgrim had built right outside of their place had taken a direct hit from the bolt, thus saving them. From then forward, they decided that they would only surround themselves with believers of Jesus and decipher that God had been punishing them for harboring a non-believer. During their time there, the family became more and more involved with religion, and eventually Pilgrim threw out all of their books except for the Bible and
46:50 Cassandra Yahnian? banned the reading of anything else. While at first, the neighbors were charmed by this religious family, their feelings began to shift. They had become friends with one religious family who eventually stopped speaking to the pilgrims because they disagreed with the way. And he refers to himself a lot as Papa Pilgrim, so sometimes just to decipher if I'm talking about the Pilgrim family, or Papa Pilgrim, I'll say Papa Pilgrim. So they disagreed with Papa Pilgrim's interpretation of the Bible. They found his interpretations to be extreme, that he was interpreting kind of like this doomsday, like preparing for everyone to die, and also put himself as a role as godly himself, which this family
47:35 Cassandra Yahnian? did not agree with, and they did not appreciate his interpretation of the Bible. And they weren't really wrong with their assumptions and what they were hearing, because Pilgrim did place himself in this role of God. And with that role, he became angrier and more demanding of his family. When he felt his family wasn't acting in favor of God's will, he would beat them and cite that God was using him to ensure that they would go to heaven. His anger would get so out of control that even if Country Rose had an infant in her arms, he would beat her ruthlessly. I mean, he would knock her out, she would lose consciousness, he wouldn't stop. It was just, it was really, really bad. And Alicia Bah, the oldest, was treated the worst of them all. In one instance, she was found to have told a lie, which he deemed as a sin, and punished
48:19 Cassandra Yahnian? He forced her to lay in a rat ridden attic for weeks. He withheld food from her, except for leftovers that he gave once per day. And twice per day, he would show up and whip her for hours straight. Now, this is just one example, but was a common punishment that she received. It was during their time in New Mexico that Pilgrim began sexually abusing his daughter, Alyshaba, as well when she turned 18 years old. When it began, she was very upset and she told him that God would not approve of what was happening between them. But he assured her that he was doing fine with God, but she didn't believe that. She begged him to stop, but he told her that she was doing her duty and now she would be a wife to him. Now, basically she had turned 18 and was like, okay, now it's your turn to be a wife to me,
49:04 Cassandra Yahnian? which she was obviously very confused about. And to put a little context here, the children are not raised around other people. They have no education, they can't read, they've spent almost no time with anyone outside of their family at this point. During this time, he told his wife, Country Rose, what he was doing to Alyshaba. When his wife cried and yelled at him to stop and begged him to not do it again, he beat her every day for weeks. He also took their newborn away from her and made Alyshaba act as his mother. As punishment to Country Rose, he did not allow her to have contact with her newborn son at all. While the three of them had always shared a bed together with their infant son,
49:44 Cassandra Yahnian? from then forward, he would sexually abuse Alyshaba in the same bed that he shared with her mother almost every night. She would lie next to them and pretend to sleep through it in fear of punishment of herself. Now, the abuse for the entire family at the hands of the pilgrims was horrific, but that wasn't their only hardship. They were living on very little means. Pilgrim would send the children to break into neighbors' homes for food or supplies, instructing them to steal very little at a time so that they would remain unnoticed. The neighbors, of course, did notice and the children weren't even the only ones stealing. He wasn't just sending the kids in. Pilgrim would actually steal too, and he did some weird things. So he would steal pregnant horses from local ranchers and he would return the mares back without their foals.
50:29 Cassandra Yahnian? He would, yeah, it's like.
50:31 Danielle LaRock? Okay, so he's diabolical. Like he's truly, and I know you said that this is a hard episode, but even if it just ended there, that's not with the pregnant.
50:44 Danielle LaRock? horse thing, but everything you said preceding that, I think we're all kind of just like in shock a little bit because that was really heavy. What you just went through right there.
50:56 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
50:57 Danielle LaRock? And I know we're focusing on Alicia about later too. So we're going to get into it more. But yeah, this is like, and they're still in New Mexico at this point.
51:04 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, this is just their story in New Mexico to kind of lead up to their life before they get to McCarthy. And it is, I mean, it's really, it's really awful what this family went through at the hands of Pilgrim. And there's just, it's very multifaceted because there's so much going on. You know, there's abuse that's happening. There's this abuse of religion that's happening. And then there's also, they're living by very little means away from the world. They've been removed from any type of society, any type of education. And now he's basically, he's getting this woman pregnant over and over again, and kind of forming his own little, like, it almost feels like he was trying to form his own cult within his
51:46 Cassandra Yahnian? family. And he, it's just like, it's very, it's very odd, a lot of the stuff that's going on. And a lot of this is, I mean, they're in the remote wilderness. No one knows what's going on. It's not until, like, people don't really suspect, like, all these weird things that's happening with the family, until these kind of things are happening, where he's stealing pregnant horses from ranches, returning the mare, but not their foals. And then he would also take livestock. And when he was caught, and people would approach that him and be like, hey, what are you doing with my cow? Or whatever it was, he would give some excuse that was related to God. And usually, just he, it sounds like he was a
52:26 Cassandra Yahnian? very good speaker. So things would be forgiven. Be like, oh, he's just this religious man. He didn't, this very nice.
52:34 Danielle LaRock? He didn't mean any harm.
52:36 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
52:36 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, right.
52:38 Cassandra Yahnian? But people think that without knowing the extent of what's happening behind closed doors. But here in New Mexico, people were eventually very tired of the Pilgrim family. They were so tired of them that they had a town meeting to have them removed from Jack Nicholson's property.
52:54 Danielle LaRock? Where is Jack Nicholson in all this? Not that like, he can do much, but imagine finding out about this all later on. Oh, this was happening in, on my property?
53:06 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure he found out eventually, but like with this meeting that goes on, he is aware of it. And there's this whole thing, it goes into the book about it. And I don't get into it too much for this episode, because it's such a small blip and everything that goes on. But essentially Pilgrim wrote to him again, like this letter, kind of rationalizing everything that happened and making it seem like everything was misconstrued and that he's the victim here. And it basically, the town being like, please leave, didn't work. Jack Nicholson allowed him to stay on the property.
53:42 Danielle LaRock? Interesting.
53:43 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. But there was obviously like their reputation was pretty tainted. People were pretty mad, even though he was allowed to stay there, people were still like, okay, but we, we hate you now. So the neighbors weren't super friendly. And it wasn't too long after that, that the family did decide to leave for Alaska. And now, of course, they're sitting in McCarthy, being welcomed to their new home by their new neighbors who have no idea of this horrific past and who they were truly welcoming into the neighborhood. Neil and his spouse and co-owner of the McCarthy Lodge, Doug, they laid out food spreads. They had cheese, fruits, cakes, cookies, like this big celebration to like drinks to welcome their new neighbors. All
54:27 Cassandra Yahnian? the local people came to also welcome the newcomers. And again, the children played this beautiful music for everyone. And the town was totally charmed by them all. Papa Pilgrim was kind to everyone. The children were exceptionally well behaved, which people were like, wow, your family is just like so kind and polite. And it what is like, who are you people? Basically, like, what is this? I mean, even the kids, they wouldn't even take a piece of cake off the table without being given permission first, which like, okay, like, kids, kids will be kids, but his were just like, these great musicians that didn't do anything wrong ever.
55:09 Danielle LaRock? Well, now, you know, in hindsight and looking at it and hearing this story with knowledge that they clearly did not have at the time. It's just so scary because it's like, yeah, they were behaving that way because they were scared into subservience.
55:25 Cassandra Yahnian? Yes, that's exactly it.
55:26 Danielle LaRock? Just like petrified, you know, they were not being well behaved because they wanted to show love and respect for their father or Papa Pilgrim or whatever. It's like they were terrified of him.
55:40 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, they were in that just like when I talked about when he first arrived and he was explaining their life story and all the kids just stood, they wouldn't even sit at the table. They stood completely silent behind him and didn't say a word. Like what family that brought eight children, everyone's quiet for hours while you explain this. It's just like, it's odd, but people were mostly more, I think intrigued. And it seems like a lot of people romanticized the, this family. But Neil, he did have a concern when they had the celebration. And when the celebration was over, he actually pulled, he actually pulled Pilgrim aside to talk to him because he told him that, he told him that him and Doug were a gay couple and that
56:25 Cassandra Yahnian? that had never mattered to anyone in McCarthy, but he was worried that because of his religious views that he might have a problem with it. So he just wanted to pull him aside and kind of clear the air and be like, hey, like, are we going to have problems with this essentially, but in a really kind way. And Pilgrim responded by saying that they were there to mind their own business, to live a quiet life, to be peaceful. They wanted to just work with their hands, sing songs. He basically gave this preach of like, we will mind our own business as long as you mind yours, we mind ours, we don't care what goes on in your life. And he also told, he, so he straight up tell Pilgrim straight up tells Neil that he doesn't have an issue. And he even says that if a preacher ever came to town saying otherwise, he would speak out and defend him.
57:09 Cassandra Yahnian? So with that, all seemed right with the townspeople, the pilgrim family. They seem kind, welcoming, everything seems great. And the town accepted it. They really liked them at first and they welcomed and accepted them despite knowing very little about them, except for what Pilgrim had shown them. If they had known even more of Pilgrim's past, they might've been a lot more concerned.
57:42 Cassandra Yahnian? Pilgrim was originally from the state of Texas. His real name was Robert, or what he would go by Bobby, and his name was Bobby Hale. And he had direct ties to the death and possible murder of the daughter of a prominent politician, John Connally. John Connally was Texas's governor and the secretary of treasure for President Richard Nixon. Famously, he was also the other person injured in the assassination of John F. Kennedy while he was sitting in the front seat of his limousine. Bobby Hale himself was also the son of a prominent FBI agent. Now, for the sake of this episode, I'll continue referring to Bobby as Pilgrim or Papa Pilgrim, but just remember that his real name is Robert or Bobby Hale. Now Pilgrim's a teenager at this time,
58:27 Cassandra Yahnian? and he was dating John Connally's daughter Kathleen. She was a smart and beautiful girl who always made the honor roll and was well-liked among her peers. After she started dating Bobby, though, her grades slipped and she became closed off and reserved to all those who knew her. Their relationship was known to be a strained one, where Bobby would purposely make her jealous of other girls, and they would fight often. Kathleen became ill in one of her morning classes, and her teacher called home to alert her parents that she thought she may have been experiencing morning sickness or pregnancy. When they confronted her about it, she adamantly denied it, but her parents still grounded her. Not long after, the couple fled to Ardmore, Oklahoma, which allowed legal marriage between minors as they were just 16 years old. They tied the knot and took off to Florida together.
59:12 Cassandra Yahnian? When Kathleen's parents found out where they were, both Pilgrim's father and Kathleen's father drove to Florida after them, where they found out that she was indeed pregnant. The two refused to go back with them, and there was very little the parents could do since they were married now. One week later, Kathleen's father received a phone call that she was dead. Pilgrim said that he had walked into their apartment, and she was holding a gun to her head, and he tried to stop her, but she pulled the trigger and ended her own life. People were very skeptical, though. Neighbors heard the couple constantly fighting, and the landlady of their building actually reported that Kathleen had Hidden earlier that day from Pilgrim in her apartment and she appeared to be very frightened.
59:54 Cassandra Yahnian? The way that the bullet killed Kathleen was a little suspicious. It had entered the right side of her head behind her ear. And it wasn't typical for what they would have seen for a suicide. But there were no fingerprints on the weapon. And Pilgrim testified to a jury. People questioned it so much that Pilgrim actually testified to a jury what had happened. And after his testimony, nothing ended up coming from the case.
1:00:20 Danielle LaRock? Why would there be no fingerprints on a gun if she was holding it?
1:00:23 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
1:00:26 Danielle LaRock? Okay, continue.
1:00:28 Cassandra Yahnian? So nothing comes from the case, but friends and family were adamant that Kathleen would never take her own life. And Kathleen's father, he was, he had so much going on in like the political world and whatever reason, I'm not sure why he didn't pursue this any further. Or if it was just kind of a, no one wanted to pursue this further. But Kathleen's father refused to speak to Pilgrim ever again, following that incident. Even though Pilgrim did try to reach out to him several times, he refused to ever speak to him. And after that, Pilgrim never went back to school. Instead, he began living a nomadic life, traveling from state to state. And of course, no one in McCarthy knew this story or Pilgrim's real name. They don't know about his ex-wife. They don't know that his name is Bobby Hale.
1:01:10 Cassandra Yahnian? And they have just welcomed this stranger and that has a lot of dark ties. When the pilgrims officially arrived to McCarthy to move in, they came with horses, dogs, cattle, sheep, building supplies and more. And began the trek back and forth, the 13 miles between their home and McCarthy. Part of the property they purchased included a one-room shack in town that they had used as a base in the beginning. So they basically just have this little area that they're sleeping in while they figure things out. It's still, it's springtime, but it's still, there's a lot of snow on the ground. Things are hard. They had six snowmobiles to help them back and forth. Along with that, there was also an old bulldozer from the previous owner that was left on the property and it still worked.
1:01:53 Cassandra Yahnian? Shortly after their arrival, the park service began reaching out to the Pilgrim family to have a conversation. With them. This was pretty standard, especially as the land between the pilgrims property and McCarthy was all national park land. So for the National Park Service, it was really important for the family to form a relationship with them as they would be frequently using the land whenever they needed to leave for supplies or go into town. Park Ranger Superintendent Hunter Sharp showed up at the little shack and attempts to welcome the family to town, but Pilgrim wasn't there. He was met by some of his sons who refused to speak to him, except to tell him that he had to stay off of their property. A few days later, he wrote a friendly letter welcoming the family and asking for a meeting
1:02:34 Cassandra Yahnian? so that they could all be on the same page and go over any public land restrictions and any needs that the family might have. He left it in their mailbox at the McCarthy airstrip, but it went unopened and was not responded to. Meanwhile, the Pilgrim family continued to settle in. They were using a large building that had been previously there as their main home. It was entirely open concept area minus the office. And while it had been built well, its original purpose was for miners in the summertime. It had a wood stove, but it was very minimally insulated. So it was pretty cold in there. They couldn't, especially when it's negative 20 degrees out, you know, it's by no means like a great home to be living in. There's no electricity or anything like that either. They created pit toilets outside
1:03:18 Cassandra Yahnian? and they were also working on fixing up two smaller cabins on the land. It was pretty hard living and it was early spring and while the days were getting longer, there were still a lot of snow. There was also very little to eat. Alicia Ba, the oldest, was given the duty of hunting for meat for the family, but it proved to be very hard work. There was very little game around that time of year. And when her and her brothers would also hunt as well, a lot of times they were hunting on national park property and they were hunting protected protected species. I mean, they were hunting like longhorned sheep and it was just, the park does have exceptions where you can hunt there, but you need permits and they were basically poaching on national park land if they were not on their property, which happened quite often.
1:04:03 Cassandra Yahnian? As the months went on and the snow melted, unbeknownst to locals or the park service, Amuse the bulldozer on the land to clear a 13 mile area of its trees along the old historic mining trail to make it easier for him to access town. If it were an actual road to give you some perspective on this, it could have been two to three lanes wide.
1:04:24 Danielle LaRock? Oh, wow. Yeah. This isn't just a path.
1:04:27 Cassandra Yahnian? He's really like bulldozing and on top of this, he's also bulldozing some switchbacks to get up the trails and things as well. So there's like this old historic road, there's these new switchbacks he's putting in and to avoid anyone knowing what he was doing, he stopped the bulldozing less than a quarter of a mile from where the woods opened up to town. So from McCarthy, you're in McCarthy, everything looks fine and dandy, but you head off into the woods and walk for 10 minutes and suddenly you're in this clear cut area.
1:04:57 Danielle LaRock? Gotcha. Yeah.
1:04:58 Cassandra Yahnian? When there was still no response to the park service from Pilgrim, by June of that year, Ranger Sharp began looking for new means to get their attention. Curious of what he was up against, he started doing some research of his own where he discovered Pilgrim's real name, Robert Hale. He sent another letter to him, this time addressing him as Mr. Robert Hale. When the letter was still not responded to, they instead posted a public notice to him on a billboard being like, hey, Pilgrim, trying to get in contact, hey, Robert Hale, trying to get in contact with you. And this time they posted the billboard in the mail shack that any resident could see when they came to pick up their mail.
1:05:34 Danielle LaRock? Okay. So it's like a flyer. For some reason I had.
1:05:37 Cassandra Yahnian? I guess billboards a little.
1:05:39 Danielle LaRock? I was like, whoa, they're really wanting his.
1:05:42 Cassandra Yahnian? It was more like flyers.
1:05:43 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
1:05:43 Cassandra Yahnian? That they posted around.
1:05:44 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, flyer in the window.
1:05:47 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. And they posted some around town too.
1:05:49 Danielle LaRock? I'm sure that caught his attention, that his name, his real name.
1:05:53 Cassandra Yahnian? Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. When he saw that, he was probably like, shit, they're, they can look me up now. And this time he actually does kind of respond. So he responded with a letter nailed on top of theirs and it wasn't directly to the National Park Service. It was more of like this preach to anyone who would read it accusing the park service of harassment, saying that their actions were unwarranted and legally unfounded. They also made it clear that they would enforce their existing right of ways connecting to their property through the national park land and that there was no reason to have a conversation with the National Park Service because they were within their right to utilize the land that they were using.
1:06:32 Danielle LaRock? Wait, so he put that response over the flyer?
1:06:35 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
1:06:35 Danielle LaRock? In a pu- in the public?
1:06:37 Cassandra Yahnian? Yes.
1:06:39 Cassandra Yahnian? Just stirring the pot.
1:06:40 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, for sure.
1:06:42 Cassandra Yahnian? Stirring the pot.
1:06:42 Danielle LaRock? Definitely stirring the pot. It's kind of like in college, like it just reminds me I was in a roommate situation where I was with five girls and not all of them.
1:06:55 Cassandra Yahnian? That can be.
1:06:56 Danielle LaRock? Gone along well. Like some would like leave Post-It notes on things.
1:07:02 Cassandra Yahnian? Oh, no, the passive aggressiveness.
1:07:04 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. And then they would leave another Post-It note on top of the Post-It note, like the other person instead of just talking to each other. Like, this is so awkward. This is so awkward. I, yeah, please don't do this. Can we just talk? But yeah, that's a very like petty way of communicating.
1:07:23 Cassandra Yahnian? Oh, for sure. And the National Park hasn't even, National Park Service hasn't done anything. They just want to chat.
1:07:30 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
1:07:30 Cassandra Yahnian? They're like, it's not, he doesn't like government or law enforcement authorities.
1:07:35 Danielle LaRock? To begin with, but you're making it.
1:07:37 Cassandra Yahnian? You're making it deep. And the National Park Service is getting annoyed. So during a Fourth of July celebration that was in McCarthy, the family, the pilgrims actually attended it, and the park service attempted to speak to a pilgrim in person. And this time, he like flat out refused to speak to them in person. And the Rangers simply asked if they could find a way to communicate, like, hey, how can we communicate? But pilgrims refused that as well.
1:08:04 Danielle LaRock? And if you're not doing it via letters or in person, and this is not only a time where internet communication is in its infancy, he doesn't have a computer. He doesn't have access to, so like, what is it?
1:08:19 Cassandra Yahnian? What would?
1:08:20 Danielle LaRock? Passenger pigeon, like, what are we doing here?
1:08:22 Cassandra Yahnian? He's just expecting no conversations with a government entity at all, no matter what.
1:08:29 Danielle LaRock? Like toddler, like.
1:08:31 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. It's also like you bought a piece of land surrounding National Park land.
1:08:35 Danielle LaRock? Or surrounded by.
1:08:36 Cassandra Yahnian? Or, yeah, surrounded by National Park land.
1:08:38 Danielle LaRock? What did you expect? Yeah.
1:08:40 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
1:08:40 Danielle LaRock? And isn't he on it, cutting the road through it?
1:08:43 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, they don't know that yet.
1:08:45 Danielle LaRock? Oh. Oh, but he knows it.
1:08:47 Cassandra Yahnian? So this is still friendly conversation.
1:08:49 Danielle LaRock? Okay, all right.
1:08:50 Cassandra Yahnian? As far as the park service is concerned.
1:08:53 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
1:08:53 Cassandra Yahnian? But word got around town that the park service was looking to speak with the family. And of course, people saw the flyers and from the pilgrims' words were harassing them. And I think it's important to keep in mind here that government officials in McCarthy was relatively pretty new. The park was established in 1980. And at the beginning, Rangers were extremely disliked by local people. The people of McCarthy were specifically living that way to rid themselves of government laws. And here, Rangers were newly arrived, enforcing them in a location where locals had been living for years. So when they first arrived, people largely did not like the National Park Service or the Rangers who worked for them. So in the beginning, Rangers found their cabins burnt down, vehicles were sabotaged,
1:09:38 Cassandra Yahnian? and there was even refusal to serve them food or give them lodging.
1:09:42 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
1:09:43 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, so people were really unhappy with it. But by this time, now it's 2002, the times had very much changed. They had found a common ground with each other for the most part. The Rangers essentially knew not to mess with armed outdoors people in the middle of the wilderness with no one around. And the people of McCarthy began to respect their cause, especially when the Rangers and the National Park Service stopped big oil companies and logging industries from taking over the areas. So now in 2002, the environment's a lot different. People liked the Rangers. Rangers were welcome in the restaurants and lodging. They knew all the locals by name. It was, it was overall a very friendly atmosphere. However, just because they had mostly found common ground did not mean there wasn't still
1:10:28 Cassandra Yahnian? some tensions. After all, they were still this government entity. So when pilgrims started accusing them of harassment and an overreach of government, many people actually sided with the pilgrim family. To everyone in town, the pilgrims were these God-fearing, innocent outsiders who were kind and lovely and played music and came to live their own private lives. So when people became aware that the park service was quote unquote harassing them...
1:10:56 Cassandra Yahnian? They also knew in the background of that, that the park service had been trying to buy that land that they had just purchased and assumed that they were angry with the family for getting that land instead and were now harassing them over it. So locals became pretty outspoken of their support for the Pilgrim family. News articles even surfaced about what was happening between them and the news kind of spread across Alaska and there were headlines with things that said things like "the dark side of the National Park Service" in regards to how they're treating the Pilgrim family. The townspeople even interfered with the National Park Service attempts to speak with the family by towing away their vehicles out of town when they weren't near them.
1:11:40 Cassandra Yahnian? So people are really backing the Pilgrims at this point. While most of the town was charmed by these eccentric newcomers, some were wary of them. There were some things that were off about them. To start, Pilgrim, who was clearly a faithful Christian, refused to attend or bring his family to the local Christian church, which people found pretty odd. Something was also odd about the children and Pilgrim's wife. They never spoke in the presence of Pilgrim. They stood by quietly and obediently, but it was almost too much so that people were like, "What is..." People started kind of questioning it. For a family of 15 children, many who were young, there were never any childlike playing, there were no outbursts. It just like, it came across as very odd.
1:12:24 Cassandra Yahnian? Also, some noticed early on that they would arrive in town completely barefoot while there was still snow on the ground. So they were like, "What? What is going on here?" I mean, it was pretty clear that the family was living off of very little means. The children had tattered clothing, they were thin. The family actually used them essentially to beg for money from tourists. When the summertime came, they would stand by the footbridge and offer tours to tourists and would offer information. They would offer horseback rides to come up to their property to see like this beautiful landscape, whatever it was. And many, when they first met this family, thought that they were Amish, just by the way that they were dressed and like their simple means of life. They did make money off-
1:13:06 Cassandra Yahnian? Off of visitors in the park. They were very intriguing and they kind of flooded people when they walked through, walked over the bridge into McCarthy. They're like, pay me money. And it's all these cute, innocent children and nice people. So they were making money off that, but the majority of their income did come from government assistance, assistance, money and food stamps to get by. At home, some wondered how the children were receiving schooling, but they assumed that they must just be being homeschooled. Alaska, it's important to know, is one of the few states that has no regulations around education. And this might have changed. I haven't looked up recent, but at the time of this story, Alaska didn't, you didn't have to prove that you were teaching your children at home. You didn't have to enroll them in school.
1:13:51 Cassandra Yahnian? It was entirely up to parents on how they wanted their children to be educated. While Pilgrim had made it seem that Country Rose had taken the responsibility of teaching the children, that was not true. Pilgrim was the only one allowed to educate them. He did not teach them to read or write. The only book that they were allowed to hear was the Bible. He would spend night times preaching to them the words of the Bible. He taught them that the end of the world was coming soon. And if all went well, they would all die at the same time and they would meet Jesus together. He taught them that if he were to die first, that they should pray to die with him and even take their own lives. He warned the children of the park service that they were to be avoided at all costs. And in the past, he had taught them escape maneuvers
1:14:33 Cassandra Yahnian? from child services and any law enforcement that the kids might come in contact with and explained to them that they meant to do them harm and that they would take them away from their family. And he would also preach that they were ungodly and just a lot of scare tactics. And now that they were here in Wrangell St. Elias, they were teaching the children how to avoid Rangers and also how to aid in patrolling and keeping the Rangers off of their land. During the day, he would teach them hard labor, tending to the farm, doing chores, and how to fix any and all types of machinery. Each child had the knowledge of a mechanic they could fix or finagle a way for anything that was broken to work again. They were really like, they were really, really resourceful.
1:15:16 Cassandra Yahnian? While people were certainly curious about the family, no one expected all of the abuse that was happening. And like I mentioned, in New Mexico, there were, the children were being beaten. This didn't change when they went to Wrangle St. Elias and were in McCarthy. The children were often beaten, and Pilgrim said that this was for their sins, and he was offering corrections so that they could be right in the eyes of the Lord. Alyshiva continued to be sexually abused by her father as well. And while the abuse remained a secret, what Pilgrim had done to the parkland was about to be exposed.
1:15:56 Cassandra Yahnian? In August that year, two hikers came down from hiking through Wrangle St. Elias complaining that where they had hiked on was completely logged and destroyed. The locals were confused and had no idea what they were talking about, but soon it was reported back to the National Park Service. After doing a flyover of the area, the Park Service was shocked to find how much Pilgrim had truly logged, and discussions began on how to acknowledge the situation. On February 11, 2003, so almost a year after they've been there, three rangers from the Park Service headed into McCarthy Creek Valley. After repeated and failed attempts to contact Pilgrim, and the recent reports of destruction on parkland, they headed out to evaluate the
1:16:39 Cassandra Yahnian? extent of the damage that had been done by the family. However, shortly into their trek, they came across three young members of the family on snowmobiles who refused to speak with them. Instead, they followed along as they ventured closer to their property. Each of the young boys were armed with guns and knives, but never reached for their weapons. Despite this, the rangers felt that it seemed like the boys were trying to intimidate them. Further down, two more snowmobiles, one carrying Pilgrim, appeared, but again, he would not speak with them at all. Shortly afterwards, while still within the National Park boundaries, they came upon two hand-painted signs that read, "Private Property, No Trespassing",
1:17:19 Cassandra Yahnian? and P.S. "And Private Property, No Trespass, and P.S. Not Allowed, Beware of Cables." So on National Parkland, it says, "No National Park Service allowed."
1:17:30 Danielle LaRock? Bold.
1:17:31 Cassandra Yahnian? Very bold. So the Rangers need evidence of this. So they take signs, they take pictures of the signs. And one of the younger boys on the snowmobile actually blocked the path for them to further travel. The Rangers were forced to turn around with no conversation had at all with Pilgrim family. It was all kind of just like through glares and moving in front of them. And there was like almost no words spoken. It was just-
1:17:55 Danielle LaRock? Very eerie.
1:17:57 Cassandra Yahnian? Eerie, intimidating. And at this point, what's the Park Service gonna do? You know, like, they're armed too. But what are they gonna do? Get in a gunfight with children?
1:18:06 Danielle LaRock? Right. There is no, yeah, that's not an option. So-
1:18:09 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. So they just had to essentially just turn around. But after their visit, Pilgrim reported it to the town and to the people, saying that the National Park Service harassment had gotten worse, and that they were wiretapping his phones and trying to scare him off his land, which is obviously totally unfounded. But tensions rose even higher when a park ranger, Stevens Harper, bought the land bordering the Pilgrims and they became neighbors. While Harper had bought the land because he loved the area and it was where he worked, after all, Pilgrim told his family it was yet another way for the government to try to push them out. He and his children went to the border of their property, which happened to be close to Harper's cabin, to haze their new neighbor. They would
1:18:52 Cassandra Yahnian? sing songs loudly for hours and hours of the day with lyrics like, "Mind your own business." They parked a generator nearby and ran it. It was so loud that Harper and his wife had to wear earplugs to go to sleep. And on top of that, the Pilgrims left junk parts of vehicles and other trash on his property.
1:19:09 Danielle LaRock? What? Talk about a nightmare neighbor. You think you have a bad neighbor? Not you, but like you as in the collective. Yeah.
1:19:16 Cassandra Yahnian? Imagine this.
1:19:18 Danielle LaRock? Wow.
1:19:19 Cassandra Yahnian? Like specifically going out of their way just because he's a Ranger. Their new neighbors were not the only enemies that the Pilgrims were making either. The Pilgrims had various vehicle parts and supplies strung all around town with trash piles within McCarthy, and residents were becoming upset. Their horses and other animals often got loose and ventured onto other people's land. Some residents even reported to the Park Service that he had allowed his horses to eat all the vegeta- all the vegetarians. All the vegetation in large areas of the national park land. Along with that, people were finding that parts from their own vehicles like snow machines and cars were missing. Food would go missing and various objects were being stolen, which people like,
1:20:03 Cassandra Yahnian? I mean, they figured it was the pilgrim family. On top of that, the pilgrim children were camping out at the footbridge and would direct visitors to their own tourist attractions like horseback riding tours, music, et cetera, which was causing locals who also offered these things not to get any business. So they were taking away business from these local people and that was not going over well either. The town that once viewed this family as innocent and loving or having second thoughts of their arrival, and many were voicing their concerns about this. Despite that, they did still have a lot of supporters as well. But the National Park Service was also getting fed up with the family. In a retaliation against what they had done to the historic mining trail,
1:20:45 Cassandra Yahnian? the NPS put posters up around town stating that motorized vehicles and horses were no longer permitted to use the road that the pilgrims had logged. This was a clear statement to the pilgrims as they were the only ones who used it. Now they would be required to either walk the 13 miles into town or use a bush plane to get out. They said that if they wanted to use the road, they could if they applied for a permit to do so. This move by the National Park Service was met with a lot of criticism, not just from the pilgrims, but also by those who supported their family. Many believed that this was a clear overreach of government power and that they were making a hard type of living for this family nearly impossible. In the winter months, planes couldn't reach their home and they needed snowmobiles.
1:21:30 Cassandra Yahnian? In the summer, they used bush planes and their horses to carry supplies. Many thought that this was a blatant attack on an innocent family with children to feed.
1:21:39 Danielle LaRock? Okay, so just to be clear, pilgrim. Made this road. However, it's on National Park Service land.
1:21:47 Cassandra Yahnian? Yes.
1:21:48 Danielle LaRock? So the National Park Service is saying, okay, you can still use your road even though you illegally built it. However, we're going to dictate the ways in which you utilize it.
1:21:58 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, cuz it's National Park land. So essentially, like you, there were hikers on it, you know?
1:22:03 Danielle LaRock? So technically, they could have said, you can't use this at all.
1:22:06 Cassandra Yahnian? Yes.
1:22:07 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
1:22:08 Cassandra Yahnian? Essentially, I mean, it is National Park land, so it's hard because it, the public has access to it. So I don't know.
1:22:14 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, but for private use? Uh, yeah.
1:22:16 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah.
1:22:17 Danielle LaRock? Yeah, okay. I, okay.
1:22:19 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, but basically, they're just saying, like, the way that you've been using it, you can't use. And to note too, they don't have a personal bush plane. They've had to pay pilots to come out. So that's not really something that they can do often. So even, like, in the summertime, they would use their horses and bush planes, but now they can't use their horses. So it makes things a lot more difficult for the family. On top of that, the NPS also announced that they would be doing a surveillance of the area to assess exactly how much damage the pilgrims had caused and plan to take action to make them pay for those damages. Headlines, again, circulated mostly in the pilgrims' favor, saying that the NPS were, quote, "hunting the family like a wolf pack that stalks a pregnant elk," and that they were attacking their way of life.
1:23:04 Cassandra Yahnian? Pilgrim thrived off the sympathy of others. He even invited television crews to come to his house to show off their way of living. He showed their minimal means, how the children never watched TV or listened to the radio, and instead lived off the land the same way the people did hundreds of years ago. He painted them as this God-fearing family and bragged that his children had never seen a naked body, even their own, as they bathed in clothing and had no mirrors in the home.
1:23:31 Danielle LaRock? What?
1:23:32 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah. He thought it was, uh, it goes a lot in detail in it, in the book about it, but he thought it was like, there was too much vanity and mirrors, like, to look at yourself.
1:23:42 Danielle LaRock? It's not the mirror part I'm hung up on. I'm hung up on.
1:23:46 Cassandra Yahnian? Never seeing themselves naked.
1:23:49 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
1:23:50 Cassandra Yahnian? Which obviously isn't true. He's sexually abusing Alicia Bo.
1:23:53 Danielle LaRock? Well, that's what I'm saying. It's like, you're forcing your children to bathe in your cloth, in clothing?
1:23:59 Cassandra Yahnian? Because it's sinful to be naked.
1:24:01 Danielle LaRock? That's, yeah.
1:24:02 Cassandra Yahnian? Everything's very, very extreme.
1:24:04 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
1:24:05 Cassandra Yahnian? And his, yeah, nothing, nothing really makes sense.
1:24:08 Danielle LaRock? And he said that to reporters?
1:24:10 Cassandra Yahnian? Oh, yeah. This is, this is on TV.
1:24:14 Danielle LaRock? Okay.
1:24:14 Cassandra Yahnian? And actually, I mean, people are still romanticizing this family so much. The family gained so much sympathy from the public and what the NPS was doing that in the fall of 2003, sympathetic citizens from around like Alaska and other parts of the country organized a volunteer flight to where they dropped off donated supplies to help the family through the winter. While the use of the road was contingent on a permit, the pilgrims never actually filed for one. Instead, they notified the NPS that they were suing them over illegally denying them access to the land. In court, Pilgrim pleaded to the judge saying, quote, "Windows need replacings, ceilings and floors need insulation badly, stove oil is needed for the heaters, fish and meat
1:24:58 Cassandra Yahnian? are needed to come home and hay and feed for the animals." He also said, "We need your help and mercy, your honor, the judge." So he's really like playing towards the judge, but the judge ultimately ruled in the favor of the National Park Service citing that Pilgrim had destroyed 145-year-old trees and important vegetation within the park. However, they did rule that the family did have right to access the road as well and they needed to, like, he, they couldn't sue the park service for money, but also the park service couldn't allow them to use the road and they did need access to get supplies to their house. So it was like, not really, it was kind of a win for them, but not really because he wanted to get money from the National Park Service.
1:25:41 Cassandra Yahnian? So while this is also, while this is all going on, things were also falling apart within the community of McCarthy. The pilgrims' horses continued to get loose and they were defecating in and around the town's only clean water drinking source. They were still leaving trash around, but also burning it by the shelter that they had in town. And people started seeing the meaner side of Papa Pilgrim as well. He started making enemies while also sending out preachful letters and referring to McCarthy as, quote, "our town," which some locals who had been there most of their lives found upsetting as he was a newcomer. The town eventually had a meeting demanding the pilgrims move their shelter and that they were disrupting the town, which the town wanted. And the pilgrims were forced to move their things back onto their own land far from town.
1:26:25 Cassandra Yahnian? Along with that, an incident working that left Abraham cutting off the tip of his finger resulted in a trip to the Anchorage Hospital and attempts to reattach it. However, the doctors found scars and new welts on his back and became far more concerned with child abuse than his finger. Child services were called, but each family member, including Abraham, had the same story of him falling down the stairs and the case was dropped. But the pilgrim family was spooked and flew Abraham down to Portland, Oregon to have his finger reattached at a different hospital. But when he got there, it was too late and they weren't able to reattach it. Perhaps because of the bridges burned within their own community and now with the authorities suspecting possible child abuse, the family stayed in the PNW for the better part of a year.
1:27:09 Cassandra Yahnian? They had began performing down there and actually became relatively famous for a while. They began touring and playing concerts around and even recording their own music. They became local celebrities in the area and again, were in the good graces of the media. They were painted as this perfect Christian family who played incredible music. When they did return to Alaska again, things began to fall apart. The pilgrims had befriended the Buckingham family after offering them a mousse when they failed to get anything during their own hunt. So as like a courtesy being like, you didn't catch anything, we have plenty of food here. You can have our mousse. And they became friends with this family who were a very Christian family, living a few hours outside the park and they had several children as well, including three daughters.
1:27:54 Cassandra Yahnian? The family had agreed to let them stay with them for a while during the winter months around Christmas, when living in McCarthy had become very hard. Similar to the pilgrims home, they spent time reading the Bible together every night and studied scripture together. But there was something very different about this home that the children realized very quickly. And I say children, but Alicia Buzz included in this as well, even though she's 27 at the time. Their interpretations of the Bible were very different. They were less fear-based and more about living in peace and doing good in the world. The children also noticed that the Buckingham children were allowed to participate in conversation. About the Bible, which was very different from their upbringing where Papa Pilgrim didn't allow
1:28:36 Cassandra Yahnian? any of that. If they questioned his interpretations of the Bible, he would beat them or shame them for questioning the word of the Lord. Along with those differences, the Buckingham's were on a strict schedule. They would wake up and go to bed at the same time and they wouldn't stay up late. In the pilgrims home, Papa Pilgrim would keep them up all hours of the night preaching to them. And Alicia Ba, in particular, was noticing that the relationship that the Buckingham daughters had with their father was very different from her own. So she's really starting to realize like how different her family is and how how much like bad things are going on within her own family by seeing this family that is a lot more loving and nurturing and kind and doesn't have
1:29:17 Cassandra Yahnian? abuse involved. Alicia Ba was really happy to be spending time with them as instead of spending the nights with her father anymore, she would sleep in the same room with the daughters where they would laugh and have girls' nights together. But that didn't last very long. Her father, who was staying in the family's basement, began making her sleep downstairs with him where he would sexually abuse her in their home. It wasn't long until Papa Pilgrim began taking over the household. He would force the Buckingham children to stay up late to hear him preach the Bible. He hung towels over all the mirrors so they couldn't look at themselves because vanity was sinful. He preached that the long hair of the sons of the Buckingham children were against the Lord and other things that they were doing were sinful. The Buckingham parents did not allow this
1:29:59 Cassandra Yahnian? behavior for very long. One morning, the father, Jim, took his entire family into Anchorage away from the pilgrims. The pilgrims that morning woke up to an empty house and took the hint and left to stay in Kenai for a little while. Shortly afterwards, the Buckingham's reconciled with them and invited them to spend Christmas together. But when the family agreed and came back to their home, Jim Buckingham confronted Papa Pilgrim about his behavior and questioned the nature of his relationship with his daughter Alicia Ba. He said he believed he had an inappropriate sexual relationship with her. At this, Pilgrim became extremely angry and adamantly denied it. They spent Christmas with the family but then quickly left back. For McCarthy. This wouldn't be the end of the conversation, though.
1:30:44 Cassandra Yahnian? The secret that Alicia Ba had kept well hidden from her family and her brothers and her sisters was about to be revealed. One afternoon, back at their home in the valley, the sons heard Papa Pilgrim beating Alicia Ba. He was relentless. She was screaming and crying while he punched her and beat her so badly that she lost consciousness. The boys could hear her screams from pretty far away. And that night Papa Pilgrim also repeatedly sexually assaulted her. The following day, her brothers were very upset with what they had heard and actually, for the very first time ever, confronted Papa Pilgrim about what he had done to her. And during a heated conversation, Alicia Ba admitted to the sexual abuse, something her brothers had not known about.
1:31:27 Cassandra Yahnian? They were furious and their confrontation ended with Pilgrim beating one of the boys and keeping the entire family up until 6:00 a.m. the following day, preaching about how he was doing right by the Lord by having Alicia Ba as a wife to bear his children. He argued that father-daughter relationships are allowed in the Bible and that he was no longer attracted to his wife and couldn't have children with her. Of course, we know that this is ridiculous and everything that he's saying is is really horrific and very abusive. But this was something the children and children, but also young adults that were in the family were really used to him preaching this way. But this was a line that was too far for them.
1:32:08 Cassandra Yahnian? And for the first time, the four of the boys, wholeheartedly disagreed, were disgusted and were really, really upset by what their father was doing to Alicia Ba. So they didn't really know what else to do except to leave. They hatched an escape plan and begged Alicia Ba to join them, but she refused. Joseph, Joshua, David, and Moses snuck out one night when they quietly pushed two snowmobiles down the trail away from their homestead. When they were out of earshot, they started them up and took off. The following day, when Papa Pilgrim realized what had happened, he deemed them lost to the devil. But the tides had shifted. The entire family was becoming braver and dreamed of a life.
1:32:51 Cassandra Yahnian? Way from their father. In secret, Alicia's mother begged her to leave as well and kept in secret communication with the boys from the landline telephone that they had on their property. The boys had escaped to Glen Allen and were staying and working with a family that they had done construction projects for in the past. Alicia was finally seeing hope for a new life away from her father and she began to hatch a plan to escape for herself, one that would take her through the remote wilderness of Wrangle St. Elias National Park, running for her life from her father in sub-zero degree temperatures, but she knew that if she made it, she would be free and able to tell the world who Papa Pilgrim really was. And that is where I am going to leave us for next week's episode.
1:33:35 Danielle LaRock? Holy crap. That was what you've been talking, we're almost like, we're creeping up to two hours and that flew by for me, for me.
1:33:46 Cassandra Yahnian? I'm glad.
1:33:49 Danielle LaRock? Um, wow, this is wild. So when did the, um, kind of just going back to the very beginning, the first story that we talked about or that you shared in McCarthy about the, the shooting and stuff was what year was that?
1:34:05 Cassandra Yahnian? That was in 1983.
1:34:07 Danielle LaRock? Okay, so that was in the eighties and now we're in the early 2000s.
1:34:12 Danielle LaRock? Okay, yeah, a lot has happened in this very small space.
1:34:17 Cassandra Yahnian? And then we didn't even talk about the historic mining stuff that happened. I mean, there were some really horrific mining tragedies that also happened and Kennecott is known to be one of the most haunted ghost towns in the national parks. So it's a lot.
1:34:32 Danielle LaRock? There's a lot happening. Wow, this is, I am so anxious to hear that not only Alicia buzz's perspective and her, the continuation of her story, but what happens to, I, I don't even really like calling him Papa Pilgrim. It feels weird and it feels almost like endearing, like a cutesy name. And I don't, Bob, Robert, Bobby, whatever his name is.
1:34:57 Cassandra Yahnian? Yeah, I agree, but I also think that Papa Pilgrim was specifically that name for manipulation purposes.
1:35:06 Danielle LaRock? Yeah.
1:35:07 Cassandra Yahnian? Because it does, it comes up across as so cutesy and nice and it helps romanticize this family for people like, oh, Papa Pilgrim and his sweet, loving children.
1:35:17 Danielle LaRock? Yeah. And just at the very end, when you're, you're talking about how the mo- the mother is like aiding her children and assisting them, kind of like, I, I am not able to do this, but you are, and you should take advantage of it. God, there's just, I'm really anxious to hear, when are we recording next? I know everybody else has a week, but what about me?
1:35:36 Cassandra Yahnian? You do too. We're recording next Monday and we're recording this Monday.
1:35:41 Danielle LaRock? Shoot.
1:35:42 Cassandra Yahnian? It's a really wild, I'm surprised I had never heard of it before until I found this book. And I've actually had this book sitting on my shelf for, I want to say almost a year now.
1:35:52 Danielle LaRock? Wow.
1:35:52 Cassandra Yahnian? And I finally was like, I should really open this and read it. And I didn't know, because usually I read like an article or something that kind of does like a short summary of what happened. And with this story, I didn't. So when I read the book, I was like, where is this going? Like, what is happening here?
1:36:09 Danielle LaRock? You had no idea what was about to, well, I think we're all in that boat now because I have never heard of any, this story at all. And when you were first talking about it, I was just envisioning, I think you described it as culty, which I can understand. I definitely see now, but when I first heard that, I thought this was going in a completely different direction, but.
1:36:28 Cassandra Yahnian? Fair.
1:36:29 Danielle LaRock? Okay. Well, that's it.
1:36:31 Cassandra Yahnian? Yep. That's it for this week.
1:36:34 Danielle LaRock? Okay. Well, thank you for the introduction to this story. And we're all looking forward to hearing its conclusion and to see where it goes.
1:36:44 Cassandra Yahnian? Well, thank you, everyone, for hanging out with us. If you're still here.
1:36:47 Danielle LaRock? If you're still here. Hello?
1:36:49 Cassandra Yahnian? Hello. Thank you for.
1:36:52 Danielle LaRock? Cassie's literally in the dark. It's been so long.
1:36:55 Cassandra Yahnian? So long, but it's dark out and I haven't gotten up to turn the light on.
1:37:00 Danielle LaRock? It feels really weird. Okay. Um, all right. We'll see everyone next week.
1:37:04 Cassandra Yahnian? In the meantime, enjoy the view.
1:37:06 Danielle LaRock? But watch your back.
1:37:07 Cassandra Yahnian? Bye.
1:37:07 Danielle LaRock? Bye.
1:37:13 Danielle LaRock? Thank you so much for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale or story suggestion, send us an email at [email protected] . Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD Podcast. Join our Outsiders Only community on Patreon or Apple subscriptions to listen ad-free, unlock monthly bonus episodes, and exclusive content. And remember, when you support our sponsors, you are supporting our show. For our exclusive discount codes and source information from today's episode, check out the show notes. For more information on our show, our book recommendations, merch updates, and more, visit our website at NPADpodcast.com. And please rate, review, and subscribe from
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