Digital Traces Of A Hidden Cult
By Syrops Warnops
If you hunt for information on the internet concerning a cult from Alaska called The Body, you won’t find much beyond what’s published on this website. The group have never been covered in the media, and they’ve never had a homepage, permanent address or phone number. Even in Nikiski, where the group were based for over a decade, few who know the story are aware the group is still active and that it has name. No one we spoke with on location knew the identity of the person running the organization. Leadership has been remarkably successful in their efforts to leave no trace behind.
That said, there are records of this cult on the internet if you know where to look. The less fortunate members of the group work real jobs and pay taxes for the most part, and they have phones with internet access. Even though everyone on the inside has maintained a low profile, they create evidence of their lives in different corners of the web that anyone keen on keeping up with their movements can view. What’s more, even though the cult was a total secret to the outside world for most of its existence, a the story spilled out into the community surrounding Nikiski at a certain point, and there was real concern about a diabolical “sex cult” in town as gossip spread.
Here’s an example of how the chatter led to The Body appearing online despite no one on the outside knowing what to call it. On a business listing for a shuttered company that once installed satellite dishes near Nikiski, there’s an old review that sticks out. It’s got nothing to do with the service Satech provided customers.
This review is definitely about The Body, and it was harder to find than you might assume.
The two stars here took a lot of digging to uncover despite tips from a direct source linking Satech to The Body. An interview with a former member revealed that a man named Gary P (we’re still withholding full names in most instances) had a TV business in Kenai, which is only a few miles from Nikiski. After uncovering the business’s name and clicking around for a while, this strange review appeared in a Google search. For some SEO reason the result doesn’t populate in a broader search that would’ve been more obvious like “Nikiski Cult,” but with additional information we found it just under the surface. That was just the beginning.
Policy Notice
The rest of this article is going to focus on the most significant digital traces of The Body we’ve unearthed, which are reviews of another sort coming directly from the cult leader. A thoughtless gaff he made will make his identity much less ambiguous by the end of this article, but there are a few things we’d like to avoid leaking at this point.
Our research into The Body has revealed all kinds of personal information concerning Marc and Gary, as well as current and former members. Everything from social media pages to divorce records; we’ve even got traffic tickets. This isn’t a violation when it comes to editorial; it’s just the stuff a journalist sifts through to put together a crime story in 2022. That said, as much as we may desire to blow the top off this thing and reveal everything that could hinder the survival of this insidious cult, we’d rather not create a scenario that allows a victim to be harassed. This project is meant to raise awareness of The Body to make further abuses more difficult to inflict, not to expose survivors. Unfortunately in a story like this some victims have blood on their hands too. It’ll probably be impossible to shield everyone who deserves peace from blowback in this story, but we’d like to maintain some control over what gets out. It’ll be a delicate balancing act, but there’s a plan in place to minimize damage. If anyone reading this would like inside information to dig along with us, we encourage you to contact us directly before playing detective. We’re available at contact@thebodyintl.com
Now that company policy is out of the way, it’s time to shine light on a cult leader.
What is Covops?
There are a few very interesting records... When Marc B, the reclusive leader of The Body, showed up in web forums to throw dirt on his enemies for a few moments in 2015, it was completely out of character. The guy had been a total ghost previously, and he returned to seclusion after hitting send a few times. For all the searching we’ve done in the past five years, these posts are the only known public musings from the man that establish a direct connection between the chaos he’s created and the lives of his followers. Sure, there’s now an archive of tapes that make his tenure as a cult leader obvious, but Marc had no involvement in those being released online. The posts from seven years ago are another story.
What we’re sharing here is highly specific to events that occurred prior to Marc outing himself, and to fully grasp what you’ll be reading, a bit of context is required. It’s worth understanding what the hell he’s talking about, or his words may be misinterpreted.
To prove how much we value your patience, here’s a clear image of a man who bears a striking resemblance to our subject that was recently unearthed on the internet.
A Cult Leader Walks into a Diner in Alaska
In December of 2014, a reporter from a newspaper in Kenai, who we’ll be referring to as Rasha, met local fisherman Craig L who had a wild story to tell about a clandestine cult he’d been a part of for twelve years. It was an unreal story of abuse and mind control, but as insane as the story sounded, Rasha knew enough of the details from prior research to understand it wasn’t bullshit.
*Fidelity to the events in this story is important for TBI to maintain. To keep the bases covered, we’re including a relatively tame slice of audio from the beginning of the interview to please skeptics. This segment is free of sexual content.
When this interview was conducted, Craig’s account of the past six months of his life was beyond harrowing. There were threats against his family. Then he witnessed bizarre sexual encounters involving leadership. As time went on, Craig felt he saw signs that elders in The Body wanted to remove him from the church in order to gain predatory access to his wife and children. With the perception that his life and family were at stake, Craig did everything he could prove himself worthy to Marc B and Gary P. The slide into oblivion continued with Craig finding himself the subject in a practice The Body had installed called “Washing,” which involves being sexually molested by leadership. Not long after that horror, the true nightmare scenario was realized. Marc removed his uncooperative pupil. Craig’s wife Melissa remained in the cult. To make matters worse, Marc hatched a plan to label his former servant a child molester which almost led to the custody of six children being lost. It was hell on earth.
Craig’s whole world was at stake, and he was desperate to find away to hold onto what was left of his life. In retrospect, his actions didn’t make the situation much better.
There’s one last element to this part of the story that’s important to understanding why someone as private as Marc B showed up on message boards shortly after this scene at the diner- Craig had called upon a preacher to help in his battle with The Body. Nice plan, but who he called upon was ludicrous.
Sitting with Craig and Rasha at the diner was a man from Marshall, Texas named Randy Shankle. It’s not really an issue to use his full name because privacy isn’t much of a priority when we talk about Randy. His status in the religious world isn’t a secret. Plug Randy’s name into a search engine and you’ll find pages upon pages of opinions about the man. He’s incredibly controversial. Lots of people have accused him of being a cult leader, and in Rasha’s interview he doesn’t do much to acquit the perception outside of explaining that he’s broken old habits.
The reason that Craig chose to fly in a preacher with an unfortunate reputation rather than find a local clergy member is strange, though there’s logic behind the decision. Fighting a cult leader with another cult leader to solve a pickle like Craig was in makes a sliver of sense once you realize Randy had been something of a father figure to Marc B at the church in Marshall in the years before the second coming showed up in Alaska. The plan was to get Randy to confront his former protege, and to have someone who knew the game Marc was playing around to validate the story. That’s why Randy Shankle was in the diner for this interview.
Things did not go according to plan for anyone involved.
Covops is Online
Five years later…
While hunting for information about Marc B for the creation of this website at the end of 2020, we discovered a man in Australia who’d had a run in with the recently established Aussie division of The Body. Of all the members to set off the cult alarm for this person, it was Melissa, Craig’s ex-wife, who aroused the suspicion of the whistleblower. The Australian was way ahead of us when it came to gathering scraps of data about The Body online, and our source’s tip was to investigate forums concerning Randy Shankle. That’s how we found the first post by Marc B.
Once one message was discovered, we looked for posts in other forums and eventually found a puppet account with Marc’s fingerprints all over it. Something anyone searching for Marc online will notice is that there’s someone associated with the cult leader that goes by the name Covops Specops, which obviously isn’t something any mother would name a human being. A dummy email connected to Marc in a few searches also includes the military lingo covops. As it turns out, this happened to be the handle of “another user” posting stories about Shankle in early 2015. Covops Specops is Marc B. There’s an incredible irony here about someone as elusive as Marc blowing his cover with a name that signifies how covert his operation is.
We’ll start with what appears to be the most revealing covops post of them all.
covops said...
I was there for 8 years. Was Fathered by God not by man. Was treated worse than any man there by any ones standards. Chose to love instead of accuse. Found all the teachings to be true until the end when I confronted the elders including Randy about this particular matter. I had four distinct encounters with visions of which I told them in part as instructed. One of them included a huge banner above the Cassidy Jones building the complete length. On it was written Ichobod. I won't go into the details. Suffice to say the Lord told me the glory of the Lord had left CIM. Randy agreed I must leave. I came where I am now upon the instruction of Jehovah and request from a people. We met in homes and grew to 10 families. 12 years we dwelt together and built 52 projects together including each others houses. (Not mine). One of the elders here and i went to honor Randy for who he was in my life at one time. He said he had never seen what we had. A few months later he flew up here at the complaint of a practicing child molester who had a past record. We had been trying to help him for years. Thought he was delivered. He professed to us he liked it too much to give up.we told him we couldn't have him around our women and children. Randy told me ifi wouldn't submit to him he would take my name viral and destroy me. I prophesied EZ 13 to him and said go do what you are going to do. I watched a devil enter into him. He has done far more than he promised. He has preached from pulpits all over this area and the nation how I and the other elders here are a cult, have sexual addictions, contacted the FBI with fraudulent altercations, got the ear of a news paper with flat lies about us, has 8 cases in lawsuit that are straight frauds, ruined lives especially of 8 children, whose dad is the perp, locked them in a connex for hours a day for months without the mom, drove the mother out of the house by their violence toward her when they would come out, he has thought errant that we were going to get 20000000 dollars from a land sale so is trying to get a piece of what doesn't exist, and that is just a scratch of the surface of what he has done to try to dismantle us. We are stronger than ever in Christ. I maintain he has done me no wrong as it is written a perfect man is offended at nothing. He has however damaged his own soul and darkened his own spirit. What I want to know is how a once Godly man can straight out and out lie and look himself in a mirror. He sold his inheritance for a bowl of soup. I think he has been turned over to a complete spirit of insanity. I need some trite accounts of lives and marriages destroyed by him for my court case. Can anyone help?
How do you suppose Randy Shankle was going to make Marc’s name viral? Anyway…
Crucially, everything here is line with Rasha’s tape. What Marc is trying to accomplish with this post is likely more complex than the “trite” accounts he’s requesting, but that’s a lot to unpack. For now, we’ll move on to another covops post.
This one is a brief response to a post in another forum.
covops said...
Please help if you are serious. Randy has done and is doing a more heinous crime than any heathen would do. I need some wisdom even some type of advocate possibly
Earlier, Marc had said Randy couldn’t do wrong to “a perfect man.” Now he’s a heinous criminal. Righteousness is fickle in the world of a cult leader.
To cap off this article we’re going to feature the most important post of them all. It’s less descriptive than the first entry by covops, but there’s a reason it’s of greater value.
If confronted about this, it’s easy to imagine Marc claiming he had nothing to do with covops. He’s got a history of being less than forthcoming about what he author’s. However, deniability may be lost in the following post from yet another thread about Randy Shankle. This one’s missing the pseudonym his other entries are cloaked in.
From: ***SEE IMAGE FOR USERNAME*** 2/13/15 10:51 PM
To: anticult1 unread (4 of 4)
397.4 in reply to 397.1
I am in a horrific battle right now because of Randy. He has done things here so exceedingly evil a criminal can't think this up. He came here and told me if we wouldn't submit to him he'd take my name viral and destroy me. He has done even more than he promised. I need help. I need to show the courts here your accounts. He has turned children against mothers and drove the mothers out of the house. They have become so violent it isn't safe for them to see their own children. He is in league with a known practicing pedophile, a husband beater, a wife abuser, and a woman that he himself called a pathological liar. I won't go into the details. Suffice to say he spread all manner of lies about us, fabricated stories to the FBI and many other agencies, cost us over a hundred thousand dollars in legal fees, and destroyed 8 children in all. We ate still going through court on more false allegations and trumped up cases. I need witnesses to this man's character and his destruction. Can you help?
The fuck up is so obvious it’s probably not necessary to draw any additional attention to. In defense of sharing this post, we’re not revealing anything out of bounds here. Reposting a screen capture from a thread that’s been online for seven years isn’t exactly the kind of unmasking we’re trying to avoid. Whoever this user happens to be is something we can’t prove beyond a doubt, but we’ve got a solid guess. Maybe you’ve got one too.
A final note for any cult leaders out there reading this- if you’re worried about your name going viral, don’t draw this much attention to yourself.
