Murder in Santa Cruz

But what if we didn't get the whole story?

"It has been made to fix." "The moment you look at the whole picture of the case, Colach."

“What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe?”

Oh my god, I think she might be innocent. Listen to doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security. One of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world.

The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS,

and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets.

Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the on-purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Combs, award-winning country music artist, and one of the most authentic voices in music today.

“The guy that says he's always going to be there, and that will do anything to be there,”

is the only guy that's not there. No matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children. I dread to conversation with my son. Listen to on-purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the burden of guilt season two podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpride became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. How's it monster?

Listen to burden of guilt season two on the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the winter of 1986, Jerry Shortsbach was driving along Highway 101 towards San Francisco when his phone rang. My very first call, my brand new microphone, saying that the Dr. Richard Bander has been arrested

and is in jail on Santa Cruz.

Jerry had never heard of a Dr. Richard Bander before,

but Jerry was a dedicated criminal defense lawyer. So I turned the car around and drove to Santa Cruz and saw Richard in the jail. At the jail, Jerry met a very subdued Richard Bander. He was pretty pale and he was obviously quite scared. Bander would soon be charged with first-degree murder.

“What did you see when you first saw the case against Richard Bander?”

A face value was the overwhelming evidence of guilt. Take a deep breath in. Your conscious mind is going to go totally away so that I can speak privately or unconscious mind. From kaleidoscope and iHeart Podcasts, this is mind games, Episode 6. I'm Alice Hines. I'm Zoe Laskaz.

You don't know how you did it? Yeah, you go in a little time to start your stay. And you're out of it. When we began researching neurolinguistic programming or NLP, we very quickly became fascinated with the man behind it.

Bander seemed like a therapy genius, but also a loose cannon who regularly intimidated and threatened people in his orbit. And then of course, there's the fact that he was accused of murder in 1986. As you can imagine, the story is complicated. We're going to start with the facts. On November 3, 1986, Santa Cruz County sheriffs were called to investigate

a possible homicide. When they arrived, they found a 31-year-old woman named Corrine and Christian Sin sprawled on her back in her home. She was dead from a single gunshot wound to her face. At the scene was a man named James Moreno. He told the police that he was not responsible for her death. That she had been shot and killed by another man, Richard Bander. It was an explosive case in Santa Cruz. When I met NLP trainer Judy Delozer in California,

She was with her then husband, Bander's former collaborator, John Grinder.

“What did you and John say to each other? No, shit. You know, it doesn't look good.”

You got two guys in a room with a woman and the woman's dead and each of the two guys are pointing at each other. The two guys in the room, James Moreno and Richard Bander, had once been as close as Father and Son. Now, they were pointing the finger at one another. A lot of what you will hear in this episode comes from court transcripts of the trial in 1987 and 1988. Also, from my interview with Bander's defense attorney, Jerry Schwartzbock,

who are the major players in this case besides Richard. There was Corrine Christian Sin, who was the daughter of a retired San Francisco police detective. Corrine graduated high school early in nearby San Bruno, then she went to work as a waitress. She liked to roller skate around the

“neighborhood. Friends said she was sweet and happy to help people, but she also hid her vulnerability”

under a tough exterior. In photos from the time, she is a main of curly brown hair and a big smile. Corrine had a few different jobs. Sex work, bookkeeping for Bander's NLP business, and running drugs for her much older boyfriend, James Moreno. Moreno, according to news coverage from the time, was a 54-year-old with a 70s mustache and a 2-page rap sheet. And he and Richard were close. He also was a drug dealer. There were rumors he had connections to

organize crime. Richard Bander and James Moreno first met at an NLP seminar, and they became close

in the early 1980s. Around the time Bander divorced from his first wife Leslie. That breakup was messy and contentious. So was Bander's breakup around the same time with his NLP co-founder. Nearly bankrupt, Bander met Moreno at a local bar. The two became fast friends, bonding over their love of NLP and cocaine. By 1986 the year of the murder, Moreno was allegedly supplying Bander with an ounce of cocaine a week, according to news reports of court testimony.

Trying to understand Richard's relationship with him is challenging because on the one hand, Moreno really worshipped Richard and on the other hand, he really resented him. Moreno told one reporter that Bander was "a fucking genius." The same writer described Moreno as "tall in flashy" with a gambler's weakness for diamond rings, white loafers, and Cadillac sedans. People like to be around people who are famous and Richard in that world was famous.

But then, Moreno, he did an awful lot of drugs and, you know, you do enough drugs for long enough period of time and your mind gets warped. Moreno was extremely paranoid, especially when it came to Corrine. In his testimony, Moreno accused Corrine of all sorts of worried acts that frankly defy credibility, that she slept with seven different people every day, that she dominated them with her collection of dildos, and that she supposedly recorded

BDSM sessions with powerful Santa Cruz clients, apparently to blackmail them. The media had a feel day with these sensational claims. When the trial began a year later in 1987, articles appeared in the LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Santa Cruz Sentinel. There were headlines like guns, grams, and gurus. The murder trial thrust Richard Bander and Neurolinguistic programming into the spotlight. Neurolinguistic programming?

How does that mean? Bander's lawyer Jerry Schwartzbock had never heard of an LP when he took the case.

Early on in my representation of Richard, I got a telephone call and it was a lawyer from Los Angeles. He was a plaintiff's personal injury lawyer. He asked me if I've read Richard's books,

“which I hadn't, and he said, "Oh, you have to read them. You have to read them. I told him,”

look, Richard retained me because he has faith that I actually know what I'm doing as a lawyer, and I don't think he would want me to experiment in his murder trial." Jerry was already kind of famous. He was in his forties, and the year prior had represented radical lawyer Stephen Bingham, who had been on the run for over a decade from accusations that

and Bander needed a good lawyer, because the evidence was not in his favor.

“The first strike against him. Bander didn't call the cops. Marino did.”

That allowed him to tell his version of what happened that night, which was that it was Bander, who shot and killed Carine, and after it happened, Marino and Bander drove to a nearby beach town to get rid of the gun. A 357 Magnum pistol that they threw off the pier. The police subsequently found the gun. It was Richard's gun. They got a search warrant, and went to search. The house Richard was living in. There they found some of Richard's clothes

and had some of Carine's blood and brain tissue. The police also took a blood sample from Bander. He had cocaine, marijuana, and alcohol in his system. And then there was the tape. And when the police were walking out, they saw a tape recorder that just grabbed it.

“That was the next big strike against Bander. On the tape, there was a recording of Bander”

arguing with Carine. At one point, he threatened to quote "below Carine's brains out." This was the night before she was shot. It was all looking really bad for Bander.

Marino telling his story first to the police, Bander's gun, the murder weapon, getting fished out

of the bay, and then the tape. When Bander got his chance to explain, an even more complex backstory started to emerge. When asked about the tape, his angry threats to Carine right before she was killed, Bander admitted that he was angry. But he said he was trying to get information from Carine to help out their friend, James Marino, who got in badly beaten just a few days prior. Here's the backstory from trial testimony. At a Halloween party, Marino dressed in a pirate

“costume was beaten by two assailants dressed as punk rockers. Bander assumed Marino had done”

something dumb and gotten beaten up by strangers at this party, but Marino blamed Carine for setting up the attack, or at least Bander said he did. A week after the party, Carine roller skated over to Bander's house, and that's where Bander interrogated her with the tape running. Richard was trying to get her to admit that she had done that, and why, et cetera. And at one point, he's threatened to put a bullet in her brain. She was killed with a bullet in her brain.

The next day, right? It was just a matter of hours later. The assistant district attorney assigned to the case felt like it was a slam dunk. He told her reporter that the physical evidence, the forensic evidence, and Marino's story, all quote, "Fit like a glove." The murder weapon was Bander's. The clothes stand with Carine's blood, were Bander's, and Bander was on tape threatening to kill Carine.

I interviewed a bunch of NLP trainers about the shockwave's the trial sent through the community, and what Bander was like in the years leading up to it. Bander's reputation wasn't exactly spotless. Since Bander split with his collaborator John Grinder around 1980, Bander had grown increasingly paranoid and self-destructive. I saw him chase out eight different people, Richard's a bunch. He would get an argument with him. NLP expert Michael Hall, who trained with Bander

around the time of the trial, said Bander was aggressive with students. Bander did not respond to this characterization one asked. And he would take a chance at their question and their statement, and then it was short cursing them, then he would say, "Get the hell out of here," and it put fear in everybody, like don't speak up and don't contact him because he'll chase you out. Bander seems to have been spinning out. He would only show up in the afternoon,

because he would stay up really at night, drinking and dragging, I suppose. So we wouldn't see him till one's time. And so sometimes he would come in drunk. So there were times when he was just sourced. And it usually made him a better person when he was training, he would be a little bit

kinder and soft, sure, with it. But not always. Neighbors reported Bander yelling at their kids,

and waving a gun around in broad daylight telling them to shut up so he could sleep. Yikes. Yeah, his drug use was epic. One friend remembered Bander pulling out the biggest bag of blow they'd

with sex workers to avoid falling in love. Marino even claimed in his testimony that Bander was

“considering adopting a baby and raising it alone so he wouldn't have to deal with women. That”

is so absurd. Especially given where he was living at the time. So according to court documents, this house was like a security bunker. There's a German shepherd. It was filled with guns that he kept in a gun safe. It has like a seven foot high fence all around it. That's completely opaque. So no one can see in. There's bars on every window. Okay, so definitely not a cozy space for a baby hypothetical or otherwise. Yeah, we're an adult. So Bander kept voice activated tape recorders in

this house. And if anyone came in, there's a chance to be caught on tape, which explains the tape

that came up in the trial. Yes, he used one of these recorders to tape the conversation with Korean where he says he's going to blow her brains out. What's stunning to me, though, is that at the

“same time that Bander is part of this CD Santa Cruz underworld, he's also giving seminars that”

were really well attended. Yeah, okay. So Bander spiraling, why did people keep coming? Well, some of his fans rationalized his behavior. I've heard of him pulling knives and guns on people to sort of inspire behavioral transformation. Did you ever observe that? Okay, yes. So once again, that's where Bander could be misunderstood. You've heard various stories about Bander's violent threats on this series before. Why it told me another story about Bander threatening to beat up a

rebellious teen he was trying to reform. According to Wyatt, Bander slammed the kid against the wall and said, "Let's get one thing straight punk. I've got a perfect record. You're either going to do what I tell you or I'm going to beat the shit out of you." But not everyone thought they were red flags. Like NLP trainer Wyatt Woodsmall, who worked with Bander on his military contracts a couple of years before the murder, and he actually praised

the therapeutic benefits of Bander's threats on people's lives. So presumably in one of the trainings, Bander was in a bar and put a gun to the side of one of his student's heads in order to try to get him to change, and the student ended up changing. And so the threat worked, Richard out of the goodness of his heart would have the ultimate compassion to hold a gun to the side of a student said, to provide the motivating factor that would allow them to make a change that up to that point.

They have previously been unsuccessful in doing. Bander denies he ever pulled real guns on students. When Bander was arrested for Corrie in Christensen's murder in 1986, he was in deep trouble, and the NLP community was panicked. But Bander had one thing going for him. Connections to law enforcement. His lawyer Jerry Schwartzbock said those contacts help get Bander out of jail. He'll hit an awful lot of supporters. A whole lot of people who just

believed he walked down water. There were governmental people who signed declarations to

“help me get his bail reducing and thereby get him out of jail, which was a very, very important”

thing to happen. Bander had been cultivating these connections for years. John and Richard would also go and work for attorneys like picking juries. Whoa, wait, so lawyers would bring them into help identify people's personalities or how that work. Yes, like they would help them pick out to jury. Deva Cantor Morden, the early NLP who told us about Bander and Grindr tying her to a wooden cross at a Christmas party, said they were specifically with trial lawyers back when she knew them in

the 1970s. They could tell from different responses by the jurors, which way they would go.

They were actually making money helping pick out juries doing jury consulting. Wow, I'd never

heard that before. That's bananas. Yeah, it is. Deva said it worked kind of like a poker tell. Bander and Grindr would watch the lawyers interview the potential jurors and they'd allegedly pick people who'd be sympathetic to their clients by reading their little unconscious giveaways. Bander didn't respond to an email asking him for comment. Here he is, sounding very young from a cassette one of his followers made in 1979. Do you have any lawyers, by the way, any

no lawyers? It's too bad. I've got a great thing for lawyers. If any of you ever,

lied. So I listened to this tape of Bander and the trick is basically when you're a lawyer

and you depose witness, you're supposed to ask them to describe what they were wearing and where they were standing at the scene of a crime. And you ask them if they can see an image of themselves clearly in that moment in time. And they say yes. Okay, where's this going? Well, months later, at trial, you ask the same witness the exact same line of questions. And they'll respond in the same way. Then you point out to the jury it's impossible someone could have a picture perfect image

of themselves when they were looking at the accident. So therefore this witness is memory is distorted.

“So you train them to discredit themselves. Yeah, that's what he says to do. Okay, I'm just going”

to cling to my ideals of justice and quietly pray that never worked. I'm honestly not surprised

though because when I was interviewing the veteran NLP crew, I heard about a different jury hustle. In a publication from 1980, Banner and Grinder claim they could influence judges with NLP. They gave a few examples of how to do it in this book. They co-authored with a few other trainers. In it, they describe mimicking the judge's speech patterns. They also described how to clear your throat distinctively. Every time the judge seems happy to anchor those positive vibes to the sound.

Wait, so you're clearing your throat is an anchor for the judge to be like, "Sight?" Mm-hmm. That is so absurd. I could really imagine that backfiring. Yeah, it sounds distracting especially because they specify that throat clearing needs to be like distinctive enough to be

“noticeable, you know? So you have to kind of do a very special throat clear, but not try.”

But not so weird that it's just completely conspicuous and strange. Oh my god. Okay, so these are a ton of weird tricks. We should let listeners know though that we don't have any evidence these techniques were used in Banner's own case. Still, when the trial began, NLP would play a huge part. That's after the break. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been

in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Leppi. Lucy Leppi has been found guilty, but what if we didn't get the whole story? A moment you look at the whole picture of the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast doubt, the case of Lucy Leppi, we follow the evidence in here from the people that lived it,

to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Leppi was. No voicing of any skepticism are doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of the British law. Listen to doubt, the case of Lucy Leppi, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the on-purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Combs, award-winning country music artist, and one of the most authentic voices

in music today. Luke opens up about success, self-doubt, mental health, and what it really takes to stay true to who you are when your life changes overnight. I hate fame. I hate the word

“celebrity hate those words that you make me uncomfortable. But if I think when you get to a certain”

point, the fame or the success or the influence, it just accentuates and exacerbates the inherent

person that you are. The guy that says he's always going to be there, and that will do anything to be there,

is the only guy that's not there. I'm in Australia when Beau is born. The whole identity is that no matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children over my job. I dread the conversation with my son. What do you think you'd say? Listen to on-purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the burden of guilt season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families.

Late one night, Bobby Gumpride became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Termine Hudson as the perpetrator. Termine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, "Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity." The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years only two people knew the truth, until a confession

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

“China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful”

spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Riggle, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Here how they got it on the 6th Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question of his life. And that's the Unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable.

This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS, and how one man's ambition, and mistakes,

opened its vault of secrets. Listen to the 6th Bureau on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There was a ton of evidence against Bhandler. Assistant District Attorney Gary Fry believed it would be an open and shut case. But when the trial started on December 1, 1987, it got off to a rocky start.

“Starting with the fact that James Moreno, the prosecution's key witness, just didn't show up.”

Moreno had been given immunity for drug trafficking charges in exchange for testifying.

He did finally show up a week late in court. It turned out, Moreno had been in hiding.

He testified he thought Bhandler and his CIA connections were chasing him. And he said they had even fired shots in his car window. Bhandler's lawyer Jerry question Moreno about this. Here's a voice actor reading the exchange. So you thought that he might have been using his contacts in the police department to bug the phones of your friends, is that what you're saying? Yes, and I considered Richard having contacts

with the CIA and the DEA, that because when I after the shooting I asked my attorney, and he said it was probably special forces that shot at me. Moreno came off during the trial as pretty unstable. Bhandler meanwhile testified in a few well-chosen words. He was convincing, but the prosecutor still tried to use his persuasiveness against him. Here's the Assistant District Attorney questioning Bhandler on the stand about this

NLP book he wrote. Do you recall writing in transformations? Quote, "No matter what you do, whether you're selling cars, doing psychotherapy, or working with juries. You can do it and elicit more intense responses from people. Hypnosis will allow you to do whatever you do and have a greater impact with it." Do you believe that? Yes, if you use it, do you think perhaps you could get away with us? I beg your pardon? Do you think perhaps you could

get away with killing Korean Christensen? I didn't kill Korean Christensen. When I interviewed him, he was only allowed to talk about NLP. Kathy Holob reported on the case for the San Jose Mercury News. Marino and Bhandler both gave her sit-down interviews before the trial. She said that Bhandler was eerily calm. I described him as being very gentle. He was able to put on many different personas. That was my feeling about him. Marino, on the other hand, was anxious

and full of conspiracy theories. But she found him credible. He seemed incapable of keeping any thought to himself. It was just pouring out in this torrent. And so I believed him and he didn't seem to have any "gile." So I read over the trial transcripts to try and iron out James Marino's

“version of events. Marino testified that Bhandler killed Korean because of a secret affair she was”

having with one of Bhandler's girlfriends. Marino said he told Bhandler about the affair the night before Korean was killed. And then, early the next morning, he and a decidedly upset Bhandler went over to Korean's house. She let them in and Bhandler locked the door behind them. Then, according to Marino, Bhandler pulled out his gun and pointed it at Marino's head. Here's the assistant district attorney questioning Marino on the stand.

"What was it Mr. Bhandler said as he pointed at you? The three of us

laid down on the couch. Bhandler meanwhile continued ranting and raving. At some point,

Marino heard a grinding sound coming from the kitchen. Marino walked over and saw Bhandler saw a green soap bottle in half with a steak knife. "He looked at my eyes and he took the automatic and he put it in it." And he said, "It makes the silence on." A little bit later, Marino was back on the couch. Korean and Bhandler were sitting at her dining room

“table. The room was hushed. "And when you opened your eyes, then what did you see?”

Richard staring at Korean and Korean, what was she doing? Korean took her bhandle again and started to put it up her nose and Richard picked up the gun that revolve and just kept standing on it. He took the gun and he put it against her nose at this point." According to Marino, that's when Bhandler fired. Bhandler had an entirely different account of the night. It went like this. Bhandler testified

it was James Marino who insisted on going to Korean's house and that Marino shot Korean, just walked up and fired at her. Bhandler said he leapt up and grabbed a hold of Korean as she choked,

“staining his shirt front with her blood. Jerry short-spocked made his case by attacking the”

forensic evidence against Bhandler. The prosecution said that the blood and tissue on Bhandler shirt was blowback from the gun fired at close range. But Jerry presented evidence showing this was just incorrect. Their expert testified that the gun would have had to have been practically touching her skin and that was just not consistent with where blood was found. Jerry argued that Koreans blood got on Bhandler shirt when he leapt up and caught her after Marino shot her. Jerry showed

persuasively that Korean's injuries confirmed Bhandler's account. The bullet had come from a different direction, but Jerry's case also hinged on discrediting James Marino and all of Marino's NLP training proved to be his undoing. On December 15, 1987 Jerry began cross-examining James Marino. Jerry was wearing a bow tie, a tailored suit, and raccoon ring socks. Marino looked to one reporter like a quote "coked out extraterrestrial." So I got up and I walked in front of

counsel tables, closest I could without getting in two clothes. And my very first question to him was,

are you going to kill me, Mr. Marino? Marino had threatened to kill Jerry to catch the whole lip that reporter we heard from earlier, and she published his threats in her article. Marino described Jerry as, "As a fucking curly hair little juboy. All I had ever done was ask him questions in a

“courtroom and he wanted to see me dead." So what must he have thought about Korean?”

Marino's threats played into Jerry's hand. Then Jerry moved on to NLP and how Marino thought he was God's gift to it. On the witness stand, Marino claimed he had a superpower for detecting lies, a familiar NLP selling point. I had made a lot of headway in my cross-examination of him, and that caused me to do something that I rarely ever ever have done. And that was to ask a question where if I got the wrong answer, I didn't have a way of proving that he was lying. So I played on his

basically his ego because that's one of the things that I developed in my cross-examination

of how good he thought he was at NLP versus Richard. And as I got there, I just thought, "Do I do this? Do I not do this?" And I said, "I asked that question. I have several other questions similar." You didn't know if he would take the bait. And actually... Oh, I didn't, and I had no way of proving it, but to get him to admit that he thought he had these supernatural skills. Supernatural skills like turning streetlights on and off with his mind.

James Reno testified that he was able to, like, telekinetically control streetlights. "Can't everybody?" Oh, yeah, he did. Yeah, he did. He did. And he said that was NLP. Yeah. According to Jerry and many reports from the trial,

turned to the detective next to him. He gave that answer, and I could hear because I was standing near

counsel table, and I care the prosecutor whispered to the detective sitting next to him, "If I ask you for your gun, don't give it to me." In other words, the prosecutor knew it was all over. His star witness had blown it. Jerry's tactic was to discredit Marino beyond a reason upled out. In his closing arguments, he asked the jury. "Would you buy a use car from James Marino?

“If you want to buy a use car from him, I don't think they've convinced you beyond a reasonable doubt”

that he's credible." It worked. The jury came back with an acquittal, less than six hours later. They had an enormous jury to a quick Richard in the morning, but they thought if they had been there so long, the county should at least pay for a lunch. Bhandler was acquitted in 1988. For a while, he faced a civil suit from Koreans' parents. They blamed Bhandler for the wrongful death of their daughter, and asked for damages. The case was dismissed in 2001. No one was ever held

responsible for Korean's death. Bhandler has consistently maintained that it was Marino who killed her, and he puts out that Marino, as Koreans, ex-boyfriend, had a very clear motive. In a 2023 documentary called "Altered States," Bhandler explains that he believes Marino had planned it. "I really, on reflection, think he planned it." Because I mean, I was at home, I got a call

“that he'd been beaten up at some bar, asked for a ride home, and when I picked him up,”

he was all beat up, and he didn't seem to know who did it, or why they did it, or whatever, and I just took him home and put him on the couch, hadn't go to sleep, and he woke me up later, and said he wanted to go to his girlfriend's house, and then went nuts, started tearing the place up, and came and shot her. Although Bhandler was found not guilty, the trial did damage his reputation. Stephen Gilligan, another early-ann-l-p guy, remembers running into an old Bhandler mentor

around the time of the murder trial. It was family therapist Virginia Seteer. And I said, "Oh, you heard about Richard, right?" And I fully expected her to be the earth mother,

and she said, "Yes, and you know he did it, don't you?" And I was always taking it back and,

you know, mumbled something like, "Well, I guess that's for the jury just such." She said, "No." And she started talking about that it was the fourth woman that he had held guns to their head. Bhandler admitted to one of these instances a trial. He testified that he had pointed a gun at one of his apprentices, Christina Hall, because she was, quote, "going off emotionally," and he wanted her to stop. Seteer told Gilligan that Bhandler had also held up his ex-wife,

Leslie Cameron. It was Leslie Cameron that got Virginia's self-sat. Leslie apparently was a very abusive relationship.

Bhandler divorced from his first wife, Leslie Cameron, in 1981.

According to multiple news articles from the 1980s, domestic violence was a factor. Bhandler completely denies these claims. That's also a lie that she perpetrated so that she could get a lot of money out of a divorce. I found an NLP tape where Bhandler discusses domestic abuse directly. The tape is called "creating therapeutic change," and it was copyrighted for sale in 1987. The same year of the murder trial. I mean, you know, if she lets him beat her up, you know,

for five years, you know, it's not just him doing it, because these things work in systems. All it takes is the right tonality, and she can get him to hit her. Bhandler is not talking about Leslie or anyone specific in this tape, but about the types of situations, he says, "result in domestic abuse." I did a thing for a shelter for abused women, and, you know, I was in there five minutes, and I felt like slapping a shit out of him. You know,

it was like, "Chage your ton of voice, man. You want me to help you shut up or I'll smack you on." And I mean, it was hard tonality. I mean, it was like, you know, five dental drills coming at you at one time. You know, and I really had to teach them, "Look, if this is the way you want men to treat, you keep talking this way." And it was, "Well, you shouldn't have to change the way we act." You know, in order to be treated, right? And I said, "Maybe you shouldn't, but if you keep

“acting this way, you're going to get smacked by me." Now, do you want to be treated well or not?”

Do you want to be hit? Or do you want to be treated well? Which is it?

the course of laughing men.

Basically, it was a hideous nightmare.

Bandler has said the trial took a toll. After it was all over, he packed up and left Santa Cruz. It destroyed me financially. It destroyed my reputation. And it's not that I couldn't build it up again by doing good work. But you know, all I ever really tried to do is help people. And this just took me a part in every way imaginable. So even though Bandler was acquitted, all of the media coverage was extremely damaging. People kept flocking to NLP, though. I mean, even after he was bailed out of jail,

Bandler was putting on seminars to cover his legal fees, and they were really well attended.

“This is like so weird to me. Do we think that there was some rubber-nacking aspect to this?”

One guy interviews said it definitely burnished Bandler's reputation in the eyes of some

people who had, you know, never hung out with an accused murder before and were like, "Ooh,

let me check it out." People wanted to go. People wanted to go. I think partly because there were all sorts of rumors flying around during the trial, that Bandler was hypnotizing the jury. That sounds completely false to me. I don't think that happened at all. No. I mean, a lot of experts will tell you that it is impossible to turn everyday people into unsuspecting puppets with hypnosis, but a bunch of Bandler's students after the trial, based in tire careers on the idea

“that it is possible. Yeah, this idea of mine control has been floating around our whole podcast,”

and after the murder trial, it really takes off. Over the next couple episodes, we're going to dig in to the world of dark NLP. People who seek to use NLP for coercion even exploitation. Was that real? Yeah, that's totally real. That's totally real, man. You know, she's not like you're hypnotized her. I did hypnotize her. That's next time on mine games. Mine games is a kaleidoscope production in partnership with iHeartPodcast. The series is

created and hosted by me, Zoey Leskaz, and Alice Hines. It's produced by writer Al-Sop and Dara Lookpots, edited by Kate Osborne, editorial consulting from Adiza Egan, original composition and mixing by Steve Bohn, fact-checking by Amen Willen. From kaleidoscope, our executive producers are Oz Woloshen, Mangesh Hatikador, and Kate Osborne. From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina Norvel and Nikki E. Torr. Special thanks to voice actor Walter Sipser and to Jerry Schwartzbach

for reading his lines, providing us with court documents, and for his excellent book, leaning on the arc, a personal history of criminal defense. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of

“an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story?”

Adiza's been based at first. The moment you look at the whole picture of the case,

co-act. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my god, I think she might be innocent. Listen to doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Riggle, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story

of the inner workings of the MSS, and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to on-purpose Rejati, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpride became the victim

“of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything.”

I was a monster. Listen to burden of guilt season two on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.