The Mormon Psychiatrist Who Declared a Child Killer Cured — Then Visited a Sadistic Canadian Cult Leader
In 1985, Dr. C. Jess Grosbeck declared Rodney Lundberg — who had stabbed his 11-month-old son as a test of faith — cured and ready for release. Then he flew to visit Moses Thériault's compound.
Hannah's solo bonus episode follows the Rodney Lundberg case into territory as disturbing as the crime itself. Dr. C. Jess Grosbeck was the clinical director of Utah State Hospital, an active Latter-day Saint with missionary service, a Jungian analyst fascinated by prophetic authority — and the psychiatrist who declared Lundberg recovered after three years and one month. What followed his Lundberg evaluation: a four-day visit to Roch "Moses" Thériault's rural Quebec commune, a plan to co-author a book, and a session in which Thériault described a dream about the wife he had murdered during an amateur surgery — which Grosbeck interpreted through Jungian archetypes of rebirth. Thériault left the meeting convinced he was spiritually pregnant with her soul. The central question of this episode extends far beyond any single case: what happens when mental health institutions share the theological framework of the patients they're meant to hold accountable?
In this episode: Dr. C. Jess Grosbeck, Jungian analysis, and the clinical evaluation of Rodney Lundberg; the three-year-one-month timeline from infant murder to "cured" determination; Roch "Moses" Thériault and the Ant Hill Kids commune in rural Quebec; the four-day visit, the book proposal, and what Grosbeck did with Thériault's confession; institutional religion, mental health systems, and the problem of shared theological frameworks; why this episode should be listened to after the Rodney Lundberg episode.
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