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Let the Devil In Season 1 Episode 3
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00:00You
00:30So this rosary ring was found, I believe, in Tom's room.
00:36It's not meant to be worn around the neck.
00:40It's an actual ring.
00:42You wear it with the cross up while you're seeing the rosary.
00:46But he takes it and he's wearing it with the cross down.
00:50Do you understand? It's an inversion of the rosary.
00:53But the fact that Tom even wears it with the cross going down,
01:02that's not a rosary ring.
01:04That's a mocking of the Blessed Mother and the Lord Jesus.
01:08This is a mockery of all that is sacred.
01:11This is spitting in the face of God.
01:14A 14-year-old boy, said to be obsessed by Satan,
01:18stabbed his mother to death over the weekend,
01:20and then committed suicide.
01:22Over the past month, Tom had developed an unhealthy interest in Satan.
01:26I remember walking into his bedroom,
01:28and on the bed is where I saw some of the books.
01:31And opening the books, he had some pretty strange writings
01:34of following Satan and giving his life to Satan.
01:37He was the neighborhood paper boy, a model student,
01:40and now, by his own admission, a Satanic murderer.
01:43I believe that Tom Jr. had a relationship with Satan.
01:49Once a person is possessed, they have no control.
01:53In that basement, Tom was possessed by demonic forces to kill his mother.
02:03The killing of a mother by a son is beyond comprehension.
02:10It is not natural. It is not normal.
02:14It is anti-everything that's holy and good.
02:17Evil conjures a thousand images in our minds,
02:21of twisted people, unspeakable acts, and dark ideas.
02:25It is the darkness we see in others,
02:29and the darkness we see in 감사합니다.
02:31It is the darkness we see in others.
02:33No!
02:35evil conjures a thousand images in our minds of twisted people unspeakable acts and dark ideas
02:50it's the darkness we see in others and the darkness we fear lurks within ourselves
02:57but what happens when that evil stops becoming a concept and takes shape when tommy jr killed his
03:05mother and turned a blade on himself it pointed to something that defied logic
03:12something truly evil thomas sullivan was 14 years old and state body reports his father
03:20was trying to find a way to forgive him i loved him dearly but he also took my wife who i loved
03:26if you're saying to yourself something like this could never happen in your community
03:36think again morris county police are broadening their investigation of a bizarre murder suicide
03:41to determine if it was linked to a local satanic cult according to police tom stabbed his mother
03:46more than a dozen times with a small pen knife the body of betty ann sullivan was found in the basement
03:51and the next day the body of tom sullivan jr was found in the snow he had slashed his wrist
03:56and throat this was a brutal murder this was a suicide that was you know very very violent
04:02the crime scene photos and autopsy photos showed that he cut his wrist and then took the knife
04:19put it from one ear to the other ear and pulled it across his throat right across um i mean graphic
04:26to see the picture of his head being back and just seeing this gaping hole
04:32you know the kill himself in the manner that he did
04:36it promotes a lot of questions
04:40for the average person it's like well if he was under some influence of drugs i mean that can make
04:50people do all kinds of things but from the reports and you know speaking with the detectives at the
04:55time there was no drugs no alcohol um you know just um how did that happen
05:02tom sullivan jr is described by neighbors as the all-american kid an eighth grader who loved
05:10baseball and wrestling how does a kid going to school there and having all those advantages
05:15you know why did this 13 14 year old eighth grade catholic school kid
05:22do this he told some kids that he had a vision that satan came to him satan had his face on it
05:32and satan told me kill his family and then go out and preach satanism
05:36my understanding was that tommy had written a paper on satanism in class
05:48i believe the school paper started around october when it had to be done around the thanksgiving
05:56holidays something within his research triggered his attachment to it and then he just stayed
06:05involved in it but it went downhill very quick with him just a couple of weeks tommy's behavior
06:12changed it's just mind-blowing it really is it's really hard to you know wrap your head around it
06:18it really is family did say he was getting involved in satanism and that's what people
06:23worried about is him being possessed sister filomena told us that they had been having some concerns
06:29about tommy's behavior i was like well let's go up to the school and find out what they can tell us
06:36police were in my office the following morning on monday morning
06:49they said we want to go and get all his books out of his desk
06:55my first statement i felt i had to say it was i have never dealt with anything like this before
07:03and i believe it was paul hart said
07:06neither have we
07:09it was very tense to put it mildly um there was a lot of concern about what had gone on and
07:17you know how did this happen
07:20the english teacher had them doing journals
07:28she was just trying to get the students to put their thoughts down
07:35the journal was personal and i would never have looked at a child's print journal
07:47but the police could
07:49they started each day by writing a kind of a private journal
08:06the initial sketches were of cartoon characters there's mickey mouse and you know all the things
08:26you would imagine that a teenager you know might be drawing
08:30and then it progressively got darker
08:39you know went from mickey mouse to
08:43pictures of like a horned person resembling maybe the devil
08:51there were some pentagrams
08:54and as it got kind of darker and darker
08:57nothing came to light because it wasn't anything they shared
09:03the sketchbook started taking on a more ominous angry feeling about it
09:13that tommy was not happy he was he was not a happy kid
09:20right away you could see he was influenced
09:24obsessed obsessed by the satanic world
09:29the evidence of what he was thinking of on a daily basis was in that book
09:37along with tommy's sketchbook the jefferson pd uncovered several journal entries
09:42such as this one
09:44today is really cool
09:46i really do hate god and love
09:49the devil is my idol
09:50i will rise and conquer the good of mankind for eternity
09:56and when the apocalypse comes around i will descend to hell to fulfill lucifer's will
10:02well i really do have to go now so bye
10:09i mean this is his journal this isn't for public consumption this is what he was really feeling
10:14i think it reflects tommy's deep understanding of satan or the occult
10:40and uh i see telltale signs there of somebody who's in the know
10:46as a historian i study satanism i'm an occultist i'm a seeker i'm on the path
10:53and i document what i find on the path both in terms of history and practice
10:58uh to me understanding the occult participating in occult movements requires skin in the game it
11:08requires a lot of hands-on research and practice
11:15so here we see he's holding the reverse crucifix in his left hand and the left hand path is said to be
11:24the the path of the satanic where the individual seeker is attempting to develop certain uh superhuman powers
11:37levitation or bilocation or super strength
11:41so the belief that the left hand forces
11:46hold that power that maybe he was unable to find in
11:48the other more conventional doorways that were open to him he's calling on satan to seek power
12:00this is fascinating to me because what we're seeing in this image most obviously is a horned figure with
12:09someone's severed head this time tommy creates a language a kind of script
12:19the words at the top of the image seem to me to be evil world written backwards
12:27one piece of satanic lore that runs through the ages is that uh demons as the term is conventionally
12:34used they like things backwards they like things upside down he clearly brought
12:41details a little more sophisticated than you might find in books from the local public library
12:51in this drawing you're clearly seeing uh somebody who is
12:56more fully grokking to the brutalization of what he's depicting
13:00that drawing during the investigation well it's one of those pieces of information that's stuck up here
13:10the victim has an expression of despair
13:14with the hand cut off damage to the body to the head and the face there's a
13:22a reveling in cruelty in the image you would look at and you could say
13:26that was a depiction drawing of of ultimately what happened to his mother
13:37tommy wasn't alone in his interest or in how he expressed himself i myself have stacks of notebooks
13:45with similar drawings i made when i was his age
13:57and the thing is i turned out fine in fact those inspirations served me very well throughout my career
14:02and continue to do so but sometimes the signs can't be ignored as a parent now i understand that fear of
14:10not knowing what's going through my kid's head how can i and how could anyone know what was going
14:15through tommy's mind and that he would cross that line from fantasy into something physical
14:20that day when i talked to tom in my office
14:37the steel look in his eyes i've never had anyone look at me like that ever
14:44he said it's too late
14:54and i felt it was too late
15:05the whole room got cold i was feeling
15:09just so chilled so it's too late i cannot describe it in words i can only say
15:23that for me that scared me the most
15:32satan is real
15:33satan is the opposite
15:42and the antagonist of god it is very hard for me to really
15:56understand
15:56and i know that people choose evil
16:11i walked back to my office
16:14my vice principal said did you want to speak to mrs sullivan and i said oh yes
16:19it's good to see you thank you mrs sullivan was a faithful volunteer in the school at lunchtime she
16:31would go into a classroom and be there for the kids as they were eating and then take them out
16:37on the playground it was a heroic job and she did it faithfully
16:42she was a stay-at-home mom she did not have any other job so she made her children priority
16:53i said the children had come to me they were concerned the teachers are concerned we're all
17:00concerned about what he's talking about which includes satan
17:12and she says i know all about it he took every single book out of the library and he read every
17:16single one cover to cover and she said i was so glad he was reading i didn't care what he read
17:21and i said but there are other things to read
17:28if i can help him anyway i said please i encourage you and your husband to talk to him
17:36that was thursday friday we had a snow day 14 year old boy said to be obsessed by satan
17:44stabbed his mother to death over the weekend and then committed suicide he had killed his mother
17:50on saturday night and somewhere before they found him he had killed himself so now we had a homicide
18:01and a suicide in our school
18:09truth be told i thought it was my fault
18:12it's a horrible thing to think that in two weeks a young man could change and become this monster
18:32you know uh and this interest in satan is no it there's not enough time for that to happen
18:39it's obvious to me based on what i've experienced in my own life and in ministry working with folks
18:49that we're dealing with something here that is deeply
18:53dark paranormal nefarious and dangerous and real
18:58is it possible that tommy was in touch with some kind of unseen entity some sort of metaphysical
19:12presence what a person might call possession of course it's possible of course it's possible
19:18i do feel certain that there are some cases of possession that elude all explanation i will never take
19:30the supernatural or the extra physical off the table possession and exorcism are widely referenced
19:40topics that most everyone has heard of due chiefly to entertainment take a look at the number of movies
19:48that involve satanism
19:52in the exorcist it is the tremendous power of the devil himself controlling a little girl's body
19:57against the will of a priest i love films about possession and evil movies like rosemary's baby
20:06this is no dream this is really happening the power of christ compels you the exorcist
20:14and a personal favorite of mine the omen sparked a cultural wildfire but they weren't just about the
20:21supernatural horror they were stories about regular everyday people thrust into something they couldn't
20:27explain and that's terrifying it hits you on a primal level the exorcist was based on the true case of
20:36roland doe boy in the 1940s who allegedly became possessed after using a ouija board
20:44his story spread sparking a debate was it possession or something else
20:51by fictionalizing doe's story into the exorcist filmmakers took that fear and amplified it shaping
20:59a generation into thinking that anything strange could be a sign of the devil oh god son of god
21:09how many exorcisms have you performed yourself i've been doing it for about five years now and about
21:1420 a year so it's about 100 there's been an uptick of supposed possession cases over the past 20 years
21:22or so here in the united states so much so that the vatican has just about quintupled the number of church
21:31sanctioned exorcists here in the u.s
21:35it is deeply controversial and yet word from a conference in italy is that more priests are to be
21:43trained in exorcism
21:54i have the feeling as my hands say that as though i didn't move them myself they were moved for me
22:00to find rest and peace in the realms of life i have performed what we refer to in the church as exorcism
22:09i've seen a woman where there was there was spirits that were literally fighting her from her body
22:21like fists coming out of her so to speak punching me while i was praying for her
22:26i have spoken to people that have been controlled by evil their eyes change their voices change
22:38you feel a presence you you sense beyond the shadow of a doubt you are not with the regular person that
22:45you know
23:00tom solomon's found wrist cut
23:05and then neck cut all the way to the bone and the head just hanging on by the neck bone
23:12now what would the person cut his neck and then do his these his hands no or do the hands first and
23:20then do no it's not possible there was something otherworldly about it as if he was controlled or
23:29possessed by a man or possessed by a spirit
23:43usually an individual gets possessed by something that he or she has not gone
23:49looking for but tommy willfully sought this experience
24:09so i wouldn't specifically describe it as possession
24:13something takes possession of you it's not an invited guest if tommy got in touch with something
24:20it was an invited guest
24:27it was an invited guest when tom wrote a pact with satan it was like a legal contract if you will
24:45the whole story is in the pack that he wrote
24:55all right so to the greatest demons of hell i tom sullivan would like to make a solemn exchange with you
25:04if you give me the most extreme of all magical powers
25:07i will use them wisely to tempt as many people as possible and to do evil and follow you
25:23but this is so disconcerting to actually see it written
25:28when you play with evil at this level
25:31and you call upon the deceiver directly and the hounds of hell
25:43they will respond
25:50they will respond
25:51tell me what are you doing down here
25:58i will kill many christian followers who are serious in their religious beliefs
26:06it just uh
26:10it's so deliberate
26:17it was spiritual forces
26:22that can manifest
26:24in the physical realm
26:26how am i supposed to help you if you won't talk to me
26:35and when you make a pact
26:38with a deity
26:47there has to be a sacrifice
26:51in the demons of hell
26:58throughout my new life
27:03i promise to perform any satanic rituals
27:06i will do these to prove my loyalty
27:14in the demons of hell
27:19he's giving himself bargaining
27:21i mean it's determined
27:22i mean it's determined
27:23even tealed
27:25well thought out
27:26wow
27:41exactly 20 years from this day
27:44i promise to commit suicide
27:49at this time i will go directly to hell
27:52and to work with you as a demon
27:54i believe that evil will once again rise
28:01and conquer the love of god
28:03if this pact is to your approval
28:18is
28:20sign below
28:21he was not conscious of what he was doing when he slit his throat
28:34he could be there himself but the entities that were there worked through him in fact
28:43i wouldn't say it was a suicide i'd say it was a double murder tom killed his mother
28:49but tom was killed by the entity that killed his mother through tom
28:56committing that you're gonna murder your family
29:14that's that's the part that gets people all freaked out
29:18and that's where he writes on the side i've already killed my family
29:22i mean it gives me chills right now just even even just reading it again
29:28wow i i haven't seen this in quite some time interesting
29:33you have to surmise he was definitely taken over by
29:41you know uh an outside force uh you know the the devil
29:46i remember you know being at the funeral
30:05you could barely even get in the church everybody showed up i mean the whole school
30:15was there like the whole town was there
30:17people that didn't even really know him you know like just in tears
30:24it was a combination of people just being terrified and trying to understand stuff and everybody was so affected by it
30:34i remember when it was coming time for him to be buried
30:40we're still on the increase so keep an eye on the open business
30:44we actually got briefed
30:45we gotta pick up on that hold up
30:47they wanted to let us know
30:48that these satanic cults if they believed that tommy was actually possessed
30:57they would come to try to dig the grave up
31:00to take the long bones of the body
31:04as something sacred
31:06i'm gordon coulter
31:09today it's my privilege to host this program on a little known area in law enforcement
31:14it's the area of satanic cults
31:18there are many different satanic symbols
31:20and you know you're told when you go to the police academy you're going to deal with all kinds of stuff
31:23the voodoo vivi
31:24the anarchy
31:25but um certainly not satanic uh uh demonic possessions
31:30that was not in in the uh training
31:33slayings that go unexplained
31:37symbols next to victims
31:38well there's reports all the time of uh occult activity
31:42we've had uh reports of the youth becoming more and more aware of this and more and more involved
31:47perhaps the most dangerous kind of devil worship comes in the form of underground cults
31:52most of them are very secretive usually organizing clandestine rituals in the dark of night
31:59here in northern new jersey there have been cultic groups that had been active there was recruiting
32:05i believe that tom was connected to a group that had been involved with grooming him
32:14and he was used as the tip of the sword that night by evil
32:21this is part of a continuum and that tom was only one of the players
32:29there's a lot more we're looking at a small snippet
32:34of what was taking place police take away boxes full of bones and satanic paraphernalia
32:40um well we were standing across the street and they brought a mannequin with blood officials now
32:46think mutilated dog carcasses found along a millville road may have been the work of devil worshipers
32:52connecting cults in the supernatural in new jersey isn't really a stretch the line between what's real
32:57and otherworldly has always felt a little blurry here you get the outline of something moving along
33:03in the woods kept right along the side of it take the jersey devil for example they found tracks
33:08i found tracks it's one of my favorite campfire stories this deformed winged child demon with
33:15cloven hooves and a tail born one stormy night in colonial america footprint was where that green
33:21car is now and today said to haunt the pine barrens and then there's weird new jersey a magazine which
33:28dives into the strange and paranormal happenings around here beating the public's fascination with
33:33the bizarre mutilated animals showing up by the dozens in north bergen a grizzly
33:38discovery in newark please found only the victim's lower torso when you add in the media frenzy of
33:43the time they use a cauldron they use human bone pouncing on stories of satanic rituals mind control
33:49and dark packs with the devil there are a great number of people that believe in that sort of thing
33:54well every crime every unexplainable tragedy seemed to be part of a much bigger darker conspiracy
34:01the perfect storm of local folklore and real life horror
34:16the general feeling at the time was that there were underground satanic cults that were looking for
34:24uh isolated places in the woods
34:29we heard there was this cult in the woods just a couple miles out of town
34:34animal sacrifices pentagrams carved in trees and stuff the latest incident the bodies of six dead
34:40animals arranged on a pentagram it's an area infested with phenomenon
34:44it's like a crescent from this part of jersey all the way to manhattan
34:51it's a hotbed if you will for occultic activity different stories and different types of abuse
34:59and tragedies and desecrations of sacred places the broken statue of the virgin mary
35:05and a note that read it's satan's power which gives us strength in cults then he walked over to
35:11me and dripped the blood on to me and uh made the sign of the pentagram
35:23during the gilded age which was around the turn of the century
35:26this area was a playground for people from new york it's putting aside all worldly things
35:36in a purely spiritual act of worship
35:41groups would meet and they would be debaucherous so to speak they would also um always involve some
35:47sort of a sacrifice if you know the film eyes wide shut by stanley kubrick that might give you a
35:55little context there was a massive estate back at the turn of the 20th century built by an
36:04industrialist named richard cross a bunch of freaky stuff apparently went down there cross was uh an
36:11occultist who had varied um interests would have these crazy parties with the elite of new york
36:19and uh apparently that's where these satanic rituals were happening and then by the time
36:29we were kids it was just a stone shell of a once huge mansion
36:39during high school one of those boring nights we have nothing to do
36:43we got our courage and we're like let's go walk through the ruins of cross castle in the middle of
36:50the night
36:58it's a it's a really cool place to visit during the day at night it's terrifying
37:05because first of all does this satanic cult in the woods exist
37:09is that real if it does how does it how does that happen under our noses right a pentagram where
37:18mutilated ducks were found it's very scary to think that it's right outside your backyard
37:24it seems like there's a little bit more meat on the paranormal bone in jefferson than other places
37:30that i've heard of i don't think it was unheard of that reports of kind of strange gatherings or
37:40gatherings in the woods it was a rural suburban area there's thousands and thousands of acres that most
37:49people don't access so it provides an area of privacy a lot of places where people could get off on
37:59their own if they were doing rituals
38:06i know of at least one personally that i documented
38:15kind of occult type of scene candles and
38:19laying on the ground there was a half of a coconut and i saw that these looked like bandanas that had
38:31been around somebody's head and on and taken off and tossed and there were some uh
38:37hair remains like uh pieces of animals so this is kind of weird you know bits and pieces around
38:48it was a little spooky because it was it seemed to be so fresh
38:52somehow an animal apparently played into this belief
39:06i had a really strange experience
39:15i don't know it's weird even talking about
39:17so clinton road is just outside of town
39:31no street lights just inky terrifying blackness with woods forever on both sides
39:37people were scared to go into the area
39:48it was deemed to be the most haunted road in america
39:52by people in north jersey and there were a lot of rumors and a lot of ghost stories
39:58stories associated with clinton road but i'm not really a believer of that right
40:05well you should be able to tell like it should be right there because that's where the water
40:08and me and two buddies of mine
40:15this is like a year and a half later you know after tommy
40:23and we're walking down this path into the woods
40:28and crossing in front of us was
40:42a cloaked figure like wearing a mask
40:48like look the quintessential satan worshiper would look like and we stopped dead in our tracks
40:56no one was breathing i look at him i'm like dude did you like am i the only one and they're like
41:01we got to get the out of here right and we just sprinted back to the car
41:07and we're like is that real
41:10so we had to have this an honest moment with ourselves that like all that we'd been hearing
41:16that we've been dismissing so to religious zealots it's true
41:20then it's like how who's involved in it is it our teachers or the guy at the deli is it our mailman
41:30like who is it everybody could be a suspect
41:36so that was a very sobering moment well those ceremonies sometimes involve the sharing of animal
41:44blood to gain power they say but cult members believe their strength really comes from secrecy
41:50beyond a shadow of a doubt there was stuff going on and i believe that tom was involved with cultic
41:58activities in the wooded areas months months before the murder
42:10tom was never the puppet master he was always a puppet
42:17one of the bigger fears was that there was uh underground satanistic cult within the community
42:22and they were afraid that their children were going to get involved in it
42:25to this day it hasn't been proven if there was it certainly wasn't as serious as what
42:29tommy sullib was involved in because nobody else killed their mother in that manner and violent way
42:33that he did there was nothing that showed that he was involved in any type of rituals other than what
42:43he was learning about through his own reading there were enough skeptics that it certainly kept the
42:51conversation going there are things that can't be explained i would tell them i feel the same way
43:03we had a 14 year old boy right and this is what he did and that's not to say that the devil made him
43:10do it it's just that whatever he bought into in that belief system somehow validated these
43:17uh these feelings of anger and hostility so what we wanted to know is how did this come about and what
43:28was going on with this family 1988 i was 19 years old i was uh neighbors of the sullivan family
43:42and the sullivans were like family to me i may have bought the satanic thing for a very short period of
43:52time because that was the narrative but there's no way i think that the police didn't do very much
44:01investigation at all and i just don't know that he would have killed his own mother especially as
44:08brutally as brutally as that was because i believe tommy jr's innocence of what he's being accused
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