The Story of the Ant Hill Cult
The most terrifying people are the ones who seek not to just dominate the flesh, but to dominate the mind.
In the forest of Ontario, one man convinced his followers that mutilation was a form of worship.
His name was Roch Thériault, but he went by "Moïse", and for over a decade, he commanded supreme authority over 8 to 12 adults, and over 24 children that were all fathered by Roch himself.
Roch had an almost hypnotizing power of his followers. He transformed a group of independent adults into a hive mind that complied to his every whim—no matter how sadistic—without complaint.
This group, notoriously known as the Ant Hill Kids, operated under the belief that individual thought wasn't just discouraged; it was considered a sin against the collective survival of the group, a common method of cults to control its "flock."
The group lived on a compound with Roch, and everyone worked to fulfill the demands of commune, which was to say: everyone worked for Roch.
THE GRIFT AND GOSPEL
Roch Thériault indoctrinated his subjects loyal to his whims, and numb to his bouts of rage that were frequent and violent.
By isolating them in the rugged wilderness and creating a violent "them vs. us" mentality against society, Roch pitted them against the idea of an unjust and complicated world, where only he could be considered a source of truth, the only provider of food, and only path to true salvation.
Roch was also under the delusion that he understood the complexities of surgery, and had killed one of his wives attempting a procedure on her torso.
He also performed amputations on others, even causing the death of a child in one doomed attempt to "help" his subjects.
Much like the enigmatic Jim Jones of the U.S, Roch maintained his polygamous relationships with the women of the camp, further pushing the idea of "the divine father" upon them.
The cult's final compound was a remote, heavily forested lot near Burnt River, Ontario (about two hours northeast of Toronto).
THE WOMAN WITH ARM
The cult of The Ant Hill Kids would be ultimately undone by a survivor of one of Roch's brutal "surgeries", Gabrielle Lavallée, who survived an ordeal straight out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
After years of enduring Thériault’s "medical" experiments, Lavallée finally broke free from the camp and escaped, after Roch, in one of his rages, had cut her arm off with a meat cleaver.
She emerged from the woods like a ghost, mutilated and frantic, rambling a story that was so grotesque the police initially dismissed it as a drug-induced hallucination.
No one wanted to believe that such medieval brutality was happening in modern-day Canada. It wasn't until the authorities finally breached the "commune" and saw the hollowed-out eyes of the remaining followers that they realized that something very disturbing was happening out in the vast and dark corners of Ontario.
KEEPING SCORE
Roch evaded capture in the thick hills of Ontario, but was eventually captured in October 1989.
Then, in 1993, "Moïse" was sentenced to life in prison for the second-degree murder of Solange Boilard, the wife he had attempted to "cure" of a stomach ache.
To the public's shock, even behind bars, Roch remained a figure of chilling manipulation over his followers, some of which moved closer to the prison to be near their dear leader. Roch even tried to sell his morbid artwork while locked up, but the Canadian government put a stop to that.
In February 2011, while in prison, Roch met someone more dangerous than himself.
It would seem that his fellow inmate Matthew Gerrard MacDonald was apparently immune to the charms and dogma of Roch Thériault.
Macdonald, a multiple murderer, was apparently "disgusted" by Roch's criminal history, which involved the death of an infant.
MacDonald, who had claimed that the bulk of his insanity came from when he fell from a cliff in Newfoundland and hit his head as a child, had decided he could not abide sharing space with such a man as Roch, and on February 26th, 2011, MacDonald was seen on security footage entering Thériault's cell, and plunging a makeshift knife into his neck.
MacDonald would then happily report his act to the guards, considering it a "job well done."
Much like the infamous cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, who met a similar end in a hellish dungeon, the barbarity of his crimes was so severe that even the lowest wretches grimaced in disgust. In the end, somebody upstairs is keeping score, and all debts, must be paid.
// FINAL VERDICT: SYSTEM PURGED.
// SUBJECT DECEASED: 02.26.2011
// STATUS: [CASE_CLOSED]
