JOY: I knew both sides of my mom.
I knew this wonderful, beautiful person, wanted to
help people, love people, showed affection to me,
my children, would cry when I cried, be there for me.
But I also knew this woman who had a violent temper,
who killed children, who abused people, who was
controlling, manipulative,
self-righteous, and very prideful.
It's definitely hard to accept that a person that loved me,
that I love, was capable of committing such atrocities
and hurting so many people.
It feels horrible to think of my mother as a serial killer.
It's very difficult to even say that my mom
killed three children,
possibly four.
Last time I seen Moses, he looked like he was dying.
He looked so sick,
and his lips were crusted over from dry skin.
I just started having visions of Moses everywhere I went.
I started seeing Moses in the curtains, like it was him.
I started hearing his voice.
I just kept rubbing his lips.
I said, I just need to...
I just, I feel...
I feel Moses' skin on my fingertips.
I gotta get it off.
[exhales heavily] Sorry.
I'm having a panic attack.
I'm sorry.
[breathing heavily]
Wait a minute. I need to go.
I just get -- I just feel it.
I just -- I just -- it'll go away.
I just feel it.
I just gotta get this finger, I gotta get just the feeling of
his lips off my fingers.
[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]
[strings continue playing sinister tune]
[static crackling]
-[knock at door] -[creaking]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[water dripping]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[sinister chord strikes]
This is a picture of me, my mom, my dad.
I don't know how old I was here.
I'm thinking...
maybe six, seven.
I was very happy that day with my parents.
My mom is Anna Elizabeth Young.
She was my idol. I loved my mother.
When I was young, I had no idea of her past.
I seen pictures of her before she was religious.
You know, very disco, '70s style,
you know, a lot of makeup.
By the time I was born, she'd already, you know,
became religious.
She never told me the reason why she
finally found Christianity,
she changed her life around, but I never asked.
We covered up ourselves in more modest attire to dress like
people of the Bible.
I thought we were living the right way.
I had no idea the tragedies to come
and the tragedies that already did happen.
I didn't realize the impacts they could make down the road.
I just -- it was just part of life.
The House of Prayer was like our little kingdom.
It was an old farm.
So everything, you know, it was more natural, trying to stick to
more of the natural way.
We had prayer in the morning at 5 a.m.
We had prayer in the afternoon at 3 p.m.
And then we had prayer at 9 o'clock in the evening.
And those prayers could last for hours.
I'm a cold case homicide detective for
the Alachua County Sheriff's Office.
Today is Saturday, January the 28th, 2017.
This is Joy Fluker, and we've asked her to walk us through
the interior of the residence and the outside properties to
get a rough idea of how things worked here back in the late
'80s and early '90s.
JOY: My mom was the leader.
She wasn't even called, you know, Mother Anna
from the members there.
She was called Mother.
She was basically the mother.
She, you know, everything she said, we basically followed.
Everyone followed.
We all believed that Mom was the mouthpiece for God.
One time, my mother told the congregation that
the spirit of lust was there.
Who among you have betrayed the will of God?
Is it you?
JOY: And people would feel guilty,
and sometimes they would go ahead and confess
about what they did or what they were
thinking about doing.
Anything that was considered a sin, you know, for the most
part, you would get spanked or, you know, whipped for it.
Kneel.
JOY: She took scriptures literally.
Like the Bible says, spare the rod, spoil the child.
Everyone in the congregation agreed to this form of
discipline, and that's kind of how a lot of cults
even get started -- it was like we were programmed.
Any given time, there were between five to seven kids at
the House of Prayer growing up, but for the most time there,
it was really just me and John.
He came there early on, and we were close in age.
I had to be six, seven, something like that.
So one time we were playing house,
and John told me that he had saw his parents when they
played, you know, that they would rub against each other.
And I'm like, what is that?
He said, "That's what adults do when they're married,"
because we would play like we're married.
So we start doing that, like rubbing against each other.
Some kind of way, my mom found out about it.
John was honest and told everything.
There was a point where she told me I could leave the room,
and I remember him looking at me, and I felt guilty then.
I left the room. John was still in there.
And then soon after, I heard the screaming.
[as John screaming]
JOY: He was screaming, screaming and crying.
I felt guilty about it, very guilty about it.
I remember looking and feeling like, this is because of me.
He still has wounds on his body from the beatings
he endured down there.
I need to take a break.
I'm sorry.
I'm gonna get myself together a little bit.
I just feel weird talking about this.
[sighs heavily]
I had a crush on another boy that we had
visited at a church.
You know, I was 10, and we exchanged phone numbers.
Mom went off on me about calling.
She was like, "You don't need to call no more."
And I did it anyway.
And then my mom found out about it.
My heart dropped to my stomach, and I knew I was gonna be
in serious trouble.
I was terrified when she looked at me, because I knew I was
gonna get beat down.
My mom whipped me on my backside,
my feet, and my hands.
But after the beating, my punishment still wasn't over.
There was a crawl space in her attic,
and that's where she sent me.
All she gave me was a bag to go to the bathroom in,
and no food and no water.
While I was up there, I prayed.
I tried not to have to go to the bathroom.
I tried to sleep as much as possible.
It was torturous having to do this as part of a punishment.
I wanted food. I wanted to get down.
Like, I don't know what's gonna happen to me.
Like, I'm scared. I was terrified.
JOY: I was up there for at least two days.
It was hot.
I was scared.
I was just praying she'd let me out of there.
I knew that if I showed that I had repented,
that I would get released.
It just clicked, that to get down, I need to pretend like
I was speaking in tongues and repented.
She believed that when people started speaking in tongues
or whatever, it was really God.
So I decided to start speaking in tongues,
and I faked it purely to get out of there.
And the rest is my salvation. I repent, and I...
JOY: Basically, you just say a word fast.
-I repent and I rest. I repent. -JOY: And you just let it flow.
It's like feeling a high of the spirit kind of thing.
[As Joy, whispering] I rest, I repent, and I rest, I repent.
I rest, I repent, and I rest, I repent, and I rest, I repent.
JOY: Just opens the gate -- I just keep speaking in tongues.
I keep speaking in tongues.
I tell her I'm sorry, and I repent, and everything, and...
I'm relieved to be out.
I know I'm free at that point.
I was just glad to be out.
Go to the bathroom, and life is back to normal.
I did feel a little guilty faking speaking in tongues,
because I do have a fear of God, and I love God.
And I did feel guilty, but I was in survival mode,
like whatever it takes.
Elder Adam, he was one of our first members.
My mother told Elder Adam that he had to be
separated from his wife,
but then he confessed that he slept with her
after he was told not to.
My mother was very angry.
There's something in the Bible about if your limb offends you.
I think that's what she used.
If the limb offends you, cut it off.
She took it literally.
You have this lust demon, and if you did not have
you know, a penis, then you wouldn't be
sinning against God anymore with it.
He agreed to do it.
He agreed to cut off his penis,
because that limb of his body
offended him, because it was causing him
to sin against God.
The act of him agreeing to do that definitely shows how much
power she had over the people there, including him.
Everyone was praising God and thinking he was making this
ultimate sacrifice for God.
He went to the barn with one of the sisters, who was a nurse,
and they commenced in doing the surgery.
My mother never showed any regret for it,
because she felt it was an act of God.
It was such a different world back then.
I don't -- I mean, I know it was crazy for him to do,
and I think it was wrong of her to even ask him to do it.
I think it was crazier for him to actually do it.
The fact that she was able to convince a man to do that lets
me know that the control was just really deep-rooted.
She really had them hook, line, and sinker believing that she
was the way, truth, and the light to God.
So it is very powerful that she was able to convince him
to do that.
Yeah, this is a picture of Brother Moses when he was still
being called Emon.
My dad always wanted a son, and one of the sisters at
the church had advised about a young woman who had a little
baby that she couldn't care for, and he, you know,
basically was supposed to be my adopted baby brother.
He looks like a normal little baby.
He doesn't look like he had been abused.
I wish this was the last memory I had of him.
I wish this is the way I remember him looking,
but this is not the way I last remember seeing him.
I don't want to talk about it right now.
Because I think I'll have a panic attack,
another panic attack.
I don't want to talk about
what I last -- how I last seen him look.
I don't want to have to run out the room,
thinking about it too hard.
I don't remember why, but at some point,
my mother locked Moses in the closet.
He didn't have any food or drink
when he was in the closet.
One time, she had me go give him something, and...
he looked like he was dying.
He looked so sick, and his lips were crusted over
from dry skin.
His eyes were just, like, glazing and big.
He was small, and he was weak.
He was in there for days.
So one night, I was in bed with her,
and I hadn't seen him.
She snuck out of bed and went out on the porch,
and she was talking to Elder Adam and Brother Thomas.
MAN: It's about Brother Moses.
And she asked, was he dead? Was he gone?
Something to that effect.
And Brother Thomas responded, yes.
AS BROTHER THOMAS: He didn't survive.
Let me take a break.
Sorry. This is a tough subject.
[quietly] Oh, God.
Last time I seen Moses, he was basically dying, in my opinion.
I do know that, after he disappeared,
she said that she took Moses
to live with the monks, to be raised like,
you know, like Elijah in the Bible.
She told me that he was sent to be with the monks
because he kept getting in trouble.
I knew she was lying in my heart.
I knew it.
I couldn't bring myself to talk to my mom about it,
because I knew that I would have crossed the line.
I would have taken part of that,
you know, forbidden topic.
And it was like this dark cloud now over our relationship.
What's that?
I don't know. I think it is.
I can't.
Just in case, I can't.
I just can't.
I can't look at the closet that I last saw Moses in.
No.
[Joy sobbing]
He was in there.
This is Katonya.
Um, here, she looks like a cute little sweet girl.
Looks happy, happy little baby.
Katonya was really, really young at the time still when
she was getting disciplined.
I think she was, I don't know,
two or three or something like that.
I don't hear her voice when I hear her crying.
I just hear crying in my head.
I just know I heard her crying.
My mother accepted families with children born
out of wedlock.
You know, they were single moms, so they needed more help
than a person that's married and has a family.
From what I understand, Katonya was born out of wedlock.
She felt like these children had demons in them.
They were devil possessed.
And then Katonya started having seizures, and my mom felt like
the seizures were part of a proof of the devil possession.
She was the first person that I remember seeing my mom
accuse of devil possession.
One day, I heard Katonya getting a whipping in the next room.
They were trying to get the devil out of her.
Eventually the crying stopped, and then some of the adults
started running to the next room,
where she was being whipped.
Next thing I know, they're carrying her out.
The adults were all scared, terrified, and worried.
And I was scared too.
And she wasn't responsive.
So, you know, they took her to the hospital.
They said she had a grand mal seizure, and she was in a coma.
And she died from the seizure.
I was told that the seizure started, though, because of all
the discipline that my mom inflicted upon her.
All the beatings.
My mom's beatings caused the seizure that killed her.
And I remember thinking about her mother.
Her mother was at work or somewhere.
She wasn't there.
I remember thinking, she's gonna be so mad when she
comes back and learns her daughter died.
It makes me angry, because I think that Katonya's life could
have been spared if someone would have
said something before.
And I do question the mindset of some of the adults.
They didn't know all the details, but they knew
a child died in my mother's care.
And they were full adults.
And you didn't raise a flag right then and there.
Like, Mom,
I witnessed what you did.
You can't do this again.
It feels horrible.
I mean, it feels awful.
After my dad died, we became affiliated with
a couple that lived in the Carolinas.
And they had a daughter who they said, you know, was
getting in trouble at school.
And they admired the way Mom raised me.
And they felt that Nikki could be helped
by coming to stay with us.
You're new here, right?
-I'm Joy. -I'm Nikki.
I think Nikki Nickelson was about 12 when she came there.
We're the same age.
-How are you settling in? -It's different.
Nikki was a very sweet person, but she did, you know,
have some issues.
She did not, you know, bathe herself.
I know she suffered from really bad eczema.
No one ever considered the fact of her eczema as being a reason
for her maybe not wanting to take a bath.
My mom just thought Nikki was unclean and nasty.
Eventually, my mom just,
I guess, in her mind, had enough.
And she came up with this idea
of giving Nikki a punishment bath,
making it so harsh and so painful that she would,
in turn, bathe herself,
because she would not want my mother to bathe her again.
A group of people grabbed Nikki and forced her into
the bathroom and into the tub.
[as Nikki sobbing]
JOY: She's 13 years old at this point.
You know, she doesn't want them to give her a bath.
One of the sisters would continuously heat up
scalding water and pour it into the tub.
It would still be torturous for anyone to take a bath with that
level of heat in the water.
As the water was being poured into the tub,
my mom was scrubbing her.
Nikki was fighting, trying to get out.
She did put bleach and detergent in the tub with her,
but the punishment aspect of it was my mom scrubbing her
hard in this scalding water
and the sisters holding her down in the water.
[as Nikki crying]
A couple of days later, we saw the oozing from the burns that
she acquired because of the bath.
It was horrifying to see.
I mean, her legs were just -- really just, it was bad.
My mom told Nikki's parents what happened,
but I don't know if she told them about her heating
up the water or not.
I know the narrative that I remember is more so
about the detergent causing a chemical reaction
to her because she had eczema.
From what I was told, it was their lawsuit
that raised the flag
about a child being hurt on the property
that made the DA take on the case.
That's when they started investigating it, and that's
when I started hearing Mom talking about going on the run.
I went on the run with my mom when I was 13.
A warrant had in fact been issued for her arrest.
She had left the church.
We all got new IDs with fake names.
We were going place to place.
I'm tired of this.
I mentioned, you know, like, why can't we just go
where Moses is?
I thought he was with the monks.
Brother Moses?
You can't stay with him.
Why not?
She said, "Oh Joy, I didn't tell you.
Moses died."
I'm like, what?
Brother Moses died years ago.
JOY: I wasn't expecting that response.
I'm expecting the same response she's given before.
And I said, "How did he die?"
She said, "I don't know. He died in his sleep."
And she said he died with the monks.
Shocked that she's admitting he's dead,
and then doubting myself,
and wondering, was I wrong?
Did he really die with the monks?
I was very confused by what she said,
because it made me question my own sanity,
my own memory, everything.
I just -- I just couldn't believe
that she would just blatantly lie to me to that extreme.
So I wanted to believe her.
So I met my husband,
and we weren't together that long before I got pregnant.
So eventually I got my own place,
and she was shocked that I was moving out,
but she was happy for me, and she was telling me how
smart I was to be able to figure all that stuff out.
So one night, I'm at home.
By this time, you know, I had a house, I'm in college,
and I get a call from my uncle
that my mother has been arrested.
She was working in the nursing field,
and there was an article ran in the National Enquirer
and on America's Most Wanted,
and the person saw it and turned her in.
This picture of my mom,
she was being arrested over Nikki's case.
My mom was probably mid-50s here,
but she doesn't look like the mom I knew to grow
and love and everything.
She looks hardened in this picture.
She looked like a different person.
She was being accused of child abuse.
So I thought she was gonna go to prison,
and I was devastated over that.
Sometimes it just seems strange from going from the church
community and this life to knowing that that same person,
you know, winded up, you know, going to prison and committed
such atrocious crimes.
After about 6 months or so,
she was let go, and we were all praising God,
like this is -- this is a miracle.
This is God.
I felt like everything could be normal.
Now we can live a normal life.
After awhile, me and my mom had
had one of our many arguments.
She was acting like Mother Anna again,
and it was over my children.
We had a lot of arguments over my children.
And I felt like they were
becoming sisters and brothers
of the House of Prayer almost when it came to her.
I was talking to my sister about it, and she was telling
me, you know, how she never understood how I let Mom have
so much authority over my children.
She said, "I never let her discipline my kids, because I
know what she's capable of."
I think actually it might be the first time I realized this
is not just normal behavior.
It's something wrong with her.
The things that she's done?
JOY: So I thought about it, and I said,
"I think she killed Brother Moses."
That was the first time I said out loud that I think she
killed Brother Moses.
And my sister said, "Why would you say something
horrible like that?"
I said, "Because the last time I seen him,
"he was like he was dying.
He was in my closet."
And I said, "Then all of a sudden,
he wasn't around anymore."
I said, "And she told me she gave him to the monks,
but I know that's not true."
And my sister said, "Oh my God, not again."
And I said, "What do you mean, not again?"
She goes, "Well, you know that's how your sister died."
I'm like, what? What sister?
She goes, "Oh, I thought you knew."
She said, "You had a sister, one of your dad's daughters,
and she was in the closet."
My mom put her in the closet, and she was screaming,
and she stayed in there all night.
"When I went to go let her out the next day,
she was stiff."
I said, stop, stop, stop, stop. I don't want to hear anymore.
I can't.
She said, "Well, it was an accident."
I just stopped her. I just changed the subject.
I couldn't take it,
'cause I started feeling this anxiety.
I felt like I was gonna have a --
I felt like I was suffocating.
I didn't know I had a sister named Cathy
until my sister told me.
Cathy passed five years before I was born.
Cathy was six years old.
I later found out that
her arms were tied behind her back,
and her mouth was duct taped,
and she suffocated and died.
They put her in a suitcase,
and they buried her somewhere.
My head was just swirling with all these thoughts.
I couldn't believe it.
I realized that Moses was not the first child that had died
at the hands of my mother.
My son has mild Asperger's, and one night, she told him,
"You don't have anything wrong with you.
You're letting the devil use you."
I was so upset, because he was on a path
to trying to get counseling and try to better understand
himself and try to do better.
-What did you tell my son? -Calm down, Joy.
Don't tell me to calm down.
She convinced him the devil was using him,
and that's how she really believed.
Resist the devil and he will flee.
-Now you know. -Stop. Just stop it!
That is enough.
JOY: It would just remind me of her being Mother Anna.
I hated having flashbacks at the House of Prayer.
I was hurt -- I just wanted to get out of there.
He is my son, not yours.
JOY: I'm so upset.
And before I know it, I slip, and I say, "How can you tell me
how to raise my kids when you kill children?"
And when I said it, I knew then I had crossed that forbidden
line that I had tried not to cross for so long.
And I saw the look on her face.
She looked at me like she saw a ghost.
And I knew it was true.
I hated that it was confirmed that my mom
killed three children.
As long as I didn't confront her, there was that small
percentage that I could say I wasn't sure.
I started seeing Moses in the curtains
like it was him.
I started, like, you know,
I already had nightmares about him before,
but these were just worse.
I start hearing his voice.
I just start having visions of Moses everywhere I went.
I started doubting my own sanity.
I was trying to overcome it.
I decide to reach out to one of the brothers in the church.
I found his number, and I call him.
And I said, "I'm tormented by something
that has bothered me my whole adult life."
I said,
"Moses died at the House of Prayer, didn't he?"
He said, "Yes, he did."
I said, "Mom killed him?"
He said, "Yes, she did."
I broke down sobbing.
I started screaming and crying.
And I text all my siblings.
I said, "She really did kill Moses
the same way she killed Cathy."
I said, "She really is crazy."
Those were very tough calls for me to make,
because I mean, I love my mom.
I knew that if it was found out that my suspicions were true,
she would go to prison.
[phone numbers dialing]
I knew it was the right thing to do, and I felt like I didn't
deserve to be a mother myself
if I didn't make the call and take that chance
at having them find out the truth about Moses.
It was scary, because part of me
still didn't want my mother to go to jail.
I was hoping some miracle could happen.
And if she was arrested for this,
that she would survive the jail time,
even though she was older, and she would admit
to what she had done,
and justice would be served.
But I knew that for the crime that I was accusing
her of, that was not likely.
But it was a situation where I had to know
if Moses existed, I had to speak out about what
happened to my sister, and I had to be able to live with myself.
I knew at that point
that if I didn't say anything,
I just shouldn't even exist anymore,
because I felt like
any -- any of this could happen to one
of my children, and if I didn't say anything,
then I would have no right to seek justice.
Because if I don't care about someone else's child,
then why should anyone hold sympathy for me, you know,
if I don't care about other people's children.
It was heart-wrenching, but it was -- it needed to be done.
And then Pandora's box opened,
and all these reports opened up.
This is a mug shot from when she was
arrested for Moses.
This is a mug shot from 2017.
I cried when I first saw it.
I could see the pain in her eyes,
the tiredness,
and it makes me very sad.
I knew
that justice had to be served for those children
and, um,
the other victims who suffered at her hand.
My mother blames me for everything that happened.
She feels like it wasn't God's will,
that I took God's will in my own hands.
She pled to
a no contest murder of Emon Harper, Moses.
And she pled to manslaughter for Katonya.
Cathy's body was never discovered.
When my mom was arrested for Moses' death,
they questioned her again, begging her to at least tell
where Cathy's body was, and she acted like she didn't know what
they were talking about.
She never told.
She was never charged in Cathy's death because they never could
find Cathy's body.
I was devastated, couldn't hardly function,
because I felt like there was still
unfinished business between she and I.
I don't understand
how she could be so religious
and not even at the end feel obligated
to tell the truth about any of this.
I feel like my mom needed to tell me that she knew I did
the right thing as a Christian, she raised me to be
a Christian -- to me, she owed that to me.
She owed to tell me, "Joy, I know you did the right thing."
I also wanted her to tell me herself
what really happened to my sister.
I wanted her to tell me herself
what possessed her to do what she did to Moses.
I don't think she meant for Cathy to die.
But I do think, you know,
you hear stories about how,
certain serial killers, the first kill might have been
an accident, then all of a sudden, they just keep
doing it, just keep doing it.
It's like an itch they have to scratch.
If we still had the House of Prayer,
I think she would have kept abusing children.
I think more children would have died.
I do wish I turned my mother in sooner, and that's a guilt --
that's the one thing that I am guilty about.
It's a tragic, tragic, tragic story.
I pray throughout the day.
Um, I do believe in, you know, going to church and reading
my Bible -- I -- I do believe in that.
I do believe in miracles. I believe miracles happen.
I do believe in God. I believe God uses people.
But my views on the way that she did things,
I don't believe that's normal, and I don't believe that God
uses people to do the things that she did.
♪
He was really likable.
He ended up revealing that he comes from a major fortune,
but there is that little voice in your head
that's saying "Something is wrong here."
It's just horrifying.
He did torturous things.