Page 73 of The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels
Ellie Cooper
Tried to open Oliver’s interview, Audio File 444. Not sure if it’s a strange format or been corrupted. Can you get him to resend?
Amanda Bailey
I’ll see. He’s being weird about it. Either he didn’t record it or he did and things went badly, OR it went really well and he doesn’t want me to use any of it.
WhatsApp messages between me and Oliver Menzies, 12 July 2021:
Amanda Bailey
Can you send Ellie the Gabriel file?
Oliver Menzies
Thought I had.
Amanda Bailey
It was corrupted.
Oliver Menzies
Sounds about right.
Interview with Caroline Brooks, criminal psychologist [and my tutor. EC], 12 July 2021. Transcribed by Ellie Cooper.
[I cut out some awkward chit-chat and, modestly, some discussion about me. EC]
CB:… and she’s a star of the department. [Whoops, forgot that bit. EC]
AB:Gabriel started out as a petty thief and showed signs of graduating to the fringes of organised crime. But his offending pattern doesn’t feel sequential after that. He makes what feels to me ajumpfrom acquisitive petty criminal to cult leader and murderer.
CB:Cult leaders thrive on power and power corrupts—
AB:What’syourdefinition of a cult?
CB:Well … [Slight hesitation. It’s not that she doesn’t want to commit. She’s very careful with her words. EC] It’s when people are drawn away from their lives as individuals to immerse themselves in a separatist organisation under a charismatic leader. Becoming part of a utopian community. Cults start with their own rules and philosophy, even if it seems they are creating an existence without either. This has a counter-culture appeal for those who struggle to find a place in regular society, or who lack a conventional family.
AB:What is it that makes a cult so hard to leave?
CB:If you’ve given your possessions and money away, you may not have the resources. If you’ve rejected your family and friends, you have no support outside the cult. But the psychological hold is the strongest factor. Members surrender their sense of self to conform to a new set of standards, routine, behaviours. All to please the leader or leaders. If they break the rules or question the philosophy, they’re rejected. It’s an invisible stranglehold. By the time a victim suspects the organisation of wrong-doing, they’re equally guilty of deceiving others.
AB:We talk a lot about the victims of cults, is it helpful to consider the conditions that create a cult leader?
CB:Perhaps. But, again it’s generalisation. A cult is a relationship of coercive control on a grand scale. But it can be a unit of two people: leader and follower. Some mainstream organised religions operate in ways we associate with cults. Society itself … we tend to say ‘cult’ when we mean a negative or toxic organisation. As for the leaders, the majority are mentally unstable. As a cult matures and grows, they have to exert more control to maintain their authority over more people. You can make a distinction between leaders who believe their own philosophy and those who do it for sex or money. One definition of a cult is a religion where the spiritual leader isalive. They can be seen and heard and spoken to … guru-led organisations can attract people disillusioned with mainstreamreligion. We find people raised with a strong religious upbringing are more susceptible to joining a cult.
AB:Do cults target particular types of people? Is there a profile of the victim, I mean?
CB:Many target the wealthy, for obvious reasons. Also young people who are anxious about their futures and the world in general. If someone promises you a new and different way of life, perhaps away from a society you see as flawed … Butanyonewho has experienced something life altering, such as a bereavement, can be vulnerable. In simple terms, as soon as someone knows what you want, they can control you with the promise of getting it for you. But do you know who I think are themostvulnerable? People who believe they canneverbe drawn in.
AB:[You laugh. EC] My words exactly, but not everyone sees it that way. How do you think the Alperton Angels started, and how did they conduct their activities? Were they even a cult?
CB:In my opinion, they were most certainly a cult. The leaders seem to have believed their own philosophy. They killed themselves rather than live in a world alongside the Antichrist. By the end they would all have been well schooled in ignoring any doubts about what they were doing. It was a small cult, but very typical. Think about Heaven’s Gate; they thought they were divine beings who would be collected by a spaceship. Thirty-nine of them died. Then there’s Waco: eighty dead. And of course Jonestown. Over nine hundred. Although in those cases the leader – always a man – died with his followers.
AB:Gabriel ran away from the scene.
CB:Yes. That’s unusual. Perhaps he’d lost faith in what he had believed in – or never believed it.
