66. Family Business- The Hillside Stranglers

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Support the show and get bonus content at patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcast On the top floor of a hotel in Sydney, on ground that was a convict hospital in 1788, two women on two different nights woke up to a sailor standing at the foot of the bed, looking at them. In a castle on the coast of Northern Ireland, a receptionist sent up the tower stair to sweep up a broken glass was shoved from behind on the top step and went down the whole flight. In Room 217 of the Stanley Hotel, a man hid under the covers at three in the morning while his wife whispered that something was bent over the bed with its mouth at her ear, and that she could still feel its breath. In a ground-floor suite in the Ozarks that used to be a cancer quack's office, four friends propped a vodka bottle against the inside of their door, came back at eleven, and found a row of cards laid out on the carpet in front of it with the two jokers turned face up. On a ship in Long Beach, a mother woke to a man made of darkness sitting on the other twin bed, and he sat there until dawn. Today we're counting down the ten most haunted hotels in the world, from number ten to number one. We're going from Sydney to the Scottish Highlands, the Antrim coast, London, the Canadian Rockies, the French Quarter, a California beach, a Cunard liner, an Arkansas mountaintop, and Estes Park, Colorado.

In 1977, a charismatic former Seventh-day Adventist named Roch Thériault led a small group of followers into the woods of Quebec’s Gaspé region to await the end of the world. He renamed himself Moïse, after Moses, and told his followers God would end the world in February of 1979. When the apocalypse never came, he kept them anyway. The group lived in handmade cabins, cut off from their families, working so relentlessly that outsiders called them the Ant Hill Kids. Thériault took nearly all of the women as his wives and fathered more than twenty children with them. In 1984, after a brief prison stint, he moved the commune to a remote property near Burnt River, Ontario, where almost no one was watching. What happened there over the next five years is among the most horrific abuse ever documented in a Canadian cult. Thériault drank heavily and ruled through torture, forcing members to break their own limbs, pull out their own teeth, and sit naked in the snow. He performed brutal “surgeries” with kitchen tools. In 1988 one of his wives, Solange Boilard, died after he cut open her abdomen. The end came in 1989, when another follower, Gabrielle Lavallée, had her arm hacked off with a cleaver after years of mutilation. She escaped, walked into a hospital, and told police everything. Thériault pleaded guilty to murder and received a life sentence. In 2011 he was killed by his cellmate in a New Brunswick prison.

Support the show, get ad free and bonus content patreon.com/highwaytohellpodcast Carl Tanzler was a German-born radiology technician who emigrated to the United States and by 1927 was working at the Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida. He claimed that as a young man he had been visited by the spirit of an ancestor who showed him the face of his destined true love, and in 1930 he became convinced he had found her in Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, a 21-year-old Cuban-American patient dying of tuberculosis. Tanzler showered her with gifts and attempted to treat her with homemade tonics and X-ray equipment, but she died in 1931. He paid for an elaborate mausoleum, visited it nightly, and in 1933 removed her body and brought it home. Over the next seven years he reconstructed her decaying corpse with wire, plaster, wax, glass eyes, and her own hair fashioned into a wig, dressed it in a wedding gown, and kept it in his bed while dousing it in perfume to mask the odor. In 1940 Elena's sister heard rumors, confronted him, and found the body, leading to his arrest for grave robbing. The charge was dropped because the statute of limitations had expired, and much of the public, swept up by the press coverage, viewed him as a tragic romantic rather than a criminal. Elena was reburied in an unmarked grave, and Tanzler died in 1952, reportedly with a life-sized effigy of her by his side. ICK Sources Harrison, Ben. Undying Love: The True Story of a Passion That Defied Death. Key West, 1997; expanded edition 2001. Swicegood, Tom. Von Cosel. iUniverse, 2003. Source of the body-switch theory. Sloan, David L. Ghosts of Key West. Phantom Press, 1998. Sloan also discussed the 1982 Michelfelder article on the NightMerica podcast, February 3, 2021. Peričić, Marija. Exquisite Corpse. Ultimo Press, 2023. Novel; ABC News (Australia) profile of the book and the Trial Bay internment, November 18, 2023. Tanzler von Cosel, Karl. "The Secret of Elena's Tomb." Fantastic Adventures, vol. 9 no. 5, September 1947, Ziff-Davis, Chicago. Full scan at archive.org (Fantastic_Adventures_v09n05_Ziff-Davis_Sep_1947). Von Cosel's journal, final entry ("Human jealousy has robbed me of the body of my Elena"), as quoted in Harrison and in later retellings. Miami Herald, October 1940. Source of Nana Medina's statements: "She never loved him… She looked upon von Cosel as a grandfather" and the "wedding… or a funeral" warning. Key West Citizen, October 1940. Hearing coverage before Justice of the Peace Enrique Esquinaldo, October 8–9, 1940; $1,000 bond; charge wording. The Tennessean (Nashville), October 1940. Cousin's statement that Elena "finally died hating her rescuer." Death certificate of Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos, October 25, 1931, as reported by Michelfelder (below); no autopsy performed. DePoo, Dr. Julio, and Dr. Foraker. Recollection of the 1940 examination, first stated 1972; DePoo interviewed on HBO's Autopsy series, 1999 ("I found a tube wide enough to permit sexual intercourse…"). Perez, Bienvenido (Key West chief of police, 1940). Statement to Men True Adventure magazine, undated ("I'll kill her, if necessary, to fulfil my destiny"). Michelfelder, William. Article in Detective Cases, 1982. Source of the unverified "wolfsbane… aconite" note and the "dormant epilepsy" death-certificate wording. Wikipedia, "Carl Tanzler" (with its cited sources: Harrison, Swicegood, Sloan, HBO Autopsy). Dates of birth, marriage, emigration (Rotterdam, February 6, 1926), Hoyos family dates, hearing, viewing, citizenship 1950, death July 3, 1952. WLRN, "A Love That Would Not Die: Key West Tells Its Most Macabre Legend," February 11, 2018. HistoryHub.info, "Twists in a Twisted Tale: The Exploitation, Defilement and Murder of Elena Hoyos."

TW: Suicide First ever true crossover episode! Flippers meet the Hellions, Hellions meet the Flippers. This case included so much of our mutual subject matter we decided to post it on both shows. Mica Francis Miller, 30, died on April 27, 2024, at Lumber River State Park in North Carolina, roughly an hour from her home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She had bought a handgun that afternoon and called 911 minutes before shooting herself; the Robeson County Sheriff's Office and North Carolina medical examiners ruled her death a suicide. Days earlier she had filed for divorce from her husband, John-Paul Miller, pastor of Solid Rock Church in Market Common, and police records show she contacted law enforcement at least 14 times between February and mid-April 2024.Court filings and family statements alleged years of abuse, surveillance, financial control, and nonconsensual distribution of intimate images; a December 2024 filing added strangulation allegations. Miller denied wrongdoing. On December 17, 2025, a federal grand jury in South Carolina indicted Miller on two counts, cyberstalking and making false statements to investigators, alleging he used tracking devices and unwanted communications to harass Mica from November 2022 until her death. Netflix's documentary series "Death of a Pastor's Wife" premiered August 27, 2026, renewing attention on the case and on South Carolina's protective-order law. Sources: Full list on patreon ABC News 4 (WCIV). (2026, January 12). JP Miller pleads not guilty to federal charges of cyberstalking, false statements. ⁠https://abcnews4.com/news/local/dozens-show-up-outside-florence-federal-courthouse-for-arraignment-of-jp-miller-mica-cyberstalking-lying-authorities-fbi-solid-rock-church-pastor⁠ Burroughs Funeral Home & Cremation Services. (2024). Obituary for Mica Acacia Miller. ⁠https://www.burroughsfh.com/obituary/Mica-Miller⁠ Christianity Today. (2022, September). What happens when you ask thousands of evangelical women about sex. ⁠https://www.christianitytoday.com/2022/09/sheila-gregoire-great-sex-rescue-survey-evangelical-women/⁠ Condo-World. (n.d.). History of the Sea Captain's House Myrtle Beach. ⁠https://blog.condo-world.com/history-of-the-sea-captains-house/⁠ Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. (1987). The Danvers Statement. Creepy Catalog. (2026). Death of the Pastor's Wife: John-Paul Miller's first wife says Mica's account matched her own. ⁠https://creepycatalog.com/death-of-the-pastors-wife-john-paul-millers-first-wife-says-micas-account-matched-her-own/⁠ Crime and Cask News Network. (2026, August). Father of former Solid Rock pastor John Paul Miller pleads guilty. ⁠https://crimeandcask.com/father-of-pastor-john-paul-miller-pleads-guilty/⁠ FITSNews. (2024, December 20). Mica Miller saga: Police reports fill in blanks, raise more questions. ⁠https://www.fitsnews.com/2024/12/20/mica-miller-saga-police-reports-fill-in-blanks-raise-more-questions/⁠ FITSNews. (2025, June 2). Embattled South Carolina pastor John-Paul Miller marries girlfriend. ⁠https://www.fitsnews.com/2025/06/02/embattled-south-carolina-pastor-john-paul-miller-marries-girlfriend/⁠ Gregoire, S. W. (2023, September). 10 things to know about obligation sex. Bare Marriage. ⁠https://baremarriage.com/2023/09/10-things-obligation-sex/⁠ Gregoire, S. W., Lindenbach, R. G., & Sawatsky, J. (2021). The great sex rescue: The lies you've been taught and how to recover what God intended. Baker Books. Guidepost Solutions. (2022, May 15). Report of the independent investigation: The Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee's response to sexual abuse allegations and an audit of the procedures and actions of the Credentials Committee. Jane Doe v. John-Paul Miller, Reginald Wayne Miller, et al. (2025). Complaint, Horry County Court of Common Pleas. ⁠https://www.wbtw.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2025/03/JP-lawsuit-2.pdf⁠