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Postmormon Postmortem
By Hannah and JessReligion & Spirituality
Postmormon Postmortem episodes
- Jean Baptiste: The Mormon Graverobber of Salt Lake
When Salt Lake City discovered that its gravedigger had been returning to graves after burials, stripping bodies of their clothing, and taking the clothes home to just… look it? Well, it raised more than a few questions.
Jean de Baptiste had been a Mormon convert, a gold miner in Australia, and eventually the gravedigger at the Salt Lake City Cemetery. His crimes came to light after Moroni Clawson was exhumed and found naked in his coffin. The investigation led police to Baptiste’s house, where they found more than they bargained for.
We talk about how Baptiste’s odd proclivities were discovered, the Mormon beliefs that made the crime especially horrifying, his extraordinary punishment, and the mystery of what happened in the end.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
26 min - The Leak That Predicted Itself: Gong, WikiLeaks, and the LDS Cover-Up
In January 2011, Gerrit Gong stood before the Quorum of the Twelve with a warning: could WikiLeaks — the group behind the Chelsea Manning leaks — embarrass or damage the Mormon Church?
Instead of security protocol, the room's attention turned to Dallin Oaks' comments about "the homosexual agenda." Five years later, that exact briefing surfaced in the Mormon Leaks archive — becoming the most-viewed video of the entire batch. Jess and Hannah break down the leaked tape, the men who claim the gift of revelation, and the institutional blind spot they never saw coming.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
14 min - The Mormon Church Has a New Way to Recruit Your Neighbors
The LDS Church is encouraging wards to advertise their events directly to people outside the church through a program called “activity sharing.”
Hannah and Jess look at the church’s instructions for making ward activities more appealing to a community audience, including replacing Mormon terminology with phrases like “women’s group,” “children’s group,” and “Sunday worship service.” They also query the church’s featured “success story”: a woman who attended an Easter breakfast, returned for Sunday services, and was introduced to the missionaries.
So when a ward advertises a “community” event, where does community outreach end and missionary recruitment start?
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
6 min - Is Mormonism a Cult?
Is the Mormon Church a cult? We ran mainstream Mormonism through the actual clinical frameworks researchers use for cultic control — not the insult, the real definitions.
Using Steven Hassan's BITE model (behavior, information, thought, and emotional control) and Janja Lalich's concept of bounded choice from Bounded Choice, we test Mormon teachings on tithing, garments, temple worthiness, missionary service, and apostasy discipline against the same standards used to evaluate the Unification Church, the Democratic Workers Party, and Heaven's Gate. We cover Hassan's own writing on Mormonism, what happens when former missionary Tom Hopkins investigates the Church's claims, and what leaving actually costs when you were born into the belief system rather than recruited into it as an adult. High-control religion isn't about how strange the beliefs sound from outside — it's about how much of your life the system reaches into.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
55 min - The Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping: Brian David Mitchell, Wanda Barzee, & the Role of Mormonism
Mormon True Crime episodes will drop on Saturday from now on... not usually this late. Think of this week as a two-fer Sunday.
Elizabeth Smart was fourteen years old when Brian David Mitchell entered her Salt Lake City home, held a knife to her throat, and kidnapped her from the bedroom she shared with her younger sister.
For the next nine months, Mitchell and his wife, Wanda Barzee, held Elizabeth captive while Mitchell declared himself a prophet, claimed continuing revelation from God, “sealed” Elizabeth to himself as a plural wife, gave her priesthood blessings, renamed her, and repeatedly used Mormon doctrine and religious language to justify his control and abuse.
Drawing from Elizabeth's account of her captivity and testimony from Brian David Mitchell’s federal trial, we follow the kidnapping from the Smart family home into the mountains above Salt Lake City, through the search for Elizabeth, Mitchell’s attempts to take additional girls, the move to California, and Elizabeth’s eventual return to Utah.
The question that would eventually dominate Mitchell’s prosecution was how much did he understand about what he was doing? The answer we want to know: how much did he believe his own garbage?
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
1 hr 40 min - The Mormon Glow: Can You Identify A Mormon By Their Face?
Can people really identify Mormons just by looking at their faces? In 2010, psychologists Nicholas Rule, James Garrett and Nalini Ambady found that both Mormons and non-Mormons could classify Mormon faces at rates slightly better than chance…. which left them with a new question: what exactly were people seeing?
Hannah walks Jess through the experiments, including the follow-up tests that removed different parts of the face, and the researchers’ attempts to explain the so-called “Mormon glow.” We get into perceived health, skin information, spirituality, and the Mormon belief in a visible “brightness of countenance.” Then, of course, there’s the way LDS media is going to spin it.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
22 min - The Jared Bridegan Murder Case: The Mormon Connections
The murder of Jared Bridegan involves his ex-wife Shanna Gardner, her then-husband Mario Fernandez Saldana, and Mario’s former tenant Henry Tenon. And Mormonism runs all the way through the case.
Shanna grew up in the wealthy Mormon family behind Stampin’ Up!, served a mission, and married Jared in the Salt Lake City Temple. During their marriage and bitter divorce, religion became intertwined with family money, custody, their children’s church involvement, and their increasingly hostile relationship.
Then, on February 16, 2022, Jared was shot and killed after stopping to move a tire placed in the road in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. His two-year-old daughter was sitting in the back seat.
In this Mormon Monday, Hannah and Jess get into the Gardner family money, Shanna’s departure from the church, Jared’s continuing Mormonism, the custody fight, Mario Fernandez Saldana, Henry Tenon, the $10,000 in checks, Bishop Scott Currie, Kim Jensen’s messy police interviews, the funeral potatoes texts, and the prosecution’s alleged murder-for-hire case.
Mario Fernandez Saldana’s trial began today, August 17, 2026. Shanna Gardner’s trial is scheduled to follow, and we’ll be following the Mormon pieces as the cases unfold.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
20 min - Joseph Smith’s Childhood: Trauma, Treasure Hunting, and the Making of a Prophet
At seven, surgeons cut into Joseph Smith's leg without anesthesia. At seventeen, an angel told him where to dig. A psychiatrist, a historian, and a surgeon trace the line between the two.
Hosts Jess and Hannah open a two-part series on Joseph Smith's childhood, drawing on three psychobiographical studies: Robert Anderson's psychoanalytic reading, Dan Vogel's "pious fraud" framework, and William Morain's trauma-and-dissociation reading. Covered: the 1813 leg surgery, the Smith family's repeated financial collapse, years of treasure-digging, the 1826 court hearing, Alvin's death, and the gaps between Joseph's own First Vision accounts. This isn't a takedown — it's a case study in how a traumatized child became a man other people needed to believe in.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
1 hr 27 min - Family Annihilators: Power, Control, and the Haight Family Murders
If you grew up Mormon, you already know what a “good family” is supposed to look like: temple marriage, church service, a successful provider, children in the pew, and problems kept inside the home. The Haight family murders in Enoch, Utah force a harder question: what happens when a man treats his family as part of his identity, status, and control?
On January 4, 2023, Michael Haight killed his wife, Tausha Haight, her mother, Gail Earl, and all five of his children — Macie, Briley, Ammon, Sienna, and Gavin — before killing himself. The case left behind an unusually detailed record: police interviews, child-abuse investigations, texts from the children, internet searches, financial and employment information, Michael’s recordings, and a handwritten note centered on grievance, reputation, and his lifelong pursuit of the “ideal of an eternal family.”
Using the research on family annihilation, we examine the patterns that show up again and again in these cases — grievance, coercive control, threatened identity, family breakdown, masculinity, and the belief that a wife and children are extensions of the man at the center of the family. The Haight case also brings Mormon ideas about the eternal family, priesthood authority, reputation, forgiveness, and public image into the frame.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
1 hr 18 min - Ward Cookbooks: Funeral Potatoes and Mormon Women's Recipe Networks
Every ward had one — spiral-bound, typed on a typewriter, funeral potatoes on page whatever. But the story behind the ward cookbook goes back further than the 1970s nostalgia object it's remembered as. From pioneer-trail survival recipes to a 1907 cookbook from a New Zealand mission, to the "Relief Society network" that spread identical Jell-O salads and potato casseroles between wards with zero contact — decades before the Mormon Church built an actual correlation department to standardize anything else — this is the story of an organic, decentralized system of women's labor that's never once been treated as an institutional achievement.
Jess and Hannah dig into where the ward cookbook tradition actually comes from, how it got commercialized (and turned into Olympic pins), how it ended up on Netflix, and why it's still happening today — new moms getting handed fresh copies of ward recipe books with zero institutional prompting.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
29 min
About Postmormon Postmortem
From the publisher's feed
Mormonism gave you a complete universe, with charts, diagrams, and a plan for everything. Leaving can dismantle all of it at once. Postmormon Postmortem is hosted by Hannah and Jess, two women who…
left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and wanted more honest conversations about what comes after. We cover Mormon history, doctrine, culture, true crime, institutional harm, religious trauma, and the messy work of rebuilding a life outside the church. Whether you're freshly out, years removed, or trying to understand someone you love, you're in the right place.