When Internet conspiracy theorist Sherry Shriner told one of her long-time followers, Steven Mineo, that his new girlfriend Barbara Rogers was a deadly reptilian agent, Steven broke with Shriner’s cult. Two months later, he was dead from a gunshot wound to the head, and Barbara had been charged with his murder. Shriner claimed credit for a true prophecy. But the truth was darker.

Journalist Tony Russo’s investigation of Mineo’s death, along with the earlier suicide of another cult member, led him inside an exotic new form of religion, where true believers assemble in internet chat rooms to stave off the demonic hordes of Lucifer, the New World Order, cell phone towers and reptilian shape-shifters.

Dragged Into the Light is a look at how conspiracy cults wield surprising power, and what their growth says about deepening religious and political divides in the United States.