Part One: The Throat-Slitting Evangelical Minister of Jamaica

as a guest. Molly, welcome on the show. Are you ready to have your day be worse?

title this the other Kevin Smith or some shit. We're talking This guy is a Jamaican pastor who led a charismatic Christian End Time sect in Jamaica and lost his mind as a result of COVID lockdowns and wound up trying to have slit dozens of people's throats and moss during a church service. This is a wild story, and the fact that he has just named Kevin Smith the whole time is going to be frustrating. I'm gonna i'll

cop to that right now. If you want to imagine silent Bob committing the heinous atrocities we're about to discuss, that's your business, although you should probably also talk to a therapist if you feel compelled to do that. Mollie, you ever heard of this guy, I'm gonna guess not. I had not until I started doing this digging.

someone's a cult leader, is like. The birth date's a real open question, so funny probably, though there's some sources that suggest he might be a little younger than this, born more in the late eighties. And I've just got no idea what day or month he came into the world. I guess it doesn't matter all that much. He was definitely born in a town called glengof GLn Goffe in the parish of Saint Catharine. And this is in Jamaica. It's one of the most prosperous parts of the island.

It's second only to Kingston as an industrial center, and it's got good access to water and a really good growing climate. So he comes up in like a fairly you know, Jamaica is an island with a lot of poverty, but he comes up in a fairly comfortable part of the island compared to some other parts. We have very little information about his early life, aside from the fact that he would later claim to have been physically abused by his father, who died when he was very young.

So his mom's going to raise him on her own for much of his adolescence, which again not a wildly uncommon cult leader backstory. And this statistically, you know, just since the fact that she's a single mom might suggest that he came up in a degree of poverty, but there's not a lot of evidence either way, right Like, In fact, it kind of seems the evidence suggests more that she managed to keep them fairly comfortable I'm not sure what she did, but they don't seem to have

been like on the edge of poverty or whatever. Right, he claims to have been baptized at age nine, and it's unclear which denomination he was from, but some sort of Protestant sect, right, just based on kind of the demographics of Jamaica and based on his later religious life, it was some kind of evangelical Protestant sect that he's baptized into. We can be pretty pretty sure of that.

Years later, as part of a court case that we will talk about more in the future, Kevin would claim to have again been sexually abused as a child by a male relative, so both physically abused by his dad and sexually abused by a male relative. We don't know how old he would have been when this happened, but he's probably pre adolescent, somewhere around like ten to twelve. We know that he goes on to attend Jamaica College, which confusingly is not a college, this is a high school.

I've read enough of the history to tell you I can't give you a perfect idea of why they called it Jamaica College, other than that word hasn't always meant the same thing, right. I think the school is initially established by like some I believe it's a Catholic member of the clergy who like leaves a bunch of money behind. But I forget exactly. But it's one of the best secondary schools in all of Jamaica. Right, So this is and it's not just I say it's primarily a secondary school.

I think you can start going there when you're about ten years old, right, So it doesn't exactly map onto what we call a secondary school. But this is a real good school, and it's a public school.

and he probably leaves when he's around fourteen. The Toronto Caribbean newspaper claims that this is when his mother moves the family to Canada in nineteen ninety six, but there's

disagreement on when the family moves to Canada. The Walrus, which is an award winning Canadian magazine, says they moved when he was twelve, which would have been probably around ninety four, although again we don't know his birthday really, so it's unclear how much time he spent at Jamaica College, but a report on his social media history by the Jamaica Gleaner shows a photo of him wearing the school uniform, so we know that he went there at some point, right,

So sometime between two and four years at this fairly prestigious academy, and then the family emigrates to Canada, and the fact that they were able to do so legally again suggests kind of a degree of financial comfort, because that's just not like a super cheap or easy thing, right, And it probably also suggests that like there's a lot of family support that's usually the case when people are able to make this move from Jamaica to Canada, that like members of their family kind of pool to help

make this possible, right, whatever the case, He graduates high school in Canada and it's here that he starts preaching for the first time. Right, and this is this is where we start getting like the foreboding music. You know,

this kid is like one of these teenage preachers. Like he gets into being an evangelical pastor at a very early age, which is almost never a good thing, right, Whenever someone's described as a gifted child preacher, which I've found references to in the Toronto Caribbean newspaper, it's like a bad thing, right, like that almost I've never heard of that ending.

you can bring someone in and get them preaching. Number one, it helps establish their career. You can be like I've been doing this since I was sixteen or seventeen or even younger, right, But it also it's kind of like a it's a marketing tool, right that you've got. We've got a child preacher, you know, God speaking of this little young man, and you know you need to hear what he's got to say. That's kind of a big

deal in the community. We're not entirely certain where he comes up within sort of the evangelical community in Toronto. I've heard references to the Apostolic community in Toronto, Caribbean, although the Walrusk claims he joins the Exodus Deliverance Temple in Mississaugua at age seventeen, and these are slightly in conflict, although he could have done both, because that's just sort of the way this community works. If that's the case.

The Exodus Deliverance Temple is founded in nineteen ninety nine, which meant he would have joined the year it was founded. And I kind of doubt that this is the case, just because I looked at their website and they say that when the church was founded, it was founded with only a few family members in a quaint and old white village hall. And he's not a member of the family that founded this church. So I think it's more likely that he comes out of the Apostolic community in Toronto.

But the Walrisks may have done, you know, have access to information. I don't. I don't know if I'm getting into the weeds too much on this sort of thing. But if he gets started in the Apostolic Faith church in Toronto, that is kind of a separate thing. And the Apostolic Faith movement is a strict fundamentalist Pinecot sect that originates actually in Los Angeles, right It gets its start kind of in a Hollywood at the end of the like right at the start of the nineteen hundreds

into the eighteen hundreds, start of the nineteen hundreds. And this is there's like a wave of different evangelical Christian revivals that sweep and they often do start in the West Coast for all of its sort of reputation is like a progressive haven. This is a thing that occurs

at the start of the nineteen hundreds. It occurs like in the mid century, it occurs after the Hippie movement, right, Like it's it's this constant place where you get these sort of a static evangelical movements that like rise up and they often will kind of sweep north in then east from Los Angeles.

was sort of like Catholicism light. And then my church left because they made a gay guy in California a minister and that was or a bishop, and that was not cool with a lot of people.

a different thing. It's called the Azusa Street Revival that gives a start to the Apostolic faith movement that is going to wind up probably being the church that Kevin Smith, the other one gets involved in, was started by a lady called Florence Crawford, and it's part of this wave of evangelical revivals that sweeps la from nineteen oh sixty nights fifteen, and it's characterized, like all Pentecostal revivals, by

these acts of like a parent mass mania. So you'll get these groups of people who attend a preaching session and they'll start babbling in tongues together and like having what look like seizures where they're like twitching around on the ground and shouting in fake languages. And this kind of mania that spreads contagiously is a big part of

the movement, right. And so a mission comes out of this on Azuza Street, which is why it's called the Azuza Street Revival, and they start a newspaper called The Apostolic Faith that begins circulating, and this lady Crawford, Florence Crawford, is a part of it.

Classic story. If you get kicked out of LA, move up to Portland. You know, many such cases, including several people on this podcast.

Apostolic Faith newsletter in the city. Here's how the organization he established, which Kevin is probably winds up joining, describes its founding. After reading an Apostolic Faith paper. Stanley Hancock received his baptism and was banned from church. In nineteen forty three, he and others started the first Apostolic Faith church in Canada. Now there are eleven and the Apostolic

Faith Church. It falls under this whiter umbrella of charismatic Christianity, right, which is a chunk of Protestantism, who believes in brief Number one, the Holy Spirit can and does directly enter people to change them and thus change the world. And number two, through this method, by sending the Holy Spirit into people, God bestows gifts upon them like prophecy and healing. He can like spontaneously heal your injuries by sending the Holy Spirit into you. And number three, and this is

the most important part of charismatic Christianity. It's a lot of fun to writhe around on the ground and pretend to speak in a fake language. People love it.

So it's kind of like a whiskey bourbon sort of deal. Pentecostals are all part of the Charismatic movement, but the Charismatic movement isn't just Pentecostals right now. One thing all these churches have in common is that they're always sort of scouting for young men with what the rest of

us might call strong cult leaders vibes. You know, we didn't have TikTok or like streaming back then, so as someone with those vibes couldn't just start a media career like they had, they pretty much like getting involved in a church or like Dianetics was basically their best option, you know, in the mid century. And Kevin though, comes up in this period right before the Internet's gonna really take off, and he gets scouted at around age seventeen

by this community. On the brief autobiography for one of his now scrubb social media accounts, he claims at the age of seventeen he was sent to thirty three countries within two years as a profit to the Nations. And this is probably true that like once they figure out this kid's got the gift of gab, and you can kind of set him up in front of any church you want, and he'll keep them entertained and giving money,

donating money for a couple of hours. You fly him all around, right, you put him up, he's like crashing in churches and whatnot around the world. But you fly him around and he's both building his own kind of platform, but he's also raising money for the wider organization and for each of these individual churches, and this is a whole industry, right. This is like the charismatic pastor industrial complex pretty much, right, which is what like Marjo documents

and why I recommend watching that documentary. So he's good at preaching to crowds and gathering followers, and it would have been a cinch for him to raise money for mission trips and even convince the leaders of his church to pay for him to go and preach the gospel. He claims that he was ordained at age eighteen by an organization called the National Evangelists for Canada, and I can't find any evidence that this group exists. People lie

about this all the time. But also the reporting for this comes from a Jamaican news site, and it's based on claims made by Kevin and based on just the differences in dialects spoken. It's possible that this is a real organization. They just gave kind of a name based on sort of the differences in dialects that made sense to them. But that doesn't directly correspond with what the organization is called in Canada. Right, there's some organizations with

similar names. I'm not sure. I don't doubt that he was ordained in some Pentecostal organization or another. It's not like being a priest in the Catholic Church, where you have to go through school. Somebody just decides to ordain you. When you're ordained and you get maybe a piece of paper or whatever, it's very easy. It's like my experience with becoming a judge. There you go, yeah, there you go. His denomination again, there's no seminary degree required, no qualifications.

The Walris notes that Kevin himself claims, and I'm talking about a new site when I say that, claims that Kevin says that ministers are qualified as ministers when they feel the call of God on their life, and that's pretty consistent in this community. For his part, Kevin would claim that he was around eighteen or nineteen when his grandfather first saw some of the early preaching he'd done and during a phone call, informed Kevin that he was

a prophet. And I'm gonna play you with video of his excellency, doctor Kevin Osmith discussing this conversation with his grand father. Because it's about time you get an idea of how this guy sounds and talks.

the youngest Jamaican born bishop in Jamaica's church history. Kevin completed a Bachelor of Theology degree, a doctorate degree from Vision International University in Ramona, California, and a Doctor of Ministry from Mount Olive Bible Institute and Seminary in Toronto, Canada. He was a licensed counselor and certified psychotherapist. And that all sounds very impressive. I can verify some of this,

but the stuff I can verify doesn't matter. I have no idea if he was the youngest Jamaican more born bishop in Jamaica's church history, because again, this is not like the Catholic Church, where like a bishop is a real position. You can just call yourself a bishop, or you can convince a friend to call you a bishop, and then you're a bishop, right, Like, it's not difficult, That is so true.

got fancy and impressive degrees. Reporters from Jamaica Observer called Vision University to see if Kevin and had received a bachelor and a doctorate there and quote. We were told that such information could only be provided in response to a written request, and only students are allowed to make that request. Now these guys had led. Yeah, they can't

even verify that, or they won't. But the news reaches out to these guys after he cuts a bunch of people's throats in a church service, right, So Vision International doesn't want to claim him. So I decided to just like look into the school to see, like is this even a real school? Like is there a chance anyone

has ever earned a real degree from Vision International University? And, at the risk of getting sued, I think the answer is no. If you go to their website, they bragg that you can quote earn an affordable Christian ministry or business degree on your time, and their motto is taking the whole world to the whole world. Now, I'll let Sophie scroll through the website while we discussed this fine institution in more detail so you could get a look at Yeah, save time and money on your college degree.

That always is the first a real college. Yeah, they've got like a lot of good stock photos. There's like a young black lady punching the sky defiantly with her diploma and the claim that Vision International holds prestigious international accreditation from ASIC. Right now, you're wondering what that is, right, prestigious international accredit. That must mean it's a real school. Right.

It says it's prestigious, So that's got to be legitimately accredited, right. Well, I looked into it because I thought that was odd. People who are accredited from legitimate organizations never have to tell you that the accrediting organization is legitimate. That's the first sign that someone's not part of a legitimate accrediting organization.

real school. So I googled Vision International University fake and the second search result was the Wikipedia page for list of unaccredited institutions of higher Learning, which seemed odd because they ensured us that they were accredited by someone real. Now, the first result when I looked into that was someone on the forum for degree info dot com back in two thousand and two asking is this a good school

or a fraud? And someone pointed out that like, well, they offer a master's in creation science, which means they fall under a religious exemption in California, which is not accreditation right. It means California can't stop them from giving out religious degrees, but they're not approved by the state as like a real college, you just can't stop someone from giving out degrees with titles like Master of Theology

or Doctor of Ministry. But they're not allowed to give out secular degrees like an MS a Master of Science. And they claim to right. And one reason I'm interested in this is because there's an attempt within sort of this chunk of the evangelical movement. One reason this is interesting is that there's an attempt within this chunk of the evangelical movement to create people who can get jobs as science teachers, right because they have MS degrees and

then teach in Christian secondary schools about stuff like creationism. Right. So that's what Vision International is doing. But they're not accredited to give out an MS in the state of California. So then I looked into that ASIK accreditation, right, which is why they're how they claim to be a legitimate university ASIC. ASIK stands for the Accreditation Service for International Colleges.

And this is a real organization. It's a private educational agency in the United Kingdom that is literally based out of a semi detached duplex residential property and stocked it on teas which doubles is the residential address for its creators.

So great, very legitimate organization run out of the home of the people who run it, just like this podcast and ASEX whole business is accrediting private UK colleges for visa purposes, and they are recognized by the UK government and this capacity, but they've been repeatedly criticized for being what's called a run around accreditor. And another poster from a different threat and Degree Info explains the key difference is that accreditation in the UK appears vastly different from

accreditation in the US. If your UK university has a royal charter, then that's all that really needs to operate. Accreditation is wholly voluntary and doesn't confer degree granting authority because that's not how degree granting authority is conferred in the UK. The issue with A six seems to be that some of the schools accredited by them lack institutional accreditation or authority to award degrees in their respective country.

So Vision International is accredited through ASIK, but ASIK is not approved in the UK to accredit a school, it means a different thing than it does in the US. They have no ability to grant degrees in the US, and they also don't really have the ability to grant degrees that are recognized by the UK. It just means that if you go here, you can get an educational visa in the UK. They're kind of playing with the fact that the same word means different things in two countries. Does that make sense?

He had been director of international operations for a real school, Northumbria University, until two thousand and three, when he was fired for reasons neither he or the school will ever discuss, which I'm sure means good things always not shady. When your school won't even tell anyone why they fired you, I'm sure no crimes were committed.

enter or stay in Britain. Another in London issued more than twenty five hundred bogus postgraduate diplomas in two months last year, earning its owners, who have fled the country and estimated five million pounds. So great organization, very real school. That's what we can say is that Kevin Smith gets

his doctorate from an entirely real university. Again, it's important to discuss this, even though we're getting a little bit off topic from the other Kevin Smith, because every one of these abusive Christian cult leaders you come across today has some kind of PhD or other fancy sounding degree from one of these fake schools. There's a whole ton

of them. One of the claims I found is that Vision International and around two this and two was show claiming to have four thousand campuses in more than one hundred countries, and to the best of my knowledge, Vision has thirty full in part time employees, which it's hard to keep four thousand campuses operative on thirty employees. And it kind of seems like they're just counting everyone who registered online as a campus, like you're a campus for

Vision International University. If you log on with your laptop, whatever coffee shop you're in as a campus. I love that. I need to start a fake college, like Sophie, we got to get in on this fucking racket.

Australian pastor named kin Chant. And I just mentioned that because I found a photo of him that I have to show you guys.

that I didn't know where to stop. According to the nineteen ninety four edition of Name It and Frame It by Stephen Levkoff, which is a book about fake colleges, Vision Quote also offers a special additional ten percent tuition reduction for students to enroll within the next thirty days, which is a real sign that someone's got an actual college going. Real colleges give you bonuses like that, right, sat up in thirty days and get ten percent off. Okay,

Now back to Kevin for realsies. In addition to his definitely fake degree, he claimed to attend Tyndale University, which is a real and respected private Evangelical Christian university. He also claims to have a Doctorate of Ministry from Mount Olive Bible Institute in Toronto, which seems to be about as real as Vision but has a very similar name to an actual college that's in the United States, which I think is the point and laying out Kevin's educational history.

The Walras, who is again a Canadian news site, noted while he has referred to himself as a registered clinical counselor and sought after holistic psychotherapist. He has never been registered with a College of Registered Psychotherapists in Ontario, so he's a Christian psychotherapist, which is different from being a

psychotherapist in the way that any medical establishment recognizes. Now while he's getting all these fake degrees and maybe one real degree in addition to several other questionable certifications, Smith grew up and seems to have made his living operating a ministry in Toronto and traveling around the world to

give speeches at different churches. Sometime around the turn of the millennium, he found his own ministry, which he calls CHOS Deliverance International, and the initials Chaos is just the initials of his name. On August twenty second, two thousand and six, he returns from one of his overseas preaching trips to the UK. The Walrus writes quote Smith was jet lagged and lonely, craving to spend time with someone

besides his brother. I wanted, you know, emotional company. Smith would later recall as per court documents, so he perused online ads for escorts and reached out to a man for his services Matt, whose real name is under a court ordered publication ban, arrived at Smith's home around ten thirty one evening. I would need him to be as inconspicuous as possible because I lived straight and I'm a Christian.

Smith would recall there was a conflict happening inside of me in essence to what I was going to do or not do. Now what he did, according to Matt's allegations, is sexually assault Matt, who goes to the police. The

next day, Smith is arrested and charged. He would later claim that Canadian police tried to use his Jamaican ancestry in the local stigma against homosexuality in Jamaica again Saint him, and he claims he told them gays are just people who need redirection, which does do a great job of making me more sympathetic to his case. But he's been accused basically of calling this guy in and then sexually

assaulting him. Right now, the case these allegations against him wind through the Canadian court system for the next several months and the next year. In early two thousand and seven, he gets married and possibly as a way to kind of distract from the fact that this is really bad pr to his ministry. He's either eighteen or twenty five when he gets married. I found different things on different news sites. It kind of depends on whether or not he was actually born in nineteen eighty two or not.

Whatever the case, this marriage does not seem to have really been like it certainly doesn't last. There's debate as to whether or not it was legitimate. They very quickly split. In the Walrus Rites, Smith's x's wife described him as verbally abusive in someone who led about his private life. He is not living an honest life, she would later recall. According to court records and the Toronto Caribbeans Report ADS, there have been allegations that his wife caught him having

sexual relations with men. She reported to senior ministers in the church organizations, but they denied it and there were no reprimand or consequences. So, you know, not a story we've ever heard before anywhere else. Wow, powerful up and coming guy gets caught violating the tenets of his religion for personal reasons and also violating a sex worker, and it all gets smoothed over because hey, you know, he's

he brings in money. Probably shouldn't segue to ads with that, but they also bring in money.

of two things happens. Either he marries this lady to try to distract from the scandal, or they had been they'd get married and stay that way for years, but she had seen signs that he was kind of living a lie and eventually tries to report them. In either case, the two of them split up and he goes on trial later in two thousand and seven for sexual assault. And this trial we can confirm absolutely happened, right. There's

plenty of court records in Canada over it. During the trial, Smith identifies himself as an international minister of religion who had preached in three hundred different cities. He says, we do crusades all around the world in churches and open fields and stadiums and things to that magnitude to preach the gospel Smith's lawyer denied that anything non consensual had happened, and under oath he claimed that Matt had tried to extort him for money during a private religious counseling session.

Quote the prosecutor in her closing argument shredded Smith's testimony. His life in his platform is a facade. She said. Mister Smith's reputation and his public persona are his primary concern, and he will go to any extent to preserve that facade. In the end, this judge found Smith guilty of sexual assault, sentencing him to six months in jail, followed by two months of probation. Mister Smith, it seems to be the judge said to quote, a parable might be viewed as a wolf in sheep's clothing.

his probation. He's supposed to attend counseling, and he's like no, I'm just going to go back to Jamaica and start a church there, and he's going to remain in Jamaica for the next six years where he starts a local church and he burrows into the Pentecostal community and he starts accruing clout followers and eventually wealth. So that's where we are at the end of part one, and this is going to lead us to what I would describe as a shock bloody conclusion to come in part two

where this one ends is pretty fucking intense. But Molly, that's what we got for the start of this episode. How you feeling as we sort of close out part one?