Episode 8--Alley Cats Strike!

Warning, this episode may contain disturbing content soothing narration in mild existential dread, basically murder ASMR for stressed professionals. Listener discretion is advised. Hell, it might be necessary. Nick Hackney made a lot of promises. He promised to love, honor, and cherish his wife Dawn, to forsake all others, to remain faithful until death parted them. In the end, there was only one part of those vows that remained true. Death did indeed part them, but Dawn wasn't the only person to whom Nick made promises. As a pastor, promises were his currency. He traded in trust. He wrapped his words in scripture, borrowed the authority of God and convinced the people around him that his integrity was beyond question. His promises were compelling, they sounded sincere. They were spoken with conviction and wrapped in the language of faith, but they weren't made to be kept. They were made to manipulate, to persuade, to coerce, to satisfy Nick's own desires regardless of what those promises would ultimately cost the people who believed them. Promises are dangerous things. In fact, the Bible itself warns about making oaths in multiple places. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us followers, let your yes be yes, and your no be no. In other words, live with such integrity that your word doesn't need embellishment or grand declarations to be believed, but despite those warnings Nick Hackney made many promises. And promises come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they're the wavy vows exchanged at a wedding altar. Sometimes they're legally binding contracts. Sometimes they're nothing more than a pinky promise on a playground, but every promise, no matter how big or small, has one thing in common. Its value depends entirely on the integrity of the person making it. And as the people around Nick Hackney watched his promises unravel, his integrity unraveled with them. One broken promise became another, then another, until those left holding the pieces could no longer ignore the truth. They'd placed their faith at the feet of a man who lacked integrity and the promises he made were worthless. Eventually, some of those same people made promises of their own promises to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In police interviews, in depositions, and ultimately, in open court, this is part two of pulpit in the pyre the murder of Don Hackney on Crime to Burn. Welcome to Crime to Burn, where we explore the dark city landscape where true crime intersects with our sin and criminal negligence. Join us as we sift through the ashes to bring you the story of what really happened. Welcome back to Crime to Burn, I'm April a fire protection engineer, former firefighter, and the officiant for this episode, despite not being ordained. And I once was ordained, but I renounced it. If you're new here, you may find it helpful to start with part one of this series, but if you want to jump straight into the deep end of the baptismal pool, don't let me stop you. But before we dive in, we do have one small favorite ask. If you're enjoying this show, head over to your podcast player of choice and leave a five star rating, and if your app allows it, a written review. Those ratings and reviews are the lifeblood of small independent podcasts like ours. This week, we picked up another Apple podcast rating bringing us up to 81. Spotify, however, has been parked stubbornly at 80 for a few weeks, but I have faith that it's going to pick back up. We also want to thank everyone who's reached out this week. Heidi, it was great seeing you over in the Spotify comments. And over on Pod being thank you to Nick Gunter, just Becky, and Sophie Brown, who has declared that my co-host has this sexiest voice and podcasting, and I don't disagree. You know, Sophie, you're not wrong. And while Crime to Burn will always be free on your favorite podcast platform supported by ads, if you'd like to help toss a few coins in the offering plate, we would love to have you over on Patreon. You'll get every episode ad free, and if I have my life together early. This week, well, let's just say my organizational skills are being tested by fire, but I am trying. You'll also find a link in the show notes to our spreadsheet, where you can pick up all kinds of Crime to Burn shirts, mugs, and other goodies. And if you haven't already, we'd love for you to follow us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, or YouTube. Every like, comment, share, favorite, and follow helps us appease the algorithmic overlords, and we appreciate every single one of them. As always, you can email us your fire stories, case suggestions, episode feedback, and confessions of sins at Crime to Burn at Gmail.com. This week, we also had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff Plunkett, the author of the Whiskey EgoGo Massacre, Murder, Arson, and The Crime of the Century. And as soon as this series wraps up, we'll be airing that interview, so keep an eye out for it. And special thanks to Tony Murphy, who reached out to us on Facebook with his thoughts on the whiskey case, and even shared some songs he had composed inspired by that tragedy. But this week, we're heading back to Washington. Last week, we left Don Hackney's death exactly where investigators left it for five entire years, in the accidental file. Although the medical examiner noted that Don's lungs contained no smoke or soot, and her blood showed no elevated carbon monoxide or other toxins, typically seen in fatal fire deaths. Investigators ultimately accepted a very different explanation. Under very specific circumstances, it is possible for someone to die in a fire without ever inhaling smoke. It's something more commonly associated with explosions or flashfires, where a victim inhales intensely superheated air before smoke has a chance to enter the lungs. That superheated air can trigger a laryngeospasm, causing the vocal cords to slam shut, physically preventing smoke from being inhaled. And investigators theorized that the small propane cylinders that were in Don's bedroom had leaked, creating a flammable fuel air mixture. And when the space heater produced an electric arc, they believed that this mixture ignited a flashfire, causing the fatal laryngeospasm. And my co-host is vigorously shaking his head no, I agree with him. And so Don's death was ruled an accident. With that conclusion, investigators never really explored whether anyone might have had a motive to kill her. Yes, Don had recently increased her life insurance coverage, but the new policy hadn't yet taken effect. So, the insurance money Nick ultimately received wasn't anywhere close to life changing. As far as law enforcement was concerned, there simply wasn't much reason to dig any deeper, but had investigators looked beyond the fire scene and had they started asking the right people the right questions, they would have discovered that whispers had already begun circulating long before Don died. Those whispers centered on the church secretary, Sandy Glass. Sandy and her husband were struggling in their marriage and turned to pastor Nick Hackney for counseling. But apparently counseling the couple wasn't enough. Nick decided that Sandy also needed individual counseling sessions. Now to be fair, individual counseling alongside marriage counseling isn't unusual. In many situations, it can be genuinely helpful. But several members of the congregation began to wonder whether the relationship between Sandy and Nick had become a little too close. Even Sandy's own in-laws grew concerned. They were worried about the amount of time that she was spending with pastor Hackney, but they kept those concerns to themselves. Sandy was the mother of their grandchildren, and with her marriage potentially crumbling, they feared that confronting her might jeopardize their relationship with those children. It's also worth remembering that Nick wasn't even the church's senior pastor. He was the youth pastor. Now in smaller churches, it is not uncommon for pastors to wear multiple hats. Youth pastors often help with counseling or visitation or other ministry responsibilities, but still. As more people noticed the growing closeness between Sandy and Nick, the whispers became hard to ignore. No one had proof of anything, just questions, questions about boundaries and appearances. Questions no one really wanted to ask about a man whose job it was to help shepherd the flock, because pastors are supposed to be trustworthy. And for a while, most people believe that he was. But there is another detail investigators never really dug into. Nick Hackney wasn't exactly flush with cash. He and Don had recently purchased a fixer upper, and the renovations had saddled the couple with significant amounts of debt. Money was very tight, which makes what happened in October of 1997, just two months before Don died, all the more curious. Nick walked into a local jewelry store and placed a deposit on a custom-designed ring. Not just any ring. A woman's ring. Gold with a sword motif set with four gemstones. A diamond, a sapphire, fire, and emerald, and a ruby. Now a married man buying jewelry isn't inherently suspicious. Maybe it was an anniversary gift. Maybe it was supposed to be Dawn's Christmas present. That would have been a perfectly reasonable explanation. Except, Dawn never received the ring. By the end of October, Nick had returned to the jeweler and paid the remaining balance and picked up the custom piece, but there is something else. Nick had not been the only customer placing a jewelry order that month. Church Secretary Sandy Glass had also commissioned a custom ring from the very same jeweler. Hers was a man's gold band with a Celtic inspired design. Like Nick, she returned before the end of the month, paid off the balance, and picked up her ring. Maybe it was all just extraordinary coincidence, after all, plenty of people by jewelry. But according to those who knew Sandy, she wasn't known for being the type of woman to go and commission custom jewelry. Especially when her marriage was seeming to fall apart. But a Christ community church Sandy Glass was known for something. She was known as a prophetess. A what? A prophetess. And she made one hell of a prophecy. Now as we discussed last week, Christ community church was a charismatic church. They still believed God spoke through modern day prophets and that ordinary events like dreams or coincidences or even just your impressions could all carry divine messages. And I'm not here to tell you whether those beliefs are right or wrong. But I am here to tell you that they mattered because Sandy Glass wasn't just the church secretary. She was considered a prophetess and people believed her. Not symbolically, but they believed God actively spoke through her to the church body. In fact, whenever Sandy or any of the other members believed to have the gift of prophecy, shared a dream or vision that they believed came from God, the church would actually print those prophecies and distribute them to the congregation. Now she wasn't the only one. Nick's fellow pastor Robert Biley was married to another woman regarded as a prophetess, Pamela Biley. And at one point, Pamela announced that God had revealed an immense earthquake was about to strike the Pacific Northwest. You haven't heard this old man you can't swing a dead calf that had a prophetess in this thing. And in Greg Olson's book, A Twisted Faith, it was Pamela that predicted the earthquake. But in several news sources, I've seen it said that it was both Pamela and Sandy Glass that predicted the quake. And the church took those warnings very seriously. They warned families to stock up on food and water. And the prescribed day, many people stayed home from work, parents kept their children close, and then nothing happened. The predicted day came and the predicted day went and the earth never moved. Now I want to pause here for just a moment because there's something important to understand. The Bible actually gives us a remarkably straightforward test for someone claiming to speak on God's behalf. In Deuteronomy, it says that if someone speaks in the name of the Lord and what they predict does not happen, then that message was not from God. The prophet has spoken presumptuously. And that word presumptuously is extremely important. I don't think the weight that that deserves gets accredited to it most of the time. And I feel like the punishment for that. We're about to get to that. Oh, apparently I edited the punishment out. Tell us what the punishment is. We killed them. Yes. It was a law. It was prescribed that false prophets pay with their lives. We hit them a big rock and rock. So how did Christ community church reconcile prophecies that did not come true? Like many groups that embraced modern prophecy, they had an answer. You see, some biblical prophecies were conditional. They were warnings meant to inspire repentance. Whoa. And if people turned from their wrongdoing, disaster could be averted. So when a prophecy failed, perhaps it hadn't really failed at all. Perhaps God had simply shown mercy. That explanation apparently satisfied many members of the congregation, but not everyone. One member stood up during a church service and publicly declared that Robert and Pamela Baile were false prophets. The response wasn't an investigation. It wasn't a debate. It was excommunication. In your pastor Bob Smith sent the man a letter defending the church's actions. One sentence in particular jumped off the page of me. Quote, "Despite your lies and hypocrisy, you are unable to show us or anyone a legitimate historical record of Robert's sins in the same way that we have given you a legitimate historical record of your sins." Did he leave the list? Now let that sink in. This church claimed to possess a historical record of one of its members' sins. And if you're wondering how a church could possibly compile something like that well friends, the answer is quite frankly shocking. Because Pastor Bob Smith was not exaggerating, the church really did have a historical record of that man's sins in a file inside the church. You see, members of Christ community church participated in what were called "deliverance counseling sessions." Now these were kind of like Catholic confessions on crack but without the anonymity and with documentation. Humor aside, that is actually a terrifying sentence. Unlike a traditional confession where the expectation is privacy and anonymity, congregants at Christ community church were encouraged to confess every sin they could remember ever committing throughout their lives to church leadership during these sessions and some of them would be ten or more hours of interrogation. They would repent and receive what the church believed was deliverance from those sins. "Hey, let's pump the repent break for a minute." "Okay." "I've actually defined repentance before we move along because repentance isn't, 'Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, what was me? I'm so sorry. My bad." "No, man, it's a literal turning away from the whole idea of moving in a different direction. It doesn't require a ceremony or a confession. It's just a doing man." So they would repent and receive what the church told them was deliverance from their sins and someone would write it all down. Every affair, addiction, secret, every shameful thing in their life. Then those confessions were filed away at the church. Now people rarely volunteer for the stick. "Wait, wait, wait. You said file away at the church." Yeah, there's files on people of what they can do. Now people rarely volunteer for the stick unless someone's dangling a pretty attractive carrot and a Christ community they had one. The church taught that God wanted to bless every area of your life. A statement I don't disagree with, but Christ community took the idea to a whole new level. You see, God wanted you to prosper and your desires and ambitions. Those were from God, so He would absolutely provide for them. In a car, go buy it. God will ensure it's paid off. The designer handbag, you definitely can't afford, put it on the credit card, and faith. And well, if God wanted you to have it, why should you worry? Rack up the debt because God was going to provide. And if you overextended your finances in faith and God didn't seem to be providing you away out, well, maybe there was some unconfessed sin standing in the way and maybe there was another demon that needed to be cast out. People just need a deliverance, session, interrogation, and the church will get to the bottom of whatever standing between you and your blessings of prosperity. All you have to do is tell the church leadership every embarrassing, shameful, deeply personal thing you've ever done so they can write it down and add it to your file. And now I should not have to say this, but I'm going to anyway. If any organization, religious or otherwise, is encouraging you to hand over enough personal information that they could blackmail, shame, or coerce you later, you are not going for handing them over the keys to your autonomy. That should set off every alarm bell in your brain because once someone has your deepest secrets, they have leverage. And leverage is one of the oldest tools of manipulation there is. And if you're horrified, good. Thank all that is holy because if your reaction to all of this is anything less than profound discomfort, it might be time for a little self-reflection. That was the environment at Christ Community Church. A community bound together not just by faith, but by increasing fear and shame. By the belief that church leaders possessed extraordinary spiritual authority and extraordinary spiritual insight. And in that environment of prophetic dreams, supernatural gifts and promises of divine prosperity, Santa Claus developed a reputation as one of the church's most trusted prophecies. But then Santa made a very ominous prediction. Now at this time, Sandy's spending habits had caught the attention of a very concerned friend. was carrying significant credit card debt, and the friend questioned whether she should really be spending this money that she didn't have. But Sandy wasn't worried. Not only was her spending done in faith of God's provision, but according to her, God had already shown her how all of that debt would be paid off. Jimmy, her husband, was going to die. His life insurance would take care of those bills. According to Sandy, she'd seen it in a prophetic dream, and the friend Sandy shared her prophecy with "wasn't the only one that she told." Curiously, she didn't share it with Jimmy, or Jimmy's parents. But several people knew about it, and somehow that prediction didn't become the subject of urgent concern. Now, if someone today casually told you that they knew they're young, otherwise healthy spouse was going to die because God had revealed it to them in a dream, you might find that unsettling, at best, maybe alarming at worst, but for congregants at Christ community, you would see everyone's internal alarm bells were permanently disconnected. So did they start making funeral plans? No, Sandy just told people he was going to die. And they were like, "Okay, we'll burn that bridge when we get there." At one point, she went out and bought a smaller chainsaw that was easier for her to use, and went to a friend asked her why, because Jimmy had a chainsaw. She said, "Well, when he dies, I'm still going to need to cut things." Like, that's how convinced she was. What did Jimmy think about that? She wasn't telling Jimmy. She told the old congregation, there's no way Jimmy didn't find out. She only told her friends. She didn't, this is a good thing. Oh, I thought this was like, "Oh, I got a word from God. Hey, my old man's going to die." Who's next? But Sandy wasn't the only woman past her Nick Hackney had grown unusually close to. Annette Anderson and her husband Craig had also turned to Nick for marriage counseling. And much like Sandy, it wasn't long before Nick was meeting with Annette alone. Then there was Nicole Matheson, a single mother desperately hoping her struggling marriage could still be saved. But when her drug addicted husband fathered a child with another woman, Nicole finally filed for divorce, and once again, Nick Hackney was there to counsel her and comfort her and minister. All different women's and all different marriages, but the same pattern. Women at vulnerable points in their lives, who increasingly found themselves depending on their past. Meanwhile, Sandy's relationship with Nick was becoming even more extraordinary. Sandy later claimed that in the fall of 1997, God had shown her another prophetic dream. This time she said the vision wasn't about Jimmy. It was about Dawn Hackney. According to Sandy, God revealed that Dawn Hackney was going to die. And after Dawn's death, Nick and Sandy would be together. What? Unlike many of Sandy's other prophecies, this one was not shared with anyone else except for one person. Nick Hackney. And according to Sandy when she told him what God had supposedly revealed, Nick simply replied, "I knew it." The prophecy even came with a date. December 18, 1997. As that date approached, Nick began quietly preparing the women closest to him for difficult times ahead. He told Annette Anderson that God's plan for him involved enduring some terrible things. That she wasn't to be alarmed by what was coming because it was all part of God's will. At roughly the same time, the men in the church were beginning to notice something wasn't right. Jimmy Glass had grown increasingly frustrated, honestly very angry, by Sandy's emotional distance and by the amount of time she was spending with Nick. Other husband's voiced similar concerns, accusing Nick of inserting himself into troubled marriages and growing far too close to the woman he was counseling. Those concerns eventually reached Pastor Robert Byley. Nick didn't see those complaints as accountability. He saw them as "spiritual warfare." You see around this time, he became captivated by a book called The Final Quest by Rick Joyner. "Oh God." The book describes a spiritual battle raging within the church itself where faithful believers must recognize hidden evil, resist deception, and climb a symbolic mountain toward God, gaining spiritual weapons and armor along the way, before returning to rescue those still trapped by darkness. Nick was so taken with the book that he bought copies for Sandy Glass, Annette Anderson, Nicole Matheson, and even Pastor Bob Smith's daughter Lindsay. To Nick, this wasn't simply an interesting Christian book. It was a roadmap, a blueprint for understanding the conflict unfolding around him. If people questioned him, perhaps they were agents of Satan standing in the way of God's plan. And then there's one more detail, one that may be nothing more than a coincidence or it may not. Throughout The Final Quest, Joyner uses very rich symbolism. One of the recurring images is a sword representing the word of God, and those swords are adorned with precious stones. Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and emeralds, which were symbols of purity, sacrifice, the heavenly realm, and God's mercy and eternal life. And weeks earlier, Nick Hackney had commissioned a custom ring, a woman's gold ring with the sword set with a diamond, a ruby, a sapphire, and an emerald. But there was a small problem. You see, Jimmy Glass stubbornly refused to die. He remained inconveniently alive, seemingly thwarting what both Sandy and Nick believed God had revealed was his divine plan, and that's when Sandy made a mistake. It appears she mixed up a couple Christmas presents while she was wrapping them. One gift intended for Nick Hackney accidentally ended up in a package labeled for a family friend. When the friend opened it, she found a small stuffed teddy bear. Odd enough? But it was the card tucked inside that really caught everyone's attention. To Nick, my big-hearted, hug-able, hold-able, hunk of a man, I love you so very much, Sandy. Awkward? Especially because that package was not opened in front of Sandy, but it was opened in front of her husband Jimmy's parents. Parents who were already concerned that their daughter-in-law was spending an awful lot of time with her pastor instead of working on her crumbling marriage. Parents who already seem to suspect something inappropriate might be brewing. And now they're holding a love note from their son's wife to her pastor who was supposed to be helping them patch up their marriage. Jimmy's parents quietly tucked the bear in the car to away. They did not confront Sandy. They were still terrified she would retaliate by limiting their access to their grandchildren, so they stayed silent and waited. And then December 18th arrived. The day that Sandy had prophesied that Don Hackney would die, and it went. And Don was very much still alive. Wait, wait, the day that she prophesied it, that's when she killed them right or tried to do her. No, the day came and went, nothing happened. Don was still alive at the end of December 18th. She didn't die until December 26th. Oh, yeah. Well, hey, that's a silver line. But Nick and Sandy had clearly already planned their life together. They bought those rings. They saw the visions. And Shirley's Sandy could just divorce Jimmy and go around the inconvenient failure in that prophetic doom. But Nick. Nick could not simply divorce Don because he was a pastor and he counseled struggling marriages. He preached about the sanctity of marriage in a church that highly discouraged divorce. Divorcing his wife to marry another woman would have destroyed everything he'd built. So. What's a faithful couple to do? I mean, they aren't actually a couple because they're both still married to other people. People to whom they stood before God and made vows. But you know, that was before God revealed his full plan. But now God doesn't seem to be keeping up his end of the bargain. The inconvenient spouse is just keep breathing. And that doesn't track. Well for a while, that question went unanswered. Investigators ruled Don Hackney's death on December 26th in accident. And life, as much as it could, moved on. But Jimmy Glass, Jimmy, was still around. And months after Don's death, Sandy was apparently still waiting for Jimmy to exit stage left. And then in the spring of 1998, according to Sandy, heaven checked back in. She told Nick that she'd received more prophetic visions and messages, including messages from the angel Gabriel. You've got mail. Yes, that Gabriel. The angel Gabriel appears to what? Three people in the entire Bible? Daniel, Zechariah, and Mary? It's a pretty exclusive list. But apparently, in the spring of 1998, Gabriel decided to make an unscuduled stop in Washington state, and according to Sandy, she had a vision that showed exactly how Jimmy was going to finally die. In the vision, Sandy, Jimmy, and one of their sons would be driving across Agut Pass bridge in the family's suburban. And Sandy would reach over Unbuckle Jimmy's seatbelt, grab the steering wheel, and deliberately crash the vehicle into a telephone pole killing Jimmy. That is extremely specific. I guess their son was just supposed to be collateral damage in this? I don't. Now, let's just think about the theology here for a second. According to Sandy, the all-powerful creator of the universe had a divine plan, and that plan required Sandy and Nick to be together, but there was this stubborn obstacle named Jimmy Glass. And apparently, the god who created heaven and earth, part of the red sea, reigned fire from heaven and raised the dead, just couldn't seem to get Jimmy out of the way. A speed bump on the supernatural highway of divine intention. Oh dear. No Gabriel was dispatched with an update. To show Sandy that she was going to have to handle this one herself. Now I'm paraphrasing, of course. But that's the unavoidable implication. The god who commanded Daesh out not murder supposedly sent one of the most prominent angels scripture to tell Sandy that actually God needed her to be his hit woman. And if that's too much insanity, I regret to inform you that we're not done. Not even close. Because in the months after Dawn's death, Nick, the grieving husband, the pastor who had just tragically lost his wife, turned to the women he'd been counseling for comfort. Spiritual comfort, friendship, companionship, and eventually physical comfort. Nick went to these women for claiming how desperately he missed Dawn and how overwhelming his physical needs had become. He argued that the church was too prudish about sex, that physical intimacy was a gift God intended human beings to have in times of need. And somehow he managed to twist that argument even further. By sleeping with him, these women weren't committing a sin. They were serving the will of God. First, there's Nicole Matheson. Now Nicole was already heartbroken by her own husband's betrayal. And she wanted desperately to save her marriage. And she wanted her husband to want her. And now at one of the most vulnerable points in her life, here was this man she believed was godly and that she trusted, telling her all of the beautiful things that she had wanted to hear for so long from her husband. Nick told her that she was special and he told her how much he needed her. And he convinced her that a physical relationship between them wasn't sinful, it was merciful. She was helping a grieving widower cope with the need that God himself had given him. And then there was Annette Anderson. Annette was still married to Craig. She was also a woman who had spent years learning to trust the spiritual leaders around her and to accept their interpretation of God's will. And now that one of those leaders was telling her that he was carrying out God's plan and God's plan apparently required Annette to help satisfy his physical needs, Annette knew somewhere in her head that they were doing something wrong. But by this point she had spent so long being taught to distrust her own doubts and to interpret her questions as rebellion and resistance and as spiritual failures. That when a pastor she trusted told her that this was God's will she believed him. And then of course there was Sandy Glass. And now we know that Sandy and Nick's physical relationship began before dawn's death. Sandy was a church secretary, a woman who deeply wanted to believe that she had been called by God for some greater purpose. A woman who believed that she possessed the gift of prophecy and Nick fed every bit of it. Her ego, her desires, her belief that God had something extraordinary planned specifically for her. And that her prophetic gifts were proof. The visions were proof. The ring he purchased was proof. Once Dawn was gone and Jimmy was gone, Nick and Sandy would finally be together. She believed this so completely that she maintained a relationship with Nick while both of them were still married. She believed Dawn was going to die and Jimmy was going to die. And eventually she believed an angel had shown her that she herself was supposed to make Jimmy's death happen. Thankfully, Jimmy Glass survived Sandy's prophecy she never did attempted to kill him. And Sandy Glass would ultimately survive Nick's manipulation long enough to become his undoing. But Sandy wasn't the last woman. Oh no. Pastor Bob Smith had an 18-year-old daughter named Lindsay. And after the fire Nick moved into the Smith family home. And shortly after Christmas, Lindsay left for a mission trip to Africa. While she was gone, Nick began sending her long rambling emails. He wrote about his growing feelings for her, about what God was supposedly showing him, about God's plan for his future. And how that future included Lindsay. Eventually, those messages became sexual. But Lindsay was thousands of miles away in Africa. And Nick's supposed physical needs were back in Washington, where by this point he'd assembled what amounted to an entire rotation of women that he had convinced were somehow participating in God's divine plan. And somehow there was still one more. A woman who'd known Nick before he became a pastor. A woman who'd welcomed him into her family. A woman who'd celebrated when her daughter married him. Dawn's mother. After Dawn's death, her mother was drowning in grief and she was struggling with depression and her own marriage that was falling apart. And Nick was there. He told her that no one else could possibly understand what she was experiencing, but he could because he had lost Dawn also. They were grieving the same woman. And Nick leveraged that shared grief and vulnerability into a sexual relationship with his dead wife's mother. The mother of the woman Nick Hackney would eventually be convicted of murdering. By this point, take a look at what Nick was asking the people around him to accept. Adultery, coveting other men's wives, deception, broken vows, broken promises, and eventually according to Sandy's own supposed prophecy murder, all while invoking the name of God. And whenever someone questioned him, Nick had an answer, it was spiritual warfare. These people were challenging him. The people challenging him weren't trying to hold him accountable. They were obstacles. They were being influenced by evil. Satan would of course attack Nick because Nick was doing God's work, which meant every challenge to Nick's authority could become further proof that Nick was right. And this is where one moment of discernment could have changed everything. Someone needed to stop and ask a very simple question. Does the God Nick Hackney is describing bear any resemblance to the God described in scripture that Nick claims to preach? Because the people of Christ community church had spent years allowing spiritual middlemen to interpret God's will for them. They'd been subjected to deliverance counseling. They'd confess their deepest secrets. They'd been warned about having rebellious spirits. They'd watched people who challenged church leadership he pushed out. And little by little, some of them had learned to distrust the alarm bells ringing inside their own heads. They'd been conditioned to politely eat whatever they were fed and call it holy. But alarm bells don't disappear just because you learn to ignore them. And eventually people did start to listen. Nick Hackney would eventually be exposed for what he really was. Not a man of God, not a spiritual leader, not a warrior, valiantly driving evil from the church. But a man who had learned that invoking God's name could make other people surrender their judgment to his own desires. And ultimately, one of the women he'd manipulated would make a decision that Nick couldn't explain away a spiritual warfare. She would talk. And when she did, she would make a promise of her own. To tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And that's where we'll pick up next week on pulpit in the pyre the murder of Don Hackney on crime to burn. No, but if we don't get through this episode fast enough, it's going to get really freaking hot down here. You won't feel the heat. Dude, we didn't have an air conditioner back here for the last three years. But I've been spoiled now. So I mean, if I start stripping through the episode, you'll know you're sort of motivating me to draw this out, you know. That's not. I don't think you really thought this whole line of reasoning through. Well, you just starting to draw it out on necessarily to get my. Restore a strip for me if it's necessary. The dog sighs for me. It's been a day. We have to start with butthole drama. Analabrasions. Yeah. I thought that would be like a cool metal song title. Analabrasion. First in a minute. What kind of metal would that be? Would it be like dark metal or like dark? I don't know, but it would be thrash metal. It's abrated. So I'm not sure how to qualify that or quantify it or classify it or indemnify it or rectify it, frankly rectify it. See what it did there. I need to take Winston to the vet first thing this morning because he had a butthole problem. Like he could not seem to work out. He was suffering so bad. He was. But then they took him to the back to express the anal glands and all of a sudden we just heard the Winston. Oh, that's probably why I needed to be out of the building. I'm so bad. I don't think I need one more ounce of drama. Jesus, help me. It's not helping. Just put it on your put it somewhere. Put it in your bum bum. Don't care. You're not putting anything in my bum bum. I'm going to need so much help. That's what tacos because I'm excited about tacos. I'm already hungry. No. You do have hungry eyes. Okay. The one thing that I do find amusing is that the Dennis arms are about as big around as this head and it makes them look unbalanced. Is it mean it's a small head or big arms? He does have a small head but he also has big arms. That's why it balances. It looks to me like he's going to fall over if he leaves two arms. He's like his arms are that big. What did you see? But it just gave the overall impression that his head and the tops of his arms were the same size. Which made me picture him with heads sticking out of both shoulder sockets. That was was. Holy crap. What was happening in my head? Yeah, like an acid flashback or something. I've never done acid so I wasn't glad. That wasn't nice. Well, I use it because it's got the hole to put on my phone. I love things with holes. When I was making this, that was the video. You made that? I made this. I thought it was. You put it on. I made it with the right. It looks like that. Your dog has the digestive system. Oh my god. - I'm a wood chipper. - Yeah. (laughs) I've seen him pass entire portions of blanket. Okay, we don't need to keep revisiting my trauma. Oh, I forgot that that was special to you. All my dreams have gone up in fire or theft, so I forget that you still have special feelings. Sorry. Sorry about my special feelings. (laughs) Yeah, go be sorry over there and hang your head where I can't see it. God, it sounds like a hippie today, Jesus, Frank, I'm gonna hit myself. As always, you can email us your fire stories, case suggestions, episode feedback, and confessions of sin at [email protected]. (laughs) Your confessions was so Napoleon dynamite. The church would actually print those prophecies and distribute them. That's not the way you say that. I'm much for England. Hey, sometimes you put the emphasis on the wrong slab, but it's all right. Man, I don't want to sound weird or religious or suspicious. I'm suspicious. Those salted, or your shoulder. Super suspicious. Yeah. (beep) It's okay, you don't have to confess that Jerk and I'm the Barney or the Power Rangers. I accidentally hung up on my mom. Oh, Frank, your Frank, your Frank and Cook. Just seeing how you're doing there. We're gonna support your podcast, don't you worry. Some reason those phone, every time it tries to dial me, it hangs up. Did you block mom? (laughs) Did you block mom? I think she did, she went to block. (beep) And leverage is one of the oldest tools of Manipi-Leithin. Hey, Manipi-Leithin is terrible. Perhaps they weren't exposing wrongdoing. Perhaps they were agents of Satan, yeah. No, yeah, you're a douchebag for Satan. You're a lap dog of the devil. I'm gonna have to sit at my husband after this episode. You know what? I'm a member of Amazon Vine, which is a program where I can opt into certain products, usually not great products, but and then they'll send them to me and I have still to pay taxes on them, but I get to review them and I don't have to purchase the product. Several times there have been goat castration units on Amazon Vine. Oh, that's compelling. And I thought we don't have any goats. Yeah, well, you don't have any goats to use that. I need a strong sense of discernment. A strong sense of discernment. I heard nobody joins a cult. They just wait too long to leave. Exactly. Ladies and gentlemen, if your dog starts butt scooting around the house, please get him service as soon as possible. If he may, a braid is anus. And then the vet will instruct you to put diaper rash cream on a dog's anus. And then you'll have to pay $80. Further privilege. (laughs) It's so weird to simultaneously love and hate everybody. It's, I don't know how to rectify this. I think, I think with tacos. Oh, yeah. I don't know if you've had enough beer for this conversation. I feel like I could be a sex guru. It's a different podcast. I, um, I really want tacos and a sign off a standard between us and tacos. Meet wrapped up in smothered in cheese. Did you know a female hyena has a scudal penis? I'm really good at underestimating things. Yeah, I can tell from this episode. I can underestimate the length of time it's gonna take me to do things. I can underestimate the level of effort something's gonna be as evidenced by this podcast. (laughs) I just don't wanna touch it. I mean, it feels, we should leave this to professional. We paid money to have this region manipulated. As always, always, nope, that's the reason. (laughs) And as usual, always question authority and something about dog butts. I never take a healthy dog butt for granted because they're not granted, they're earned. Healthy dog butts are earned. May your dog's butt stay uneventful. Many of the odds always being your dog's favor. (gentle piano music) Crime to burn is a production of Crime to Burn LLC where we light fires in your brain and not your buildings. All rights reserved. Still spiritually parched after this episode? It's okay, Steve believes in cross-pollination. Here's a trailer for a show we think deserves to infiltrate your ear holes in a good way. Don't forget to leave a five-star review before you go. Steve is watching. - Looking for your next true crime podcast? Then consider checking out my show, truly twisted, wherever you get your podcasts. - Hi, my name is Alicia Watson and each Thursday I will be bringing you a twisted story that is always victim focused and fact-based. My goal is simple, bringing a voice to the voiceless. So be sure to follow me on Instagram and TikTok at it's truly twisted. And for more on my show and other amazing creators, visit fireisemedia.com. And in the meantime, remember, you are wanted. You are loved and you deserve to be here. And I'll see you there. Fireisemedia.